Thinking as a partner

To benefit from one’s calling[1] / 2.

“A psychoanalyst should ask himself a test about quackery every day, even better every session.”[2]

                                                                     Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio March 28, 2022

[1] www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/en/pensare-da-partner-2/358-psychoanalyst-and-profession-1 

[2] ‘Due test’, Paragrafo I - ‘La formazione dello psicoanalista’, Giacomo B. Contri ‘THINK!’ May 10-11, 2014.

<In the picture, ‘Casa Carbone’ kitchen - Lavagna (GE) / FAI Fondo per l’ambiente italiano>

Conversation with Stefano Frassetto[2].

“Ideas, or rather syntheses, early in the morning are the most usable ones, when thinking of things to do in the day didn’t take over : it’s a lightness that allows me to construct the story.”

“I can say that some light aspects of life always intrigued me, even at school : for example, I was born on October 1, 1968 and for all my first years of school the school year started right on my birthday!

Indeed, thinking about it, it was in class that I started drawing seriously : I was listening to my teacher and meanwhile my pencil ran across the paper. There must even be something left of an ‘Odissey’, or of a ‘Promessi Sposi’ which I enjoyed drawing comic parodies.”

And the portraits ? It would seem that you have a real talent, how did you start ?

“When I was a child I didn’t enjoy reading, I especially liked picture books : but someone gave me a comic that I still remember, it was called ‘Petzi’, I think the author was Danish. I liked it because the text didn’t invade the drawing, but it was a caption under the cartoon as in the old illustrated stories – think of ‘Signor Bonaventura’ in the ‘Corriere dei Piccoli’ which by the way I liked very much – and next to this caption was reproduced in small size the character who was speaking. That’s how I started reading, and then devouring, comics of all kinds…

Today I publish one strip a day for ’20 Minuti’, a newspaper that comes out in Switzerland and I draw portraits for the cultural pages of various Magazines : and although my work is aimed at readers, in front of them I would not be able to make portraits nor to conclude a strip (that’s what takes me the most time). But it’s a satisfaction to realize that what made me laugh had the same effect on others too. I often get messages from readers, who tell me what they particularly liked, maybe they ask me to continue a story carrying it on for several days.

How would you describe yourself ? 

“I think I’m of a fairly calm nature, I was also as a child : but very quick to catch an expression, a special situation and to reproduce it by interpreting and often trying to simplify it. This is the reason why my thesis (in Architecture) was about how to transform a complex design, with perspective structure indeed, into an iconic image, mainly through the search for two-dimensionality. Still today the two-dimensionality fascinates me about how it manages to capture the reader’s attention : flash is visual, yes, but it refers to a tactile and a sensory that the viewer immediately recognizes, making so more ‘familiar’ the setting of the strip.

It’s everyday ethics, in short, a bit repetitive and predictable, also made up of all our clichés that can find a very rapid synthesis right in the humourous strip. Are you then a selective observer, and listener ?

“I listen music always, starting with classical music (I love Gershwin and Mahler) that I began listening with my father and with whom I liked to talk about. Anyway I like all kinds of music. Music is essential for me, while I’m drawing I couldn’t help it : it’s something that surrounds me and it clears my mind of all other thoughts.

Then there is colour and the choice of colours, an indispensable stage of my work : there are colours that I feel more mine, a certain yellow, or green, or blue. I always prefer the soft shades over bright ones. Colour is the last thing I put in the strip. When it is ready I deliver it to the Magazine and it’s time for the detachment : I know that from here on it will walk with its legs. So when a reader writes to me that he liked a strip, it seems to me like a distant son who calls you to tell you : “Hello dad, I‘m fine!”

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – March 19, 2022

 <Original painting by Stefano Frassetto>

[1] ‘Ethica more geometrico demonstrata’ (1677) is the philosophic effort by Baruch Spinoza to demonstrate that Euclidean geometry, while recognizing objects’own qualities and rules, can come to explain human ethics.

[2] 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 as a portraitist for Swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’. He published some original portraits for TutorSalus.net

Monica Vitti[1].

In the air-raid shelters where they were staying during the war, a just twelve years Monica Vitti and her brother were acting sketches, only to spend those hours : but their neighbours in the shelter were listening to both of them and even smiling, notwithstanding everyone was so scared. “I owe my own career to those bombardments…”[2]

A risky statement, and a hinge with other ‘bombardments’, those fearful ones[3] indeed on one’s own uncounscious and which our conscience is charged with : even in some darkest moments of her fourteen years, Monica Vitti does remember how irreplaceable was to realize her talent in playing and be able to face her own conscience.

Years after, she debuted in theater as professional and graduating at Academy[4], playing in the Chorus of ‘Iphigenia in Aulide’ at he Greek theater in Akrai, where every year  - almost contemporary to the theatrical review at the near ‘Ancient theater’ in Siracusa - the ‘Young people Festival’ takes place[5].

Iphigenia – the ancient Greek princess addressed to be sacrificed by her own king-father, Agamemnon, in order to favour the leaving warriors of Achaean, eager to fight at Troy – has been often performed to an audience of very young people : maybe due to Iphigenia unexplained swinging between a dismay for her father decision when she was already promised in marriage with the hero Achilles and, on the opposite, her gradual submission to the sacrifice, in front to an attentive people, she obedient and with the royal behaviour expected by everyone.

But, just when she was being pierced by the executioner’s sword, Iphigenia is replaced by a big doe of the forest which the incredoulous presents see bloodstained and dying on the sacrificial altar of goddess Artemis, instead of the unlucky young woman.

Replacement was then possibile ? Without one’s own identity document, yes of course ! The sole emotions can’t defend ourselves, as a matter of facts : each one of us could realize that.

Here, however, Euripides is telling something more to us – and since 403 a.C., when the tragedy was for the first time performed : if that is the sort of an artless woman, she then will be able to make up for the  abuse of power, as unfortunately we will read in the following ‘Iphigenia in Tauride’, still bearing the signature of Euripides.

The presence of a woman with, or without, her own identity document, was taking again on the stage the acknowledgement of that masochism which Freud named ‘feminine’[6] – not at all specific for woman but spreadly borrowed from women – and which Monica Vitti well performed in a few characters of her long, fairly appreciated, professional career : but also she paying a dear price for that constant coming into and going out in also grotesque, never improbable, characters as acting does impose.   

Her uninterrupted recitative speech was evidently a selective one, as first of all addressed to women.

“Different is the nature,

different is the disposition of humans,

but the genuine virtue is always bright”[7].

Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio - March 10, 2022

[1] Monica Vitti, recently died (1931-2022), has been a famous and award-winning actress, also much loved by the public : during the II World War she was little more than a girl.

[2] ‘La mia Guerra’ (1990, Rai 3) has been a television programme in seven episodes, conducted by the journalist Enza Sampò and by the tv screenwriter Leo Benvenuti.

[3] The risk of a ‘return of one’s own repressed thought’ still remains in direct psychotherapies, not in the analytical work. Freud pointed out that, since the beginning of his career. ‘Studi sull’isteria’, J.Breuer-S.Freud (1895) OSF vol.1; ‘La rimozione’, S.Freud (1915) OSF vol.8

[4] Monica Vitti debuted in 1953 with her name at birth, Marisa Ceciarelli, just a little before graduating at the ‘Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica’ in Rome, established and directed by Silvio d'Amico, who was also her teacher and suggested to choose an ‘art name’ : it was so that she got to the name Monica, she liked, and Vitti with the first part of her mother last name, Vittiglia.

[5] https://palazzoloacreide.italiani.it                   https://indafondazione.org

[6] ‘La questione economica del masochismo’, S. Freud (1924) OSF vol.10

[7] ‘Ifigenia in Aulide’ in ‘Euripide. Ifigenia in Tauride. Ifigenia in Aulide’, a cura di Franco Ferrari BUR (2018) Mondadori Libri Spa / vv.558-560, pp.240-241

Expo Dubai 2020 experience (October 1, 2021 – March 31, 2022) does involve our ‘Art Academies’ too : the chance of an internationalization can be also a valid opportunity to come out from that ‘implicity’ into which the Arts themselves try to keep our own thinking.

To our sight the main part of communications, and artistic too, does address : even if our sight, to be effective, is asking for a support from listening, more and more then relegated to a didactic and emotional function, rather than confirming as a preferential instrument of decision and direction.

However, listening is the real beginner in each one of us, except afterward getting lazy and almost in tow of human experience : but it remains that nothing gets to be heard if doesn’t become an appointment[1], and right through that individual capability to listen to.

Last December 15, 2021 Roberto Bolle - Italian classic dance pride – has been joining an audition at the ‘Commissione Cultura’ of the ‘Camera dei Deputati’, just while our Government is attending a selection of productive activities able to give economic return on extended funding[2], as required by the well known restrictions due to Covid19 pandemic : the principal dancer spoke with exemplary authority in favour of the ‘Teatro alla Scala’ Academy in Milan https://accademialascala.it  from which he did come from with merit and to which himself was investing for years with evident profit.

On his own he was making an appointment, without using therefore his professional instrument of classic dance where he does excel in the world as well : he made it instead by the excellent and general instrument of human defense, which is the imputative speech[3], so that confirming that irreplaceability in any professional training when it likes to get into a trust-worthy ‘excellency’.[4]

Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 20, 2022

[1] ‘Psychoanalist training’, by Giacomo B. Contri in ‘THINK!’ May 2014, 10-11; 12; 15; 17-18; 19; 21; www.giacomocontri.it

[2] ‘Next Generation EU’: on December 17, 2020 the European economic budjet 2021-2027 has been settled with progressive steps.

[3] After speaking with Salvatore Salvo Bitonti – theatrical director and teacher, both at the ‘Accademia Albertina’ in Turin https://www.indafondazione.org/accademia/ and at the ‘Accademia d’Arte del Dramma Antico’ in Siracusa  https://www.indafondazione.org/accademia/ - I’ve published at the following link https://www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/en/events-2/314-talking-with-salvatore-salvo-bitonti-1-theater-director

[4] “…culture is not unnecessary : it is in the structure of Italian identity. We have to keep on making our intellectual and works heritage – to be protected and supported – a strong resource, able to produce knowledge, moral enhancement and economic development. It is also a strategic resource for those young people looking at University, Publishing, Arts, Theater, Music, Movie their professional landing, according to their own ambitions.” Cit.:  https://www.quirinale.it/elementi/62272 Message by the President of Repubblica Italiana Sergio Mattarella to the Parliament in his swearing day / February 3, 2022.