Six Days in Another Town(s)
The LLGAF Art Tour
of Bologna, Italy
January 15 – 21, 2004
By Charles W. Leslie

Eighteen months ago our friend and colleague, Peter Weiermair, the Austrian director of the Galleria D’Arte Moderna, The Museo Morandi, and the museum for special exhibitions, the Villa Delle Rose — all in Bologna — requested that we loan two works for a major exhibition in Bologna’s Moderna. The exhibition, covering the period from the end of the 18th century to the present, is so ambitious and of such vast scope that it requires a title, a sub-title, and a sub sub-title to help the viewing public grasp the import of what they are looking at. There are nearly 500 works in this exhibition and in America we would call it a “blockbuster.”

The title of the show is, The Nude. Between the Ideal and Reality. From Neo-Classicism Till Today.

It is based on a brilliant art historian’s perceptions (Peter’s) and is grounded in the realization that towards the end of the 1700s a sea change began in the way nudes were rendered by artists. Until then early through late renaissance artists had to hang their magnificent nudes, often male, on a religious or allegorical hook. Churchly images allowed remarkable amounts of nudity and near nudity because they retailed stories from scripture....Among hundreds of examples there is The Sistine Chapel, Titian’s heart-stopping Crucifixion of Christ and The Good Thief — which brings tears to this non-believer’s eyes–and the whole enthralling panoply of renaissance genius. When one looks at Correggio’s Christ Crowning the Virgin it is almost impossible to believe that the artist was not gay.... The voluptuously sensual beauty of this bare chested young man utterly transcends the merely religious and plunges us into the world of unutterable human beauty. This Christ is more human than divine, but in the absolute beauty of his humanity he becomes — truly divine...

Allegory and myth provided Renaissance artists with the “excuse” to paint and sculpt glorious nudes, both male and female. The young Sandro Botticelli is a perfect example. And although they were understood to be images of pagan imagination they still had a kind of legitimacy in that they presented a socio-historical “reality” in which the pagan myths still resonated in the collective European memory. To them the myths and allegories stood for–in some complex sense — something “real.” They lived in countless songs, ballads, plays, poems, art works and even in Christian distortions of ancient tales.

In the late 1700s the sands began to shift. The French Enlightenment had swept Europe and artists began to render nudes for the sake of the nude. They might still attach mythical titles to the work for the sake of convenience — (here the name of Canova looms large — but no-one really cared any more....The dozens of “Leda and The Swan’s, Ganymede and The Eagle’s, Perseus and Medusa’s” and countless others no longer depended on some “real” historio-literary reading of the myths. It was simply the nude for the nude’s sake....We have dubbed this change and the period which followed “neo-classicism/neo-classical.” The 19th century saw it flourish, but also saw (acknowledging certain notable exceptions) the relentless abandonment of the male image and an evermore insistent objectification of the female nude. One of the most impressive accomplishments of Peter Weiermair during the three years it took him to put this show together was his unearthing of numerous male nudes from the period which until now have been virtually unseen, languishing half hidden (or completely hidden) in small (and some large) arts institutions around Europe.

One grand exception to this grim, puritanical phenomenon was America’s own Thomas Eakins. Others were doing male nudes as well...John Singer Sargent’s multitudinous nudes of British soldiers and his own Italian “permanent valet,” Nicola D. Inverno, who came into Sargent’s employ at the age of 19 and lived with the bachelor artist for 27 years. But, of course, these works could not be shown publicly. Very few even knew of their existence till long after Sargent’s death. The puritan, male-dominated art establishment prevailed throughout the 21th and the first half of the 20th century in spite of which some few transgressive artists such as Hans von Marees and Lovis Corinth produced marvelous male nudes. Also, at the end of the 19th century the relatively new invention of “pictorial” photography was manifesting itself in a burst of nude male photography in a place so remote that it seemed hardly connected to Europe. The little town of Taormina in Sicily was home to the German Baron Wilhelm Von Gloeden who in effect, became the father of male nude photography. Two associates soon followed him in producing striking work; the German, Wilhelm Pluschow and the Italian, Vincenzo Galdi. But this work too was suppressed in the 1930s and did not re-emerge into the public light of day until the 1970s....Photography has in fact become such an integral part of the contemporary art scene (with a concomitant increase in the visibility of the male nude) that nearly half the Bologna show is dedicated to photography beginning with an image of a man in a Turkish bath (circa 1870) and ending with The Dance by Olga Toburluts (2003) in which five lithe, naked young men almost magically project the image of Matisse’s
La Dance in colors of equal intensity.

The puritan dam began to crack soon after the 2nd World War and finally burst in the late 60s. And yet — still — the American art establishment remains a monster of intransigent disapproval of the presentation of male nudity....The Europeans are far more evolved.

This preamble to the description of our tour is simply to help you understand the context in which the trip was taken. The Nude was the centerpiece of the journey and the forgoing helps us — and I hope you — to understand what we saw.

Our trip to Bologna was organized by the indefatigable, Anna Canepa, who also organized our hugely successful trip to Sicily and was conceived as a way to participate in the launch of the amazing Bologna exhibition, The Nude. We were 10 people in all; Marion Pinto, the artist who painted the beautiful dual male nude which we loaned to the exhibition, Nicholas McCausland, Lynn Starr, John Wykert, Douglas Turnbaugh, Vincent Bochin, Wayne Snellen — LLGAF’s director — Anna Canepa — “our leader,” Fritz Lohman, and myself.

JANUARY 15
Arrival at our very grand Grand Hotel Baglioni in the heart of the old city in time for lunch in the hotel’s excellent restaurant. Culinary excellence is standard in Bologna (think of all things “Bolognese”) and in nearby towns like Parma (think of all things Parmasan, hams, cheeses) and every meal was accompanied by copious amounts of good wine....For some reason when you drink wine in Italy and France it doesn’t make you tired. It just sets you up for whatever’s next!

We spent the afternoon in a guided walking tour of the old city, the physical centerpiece of which is the thrilling ultimate in divine beefcake.... The giant, purely magnificent bronze nude of the god Neptune standing heroically aloft his beautiful fountain, trident in hand. It is an authentic masterpiece of brilliant renaissance sculpture by the great Giambologna. We then visited the city’s “pinacoteca” (the picture gallery) which, as in most Italian museums — even those in relatively small cities, is simply stuffed with astounding art.

Memorable among much that was memorable were works by the brothers Caracci, Vivarini, Cima da Coneglina, Raphael, Guido Reni, Domenichino, Guercino, and on and on and on...(Note that Bologna has a population of 400,000 of which 100,000 are students at the oldest university in Europe.) We were all resisting jet-lag because of the incredible stimulation of the day. We dined at the terrific, nearby Ristorante Rodrigo. The good food, the good wine and jet-lag did their work and we sank into our beds with great art — like oxygen — streaming through our brains...

JANUARY 16
Up and at ‘em!....A lavish buffet breakfast and then to our little bus to take us to another one of those (so many, so many) fabulous Italian cities: PARMA....Here we had the most memorable guide of all. An English lady, long resident, married to a Parmasan and mother of 2 young “Parmasans” as she called her 20-something sons. She had a magisterial knowledge of everything Parmasan — in Italy you have to have a college degree in your area of interest in order to become an official guide — be it history (Parma’s began with the Etruscans) to society to food and wine to politics to art; especially to art. It was like being in a really good university class with a really good professor. She also had a terrific delivery, like fine British theater, and a very good look to boot. Imagine a smashing cross between Julie Andrews and Glenn Close. She led us on foot, taking in the great public monuments; the great Romanesque Episcopal center, including the tremendous medieval baptistery by Antelami and the tour of the pinacoteca and its abundance of work by Parmigianino, da Vinci, Fra Angelico Doso Sossi, El Greco, Canaletto, Balloto, Piazetta and Tiepolo among many others. Here too–a Correggio, The Descent from the Cross with a virtually naked Christ, supine, his head in his grieving mother’s lap. Again, the strangely tender yet paramount sensuality of this beautiful body and face–an image of male beauty both sacred and profane....I just can’t help wondering about Correggio. We broke for lunch at a typically wonderful Parmasan trattoria where we were presented with delicious Parma hams of different kinds, great local sausages and salamis and, of course, chunky blocks of aged parmasan cheese with good bread and olive oil. And, as usual, lots of good wine...

The other great site visited that day was the almost unbelievable Farnese theater built entirely of wood in pure Palladian style by the Farnese family in 1619. Terribly damaged by allied bombing in 1944, it has been meticulously, indeed lovingly restored and remains one of the most astonishing visions one brings away from Italy.

We returned to Bologna just in time to refresh and attend a cocktail party given by Fritz Lohman and Charles Leslie in their rather fancy suite (large living room, big bedroom, 2 grand bathrooms, Venetian chandeliers, etc. — well, you get the picture.) During the party we had a surprise visit by Peter Weiermair who must have been the busiest man in Bologna at that moment. Invitees from all over Europe were coming in for the opening events and Peter had to somehow be available to all of them, yet somehow managed to be with us for a good part of the party. We later learned that he didn’t go to bed for two nights prior to the opening reception and dinner on the 20th. We had a fine dinner in the hotel and then directly to bed.

JANUARY 17
After breakfast departure for Ravenna with a stop at the old town of Faenza which gave its name to the world of ceramics; “faiance.” Inside an old monastery one finds a state-of-the-art museum with a world class collection of the ceramists craft. Because of the abundance of good clays and the ever greater use of ceramic tiles in both architecture and decoration Faenza emerged as an important center in the 15th century and there are still important, modern tile manufacturers there. The museum houses ancient ceramics, Islamic ceramics, a large collection of Renaissance majolica and a surprising collection of modern pieces by Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Leger, Lurcat and the Vallauris school. After a pleasant hour in this interesting museum we traveled on to Ravenna, home of the most dazzling, indeed the only major agglomeration of Byzantine art in Europe. Another great example, but a much later one is the Duomo on the Piazaza San Marco in Venice.

In order for the reader to better understand what we were looking at and how and why this treasure of Byzantine art exists in Western Europe (its origins were in the East in what is now Turkey and Greece) it’s necessary to proffer a brief historical note.

Toward the end of the 3rd century c.e. riven in two, the empire was consolidating itself in the East (Byzantium/Constantinople) and barely hanging on in the West in its last, ever weaker stronghold in Milan. Finally, beset by Northern barbarians coming from all sides, in 420 c.e. the Emperor Honorius abandoned Milan and removed to Ravenna on the Adriatic coast. It was thus that Ravenna became the last capitol and redoubt of the Western Roman Empire. A bit earlier, in 382, Roman Catholicism was made the state religion effectively criminalizing all other religions. Honorius’s sister, Galla Placidia, became the de facto, if not the titular Empress of the West. Because of its dependence on the Eastern Empire in Constantinople (ex Byzantium) Ravenna became an ex-archate of the Byzantine/Roman Catholic Church which was heavily Greek in visual tradition. Thus, for some time, an essentially Eastern form — Byzantine Art — flourished in a small part of the East coast of Italy. In the late 400s Ostragothic kings — Odoacer and Theodoric — absorbed Ravenna and the remains of the Western Empire, but the empire equally absorbed them; becoming as they did in their turn Christian emperors in the style of Greekified Eastern Romans. Ravenna was also home to a branch of Christianity which became known as The Aryan Heresy. Adherents believed that Jesus was no part of God but only his divinely appointed human messenger. This belief resulted in the creation of two Byzantine “Aryan” baptistries in which Jesus is presented as a man with all his male sexual attributes clearly visible. One image centers the mosaic dome of the Neonean Orthodox Baptistry (5th century) and the other the dome of the Baptistry of the Basilica of St. John The Evangelist of the same period. In 518 Justinian became the Eastern emperor and he and his wife, the Empress Theodora, determined to exterminate the Aryan Heresy in the name of the “true” Catholic Church. And by exterminate, they meant exterminate, and so Ravenna began two grim centuries of warfare pulled back and forth between the East and the West. But during the roughly 3½ centuries between 402 and 741 Byzantine art reigned supreme in the region and buildings and artworks were created in spite of the never ending conflict. In 741 the Lombard king Astolfo ended Byzantium’s sway in Italy although it continued to flourish in Constantinople and the East. The Lombards despoiled Ravenna ruthlessly and their depredations only ended when Pope Stephen II begged King Pipin of France to stop them, and stop them he did. The deal was that he could have anything he wanted except for those buildings defined as “sacred,” i.e., the property of the church (fortunately for us.) The result was the total plunder of every Byzantine work of art and architecture that did not belong to the Church and that had not already been savaged by the Lombards. The magnificent palace of Theodoric was stripped bare and finally its very building blocks borne away.

By the beginning of the 800’s coastal refugees from Malamocco, Ravenna and other towns were fleeing into the lagoon to escape the endless barbarism onslaught. The embryo city which they created in the water, officially founded in 811, would become known as–Venice. It is something of a miracle that so many of these great Byzantine monuments and mosaics have survived and that they are sprinkled throughout and around an otherwise rather unprepossessing city of only 135,000 people. Memorable sites which we visited included the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the Basilica of San Vitale, and the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinaire in Classe....Looking at these breathtaking mosaics is like looking at huge walls or great domes made of brilliantly colored jewels and wafers of gold. They glow...

A late return to our hotel for dinner and bed.

JANUARY 18
After breakfast we’re off to Mantua, birthplace of the great Latin poet, Virgil (70 b.c.e.) and in the Renaissance, domain of the legendary Gonzaga family — The Dukes of Mantua. Having emerged as a country horse breeding family in 1327 they bestrode the city, its duchy, and a good bit of the Italian economy until 1707. (380 years isn’t a bad run!) They were horse traders, brilliantly successful entrepreneurs, river merchants and, when necessary, warriors. Also, although never rivaling the Medici in terms of art patronage, they were voracious collectors of high art. A Gonzaga duke would march into one of his great halls with horse shit on his boots to vet a collection of painting, sculpture, and object de vertu and choose which ones he wanted to buy and often he wanted them all. Collecting art was an impulse as strong as horse breeding. It was in their genes and it went on for generations. Not until the Austro-Hungarian Empire invaded and annexed Mantua in 1707 did the Gonzaga story end. The immense collection, once housed in the Ducal Palace, in their “country” house — the Palazzo del Te — and other family seats, were scattered throughout Europe through sales in every capital. But they were mostly sold, because of the good market there at the time, in London. Thus, if you want to see much of the Mantua treasure today you’ll have to visit The Queen’s Picture Gallery or the stately homes of the dukes and duchesses of this and that. When visiting Mantua much of the wonderful art you see is that which was actually “built into” the great architectural monuments.

We spent the entire day walking, but mostly in the Ducal Palace; an immense heap of styles and mazes whose construction began in the late 13th century and continued through the 17th. The Gonzaga apartments are artworks in and of themselves filled with painted walls and ceilings, with evocative names — bespeaking the visual experience — such as, The Zodiac Room, The Moors’ Room, The Tapestry Room, The Hanging Gardens, The Hall of Rivers and so on and so forth. Among countless artists associated with Mantua and its dukes were Pisanello, Mantegna, and Giulio Romano.

After a very full day in Mantua, which included another terrific trattoria lunch–back to Bologna in time for dinner at the sensationally successful Restorante Diana, featuring Bologna’s famous “tortellini in brodo” as a starter. “Le Tout Bologna” was there including the mayor dining with some of the city fathers. Almost miraculously, Peter appeared and, after a chat with the mayor, dined with us....I think we were a welcome bit of R&R during his 24-hour marathons in the run-up to the grand opening reception and dinner. It was an altogether wonderful evening because, being a small group we were all engaged in the conversation with Peter who is an art-world spellbinder; erudite, witty, magisterially knowledgeable and completely unpretentious. We retired that night looking forward to the penultimate day...

JANUARY 19
In the morning we visited the Morandi Museum, another of Peter’s responsibilities, in the vaulting Palazzo Communale (town hall — 13th through 16th century) passing through great halls of 17th century frescos and Emelian paintings and up immense broad and shallow-stepped staircases, designed so that horse-drawn carriages could bring the elite to the high upper floors without the necessity of climbing.

We entered the modernly organized and appointed Museo Morandi which bears no resemblance to the larger space in which it is installed....Morandi (1890-1964) a native son, was truly an artist of the 20th century. The quiet softness of his work with its delicate pastel palette, its strange idiosyncratic concentration of the simplest objects — small vases, paper flowers, compact, gentle landscapes so still that they barely seem to breath — and their curious atmosphere of ordered serenity are distinctly his. There is something calming in his vision and there is nothing else in art exactly like it. Although he only left home twice in his life — both times briefly — and lived to the end of his life with his two old sisters looking after him, he is now universally appreciated and Peter confided to us that he was able to call in some IOU’s for The Nude show based on loans of Morandis that he has made to other European institutions including most recently, The Tate in London. When you leave the Morandi collection you feel a kind of Zen quietude...

After another good lunch the afternoon was free for walking, shopping, napping–whatever. At 6 o’clock we gathered to be driven to a private preview of the Dino Pedriali photo show–an exhibition designed to complement the big NUDE show — in the Villa Delle Rose.

Dino Pedriali is a startlingly handsome man, now in his 50’s, not much changed from when I knew him several years ago. He is Roman through and through and shocked the art/photo world in Italy when still very young with his starkly black and white nudes of “Ragazzi di Vita;” street boys, hustlers, grifters, rough trade, and all around dangerous sexual predators with all the tattoos, track marks and dirty fingernails that go with them. But Dino’s work offers something more. For his images reveal a strange kind of innocence, vulnerability, beauty, and even tenderness. Having been taken up by Man Ray, and more especially by Pier Paolo Pasolini he started moving in more than one world–although he never abandoned the world that Pasolini and he himself clearly loved. But his circulation in the other world led him to make stirring portraits of celebrated Europeans and Americans thus greatly enlarging his career. My favorite is a 1973 self portrait with Andy Warhol which reveals Dino’s own beauty at 25; a kind of Roman James Dean...

We were given a wonderful private and privileged glimpse of a show in the making but Dino wouldn’t be arriving until the day we left so I didn’t get to see him again this time. Fortunately, Peter has produced a handsome hardcover catalogue of the show in cooperation with SKIRA...And then, another happy surprise. Peter invited us to a popular trattoria called “DaVito” in a working class district. Popular with working-class, yes, but we quickly noticed that the crowd was laced with young artists and art groupies (like us?). We had one of the very best meals of the entire trip!

JANUARY 20
D-Day....Anna cleverly decided to get us out of town for the morning and lunch without any heavy-duty art obligations. We would need all our strength for the evening to come, the private reception for about 800 and the post-viewing dinner for 150, which was to be the apogee of our Italian sojourn.

We drove to the pretty little hill town of Dozza known for its outdoor art works; some naive, some folklorique, others remarkable refined and inventive....It made for a lovely, relaxed, wandering stroll....Most intriguing is–how did it happen? People simply turn over whole sides of their stucco surfaced houses to let young artists go to town. And you may be sure, this is not mere graffiti, there are full-blown pictures.... The painting is a biannual event when young artists from as far away as Poland and Japan come to paint their pictures on Dozza’s houses.

After another good lunch in the local trattoria, back to Bologna and a free afternoon.

At 6:30 some of us met for a cocktail in the hotel’s downstairs bar–in which you can see a swatch of the chariot-rutted ancient Roman road — the Via Emelia — under a slab of glass below floor level — and then to our bus.

IL NUDO
At 8 o’clock we arrived at the Galleria D’Arte Moderna in the finest raiment we’d managed to pack. Marion Pinto and Anna Canepa were beyond glamorous — which was a good thing — because when the Italians dress up, they really dress up!

As hundreds of people were streaming into the museum Peter was there greeting them all, taking time to introduce me to two young men representing ARCHIGAY, the Italian gay rights organization which, interestingly enough, was not founded in Milan or Rome — but in Bologna.

We began to wend our way through the large and somewhat labyrinthine complex that is the museum and were awestruck by Peter’s accomplishment. The breadth, the depth, the sheer scope of the assembled work is simply amazing.

The show is broken into two sections — graphic and plastic works in the first and photography in the second. In each section work is separated into general periods with the beginning of neo-classicism toward the end of the 18th century and, in the case of photography, in the mid-19th century. There is not a rigid chronology within the context of each period, but instead, an eclectic mix of works hung to their very best advantage. In a way it was like looking at art in the home of someone who had a brilliant collection but with hundreds of pieces. We were, of course, thrilled when we came to Marion Pinto’s marvelous dual nude of Fritz and myself painted, I must emphasize, when our hearts (and our bodies) were far younger — if not any gayer....And in the photo section was our contribution of Peter Hujar’s riveting nude photograph of his lover Carlos sprawled in a straight chair with his arms and legs akimbo, his head thrown back, and his mighty cock rampant.

We barely made it through the whole show in 2 hours when the dinner guests were summoned to the restaurant at 10 o’clock. Peter made a few remarks to resounding applause and picked out our table for a special thanks. We dined, wined, talked and laughed and towards midnight people started taking their leave. We said our goodbys (for now) and made our way to our little bus, our hotel, our beds and contented sleep.

JANUARY 21
A last great breakfast, and the planes for Rome and New York. Flying from Rome I had that feeling one has after great sex....It’s the same after great art. Deliciously exhausted, deeply happy — and sleepy....And then, to be sure, there was — and is — Italy.

If, for we citizens of the Western World, Greece is our father — Italy then, is surely our mother.

A NOTE ON THE CATALOGUES
Given the constraints of space it is impossible to detail the scope of “Il Nude” here. But we have brought back copies of the two beautiful catalogues (550 pages) and the Dino Pedriali catalogue. Whenever you are in the gallery just ask to see them and peruse them to your heart’s content.

Many thanks to ANNA CANEPA INTERNATIONAL, 2 Wooster St., NYC 10013. Tel: 212-313-7463 for organizing yet another memorable visit for LLGAF.