I am conscious, in making my critique of acquisition and presentation in this museum on that web page, that I myself have acquired and critiqued. May the gods frown on me...
Below: "You've gone too far this time, my pecker!"
One can see (in Freudian anxiety terms, though even enlarged the actual absence of vital member from sculpture is not clear) why this is a less familiar image/relationship than Leda and the Swan.
We travelled about a third of the distance from Naples to Herculaneum as we would have travelled to get to Pompeii, on the same local rail system (Circumvesuviana). Herculaneum (Ercolano today) is a smaller excavation of a more exclusive seaside retreat than Pompeii. Extraordinary to be able to look down into, then walk down into, streets of antiquity inside a modern town.
Alarming to be allowed to walk into rooms, over tiled floors 2000 years old, with rain puddles in them and shoes of every description scraping over them.
It was something of a puzzle, watching bricklayers at work restoring or recreating walls, to know which parts of fascinating wall building styles should be attributed to the original town builders.
We later visited the National Archaeological Museum where we saw spectacular mosaics from Herculaneum and Pompeii, very valuable to have been first to Herculaneum — having done which we felt no need to go to Pompeii. Here are photos from Herculaneum:
click to enlarge this photo below, the detail may otherwise escape you...
... use the BACK button to return
... and here, finally, down at the seaside as was in AD79.
If he was a gentleman guardian of the town, he was, like the guns of Singapore in 1941,
looking the wrong way.
click here to see some items from here and Pompeii in the
Its publicity material says of the Museo Madre that it is the only contemporary art museum in the centre of any city. We enjoyed our visit to the museum today. Lively, interesting, especially interesting to need to look at not quite impressive seeming works and put them in the context of being 30 years old and saying "oh yes, how original that was then..."
We were advised that we could take photos of the structure but not of the works. The structure is itself a great work of art. We fudged only slightly. Here is the result in a little film. You may need to turn down the sound on this, still learning how to get sound levels right.. this soundtrack recorded while we lunched in the cafe of the museum. Contemporary cutlery grunge lyrical?
Reflecting later, we were conscious that there seemed many things missing from the museum, in what might be 'contemporary' beginning not least with the graffiti art with which Naples abounds. We commented on this to someone without connection with the museum; the reply was that this museum project had been pushed and funded by a group of politicians who particularly wanted to favour artists of their own circle. Those politicians were now out of power and this museum thus had had its funds cut. To deal with this cut in funding the museum now opens only in the mornings. Hence the problem also for staff whose hours and shifts have been halved.
We have a delightful loft apartment in Naples, contemporary style, like, Helen says, a factory conversion in Sydney. The new top title photo for the blog is a photo from our window.
I went out early, the morning after our Saturday night arrival, to fetch breakfast items. Approaching the major road from narrow via Duomo I heard a sudden gobbet of shouting and the sound of hands hitting car rather than car hitting car. Several others walking my way hastened to have a look. When I got to the corner, there, eight lanes away, were young men with a fancy black car in altercation with young women (Berlusconesche, we could say), dressed in tight pink pants. By the time I got to cross the road a few metres up, the Carabinieri had arrived and were interviewing the men, the women having vanished. Good marks for prompt police intervention. There is a considerable police presence wherever we have been, but it is much less aggressive and confrontational and hard rule driven than it seems in Australia. Results based, rather than pigeon chest puffing power position assertion.
Again yesterday, this sight we have seen before, in Soriano last year, of the parking policeperson standing by the triple parked car, blowing whistle and waiting for the owner to arrive and move car, rather than issue ticket, though ticket pad in hand. A nice scold, not a ticket and sustained road blockage. (We did not have the camera with us either in Siracusa week before last, when we saw a police team and tow truck pick up an illegally parked car, back it (quite some time) down the narrow street and drop it, with some difficult manoeuvring, into a road-centre parking space. Shades of my experience in Paris December 1969, when the charming young policeman at the police station, after I had reported my car stolen, came back to me with some gents in overalls to say "Monsieur, may I introduce you to the gentlemen who stole your car, and may we ask you in future not to park in front of the doctor's garage." "Oh, sorry, where do I go to collect it?" "It is about 100 metres down the street on the other side.") When will we Anglo-Sassoni learn that the more we huff the more people will try to blow our houses down.
I went out again later with Helen and with the iPhone - movie below. (I am using the iPhone rather than the Fuji S3 DSLR first because it is unobtrusive and producing such interesting results and second, alas, because the S3 is producing a spot on every photo (either lens) and I have not yet solved the problem.)
To get to the local market, we first have to descend from our fifth of five floors apartment to the street.
A few metres up the street we dropped into the Museo Madre Contemporary Art Museum and got some good advice on buying an 'ArteCard' with discounts for places and free transport in the region PLUS information and conversation on the industrial relations agitation by museum staff on very familiar grounds: casual employement, low pay, short shifts. And then to the cheerful crowds of the market, to stock up food (except we forgot butter, so that will be another 2 x 131 steps plus the horizontal travel) after having a coffee in a deservedly popular cafe, serving brilliant coffee.
It's still carnevale, as last Sunday in Palermo, so still small children are out in special outfits.
While putting together the movie, we suddenly heard a band somewhere downstairs. I put the iPhone in the window and recorded a soundtrack for this movie, so the commentary is in subtitles.
Best to watch as HD 1080, there's a little thingie down below the picture to click and adjust. You can also watch full screen, another button below: explore, enjoy (I hope!).
Today we will leave Sicily. A week in Siracusa, two days Modica, a week in Palermo. This week clouded by a quite unpleasant virus for us both. Remarkably fortunate to have been where we were, above the ultimate fresh food market, able to fetch small delights to cook as well as strawberries and blood oranges and bottles of strangely delicious and pale 'Fanta' - not the real thing really, just a pale Italian version authorised by Coca Cola, containing real juice (three oranges to the bottle, lacking colouring agents. No escaping the globalisation though, bring home a bottle of standard local mineral water (fraction of price of such in Australia) and discover it is a Nestle product.
Many writing projects incomplete. But lasting impressions in the mind. We realise that to be in Capo district we are very much at the centre of old Palermo. Which deserves several essays. Yes you do still have to pay mafia protection for a stall downstairs (conversation with someone who has to pay); yes, we do have, for more research and writing perhaps, photos of the names on the memorial to the fallen in the war against the Mafia, 100 metres away, round the corner, other side of the apartment, piazza of the Tribunale of Palermo and the Ministry of Justice. Yesterday we took the town bus to the hill village of Monreale, where the Normans left their greatest buildings. And shared a superb lunch in a small trattoria with charming Korean friend Lee Junyoung (following the rule: walk 100 metres + away from a tourist attraction).
Today we take the 10am train, the west Sicily intercity for Rome, which meets the east Sicily (Siracusa) intercity for Rome at Messina, at the top left corner of Sicily for the train to the mainland, where the two trains are joined to travel onward. Naples by 8pm. To our apartment in the San Lorenzo district, next to the new modern art museum. Having trained in Sicily for an apartment on the fifth of five floors.
While disappointed that we have been frustrated in not seeing more of Palermo, we sense its size and character and we are prepared in a way not possible coming from the north, to arrive at the other historical capital of the kingdom of Sicily or the Two Sicilies — Naples.
We are not unaware (speak to an older local at the bus stop and swiftly be warned of the dangers, a conversation subject that comes promptly after the weather) that there are personal risks in these places; we have prepared variously for that. At the same time, we compare such risk with other modern cities and suburbs of Sydney in particular. But this is not central to our focus on these remarkable places, full of life now, full of great history. We did not get to the Greek theatre at Siracusa; we did not take the train from Palermo to the Segesta temple (eat your heart out, Athens). Now the whip may come out, to take, from Naples, the train to Pompeii (the Circumvesuviana railway system) and the bus for Amalfi — the Amalfi drive with the Monterey Peninsula drive in California and Reedy Creek Rd, Eurobodalla, the three most spectacular of the world's scenic roads.
While in recovery from the virus, we watched Il Divo and The Leopard, Italian films of importance both in the history of film and for illumination of Italian history... nice to be able to pause the DVD on the computer and fetch historical background. And special to watch them here in Palermo, with a box of tissues not for the film but the virus.
As reported in our previous entry, we met Aldo Palazzolo on Thursday last week.
As you will see from this section of Aldo's web portfolio he has been experimenting with 'liquid light', doing things with his fingers in the chemicals on the paper during late stages of processing of prints. Abbiamodiscussola nostra preferenza perla suaarteritrattotradizionale. Aldo ha detto che si deve sempre cercare il nuovo, non si puo continuare come sempre. We discussed our preference for his traditional portrait art form. He in reply said that one must always search for the new. You cannot continue doing the same thing.
I found myself in accord with this principle - as also moved by his desire to use fingers in his photography, as I have found myself essential (or rather, unstoppable) in painting.Mi sono trovatoinsintonia conquestoprincipio-comeanchemossodal suo desideriodiusarele ditanellasuefotografie,come ho trovatoindispensabile - o meglio 'inarrestibile" - mentre lavorando su dipinti.
I don't want to put myself in the same high class as Aldo, but as a small homage I have used my fingers (in Photoshop) to apply liquid light to a little photo I took with the iPhone. The relationship between Aldo and his portfolio is complex and growing - above all under the power of his eyes. The observer who came to eat fish and prawns is being enveloped by the art.... Non voglio mettermi nel campo alto di Aldo ma come uno piccolo omaggio ho usato le mie dite (in Photoshop) applicare 'liquid light' ad una piccolo foto di Aldo dall'iPhone. Il rapportotraAldoeil suoportafoglioècomplessoe in crescita - sopprattutto sotto il potere dei suoi occhi.L'osservatoreche è venutoamangiarepesceegamberettiè stataavvoltadal'arte. Eccolo:
