The Portrait: Me through her eyes (Me attraverso i suoi occhi)

I look at the canvas and wonder to myself “Do I really look that mean?!”. The sad part: I already know the answer…

Her hands are flying wildly across the paper. She’s broken three pencil points so far and snapped a crayon in half. Casualties of war, she discards them and continues, unwavered. She jumps up, frantically and shuffles to the living room to find a marker that is just the right color. I try (and fail) to quiet my neurotic side, which is currently glaring at the discarded pencil shavings on the floor secretly itching to sweep them up. She comes back into the room and gazes at my hair with pleased curiosity. She wants to get the bleached and hennaed color just right but can’t seem to find the tools for the job. She settles on a yellow crayon which she first drags violently over the paper, then scribbles over it with a brown marker.

Guya Versari, a teacher and trained painter, is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence under the guidance of the art critic Capocchini with a thesis on “Futurism: Boccioni and Marinetti”. But to me, she’s the mother of a good friend. A peculiar and artsy woman in appearance, I find out later from a mutual friend, that she is nearly blind but paints more of what she senses spiritually in a person than what she sees visually. I’m told I should be flattered that she wants to draw me. And I am.

I’m wearing no makeup, my hair is a mess and her hands are moving so feverishly that this spur of the moment portrait could turn out any which way. She reminds me to straighten my head, and I attempt to fix my posture. I‘ll admit that I’m a little nervous as I sneak peeks down at the unfinished work. I want to tell her that my eyes look crooked, or that my forehead couldn’t possibly be that big, or that my lack of eyebrows is my mom’s fault, and probably my dad’s too and that my brother’s eyebrows are perfect and he must’ve been switched at birth and…… but I refrain. Half because she doesn’t speak any English and half because I’m not quite sure who invited my vanity to the party. So I sit. And I wait.

Guya is known for more abstract depictions of reality. Her paintings reflect her own inner world, and whether that world is mysterious, joyous or painful, she’s always careful to be very truthful about her current sense of the world. My understanding of her is that she has a sixth sense so to speak. She understands a sublayer of life that can easily be ignored had she not this form of spiritual literacy. She reads into the invisible watermark that exists in the space between her eyes and your existence as though confirming it as reality. She portrays life through the colors and movement of her paintings so that they are to be experienced rather than simply looked upon. Even flowers, she says, are not only a symbol of life and happiness, but a tapestry of colors, of light, a vitality, a movement of lava.

I stare at the final product. This sketched portrait of me. There is something about it. This depiction of me. Sure it looks like me, but more, it feels like me. The eyes and the mouth. They tell my story. A story I never translated for this woman who sat in front of me and read me like a book, with words that neither of our languages would allow us to efficiently convey. I’m learning something herein Italy. Something that you have to learn when you don’t speak the same language. It’s that communication is so much more complex than I could’ve imagined. And that the most beautiful things don’t have to be said...

Love, Me.... Free

A Day at the Museum... turns into a post- mortem therapy session waiting to happen

Recently I visited a museum that was recommended by a friend of a friend. The Marino Marini Museum. Being in Florence and not having the same enthusiasm for classic Italian art as most tourists, I was elated to have a recommendation for a modern art museum. The building, tucked away in a sunlit opening of one of Florence’s many side streets, is dedicated to the paintings and sculptures of the late artist donated by his wife shortly before his death.

Well... It didn’t take long for me to form a very strong opinion of the artist. This opinion, let me say, was not the most pleasant.…

Let me take this opportunity to insert a sidebar: I realize that a person’s view of the art they are viewing is sometimes, if not always, a reflection of their own understandings of the world, society, humanity and so forth. I attempted to view the work objectively but sometimes feel overcome with very strong feelings. This is one of those times. After leaving the museum, upon further internet research of the artist, discovered that there is very little in the realm of negative critiques of his work. Of the reviews of both the man and his work that I have found, most exude a quieted, neutral tone. It is as though there has been a unanimous decision made in the art world that the controversial implications of his work are better off left alone than delved into publicly. Aside from the year that they were created, the works in the museum have no other descriptions posted and are, therefore, open for interpretation.

A Man About a Horse

Much of Marini's work is loosely based on an equestrian theme. Specifically, the image of a man atop a horse. As his work progresses in time the sculptures and painting become more abstract and the figures less true to life, anatomically speaking. His later work gives an uncanny feeling of conflict between the horse and its rider. Often the horse appears in painful poses at the mercy of a sadistically overjoyed rider. The horses head is often turned in a way that would imply some sort of merciless and humiliating subjugation of the animal. In many of the oversized sculptures the bodies of the two are melded together as though becoming one as though in some sort of centaurian fantasy. The pieces that manage to maintain the dignity of the animal’s natural disposition to remain standing, often depict some other act being performed that confirms the theme of conflict that is present throughout his work. One piece in particular, displayed proudly on the ground floor of building, depicts the animal’s head tilted backward, chin pointing straight up, with the rider roughly tugging on the horse’s mane.

I found it quite interesting, that the painter’s basis in reality seems to deplete over time. His later paintings and drawings, mostly oil paintings and pencil sketches with water color, depict horses sitting upright many times with geometrical shapes replacing the joints in their legs. Whereas in his earlier works, the detailing and intricacies of the human body were so well depicted, his later work comes to resemble more and more that of a small child releasing his fantasies on paper. The human figures bend at the neck as though broken, faces turned sideways in a way that mimics the eerie feel of a classic horror movie. The horses, still at the mercy of these sadistic riders, become objects of ridicule, placed in highly sexualized positions that highlight their rears.

The Women

The sculptures and paintings of women are the most troubling images of all to me (note: I will admit that I am writing from a very feminist perspective). The similarities in the body shapes of his models to that of the horses in his work are uncanny, signaling to me a troubling link in the psyche of the artist. With large thighs and generous rumps (yes I just used the word “rump” in a sentence) variation in the sizes of his models is nonexistent. Very few of his pieces that depict a female subject display the subject with a smiling expression. In fact, more often than not, the face is expressionless and borderline traumatized (much like I was after leaving the museum). Especially, in contrast to the elated expressions of the male riders atop the aforementioned demeaned horses, these womens’ faces are too disturbing to be ignored. Whereas, many of the earlier drawings depict detailed faces, though often a saddened, sometimes confused expression, his later sketches feature figures with faces and eyes darkened and/or scratched out. While the bodies are very often nude and true to life, the feet are often not of definable shapes or human origin whatsoever.

In one of the more troubling sculptures, a woman’s naked body is featured in a seated position. Welts are raised across her shoulders and just below her knees. It is hard to determine if the artist is depicting a woman tied by ropes, or if the sculpture was somehow destroyed and put back together, though the latter possibility is doubtful considering the exactness of the placement of the marks. In another distressing piece, a woman is depicted in a seated fetal position, head lowered as though ashamed or cowering. It is worth mentioning that this particular piece is one of the firsts I see as I enter the museum, and upon first seeing it, I did not interpret it as negatively as after I had seen the rest of the pieces and collected a general misogynistic impression of the artist.

Just before I reach the doors to exit the museum, there is a large photograph Marino Marini himself. Wild hair, deep eyes and gaping mouth. After taking a look into his world, one is prone to want to ask out loud “What goes on in that head?”… But then again, I’m afraid he’d ask me the same thing.

Pics!!!!!!!!!!

On the side of an elementary school in Florence.

Late night light show. Poetry sprawled across a building in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

My first taste of Roman pizza... Needless to say I was UBERpleased... molto felice!

Display of locks along the Tevere River in Rome.. I just thought it was kinda cool.

The sun blazing out over the Collosseum.

One of the few people who had their own work on display instead of copies.

An image on wall of the Cupola in the Vatican.

Love, Me... Free

Italy... part 2

Up a flight of steps and into a wide doorway. A petite woman greets me with a smile and I’m given a tour of the apartment. Immediately I’m in love with the ambiance of the place. Richly tinted lace scarves, camouflage doorways and are peeled back to reveal massive bedrooms. Large geometrical shapes are painted on the walls in bold shades and poetry quotes are splashed across the walls in massive gold- colored cursive letters.

We sit in the kitchen and peer out of the two wood-framed glass doors leading out to a small balcony, scattered with paint supplies and potted plants. Over a pasta lunch we talk about ourselves. I find out that she is an architect, that she respects and adores art, and that she has a real appreciation for unfiltered expressions of human emotion. That’s all I need to know. I can tell I like her.

It’s confirmed when days later, I sit in bed and cry, seemingly of a broken heart (we’ll get to that later) and she stoops down on the floor in front of me and stares into my face “Cry!!” she says. “Cry…” She tells me that to pretend to be happy would be worse than crying. And she’s right. So I cried….

I remember the day I decided to translate one of my free-writes into Italian. After over an hour and a half of painstakingly wrestling with Google translator, I was SO sure that I finally had my translation right. I proudly handed her the paper to check for mistakes, of which I was SURE there were few. After about 2 minutes of looking it over she told me “This is all wrong”. “Your Italian is like my English” she laughed. That day she spent over an hour correcting my translation. “This is important” she said, as she hunched over a massive English- Italian dictionary. She’d refer to me when she needed clarification. “ ‘Stared’ What is this?”. I explained “ah! Come ‘fissò… fissato’!” We went on like this until the entire text had been translated. And it wasn’t until weeks later that I realized she had helped me write my first, but not last, piece of Italian poetry….