Mart Museum, a modern art Symphony

This was my second visit to the Mart Museum in Rovereto. The first time I was more than 10 years younger. See the ignorance? I checked because I was about to write “I was MORE than 10 years LESS”. I must sound so naïve, but it’ so good to practise! This blog gave me the opportunity to write in English for the first time in my life. I am aware that I sound like a child writing at school and that my English can be defined as “maccheronico” (mahk- keh- ROH- nee- koh, it comes from a type of pasta, the maccheroni, and means “broken English”… you know, like Hagrid).

But I don’t care. All my life people kept telling me how gifted I was at languages, but I never really cultivate this passion properly. I never studied abroad, I never attended a serious English course, I almost never chatted in English with someone. Since it is never too late, this is my occasion to do it. Anyway, the Museum!

Mart Museum in Rovereto

The first thing that hits me about Mart Museum is the building itself by architect Mario Botta and engineer Giulio Andreolli ’cause it’s different from all the other traditional museums in Italy. Ok, if you’re not Italian you may be accustomed to Museums hosted in modern buildings, all white, glass, aseptic atmosphere. But I’m not. Or at least I wasn’t the first time. The huge steel and plexiglass dome bewitched me. Sure the revolving door is not so convenient for the poor ladies at the ticket office. They were freezing each time someone entered. Poor things!

Once you enter, go left and there’s the Ticket Office. Behind that, the shop. On the right the lockers (self service with key). If entering you go right there’s the toilet on the left, on the right the lift. In front of you the staircase.

• First floor – Temporary exhibition: Awareness of the real. Nineteenth-century masterpieces. From Courbet to Segantini (until April the 3rd). One word: Awesome. I’m not a lover of that period’s art but this exhibit was lovely. Normally I’m ecstatic in front of Renaissance art as well as in front of a Dadaist artwork. But there are styles (with exceptions) I gladly skip: Baroque and Rococo, cause they’re too much. Nineteenth-century art on the contrary has always seemed “not enough” to me. I don’t know, maybe I changed, maybe that day I felt romantic… But I enjoyed those nice, rarefied, intimate paintings, portraying families, couples, woman, everyday-life scenes and some unique landscape paintings I fell in love with. They were like fragments of a gentle, refined past, too distant now. I’m sorry I must choose only a few paintings to post otherwise you couldn’t possibly load the page for it would be too heavy!

• First floor – The Mart Museum Collections: The invention of the Modern
  Ok, here’s another artistic movement I’m not particularly fond of: Futurism. Don’t hate me! I know, it is one of the few, maybe the only Avant-garde movement in Italy, but… I can’t seem to like it. Too geometric, too warlike, too gaudy. Anyway, the works I liked the most of this section were: Nudo di spalle Controluce (Nude from behind Backlight) by Umberto Boccioni (before he joined Futurism), the Noise machines by Russolo (nowadays we’d need Silence machines!!!), Numeri innamorati (Numbers in love) by Giacomo Balla (I liked the idea), the geometrical lightness of Melotti sculptures. The second part of the section displays artworks pertaining to another tendency: archaic and metapysical. De Chirico and his disorienting scenes, the hieratic figures by Campigli, Carrà’s archaism, Arturo Martini’s always surprising sculptures. And then Casorati and the “magical realism” of his paintings, suspended on the edge between reality and illusion. I also liked The green bridge by Moggioli (even if in my opinion it is blue) but I didn’t get the connection between this painting and the other works displayed.

Second floor – The Mart Museum Collections: The incursion of the Contemporary

As I said other times before, art is personal, subjective. So as usual I’ll tell you what I liked most.

• Arnaldo Pomodoro In memory of J. F. Kennedy
• Emilio Vedova, Del ciclo della natura (about nature’s cycle). Basically I liked it because it reminded me the girl in red coat scene of Schindler’s list (that has nothing to do with the painting. See? What did I tell you?)
• Burri’s works (no pics because there was an awful lighting). I simply love him. I love his use of materials, his compositions, everything. If you want to see some of his works go to www.google.it/burri
• Lucio Fontana’s Spacial Concepts. Here’s what he said: “I pierce the canvas and let infinity pass through”. Is there anything more to say about his artworks?
• Giovanni Anselmo Entrare nell’opera (Entering the artwork): a photo (made using the timer) of the artist walking in a field that represents (I think) a non-place: it could be anywhere, a metaphorical expression of art itself, in which Anselmo enters and we enter with him. Wonderful.
• As for the Igloo by Merz. Yes, it is eye-catching but it doesn’t won me over.

Arnaldo Pomodoro In memory of J. F. Kennedy

Emilio Vedova, Del ciclo della natura

Lucio Fontana’s Spacial Concepts

Igloo by Merz

Giovanni Anselmo Entrare nell’opera (Entering the artwork)

Devalle exhibition (until February 14th)

I must admit I never heard about him before. Thanks to Mart, I learned that he was a painter and lecturer (Brera Academy in Milan). I was really captured by his heterogeneous, coloured, vivid works. Drawings, collages, 3D installations. I had never seen anything like that before. I really liked him and I suggest you to go and see. The most peculiar works are the gigantic canvas which combine different celebrities in some sort of impossible dialogue, like John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe and Chopin or Salvador Dalì and the Little Mermaid.

Symphony of an Execution – MASBEDO at the Mart

Masbedo is the collective name of two artists (Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni), whose work consists of videos and installations. They filmed the shooting down of a tree in Val di Fiemme, an area of Trentino where violin makers (once even Stradivari) choose the wood to create the finest musical instruments in the world. Masbedo combined in the videos the sounds of nature with the sounds of the mechanical noises to create a strange and dissonant symphony. The death of the tree generates a new life, that of the instrument, that of music. Visitors are provided with headphones (you must turn them on!) and then enter a quite dark space in which they can watch the installation. It was peculiar and interesting!

Devalle exhibition

Devalle exhibition

Me listening to Symphony of an Execution – MASBEDO

WARNINGS