Excursion

Author(s): Helen Barolini

Source: The Kenyon Review, Vol. 30, No. 3 (1968), pp. 310-315
Published by: Kenyon College
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4334813
Accessed: 19-08-2017 21:18 UTC

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 tique dealers. . . . We want
rabidly to fight the fanatical,
lifeless and snobbish cult of
the past.
Signor Bazzani, architect of
The National Gallery of the National Gallery of Mod-
Modem Art in Rome is newly ern Art, seems not to have
opened. That is, the galleries heard, for up rose this new pile
dedicated to the art of the to the past. As we approached
1800s have been refurbished the ornately columned temple
and are again available to the with its formidable flights of
public after having been closed steps, processional friezes,
for two years. Some weeks ago, sphinxes, eagles, snarling lions,
my husband and I received an and opulent garlands, our eyes
announcement from the Min- were drawn to four Saul Stein-
ister of Public Instruction, berg ladies who balanced in-
under whose wing the Gallery trepidly on tiptoe from the
belongs, saying he would be rooftop and brandished laurel
honored to see us at the re- wreaths at us. After this ex-
opening ceremony, and so we posure to massive decor, recall-
went. The Gallery is on a ing the unspeakable Vittorio
broad avenue, Valle Giulia, Emmanuele Monument, a
which runs through Villa homey touch: the number was
Borghese not far from the zoo. at the door, number 135 Valle
Modern art's home in Rome Giulia, as if that mass of
is a huge neoclassical building marble had to be precisely pin-
built in 1911 but full of the pointed for the mailman. The
fanciful rhetoric and bombast place, we decided, had a sense
of old Rome forever-anoma- of humor.
lous if one considers that al- There was the flurry of a
ready at the time Louis Sul- little ceremony going on at the
livan had built the first sky- front door as we arrived: the
scrapers and Frank Lloyd Gallery's director, Dottoressa
Wright his radically new Palma Bucarelli, the lady of
"horizontal" houses. But the the house at 135 Valle Giulia,
style of the building was prob- had come out, smiling, to greet
ably determined by the col- Minister Gui and his little
lection it was to house. Form band of dignitaries who were
follows function. And yet, and just ahead of us. They en-
yet . . . in 1909 Filippo Mar- tered, we followed, and found
inetti's "Manifesto of Futur- ourselves in one of those lofty
ism" appeared in Figaro to interiors probably well-suited,
state the stand of young Ital- as its prototype, the Roman
ian artists against just such Bath, for letting steam rise,
phoniness: "It is in Italy that but peculiarly unsuited to the
we launch this manifesto of hanging of pictures. Two
violence, destructive and in- young ladies were dispensing
cendiary, by which we this day materials to the guests: a floor
found Futurism because we plan and guide to the newly
would deliver Italy from its opened rooms, a copy of the
plague of professors, archaeol- speech to be given by Palma
ogists, tourist guides, and an- Bucarelli. The walls were fresh

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and clean, white and dove
gray; the Victorian side chairs
looked newly upholstered; the
potted plants glistened.
We sat on folding chairs in
the atrium facing a table with
a microphone. On the walls
around us were arranged the
Gallery's most important nine-
teenth-century works: a Mon-
et in a very fancy frame, a
double Cezanne watercolor
made visible on both sides by
an ingenious revolving frame
Van Gogh's "Arlesienne," a
Degas, and the work called
"The Three Ages" that is con-
sidered Gustav Klimt's mas-
terpiece-a striking example
of Art Nouveau with its volu-
ble rhythms and colors and
symbolic theme. The ambient
was rather too casual and
formal at the same time-cas-
ual, the placing of important
works in the spaces between
windows hung with plastic
Venetian blinds; formal, the
pompous hall reminiscent of a
bank lobby. But the arrange-
ment is temporary and was
meant, astutely, deliberately,
to point out the paucity in
Italy's National Gallery of
Modern Art of the really great
masters of modern art.
It is a theme that Director
Bucarelli touched upon in her
speech of welcome to the Min-
ister of Public Instruction. In
the years when other Europe-
an and American museums
were building important col-
lections of modern art, Italy,
propelled by the chauvinism
of the Fascist regime, delib-
erately ignored what was "for-
eign" to her in art. The result
is the provincialism of the
nineteenth-century collection.

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 Palma Bucarelli is a stun-
ning, intelligent, courageous
woman who has been director
of the National Gallery since
1945 and has been responsible
for the few important nine-
teenth-century non-Italian
works the Gallery has ac-
quired. She is small, trim, and,
that day, dressed austerely in
a black tailleur with white
blouse. Her whole appearance
was unadorned, smart-mod-
ern-and her speech was sing-
ularly free of the usual Italian
sentimentality and abundant
phrase. She had her say: the
collection needs improving,
trained personnel and funds
are lacking, interest in high
places is lacking, the mistakes
of previous years must not be
repeated.
She ran through the work
accomplished in reuniting and
reordering the collection. For-
eign works dispersed by the
Fascist government in favor of
a strictly nationalist collection
had to be recovered; over half
of the museum space taken
over for a "permanent" show
of the Fascist Revolution had
to be reclaimed, and the whole
nineteenth-century collection
of some 1000 pieces had to be
reassessed with new criteria.
Much housekeeping, in short,
and little wherewithal. Since
1962 there has been a suspen-
sion in showing loan collections
of contemporary art from im-
portant museums around the
world; collateral conferences
and film projections have also
been suspended for lack of fi-
nancing. This is a pity-the
Gallery entrance was gay with
the cluster of posters announc-
ing former loan shows: Piet
Mondrian, Kandinsky, Henry
Moore, Ben Shahn, et al. It
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was clear as she spoke that
Director Bucarelli was elegant-
ly needling the Minister to
open the money bags in her
Gallery's direction.
The Minister responded
graciously. He thanked Dot-
toressa Bucarelli and her col-
leagues for their devoted work
of two years (burst of ap-
plause). It was not, however,
immediately clear if he'd loos-
en the purse strings. Once
finished, he invited the guests
to visit the newly done rooms
and we rose to follow him,
protocol prescribing that no
one visit a room where the
Minister had not first set foot.
While standing in the atri-
um waiting for the ministerial
party to advance, we found
ourselves in front of Van
Gogh's "Arlesienne." A young
Italian pondered aloud as to
whether the painting was real
or a reproduction. For some
reason, I was startled. I
thought this could only happen
with, say, elderly American
ladies who scan paintings in
Via Margutta's annual Out-
door Show and ask "Is it hand-
made?" Real, real, we mur-
mured to the young man in
front of Van Gogh, and then
passed on to Monet's water
lilies which there, unfortun-
ately, did not seem the radiant
explosion they are in New
York's Museum of Modern
Art. And the Cezanne, though
charming, was tenuous; yet
these were some of the gems
of an art collection whose
guiding objective had been
cultivating one's own national
garden. We thought of stressed
social realism in today's art of
the USSR and, together, my
husband and I decided that
politicians make better politi-
cians (if that) than art men-
tors.
The time of the Gallery re-
opening was also election time
in Rome. It was a little un-
settling, as we assisted in the
Gallery at the results of past
super-nationalism, to think
that outside obnoxious flocks
of cars covered with the MSI
banners of the resurgent Fas-
cist party were littering the
streets with flung-out hand-
bills, filling the air with the
din of their "We're for
Peace!", and adding their pug-
nacious presence to the al-
ready intolerable traffic jams
of Rome. The Fascist regime
devastated Italy with results
reaching, as we could see, even
into the field of art, and yet
there were still the easygoing
like our portiere, now com-
fortably off in the Republic,
who said, after the inconven-
ience of a two-day postal
strike, "We were better off
when we were worse."
But back to the collections.
We started our tour with a
peek through the plastic blinds
at a sculptural mass in a little
courtyard; it overwhelmed the
greenery it was set in and was
so gauche as to be likable. It
was Biondi's group of revelers
called "I Saturnali," a roister-
ing crew of big-paunched
monks falling to the ground in
glee, youths piping, and women
straining until the blouses fell
from their shoulders and bared
their breasts. It would be
rather fun to come upon this
tipsy crew in some shady
strand of Villa Borghese- a
good antidote to all those staid
and sober busts of the illus-
trious that fill the park. But
the Saturnalia is fairly rooted
in its little courtyard, and it
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set the tone for our whole visit.
With the important and
charismatic (in that milieu)
exception of Medardo Rosso's
wax and bronze figures, there
is really nothing first-rate.
And, as if to prove further the
rule of mediocrity which in
past years formed the collec-
tion, we later learned that the
Medardo Rosso pieces were
donated by the sculptor's son
rather than acquired by Gal-
lery purchase. In his lifetime,
Medardo Rosso, though es-
teemed in France and now
recognized as the revolution-
ary precursor of Rodin, was
officially neglected in Italy.
And yet, as we proceeded,
we discovered a raison d'etre
to the Gallery's nineteenth-
century collection. The art dis-
played mirrored the true con-
text of Italian life in that
century: an Italy not yet po-
litically united, a kind of drow-
sy cultural backwater im-
mersed, suffocated in her past
glories. Apathetic, unstirred
by what was happening else-
where, peninsular-that was
the Italy whose esteemed art-
ists were the documentary
Fattori of the so-called mac-
chiaioli (color-dab) school, the
genial Palizzi, and Antonio
Mancini, whose works seem to
find the same fortune on the
Italo-American market that
Caruso records do.
Going from room to room,
we had a feeling that we were
not seeing pictures at an ex-
hibition but the kind of paint-
ings we might have run into
in the front parlors and along
the stairways of any nine-
teenth-century middle-class
home. They radiated the com-
fortable feeling of the buone
cose di pessimo gusto (nice
things in terrible taste) as
itemized in Guido Gozzano's
celebrated poem on his grand-
mother's house. A far cry, in
any case, from "epater le bour-
geoise!"
What we were seeing was
the fabric of life-life being
lived at the moment of the
artist's perception of it-which
great experimental art, by its
very nature, cannot catch or
rather, catching it, transmutes
into poetry which is no longer
a document but exciting
prophecy. Nineteenth-century
Italian art with its mannerism
and genre painting is dull but
usually true; when not true-to-
life, it becomes an exaltation
of the histrionic. Not until
nearly the end of the century
does there become noticeable
in Italian artists a timid re-
flection of the great explosion
in art that had taken place in
France much earlier. Some
imitations of Cezanne and
Seurat are in the Gallery and
some paintings of uncertain
derivation showing the begin-
nings of bolder, thicker brush-
strokes-translations, perhaps,
from Van Gogh.
So here is Italy of the 1800s
in the portraits of prelates and
well-brought-up girls from that
famous category, le signorine
di buona famiglia; scenes of
convent life; battle scenes of
the wars for unification; a
huge canvas of prostrate fig-
ures in a religious ceremony
called "The Vow" with (as al-
ways in Italy) the irreverent
aside that invariably marks a
religious service here-in this
case a grinning woman along-
side the penitents who holds
up her baby to be admired.
In the two rooms dedicated
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to the works donated by the
Neapolitan Filippo Palizzi is
the eternal tourist's eye view
of Italy: the old Arcadia that
well-off Americans and English
flocked to in the Victorian Age,
the charming and picturesque
that has always been both
Italy's curse and the foreign-
ers' goal here-her "fatal gift
of beauty," as Byron put it.
Palizzi's works are costumed
peasants, farm animals, deli-
cious renderings of rocks and
wild flowers, country lanes, in-
nocence and bucolic pleasures;
an aura of absolute serenity
and tranquility wafts over his
scenes as if life in Italy in his
day were one sweet dream.
And yet Palizzi's eye indubit-
ably reflected part of the truth
-the sweet, not the bitter-
and his hand was so expert
that there were those among
the viewers that opening day
in the Gallery who sighed and
said, "Now, this is art"-
meaning, what we feel com-
fortable with is good.
And just as Palizzi the
painter is comfortable and lik-
able, so the man is simpatico;
his words are there, in the
rooms dedicated to him: "I've
brought these works to Rome
from my studio in Naples and
have arranged them here in
chronological order for the
simple manifestation of im-
mense faith and love that I
always brought to the long and
demanding requisites of art. I
would like to be born again
just to start off again."
From Palizzi's ingenuous-
ness, which was charming, we
soon arrived at that which was
not: what my husband, who is
Italian, calls the D'Annunzio
taint in Italian life. There
were some fine examples in
this exhibition: a virgin
drowning in the Nile, a waif
crouched on a bridge, Tasso
reading to Eleanora d'Este,
Marco Polo starting off for
China, St. Anthony being
tempted yet another time.
Other platitudes in white
marble: "Eve after the Fall,"
"The Clown at the Bedside of
His Dying Wife," "The Arrival
of the Last Sacrament for the
Little Orphan."
And then we ran into Mil-
ena Mileni, an energetic,
tanned, long-haired woman
who has just gained the dubi-
ous distinction of having her
most recent book judged por-
nographic in the Italian courts
and withdrawn from the mar-
ket. She has been a success-
ful and esteemed writer for the
past twenty years and her
latest book is the first Italian
novel to be so censured in re-
cent times. She was indig-
nantly explicit on this matter,
and as we turned into a room
with her and were confronted
by a gigantic canvas of four
nudes-nude, that is in the
Victorian manner, with expur-
gations-she declared con-
temptuously, "Now that is
what is really obscene!" The
painting, called "The Gorgon
and the Heroes," is the work
of Aristide Sartorio. In front
of another immense Sartorio
jumble of nudes, wild beasts,
and a many-breasted Diana of
Ephesus, three Americans
stood and looked cautiously
from painting to title-plate and
back again. Finally, "We'll ask
Joe what it is," one said, and
they left.
There was, next, the brief
oasis of sensitivity where we
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saw Rosso's works, impressions
caught in wax and bronze, sub-
merged but strong. They
struck me as what James
Joyce meant by epiphanies-
immediate revelations in art
of some sense of overwhelming
truth. Then out of Rosso's
room into more of the official
grandeur. There we met our
friend Contessa Carandini, wife
of a former ambassador to the
Court of St. James, and a little
impatient of super-Italianism.
"Oh, how one wishes for the
cleanness of some real modem
art!" she exclaimed.
As we left, the two young
ladies in the entrance hall who
had provided our introductory
material informed us that we
could choose reprints from
some black and white glossies
in two albums. While thumb-
ing through the albums we
noticed some very striking ab-
stract prints in a glass case be-
hind one of the girls. They had
a welcome astringent effect on
us after all the pomp and sug-
ar we had left behind, and we
asked what they were. But
the girl didn't know and gave
her attention to suggesting
three reprints for us: a study
of nuns reading in a convent,
a Palizzi peasant woman feed-
ing her cows at the manger,
and a detail of the battle of
Custoza. We thanked her for
the choice and, on our way
out, looked closer at the ab-
stracts in the glass case. They
were lithographs by contem-
porary painter Emilio Vedova
to accompany a book of Span-
ish poems. Very handsome.
We decided we'd be back when
the wing for twentieth-century
art is reopened.
-Helen Barolini