MACROradici del Contemporaneo: A Roma La Nostra Era Avanguardia

MACRO

June 1 – October 10 2010

www.macro.roma.museum

by Clara Giannini

During this period at the Macro museum in Rome there is a very interesting exhibition that contains works and testimonies of artists active in Rome in the 1960s and 1970s. The show, part of the series “MACROradici del contemporaneo” is called “A Roma la nostra era avanguardia”. A large part of this exhibition focuses its attention on “Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960/1970”, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, which almost becomes a complementary exhibition to the first one.

Today those years have been re-edited by Luca Massimo Barbero and Francesca Pola in collaboration with Incontri Internazionali d’Arte. The curators retrace the Roman avant-garde expressing its meaning and its value in a period rich in changes, and in a place still strictly connected with its past.

Before entering the room, the visitors can watch a video that presents those specific special years. The testimony of Graziella Lonardi Buontempo, foundress of the association “Incontri Internazionali d’Arte”, muse of many artists of the 1960s and 1970s, and friend of all those creative personalities that decided to work in Rome, is fundamental in order to understand the time and, above all, the exhibition itself.

In entering the room, people find themselves in front of a space full of documentary photos on the right and left walls, while a huge Warhol’s painting (whose protagonist is Lonardi), is hung on the central one. Six wooden and glass chest cases are positioned in the middle of the room. When opening these drawers the audience is confronted with photos, letters, works and documents connected to the artists who worked with Achille Bonito Oliva and Graziella Lonardi Buontempo during those active years in Rome. When visitors enter, they find themselves immersed in an age that today seems far away, and they can see with their eyes and understand what this period meant.

With the back to the entrance, spectators have on the right and on the left a series of one hundred and fourteen photos by Ugo Mulas depicting artists and some of their works. These images are representative of the show “Contemporanea” curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and “Vitalità del negativo”. They are hung divided in three lines for each wall, one after the other without interruption, and run across the whole length of the walls. The problem is that they are so near one with the other that spectators cannot focus on one single photo; their eyes jump from one picture to another, and it becomes difficult to understand subjects and themes. This arrangement does not allow to breathe, and the final result is an overwhelming sensation that leads viewers to move their sight somewhere else.

Warhol’s work, that viewers find in front of themselves while entering, is the only source of colors. Surrounded by the manifesto of “Vitalità del negativo”, its protagonist is Graziella Lonardi Buontempo in the typical Warhol’s way: the repeated image of the woman in different colors. The painting’s position, due to the role and the importance of its subject, seems to be the destination of the sight; the eyes run on the lateral walls whose photos guide them to Warhol’s work.

Exactly in the middle of the room forty-eight drawers contains documents (photos and papers) that attest the presence of many international artists in Rome. Personal and work letters accompany works of art and allow visitors to enter in a world which is parallel and complementary to the artistic life of the artists. Thanks to these chests, the audience can participate actively to the exhibition. Visitors can choose which drawer open, and then they can read what was necessary to Christo in order to make his work, or look at the picture that portrays the encounter of Warhol with Pope Giovanni Paolo II, or even some works on paper by Piero Manzoni. Through this expedient, the audience not only participate actively to the exposure, but without the audience many works, and especially many documents, would remain hidden, and with them the human aspect of the artists.

“A Roma la nostra era avanguardia” is the summary of an epoch, of a period during which historical and political changes influenced the world and its art. The exhibition is also a testimony of that period and a tribute to those who allowed it to live, such as Achille Bonito Oliva, Graziella Lonardi Buontempo and all the artists.