Skira has just published “Marcello Pietrantoni.
Yellow, orange and red zones. At least all over Italy; no museum, gallery, art fair, no theatre or cinema can be accessed. It seems that beauty has been replaced by fear. We live immersed solely in a din of hammering, monotonous, disheartening TV, monopolized by an army of virologists, infectious disease specialists spin doctors, anchormen and politicians. The result creates delirium and confusion. What are the consequences?
It would take the scream of a new Munch to depict the exact meaning of what the year that has just been passed meant, not only for describing this society
The year that has just passed has left us with words that draw a fragile line. Apparently, among a thousand thoughts, a strange, almost unconscious optimism pervades the country. Constantly, on television screens, in these first weeks, the images related to the first vaccinations: smiles, sweet declarations, the exit from the tunnel that finally seems clear, explicit in front of us.
You have been described as “the jester of the art system”. Do you think this definition fits you well?
“It’s the poet’s end of wonder” decrees Giovan Battista Marino, a great Baroque poet from Naples. Maybe we have become too little poetic and have forgotten excitement, the delicious capacity to experience wonder, but she is there, crouched and even though numb, ready to reawaken. We need beauty.
