Italian Contemporary Art at the Quadriennale

Quadriennale di Roma
Originally uploaded by Sindromedistendhal

With the reopening of the Palazzo delle Espozioni the Quadriennale D'Arte di Roma show has returned to its original home. In its 15th edition, this major Italian Contemporary Art show brings together 99 young and mid-career artists working in Italy who have emerged within the last twenty years, as well as a posthumous contribution by sculptor Luciano Fabro who died last year. With so many contributing artists the Quadriennale is necessarily a huge show covering both upper and lower floors of what is already a vast exhibition space and although I found it somewhat patchy overall there's still plenty there to make the exhibition well worth a visit and an encouragingly large number of women artists included.

Artists using video and short films were well represented throughout the show – I particularly liked Grazia Toderi's Rosso, an absorbing nocturnal cityscape video on a loop, with its man made constellations of twinkling headlamps, planes and street lights played to an increasingly noisy city soundtrack which soon seemed reminiscent of the rumble of a distant warzone, with the red glow of the city and sudden flashes of light echoing infrared footage of recent bombardments (which most visitors will have witnessed only on television). Other major social and contemporary issues were also represented – global warming and the eco disaster of endangered species was tackled by Maurizio Savini in Destined for Nothing which featured a bright pink chewing gum sculpture of a polar bear who is found washed up and desperate - quite literally on our front doorsteps - in an interactive piece that allowed the visitor to step into the installation, look through a spy hole and take a closer look at a doomed species. I also enjoyed Andrea Mastrovito's disturbing life cycle animation/projected video Eine Symphonie des Grauens.

The Rome Quadriennale runs until 14 September 2008

Giovanni Baronzio and the Rimini School in the 14th Century | Palazzo Barberini

Taking as its centre piece a recently restored multi-panelled Dossale from Villa Verucchio depicting various scenes from Christ's Passion by Giovanni Baronzio - exhibited for the first time in its newly reassembled state - this small exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini also offered several other gems from the 1300s from other lesser known artists working in Rimini in that period. In fact, my favourite room was the very first in the exhibition which focussed primarily on tiny devotional panels created in the main part for private alters such as Pietro da Rimini's 1330 pair of panels – The Resurrection and an exquisite Noli me tangere. Giuliano da Rimini's Byzantine-looking Head of Christ painted in c.1320 in Room II was also a fascinating fragment of what was once a much larger panel allowing us to view from close up the incisions in the inlaid halo and a tiny square of the painted background draperies decorated with abstract motifs.

The exhibition is a preview of works which be housed in the soon to be opened (end of 2008 according to the gallery Web site) ground floor section of Palazzo Barberini dedicated to works from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.

The Myth of Speed | XXI Century China | Palazzo delle Esposizioni

Quite soon after moving to Rome it became very clear to me that I would not be driving in the city – the relationship that most Romans seem to have with their cars combined with terrifyingly cavalier attitude to dying at the wheel quickly put paid to any hopes I may have had of “getting the hang” of driving in Rome. Dino Risi said it all in 1962 with the classic film Il Sorpasso – little seems to have changed – there are just more and more cars in a city already choked by traffic. The recent exhibition at The Palazzo delle Esposizioni entitled Il mito della velocità - Arte, motori e società nell'Italia del '900 (The myth of speed - Art, engines and society in 20th century Italy) took this Italian love affair with speed and the internal combustion engine in particular as its focal point, taking a chronological look at its influence on art, fashion, design and society as a whole from the Italian Futurist movement through to Casey Stoner's 2007 Moto GP winning Ducati Desmosedici. Exploiting to its full potential the extremely large exhibition space this really was a stunning show featuring vintage racing cars and motorcycles – even a hydroplane and numerous pieces of related memorabilia.

Liu Xiaodong, Prima mangia / Eat First
Originally uploaded by we-make-money-not-art

Speed was also at the heart of another enjoyable exhibition on the upper floor of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni Cina XXI secolo. Arte fra identità e trasformazione (21st Century China.Art between identity and transformation) – which examined the impact of the alienating changes taking place in the new communist-capitalist China through the work of some of the most important artists working in China today. I particularly liked Fang Lijun's 2006 consisting of 16 bronze portrait heads finished in gold foil, all with eyes closed appearing rather like death masks; Weng Fen's photographic bird's eye views of rapidly changing cityscapes dwarfing young girls; Wang Qingsong's complex and troubling Dream of Migrants, which rather like the Crewdson photographs earlier in the year seemed to encompass an entire film in one elaborately staged composition, with the addition of traditional Chinese history and imagery mixed with western elements; and finally, Liu Xiaodong's brilliant Prima Mangia, a lay revisiting of The Last Supper painted in situ at the gallery in February of this year.

Mimmo Paladino and Brian Eno at the Ara Pacis Museum

Richard Meier's dazzling white modernist building, which is both a museum housing Caesar Augustus's Ara Pacis (altar of peace) and an art gallery showing temporary exhibitions, took ten years to complete and was met with a mixed reception from Romans. I'm one of those people who actually really like the glass and travertine marble structure and have been therefore appalled by Rome's new mayor Gianni Alemanno's suggestion that he’ll be holding a referendum to allow Roman citizens to decide the fate of the Ara Pacis museum - if it gets the thumbs down the neo-fascist politician will take down the $24 million building and move it to the suburbs. Rather embarrassingly this outburst from Alemanno has made headlines all over the world - all of them posing the question He can't be serious...right?

Meanwhile, the current installation at the museum is a perfect demonstration of what works best about the structure and brings together the work of sculptor Mimmo Paladino and musician Brian Eno. Paladino fully exploits the crypt-like lower floor of the building with his recumbent figures and charred disembodied torsos taking on a distinctly archaeological feel as if surrounded by broken fragments of burial goods. Hints of something much darker, perhaps augmented by Eno's music, pervades the entire installation with associations with the Holocaust inevitable, particularly in the piece with hundreds of old wooden shoe lasts with small bronze birds attached to them which covered an entire wall. Brian Eno's music uses the auto-repeat and random-shuffle controls on numerous CD players placed throughout the exhibition to achieve infinite permutations of sound in space, with a variety of speakers installed - including Eno’s trademark speaker flowers.

The photograph show the upper floor on the beautiful sunny day I visited with sunlight streaming through the glass walls. It also shows how busy it was - in spite of Alemanno's protests, L'Ara Pacis is now the third most visited site in Rome.

M C Escher's Puzzling Art in Rome

Spring afternoon in Rome
Originally uploaded by Axel Antòn

Quite by accident yesterday I happened on a wonderful M C Escher exhibition at the Auditorium – Parco della Musica. It actually opened back in March as part of the Festival of Mathematics, which is undoubtedly why it slipped my attention. Entitled L’arte del puzzle e il puzzle dell’arte (The art of puzzles and puzzling art) the curator Federico Giudiceandrea has brought together 66 original linocuts, lithographs, etchings, and even watercolours which brilliantly take us through the Dutch artist's entire output and interests, beyond the widely known fantastical and often maddening architectural landscapes.

So much has been written about how these apparently decorative patterns are based upon mathematical concepts of the infinite, yet on seeing the original works I was surprised by just how beautiful they are. I particularly liked The Puddle (1952, lithograph printed from three blocks), Three Worlds (1955, lithograph) and Rippled Surface (1950, linocut) which all seem to have a distinctly Japanese influence. The symmetry drawings on squared paper in pencil and watercolour (Eagles) were also really lovely, as were the colour woodcut prints of tessellated animals, and the large and rather dramatic black and white woodcuts of beetles, ants, serpents and grasshopper.

500,000 coloured balls tumbling down the Spanish Steps!

Love him or hate him, it's certainly hard to ignore Graziano Cecchini, a self-proclaimed modern day Futurist artist.

Last October he made headlines around the world when, instead of making a wish and tossing a coin into the Trevi Fountain, he tipped a bucket of dye into the water and turned it a spectacular blood red.

This week he struck again with another of his peaceful protests - to the amazement of Romans and tourists alike he launched 500,000 red, green, yellow and blue balls from the top of the Spanish Steps at Trinità dei Monti, which then rolled their way down until they reached Piazza di Spagna below, filling the Barcaccia Fountain. The balls were up for sale on eBay within hours!

Pop Art 1956 – 1968 | Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome

The Scuderie del Quirinale art gallery and exhibition centre, as its name suggests, is found on the Quirinal Hill opposite the Quirinal Palace (the official residence of the Italian head of state), and is housed in the Quirinal Stables. Originally built between 1722 and 1732, the Quirinal Stables were restored and converted into a gallery between 1997 – 1999. Situated on the highest of Rome's famous seven hills, the views from the Scuderie del Quirinale are breathtaking and whatever the exhibition one has seen, there is the guaranteed treat of gazing out over the Roman skyline from the purpose-built great window, designed by Gae Aulenti. I took this shot at dusk on a visit to the current Pop Art show. San Pietro can be see in the distance...

The exhibitions at the Scuderie are usually reliable with a good selection of pieces from international collections. I found the Pop Art show a little patchy as regards consistent quality with a little too many also-rans in the mix, although there were plenty of surprises to make it an enjoyable show overall. My particular favourites were the two David Hockney paintings on display in the upper gallery – the 1963 Renaissance Head and the gorgeous 1962 Picture Emphasising Stillness, with its tiny Letraset caption THEY ARE PERFECTLY SAFE THIS IS A STILL. Peter Blake, another early British Pop Art exponent was also well represented in the show, as was Richard Hamilton. Predictably, there was a large group of visitors gathered in front of Andy Warhol's iconic Marilyn series, although it was another, smaller icon which drew my devotion in the first room – Ray Johnson's Untitled Elvis No.2 - with it's collaged, mosiac-like single image of Elvis...but then, as a sworn devotee of the church of Elvis that's hardly surprising! Other favourites were Christo's 1965 Brigitte Bardot, which naturally consisted of a wrapped picture of BB and made me laugh, and Italian-born Eduardo Paolozzi's painted aluminium sculpture Diana as an Engine (1963-1966), which was vaguely reminiscent of his later decorative works for the London Underground.

Mark Rothko | Stanley Kubrick | Gregory Crewdson | Palazzo delle Esposizioni

After five long years the newly restored Palazzo delle Esposizioni on Via Nazionale reopened in October of this year and immediately reclaimed its position as Rome's finest exhibition centre. Queues have been long over the Christmas holidays with Romans and tourists alike rushing to catch the Rothko and Kubrick shows which close on 6th January 2008. Climbing up the steps to the main entrance and walking into the central main hall with its columns and immense domed ceiling is rather like walking into a cathedral – the perfect space, in fact, for Mark Rothko's large colour-field canvases. Placing the dazzling yellows and reds of the mid-career Untitled No.10 from the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum immediately opposite the entrance foyer allows the visitor the chance to really admire the painting from a long distance – in fact, the entire show makes maximum and skilful use of the large exhibition space. Looking right, the deep sea blues and greens of No.15 (Dark Green on Blue with Green Band) positively dazzle like an ocean-scape on another far end wall. On a smaller scale, Rothko's original sketch and notebooks are on display alongside their virtual copies allowing the viewer to browse through the entire book in digital format.

The retrospective by American photographer Gregory Crewdson was a total surprise and an added bonus. His unsettling photographs are meticulously staged scenes of American neighbourhoods that border on the surreal. Often inspired by the work of film-makers such as Spielberg or Lynch and featuring famous actors such as Julienne Moore, they read rather like an entire film condensed into one shot, or a short story by Raymond Carver, or a painting by Edward Hopper...the influences are numerous and recognisable but the results feel strikingly original.

And so after two immensely enjoyable exhibitions, we climbed the huge staircase up to the second level and the Stanley Kubrick exhibition...and ended up staying another couple of hours! If you're a Kubrick fan and haven't seen this show – book a last minute flight and get over to Rome! It really is a treasure trove of Kubrick memorabilia - unpublished documents, screenplays, director’s notes, on-set photographs, storyboards, models, costumes, even the lenses he used – all plundered from the archives of the Stanley Kubrick Estate, and made available for the first time. Each and every one of his films is covered including the films that never made it past the pre-production stage – Napoleon, Aryan Papers and A.I. (later made by Spielberg). An absolute must-see exhibition!

Massimo Silenzio by Giancarlo Neri

Bubble lights "Massimo Silenzio"
Originally uploaded by Paolicchio

Massimo Silenzio is an installation by Giancarlo Neri using 10,000 luminous globes placed directly on the ground filling Circo Massimo in Rome. The globes slowly change colour and fade throughout the night.

The installation opened yesterday evening on the eve of tonight's Notte Bianca and will be visible every evening until September 11th.