Events

‘Aurora’ (1948) by Salvador Dalì.

“…My ruthless and patient painting[2]”, Salvador Dalì has been admitting. Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[3]

I found out Salvador Dalì only recently and thanks to Facebook, where often good authors are hosted : here I’ll tell about his ‘Aurora’ (1948) which by me can well assert Dalì, otherwise criticized as often happens to someone able to be noted with good reason.

“…I believe that the time is near when, through a paranoic and working process of thinking, it will be possible (concurrently with the automatism and other passive conditions) to systematize the confusion and contribute to a total discredit of the world of reality[4]”.

The biggest sun of a radiant aurora appears behind eggshell-clouds breaking in the sky, while diligent workers climb on its surface and, slinged not to slip, do their best to scratch it. The two halves of the shell are also the two halves of a fragrant small white bread, and the sun a fresh egg yolk, and the profile too of a flourishing daisy : in front of such a wealth the sailor who was taking off with his boat, is running away terrified in the opposite direction.

“Today I declare that the new sexual appeal of women will depend on the possible use of their spectrum attitudes and resources, that is to say on the possibile their dissociation, bright carnal de-composition. The rainbow-coloured spectrum sets itself against the ghost (still performed by that homesick chemist of a country town so much resembling, desperately, to the other prosaic and diabetic ghost named Greta Garbo). The spectrum woman will be the dismantlable woman[5]”.

All the painting elements really make up an ironic performance, light and serious at the same time : Salvador Dalì looks incredulous at the terror driving any scientific discoveries and giving rise to cruelty, since the revolutionary atomic and quantum energy were soonest used for unimaginable devastations[6].

“I’ll not insist on what today it seems to me absolutely unacceptable, not only a poem, but also any literary production not responding to the anti artistic notation, loyal and objective of the world of facts, whose occult sense we’re still asking and looking for the revelation… Neither is the moment to fervently praise the photographic evidence, but to wander without a method on paths of unintentional, and notice the simple fact that the reason is becoming more and more the essential element in the knowledge field …[7]”

A thought definitely anti-artistic, anti-lyric anti-decorative is present indeed in the epiphany Dalì called ‘Aurora’, as any epiphany is not generalized until is individually recognized, coming out from darkness of a crowded night with the same delirious dreams which at morning we are conscientiously building, looking for hostility all around us. The good genius of Dalì was meeting the diabolic Picasso[8] and let himself be laughed at, due to his own affective fidelity and his disarming frankness.

Here however he dares to point out that our conscience ‘knows’ how to take back to a faultless justification perversion and paranoia by which so often we face the new and the unpredictable, until we do our famous existential doubt, invalidating but absolutely ‘natural’ for humans : an obsession indeed, able to crumble our experience, as far as the delirium itself.

“It was just a dream…!”, is the common saying of our clichè.

                                              Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio – January 7, 2021

[1] “One day I’ll have to write long, maybe a book, on a character named Eugenio Sanchez, to whom I was linked as a friend during the nine months of my military service. To that extraordinary man, of whom unfortunately I’ve lost any trace,  I owe some of the richest hours in my life and, moreover,  the reading of a few most interesting texts. The man I’telling about was a carter by trade and absolutely uncultured; he could only read and write : however I could understand myself with him, better than with anyone else and right about on most unapproachable items, not only to our language but also to our own conscience”. Cited by :  “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 ÉÉditions Denoël – original title ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.96-97

[2] “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 ÉÉditions Denoël – original title ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.234.

[3][3] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’..

[4] “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 ÉÉditions Denoël – original title : ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.132.

[5] “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 Éditions Denoël – original title : ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.201

[6] Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic explosions of August 6 and 9, 1945.

[7] “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 Éditions Denoël – original title : ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.95.

[8] “…I twill be then natural that, when his fierce eyebrows (Dalì refers to Picasso, editor’s note) once more shoot the poisoned arrows of the objective world of his outward Saint Sebastian, he is the last one to be informed about the physical pain he does cause”, cited.by : “Perverso e paranoico. Scritti 1927-1933”, Salvador Dalì 1971 Éditions Denoël - titolo originale ‘Oui’ / Ed. ‘il Saggiatore’ Milano 2017, p.232. ‘Saint Sebastian’ is also the title of an essay Salvador Dalì published on the magazine ‘L’Amis de les Arts’ (1927).

The suit titled ‘Portable Organ : to catch the sound’ – the designer Sara Pernatsch produced it in collaboration with Margherita De Candia for “Il Teatro della Moda”, School for haute couture training in Milan, inspired by Leonardo’s homonymous sketch and remained unfinished; the pencil drawing is present in the ‘Madrid II Codex’ (1491-1505), at the ‘Spain National Library’. The thirty suits of the exhibition “Leonard prisoner of flight” www.leonardoprigionierodelvolo.com are already offered for sail ‘by public auction’ : the proceeds will be donated to V.I.D.A.S. for the first children hospice in Lombardia (Italy).

Reproducing sounds in Nature, as they are catched by our sense of hearing, inspired the two young women authors, Sara Pernatsch e Margherita De Candia who interpreted and translated Leonardo’ sketch ‘Portable Organ’ by which Leonardo Da Vinci began to project a bellows vertical keyboard, ancestress about 300 years earlier of the accordion which uses the pressure of the fingers of both hands to modulate the sound just entered by the player in exhalation. The sketch by Leonardo has been happily taken up by the luthier Mario Buonoconto[1] who made with it a fully functional accordion.

“…It was not so obvious to find a source of inspiration that didn’t make me fall into the ‘banality’ or in a ‘bad copy’ of the original. So, I wondered, what would help make me feel so close to Leonardo Da Vinci to be able to understand his own works to the point of creating one myself ? I had to find something in common with a man lived 500 years ago, which would allow me to give free rein to my imagination, but remaining at the same time connected to his own studio. Really, I haven’t found anything that unites us, if not just the love and passion for our respective jobs. That’s exactly where I started from to develop my project. We can’t be more sure that everything Leonardo worked on, was the fruit of great love and passion…

I liked reproducing the immensity of sensations which a melody can give, right through the grandeur that characterizes this dress. The inspiration almost came by itself within the walls of my apartment, listening what is, at the end, the real source of inspiration for the whole projects : music…”[2]

                                               Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 29, 2020

[1] Mario Buonoconto, workshop ‘Antichistrumenti’, at Majano – Udine (Italy).

[2] Cited from the description of ‘Portable Organ’ suit, shown at the exhibition “Leonardo prisoner of flight” www.leonardoprigionierodelvolo.com at ‘Palazzo Morando’ in Milan, until last January 5.

“… Il convient d’introduire ici une distinction, classique en philosophie, entre repentir et remords : le premier reconnaît la faute pour mieux s’en separer, goûter la grâce de la convalescence, le second s’y maintient par besoin maladif d’en éprouver les brûlures…”[1]

‘MEETmeTONIGHT’[2] is the annual review of Universitary Research in Italy and this year had a single macro theme, ‘The future’: the appointment with dr. Laura Musazzi[3] was about the consequences of the stress on the brain, which indeed – in my opinion – proves itself ‘not an indifferent reader’, as it is also able to judge about individual suffering when communicated to our organs in order to activate a defense.

As we know, in each one of us the neurons change physiologically their shape when just facing anxiety and by a progressive contraction of the  dendrites, responsible for transmitting signals to the organs : it furtherly seems that the muscle activity – which we give space willingly to, when anxiety begins – can compensate that excessive, or prolonged, contraction we produce when stressed, so to favour the presence of beneficial neurotransmitters, the endorphins.

But I was wondering if the sole muscle activity – which can prove also aggressive other than detrimental as we often learn by journalistic reports – even allows our trained body to produce heavier and more prolonged stress loads, with harmful and then uncontrollable effects.

“Anxiety is not outside of us…” was a fair annotation I heard at the beginning of the ‘talk’, but not sufficient in its definitiveness : infact, when you live anxiety without any other ‘placebo’ than your own muscle activity, even pharmacologically fortified, you can incur in a further frustration, but admissible with difficulty.

I think that if the brain is ‘not an indifferent reader’ of one’s body – we’re finally beginning to know something about – which means that our brain can easily acknowledge what anxiety suggests : that is a distance from an a-sexual model, not at all looking like us and – as our own production of stress shows, physiologically and also pathologically, exposing us to a cross and generalized target shooting.

                                                 Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - December 11, 2020

[1] “La tyrannie de la pénitence”, by Pascal Bruckner – É É ÉÉditions Grasset & Fasquelle (2006), pp.53-54.

[2] Adhering to the anti Covid19 rules, the review took place online, so offering a number of interesting shortest ‘talks’, each one lasting twenty minutes included questions from the audience, and about specific topics in the five areas of interest, ‘Health’, ‘Humanities’, ‘Smart cities’, ‘Sustainability’, ‘Technology’.

[3] Laura Musazzi is associate professor of ‘Farmacologia’ at the ‘Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca’, Deparment of ‘Medicina e Chirurgia’ : the ‘talk’ November 28, 2020 was titled ‘Un cervello sotto stress’.

In the five hundredth anniversary of Raffaello Sanzio[2] of Urbino.

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[3].

Vasari[4] says that Giovanni de’ Santi, Raffaello’s father, was so happy for the birth of his son that he didn’t want send him to nurse, and “let his mother breastfeed him”, while “by all the good and excellent manners possible at the time” the child was immediately initiated and trained to painting in his father’s workshop at Urbino : as soon as in age, his father introduced him in Perugia to the workshop of Pietro Perugino who accepted the child in apprenticeship, and where Raffaello stood out for how he studied Pietro’s manner, also imitating him to the point that it was not easy to distinguish the work of the pupil from that of the master.

Thanks to his fine manners that very few of his predecessors demonstrated, Raffaello soon obtained high-ranking orders, first in Siena – where Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo already were working – then in Florence where he begun to teach ‘Perspective’ in which he was excellent indeed and that especially interested him, since maybe town planning and architecture were the real novelties to the Renaissance artist, no longer just a decorator or poet but philosopher and theorist in all respects[5].  

He met and appreciated Albrecht Dürer[6] from whom he had a few engravings done on his own drawing.

Little is said about Raffaello’ special talent and sensuality of love, which Vasari indicates in his portraying human features : so that, for example “La Velata” (1516) and “La Fornarina” (about 1519), which even are inspired by “Amor sacro e Amor profano” (1515) of his contemporary Tiziano Vecellio, are not indeed didactic and tedious pedagogical portraits, unlike the other.

He came back to Perugia, where he was a guest of the Duke of Montefeltro, then again to Florence where new orders called him, and finally to Rome in 1508, where the Pope Julius II – who had ordered the demolition of the Vatican basilica dating back to the emperor Constantine due to the barbarian Middle Age contaminations – commissioned to Raffaello a series of frescoes for the new Library and Ecclesiastic Court in the ‘Stanza della Segnatura’ of the ‘Palazzi Apostolici’, where theology was peak and balance of human philosophies.

In the meanwhile Raffaello, who already had set up – unlike Michelangelo - a profitful workshop with talented collaborators, came to meet the expectations of his client, without neglecting just a little ironic look about what he was painting : that encyclopedic figurative work to which he seems having been accompanied step by step by cultured papal officials.

And so, his “School of Athens” opens to the viewer a heterogeneous disorder with the everlasting discussion in the centre between Plato, the real leading character of the fresco pointing to Heaven of Ideas, and his pupil Aristotle offering his “Ethics” to human processing. All around them a number of recognizable characters, portrayed in realistic guises of fellow artists and contemporaries of Raffaello : Socrates - Plato’s teacher -, Pythagoras with the perfection of the number, the Berber Averroes, Euclid, Heraclitus, Zoroaster, Diogenes to name a few.

None of them looks at the viewer, each one is taken by his own ‘good’ theory, arguing and supporting it , when possible, with loyal disciples. And although the timeless Heaven which lights up the scene, gives no indication of the time, the date indicates 1503 October 31, the day of the election of Giuliano della Rovere to the papal throne with the name of Giulio III.

Here is finally represented the grandeur and the harmony of Architecture, that at the same time receives, supports and introduces, to the audience and to the History, both motion and features of philosophers and scientists.

Does so an Order precede, accept the human disorder and, while making it clear and unpleasant, is also able to raise it offering space and listening?

Raffaello seems to share what his client thinks, however he gives the only woman in the fresco – Ipazia, with good reason, the Alexandrian mathematician who here wears a white sheer dress and looks incredibly like Raffaello himself, also portrayed on the opposite and symmetric side – that precise gaze which seeks the viewer and asks a judgement, a feedback and an aswer, so making itself an indispensable link of imputation for benefit and wealth.

                                         Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – September 12, 2020 

[1] “Everything in its place” is the title of an essay by Oliver Sacks, published posthumously, where the neurologist points out the pathological aspect of melancholy and compulsion, for which an indispensable condition is that ‘everything is in its place’, even at the cost of tampering with reality at one’s fixation. On the other hand Sacks indicates in ‘one’s putting order’ the quality of patients who come to heal, as they make themselves able to ‘put order’ starting from a mental disorder which is present in any pathology.

[2] In 2020 occurs the five hundredth anniversary of Raffaello Sanzio death whom Giorgio Vasari remembers in “Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri” ‘Nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550’ (Einaudi ‘ET Classici’ 2015, Vol.II p.611 e p.639).“Nacque Rafaello in Urbino città notissima l’anno MCCCCLXXXIII (1483 - ndr), in Venerdì Santo a ore tre di notte… Poi confesso e contrito finì il corso della sua vita il giorno medesimo ch’e’ nacque, che fu il Venerdì Santo d’anni XXXVII (37anni, quindi era il 1520 – ndr)…” 

[3] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ newspaper as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’. In 2022 Frassetto published his first comic review ‘35MQ : 2012/2022 Dieci anni di inettitudine’.

[4] “Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri”, Giorgio Vasari ‘Nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550’ - Einaudi ‘ET Classici’ 2015, Vol.II pg.611

[5] Leon Battista Alberti published “De pictura” (1435) ed il “De re aedificatoria” (1485), the first theoretical treatises about painting, engraving, architecture.

[6] “Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri”, Giorgio Vasari ‘Nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550’ - Einaudi ‘ET Classici’ 2015, Vol.II pg.629