Post Zang Tumb Tuuum. Art Life Politics: Italia 1918–1943

The Prada Foundation in Venice, always a sumptuous experience has now become even more spectacular with the latest addition of Rem Koolhaas’s Torre, a multi story tower with installations that culminates in a restaurant modeled after the Four Seasons.  It was closed when I was there so I cannot report on that, only that the spicy tuna sandwich at the original cafe was delicious and fast.

You need to be fast because there is much to see, especially now Post Zang Tumb Tuuum, a show that would not have been possible just a few years ago on the art of Italy pre and post WW2.  It begins with the great Futurists (I can never have enough Boccocconi or Severni, though there are not the best examples here) and carries on through the Fascistic era.  Now, buildings and paintings we once thought were edifici non grata are being newly rediscovered as examples of a certain style.  Much of this art would have passed as Flea Market Art about a decade ago and it is still not the strongest period, but the curators have added vintage books, posters and ephemera and so we have an understanding of the motivations. 

I am a bit of a sucker for this stuff, even in its middlebrow incarnations, because in the aggregate there is an elegance that defies the often repressive or anti Semitic period during which it was made. Artists such as de Chirico had already been fingered, but there are many society painters and designers who must have been working with one eye closed.

It’s a very large show which takes up many pavilions and I recommend it both as an artifact and a welcome addition to scholarship of the period which many of us having been avoiding. 

A local very knowledgeable friend who accompanied me on my visit said, “Who knows how long this all can last? “ By that she meant that retail luxury business is down worldwide and that Prada too had been affected.  Though many luxury houses have contributed mightily to the arts, I would have to say that the scholarship at Prada is always top drawer and introduces me to work with an excellent historical perspective.

Prada Foundation in Venice

At the Prada Foundation in Venice, an exhibition Machines À Penser has a title which is precisely the opposite of what one expects.

Inside the always impeccably curated space is a show about philosophers and their hideaway huts. It is a testament to the value of escaping to do one's work, to the perennial Virginia Woolf wish for a Room of One's Own or as Dieter Roelstraete, the curator put it, "the enduring infatuation with fantasies of flight and the architecture of retreat"

Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Adorno the focus of the show had 'huts' that are still vaguely extant. 

Do not think of Easthampton or Santa Barbara. Instead think of remote Norway or Germany or even the Pacific Palisades as the biggest surprise for me was a huge blow up of the Villa Aurora at the entry which is right near me in Los Angeles and which was the getaway of Lionel Feuchtwanger and the nearby 'hut's of Salka Viertel, Hans Eisner, Thomas Mann (now saved by the German government), Arnold Schoenberg, Brecht, Alma Mahler

The Palisades can be a good if isolating place with precious little spontaneity but that's probably what the philosophers were seeking.  Refuge.  Thinking about the relationship of thought to environment is omnipresent in my life and often confused with happiness.  No, the exhibition is not about contentment but rather the mental space to do one's work. 

Again I was sorry that few women were included as surely women have longed to escape to think even perhaps more than men.  

Rachel Cusk's new book, Kudos, which I've just begun, has a scathing section on an Italian contessa's writers retreat only thinly disguised as is most of her work.  Here the writer's are hardly able to work and instead sit staring at the beautiful walls or tapestries in a kind of mad desperation. One packs up his bag and leaves on the second day, another wishes she could but her suitcases are too heavy. 

The intellectuals in this exhibit are more bonded with their private retreats which depend on barebones cooking (women seem to be present for that part).

Contemporary artists were asked to contribute to this theme. (Again: very few women) Alexander Kluge's film Cold is the Chain of God was far and away the most charming, an animation which included Napoleon's armies suffering in the cold, lots of beautiful snow and great wit.