Listen to the audio version of the article
Air of novelty in the Florentine territory: the Museo Novecento offers two unmissable exhibitions both for photography enthusiasts and for lovers of contemporary painting, celebrating the vices and splendors of the Tuscan city.
“Mapplethorpe – von Gloeden. “Beauty and Desire”
The exhibition “Mapplethorpe – von Gloeden. Beauty and Desire”, curated by Sergio Risaliti, celebrates the career of Robert Mapplethorpe (Boston, 1989), rarely visible in Italian exhibitions. Open until 14 February 2024, the exhibition compares the photographer’s works with those of Wilhelm von Gloeden (Taormina, 1931) – pioneer of staged photography – and the Alinari Brothers, unraveling a common thread of expressive intentions. Themes that wink at the concept of kalokagathia of ancient Greece, in which the search for perfection in form and essence recalls the masterful shots of Mapplethorpe, master of understanding statuary (especially Michelangelo).
Step by step the exhibition is a succession of sculptural bodies, muscular and defined like those of the ancient gods and heroes, but with a single, common denominator: seeking beauty (and finding it). A panacea for the eyes and the soul that is also enjoyable in the erotically delicate flowers of Mapplethorpe.
Von Gloeden wrote: “Art has no other purpose than beauty and does not want to feel anything moral”. In this search for classicism there is in fact free space not only for the Apollonian spirit, but above all for the sensuality of the Dionysian, which never leads to vulgar poses, but certainly detached from false respectability and free to transgress. In an era where social media censors even frivolities considered not very “politically correct”, it is a breath of fresh air to be able to desire a world with a greater open-mindedness.
The nude, the beauty, the torment: Robert Mapplethorpe and Cecily Brown at the Museo Novecento in Florence
Photogallery 11 photos
View
“Cecily Brown. Temptations, Torments, Trials and Tribulations”
Always with an underlying drive to desire, but of a completely different artistic genre, in the rooms on the ground floor of the Museo Novecento the exhibition – also curated by Risaliti – of the contemporary painter Cecily Brown (London, 1969). Her artist is also on display in this period at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. “Temptations, Torments, Trials and Tribulations” collects over thirty works by Brown, which take as their imitative inspiration the figurative work of the Flemish school “The Temptations of Saint Anthony”, present on display in the museum chapel and created in the second half of 16th century. A curious dialogue between totally different styles, but similar themes: it is impossible not to be fascinated by Brown’s disordered brushstrokes, sometimes slow and serious, sometimes broad, furious and lively. What at first may appear as a material mass of meaningless shapes and colours, at a second glance brings out hidden details of animals, bodies and plants sinuously blended on the canvas. A multisensory abstract orgy of shapes and colors that has nothing to envy of classical painting. “The moment there is a clear image, the mind settles. And I don’t want it to stabilize. I like the restlessness, the openness and the ambiguity that exists when there is constant change taking place”.