Over the thousand-year history of the museum business on the Apennine Peninsula, not only colossal volumes of material have accumulated, but also a specific culture of its presentation has been formed. Moreover, the immediate artistic value of the exhibit becomes an ambiguous concept, sometimes more important is the idea that unites it and the resulting complexity of the exposition. For example, the exhibition held six months ago by the great Venetian artist of the Renaissance Giovanni Bellini, first of all, struck with the newly combined altar doors, usually stored in different museums thousands of kilometers from each other, or with boards from private collections brought from the American hinterland. The exhibition "Giotto and Trecento" brought together a colossal number of Italian masters from Milan to Naples and their French contemporaries of various qualities, one way or another influenced or influenced the Tuscan innovator.
The Siena exhibition brought together under a common title, borrowed from romanticism, not only exhibits from different countries, works of different eras, material of different properties - but also artists of varying degrees of mental sanity, some of whom are generally indirectly related to Art. Here, of course, the presentation is more important, and to a greater extent - the one who serves: the curator Vittorio Sgarbi. A politician and art historian, known for the use of political methods in art criticism - the substitution of concepts and provocations. An active participant in student protests in 1968, candidate for mayor of Pesaro from the Communist Party in 1990, founder of the Liberal Sgarbi movement in 1999, then an ally of Silvio Berlusconi, thanks to which he became secretary of the Ministry of Culture in 2001. In parallel, he writes books about masters and works of all eras and produces videos on the history of art. An Italian-specific combination.
After all, a museum here is not only an exhibition space, and an exhibition is not just a cultural event. This is an expression of the spirit of the times: from the passion for collecting among aristocratic families and the directly proportional dependence of the wealth of collections on the influence of the owner - to futurism, which proposed to destroy museums, and at the same time to rebuild society (the Futurists are almost the only artistic and political party in history: Marinetti was friends with Mussolini and was proud that some of the political ideas of fascism were put forward by him). A museum event is always a spectacle, with theatricality inherent in all Italian life: shocking, science, politics, intrigue are closely intertwined in it. It is superficial and deep at the same time, speaks of the momentary and the eternal, funny and makes you cry. And he always requires scenography - architecture.
The exhibition "Art, Genius, Madness" presented in 10 thematic halls the confusing and controversial side of artistic creation. The exhibition is conceptual (it is still impossible to call it thematic, since the topic is interpreted very broadly and not always literally), the material is specific and heterogeneous (from the works of Van Gogh to the works of the patients of the Siena mental hospital), the specialists involved come from very different professional spheres (artists, art historians, psychiatrists). The halls of Palazzo Squarchalupi turned out to be filled with boards of altar compositions of the 15th century in the style of Bosch, small genre compositions depicting the treatment of madness in the 17th century, canvases and graphic sheets of Van Gogh, Munch, Kirchner, Otto Dix and Max Ernst, works of contemporary artists under the supervision of doctors a profile corresponding to the idea of the exhibition, as well as the clothes of patients and medical equipment of psychiatric hospitals of the past centuries. In such conditions, design plays one of the leading roles, if not the first, namely, it clarifies the concept, sharpens accents, unites materials of different times and different quality, which appeared under the same roof and in the same walls at the behest of the "author" of the exhibition.
10 topics suggested by the curator - 10 different interpretations and approaches to the interpretation of the phenomenon of madness - are distributed in the respective rooms. A multifaceted view demanded a different material, sometimes difficult to agree. The organization of the exposition saves the problem from vulgarization, in which heterogeneous objects are appropriately systematized and decorated, and the exhibition spaces were interpreted in accordance with the themes that should have been presented in them.
The viewer is gradually "introduced into the subject": behind the hall with the Italian sculpture of the 20th century, which serves as a kind of preamble, follows the historical part of the exhibition, located in a long corridor and consisting of works of art from the beginning of the 16th to the 18th century, representing images of madmen in this era and history. studying the subject, as well as - from anatomical models of the brain and vintage straitjackets. The latter, placed in an “artistic” context and elegantly integrated into the exposition, without losing their “cognitive” character, look at the same time as some kind of art objects.
Further, a retrospective study of the phenomenon, accompanied by the work of patients of hospitals of the specified profile, depicting their hospital everyday life (Cesare Lombroso, Paris Morgiani), is connected to the “main exposition” divided into floors by a staircase, at the foot of which there is a well used as an exhibition stand for the relief of the marginal Sienese master Filippo Dobrilla, our contemporary. The historical part ends with a hall of portraits-characters of the 18th century sculptor Franz Messerschmidt, who in the last years of his life was damaged in reason, but retained the ingenious ability to reproduce the human body.
Then the exposition is divided into halls representing various aspects of the relationship between art and madness. Van Gogh, Kirchner, Strindberg and Munch are united as artists who worked during the time of Nietzsche (whose attitude to the topic is very direct), as well as constant heroes of research on the topic indicated in the title of the exhibition. Hall "General Madness: War through the Eyes of Artists" - on the one hand, presents another version of madness, on the other - an important problem in the history of art of the twentieth century. Here are the artists for whom the war has become the leitmotif of creativity, the theme that glorified these masters: Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai, Georg Gross, Otto Dix.
The rooms where the works of the madmen themselves are housed contain works from the collection of the psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn from Heidelberg, the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne, as well as the fruits of the creativity of patients of Italian insane asylums, systematized according to a monographic principle. Works by Antonio Ligabue, a kind of primitives reminiscent of Henri Rousseau, graphic compositions by Carlo Dzinelli, amazing in their compositional and color structure - these are some examples of the so-called. art outsiders, long ago become a collectible. The last theme is the hall of artists working in a style bordering on madness, called "The Clear Madness of the 20th Century": there are surrealist works and an exposition of Viennese actionism, which, in general, has absorbed the elements of all of the above. Hall 10 is a kind of quintessence of everything seen - not at the level of artistic quality, but at the level of ideas. In any case, the work of the madmen is more harmonious than the bloody bodies of the members of the Viennese group. And at this stage, the viewer, having seen more than 400 exhibits on the topic of mental disorders, understands that the exhibition does not give an answer to where is genius and where is madness, and does not try to give, but additionally raises new questions about the criterion of "normality" and about it of relativity in general.
An attempt, perhaps, not to solve the problem, but to bring everything into a single system, takes upon itself the design of the exposition. In the architecture of the exhibition, the “documented” normality or museum recognition of the artist is reflected in the character of the hall's interior. The halls with Van Gogh, Otto Dix and the Actionists have a classic display: paintings are hung on the walls and illuminated with the correct museum light. The halls with the works of the "crazy" turned out to be a field for the activity of architectural and expositional fantasy: the works are suspended on a fishing line along a broken guide or embedded in metal frames and placed in the middle of the hall at different angles to each other. This is how their specific character is preserved and emphasized. The originality of the exhibits is consistent with the specifics of the works and serves as that fine line that not only nevertheless separates great art from the creativity of the marginalized, but also gives the latter an "exhibition", to a certain extent "museum" character.
The work of the architects of Studio Milani plays an almost leading role in the perception of the exhibition material. Here it is difficult to speak of a direct “embodiment of the curator's ideas”, since the style of this bureau is clearly visible in the architecture of the exhibition interior. But this is in the full sense of the architecture, consistent with the concept of the customer, in its forms corresponding to the function, telling about its content, directing the movement of the visitor and, thus, interpreting the idea of the structure (i.e., the exhibition space). Lightweight structures, materials - metal, plastic, glass, laconic forms refer to the style of the Italian exhibitions of the 1930s, which were designed by architects - supporters of the Italian version of the Modern movement - rationalism, with their minimalist designs and exceptional talent to convey the exhibition concept by small means. However, here the rectangular module that prevailed in the 1930s is replaced by a triangle (dynamic shape), violet light (the color of madness) is added to the neutral colors of the showcases, and some parts of the stands are reflective surfaces. The result is a dynamic space with a broken trajectory of movement, multiplying in reflections of itself, responding not only to the theme of the exhibition, but, moreover, to the spirit of modernity in general.
As thin as the line between genius and madman, between madman and artist, between the product of a sick consciousness and art, it can turn out to be very conditional between the visitor of the exhibition and the authors of the works presented at it, between the real world and the world of invented ideas and fantastic images. The metal gratings used in the design, on the one hand, bear the aesthetics of modern architecture of light structures, on the other hand, they resemble the gratings of psychiatric hospitals. The broken trajectories of the routes of the exposition are not only the lines of the spaces of deconstructivism, but also a metaphor for the broken psyche. Neutral light combined with violet lighting - not only illumination of minimalist interiors, but also hospital corridors. The design, which has united works of different content and nature, as if compares their authors with the viewer: in the planes of showcases, among the exhibits, the visitor periodically sees his reflection. In addition, the route through the four floors of the exhibition, turned into a labyrinth by the efforts of the architects, is long enough not only to get used to the museum space, but also to approach the “heroes” of the exposition in our emotional state.
This is the involvement of the viewer in the insane world of art and the fantastic world of insane - either a philosophical idea of art curators, or an experiment of psychiatrists, or a Zeitgeist trace. A real, implemented architecture of ideas does not create, it embodies them, it appears at the right time in the right place. And the point is not only that in Italy, since 1978, state psychiatric hospitals have been closed, that is, insanity is considered a "different kind", but not a disease, and not that a small, refined, extremely conservative in its foundations Siena opened its own doors for an exhibition, where a significant part of the exhibits can hardly be called works of art in the usual sense. This exhibition makes you look not only at the world of art and see a share of insanity in it, but also at the world of the insane - and see the elements of everyday life in it, and thus feel the subtlety of the line that separates these worlds. It is also an excuse for detachment, detachment, which serves art, which is an integral part of mental deviations and which helps to see things in a new light. And for this, the closed, located on a hill, separated from the rest of the world by the Tuscan plains of Siena, is the best suited.
When examining the last hall, emotional tension grows to the limit and makes you want to go out into the fresh air - and the exhibition takes the visitor into a bright, glazed room overlooking the medieval Siena walls. Only the letters of the exhibition name attached to the wall remind of what he saw, which provokes light reflection on what is missing in the exposition: pages from "Diary of a Madman" or "Nightmare" by Fuesli … But the Tuscan sun and the stone and marble of the Siena palazzo illuminated by it on the contrary, they are suggestive of the "clarity of the Italian genius" so valued by Welflin.
Exhibition Arte, Genio e Follia. Il giorno e la notte dell'artista takes place in the Santa Maria dela Scala museum complex, Palazzo Squarchalupi UNTIL JUNE 21, 2009.
Curated by Vittorio Sgarbi
Academic Direction: The Antonio Mazzotta Foundation
Architectural design: Studio d'Architettura Andrea Milani
The exposition brings together more than 400 works from the leading art museums in Europe (Orsay, Center for Georges Pompidou, Prado, Brera, etc.), thematic collections (Museum Art Brut, Lausanne, Collection of psychiatrist Prinzhorn, Heidelberg) and museums of the history of medicine (Museum of the history of medicine University of Rome "La Sapienza", Museum of the History of Medicine named after Rene Descartes, Paris, etc.).
Thematic rooms: Depiction of Madness (from works attributed to Bosch to the present day), Genius and Madness in the time of Nietzsche (Van Gogh, Munch, Strindberg, Kirchner), General Madness: War through the Eyes of Artists (Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai, Georg Gross, Otto Dix), The Art of the Mad: Dedication to Hans Prinzhorn (works from the collection of the psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn in Heidelberg), Art Brut (works from the Art Brut Collection by Jean Bubuffet, Lausanne), Some Italian examples between normality and insanity (works by Carlo Zinelli, 1916-1974, Pietro Gidzardi, 1906-1986, Tarcisio Merati, 1934-1995), Travel to Tuscany (Tuscan villas and castles, in which psychiatric hospitals were located, are famous for their talented patients: Filippo Dobrilla, Evaristo Boncinelli, Venturino Ventruri, Belarges, etc. The sheer madness of 20th century art (from surrealist work to Vienna actionism).
