#beyondthecanvasblog

Beyond the Canvas

2 days ago
1 min

On World AIDS Day

“I want to be discussed in hushed tones. When people talk about me, I want them to be whispering.’ - Peter Hujar (b.1934 - d.1987) With his powerful black & white portraits of people and animals and raw cityscapes in which he captured the unglamorous areas of New York he used to roam, Peter Hujar remains one of the most influential American photographers. He is known for spearheading an avant-garde group of artists and performers active in the Manhattan subculture of the 197

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Football, human rights, fossil fuels and geopolitics.

Beyond the Canvas

Nov 25
1 min

Football, human rights, fossil fuels and geopolitics.

The 22nd FIFA World Cup has kicked off. Italy did not qualify for the event, which I'm now almost pleased about as it's all turning into an awful mess for a number of rather obvious reasons. Corruption. Despite the absence of a definitive smoking gun, there is strong evidence that the bidding process was rigged (not for the first time) and that, much to no one's surprise, hefty bribes were paid. Workers' exploitation. The astronomical $220 billion infrastructure budget was ke

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Simone Leigh's Sovereignty at the U.S. Pavilion, Venice Biennale

Beyond the Canvas

Nov 20
1 min

Simone Leigh's Sovereignty at the U.S. Pavilion, Venice Biennale

"I like the idea of thinking of femininity as something solid and enduring rather than always something fragile and weak." - Simone Leigh As the 59th of the Venice Biennale draws to a close, I'm looking at the photos I took (they are decent, for once) of Simone Leigh's large-scale sculptural work and I'm having some belated thoughts. Leigh's figurative sculptures in bronze and ceramic (the latter is her medium of choice) illustrate her relentless focus on the exploration and

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Beyond the Canvas

Nov 14
1 min

Robert Capa at Mudec, Milan

"I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life." - Robert Capa (1913-1954) Alas, Capa's hopes were destined to be dashed, time and time again. In the course of his extraordinary career, he would cover no less than five conflicts. After fleeing his native Hungary moving to Berlin, he witnessed the horror and destruction of the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, WWII across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and, lastly, the First Indochin

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Overlooked and underrated: Bologna's Renaissance.

Beyond the Canvas

Oct 31
1 min

Overlooked and underrated: Bologna's Renaissance.

Eclipsed by Ferrara's and crushed between Venice's and Florence's, Bologna's Renaissance art fails to garner the attention and appreciation it deserves. With one of the largest and best-preserved city centres in Europe and its 62 km of porticoes (recognised by UNESCO in 2021), the city has more of a medieval identity. This, however, doesn't mean the Bolognese school did not produce some truly remarkable work. Take, for example, Francesco Francia. A painter at the court of Gio

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Masterpieces of Bologna's Pinacoteca Nazionale: Ludovico Carracci's San Pietro Toma Crocifisso, 1613

Beyond the Canvas

Sep 23
1 min

Masterpieces of Bologna's Pinacoteca Nazionale: Ludovico Carracci's San Pietro Toma Crocifisso, 1613

Compared to other Italian painters of the 17th century, I find that the Carracci (brothers Annibale and Agostino and their cousin Ludovico) are shamefully unknown outside of Italy. As a fellow Bolognese, I'm now in the process of getting reacquainted with the many gems of our wonderful pinacoteca and I feel compelled to address this great injustice. The son of a butcher, Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619) trained in Bologna under the Renaissance painter Prospero Fontana, and was l

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Albrecht Dürer and history's first selfie

Beyond the Canvas

Sep 7
2 min

Albrecht Dürer and history's first selfie

“I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg portrayed myself in appropriate colours aged twenty-eight years”. In painting himself like Christ the Saviour, Dürer is saying that he has created this painting on behalf of God. The direct gaze, the fur coat. This is a bold personal statement about his own God-given creative ability. An iconic self-portrait that needs no introduction, this arresting picture was painted by Dürer when he was only 28. Maybe he did paint himself like Jesus, but so

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Beyond the Canvas

Aug 14
2 min

The issue of (female) ageing

You know when you're having a conversation with a friend and the following day you read something that exactly echoes your thoughts articulating them better than you ever could? This morning I randomly found this interview on Libération, in which French writer and journalist Laure Adler states: Je suis vieille et je vous emmerde, meaning I am old and you can go to hell/I don't give a sh*t what you think (translations are seldom straightforward). Adler goes on to say exactly w

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A nameless painting and a story of new beginnings

Beyond the Canvas

Jul 24
2 min

A nameless painting and a story of new beginnings

Antonio Pedrazzi was a family man, a husband, a father of four. After studying at Bologna University to become an agronomist, he worked as an insurance executive. Life, as you know, has a way of taking you places you never planned to go. After his wife died, he decided to become an artist. Antonio was serious about it, he wanted to be formally trained and learn how to paint. So he turned up at the local Accademia and convinced the professors to allow him to attend their class

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Remembering David Wojnarowicz, artist and activist (1954–1992)

Beyond the Canvas

Jul 22
1 min

Remembering David Wojnarowicz, artist and activist (1954–1992)

"One of the strongest feelings I have about death is that it's a time when the energy we carry is dispersed and becomes a part of everything." - David Wojnarowicz It's been 30 years since David Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related illness at the age of 37. I remember seeing his survey exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2018 and being struck by the poignancy and brutal honesty of his work, a genuine punch in the gut. Wojnarowicz was, for all intents and purposes,

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Beyond the Canvas

Jul 16
1 min

Donatello at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

If there is an equivalent of Zoom fatigue for art shows, I 100% suffer from it. The ridiculous speed at which I move from one room to the other is incompatible with any coherent understanding of what's before my eyes. The best I can hope for is that adequate appreciation is happening on an unconscious level, but as far as retention and analysis go, they are sketchy at best. The one marvellous thing I did take away from the Donatello exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi , is a renewe

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Domenichino's Sibilla Cumana at Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

Beyond the Canvas

Jul 15
2 min

Domenichino's Sibilla Cumana at Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

Being inside an empty museum at night might well be the ultimate art lover's fantasy. Apart from not having to share the space with herds of other human beings, which tends to be a much broader issue as far as I'm concerned, there's a sense of heightened awareness that does result into a more intimate and meaningful relationship with the art. And whilst last night I couldn't fully realise my fantasy of blissful solitude, I am hugely grateful to Bologna's Pinacoteca for arrang

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Sarah Ball (et al.) at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Beyond the Canvas

Jul 9
1 min

Sarah Ball (et al.) at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

There is a milky evanescence to this mesmerising portrait by British artist Sarah Ball, and the longer I stood in front of it, the more it was drawing me in. There is nothing conventional or normal about Emma. Look at the size of the head, the length and thickness of the white eyelashes, the texture of the hair, the clownish quality of her makeup, the uber plump lips. Her shimmery face is odd and beautiful, her eyes aloof and alluring. She looks fake but feels real, her gaze

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Roe vs Wade overturned: The relentless erasure of women's rights.

Beyond the Canvas

Jun 25
2 min

Roe vs Wade overturned: The relentless erasure of women's rights.

They've only gone ahead and done it. I'm not even going to get into why those late SCOTUS appointments were so crucial. You know why. Nor am I going to tackle the absurd pro-life vs pro-gun debate. Because what happened yesterday is all about meddling with women's reproductive rights, it's all about control. But also about social status and race. This decision winds back the clock almost 50 years, removing the right to safe pregnancy termination from millions of women. Aborti

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Beyond the Canvas

Jun 12
1 min

Gates of Turan, Firouz FarmanFarmaian at the Venice Biennale

Sometimes the Venice Biennale takes you places you'd never dream of going to. A decision to escape the mad crowds of San Marco and take the ferry to Giudecca meant I was rewarded with a mesmerising insight into a nomadic culture I knew nothing about. Firouz Farman-Farmaian has recreated a traditional Kyrgyz environment where we see, hear, smell (the felt banners hanging from the ceiling are made of yak wool) and, mostly, feel. It is also possible to sit on a rug underneath th

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Beyond the Canvas

Jun 8
1 min

In memoriam: Paula Rego (1935 - 2022)

Paula Rego died today. The art world has lost one of the greats. I'm so glad I got to see her some of her work one more time at the Venice Biennale, where it inhabits an entire room in the Central Pavillion. Rego didn't paint to please the viewer, she painted to unsettle them. Her pictures tell uncomfortable, ambiguous, and sometimes downright disturbing stories that we struggle to make sense of. And the longer we stand in front of them, the more we are intrigued and confused

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Beyond the Canvas

Jun 5
2 min

Anselm Kiefer at Palazzo Ducale, Venice

Go early, go alone. This could be my motto for many things, but it becomes particularly fitting when I'm on my arty trips. And, for the sake of transparency, full disclaimer required: I am a lifelong Anselm Kiefer adept and, as such, chances are I will struggle to write anything remotely insightful or objective. In this case, going early meant that I could experience a good couple of minutes of blissful solitude in the Sala dello Scrutinio, a place of great symbolic importanc

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Beyond the Canvas

Jun 2
1 min

On Italian National Day, 02/06/2022

On 11 June 1946, the Italian people voted in an institutional referendum to replace the monarchy with a republic. I won't lie, it was closer than I like to think, but they did it: 12,672,767 votes for the Republic vs 10,688,305 for the Monarchy. Importantly, this was also the first time that women voted at national level. As the journalist Anna Garofalo recalls: "The ballots that arrived at home inviting us to do our duty had a silent and peremptory authority. We turned them

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Where Once the Waters, David Cass - Venice Biennale

Beyond the Canvas

May 29
2 min

Where Once the Waters, David Cass - Venice Biennale

My experience at the Venice Biennale is that it is often the fortuitous detour, aka me getting lost like I inevitably do, that is going to take you to the most unexpected rewards. This is how I came across David Cass' installation near the Giardini (now sadly closed so apologies for the late post). David's work is about the rise of sea levels, an issue Venice knows all too well. The idea behind Where Once the Waters is to raise awareness about the variation in sea level in t

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Ukrainian artists: Zhanna Kadyrova at the Venice Biennale

Beyond the Canvas

May 17
1 min

Ukrainian artists: Zhanna Kadyrova at the Venice Biennale

“During the first two weeks of the war, I had the impression that art was only a dream, that I had only dreamed these twenty years of my professional life. And that art at all is powerless and ephemeral compared to the ruthless machinery of war that destroys civilian cities and human lives. Today I don’t think that way anymore, and I see that every artistic gesture makes us visible, and our voices audible.” - Zhanna Kadyrova After fleeing from Kyiv and finding shelter in the

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