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- Restored to the Museum?
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- Colloquio, an Aside?
Try Try Again
12 Saturday Sep 2015
Posted in Education
Category Archives: Education
Exposition
12 Saturday Sep 2015
Posted in Education
In 1962, as part of the city’s annual festival of the arts, modern sculpture was exhibited along a route across Spoleto’s piazzas and streets. (A few remain.)
The exhibition was photographed by Ugo Mulas, a renowned artist. My plan, a bit obvious, is to find a way to photograph each one.
The experiment’s only virtue, perhaps, is to limit the variables. Twelve works, fewer weeks. Little chance of getting around to them all. (Or of getting back to the Wi-Fi, it seems. I’m getting dizzy watching the little ball spin. Until then…)
Next Doors
12 Saturday Sep 2015
Posted in Education
Subject, What Subject?
12 Saturday Sep 2015
Posted in Education
The Stories of Frescoes
11 Friday Sep 2015
Posted in Education
Two of them hold me in thrall: 1) whatever story’s being told within the fixed image of the still; and 2) whatever stories experts know about the making of these works, together with their undoing over time, and their restoring in the present. At these moments, a) I long for a tour guide; or, b) I fantasize about a traveling University, where one’s education occurs on the ground, at the scene of the action instead of on the board at the scene of a crime.
Post to follow techno travails: “A Window into the Fresco,” by yours truly.
En plein air
10 Thursday Sep 2015
Posted in Education
Out in the open air this morning, for art’s sake Rebecca may pardon my French:
Colloquio Spoletino
02 Wednesday Sep 2015
Reb: Am I just a dim-wit, or is that sculpture new?
JT: ________________.
So how would you fill in the blank spot in this dialogue? Probably depends on your reading of the wattage on my dome.
With an eye toward more educational pursuits, I search the net. Romance languages return us to where the colloquio started:
a) talk; b) meeting; c) conference; d) interview; e) dialogue; f) discourse; g) consultation; h) deliberations; i) colloquy
The “Spoleto” to “Spoletino” construct is familiar enough as well. The location of “Sculptures in the City” (from 1962), we are learning, is not.
We know these figures by Pietro Consagra from the town museum (memory gets a jog), yet they were originally on top of the steps we just talked our way down.
This is the way two novels (and one quick trip) end
25 Saturday Oct 2014
Posted in Education
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
APRIL 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
APRIL 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
Dublin, 1904
Trieste, 1914
Ulysses
… and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921
As Unpredictable As Ever
18 Saturday Oct 2014
The weather, yes, again. But the Chiesa di S. Pietro proved to be full of surprises as well.
In the lore of European travel, the acronym “ABC” expresses a contemptible attitude toward the usual parade of churches visits arranged by tour groups. Understandable enough, in many cases.
More than most exterior architectures, that of S. Pietro has its Romanesque charms:
Yet once inside, the renovated interior could hardly keep pace. Except for the rare anomaly, old and new somewhere juxtaposed in an arresting contrast, mostly disappointing.
Until, suddenly, Rebecca and I come upon the same smile at the same moment, seeing these chairs at the beginning, beside the pew, and then this sign at the end, in explanation of a sort:
Only there was much more in between left to ponder, from the obvious, to the still somewhat mysterious:
A prayer and a Bible story, child’s play. But the itemizing of individual talents and interests, united under the banner of an “Orchestra,” such is the stuff that dream’s are made of.
Chiuso
16 Thursday Oct 2014
Posted in Education
If I have learned any Italian word on this year’s trip, it is “chiuso“–“closed.”
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is an old saying I recall recalling. One pic beside the other, then, must be worth either two thousand or a million (you do the math when the door marked “chained” stands between us and the church.)
Other photos follow the same motif (trust me, you don’t want to sit through that long-lasting picture show–any more than you want me to trot out the “bulleted list” format to give a go at testing the old memory). Suffice it to say, “Chiuso.”