EXIBITIONS IN PROGRESS
L’EXILE ET L’APPARENCE
Meetings with Jean Baudrillard
Siena, Santa Maria della Scala
Magazzini della Corticella
May 8–July 13, 2003
One of the most brilliant sociologist and provocative maitre à penser of our time, Jean
Baudrillard is famous for his sharp analysis of contemporary society and consumerism. He is
less known as an artist and photographer: his exhibition at Santa Maria della Scala presents
his “System of objects”, that is a group of autoreferential signs related to reality, which is
more and more identified as simulation and representation. Selected by the author together
with Antonio Bertoli, curator of the exhibition, photographs clearly show the artist’s intention
to present an image that does not depend from the real, but has an evocative and symbolic
strength. The game of shapes that become the symbol of something else, creates a new
setting, different from reality. This is how illusion arises: stronger and more vital than reality,
it is fundamental in our world of simulation and representation.
ARTE ALL'ARTE - ARTE ARCHITETTURA PAESAGGIO
(ART TO ART - ART ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPE)
Casole d'Elsa, Colle di Val d'Elsa, Montalcino, Poggibonsi, San Giminiano, Siena
13th September 2002 - 6th January 2003
Art critic Emanuela De Cecco and Vicente Todolì director of London's Tate Modern are the
curators of the seventh edition of Arte all'Arte which continues research and encouragement of
a constructive relationship between the community and local cultural heritage aimed at a living
creative dialogue. Run down and often forgotten areas have acquired new connotations and
identities thanks to the installations created by contemporary artists of international standing
through sensitive non-invasive interactions with the existing architecture and landscape.
The work of Miroslaw Balka in San Gimignano, Lothar Baumgarthen in Montalcino, Tacita Dean
in Casole d'Elsa, Cildo Meireles in Siena, Marisa Merz in Colle di Val d'Elsa and Damiàn Ortega
in Poggibonsi bear witness to how it is possible to speak of the present through the mouth of
the past.
COLLATERAL ACTIVITIES
An exhibition of projects created for this year and documentation of past editions:
- MUSEO DELLE PAPESSE (SI)
13th September - 15th November 2002
- MUSEO DI ARTE MODERNA E CONTEMPORANEA DI SAN GIMIGNANO
22nd November 2002 - 6th January 2003
On 22nd and 23rd November 2002:
- Presentation to the press of the following publications: Arte all'Arte Catalogue, curators:
Emanuela De Cecco and Vicente Todolì
Guida all'Andar Lento 2002, (Guide to going slow 2002) curators: Roberto Rossi and Michele
Taddei
- Inauguration of the permanent installation by Nari Ward at the Termoutilizzatore in
Poggibonsi
- Guided tour of installations at Arte all'Arte
- Tasting of typical wines and gastronomic specialities chosen for the occasion at Spezieria di
Santa Fina in San Gimignano
14th - 15th December 2002: Arte all'Arte. Arte Architettura Paesaggio Conference
For information:
Associazione Culturale Arte Continua
tel. 0577-907157 - fax 0577-940484
artecontinua@tin.it
www.arteallarte.org
ROBERT CAPA PHOTOGRAPHS
Siena - Santa Maria della Scala
San Leopoldo and San Giuseppe rooms
12th October 2002 - 12th January 2003
This important Roberto Capa retrospective, created by the Aperture Foundation (NY) and
organised in an exclusive Italian tour by Fratelli Alinari (FI), is at its final stop in Italy at Santa
Maria della Scala. The curators Capa's brother Cornell and Richard Welan have selected 170
black and white photographs the greater part of which are being seen in public for the first
time.
The exhibition opens with a photograph from Barcelona in 1939 of a woman with her dog
searching for refuge during an air raid and closes with his last photograph taken on 25th May
1954 in Indochina before his death when he stepped on a landmine on the road to Namdinh at
Thaibinh. Apart from touching and incisive war reportage where the leading role is taken by
the courage determination and tenacity of ordinary women and men the images in this
exhibition also sharply focus on the joys of peace, Parisian life in the thirties and forties
through inspired and enriching portraits of friends such as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck,
Irvin Shaw, John Huston and Pablo Picasso …
"For me, Capa wore light like the uniform of a great bull-fighter, but he did not kill; like a great
sportsman he fought generously for himself and for others in a whirlwind. Destiny decreed that
he should be taken from us at the height of his powers".
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Idea of Metropolis
Museum of Contemporany Photography Villa Ghirlanda
26th October 2002 - 2nd February 2003
The physical, existential and cultural complexity of the metropolis, its varied and possible
forms of representation in photographic and video images: this is the theme of an exhibition
commissioned from eight young Italian artists by the Lombardy Region, the Province of Milan
and the Municipality of Cinisello Balsamo in preparation for the Photography Museum Museo di
Fotografia Contemporanea of Villa Ghirlanda.
Despite their different backgrounds the eight photographers all constantly seek to renew the
language of photography, which today has come to embrace both the values of documentation
and the more complex issues of an artistic project. These works do not fall into the traditional
categories of photography (landscape, portrait and social photography) nor does the use of the
term metropolis wish to evoke the Milanese metropolitan area in particular. Some of the
photographers live in Milan or its outskirts (Jodice, Marossi, Colanzi, Di Bello, Mangano) while
others live in different cities (Signorini in Prato, Zamagni in Rimini, Orio in Venice). Their
research has been carried out in very different territories and situations favouring a very full
bodied, global concept of the metropolis. It is worth noting that the common denominator that
emerged in all the projects was the human figure, observed within the public spaces of the city
or in more intimate or private locations, while the urban environment took on a more marginal
role as the background of single human episodes.
DIONISO’S WINE
Gods and men banqueting
Siena, Santa Maria della Scala
Archaeological Museum
6th August 2002 – 2nd February 2003
The new Archaeological Museum of Santa Maria della Scala hosts 150 finds of excavations on
the cult of Dioniso and the world of Symposium in Basilicata. The collection illustrates different
aspects of wine consumption in ancient times, as well as its social and cultural values. Objects
range in date from the Bronze Age to Roman imperial time and were commonly used to
transport, prepare and drink wine. Displays include craters (deinoi), amphorae (oinochoai),
small metal or ceramic vases (kyilikes, skyphoi, kantharoi), and also spits, trivets and lamps
(kottaboi) used in banquets.
Funerary goods from necropolis of Chiaramonte, Guardia Perticara and Montescaglioso
(datable from 6th to 4th century B.C.) state a gradual acquisition of Greek costumes in the
habits of local rich élites. A special section considers Dioniso and his cult, widespread in all
social classes from 5th century B. C. He was seen as a god gathering and protecting the city
world, offering worldly pleasures and a blissful afterlife.
BICCHERNE OF SIENA
Art and Economics at the Dawn of the Modern Financial Age
Siena, Santa Maria della Scala
Room San Pio
7th December 2002 – 1st June 2003
This exhibition is about the confluence of three seemingly disparate elements – art, history and
economic thought – in a synergy of civic life: the biccherne. These remarkable works of art
were painted covers of the state ledgers or administrative balance sheets of Siena and they
derive their name (biccherne) from the government agency that originally commissioned
them. In 1257 the Office of the Biccherna, the most important finacial branch of Sienese
government, charged with managing all the revenue expenses of the comune, inaugurated the
custom of commissioning panel paintings from the best artists in the community to function as
covers of its semi-annual collection of public ledgers. Shortly thereafter, the Office of the
General Gabella, which was responsible for all duties and other taxes on commodities and
business transaction, followed suit. Today more than 100 of these fascinating works of art are
part of the collection of the State Archives in Siena. The style and subject matter of the
biccherne evolved paralleling and documenting the growth of the Siena itself. As the city
state’s importance and self-awareness grew, the themes of the cover were expanded to
include allegories of the religious and political life of Siena and even specific historical events.
After Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome and the Corcoran Gallery of Washington, the collection is
now on view in the Museum of Santa Maria della Scala. It includes works by painters such as
Guido da Siena, Giovanni di Paolo or Sano di Pietro, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Lorenzo di Pietro (il
Vecchietta) and Francesco Vanni.
ARCHIVE
CH A N GI N G PER CE PT I O N S : T h e P a nz a C o l le ct io n f r om t he G ug g en h e im
Mu se u m C o ll ec t io n in N e w Y o rk
Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona, 29 June – 18 November, 2001
After almost ten years of restoration activity, Palazzo della Gran Guardia, a monumental
building in Verona’s city centre, was once again open to the public. A venue for cultural events
and an active congress centre, the Palazzo was opened with Changing perceptions, an
exhibition of outstanding works from the Panza di Biumo collection at the Guggenheim
Museum in New York. The exhibition layout, designed by Giorgio Cortenova, Director of the
Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti, and by Earl Giuseppe Panza di Biumo
himself, presents works by C. Andre, D. Flavin, D. Judd, Sol LeWitt, R. Morris, P. Sims, J.
Turrell e L. Weiner and provides a precious opportunity to access one among the most sensible
and insightful views of Minimalist, Conceptual and Environmental Art of the 60s and 70s.
For this cultural event, Bondardo Comunicazione has studied a detailed communication plan
while managing at the same time media relations.
A sc o lt a r co n g l i o c ch i
Works by Daniele Lombardi and Francesco Pennisi
Composers and visual artists
Siena, Santa Maria della Scala
San Pio and Sant’Ansano Halls
12 July – 8 September 2002
This event has been organised in collaboration with the Municipal Administration of Siena and
the Chigiana Musical Academy with the support of the Monte dei Paschi Bank. The show
comprises two parallel artistic itineraries, both directed to a multimedia idea of art where the
arbitrary and the subjective are the mysterious dimension challenging the visitor.
“Musica inaudita” by Daniele Lombardi (San Pio Hall)
“In margine al pentagramma” by Francesco Pennini (Sant’Ansano Hall)
Daniele Lombardi, drawing from a musical and visual education and background, has
developed a dimension that incorporates sign, gesture and sound in a single idea of
perception, which includes analogy, contrast, stratification and association.
The show, curated by Omar Calabrese, demonstrates the evocative musical and visual
development of the artist. Over a thirty-year career, which began with a thorough study of
20th century avant-garde movements, the artist now considers the tension towards
simultaneity to be like the inexorable freezing of temporal flows in a fixed space.
For Lombardi, this is not about seeing music according to an exact correspondence between
visual diagrams and their execution: the artist builds utopian maps in which the journey is an
adventure in freedom, at times without obligatory paths, which necessitates a strong
sensibility and sense of abstraction on the part of the participant, like entering an unexpected
and beguiling labyrinth.
Francesco Pennisi, recently deceased, was one of the leading composers of the last fifty years.
The show, curated by Jade Vliestra, presents painting and graphic works created by the artist
for the theatre piece Descrizione dell’Isola Ferdinandea (text by the artist), and the cycle for
flute, cello and harpsichord Carteggio, published in two books Deragliamento (1984) and
Paesaggi di memoria inattendibile (1994), and the illustration of Giona e il Leviatano by
Giacoma Limentani (1993).
His ‘voice’ springs from the need to express a constant interaction between sign and sound,
when the need to create with different signs pushes the artist towards new modes of
expression.
Pennisi’s work is sensitive to the close relationship between man and nature, between
cognitive experience and the primal force of natural events, which he translates into a
sensitive and refined world, rich in oneiric visions, in which vegetable blends with animal and
the insignificant with the universal; it is a world where birds, for example, belong to a reality
which is as natural as it is abstract and mechanical and so he transforms them into flying
contraptions.
THE BIENNIAL OF POST-MEDIAL ART - EUROVISION
DNART
Gen.Etica e Mutazioni
Merano arte, Merano
15 June - 27 October 2002
A theme of great importance has been chosen for the first edition of this Biennial. Cloning,
artificial insemination and DNA mapping, the unpredictability of the mutations that are
being produced without any control are issues of public debate and have already been, for
some years now, themes dealt with by numerous artists.
In the light of the most recent discoveries in the fields of genetics and biotechnology the
approach to these issues goes far beyond the traditional coupling of art and science. Indeed in
this case the imagination embraces fear as never before and science undertakes an ethical
dialogue with contemporary art.
The first Biennial of Post-medial Art in Merano is conceived as a creative laboratory which can
provide a platform for exchanging ideas and formal solutions, bringing together the efforts of
those who are working towards understanding what will happen.
Sections of the exhibition
The Double
Mutations and Transformations
Metaphors and Analogies
List of artists
Julia Kissina, Bjørn Melhus, Milan Knì¡zàk, Larry Miller, Brian Reffin Smith, Tyyne Claudia
Pollmann, Andreas Horlitz, Elisabeth Wörndl, Lorenza Lucchi Basili, Julia Schrader, Suzanne
Anker, Tobias Madörin, Annachiara Mongiello, Dominique Tirincanti, Salis & Vitangeli,
Costantino Ciervo, Arnold Mario Dall’O, Alighiero & Boetti, Silvano Tessarollo, Karen Yurkovich,
Santolo De Luca, Martin Kippenberger, Peter Kogler, Eduardo Kac, Paul Feichter, Myriam
Laplante, Matteo Basilé, Ottmar Kiefer, Zvonka Simcic & Tanja Vujinovic, Karin Anderson,
Andreja Kuluncic.
Video Section (in collaboration with Careof, Milan)
Sabrina Mezzaqui, Alessandra Arnò, Tessa Den Uyl, Valentina Coccetti, Kocheisen + Hullmann,
Francesca Seteria, Brigata Es, Lino Budano.
Performance (only on Saturday 15 June) Franca Formenti Bio Doll
Partner:
Galleria Civica di Trento
With the support of:
Merano Municipality
In collaboration with:
Cultural office
The European Academy of Design, Autonomous Province of Bolzano
Bolzano
Autonomous Region of Trentino-Alto Adige
Academy of Fine Arts, Urbino
Careof Milan
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C’ERA UNA VOLTA
MEDIEVAL CERAMICS AT THE CONVENT OF CARMINE
Siena, Santa Maria della Scala
san leopoldo and san giuseppe rooms
25 June - 15 September 2002
This exhibition shows, through over four hundred artefacts found during the restoration of
the convent and hospital complex of Santa Maria della Scala, the life style, working habits and
diet of building workers during the first half of the fourteenth century. At the time this
material was used to fill the cavities of vaults by alternating ceramics with loads of earth. Here
the workers also left abundant refuse, making it possible to reconstruct everyday life on the
site and yielding perfectly conserved objects such as pieces of material and parts of footwear
with holes for shoe nails.
The exhibition, curated by Riccardo Francovich and Marco Valenti from the archaeological
department of Siena University was sponsored by Banca Monte dei Paschi.
LEONARDO MATTIOLI: ILLUSTRATOR AND GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Santa Maria della Scala, Siena
Piazza Duomo, 2 October 20, 2001 – January 27, 2002
Promoted by Santa Maria della Scala, in cooperation with Siena City Hall and the Historical
Institute of Art in Florence, this exhibition offers a journey through the abundant artistic
production of the well-known Florentine illustrator and graphic designer. The starting point is
his quite personal interpretation of Pinocchio, published by Vallecchi in 1955, where Mattioli
fully expresses his innovative potential in the use of monochromatism, years in advance of
what will later be regarded as an identifying tract of the Italian mainstream in illustration, to
arrive at a so far unreleased Gianburrasca from the 90s. A section of the exhibition is devoted
to the vast poster design activity touching political and social themes, a sign of the artist’s
strong civil commitment dating from the early 70s: a telling example are those designed for
Regione Toscana’s anti-pollution and forest fire prevention campaigns. At the end of the
exhibition one finally finds the graphic design activity carried out for major Italian publishers
such as Vallecchi, Sansoni, La Nuova Italia among others, for which Mattioli designed whole
series of books and unforgettable covers.
PHOTOGRAPHERS IN SIENA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Santa Maria della Scala, Siena
Piazza Duomo, 2 October 20, 2001 – January 27, 2002
Promoted by Museo di Storia della Fotografia Fratelli Alinari, the Siena City Hall and the Santa
Maria della Scala Institute, the exhibition presents Siena as a primary destination for tourist
routes in nineteenth century thanks to its Middle Age flavor, so appealing in view of the
concurrent primitivist mood, but also as an opportunity to rediscoverice of the historical roots
through its consistent heritage of monuments which, after Italy’s Unification, effectively
addressed the need of a national identity.
The city’s most celebrated monuments are photographically reproduced by Alinary as early as
in the mid-nineteenth century, and are cited in the first commercial catalog dated 1856. They
are also present in the photographic production of the most prominent ateliers of the time,
such as Brogi, Anderson, Sommer. Worth of mention is also the precious testimony of local
photographers such as Paolo Lombardi, active in Siena from the late 50s, in addition to as
many as 180 photographs, mainly unreleased, coming from the Fratelli Alinari History of
Photography Museum, from the Central Institute for Cataloging and Documentation in Rome,
from Biblioteca degli Intronati in Siena, from Siena’s Soprintendenza and also from several
private collectors.
IRVING PENN – Still Life
(12 October – 19 December 2001) exhibited some famous works by the American
photographer side by side with advertising campaigns for Miyake, Clinique and Vogue and
about eighty still-lifes from the 40s. The intention was to make an in-depth comparison with
this parallel, but lesser known, part of the artist’s output, analysing the intense synergy
between the two creative fields. For the same purpose the agency organised the seminar
Creating and Consuming. Objects representation from Flemish still life to advertising to
coincide with the opening of the exhibition.