4.10.12
Last night at the British Institute Library in Florence we were treated to another great talk by Canadian Director General of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi DR James Bradbourne.
In his position of joint Curator of the latest exhibition at the Strozzi Palace – called Beyond Fascism Dr Bradbourne ,with palable energy despite having started his day in Russia, introduced us to some of the ideas about “how?” and “why?” this exhibition has been mounted.
There have been several principles behind the growth and development of the new image of the Strozzi Palace as a Phoenix, the new team having resurrected the gallery from the doldrums of the 1990’s, and set about creating at least two “MUST SEE” exhibitions each year, whilst not forgetting to develop the smaller gallery below stairs, The Strozzina – or indeed the Courtyard Space!
The first problem that struck the team was clearance of the name of the latest Exhibition -Art in the Thirties , Beyond Fascism – and this I fully emphasise with! When I did market research on the name Beyond the Yalla Dog it was in the UK with English speakers – I had no idea how much trouble I would have explaining – “Ma! – cosa vuole dire??!”( what are you trying to say?) to an Italian because there really doesn’t seem to be a literal translation of the word beyond – “Oltre” being the nearest is more literal and seemingly not carrying at all the same sense with which we use the word in English!
Having crossed that hurdle at last, they next had to agree on the image for the poster – the enigmatic image of the girl at the cafe finally being agreed upon, because it was much more definitive of “Beyond” than that of a futuristic fascist looking man with a train.
Florence is an ideal place to stage this exhibition because, although it is full of wonderful architecture from the Renaissance forward, the first thing that a lot of tourists see of Florence is the railway station – itself designed and built to keep those trains running on time in Mussolini’s era- in 1934!
A lot happened in Florence in the 30’s and one of the best things about this exhibition is that they are inviting people to talk about their experiences – doing radio interviewers , talking to visitors and , maybe most moving and innovative of all, inviting Alzheimer’s patients to come to the exhibition to stimulate their latent memories and reconnect in many ways with their family and carers.
The exhibition itself is a mixed bag of items – some exciting, some moving and some, like the Otto Dix above totally grotesque. This exhibition wants to show us that there was more to the thirties in Italy than the sinister rise of fascism – and there clearly was – but many of the more powerful , and symbolically interesting – paintings do foretell a distasteful few years ahead – and if the exhibition were to be judged on paintings alone there is some point in Guardian writers Jonathon Jones rather harsh review.
However on the credit side there is more to this exhibition than the paintings , there are some fabulously lit sculptures which really seem to put the painting of the period on the back foot.
The are also records of developments in architecture, furniture design, games of Monopoli (sic) based on the Stock-market crash in 1929, hundreds of magazines , a reading room, and best of all – a recording room where visitors can interview their families and friends and submit them for future radio broadcast, finally on the way out, there is a touch table to keep children and adults alike involved in the exhibition.
In Florence in the 30s there were many artists, poets and philosophers writing – even from one side to the other of the Piazza Republicca – from completely opposing positions. Their work was published in magazines produced in Florence and was widely read – there was by no means lemming-like charging towards a second world war amongst the intellectuals of Tuscany.
But despite the introduction of the Maggio Musicale in 1933 – a series of concerts still going to this day – there doesn’t seem to have been much sweetness and light in the 30s – and such as there was, to me just displays another species of grotesque – such as Adolf Zeigler’s triptych Earth, Water, Fire and Air showing Aryan beauties so much admired by Hitler he had the painting displayed in his apartment in Munich.
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Mmmmn – let’s not let “Beyond” go there?
