Monthly Archives: September 2020

Monoscopica – An Exhibition at Barga’s Via del Pretorio no. 4

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On our trips to Barga we had always found time to have a slice of pizza at the little pizzeria just inside the town’s main gateway, the Porta Reale, in the Via del Pretorio. This street, which leads up to Barga’s fine cathedral, has new significance for us in the attraction of an art gallery at no .4. I can’t do better than to quote what this gallery’s web site at https://www.viadelpretorio4.it/?l=en says about itself:

Via Del Pretorio 4 is not just an address. Via Del Pretorio 4 is not only a physical place, it is also a point of reference, via Del Pretorio 4 is a soul space.

Between the walls which embrace the studio of the artist Giorgia Madiai, over time, a conservatory has been created where the arts evolve and are expressed in all of their diversity and potency.
This corner in the historic centre of Barga, in a short time, has become a “speakers’ corner”, where art and knowledge take shape and are freely expressed.

Cultural events by numerous artists and musicians of national and international renown have been presented here: Alessandro Cavalloni, Nicola Perullo, Federico Maria Sardelli, Dimitri Grechi Espinoza, Nicolao Valiensi, Giuseppe Venturi, Zeno Marchi, Patrizio Alaimo, David Dominici, Azzurra Tanzini, Gabriel Feld, Candida Abbondio, Nicola Salotti, Mario Madiai, Stefano Tommasi, Nicholas S. Kraczyna, Sara Saccomani, Sandra Rigali, Noah Tortelli, Fabrizio Da Prato, Luca Salemmi, Walter Nenci, Keane, Kerry Bell, Claudia Haberkern, Masahide Kudo, Francesco Piacentini, Andrea Landi, Andrea Convalle, Sally Li, Angela Guadalupe and many others.

My greatest wish is to continue to organize events, to involve artists and anyone who would like to exhibit their work in any form: actors, musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, performance artists, free thinkers, as well as events, presentations, conferences, plays, and courses open to anyone who wants to learn: #viadelpretorio4 should become a forge where art is not just to enjoy, but something to participate in collectively, and then we’ll add to the mix, hospitality, oenology and gastronomy.

The gallery’s space was conceived for conversation and presentation and will host artists, musicians and performers in exhibits and events which will be presented monthly by resident artists, Giorgia Madiai, Fabrizio Da Prato, Caterina Salvi, Stefano Tommasi, and Kerry Bell as well as many guest artists, musicians and performance artists.

Currently there’s an exhibition, open throughout September, on weekdays from 4 pm to 6 pm and at other times by appointment, showing works by the following artists: Giorgia Madiai, Fabrizio Da Prato, Kerry Bell, Caterina Salvi, Stefano Tommasi, Cinzio and Andrea Tessieri. These artists each so different from the other in their techniques and aspirations have put together a show which cannot possibly be missed and it is to be singled out for its very high standard.

“Monoscopica” is the title of the exhibition. Translated into English it means a television test card used to help viewers tune their set to the best picture and which, before the explosion of new channels occurred, used to occupy much of the time a television screen was switched on. Perhaps then this exhibition is a way of attuning viewers’ reactions more clearly in perceiving life details they may not have been aware of, or if they had been aware, to have discarded these images as being of little importance without realising their significance.

Let us look then at some of the art creations presented in this very eclectic and certainly stimulating exhibition. I have very little to add to Kerry Bell’s comments she kindly sent me on the works presented which also include her own. Her comments are shown in italics below.

Giorgia’s work currently on exhibit includes powerful imagery of the double tailed mermaid seen throughout Italy in churches and archaeological sites. It also includes intriguing references to the Tarot, as well as emotionally evocative symbolism of the divine and not so.


Giorgia Madiai’s ‘Sirena’ is a mixed media work which, although highly original, evokes in me reminiscences of Chagall, in particular his stained glass designs. Indeed, I think Madiai’s work could very easily translate into glass. This detail from the work pictures a dream sequence delving into fantasy with the wonderland rabbit. It is also suggests a nightmare appeased by a phrase which, translated means, ‘give her peace’. I especially love the composition’s colour chromaticism with its autumnal shades.

Fabrizio’s work here is part of his on-going exploration of materials and imagery that promote Fine Art in construction, home, and advertising. He is currently installing a series of paintings in place of advertising, as billboards, in Parma, the designated capital of culture in Italy for 2020. These are a continuation of his work in the same field shown in Palermo and Pistoia.

I have known Fabrizio since he was one of my English language students at the Materis paint works in Capannori. I do think that getting a job in a paint factory as an artist must be a very empathic occupation and it certainly adds vividly to the artist’s handling of his medium!

Caterina (Debbie) Salvi presents a series of photographic abstracts with sharp contrast and detail, showing exquisite depth and texture, in addition to a fascinating black and white series done of Casa Pascoli, which is featured in two books.

Black and white photography has tended to be displaced by the current emphasis placed on colour, especially in this digital age. Yet monochrome represents classicism and indeed, evokes in me some of the finest thirties and forties era mostly black-and-white Hollywood films, especially film noirs with their empathic shadows and unusual camera angles bordering into the non-figurative like Billy Wilder’s ‘Double Indemnity’.

Stefano Tommasi is showing black and white photography of thought provoking detail.

Stefano is another acolyte of monochrome photography. His skill is such that it  tempts  me to turn off the colour option on my own camera and start concentrating on what for a long time used to be considered inferior, if only because its printing was cheaper, to colour photography.

Kerry Bell’s textiles range from garment to sculpture which arouse and evoke our profound emotional connections to clothing.

I have discussed the last exhibition I visited featuring Kerry’s work at Barga’s Oxo gallery at my post at:

https://longoio3.com/2019/09/25/elusive-elegance/

I can only repeat a paragraph in that post as it continues to sum the special qualities of Kerry’s work in this exhibition:

“It was the folds in the dresses that principally engaged my attention: those sinuous contours, the interweaving lines, highlighted by the subtle use of lighting, which continued their journey, projecting multi-layered silhouettes onto the gallery walls and forming a profound dialogue between the object and the aura it created”.

Andrea Tessieri’s print delicately and warmly evokes a place lost in time.

I can add very little to this succinct reflection on Andrea’s work except to say that, again, it leads into a parallel universe beyond our mundane concepts of time and space.

The gallery is open generally from 6 PM and by appointment. For more information contact giorgiamadiai@gmail.com or 334 368 8592 and follow us on Instagram viadelpretorio4

The Dead Live Anew at Bagni di Lucca’s Anglican Cemetery

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In 1842, the ruler of the duchy of Lucca, Carlo Ludovico di Borbone, granted the English colony of Bagni di Lucca the right to found a protestant cemetery. A place called “al Prato Santo” (‘At the Holy Field’) was chosen on the opposite side of the river Lima and the graveyard was opened in 1844. It was in use until 1953 and there are one hundred and thirty seven individuals who rest there. In 1982, with the end of a legacy destined for maintenance, the cemetery was purchased by the Municipality of Bagni di Lucca. It is now managed by the town’s Michel de Montaigne Foundation and the Lucca Historical Institute.

Among those buried here, often with monuments made by renowned sculptors such as Benjamin Gibson, Giuseppe Norfini and Emilio Duccini, are the sister of the President of the United States of America Stephen Grover Cleveland, the writer ‘Ouida’, Henry and Elizabeth Stisted (the founders of Bagni’s Anglican church)  and the Irish entomologist Alexander Henry Haliday.

For those of us who prefer the romantic view of a cemetery as a place of decay with gravestones decomposing under a jungle of ivy and other creepers, a place haunted by bats and crows, a symbol of life’s ultimate futility and a site of melancholic and solemn reflections it might seem a contradiction to appreciate these ancient tombs restored, oxymoronically, to new life and I have often felt this way. However, I am now resigned to the fact that the aim of Bagni’s De Montaigne cultural association is to restore all the monuments it contains to their pristine glory. This is because in addition, to the names of the graves’ occupants the restoration has given fresh remembrance in the form of those who not only have munificently funded their renovation but also in the fact that several of the sepulchres have received a second dedication to recently deceased inhabitants and visitors to Bagni di Lucca. Thus, some tombs may have a triple dedication: the original occupant, the person who has given funds to restore it and the new dedication to a departed lover of Bagni di Lucca. Some even have a further association as the name of the tomb’s restorer is also mentioned. Sadly, in one case this has meant a fourth remembrance since the restorer in charge of the iron railings of several of the tombs recently died prematurely aged forty.

Last Saturday, 5th September, at the English cemetery of Bagni di Lucca in the aureate sunshine of a late September afternoon, five newly restored funeral monuments were inaugurated, raising the cemetery’s restored monuments to fifty five.

(Prof Marcello Cherubini, director of the De Montaigne Foundation and Bruno Micheletti of the Bagni di Lucca branch of the Historical Institute, the two principal organisers of yesterday’s event)

The renewal of one funeral monument was dedicated to the memory of Tony Bareham, protagonist of the Montaigne Foundation’s international conferences of the and himself a benefactor of the cemetery since he provided funds for the restoration of the writer Louise de la Ramée’s, (better known by her nickname of ‘Ouida’) monument. Bareham dedicated this restoration to the memory of his wife who had died a few years previously. This circumstance shows to perfection how one tomb can receive associations well beyond its inhumed dweller.

Another tomb was reinstated in memory of Umberto Guidugli, a notary who died of Covid-19.  He was a keen visitor to Bagni di Lucca and a supporter and friend of its Montaigne Foundation and the Historical Institute. A third monument was dedicated to all the doctors, nurses, health personnel, pharmacists, volunteers who sacrificed their lives to help those affected by the recent pandemic. Because of this reason, a representative of the Bagni di Lucca committee of the Italian Red Cross was present. Again this shows how supposedly irrelevant monuments from a past and largely forgotten age may be made significant again for our present very troubled age where, once again, we are all suffering under a pandemia as threatening as that ‘Spanish Flu’ of 1918 which killed two of the cemetery’s occupants Nelly Erichsen and Rose Elizabeth Cleveland whose tombs have also been lovingly restored.

Finally, there was the restoration of the Caccia family tomb. Colonel of the Bersaglieri, Mario Caccia was a participant in Italy’s wars of independence and died in Peschiera in 1879. This was a particularly moving moment in the afternoon’s proceedings.

A trumpeter from the famous Italian Bersaglieri troop played the Italian equivalent of the ‘Last Post’ on his trumpet:

Caccia was honoured with the laying on his grave of a small laurel wreath by other bersaglieri all wearing their traditional helmets adorned with black capon feathers.

The proceedings were completed by a delightful concert held in a suitably cooling orchard by the Lima River.

The performers were “Sax off limits”: an ensemble of twenty saxophones from the “G. Puccini” Conservatory of Music of La Spezia. This was the programme:

One of the items, Puccini’s ‘Crisantemi elegy’, has become something of a leitmotiv for Bagni di Lucca’s cemetery. I remember it being played (by a string quartet this time) in the presence of Puccini’s grand-daughter Simonetta who was a keen supporter of the efforts to restore the cemetery and who renewed her love for a town which was equally cherished by her distinguished ancestor.

It was a brave effort to play Beethoven’s potent ‘Coriolan’ overture on saxophones and it was surprisingly well hit off. For me, however, Rossini’s early sonata was a happier choice. There were two very welcome encores: first a trifle of a march called ‘Scossa Elettrica’ by Puccini written to celebrate the centenary of the invention of the galvanic battery:

and second, a Piazzolla tango. As many will know Piazzolla is almost a local lad; see my post at  https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/tango-where-astor-piazzolla-originated-from/ to find out why.

 

This was an idyllic finale held in the lovely orchard by the banks of the river Lima. No better location could have been chosen since these September days have given us a prolonged summer with really hot days. Sitting in the shade under the fruit trees was clearly the best choice!

As ever in Italy strict Covid-19 regulations were in place for this event. Everyone had to wear  ‘mascherine’ – surgical masks – and no-one was allowed to move their socially-distanced chairs. Italy, in this ghastly on-going situation has set an example for public events which, alas, is all too lacking in many other countries. I remain truly proud of and feel very safe in this country!

(The presentation by the Bersaglieri of the commemorative laurel wreath to Italian independence fighter Mario Caccia)

Elia

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The following was written as a funeral address for Elia, my wife’s mother when she died last year. I would like to remember this remarkable woman on the first anniversary of her death by publishing that address in this post.

(Elia in Saint James’ Park London)

When Elia, celebrated her ninety-eighth birthday on June 10th this year, with her daughter Alexandra and me, her son-in-law at home we imagined that there would be an even more beautiful party in two years’ time when Elia would have been one hundred years old.

Sadly this was not to be. However, we should instead be grateful that Elia has led a life full of so many accomplishments and events and lived in good health until near the end. Elia’s eyesight, for example, was near perfect – she could see the number of the bus coming before I ever could – and never needed to wear glasses.

On Tuesday afternoon, 25th June, the lady who gave birth to Alexandra, my wife for over forty-two years now, finally flew to heaven with her guardian angel, to become one with the eternal love of her Creator.

Born in Italy’s Venice region in 1921, less than three years after World War one ended, Elia grew up in a farming community during difficult times. Among her activities were looking after silk worms, feeding them with mulberry leaves, and growing tobacco.

In 1936 Elia became an employee of Colussi, the biscuit manufacturers. It was in that same year that a devastating earthquake hit her area of north Italy, an experience which she described to me in its terrifying details.

Regrettably, another disaster, this time man-made, hit shortly afterwards when World War two broke out. Elia confessed to me that she hoped we would never know the hunger and poverty that her community experienced during those dreadful times.

Elia also worked in Sardinia for her uncle at a hotel in Iglesias –a place Sandra and I visited during our own trip to that beautiful island.

Elia inherited her father’s spirit of adventure: he had travelled to America and helped build New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. Elia’s own adventurous spirit took her to a post-war UK with her cousins and where she worked as a Nanny. They lived in a cottage near the Duke of Norfolk’s castle at Arundel. It was in these idyllic country surroundings that Elia met Dino. It was love at first sight – a love so strong that again, this Easter, Elia visited Dino’s last resting place near his birthplace of Florence.

Alexandra was born from that love in 1948 and, with wondrous coincidence, when we married, on the 7th day of the 7th month of 1977 at Caxton Hall, it was the same registrar who had married Sandra’s parents who married us!

In London the Italian Institute had been set up to restore amicable relations between formerly war-torn countries and to spread love of Italy, its language and its culture in the UK.

Both very industrious persons, Elia and Dino worked as an indefatigable team at the Italian Institute. Dino became Secretary-General and Elia not only was telephonist and receptionist but also set up a canteen  where she showed great initiative in cooking delicious pasta dishes and cakes for English people at a time when the delights of Italian cuisine were still very little known in the UK.

Elia was always pleased to show her Italian friends and relatives around London and its surroundings and her hospitality was legendary. She loved to travel and even in May this year, aged 97, flew to Italy. Elia passionately loved her garden which she kept as elegant as a living room. She did wonderful flower arrangements at the Italian Institute and her garden display there won a prize from Westminster City Council.

Through her work Elia met many distinguished persons and with all of them felt perfectly at ease and made them feel at ease too. She could always hold her own in conversation with people from all walks of life.

Elia loved animals and for many years her and Dino’s constant companion was the whippet Lord Rupert and Cheeky the tortoiseshell cat.

Elia was an avid reader; she knew all the novels of Jane Austen in Italian and English and had a shelf-full of her favourite author, Catherine Cookson, whose novels where heroines meet difficult situations must have had considerable resonance with Elia’s own experiences.

Elia also loved music. She enjoyed singing to herself and her favourite piece was the chorus from Verdi’s ‘Nabucco’ which you heard at the beginning of this celebration.

Elia was a perfectionist in everything she did. Brilliant in sewing, making curtains, quilts she was a veritable make-do-and-mend person whose example is once more followed in this consumer society.

Elia’s life is an example, to all those lucky people who have known her, of a pioneering woman of her time: a modern lady in another age. She is a memory that will always remain fresh, like her complexion that always seemed filled with youthful sunshine.

We feel proud to have helped Elia enjoy her life till the end and we celebrate her sudden departure into a new world safe from harm and surrounded by her loved ones with joy and sadness in equal measure.

Like her daughter, my wife Alexandra, I shall miss you Elia. It’s not only going to be a goodbye but also an au revoir till we meet again. May you rest in Heavenly Bliss and Peace and enjoy a well-deserved repose. With Alexandra I love you Elia and always will.

(Near Westminster Bridge London)

Adapting to On-Line Life?

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Of the various adaptions that have had to be made as a result of the on-going pandemic one having the greatest currency is that of home-working, especially in the field of education. In Italy, as in many other countries, friends who are in teaching have had their work cut out in preparing on-line lessons, marking distanced homework and ensuring that the technology can be accessed by all of their pupils. Most teaching staff have admitted that it is rather more exhausting to teach this way than in a traditional classroom!

(Lucca’s ‘Fosso’ near Porta San Jacopo where one of my teacher friends lives)

Home-working has also diffused itself in many occupations normally conducted in office blocks. Indeed, the UK government’s new encouragement for employees to return to their offices and give up home working has been met with a largely unenthusiastic response, almost as if it were a retrograde step. After all if one looks at the industrial revolution the original trend used to be home-working. It was only when, for example, Hargreaves invented his ‘spinning Jenny’ that factories began to be built and concentrated workers into one space and set up strict timetables.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was found that it makes better economic sense for many jobs to be more productive at home than in some skyscraper? Commuting on crowded and unhealthy public transport systems and traffic pollution could be greatly reduced and the time saved on often considerable journeys would be able to be spent on the work itself. Young families could spend more time with their children and pets. Work could also be rearranged to suit meteorological conditions. For example, if it’s a fine morning why not take a walk and make up for work-time when it’s raining cats and dogs?  For me, however, one of the greatest benefits of home-working would be that those ghastly office skyscrapers disfiguring the City of London, like the ‘gherkin’ and the ‘cheese grater’, could be demolished and the urban sky-line restored to its former proportions where historic buildings could finally find their proper places again.

The same arguments would go for shopping. In London during the pandemic we’ve availed ourselves of on-line home deliveries of groceries from the likes of Tesco’s and Iceland and non-food items from such concerns as Amazon. This clearly saved journey time, queuing time and greatly reduced health risks when shopping in stores, especially when we found Covid-19 regulations were applied in some stores with disturbing flexibility.

The use of social media has also considerably expanded during this pandemia. If one is unable to visit friends because of Covid-19 strictures or organise a social gathering then technologies like Zoom can provide an alternative. In particular, Facebook has delivered a life-line for many people.

Which leads me to the question: how much does FB reflect our real-time social environment? How many of our real friends are FB friends and how many of our FB friends are our real friends? In my case I can say that the greater part of my FB friends are not my real friends meaning people I would take the trouble to arrange to visit and enjoy some activity (mainly eating!) together. Obversely, a significant part of my real friends do not use FB or, if they are on FB, do not use it from one year to the next.

FB is, however, useful in helping to select those on-line ‘friends’ one would actually want to meet in real-life. Of the many FB ‘friends’ I have in my list who spend part, if not all of their time, in Bagni di Lucca, it is the majority I have never actually met and am unlikely to meet except by accident. This is because I feel that I could take exception to many comments they make especially those on politics (particularly those two chestnuts, Brexit and Covid-19) or religion. (I will not say here what my views on these subjects are, except that if anyone wishes to know what they are they can refer to my own FB page…)

(An On-Line Lucca Fountain)

Are we then heading towards a world where our contact with work will be mainly via broad-band and our social relationships mainly via media like FB or WhatsApp? Who knows? If it has been difficult for us to adapt to an environment of face masks and (anti)social distancing it could be even more difficult for us to return to a world where we do not have to automatically cover our noses and mouths and where we will actually be able to shake hands, hug and maybe kiss that handful of real friends. After all, my dad would tell me it was much more difficult for him to return to civvy street life after six years in the army than to adapt to a world at war in the first place.