An exhibition at the Mother of Naples
When the ambition of the new rich off progressively to establish the virtues of republican oligarchies, where the constraints that had allowed the spread of wealth were seen as a hindrance to further enrichment, we found from the Renaissance to the Baroque. The historical pattern, the social fabric of one of the most significant upheavals in European history admirably described by José Antonio Maravall become a classic book (The Culture of the Baroque, the mill), they sound very familiar to contemporary readers. So much so that at the beginning of the nineties, when we began to enter the postmodern era, where the mystique of the market took over, some critics began to speak of neo-baroque. The similarities, however, were and are many: a homogeneous society that real inequality, speculation and financial crises animated by the middle classes who feel at risk and hope to make the leap, wars and conflicts generated by society in continuous destabilization. Some anecdotes from the past? The transformation of municipalities in the Lords, in 1636, the crack of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, major epidemics such as plague, the failure of the major Italian bankers, and half a century of conflict (the Thirty Years War, War of English Succession ...) . All of which stimulate the comparison with the contemporary world, as does a show at the Mother of Naples: Barock, the inner soul of the contemporary baroque, the aesthetic culture of an era where the return of inequality and domination of the fittest does go out of style confidence in reason. Where - to resume the analysis of Maravall - "the rich from all walks of business conduct seriously detrimental to the community," coalescing around absolutism and promoting a culture that rides the widespread insecurity, and privileges the mystical inspiration a significant revelation of the divine which is believed inaccessible to the tools of intellect. With the eclipse of the ideal rational, or the Renaissance of the Vanguards, therefore, art sought amazement. The Baroque, in fact, or sensation, as recited in 1997 the title of a famous exhibition of collectors Saatchi & Saatchi, intends to document the increasing sensationalism of contemporary art. Challenge was echoed by the mother, who greets visitors with the most talked about and popular piece of 1997: Heaven (Paradise). Opera sostituitasi denouncing science to religion in the promise that man will never get: the overcoming of death. The famous shark in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst that clears the illusory power of the technique as pure artifice, emerging as the only chance to see where life is no more, is in an aesthetic vision, throughout the Baroque period. As in Moon Shadow, the work of Anish Kapoor, where the jet of red wax ripped from the walls suggests the presence of hidden spiritual life in inanimate matter.
In both cases, as with many artists selected by curators, museum directors Eduardo and Mario Codognato (including the Chapman brothers, Cattelan, Gordon, Hatoum and many others), wonderful visions necessarily spectacular - because the truth that defies reason must be absolutely overwhelming - and the usual lack of confidence in the ability to find a rational way in pushing calculated apophany sensitive. How reiterates Giorello Giulio in the catalog, in fact, the mistrust of the time, it is strong today. In the seventeenth century brought the failure of Aristotelianism, its claim to describe reality in a system default and theoretically opened the way for the experimental method, the quantitative measurement of the phenomena, qualitatively impossible to circumscribe. Today, accompanied by sensational discoveries where the answers they believe to hand go further and further, inviting scientists to use physical and major literary metaphors to suggest a hypothetical overall sense of knowledge (as in the famous Cosmic Landscape by Leonard Susskind) .
Once again, it dominates the search for a loophole ultra-rational, an allegory of life in a small theater where humans and repeat endlessly recite roles archetypes of which escapes the deep meaning. It makes a spectacle out of existence, the desire of a revelation that breaks the daily repetitive script, illuminating some overwhelming truth. To fulfill this vision of the world, the seventeenth century practiced a blend of artistic genres called beautiful composed and determined to lay the conditions for the appointment with the miracle might be fulfilled on time in the art total. Similarly is the case today where the insecurity of citizens and the hegemonic ambitions of the powerful do not translate into great decorative apotheosis but the contamination of languages \u200b\u200band phantasmagorical world of television and film images. In the refined allegories staged by the mother, but especially in the continuous carnival ephemeral means of mass communication, such as television sets of the seabed of seventeenth-century papier-mâché, the existence of the reality show where the most banal and meaningless suddenly seems geared to a script already written.
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