I love this picture, courtesy of 20x200.com (if you haven't checked them out, do!). It reminded me that I'd taken some really great photos of an adorable bookshop in Trastevere that I had yet to post.
I've been reading a lot here. While currently working through the great Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism, I've also breezed through parts two and three of Steig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo series, and most recently have been enjoying Bram Stoker's masterpiece Dracula, while tanning in the sun, natch.
EUR (Esposizione Univerale Romana) was an ambitious and vast area on the outskirts of Rome that Fascist leader of Italy Benito Mussolini planned to unveil as the setting for the 1942 World's Fair, which would mark the 20th anniversary of his Fascist rule of Italy. Though World War II disrupted these plans, EUR exists today, and is a bustling residential and commercial area, adding a rich layer to the capital's architectural history. It is a really striking and beautiful area, and is really interesting to consider in relation to our preconceptions about what Rome is as a city, as well as its relationship to Classical Antiquity.
We had class here relatively early in the program, and it was really fascinating to see the students' reactions to this place, which is so different from the rest of Rome, yet at present, is very much a living, working part of the edge of the city, not at all a forsaken ruin of the Fascist past.
Mussolini was all about broad streets and grid-like urban spaces with carefully engineered views. In the above photo, we were looking from the building in the next photo, and we could see directly the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana.
This place was on the roof of the building two photos below. It is so sci-fi! Apparently they could project movies on that huge wall and then people would sit on the benches.
At first glance, when considering it's stark simplicity, huge scale and conflicted (/scary) history, what we call Fascist architecture can have a negative connotation. However, in my opinion, the political agenda behind the architecture makes it even more interesting; Mussolini wanted to connect his rule of Italy to the Roman Empire of old while glorifying his regime.
These murals are really interesting. None other of the Fascist/Socialist regimes of the early 20th century embraced Modernism, in fact, most governments pursued purely neo-classical/realist programmes, including the US democracy.
Il Palazzo della Civilta Italiana. The Palace of Italian Civilization. A people of poets of artists of heroes of saints of thinkers of scientists of navigators of migrants. This building is incredibly striking and beautiful, very simple and classical, all in white Travertine stone.
You can tell I'm really enthusiastic about EUR. So much of any study or experience of Rome has to do with it's picturesque ruins, cobblestones and baroque buildings, but Rome is a living city with a complex history, and a place like EUR is a refreshing reminder of the multidimensional character of the city.
Last Saturday night I was so excited to attend la notte dei musei, ("night of the museums") when most of the museums in Rome were open until 2am and entry was free! Though I regret to say that nothing actually came to life, the museums were amazing to see at night, and everything seemed more glamorous and mysterious after dark.
My friends and I went to Galleria Spada and Castel Sant'Angelo; we wanted to focus on a couple of places that were really different.
Galleria Spada is in a lovely palazzo, and the rooms are crammed with paintings and sculptures. In the garden, I was blown away by Francesco Borromini's Prospettiva, a corridor which recedes to create a forced prospective, appearing much longer than it actually is. I'm a real fan of Borromini's architectural wit. (photo courtesy of il Sito Ufficiale Galleria Spada)
By the time we got to Castel Sant'Angelo, it was raining, but the views were well worth the weather. That's San Pietro off to the right.
Bellissima. Also, notice how high the Tevere is! The lower banks are completely submerged after all the rain we've been getting.
I think it's a combination of being visual + an artist + synesthesia, but sometimes I get really fixated on certain visual/color things. Like one time last year, I mixed this shocking pink color when painting, and then I became obsessed with it and pink in general, to the point that I only ate strawberries and pink yogurt for a couple of days. OCD, I know.
Anyways, Mom sent me the above gorgeous picture of the Vermont spring (thanks again!), and it totally set me off on a green/leaves/flowers tangent.
Yes, I'm still dreaming of sun. Rome's having a really wet and cold May. So I thought I'd round out the pictures of bella Sicilia, including this watercolor that I painted while sitting on the rocks overlooking the ocean. Thanks to my friend who brought his watercolor set!
I had already mentioned how well we ate in Ortigia, but I decided to emphasize this point by photographing this lovely array of really fresh fish.
On our last evening on the island, we ate on a lovely terrace overlooking the water.
I am currently ensconced in a lovely caffe called Bar Good. They have wifi, English Breakfast tea, chandeliers and a dog named Ciao. Tutto bene.
The only downside? It's rainy and cold outside, and has been for a couple of days now. So, to lift my spirits, I thought I'd post some more sunny pictures from Ortigia - works every time!
This is X (pronounced "iks"), a lovely grehound-looking creature who lived near us. We made friends.
This my friend outside the apartment that four of us were sharing during the trip.
This is Caffe del Duomo, right in the center of town, where we came at least once a day for breakfast, and often again in the evening for aperitivi.
(Fun fact: the main cathedral or church in a town or city is called the Duomo, which roughly translates to mean house of God. A famous example is the Duomo in Florence, Santa Maria dei Fiori, with Brunelleschi's famous dome on top. Though we English-speakers find it convenient, "Duomo" doesn't mean "dome," it just sounds like it!)
A shadow of the copy of Michelangelo's David, that stands outside the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence.
Scenes from Masolino and Masaccio's fresco cycle in the Brancacci Chapel, in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine.
Donatello's Mary Magdalene
I just finished reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. It was a really moving and philosophical work, very creative. I particularly enjoyed the prose in Chapter 10, titled "What Congruence?" I had to read it a couple of times in a row. In the passage, the main character, Renee, talks about art, drawing on Kant and other philosophy regarding the nature of beauty. I wanted to reproduce it here, directly quoted, because I thought it was really close to a lot of my less-well-articulated thoughts about what it means to love art:
“Whence comes the sense of wonder we perceive when we encounter certain works of art? Admiration is born with our first gaze and if subsequently we should discover, in the patient obstinacy we apply in flushing out the causes thereof, that al this beauty is the fruit of a virtuosity that can only be detected through close scrutiny of a brush that has been able to tame shadow and light and restore shape and texture, by magnifying them—the transparent jewel of the glass, the tumultuous texture of the shells, the clear velvet of the lemon—this neither dissipates nor explains the mystery of one’s initial dazzled gaze.
The enigma is constantly renewed: great works are the visual forms which attain in us the certainty of timeless consonance. The confirmation that certain forms, in the particular aspect that their creators have given them, return again and again throughout the history of art and, in the filigree of individual genius, constitute nonetheless facets of a universal genius, is something deeply unsettling. What congruence links a Claesz, a Raphael, a Rubens and a Hopper? Despite the diversity of subject matter, supports and techniques, despite the insignificance and ephemeral nature of lives always doomed to belong to one era and one culture alone, and despite the singular nature of a gaze that can only ever see what its constitution will allow and that is tainted by the poverty of its individuality, the genius of great artists penetrates to the heart of the mystery and exhumes, under various guises, the same sublime form that we seek in all artistic production. What congruence links a Claesz, a Raphael, a Rubens and a Hopper? We need not search, our eye locates the form that will elicit a feeling of consonance, the one particular thing in which everyone can find the very essence of beauty, without variations or reservations, context or effort. In the still life with a lemon, for example, this essence cannot merely be reduced to the mystery of execution; it clearly does inspire a feeling of consonance, a feeling that this is exactly the way it ought to have been arranged. This in turn allows us to feel the power of objects and of the way they interact, to hold in our gaze the way they work together and the magnetic fields that attract and repel them, the ineffable ties that bind them and engender a force, a secret and inexplicable wave born of both the tension and balance of the configuration—this is what inspires the feeling of consonance. The disposition of the objects and the dishes achieves the universal in the singular: the timeless nature of the consonant form.”
I love this picture, courtesy of 20x200.com (if you haven't checked them out, do!). It reminded me that I'd taken some really great photos of an adorable bookshop in Trastevere that I had yet to post.
I've been reading a lot here. While currently working through the great Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism, I've also breezed through parts two and three of Steig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo series, and most recently have been enjoying Bram Stoker's masterpiece Dracula, while tanning in the sun, natch.
