Sunday 13 December 2015

A Magic Encounter

Here we are, right in the middle of the Venetian Carnival. We are wandering around the city. For sure the crisis is noticeable to those who are no longer children even among the hundreds of masks and people that crowd the piazza. But can you get a better occasion to get rid of the daily things? This thought takes me back to when I was a child, to the joy I would feel when, after the flight of the Colombina, I would discover the sky covered with thousands of coloured balloons. I have kept this precious memory and it comes back in the most magic moments. I used to look at the crowd with their noses looking up and in their faces I could see the magic. The same magic that as a child I was feeling. For long moments time and space seemed no longer to exist. WHY DO NOT THEY DO IT ANY LONGER?? I have asked myself for many years. IT WOULD BE SO GOOD FOR THE SOUL.
What a magic! The same magic that I have experienced this year meeting a person very dear to me and well known in the city. A unique occasion, I hope not unrepeatable as I would like, though his tales, to understand better life. For a long time, I had been charmed by this character, or better, by the image that was coming out from a book I had read a few years earlier, which seen him witness and not only, of a tragedy for our city, that we both love, the fire of La Fenice theatre. I remember that year really well as an other most painful event for me, my grandfather's death, marks it in my memory. It was 1996. The years had passed by... and there he is... at the celebration for my graduation, where I find out that he is my father's acquaintance and friend. His spontaneous presence at my graduation, charmed me much more than his international fame.
Finally, today I have a chance to find out his world. Is he really the person I have been admiring for many years and that I have been trying to seeing into his 'surrealist' paintings? It is the afternoon of the 8th of February and, for the first time, I enter a magic place. Suspended between past and present, it seems as it almost wants to anchor itself to the rests of a glorious past in the same way as Venice Titanic constantly fights to save itself from the water. Since the very entrance I notice the link to the past. The bell, actioned by pulling a cable, produces a sound that you have not heard for a long time. The door opens on a long corridor that seems not to end and on the right there is the entrance to the artist's study. There are painted wooden beams and an opaque and rustic wooden floor. Insects, hundred of tubes of paint and brushes, brushes with small points with which, like Canaletto, he creates characters and millimetric details in the Procuratie portici, one of his works' scenography. Piles of books that, as the artist himself, do not follow conventions. They are, indeed, books of different genres, but laid one next to the other without a precise order or, at least, without an order comprehensible to the visitor. Sartre next to Bronzino, an art book next to De Sade, a book on Casanova.
Casanova brings my attention back to the canvas in front of the artist. It has intense colours, the blue prevails, and the light is explosive. In the middle, Casanova in his conventional role entratains a woman. On the right, Casanova is represented once more, now as the man object. Next to him, created thanks to Fellini inspiration, there is the mechanical doll. They are both objects and the only way left to communicate for them is through their aerials that we can notice above their heads. On the left, painted in blue, appears the Queen of the Night who carries her vassal on head.
It is really him, as I had imagined him. Once again, the sensation of the magic. THANKS TO LUDOVICO DE LUIGI for making me understand the magic of the simple and natural things of . The magic of carpet diem, of seizing and tasting unique moments that will never come back and that mark in our memory unforgettable feelings and memories.
Wow! here we are! Right in the middle of the Venetian Carnival! Of course, I am lucky as here I was born, but my boyfriend, who like myself has a passion for photography, is a foreigner. As I was saying, here we are, wandering around the city. Yes, for sure there is a crisis and for those who are no longer children this is evident even among the hundreds of masks and people that crowd the piazza. But can you get a better occasion to get rid of the daily things? This thought takes me back to when I was a child, to the joy I would feel when, after the flight of the Colombina, I would discover the sky covered with thousands of coloured balloons. What an emotion! I have kept it in my memories and it comes back in the most magic moments. I used to look at the crowd with their noses looking up and in their faces the magic. The same magic that myself, a child, was feeling. For long moments time and space seemed no longer existing. WHY DO NOT THEY DO IT ANY LONGER?? I have asked myself for many years. IT WOULD BE GOOD FOR THE SOUL.

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