Artisti a teatro: materiali e storie. Incontri di pittura e scultura con il palcoscenico tra Roma, Napoli e Torino negli ultimi 50 anni
Author(s)
Mattarella, Lea
Date Issued
February 27, 2014
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
This research project analyzes the relationship between contemporary visual arts and theater, understood as physical space.
One doesn’t usually focus on the ‘theatrical’ aspects of most contemporary art - which would be, above all, to analyze the experience of the performance, a topic which has already been studied extensively - but instead to concentrate on the artists who 'attended' theatre as a ‘place’, as painters and sculptors.
The field of investigation is defined by the collaboration of some protagonists of Italian art, from the post-war period to today, with the most important theaters (the Scala Theatre in Milan, the San Carlo in Naples, the Rome Opera, the Maggio Musicale in Florence, and the Stabile Theatre and the Regio Theatre of Turin) in the archives where much of the reasearch has been carried out. We focused on the situations in Turin about 1968th and Naples in the early years of the new millennium, finding some similar features in the management of the cultural politics of the city, in which the theater became an active part.
The artists were selected based on their actual and real relationship with the stage, but also on the 'theatricality' inherent in most of their work : Mario Ceroli, Jannis Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Mimmo Paladino worked very much like scenographers and theatre influenced their work explicitly. The project began with Alberto Burri's research which from 1959 and 1976 shows some scenes that perfectly reflect what would be the dynamic between artists and theater: to carry themselves on stage, but keeping in mind the rules.
What is interesting to note is how, in collaboration with the theatre, the idea the artist's freedom has a specific constraint: a place that over the centuries has always remained true to itself and has a strong awareness of its own memory. As if that were not enough, the artist has had to deal with a plot (just like in Operas and musicals), that story played out in scene, which however, is impossible to ignore. . So whoever sets a scene must remember two 'limits': one spatial and the other narrative. It is interesting to see how these artists, already established and with their own specific language, have addressed this grid, defined long before them. The play arises from the agreement between the artist - designer, the director, the superintendent of the theatre, and the person who has commissioned the work . Nonetheless, it seems that in the end, the artist manages to become the protagonist of the scene.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Memoria e materia dell'opera d'arte attraverso i processi di produzione, storicizzazione, conservazione, musealizzazione