The fantastic visions of Steven Arnold

It is unfair and inexplicable that the figure of Steven Arnold, an eclectic and highly refined artist and influencer ante litteram, has remained so little known: it is only in recent years that people have begun to recognize his exceptional weight, from his visionary work to his central role in the cultural scene of the 30-year period from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Born on May 18, 1943, in Oakland, California, Steven showed a creative nature early on: as a child he spent hours locked in the attic of his home playing with puppets, for which he constructed elaborate costumes. In a sense he never stopped doing this until the end of his life, although by then, instead of puppets, he now had flesh-and-blood models and spectacular sets that he personally composed.
In high school Steven met Pandora (who was to become his muse, collaborator, and best friend), with whom he spent afternoons in his bedroom losing himself in reveries fueled by joints, mysticism, and playful cross-dressing.

In 1961, Arnold won a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute. In the summer of 1963 he made a move to Paris, studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, but soon becoming bored, he moved to Formentera where he stayed for three months in a hippie commune. There he tried LSD for the first time, an experience that changed his life, as he later recounted: “this new drug was so euphoric and visionary, so positive and mind expanding. I ascended to another dimension, one so beautiful and spiritual that I was never the same.”

Upon returning to the United States, he devoted himself to his passion for filmmaking, and from the start the prospects were encouraging: his graduation short film, Messages, Messages, was screened at Cannes and other prestigious festivals
For the premiere in San Francisco in February 1968, Arnold decided that he would go big and, together with his collaborator Michael Wiese, rented the Palace Theatre for one evening; in addition to his short film, the evening included screenings of a number of French films selected by Arnold (including works by Méliès and Man Ray). The initiative was a resounding success, with 2,000 tickets sold, so much so that the theater managers suggested that Arnold curate a weekly film review.

Thus, a month later, the Nocturnal Dream Show was born, the very first example of a midnight movies review in history.
The themed evenings, complete with dress code, that Arnold organized at the Palace were not only a chance to see extremely rare films − such silent masterpieces as Metropolis, Betty Boop cartoons, old surrealist films, early twentieth-century pornography − but they soon became a cult phenomenon and a fixture for the Bay Area’s hippie counterculture.

The Nocturnal Dream Shows were also the moment when Steven Arnold’s ability to act as an “attractor” emerged, as he created crazy and colorful happenings, capable of bringing different worlds together: in the audience, among kids smoking pot or engaging in free love, it was not uncommon to run into actors, artists and writers of the caliber of George Harrison, Ellen Burstyn, Janis Joplin, Truman Capote or Tennessee Williams.

During those years Arnold, while staying out of the spotlight, had a major influence on fashion and visual culture: not only did he design some of the first rock posters for the famous Matrix nightclub (where the “San Francisco sound” was historically born), or invented the look that would be made famous a few years later by Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but he also gave for the first time the opportunity to perform on a stage to The Cockettes, a drag and psychedelic theater collective that immediately became a cornerstone of the San Francisco underground scene.

Meanwhile, Arnold also continued his directing career, signing in 1971 Luminous Procuress, an experimental and lysergic feature film that once again was acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival.
Two years later, Arnold met Salvador Dali at the St. Regis Hotel in New York, where the Surrealist painter was residing with his entourage. Dali, who was certainly not known for the generosity of his compliments, exploded into unprecedented enthusiasm when he saw Arnold’s work. He rented the hotel’s huge ballroom to screen Luminous Procuress; the entire New York elite, including Andy Warhol, attended the event.

From that moment on, Arnold became his protégé. He often sat at Dali’s feet like an adept before his guru, or by his side during dinner, and soon the two became inseparable. In the alternate reality they created together, they spent hours devising fantastical garments, dreamlike designs and surreal inventions
The following year Dalí invited him to Spain to work on the decorations of his Theater-Museum in Figueres. After attending the opening, he definitely became a favorite of Dali, who called him the Prince of his Court of Miracles — that is, the parterre of stars who revolved around him, from Amanda Lear to Marianne Faithfull, from Mick Jagger to David Bowie.

It was after his experience with Salvador Dali in the mid-1970s that Steven Arnold found his most congenial medium of expression: photography.
He rented an abandoned pretzel factory in Los Angeles, which he renamed Zanzibar Studios and turned into his laboratory. There he began shooting his extraordinary black-and-white tableau vivants, creating elaborate, baroque sets from the endless props and clothes he had collected over the years.

Steven Arnold’s photographs, to which he ascribed spiritual value and which he approached as meditation exercises, propose a veritable surreal cosmology in which reverence for the divine is diluted by a blunt camp humor. Here angelic and ethereal figures are depicted through a seductive, erotically charged carnality in a playful celebration of fluidity (ahead of its time). It is no coincidence that one of the deities Arnold was most fond of was Guanyin, the “drag” Buddha who is depicted in female form in parts of East Asia.

The density of the visual layout and the striking attention to detail also suggest an essential element of Arnold’s photography: even when he engages in ironic, queer reworking of religious icons, he shows no intent to shock the viewer. On the contrary, what emerges is the search for a language well-suited for his generation, capable of approaching mysticism and the sacred in a joyful and imaginative way. The images on which his pictures are based, in fact, often came to him in his dreams or during meditation; transposing these visions thus became a shamanic, almost priestly act, and at the same time theatrical, as if he was staging the unrepresentable.

From time to time inspired by his dream world, religions and Jungian archetypes, Arnold produced a vast body of photographs, sketches, sculptures and assemblages. At the same time he cultivated extensive social relationships, and his studio soon became a new hub for gatherings, daily parties and aperitifs attended by famous names and emerging artists.
Unfortunately, in 1988, just when he was at the height of his popularity, Arnold received the most dreaded diagnosis, that of AIDS.

In this excerpt from an interview with Ellen Burstyn, his close friend, we see him address the subject with the grace and irony that were his hallmarks.

After his death in 1994, Steven Arnold’s name and work remained relatively unknown to the general public for a long time.
Recently, thanks in part to the work of Vishnu Dass, director of the Steven Arnold Museum and Archives (and author of a documentary about the artist’s eccentric and unconventional life), his importance is beginning to be recognized — not only as a visual artist of great originality, but as a pioneering figure in queer culture as well. As Dass himself stated in an interview, “the things that he was really nurturing and fostering in his studio spaces are what people are fighting for in the culture at large today; and he had already made that a reality within the walls of his studios in the Sixties.”

Here is the wonderful Instagram page of the Steven Arnold Archives.

Dreams of Stone

Stone appears to be still, unchangeable, untouched by the tribulations of living beings.
Being outside of time, it always pointed back to the concept fo Creation.
Nestled, inaccessible, closed inside the natural chest of rock, those anomalies we called treasures lie waiting to be discovered: minerals of the strangest shape, unexpected colors, otherworldly transparency.
Upon breaking a stone, some designs may be uncovered which seem to be a work of intellect. One could recognize panoramas, human figures, cities, plants, cliffs, ocean waves.

Who is the artist that hides these fantasies inside the rock? Are they created by God’s hand? Or were these visions and landscapes dreamed by the stone itself, and engraved in its heart?

If during the Middle Ages these stone motifs were probably seen as an evidence of the anima mundi, at the beginning of the modern period they had already been relegated to the status of simple curiosities.
XVI and XVII Century naturalists, in their wunderkammern and in books devoted to the wonders of the world, classified the pictures discovered in stone as “jokes of Nature” (lusus naturæ). In fact, Roger Caillois writes (La scrittura delle pietre, Marietti, 1986):

The erudite scholars, Aldrovandi and Kircher among others, divided these wonders into genres and species according to the image they saw in them: Moors, bishops, shrimps or water streams, faces, plants, dogs or even fish, tortoises, dragons, skulls, crucifixes, anything a fervid imagination could recognize and identify. In reality there is no being, monster, monument, event or spectacle of nature, of history, of fairy tales or dreams, nothing that an enchanted gaze couldn’t see inside the spots, designs and profiles of these stones.

It is curious to note, incidentally, that these “caprices” were brought up many times during the long debate regarding the mystery of fossils. Leonardo Da Vinci had already guessed that sea creatures found petrified on mountain tops could be remnants of living organisms, but in the following centuries fossils came to be thought of as mere whims of Nature: if stone was able to reproduce a city skyline, it could well create imitations of seashells or living things. Only by the half of XVIII Century fossils were no longer considered lusus naturæ.

Among all kinds of pierre à images (“image stones”), there was one in which the miracle most often recurred. A specific kind of marble, found near Florence, was called pietra paesina (“landscape stone”, or “ruin marble”) because its veinings looked like landscapes and silhouettes of ruined cities. Maybe the fact that quarries of this particular marble were located in Tuscany was the reason why the first school of stone painting was established at the court of Medici Family; other workshops specializing in this minor genre arose in Rome, in France and the Netherlands.

 

Aside from the pietra paesina, which was perfect for conjuring marine landscapes or rugged desolation, other kinds of stone were used, such as alabaster (for celestial and angelic suggestions) and basanite, used to depict night views or to represent a burning city.

Perhaps it all started with Sebastiano del Piombo‘s experiments with oil on stone, which had the intent of creating paintings that would last as long as sculptures; but actually the colors did not pass the test of time on polished slates, and this technique proved to be far from eternal. Sebastiano del Piombo, who was interested in a refined and formally strict research, abandoned the practice, but the method had an unexpected success within the field of painted oddities — thanks to a “taste for rarities, for bizarre artifices, for the ambiguous, playful interchange of art and nature that was highly appreciated both during XVI Century Mannerism and the baroque period” (A. Pinelli on Repubblica, January 22, 2001).

Therefore many renowned painters (Jacques Stella, Stefano della Bella, Alessandro Turchi also known as l’Orbetto, Cornelis van Poelemburgh), began to use the veinings of the stone to produce painted curios, in tension between naturalia e artificialia.

Following the inspiration offered by the marble scenery, they added human figures, ships, trees and other details to the picture. Sometimes little was needed: it was enough to paint a small balcony, the outline of a door or a window, and the shape of a city immediately gained an outstanding realism.

Johann König, Matieu Dubus, Antonio Carracci and others used in this way the ribbon-like ornaments and profound brightness of the agate, the coils and curves of alabaster. In pious subjects, the painter drew the mystery of a milky supernatural flare from the deep, translucent hues; or, if he wanted to depict a Red Sea scene, he just had to crowd the vortex of waves, already suggested by the veinings of the stone, with frightened victims.

Especially well-versed in this eccentric genre, which between the XVI and XVIII Century was the object of extended trade, was Filippo Napoletano.
In 1619 the painter offered to Cosimo II de’ Medici seven stories of Saints painted on “polished stoned called alberese“, and some of his works still retain a powerful quality, on the account of their innovative composition and a vivid expressive intensity.
His extraordinary depiction of the Temptations of Saint Anthony, for instance, is a “little masterpiece [where] the artist’s intervention is minimal, and the Saint’s entire spiritual drama finds its echo in the melancholy of a landscape of Dantesque tone” (P. Gaglianò on ExibArt, December 11, 2000).

The charm of a stone that “mimicks” reality, giving the illusion of a secret theater, is unaltered still today, as Cailliois elegantly explains:

Such simulacra, hidden on the inside for a long time, appear when the stones are broken and polished. To an eager imagination, they evoke immortal miniature models of beings and things. Surely, chance alone is at the origin of the prodigy. All similarities are after all vague, uncertain, sometimes far from truth, decidedly gratuitous. But as soon as they are perceived, they become tyrannical and they offer more than they promised. Anyone who knows how to observe them, relentlessly discovers new details completing the alleged analogy. These kinds of images can miniaturize for the benefit of the person involved every object in the world, they always provide him with a copy which he can hold in his hand, position as he wishes, or stash inside a cabinet. […] He who possesses such a wonder, produced, extracted and fallen into his hands by an extraordinary series of coincidences, happily imagines that it could not have come to him without a special intervention of Fate.

Still, unchangeable, untouched by the tribulations of living beings: it is perhaps appropriate that when stones dream, they give birth to these abstract, metaphysical landscapes, endowed with a beauty as alien as the beauty of rock itself.

Several artworks from the Medici collections are visible in a wonderful and little-known museum in Florence, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure.
The best photographic book on the subject is the catalogue
Bizzarrie di pietre dipinte (2000), curate by M. Chiarini and C. Acidini Luchinat.

The Stone Pinacotheca

Article by guestblogger Stefano Cappello

I lived in Catania for several years, first as a student at the liberal-arts college, then on the account of my work. Art always fascinated me, and being ale to live and travel throughout Sicily allowed me to discover this place where the highest expressions of human creativity lived together for thousands of years, sometimes blending together with unique results.

Visiting one of Catania’s churches, I happened to notice how the marble on the altar formed curious shapes: through the veinings, one could almost grasp grotesque faces, animal masks, bizarre figures.

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The practice of putting two marble stones near each other in order to obtain a specular image is known as “macchia aperta” (book matched). Used for thousands of years, such a technique combines two consecutive slabs, which are cut and then put side by side, so that the veinings can form the image that up until then had been “sleeping” in the marble.

I started to visit other churches in town, only to find the phenomenon was quite widespread. The cutting of slabs and their arrangement were intentional, and these examples cannot be explained with pareidolia — the subconscious illusion that leads us to interpret artificial or natural visual stimuli as recognizable shapes.
Perhaps we should better think of these marble figures in relation to the concept of Gamahés, implying a sacred aspect of images and forms, which the Anima Mundi impresses within the stone in the shape of faces, animals, symbols or even whole landscapes, as in the case of the Paesina Stone. Through the same occult process, pictures could be ingrained in the marble by that very creative force, the natura naturans generating every aspect of reality, and they could be waiting for a sharp wit who, thanks to his sensitivity, will be able to bring them to light.

All these churches have in common the fact that they’ve been rebuilt from scratch after the devastating earthquake which on January 11, 1693, destroyed Catania. The city suffered huge losses, about 16.000 victims on a 20.000 citizen population.
A huge emergency project was set afoot to bring things back to normal in reasonable time. The reconstruction of the city shows how the catastrophe entailed a search for innovative architectural solutions of the highest quality. These innovations, which were applied in various degrees to all the villages struck by the earthquake in the Noto valley, were elaborated by what could be considered as a “unique experimental workshop of Baroque international models”.

In the particular case of Catania, the unity of this project can be seen on a structural level, as shock-absorbing materials were used in view of a possible new shake, and on a urban level. The city was completely re-planned, with broader streets and escape routes [1].
One of the marbles used in churches, the Libeccio Antico of Sicily, is also called Breccia Pontificia, because it was also used in the Vatican. This rare and precious marble, extracted from the Custonaci caves, is perfect for macchia aperta manufacturing, so that the internal veinings can emerge.

The fact that its figurative use was intentional is quite evident in the S. Agata la Vetere Church where, on the side altar that once contained the remains of the Martyr, these marbles can be found.

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It looks like this red jasper slab was meant to represent the outline of the Saint’s body laying in a sarcophage. If we rotate the image, the composition is even clearer.

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We can see the head, shoulders, the arms bent on her chest, her hips, legs, and her feet emerging from the garment.
Suggestion may go even further. On the silhouette’s chest, for example, one could almost see a Flaming Heart. A spherical shape is at the base of the figure, which is surrounded by a sort of aura.
The whole shape is consistent, in its proportions, with a female body.
The visual stimuli such a contour can suggest, if we consider it as standing on a globe, refer to the iconography of the Virgin Mary. This hypothetical “transfer” would be justified when applied to a female Saint, as in Christian tradition all female figures are in fact manifestations of the Sacred Feminine archetype.

Another example of the intentionality of these marble depictions can be found in the Church of St. Micheal Archangel. Here, like in other churches in town, the representations often appear in couples, at the bottom of the columns near the side altars.

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These marbles show two stylized figures, of which we can make out the head, neck, stretched-out arms, chest and tunic. Behind these silhouettes are shapes that could be interpreted as wings, of which the veinings even seem to trace the plumage. The whole figure could refer to the Byzantine iconography of the Archangel.

In Catania’s churches, marbles take us on a trip through beasts, men, Saints and demons.

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The following mirrored marbles seem to represent several faces, each wearing a hat that resembles a wolf’s head. This depiction could refer to the iconography of  Hades, god of the Underworld, wearing the kunée, the Helm of Darkness.

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If we suppose that marble workers acted freely, without their ecclesial clients knowing, we can imagine that their craftmanship combined with a knowledge of treatises was used to explore this figurative expression, and it could testify the existence of a clandestine ideology. These marbles could offer an example of such underground symbolism.

Here are two grotesque faces, of which we can identify the eyes, nose, mouth, and what looks like a mitre.

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Here’s another curious image emerging from these slabs: a grinning creature, with what could be its hands (the veinings seem to outline the fingers) held before its chest, in a triangular shape.

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The peculiarity of this grotesque face is that it can be found behind an altar, hidden from direct view. Is this an example of the typical Baroque need to fill out every empty space, of the horror vacui?

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In the church of S. Francesco all’Immacolata we can find the following marbles, showing what looks like a donkey-headed seated figure. We can see its long ears, its snout, its nostrils. The hands, coherent in proportions, are in its lap and the symmetrical neinings on the slab’s sides give the perspective idea of a throne. What is interesting is that this figure has been created with an inlay work, using both the natural veinings and an artificial technique in order to obtain a specific figurative suggestion. This practice was already documented by Pliny, who in his Naturalis historia reported how, in his time, marble-cutters managed not only to cover with marble the walls of temples and public buildings, but even to carve them and insert small stones in shape of animals and other things. They actually began “painting with stone” (“coepimus et lapide pingere”, Nat. hist., Liber xxxv, 3).

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The composition of these marble slabs seem to copy the structure of a railing from Samothracia, an important place for Mystery (Orphic) Cults in the Greek world. Here we have veinings that take the form of two bucrania on each side, and in the middle — where in the Samothracian version there was an eight-petal flower — a greek cross with four additional rays, as if to remain faithful to the original symbology.

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We can imagine that such compositions sometimes referred to pre-existing models, and thus marble-makers were researching those exact shapes in the stone, while in other cases the veinings themselves suggested an image. These simulacra manifested themselves both with the firmness of symbols, archetypes, and the ever-changing uncertainty of the colored surface, the evanescent shape given by an immanent Nature.

The interesting aspect of this unsung chapter of Sicilian Baroque is that the Monstrous, the Grotesque, the Uneven which had not been adopted in religious or civil buildings, actually penetrated them in disguise. From three-dimensional sculpture to two-dimensional slabs, subtly flattened on the walls, decorating the altars right near those very paintings which were used to maintain the Church’s power in the form of Biblia pauperum, these marbles were a kind of parallel stone pinachoteca.

We do not know the ultimate goal of this figurative expression.

We can be sure it was intentional, and it was a thousand-year old decorative system which found its use in representing the bizarre and the grotesque, typical of Baroque culture and especially of the Sicilian Baroque. Probably known in the ecclesial environment at the time, at least in its highest levels, this art form was kept secret and not divulged to the masses.
The inherent ambiguity of these visual stimuli is similar to the lack of objectivity in the Rorschach inkblots, a projective test for which there are no correct answers but rather a subjective meaning.

One could ponder if clients and marble-workers considered the eventuality of the believers noticing these hidden compositions, only apparently chaotic. But even if someone became aware of it, he would had probably never mentioned it without risking the Inquisition, which was active on the island and only abolished in 1782.
Why then selecting rare and precious marbles to compose figures depicting grotesque masks? Was it a simple aesthetic pleasure for a selected few, or rather a specific apotropaic function, the monstrous image used as a spell to ward off the danger of a catastrophe similar to the one that destroyed the city?
The motivation behind such representations is still open to analysis. Several hypothesis could be put forward, just like many analogies can be found with the esoteric tradition — but we should not forget that “there is nothing an enchanted glare cannot recognize in shapes, spots, profiles within the stone” (Roger Caillois, La Scrittura delle Pietre).

To complete our visit to the Stone Pinachoteca, the slab which best represents the beginning and the end of this Voyage is one we can call “The Jester”.

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Its vibrant eyes, sardonic smile, cap and bells. It reminds us of The Fool, the tarot card whose value is 0, the great multiplier. It is the archetype of everything beyond comprehension, the pilgrim on its Way, emerging from the stone to shout his warning: “Open your eyes!

 


[1] Giuseppe Lanza Duke Camastra, who was nominated general vicar, and architect Giovan Battista Vaccarini were the two personalities mainly remembered for the reconstruction of Catania, while the documents from the Historic Archive and other sources do not report specific information about the workers, who remained anonymous.
Of the few names mentioned in the first years of re-building after the earthquake, a notable one is architect Salvatore De Amico, who is sometimes called Caput Magister, and was born in Aci S. Antonio, a feud belonging to the bishop of Catania. De Amico for five years acted as a bridge between the bishop’s curia and the construction sites: he himself managed funds, hired, coordinated and directed workers, evaluated and bought the materials and the necessary plots of land (Le maestranze acesi nella fase iniziale di ricostruzione di Catania, S. Condorelli).
The architect also designed the new map, and directed works, for the epicopal Palace and five other churches in the city.
The Episcopal curia was the direct client for these works and it is very likely that some religious personalities, among which the bishop Andrea Riggio (son of luigi Riggio Branciforte prince of Campofiorito, renowned aristocrat and diplomat), visited the building sites during construction, and were therefore aware of the decor that would adorn the interiors.

Mors pretiosa

Mors Pretiosa

Here comes the third volume in the Bizzarro Bazar Collection, Mors pretiosa – Italian religious ossuaries, already on pre-sale at the Logos bookshop.

This book, closing an ideal trilogy about those Italian sacred spaces where a direct contact with the dead is still possible, explores three exceptional locations: the Capuchin Crypt in Via Veneto, Rome, the hypogeum of Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte in via Giulia, also in Rome, and the chapel of San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan.
Our journey through these three wonderful examples of decorated charnel houses, confronts us with a question that might seems almost outrageous today: can death possess a kind of peculiar, terrible beauty?

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From the press kit:

There is a crack, a crack in everything: that’s how the light gets in” sings Leonard Cohen, and this is ultimately the message brought by the bones that can be admired in this book; death is an eternal wound and at the same time a way out. A long way from the idea of cemetery, its atmosphere of peace and the emotions it instils, the term “ossuary” usually evokes an impression of gloomy coldness but the three places in this book are very different. The subjects in question are Italy’s most important religious ossuaries in which bones have been used with decorative ends: the Capuchin Crypt and Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte in Rome, and San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan. Thick with the sensation of mortality and vanitas, these ossuaries are capable of performing a completely unexpected role: on the one hand they embody the memento mori as an exhortation to trust in an afterlife for which the earthly life is a mere preparation and test, on the other they represent shining examples of macabre art. They are the suggestive and emotional expression – which is at the same time compassionate – of a “high” feeling: that of the transitory, of the inexorability of detachment and the hope of Resurrection. Decorated with the same bones they are charged with safeguarding, they pursue the Greek concept of kalokagathìa, namely to make the “good death” even aesthetically beautiful, disassembling the physical body to recompose it in pleasant and splendid arrangements and thereby transcend it. The clear and in-depth texts of the book set these places in the context of the fideistic attitudes of their time and Christian theological traditions whereas the images immerse us in these sacred places charged with fear and fascination. Page after page, the patterns of skulls and bones show us death in all of its splendour, they make it mirabilis, worthy of being admired.

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In the text are recounted some fascinating stories about these places, from sacred representations in which human remains were used as props, to the misadventures of corpse seekers; but mainly we discover that these bone arabesques were much more than a mere attempt to impress the viewer, while in fact they represented a sort of death encyclopedia, which was meant to be read and interpreted as a real eschatological itinerary.

As usual, the book is extensively illustrated by Carlo Vannini‘s evocative photographs.

You can pre-order your copy of Mors Pretiosa on this page, and in the Bookshop you can purchase the previous two books in the series.

La bambina nella scatola

Dietro ogni cosa bella
c’è stato qualche tipo di dolore.
(Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet)

La storia di Irina Ionesco e di sua figlia Eva suscita scandalo da quarant’anni, ed è certamente un caso unico nel panorama dell’arte contemporanea per le implicazioni etiche e morali che lo accompagnano.

Irina Ionesco, nata a Parigi da padre violinista e madre trapezista, viene abbandonata all’età di quattro anni. Spedita in Romania, paese da cui provenivano i genitori, Irina viene cresciuta dalla nonna e dagli zii nell’ambiente del circo. Nonostante sognasse di diventare ballerina, a causa del suo fisico asciutto ed elastico verrà indirizzata verso l’antica arte del contorsionismo. Dai 15 ai 22 anni gira l’Europa, l’Africa e il Medio Oriente con il circo; durante il suo spettacolo si esibisce con due serpenti boa, e più tardi dichiarerà: “ero diventata schiava di quei serpenti, e alla fine ne ho avuto abbastanza”.

Durante una convalescenza a causa di un incidente di danza a Damasco, Irina comincia a disegnare e a dipingere; abbandonato il circo, viaggia per qualche anno con un ricco giocatore d’azzardo iraniano che la copre di gioielli e abiti lussuosi, prima di studiare arte a Parigi. Poi, ecco da una parte l’incontro fortuito con la fotografia (l’artista belga Corneille le regala una reflex nel 1964), e con gli scritti sulfurei e trasgressivi di Georges Bataille dall’altra.

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Le sue fotografie, che inizialmente ritraggono amiche e amici agghindati con gli abiti che Irina aveva nel suo stesso guardaroba e fotografati al lume di candela, conoscono un immediato successo fin dalla prima esposizione. Già da questi primi scatti sono evidenti quegli elementi che attraverseranno tutta l’opera della fotografa: l’erotismo feticistico, i costumi di scena ricercati e barocchi, le pose teatrali, le collane di perle, e i dettagli gotici (teschi, corredi funebri, composizioni floreali).

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Ma le fotografie davvero controverse di Irina Ionesco non sono queste. Dal 1969 in poi, Irina decide di fotografare sua figlia Eva, di appena 4 anni, nei medesimi contesti in cui fotografa le modelle adulte. Cioè nuda, in pose da femme fatale, e agghindata soltanto con quegli accessori che avrebbero dovuto renderla un’icona dell’erotismo.

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Siamo negli anni ’70, un’epoca in cui i tabù sessuali sembrano cadere ad uno ad uno, e chiaramente il lavoro di Irina si iscrive in questo contesto storico specifico; ciononostante le foto creano un grosso scandalo – che ovviamente porta fama e successo alla fotografa. La critica discute animatamente se si tratti di arte o di pornografia, e anzi per qualcuno le fotografie proiettano un’ombra ancora più inquietante, quella dell’istigazione alla pedofilia.

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ion2Ma in tutto questo, cosa prova la piccola Eva Ionesco? È in grado, data la sua tenera età, di comprendere appieno ciò che le sta accadendo?

Mia madre mi ha fatto posare per foto al limite della pornografia fin dall’età di 4 anni. Tre volte a settimana, per dieci anni. Ed era un ricatto: se non posavo, non avevo diritto ad avere dei bei vestiti nuovi. E soprattutto non potevo vedere mia mamma. Mia madre non mi ha mai allevata; il nostro unico rapporto, erano le foto.

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Eva Ionesco diviene ben presto una piccola star: nell’ottobre del 1976, all’età di 11 anni, viene pubblicato un servizio su di lei sul numero italiano di Playboy. È la più giovane modella mai apparsa nuda sulle pagine della rivista. Seguono alcuni ingaggi come attrice (il primo nell’Inquilino del Terzo Piano di Polanski), fra i quali spicca il suo ruolo nel film “maledetto” di Pier Giuseppe Murgia, Maladolescenza, del 1977. Il film racconta la scoperta, da parte di tre adolescenti, della sessualità e degli istinti crudeli ad essa collegati, in un ambiente naturale e privo di sovrastrutture (in un chiaro riferimento al Signore delle Mosche); le due attrici protagoniste di 11 anni e il loro compagno di 17, nel film sono impegnati in scene di sesso simulato e mostrati mentre si dedicano a torture reciproche e contro gli animali. Il film non manca di una sua poesia, per quanto efferata e disturbante, ma nei decenni successivi viene ritirato, censurato, rieditato e infine condannato definitivamente per pedopornografia nel 2010 da una corte olandese.

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Da tutta questa serie di attività di modella a sfondo erotico, decise e volute dalla madre, Eva riuscirà a liberarsi proprio nel 1977, quando Irina perde l’affidamento della figlia. Eppure l’ombra di quelle fotografie perseguita Eva ancora oggi. E se madre e figlia non hanno mai avuto un vero rapporto, per anni si sono parlate soltanto per interposti avvocati.

Non vuole rendermi le stampe e i negativi. Continua a vendere un numero enorme di quelle fotografie. In Giappone si trova ancora un sacco di roba, libri, CD erotici. La gente crede che Irina Ionesco significhi soltanto foto vintage con una piccola principessa che viene spogliata. Ma io me ne frego dei reggicalze! Bisogna dire le cose come stanno: voglio far proibire le foto in cui mi si vedono il sesso e l’ano.

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I processi giudiziari, per mezzo dei quali Eva ha cercato di riappropriarsi dei propri diritti e di farsi riconsegnare dalla madre gli scatti più espliciti, hanno avuto un amaro epilogo nel 2012: il tribunale le ha riconosciuto soltanto parte delle richieste, e ha condannato Irina a versare 10.000 euro di danni e interessi per sfruttamento dell’immagine e della vita privata della figlia. Ma le foto sono ancora di proprietà della madre.

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Nel 2010 Eva ha cercato di liberarsi dei fantasmi della sua infanzia curando la regia di My Little Princess, un film in parte autobiografico in cui il personaggio della madre è affidato all’interpretazione di Isabelle Huppert e quello della bambina a una sorprendente Anamaria Vartolomei. Nel film, l’arte fotografica è vista come un’attività senza dubbio pericolosa:

Isabelle Huppert carica la macchina fotografica come un’arma. L’immagine rinchiude, rende il personaggio muto. Fotografarmi, significava mettermi in una scatola: dirmi “sii bella e stai zitta”.

E in un’altra intervista, Eva rincara la dose:

Spogliare qualcuno, fotografarlo, rispogliarlo, rifotografarlo, non è violenza? Accompagnata da parole gentili, naturalmente: sei magnifica, sublime, meravigliosa, ti adoro. […] Volevo raccontare una persona senza coscienza né barriere, dispotica e narcisa. Una persona che non vede. Fotografa, ma non vede.

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Il valore artistico dell’opera di Irina Ionesco non è mai stato messo in discussione, nemmeno dalla figlia, che le riconosce un’incontestabile qualità di stile; sono le implicazioni etiche che fanno ancora discutere a distanza di decenni. Le fotografie della Ionesco ci interrogano sui rapporti fra l’arte e la vita in modo estremo e viscerale. Esistono infatti innumerevoli esempi di opere sublimi, la cui realizzazione da parte dell’artista ha comportato o implicato la sofferenza altrui; ma fino a dove è lecito spingersi?

Forse oggi ciò che rimane è una dicotomia fra due poli contrapposti: da una parte le splendide immagini, provocanti e sensuali proprio per il fatto che ci mettono a disagio, come dovrebbe sempre fare l’erotismo vero – un mondo immaginario, quello di Irina Ionesco, che secondo Mandiargues “appartiene a un ambito che non possiamo conoscere, se non attraverso la nostra fede in fragili ricordi”.
Dall’altra, la ben più prosaica e triste vicenda umana di una madre fredda, chiusa nel suo narcisismo, che rende sua figlia una bambina-manichino, oggetto di sofisticate fantasie barocche in un’età in cui forse la piccola avrebbe preferito giocare con i compagni (cosa che Irina le ha sempre proibito).

L’innegabile fascino delle fotografie della Ionesco sarà quindi per sempre incrinato da questo conflitto insanabile – la consapevolezza che dietro quegli scatti si nascondesse un abuso; eppure questo stesso conflitto le rende particolarmente inquietanti e ambigue, addirittura al di là delle intenzioni originali dell’autrice, in quanto stimolano nello spettatore emozioni contrastanti che poche altre opere erotiche sono in grado di veicolare.

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Irina compirà 78 anni a settembre, e continua ad esporre e a lavorare. Eva Ionesco oggi ha 48 anni, e un figlio: non è davvero sorprendente che non gli abbia mai scattato una foto.

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Le interviste a cui fa riferimento l’articolo sono consultabili qui e qui.

Kris Kuksi

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Nato nel 1973, Kris Kuksi ha passato un’infanzia particolarmente solitaria. La sua famiglia poco omogenea e l’immobile realtà delle sperdute campagne del Missouri, dove rimaneva completamente isolato per intere giornate senza televisione né contatti sociali, spinsero il giovane Kris a liberare la sua fervida fantasia con i materiali che aveva a disposizione: lego, pezzi di ferro, mattoni, legno e qualche astronave giocattolo, con i quali fin da piccolo cominciò a costruire dei paesaggi fantastici.

Kuksi, in un certo senso, è ancora quel bambino: dopo essersi diplomato in Belle Arti all’Università di Fort Hays, in Kansas, e aver studiato pittura a Firenze, la sua visionaria creatività si arricchisce di nuove tecniche e di una più profonda conoscenza dei temi artistici classici, ma rimane fedele alla linea tracciata nella sua adolescenza.

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Le composizioni per cui Kuksi è diventato celebre sono proprio dei diorami estremamente complessi e dettagliati, costruiti a partire da materiali misti che l’artista acquista personalmente o che si fa spedire da tutto il mondo nel suo studio in Kansas. Si tratta di vecchi oggetti d’antiquariato, parti di legno o metallo, pezzi da modellismo, piccoli giocattoli, soldatini, o ingranaggi di macchinari. Kuksi li lavora, li scolpisce, li ritaglia, li scioglie, li incolla, li salda assieme secondo il fluire della sua immaginazione, aggiungendo e affastellando i particolari più sconcertanti e fantasiosi. È facile intuire, guardando uno dei suoi assemblaggi, come l’artista parta spesso da una figura centrale per poi sviluppare l’opera attorno a questa, con successive riconfigurazioni e rielaborazioni nel tentativo di creare un flusso dinamico all’interno dell’opera.

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Ogni pezzo di Kuksi è un vero e proprio mondo, all’interno del quale lo spettatore si perde come dentro un romanzo di fantascienza o un film fantastico. Ogni minimo dettaglio suggerisce un racconto, un mistero, una strana e grottesca legge fisica che governa questo universo parallelo in miniatura. Le finestre che Kuksi spalanca di fronte ai nostri occhi ci introducono spesso in una realtà macabra, violenta, sconosciuta, che accosta accenti classicisti con l’immaginario della fantascienza pulp e del cosiddetto realismo fantastico.

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Sono ben riconoscibili, nei suoi lavori, i rimandi a Bosch e Bruegel, al barocco e al Rococò, ma è sempre presente anche un elemento più ludico, infantile – e cioè l’innegabile gusto per il pastiche postmoderno. Allo stesso tempo vi è una vena di cupa disperazione, di pessimismo e malinconia, perché il panorama che si apre al nostro sguardo è quasi invariabilmente drammatico e angosciante.

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Secondo le intenzioni dell’artista, le sue opere sarebbero anche una sorta di monito per un’umanità che non sa imparare dai propri errori, dalle ripetute ascese e ricadute storiche, e che è votata al fallimento e all’autodistruzione se non imparerà a reinventarsi completamente. Ecco che, in maniera davvero interessante, il medium diventa il messaggio: l’arte di Kuksi nasce a partire dai pezzi di scarto, da piccoli frammenti diversi provenienti da tutto il mondo – così come l’uomo farebbe meglio a ricominciare dalle proprie macerie, “raccogliendo i pezzi” per riassemblarli in una nuova configurazione, e donando un nuovo significato a tutto ciò che ha creato finora.

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Uno dei pezzi più significativi al riguardo è la serie di lavori chiamati Churchtank. Una chiesa gotica costruita sopra ad un carro armato. Un’opera simbolica che se da un lato denuncia il fondamentalismo religioso che crea morte e distruzione, dall’altro sembra suggerirci che la via d’uscita sta negli stessi elementi che abbiamo sotto i nostri occhi, se siamo davvero capaci di scorgerla: così la spaventosa chiesa armata di cannone potrebbe essere anche il simbolo di un futuro migliore in cui, invece di mortali proiettili, riusciremo a “sparare” nel mondo messaggi di pace, di amore e di fratellanza.

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Ecco il sito ufficiale dell’artista.

(Grazie, Cristina!)

L’ultimo castrato

Esiste, nella storia della musica classica, una figura strana e ormai quasi mitica: il castrato. Si trattava di maschi che avevano subito l’evirazione prima della pubertà, con l’unico scopo di mantenere la loro voce acuta, e di impedire il naturale abbassamento di tono e timbro che avviene durante la maturazione sessuale.

L’utilizzo di eunuchi nelle corti era diffuso in diverse culture ed epoche, ma i veri e propri castrati (coloro, cioè, che subivano questa mutilazione a fini musicali) comparirono per la prima volta nell’impero bizantino, e lì continuarono ad essere utilizzati nei cori fino alla presa di Costantinopoli nel 1204, durante la quarta Crociata. Per tre secoli non si sentì più parlare di castrati e sembrava che la crudele pratica fosse scomparsa; poi, misteriosamente, eccoli ricomparire in Italia.

Da quel momento, e fino alla fine del 1800, la presenza dei castrati nella musica lirica ed ecclesiastica sarà costante. Alcuni di loro diventeranno delle “superstar” ante litteram, come Farinelli o Velluti, vincendo ricchezze e favori presso le corti e il pubblico, diventando oggetto di isteriche adorazioni di massa. I maggiori compositori (Händel su tutti) scrivevano la loro musica appositamente per i castrati più celebri, e le voci di questi “soprani naturali”, come venivano chiamati, erano le più ricercate e pagate. Eppure, rispetto ai pochi fortunati, erano innumerevoli i bambini che morivano sotto i ferri, o in cui l’operazione non dava l’effetto sperato; altri non avevano semplicemente le doti vocali adatte per una carriera lirica e dunque restavano menomati a vita, derisi per la loro voce acuta, per il fisico tendente all’obesità, e destinati a una precoce osteoporosi.

La Chiesa, pur essendo la principale utilizzatrice dei cori di castrati, reputava l’evirazione un reato; quest’ultima veniva dunque effettuata di nascosto, senza grande pubblicità, clandestinamente. Tra il 1720 e il 1750, l’epoca d’oro dei castrati, si stima che i ragazzini evirati a scopo musicale ogni anno fossero addirittura 4000. Spesso provenienti da famiglie povere, che li vendevano a una istituzione ecclesiastica o a un maestro di canto nella speranza di vederli far fortuna, erano sottoposti a una rigida e durissima educazione musicale, dalla quale soltanto i migliori uscivano professionisti.

Nel 1861, con l’Unità d’Italia, la castrazione divenne ufficialmente illegale, e qualche anno dopo, nel 1878, anche il Papa proibì l’utilizzo di castrati nei cori ecclesiastici. L’ultimo cantante eunuco ad arrivare al successo fu il romano Alessandro Moreschi.

Nato nel 1858, il giovane Alessandro nel 1883 riuscì ad entrare nel Coro del Cappella Sistina come solista, e fu quindi uno degli ultimi ad entrarvi, prima che avvenisse l’estromissione formale da parte della Chiesa (febbraio 1902) dei castrati. Soprannominato “l’angelo di Roma”, Moreschi visse un lungo periodo di fama e successo, ma all’inizio del 1900 cominciò il suo declino. Quando morì, nel 1922, era ormai solo e dimenticato da tutti.

Ma quello che rende eccezionale Alessandro Moreschi è che la sua è l’unica voce di cantore castrato ad essere arrivata fino a noi. Tra il 1902 e il 1904, infatti, Moreschi partecipò ad alcune sessioni di incisione su fonografo, registrando sui rulli di cera 17 brani lirici.
La voce di un castrato, si sa, non è né maschile né femminile, ma possiede un timbro completamente a sé; le registrazioni di Moreschi, per quanto siano di scarsa qualità, sono l’unica occasione che abbiamo di ascoltare una simile voce.

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È una voce fragile, sottile. Forse la sua poca potenza è da attribuire al nervosismo per la registrazione (nuova esperienza, per l’epoca, quella di cantare in un imbuto!) o forse Moreschi era già in fase di declino. Fatto sta che queste canzoni possono all’inizio apparire incerte e deludenti, soprattutto rispetto alle nostre aspettative. Eppure è anche questo un elemento essenziale del loro fascino: la voce dell’ultimo castrato, esile e delicata, sembra provenire da un mondo lontano, da un’epoca ormai finita, ed è come se non fosse sicura di riuscire ad attraversare i fruscii del tempo.

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(Grazie, Andrea!)