Alessandro Bavari and Luca Bandirali

E-mail correspondence between
Alessandro Bavari and Luca Bandirali

Subject: The Hall of Coprophilia
Date: Wednesday, August 2, 2000 14:09
Alessandro Bavari wrote:

Ciao Luca,
I am sending you an image I've just finished. It is entitled "The Hall of Coprophilia". As you can see, there are huge figures on conical trestles. The devotees have only to place themselves under the trestles. Have you given any thought to your text for zonezero?
Ciao,

Alessandro Bavari

Subject: Re: The Hall of Coprophilia
Date: Wednesday, August 2, 2000 15:50
Luca Bandirali wrote:

Mr. Bavari, I'm actually considering you're a crazy guy!! I've just finished downloading the image and I consider that it has great elegance, it explores form and symbolism in a way that has Barroque resonances. In the past two days, I have written certain things that in a way touch upon the creative experience and somewhat delve into what I would call the “official mythography” of cities, which you like so much. From a philosophical point of view, I find it interesting that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were a damned progeny, destined in any case to disappear because they were the children and great grandchildren of Canaan. Therefore, the menace that threatens them, coloring the sky, ineluctably has those features which make the chosen tone of your work come close to the modes of the tragic genre. From a compositional point of view, on the other hand, I noticed that the space of the “painting” is extraordinarily open, both the subjects represented within it and the spectator’s gaze can move about freely: if you think about it, this is one of the treasures of modern painting, the legacy of a certain man called Giotto.
See you soon
Ciao Luca

Subject: smiling children and flying boars
Date: Wednesday, August 2. 2000 22:36
Alessandro Bavari wrote:

Dear Mr. Bandirali, thank you for your consideration. I'm glad you're increasingly "penetrating" the subject matter. I liked your analysis … If you want to, you can send me what you've written. I will gladly read it. I'm sending you my latest image. On to other things, next weekend, I am going to the basement at the Museum of Zoology in Rome to take photos of heaps of stacked stuffed animals. A friend of mine knows someone who works there, so through him I will have access to places unknown to the rest of the world… I have in mind a hunting scene where adults, too occupied by their erotic activities, are completely absent. In fact, in this scene there will be a group of small children attempting to harpoon flying animals, such as deer, boars, etc. The age of the children will be between 4 and 5 years old, that of the boars is not important. The main problem is finding the children. I must find someone willing to let their progeny be photographed.
Greetings,
P.S. I can send you some reference material if you think it will be useful.

Subject: Re: smiling children and flying boars
Date: Thursday, August 3, 2000 21:58
Luca Bandirali wrote:

Tomorrow I'll send you some stuff. Send me the material you were talking about, I'll read it carefully. Your next theme is excellent. I've just come back from seeing ROMEO MUST DIE, a well-made Kung Fu movie, and I'm therefore all for the healthy violence of art.
Greetings,
Luca

Subject: destruction
Date Thursday, August 3, 2000 0:56
Alessandro Bavari wrote:

…and here you can see a second version which is different from the others (I've managed to impress even myself, imagine it in movement, with a fast sequence in the midst of the figures). However, it wouldn't be a bad idea to place it at the very end, as the closing image after a long monochromatic series… but I'm not sure, we shall see…

Subject: fragments
Date: Friday, August 4, 2000 15:22
Luca Bandirali wrote:

Dear Bavari,
I've put some ideas down on paper. I thought it would be interesting to touch upon the concept of the image, something I plan to return to later. I've thought of a title, (IN)VISIBLE CITIES, which reflects the dialectic of your work, resemblance/essence, appearance/truth.
Read it and let me know what you think.
Luca

(IN)VISIBLE CITIES
“In religious symbolism, as in every kind of symbolism, it is through forms–and with these forms—that thought constructs its objects.” (Jean-Pierre Vernant)

In the Book of Genesis it is written: “God created man in His image and likeness”. The image of the soul, and not of the body. The image has already undergone a shift in meaning. To the men of the Holy Scriptures it is the second similar object, born of imitation, which is never imitation of truth, but imitation of appearance. The image is resemblance. “Adam, at the age of 130, begot in his likeness, and in his image, a son and called him Seth”. This is the image of the body, corruptible substance. Therefore, the dialectic between the human and the divine, alive in the first man, is destined to disappear. Adam represented being here (the human) together with being elsewhere (the divine).

In Hebrew “image” is “selem”. It comes from “salmu” in Akkadian, which means statue, effigy. The first Christians, divine effigies, had a dubious relationship with the image. Written culture reclaimed primacy, in terms of true knowledge, over the image. The mediologist Regis Debray reminds us that the Bible “clearly associates sight with sin” and he highlights the following passage: “The woman saw that the tree’s fruit was good to eat, pleasant to look at...”. The image is Evil itself.

Alessandro Bavari’s voyage is one directed towards the origins of the image. But it is not an archaeologist’s journey because Bavari’s art is conjugated in the present tense –the infinite present of great utopias. Sodom and Gomorrah are not consumed by the gaze: they are constructed by the gaze. They are places of the mind, (in)visible cities.

The progeny of Canaan were the first to enter the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, beyond Gaza. They are the damned children: Noah, upon being seen drunk on wine by his son Cam, condemns his son to become “the least of his brother’s servants”. The Valley of Jordan where they live “was well irrigated.... like the Lord’s Garden, like the land of Egypt”. The artist sees joyful cities where Creation has not stopped, where everything is movement and ferment. Here the New Flesh is engendered. Man is something which should be surpassed.

The destruction of the city of the infidels is Divine Justice. Only one man is saved, Lot: he has not joined in the unnatural practices of the Sodomites. He remained an outsider, he remained pure. But above all he is the son of those who have not been given the terrible promise of damnation. He is not the “least of servants”.

Subject: Re: fragments
Date: Friday, August 4, 2000 15:26
Alessandro Bavari wrote:

Ciao Luca,
I read the text you sent me with great care. I like your ideas but I find that the way you express them is too complicated and obscure, let alone didactic. Regarding the two cities, I would limit myself to an historical introduction, giving more space to your review of my work. I'm afraid that they might take some parts out since they have to translate it into two different languages. I prefer when you write in a less affected manner, when you are not so conscious of having to write a commentary, for example, when in your last mail you wrote:

and I consider that it has great elegance, it explores form and symbolism in a way that has Barroque ressonances. In the past two days, I have written certain things that touch upon the creative experience and somewhat delve into what I would call the “official mythography” of cities, which you like so much. From a philosophical point of view, I find it interesting that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were a damned progeny, destined in any case to disappear because they are the children and great grandchildren of Canan. Therefore, the menace that threatens them, coloring the sky, ineluctably has those features which makes the chosen tone of your work comes close to the modes of the tragic genre. From a compositional point of view, on the other hand, I noticed that the space of the “painting” is extraordinarily open, both the subjects represented within it and the spectator’s gaze can move about freely: if you think about it, this is one of the treasures of modern painting, the legacy of a certain man called Giotto.

You have to consider that at zonezero they will have to translate it into English and Spanish. For that same reason, I would like to avoid, if you don’t mind, play on words (I am refering, for example, to (in)visibile).

I would prefer it if you kept a genuine tone in your writing, even saying things in a way that is simpler and easier to comprehend.

I would like your text to be more concrete and flowing in style, for a “popular” audience.
I like the idea of a preface on the city and on the Bible but it is done in an over complicated way.

I think that chosing simplicity is always the best solution. Therefore I would ask you to express the same concepts but paying more attention to the user (think of the internet’s popularity). I would like to take up Calvino’s Invisible Cities on a different occasion using a set of images taken from the book. This is an idea that I’ve had for more than ten years. I would therefore prefer not to give it too much relevance (in the title).
Alessandro

Subject: Re: more stuff
Date: Friday, August 4, 2000 15:43
Alessandro Bavari wrote:

Dear Bandirali,
Your latest text arrived just as I was sending you my last e-mail. It was either a coincidence or you are the fastest pen in the world. It almost seems you read my mind through spiritual channels or telepathy. I only insist on asking that you avoid strange plays on words, such as viaggiare/vagare (travel/wander) which might not be translatable.
Greetings.
I’ll maybe go to Rome tomorrow to take pictures of sea deer, flying boars and two-headed lemurs.

Subject: more stuff
Date: Saturday, August 5, 2000 13:55
Luca Bandirali wrote:
Bad Guy Bavari:
I’ve kept on writing, getting closer to your work, which I continue to follow with interest. On second thoughts, regarding the table of the Coprophiliacs, I am not convinced that the exceptional portrayal of colors enters into a dialectic with the rest of the work. A complex work such as this has to live from tensions and contradicitions; but don’t you think that those chromatic passages are not essential, or to put it your way, are a bit affected? A contradiction is not created, but rather a separation.
I’ll send you the text tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I send you my greetings.
Luca

An invitation to the journey

Access to the places from where the deafening clamor of sin reaches God, involves crossing a threshold, a Gate that is marked by Bavari with the presence of an anti-monument. Beside this he places the elements of his entire oeuvre as clues that the gaze collects to orient itself or just out of simple curiosity or mania. The Veil, the Fragment, the Superhuman are the elements of a poetics that is mannerist by vocation: the Veil places things in the uncertain light of an irreducible ambiguity; the Fragment is the quotation, it is the linguistic withdrawal that takes away from order to give to chaos; the Superhuman is the leap in scale that leads individuals and objects to create unheard-of and stimulating proportions (to the artist and to the eye). The Statue, the Gate’s anti-monument, returns in both Simposia together shattering surface and symbol: the Statue is an effigy, therefore an image, a doubling of the real, a doubling of dreams.

Sodom and Gomorrah are the places of style; with landscape and men in blissful symbiosis, as they create a tableaux vivant. Herein lies the mannerist practice of an art that protects (itself) from life, and refuses life’s ethics to seek refuge in glittering metaphor. It is man that says: I am the Image. I am the Work of Art.

Here the New Flesh is engendered. Beyond the human, all too human of Abraham and Lot. In these cities, aesthetical domain of grafting, the gaze quenches its thirst: vain creatures are reflected on mirror picture frames which cast back beauty, calm, voluptuousness. It is an invitation to the journey in the fashion of Baudelaire. Journey/Wander with the eyes.

Subject: you’re right
Date: Saturday, August 5, 2000 15:50
Alessandro Bavari wrote:

(...) but don’t you think that those chromatic passages are not essential, or to put it your way, are a bit affected? A contradiction is not created, but rather a separation.
They are simple temptations, you’re absolutely right, every now and then the melancholy of monochromatism is assailed by the nostalgia for color.
Maybe because I don’t want to feel trapped by the absence of color. Like Botero is by fat.

Subject: Re: fragments
Date: Saturday, August 5, 2000 19:02
Luca Bandirali wrote:

Dear Alessandro,
I am very satisfied with your remarks on my article. This work –I repeat myself again– is quite stimulating. The written word is a ductile material (at least my writting is), I think we will obtain a result that is pleasing to both of us. The next couple of days I will be busy writting a review of an exhibition on landscape painters of the 19th century, this will not prevent me from continuing to think about Sodom and Gomorrah.
Luca

Subject: Re: Re: fragments
Date: Tuesday, August 8, 2000 14:40
Alessandro Bavari wrote:

Dear Bandirali:
As I already told you, I went to take photographs of stuffed animals, but I didn’t find boars of any kind. What a shame! Since I was in the area, I went to take some photographs at the zoo. Then, in the evening, I went to a friend’s house to take shots of mummified animals of all sorts (bats, fish, frogs, etc...). In short, I took 4 rolls of 36. The transparencies will be ready tomorrow so I will start working on the new images. As soon as they are ready I will send them to you. Unfortunately, there is still the problem of finding the children. They are difficult to find, or at least finding parents willing to try to calmly understand the sense of the photo. It is hard to explain that the photo is for a series based on Sodom and Gomorrah in which their own children will be portrayed harpooning deer and boars that are flying in the sky. Hmmm, I have just thought of Tonino and his boy... When he gets back from Tuscany I will run things by him. Regarding The Hall of Coprophilia: I haven’t been able to find anyone who could translate “coprophiliac” or “coprophilia”. Can you help me?
See you soon,
Alessandro.