More Body-Conscious Art in Milan

A giant naked man floats face down in Milan’s Sempione Park. Looking a little like Mr. Bean and slightly deflated in the privates, “Balloon” is a work by Polish artist Pawel Althamer. The 21-meter long work is a self-portrait.

No competition for the enormous memento mori lying next to the Duomo, it’s part of an exhibit called “One of Many” on in the park until June 5.

The show is sponsored by the Fondazione Trussardi, where someone has a thing for hovering art: namely the infamous hanging children installation by Maurizio Cattelan which were “freed” by an upset construction worker.

The current suspended work is unlikely to cause such controversy, though it would be kind of fun to take a pin to it.

Update: Daily Corriere della Sera reported on Saturday that an unnamed 40-year-old man (“perhaps a foreigner?” the journalist wonders) took a pair of scissors to the “nude doll.” No harm was done and organizers minimized the episode.

Italian Cow Parade

Cow Parade MilanMooo-velus, darling: 100 life-sized cows, each hand decorated by an artist, are grazing around Italy’s fashion capital.
This one is by Thomas Berra (title: “There’s Confusion in the Meadow”) and makes its stance at Arco della Pace near Sempione park.

Billed as the world’s largest public art event, the cattle started meandering in Zurich in 1998 before heading for new pastures including New York, Tokyo, London and Sydney.
The cows are also an early warning sign that Milan’s design week, the largest in the world, will kick off in a few days. Every year brings some much-needed public art to town, last year there was oversized Ikea furniture…

Milan’s artsy bovines will be around until the end of June when they hit the auction block for charity at the Triennale art museum.

Super-sized Memento Mori in Milan

A skeleton nearly 80 feet long reminds tourists and passersby of their mortality as they snap pictures of the Duomo or eat gelato.

The installation is part of the city’s art fair, MiArt; the leg bone is connected to the hip bone in the courtyard of Palazzo Reale.

Artist Gino De Dominicis, obsessed with his own mortality, created this work called “Cosmic Magnet” (Calamita Cosmica) in 1988. Ten years later, he died at age 51 on April Fool’s Day.

The skeleton has what looks like a giant knitting needle piercing the right hand, meant to represent meetng point of cosmic energy and the human element.

Made out of polystyrene, them bones weigh in at eight tons.

After it is dismembered in Milan May 1, the macabre reminder will be haunting cities around Europe including Hamburg, Brussels and Paris.

Italian Scientists Study Sacred Sounds

Researchers in Italy are investigating the subjective acoustic qualities of church architecture in one of the most extensive scientific inquiries yet.

By studying the best-sounding spaces (and the worst), the researchers hope to assemble practical design criteria for new churches. The data can also provide the clergy with some considerations on what music works best in existing places of worship. More from zoomata editor Nicole Martinelli here.

Sonic fingerprints safeguard Italy’s art

A near-perfect copy of a precious funeral urn called the Cratere dei Niobidi sits in an Italian cafe close to the University of Palermo. Restorer Lorella Pellegrino spied it there one morning before meeting with professor Pietro Cosentino, a geophysicist, to analyze the actual fifth-century-B.C. artifact.

They were examining the real urn to see if it was healthy enough to loan for an exhibit in Beijing when Cosentino stumbled on the idea of using “sonic fingerprinting” to help end Italy’s ongoing problem with faked and stolen artwork.

“We started joking about how (the urn) might come back from China cloned,” said Pellegrino, who works with the former seismologist much as a physician might with an X-ray expert. “That was when Cosentino realized the analysis could serve another purpose.” Full story at wired.

Italy’s Art Watch

A new manual may help stem the tide of precious artefacts stolen from Milan churches. Penned by Vito Cicale, officer with the national police unit for protecting cultural heritage, the how-to book launched recently at a conference on art safety in churches at the Diocese Museum. Continue reading

Italy dismantles, then ‘forgets’ to return Axum obelisk to Ethiopia

zoomata staff
posted June 28 17:35 p.m.

After finally honoring a 1947 agreement, Italians took down an ancient obelisk in Rome last fall but have not managed to send it back home to Ethiopia.

In a bureaucratic nightmare proportional to the 82-foot high, 150-ton monument, officials have left the Axum obelisk sitting in three sections in an airport warehouse for over six months.The trouble? According to Italian officials, the destination airport in Axum can’t handle a landing by cargo planes large enough to transport the pre-Christian era obelisk. Shipping by boat was also considered but nixed because the nearest port — now part of rival neighbor Eritrea — is not considered safe.

Italians had agreed to give back what Fascist troops took from Ethiopia in the 1930s, but intentions don’t always match actions as the African country learned in 1998 after printing commemorative stamps in vain for the expected return of the obelisk. Once returned home, the obelisk would have crowned a UNESCO-protected heritage site of the same name.

Now, as the government ponders building a monument to Italian soldiers and civilians killed in the Nov. 12 bombing in Iraq where the Ethiopian obelisk used to stand in Rome’s piazza Carpena, those who spent years campaigning to get the monument back wonder what will happen as the dust collects.

“To Ethiopia it is like the Statue of Liberty,” teacher Nicola DeMarco told zoomata. “All the technical excuses made by the Italian government are delay tactics. If Silvio Berlusconi can build a bridge from Calabria to Sicily, he can bridge the gap between Italy and Ethiopia with this small gesture.”

Head of the Axum Obelisk Return Committee Richard Pankhurst says it’s time to end the foot-dragging. He says the airport in Axum, recently expanded and reinforced, is capable of handling the precious but weighty shipment.

“After so many years we are tired of such excuses, it shouldn’t take another half century to get back what is ours,” Pankhurst, 75, told zoomata. “Many of us would like to see it in its rightful place in our lifetime.” ?1999-2004 zoomata.com This is an original news story. Play nice. Please use contact form for reprint/reuse info.

Italian monuments: better as billboards?

updated June 10 17:40 p.m. by Nicole Martinelli

Imagine the Coliseum sporting a McDonald’s billboard. Or maybe the Tower of Pisa draped in an ad for dirty denim. Michelangelo’s David perhaps hawking Calvin Klein underwear.

It’s not as far off as it sounds. Rome’s Pantheon will get a fix up thanks to advertising sold on scaffolding and officials throughout the country are grappling with the ethical problem of financing much-needed restorations by using monuments as giant billboards.Italy is chock-a-block with monuments, UNESCO estimates the Bel Paese holds 60% of the world’s art treasures, but unfortunately does not have the budget to maintain them.

Case in point, Florence Renaissance jewel church Santissima Annunziata. Italian media recently reported that the roof has such a steady leak it is ‘raining’ inside but there is no money for repairs. The city government is responsible for 12 churches; fixing damage to this church would eat up 25% of the meager maintenance budget.

Yet the same Florentines protested when an ad featuring a sexy pouting model advertising a brand of watches went up on the scaffolding in front of the Bishop’s Residence in the religious center of the city, Piazza Duomo. The diocesan administration, somewhat embarrassed by the brouhaha, said they were just trying to find a way to finance the work.

Some see saving art through advertising as a question of practicality.

“Let’s face it, when they started charging tourists entrance fees churches became museums, not places of worship,” architect and Florence resident Dario Notari told zoomata. “Now they are splitting hairs. If only every art work could find a sponsor, Italy would be in good shape.”

Environmental protection group Italia Nostra is of the same opinion, having gathered up enough money to restore the Pantheon in Rome with an ad scheme. They recently criticized city officials for refusing to restore more monuments through ads and imposing size restrictions on those they did accept, Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported. After a billboard selling cosmetics was plastered over the front of Trinit? dei monti church, city officials have decided to review the policy and handpick ‘appropriate’ ads.

Halfway measures don’t seem to please anyone. In Milan, the enormous gothic cathedral sports a somewhat discreet side billboard for a cell phone service. It’s not large enough to finance the restoration of the facade but its presence doesn’t go down well with the Milanese.

“What’s next? A church should not be a place for advertising,” passerby Luigi Mancini, 73, told zoomata. “What bothers me most is that we may come to accept it, to not see it any more.”

In fact, scandals broke out in both Milan and Florence last year when alert citizens noticed that restorations were finished, but the scaffolding stayed. The reason? There was still plenty of money to be made from giant ads on the facades.?photos + text 1999-2005 zoomata.com
This is an original news story. Play nice. Please use contact form for reprint/reuse info.

Italy’s Art Vandal Strikes Again

posted Wed. April 28 12:13 pm zoomata staff

Piero Cannata, who broke a toe of Michelangelo’s David, scribbled on a Jackson Pollock painting and took a black marker to a Filippo Lippi fresco, has struck again.

The only consolation is that this time Cannata, a failed artist, did not pick anything particularly valuable but he did try to make a political statement. Cannata took brown spray paint to a monument for WWII heroes in Prato, Tuscany.

Prato, 10 miles north-west of Florence, is the hometown of Maurizio Agliana, one of three Italian hostages in Iraq.

“For me a monument to fallen soldiers represents a suicide,” Cannata told newspapers. “It’s like artwork where Isaac is about to be sacrificed by his father Abraham, it consecrates death and war.”

Cannata probably thought his gesture would get him into the spotlight at a moment when the city is crowded with reporters following the hostage crisis, but his marking up of the marble angel statue failed to get him any attention from passersby. Cannata waited, then turned himself in only to find the police didn’t take him seriously.

He was eventually fined for defacing public property and released.
Why can’t Cannata be stopped? His gesture is bound to fuel more discussion about a bill reforming a 1978 law on psychiatric care in Italy, currently being debated in parliament. The Basaglia law abolished state-run mental hospitals in favor of short-term hospitalization in small general hospitals.

Cannata, who said he had given up defacing art for studying grammar and reproductive rights’ laws, was hospitalized following his other exploits and subsequently released. 1999-2004 zoomata.com

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