Events

A winner’s day.

In the picture : morning view of the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, residence and seat of government (1444 to 1482) of 'Federico II da Montefeltro'.

‘A winner’s day’ is the title I would attribute to the work by Piero della Francesca[2] which I was admiring a few days ago at the ‘Pinacoteca di Brera’ in Milan. Many titles actually alternated : ‘Sacred conversation’[3], or ‘Madonna of the egg’, or ‘Madonna with Child and Saints’ and finally now ‘Pala di Brera’, thus proposing a completely new order.

I stood for a long time in front of Federico da Montefeltro, an ugly and probably rude but touching man in the armour in which he tries to defend himself or simply not to reveal himself - despite being a very capable warrior, accustomed since his childhood to the mistreatment that a child suffers because he was born outside of a noble marriage.

However obedient without resignation, Federico kept the memory of that few of love he even received, as well as of the disadvantages and mistreatments that undoubtedly hurt him. But the education in a monastery – education moreover decided by the family out of mistrust and calculation - allowed him  not to give up his own thinking, which in fact he actively cultivated and in many directions, including his sincere dedication to Battista Sforza, his second and re-beloved wife.

Looking at him carefully his profile moved me, because disfigured by a primitive plastic surgery on the nose which however allowed him to use his eyesight, seriously compromised by that accident between riders : I was moved by his bent knees, made more noticeable by knee pads, placed at his side with a scruple of reality. But above all I liked his non-greedy look on the sleeping Child, that also meets a goal to which his own bride’s look, in full autonomy, is directed : where in fact a  common good is, that is a real place and here oriented towards the viewer, it is the beyond  of this work indeed.

Federico – as the winner he is remembered as – recognizes here the power of those who have no Power, nor do they arm themselves with their power to reduce people in their own power. She honoured him with many children who, formerly,  he procured elsewhere but hardly moving away from that marriage. An intimacy that Piero della Francesca testifies with a very refined detail, the precious Flemish-style fabric, here in gold and in red, of which Federico was a connoisseur, a detail that brings her dress closer to his cloak. Here is a conjugal thinking I said to myself! That is the winner as a matter of fact.

Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio – November 4, 2015

[1] 'Federico II da Montefeltro' (1422 - 1482), Count and Duke of Urbino, was an Italian leader, captain of fortune and a very famous Renaissance lord. The famous Federico’s library, unique at that time in its vastness and prestige, was finally taken over by the pope Alexander the 7th Chigi who saved it from destruction, and it is still part of the Vatican Apostolic Library.

[2] 'Piero della Francesca' (1416-1492), Italian painter and mathematician, managed to harmonize, in his life and in his works, the intellectual and spiritual values of his time. He was friend of Federico da Montefeltro.

[3] Datable to around 1472, this tempera and oil on panel by Piero della Francesca later received some completions from Pedro Berruguete, another court painter.

I invite you to know the story of Vivian Maier, who I myself by chance found out about, and then I was able to meet in the beautiful and so far only exhibition set up in Italy, at the MAN Museum[1] in Nuoro, in the elegant building where various exhibitions are housed, also documenting the sober and cultured refinement of 19th century Nuoro.

The exhibition about Vivian Maier’s work unfolds in fact through some rooms with characteristic arched ceilings, connected by the marble staircase on three floors : it offers a rich and selected collection of the incredible quantity of photos taken by the first ‘American woman-street photographer’[2] and found completely by chance by the young and enterprising John Maloof[3] .

Vivian Maier, born in the United States in 1926 and returned as a child in France where her mother’s family lived, then independently came back in the States in 1951, where she immediately looked for a job as ‘nanny’, that is a governess for children in wealthy middle class families. In a number of photos she films the nuns, perhaps not entirely ironically, because in English is written ‘nun’ and pronounced ‘nan’, very close to ‘nanny’ to which Vivian in some way compared herself. But, were indeed enough the stormy emotional events, she almost cinically commented in several photos, of her father and mother to nail her definitively and exclusively to children ?

John Maloof found himself dismayed when faced with an unexpected, enormous quantity of often repeated shots, flashes and kilometers of impressed films, haphazardly piled by Vivian in the trunks of the famouse garage[4] taken over after her death.

Vivian Maier never tried to make public her passion which remained secret even from her employers. They say about her that, in the free time provided for by the employment contract, she could be seen leaving with her ‘Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex’ hanging conspicuously around her neck. And then, seen returning hours later, or after her holiday period has ended, just as she was simply returning to duty : dignified, very tall and silent, with something rigid and absolutely non-sensual in her movements – the children laughed secretly and far away from her, now as adults they admit it.

Vivian Maier’s self-portraits are numerous and often disturbing, almost a first generation selfies to which this Nuoro exhibition dedicates a room. She sends her Rolleiflex forward but the viewer is struck by the difficulty of attributing with certainty to her a sex, and a thinking : boredom, distrust, curiosity ?

Vivian Maier ended up printing very few photos – perhaps for economic reasons, but who knows – and most of these are the result of a very careful work by John Maloof, who exalted their value as well as his own value as a precious tracker of never known artists.

It’s reasonable to assume that Vivian Maier died dissatisfied with the result of her work as a photographer, jealous of every last quintal of film she hid, which not even the employers knew existed, despite having granted her that garage for storage use and that she had begged for her trunks, with a sense of the ridiculous that Vivian herself contributed to being imputed to.

She was unable to convincingly immortalize poverty, the moment in which satisfaction escapes giving in to resignation :  yet she had tried in every way. But, despite never attempting new professional paths, with resentment remaining glued to the family where she worked, “… that shot was enough for her…”, as a viewer observes facing with photos which communicate a voyeurism difficult to admit towards prerogatives from which Vivian Maier believed herself excluded.

“Children loved her…”, a visitor woman comments facing with a photo where Vivian holds tightly by the hand the two little children entrusted to her. And they admit, but interviewed today as adults, in a dry tone and respectful of the camera filming them : “She was good…” Today they can finally be grateful to Vivian for something, even just for a brief unexpected success for knowing her as a ‘nanny’.

With an impassive tenacity that slipped into obstinacy, Vivian got to perfection her outfit, the very expensive equipment essential to the ‘street photographer’ of the 1950’s. As she herself soberly confessed, she much preferred the American metropolis with its imbalances, its contrasts, its easy ostentations : she liked the poor and especially their defeats.

Using trains and public transport she traveled elsewhere, but only to take photographs : at the seaside for example, or even abroad, managing to bring the subjects she chose closer than every time, at such a little distance that we can understand how often a serial killer is capable of winning the favour of the chosen victims.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco Sul Naviglio – September 27, 2015      

[1] ‘Vivian Maier – Street photographer’ July 10th – October 18th, 2015 – Museum of Art MAN of Nuoro, Via Sebastiano Satta 27.

[2] ‘Street photography’ is a photographic genre that appeared towards the end of 19th century and until the end of the 1970s when portable machines gradually became established, and intends to shoot public places and subjects in real situations; ‘street’ generally indicates where human activity is visible; framing and timing are key aspects of this photography.

[3] John Maloof (1981, Chicago – Illinois) achieved succes with the documentary – film ‘Finding Vivian Maier’ which was rewarded in 2015 : fond of history and journalism, he began working as a second-han dealer with his father and brother, but John especially revealed remarkable business acumen, indeed admitting that it was his own talent that guided him with confidence in identifying and purchasing Maier’s trunks at a negligible price (380 dollars in 2007), and then transforming Vivian’s pale life into a success.

[4] ‘Finding Vivian Maier’ (2013) is the film directed by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel. John Maloof is also editor of the book ‘Vivian Maier : Street Photographer’ and curator of Vivian Maier’s work.

The Great Mother goddess is a hypothetical female and primordial divinity, present in almost all mythologies, through which the Earth manifests itself, and the ability to generate and feed : indeed it seems that the Great Mother specifically concerned the first nomadic populations, who lived by hunting and gathering wild fruit. However in the elegant setting of the rooms of the main floor of the Palazzo Reale in Milan ‘The Great Mother’ offers no nourishment that is no difficult to swallow and digest. “Messages a little too layered…!”, I heard someone comment. The Great Mothers on display are the work of women, contemporary and living artists, even if something comes from Surrealist and Futurist women : but they seem little interested in feeding, perhaps.

In the very long video ‘Grosse fatigue’[2], also winner the Silver Lion at the Venice Festival, gametes are vacantly mentioned, even they are already present in primordial reptiles : man is absent at all. And the children of the exhibition are hungry.

The children of Nathalie Djurberg (1978, Sweden) for example[3]. Nathalie is having success also here in Milan, where it seems that the Art Galleries compete for her. Children in her video ferociously chase the poor woman until they return to their mother’s womb as a clear failure of a nutrition in bad shape. Wouldn’t be easier to realize in time that they were hungry, not only of food but also of thinking and speech ?

I combine that video to Ragnar Kjartansson’s video (Rejkjavik, Iceland) with the hateful repetition of an elegant, robust, elderly woman spitting contemptuously at an indifferent young man in suit and tie, perhaps also contemptuous of her, but already inclined to melancholy hatred : the title, a bit naive, is ‘Me and my Mother’, where the capital letter for ‘Me’ is really disproportionate. Suffer or kill, give up or attack : haven’t we already watched for a little too long this daily pantomime from servility to civil war ? Already more than fifty years ago Carlo Emilio Gadda had abundantly enlightened us about the victim-son who, even coming to know the truth, it would be the greatest achievement because nothing can change. [4]

From ‘The Great Mother’ here it is a flash on Virginia Woolf[5], who offers herself to the photographer in the dress worn by her mother who died a few days ago, a hint of an indefinable smile curves her thin lips : Virginia had been waiting – we are told – for the triumph of that replacement for a long time, and while waiting for which she believed having been prevented from living her own life.

And here it is a small photo of Sigmund Freud with his mother Amalia in 1925[6], while another photo - that Freud himself displayed in the anteroom of his Studio in London - depicts Oedipus who, solving the deadly enigma of the Sphinx[7], becomes king of Thebes and marries the queen Jocasta, thus also freeing the city from the monster of a Great Mother. But, as we say, Oedipus and Jocasta pay dearly for the sudden remorse for their satisfaction : a non-solution is remorse, which does damage right when it is removed.

But it is from young Slovakia, which entered the EU just under twenty years ago, that something interesting and provocative comes from a young artist, and forty-year-old father : Roman Ondak[8] proposes a real and present woman, here teaching her one year old child to walk. It seems that Roman was observing his wife while teaching their little son how to take his first steps, reading the satisfaction of the child who felt accompanied to enter independent adult life. And he was also able to read the satisfaction in his wife to collaborate in the independence of the child : what certainly recalled the artist and the man, since real life is a whole other world, precisely that one that every child wants to enter.

No one, in fact wants to be brought back ‘inside’.

                                         Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco Sul Naviglio - September 18, 2015

[1] ‘The Great Mother’,  Palazzo Reale – Milan from August 26th to November 15th, 2015 : conceived and promoted by Fondazione Nicola Trussardi together with Comune di Milano and ‘Palazzo Reale per Expo in città 2015’. At care of Massimiliano Gioni.

[2] ‘Grosse fatigue’, Camille Henrot (1978 living, Paris) 2013, Silver Lion Venice, room 15.

[3] ‘It’s the mother’, video by Nathalie Djurberg, room 19

[4] ‘La cognizione del dolore’, Carlo Emilio Gadda(1963) Garzanti editore 2008

[5] Virginia Woolf, room 29.

[6] ‘Sigmund Freud with his mother Amalia’, 1925; ‘Oedipus solves the Sphinx enigma’, J. A. D. Ingres 1808-London, Freud’s Studio, room 4.

[7] Mythological monster with a woman’s body, head of a lion and wings of a bird that devoured anyone who entered Thebes without having guessed an unsolved enigma : “Who, despite having only one voice, transforms into a quadruped, biped, triped ?”

[8] ‘Teaching to walk’, Roman Ondak, Zilina-Slovakia 2002, room 14

In the photo : next to Santa Maria Incoronata in Milan, with the characteristic two entrances portals on the facade, there is the Renaissance Augustinian ‘Libraria’ that hosted William Congdon’s exbition.

By William Congdon, born at Rhode Island in the States, belatedly approached Christianity, I had recently appreciated a ‘Nativity’ exhibited during the Christmas period in the church of San Raffaele Arcangelo in Milan, near the Duomo.

Passed through heavy experiences that led him during the 2nd World War to enter the lager of Bergen-Belsen and then into the mud of Mumbay and Calcutta he also found himself collaborating for a long time with Peggy Guggenheim at Venice, Congdon finally landed in the Milanese countryside of Gudo Gambaredo, living in a Benedictine monastic community for almost twenty years and until the day of his death, at the age of eighty-six.

An earthly, material and very pleasant painting, where Mary of this ‘Nativity’ is barefoot and the swaddled baby almost a luminous larva who, from the bottom of the cave where he was born, radiates up to the angels - almost terrestrial birds – and until going outside. Hope, the only possible one, is to feel good in your own skin : that ‘Nativity’ really says the change of something which happens to you, hope is if it can become reality.

Then, walking towards the Renaissance Humanistic Library[1] of the Augustinian monks at the romanic church of Santa Maria Incoronata of Corso Garibaldi, I was intrigued by this new William Congdon’s exhibition, fourteen selected tables preparing Christ’s Easter, passage to resurrection and therefore indispensable work. The theme of the Crucefixes is the Sabbath[2], the Saturday of the descent into hell, temporal place in which humanity continually risks catastrophe : in the pasty material of Congdon, on this Saturday of History, man is a big dark larva, the heart – of gold – an engine that proceeds alone, but is then able to ?

According to Congdon, the partner is still a promise to the child that the adult does not keep.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - May 2, 2015           

[1] The Augustinian ‘Libraria’ of  Santa Maria Incoronata, Humanistic Library of the order of the ‘Augustinian Observance’ is a Renaissance jewel in Milan : built in 1487 and functioning for about three centuries, it has been restored in 1987 with very complex works, after abandonment following the Napoleonic destruction which also caused the theft of the precious preserved volumes.

[2] ‘The Sabbath of History’, by William Congdon. With meditations on Holy Week by Joseph Ratzinger (2012) KOFC