Cindy Sherman at the Museo Gucci, Florence

Pubblicato il 12 Gennaio 2013 da Beppe

On January the 10th 2013,  in the very heart of Florence, just next to Palazzo Vecchio,  the Museo Gucci inaugurated, in its contemporary art space,  the exhibition of Cindy Sherman,   American photographer. The exhibition called “Cindy Sherman: Early Works” was planned by Francois Pinault,  CEO of the French PPR,  the company of luxurious  brands including Gucci. The curator, Francesca  Amfitheatrof,  focused on the first part of Cindy Sherman’s  artistic output as  the  cornerstone of  her on-going reflection on  common female social roles and  identities. Through a camera focused on the artist herself, we face an array of self-portraits in various styles and consumerist backgrounds.

The exhibition, here in Florence, presents three series of Sherman’s work  centred on  exasperate multiple identities, playing a myriad of roles and  clichés. Thirty photos  all sharing  the artist’s consummate skill of  manipulating space and scale.

In “Murder Mystery People”, dating back to 1976, Ms Sherman tells, staged  like a  movie,  the story of an actress of the Thirties falling in love with her director.

With “Bus Riders” the visitor is  confronted  by different  characters waiting at a bus stop. “Doll Clothes” of 1975 focuses on  the performer, Cindy herself,  acting as a girl continuously trying on dresses. The  sequence is interrupted by a gigantic hand while seizing the silhouette and  pushing  it into  a plastic bag. The symbolic relationship between society and woman is approached by the  artist with an urgent, singularly personal vision . For the  women,  whose connotations affect all of us, she employs  arrays of costumes, wigs, props and sometimes prosthetic body parts, making of photography a provocative and aggressive tool of communication. She looks like” an increasingly vehement avenging angel waging a kind of war with the camera, using it to expose what might be called both the tyranny and the inner lives of images” as says Roberta Smith in the issue of New York Times of February the 23rd 2012.

The present event in Florence mirrors the contemporary rediscovery of this artist, now in her late fifties. In the past year, from February to June, New York, the city which has adopted her, set up a great retrospective exhibition of Cindy Sherman at the Moma,  featuring  170 shots of her career from the mid-seventies to the present.

The Moderna Museet of Stockolm and the Fearnley Museum of Oslo in a few weeks will follow the New York experience, organizing an exhibition of this pioneer of photography as artistic form.

A wide appreciation of the uniqueness of her work in creating multiple identities without using stylists, lighting designers or make-up techniques.

Just the boundless imagination of her  eccentric spirit who  succeeds only by his body and his face to stage joys and nightmares of society in masterpieces of artificiality, steering clear of photoshop.

If you are interested in spending few days in Florence have a look at the accommodations offered here by Tuscany Holiday Rent.

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‘Wassily Kandinsky. Dalla Russia all’Europa’

Pubblicato il 4 Gennaio 2013 da Beppe

‘Wassily Kandinsky. Dalla Russia all’Europa’.

Another  great exhibition in Pisa at the “Palazzo Blu” up to February the third, 2013,  after the cycle devoted to outstanding  20th century artists such as  Chagall , Mirò  and Picasso. Fifty works from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, various Russian public institutions, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and private collections.  Cosimo Bracci Torsi, President of the” Fondazione Palazzo Blu”, stated in his  briefing to the press  the main guidelines  of this exhibition,  that is, the aim of  exploring, as far as painting is concerned, the birth of abstractionism as one  of the most revolutionary features of modernism. Colour, line and space have  set up a  new language which aims at expressing  the inner reality of the artist  beyond any  figurative and descriptive perspective. The exhibition  presents the works of Wassily Wassilyevich  Kandisky from the beginning of the past  century until its early twenties. The visitor  immediately approaches  the opening section devoted to the fascinating conceptual roots of  Russian folklore  and shamanism,  visually represented by the colourful objects, collected  by the young Kandinsky when a student of  anthropology. From his early symbolist paintings, pictorially translating the beloved Russian milieu, one passes  to the works of the period of the artist’s staying at Murnau, in Germany,  well arranged together with selected paintings by  per la preferenza.

Then his large canvases, witnessing  the artist’s function of joining the western vangard of “Der Blaue Reiter” and the major Russian one represented by Mikhail Larionov and Goncharova. Finally the masterpieces of the final period of his Russian stay, when his effort of setting up large museums was violently opposed by supporters of  radical movements.

The year 1922 is a milestone in Kandisky ‘s life, he will definitely abandon Russia to accept Walter Gropius’ invitation to the Bauhaus for  a shared  teaching experience with Paul Klee.

The exhibition offers the visitor Kandisky’s meaningful experiences spanning between  Moscow and Germany, uninfluenced, on the whole, by the contemporary Paris artistic revolution, a sort of voyage through the painter’s main steps across Russian  tales, music and colour which shape up to  progressively  abandon  figurative art.

It is the birth of abstractionism. Kandisky is its theorician in  the masterly use of plain colours , able to visually show the spirit of the artist himself. Art is no longer a mere representation of reality, but something more, which can, through colour,  transcend space and time to get into an   unordinary  dimension, unknown to common perception. He is in this sense  close to the technique of the French  “Fauves”, for the preference to the pure colour, the one directly squeezed from the tube. The original element of the show, as anticipated by the curator Russian Eugenia Petrova, is the basic effort to provide the public  with the cultural context underlying the masterworks. It is a voyage down to  the roots of  Russian tradition to highlight the influences and fascinations of the painter through his interests and passions. The habits and customs of the Russian peasant world rich in  fairy tales and wonderful stories are Kandisky’s anthropological references which together with Wagner’s and Arnold Schonberg‘s music foreshadow  Kandindsky’s intuition of an art detached from reality, as  well as music.

In the early years of the last century, the  hectic work of the artist through paintings, watercolors, drawings, builds up the grammar  of a new artistic movement that has turned upside down the pictorial tradition of the twentieth century.

Another good opportunity to plan a visit to one of the most famous towns in the world. For accommodations in Pisa come and visit www.tuscanyholidayrent.com

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In the Oltrarno, Firenze, Villa Bellosguardo, Villa dell’Ombrellino and Villa Mercedes

Pubblicato il 24 Novembre 2012 da Beppe

Unusual  Florence, just a walk south of the Arno, along the country lanes among  the many Renaissance villas  which hosted at the end of the  19th and 20th centuries many British and American expatriates. A gorgeous approach uphill in the Oltrarno. From piazza San Francesco di Paola one can get along via di Bellosguardo up to the Villa Bellosguardo whose tower,  the oldest part of the  building, dates back to the thirteenth century.

A long story nice to tell. In the sixteenth century the tower was enlarged into a villa by the Marquis Michelozzi Roti, who had its entrance hall frescoed by the painter Bernardino Poccetti.
In the30s of the nineteenth century it became the  glamorous meeting point of European  scholars, under the patronage of the Baroness Marion von Hornstein Franchetti.
Today it  is  a four -starred hotel  with a fascinating view, almost unknown to the ordinary tourist. The landscape is here amazing. Many residences of famous  English and American intellectuals, as from the plate, next to the entrance of the  Villa dell’Ombrellino. “Qui, dove la grazia del cielo e del colle innalza la qualità dell’arte, vissero ed operarono i  figli di patrie diversi”. (here, where the joint grace of sky and earth  enhances art, people  from different countries lived and worked). A noble forerunner, Galileo, who used to live in this villa from 1617 to  1631   before moving to Arcetri,  paved the way to next inhabitants.  At the end of 19th century the American writer Eliot Norton was here a real ambassador  to American scholars interested in the culture of Tuscany. Norton,  Berenson’s art history professor at Harvard, set up in the villa  a refined artistic milieu, made up of top-rank characters such as the Brownings or Ruskin himself. Bought at the beginning of the 20th century by George and Alice Keppel the villa became a glamorous place  to be in.  Alice, a multitasking lady, could be both loving wife, keen  mistress of the King of England Edward the 7th and ,Francis Poulenc, Arthur Rubistein , Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf mindful mother of  Violet Trefusis who would become  a successful writer with a wide circle of acquaintances ranging from musicians such as Francis Poulenc, Arthur Rubistein or writers like Marcel Proust, Vita Sackville-West and  Virginia Woolf. The garden of  the Villa dell’Ombrellino, perfectly tuning in the features of the surrounding landscape, was commissioned by Alice Keppel  to Cecil Pinsent, the garden designer very active in Tuscany between 1909 and 1939 for the British speaking community.

Don’t miss  another residence rich in literary references, the Villa Mercedes known also as Villa Belvedere al Saracino or Villa Castellani much loved by the American writer Henry James. In his novel Roderick Hudson, Villa Mercedes is the model on which he shaped Villa Pandolfini, the fictional  residence of the Hudsons when moving here from Rome. James indulges on its description. ”It offered to the outer world a long rather low façade coloured  a dull, dark yellow….The garden was a charming place. Its southern wall was curtained with a screen of orange-blossoms, a dozen fig trees here and there offered you their large leafed shade, and over the low  parapet the soft grave Tuscan landscape kept you company”. Villa Mercedes seems also   to have inspired to him the residence of one of the main  characters of “The Portrait of a Lady”, Gilbert Osmond who ensnares the young American woman, Isabel, into a disastrous marriage, “getting ground in the very mill of the conventional”. The writer in the description of the house is overwhelmed by his cherished  memories of the villa he directly knew.” A rectangle with the straight dark definite cypresses that usually rise in groups of three or four….. beside it a narrow garden productive chiefly of tangles of wild roses and other stone benches mossy and sun-warmed”.

What better homage to the Oltrarno by one of his most faithful guests, Henry James, one of the pilgrims from foggy lands fallen under the spell of Tuscany  so difficult to escape from?

If you are interested in spending few days in Florence have a look at the accommodations offered here by Tuscany Holiday Rent.

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Villa Corsini a Castello, in the immediate outskirts of Florence

Pubblicato il 16 Novembre 2012 da Beppe

Why not abandon a too prevalent conformity in the choice of vacation and getting out of the ordinary without being discouraged by cold weather? Landscapes under winter light surely unfold a different charm and fascination and  journey, without considering  weather conditions, comes back to be the aware pleasure of closely looking at things, taking off the film of the daily routine perspective. Far  from the queues to the much crowded downtown museums  let’ s adventure among the treasures of the north-eastern hills in the immediate surroundings of Florence.

A rich choice, an amazing discovery of art and archeology . Villa Corsini al Castello, the Etruscan tomb at the Montagnola, the Garden of The Medicean Villa al Castello,  VillaPetraia or the Manifattura di Doccia.

Having already blogged Villa La Petraia (have a look on purpose on the post The Medicean Villa La Petraia “ published on Tuscany Holiday Rent blog on August 29.2012) let’s now discover Villa Corsini a Castello. Villas around Florence are excursions into the  15th, 16th, 17th century history of the city because connected to the great Florentine  ruling families which witnessed in these gorgeous properties, as well organized economical systems, their standards of life, tastes,  the ups and downs of their fortunes.

The story of Villa Corsini is quite interesting. Originally a property of the Strozzi family in the fifteenth century it was sold, after the exile of Palla Strozzi for his opposition to Cosimo the Elder de’ Medici, to the Rinieris  as a ‘stately-though simple country house with a large land cultivated with vegetables, olives and grapes. The villa and its park were gradually upgraded and enlarged by Tribolo, the same architect who would later plan the garden of the Villa Medici a Castello and, above all, the masterpiece of the Boboli Gardens. After different owners in 1618 it  became part of the possessions of the Medicis, more precisely of  the Grand Duke Cosimo II, thus enlarging his nearby estates. The Corsinis, another rich family of merchants and bankers bought it at the end of the 17th century.  Giovan Battista Foggini renovated the villa and the garden according to the  baroque style. At the center of the façade a great balcony was added underlined by the Corsini’s  coat of arms and a theatrical  garden divided into three areas was planned.The south section a typical Italian garden decorated with geometric boxwood beds turning around a circular stone basin, the north area including a wild  wood of cypresses, oaks and laurels. French elements, among which a fountain flanked by two fan-like flights of  stairs, prettily bordered by bushes  and the adjacent horsehead shaped fountain,  framed by scrolls and rocailles enrich this wilder area. At last the third section,  the so-called “four season garden”,  a theatrical semi-ellipsoidal shape setting, decorated with pillars, benches and statues of the four seasons sculpted by Isidoro Franks in 1702-03. The park includes  the farm, divided by a row of cypress trees, grown mainly with olive trees and vines, reminding us the typical Tuscan landscape.

Today  the villa, purchased in the 50s by the State, is an amazing backdrop for  collections of sculptures  and ancient epigraphs from the National Archaeological Museum of Florence. The spectacular lounge hosts Greek and Roman sculptures. Valuable the original Greek lion from a  fifth century BC funerary monument and the great Roman statue of the “Sleeping Arianna”, copy of a Hellenistic original sculpture. Particularly interesting the  Roman replica of an original  second century B.C. work featuring Niobe  pleading for her last survived son against the wrath of Apollo . The mythological Greek character sung by Homer and Ovid stands here in her eternal punishment for having challenged the gods. From Greece and Rome  a turn to the Etruscan world, whose remains  adorn  the courtyard  of the villa, inviting  visitors to silence and meditation.

If you travel to Florence and surroundings , it’s worth visiting this magnificent example of Renaissance architecture. Choose for that an accommodation in the area

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Mimmo Paladino at Santa Croce, Firenze

Pubblicato il 8 Novembre 2012 da Beppe

Stop to  souvenir stalls and their spreading commercial colonization in Florence main squares. It is time to step back and re- think over the deeper meaning of historical sites, witnesses of our shared past  memory. Let’s public places stop to be misused and turned into soulless and trivial spots. That ‘s the issue of   the debate, opened these days, by Mr. Givone, the culture councillor  at Palazzo Vecchio, seat of the government of Florence.

“Let the squares in the hands of artists” he says against any dangerously contagious  shabbiness. Consequently the cultural, international week Florens 2012, as a part of a broader program,  has made an outdoor exhibition center of Piazza Santa Croce.

Mimmo Paladino, one of the most famous artists of the Italian movement called Transavanguardia has set here his installation, a huge holy cross. The event, kicked off on November the third, 2012 is going on up to  the 11th . It is meant to be an amazing call, an artistic  epiphany,  giving back  the square its original role and an on-going crusade  moving from Santa Croce to the other Florentine squares.

In front of Paladino’s work, both a game by an imaginary cyclops or just a large- scale amusement  of a child playing with beach pebbles,  visitors curiously stop. In front of the fragmented blocks they are implicitly suggested to reflect on the meaning of the place. The austere monumental  cross, made up of Carrara marble  blocks, is able to establish a dialogue with the magnificent Franciscan basilica, bordering the square. The  variously coloured, shaped blocks,  from 2  to 5 feet tall, have been scratched  by symbolical signs, faces and  limbs thus drawing back to the mysteriously figurative relationship with an archaic memory. The result is a fantastic sacred precincts of primordial times, covered with a thick carpet of white pebbles, magically reflecting, at night, mystical  light around. Through the vitality of figurative archetypes, the art of Paladino reproduces, in a contemporary milieu, the original communication of the medieval church which  employed symbols and images to reach an  illiterate community. Coming back to the roots a bridge  between  past and present is strongly established.

If you plan to come to Florence at the weekend, profit from the  downtown accommodations offered by Tuscany Holiday Rent.

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