Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website From June 23 to November 14 at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna | “CIAO MASCHIO” THE FACE, POWER AND IDENTITY OF MODERN MAN
june 22, 2021 - Roma Culture

From June 23 to November 14 at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna | “CIAO MASCHIO” THE FACE, POWER AND IDENTITY OF MODERN MAN


More than 100 works from the end of the 19th century to the present day translate the evolution of man’s role and identity into the language of art. 

Rome, June 22, 2021 – Thanks to the unique filter of different languages of art, the exhibition “CIAO MASCHIO” THE FACE, POWER AND IDENTITY OF MODERN MAN, held at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna from June 23 to November 14, 2021, describes how the representation of man and the role that today’s man plays in society has evolved and how these changes have influenced the arts, in particular from the second half of the 1970s up to the post-ideological present.

Promoted by Roma Culture, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali and is part of the Estate Romana 2021 (Roman Summer 2021) programme. This exhibition has been created in partnership with the Experimental Cinematography Centre - Cineteca Nazionale (National Film Library) and curated by Arianna Angelelli and Claudio Crescentini, this exhibition comprises more than 100 works including paintings, sculpture, graphic design, photography, art and experimental film, video, video-performances and installations, many of which have never been shown before or have not shown for a long time.

Part of the collection comes from Rome’s contemporary art collections – from the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, from the #museo di Roma at the Palazzo Braschi, and from the Sovrintendenza’s contemporary art collection at MACRO, Visual Arts Research and Documentation Centre – the rest comes from MAXXI [Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts], from the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato, from UniCredit S.p.A., from Foundations and artists’ archives, and from other public and private institutions.

Curators of the Gangemi Editore catalogue: Arianna Angelelli and Claudio Crescentini.

Scientific Committee: Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli; Arianna Angelelli; Claudio Crescentini; Costantino D’Orazio; Andrea Minuz; Federica Pirani; Fiorenza Taricone; Daniela Vasta. 

The exhibition goes beyond a simplistic, intractable reading of the “conception of masculinity”, highlighting the problems and internal contrasts of a “plural” construction of art relating to the male figure, also reflecting on the political dimension of bodies or focusing on their intermedial and identitarian nature. 

As in the 1978 film directed by Marco Ferreri, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 31st Cannes Festival and from which the exhibition takes its title, and acts as a sort of homage to the great Italian director, this exhibition is made up of thematic sequences which, through art, describe the male face, power and identity in social and political flux, from the end of the 19th century to the present day. The exhibition pays tribute to Ferreri’s extreme metaphor, a continuous exploration of today’s crisis of masculinity, with a showing of Mario Schifano’s art film, Ferreri

The exhibition opens with a site specific urban installation by the street artist Pax Paloscia titled Contemporary Gods, based on one of the core themes of her iconographic research, male adolescence as a phase of passage, transition, characterised by intense psychological and physical changes. Painted canvases and photographs which intersect/collide with feminine physicality, represented by Marino Marini’s sculpture Bagnante (1934). 

The sections of the exhibition start with THE FACE OF POWER, an installation of works that cover an entire room of the museum, an “invasive” array of faces and bodies depicting power. Images of Rome’s mayors and other political personalities and public figures connected in different ways to the city’s modern history, reproduced by “male artists”. An artistic and sociological cross section which is primarily intended to be a “window”, a gallery window, through which we reflect on the material on which male art fed to substantiate its power. Of particular significance is the inclusion, after a extremely long time, of Ritratto del Sindaco Onorato Caetani (1906-1910) by Giacomo Balla (from the collection of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna/GAM), side by side for the first time with another portrait of Mayor Caetani, again by Balla, from 1912, belonging to the Fondazione Camillo Caetani in Rome. Two exquisite works that bear witness, if that was still necessary, to the pictorial grandeur of an artist at the threshold of Futurism, and the political use of his art. The two works are in turn compared with the explosive force of the forms distorted by colour of Cardinale decano (1930) by Scipione, another of the masterpieces of the GAM collection. 

Special space is given to political power of the 20th century, between East and West, with portraits of American Presidents – Kennedy, Obama, Lyndon Baynes Johnson – by Vinicio Berti, Shepard Fairey, Sergio Lombardo, Franco Sarnari, etc. – side by side with those of Lenin, Mao, Khruschev and Ho Chi Min, by Mario Schifano, Franco Angeli, Marco Lodola, etc. These faces and bodies of power are accompanied by the faces and bodies of protagonists of what can be defined as “male power in art” with particular emphasis on the late 20th century, when, at the height of feminist social and political protests, “male artists” seem even more shielded in their way of managing the system of contemporary art based on the popularisation, through art, of their creative body as a kind of ego-worship.

There is a specific focus on THE FACE OF TERROR, with the official portraits of three dictators – Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin – emblematic symbols of 20th century terror and a living reminder of violence against people. Three “males” who devastated the world and whose face, and power, are difficult to remove from our history and consciousness. As we are taught by the works of Fabio Mauri and Gerhard Richter which are compared with portraits of the three dictators together with the universal words of Hannah Arendt taken from Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). Not forgetting.

Another section of the exhibition is dedicated to MALE IDENTITY starting from the thousand-year-old culture which too often has affected education and which art has highlighted and represented over decades with a study of works on war, on man’s violence against man, and on the family in its various forms and possibilities and on the theme of beauty and self-awareness. 

A section is dedicated to the CULT OF THE BODY AND SPORTING PRINCIPLES, in search of what we could consider to be “another body”, especially from the second half of the 20th century, including reflections on non-binary or genderqueer people and gender identity. These are fundamental themes today. To have the “right” body is important for mainstream society and for getting recognised, in order to “be famous”. In this duality, which blends nature and culture, the body, particularly the male body, can acquire an appearance and identity that is adapted to the context or, conversely, oppose it, criticising or rejecting norms. This section is connected with another of modern man’s favourite themes, which today’s artists have portrayed in specific aspects and viewpoints: sport and the body sculpted by sport, which is often itself an art form. 

Where the need to research and the need to analyse the “male” subject/object meet, we find MEN SEEN BY WOMEN, the other view of modern man, in our case through the lens of female photographers and the eyes of female Italian artists of the second half of the 20th century: Tomaso Binga, Lisetta Carmi, Elisabetta Catalano, Agnese De Donato, Rosa Foschi, Alessandra Mercadini, Alba Zari. etc. An encounter/collision of visual peculiarities to be investigated, through the lens of female artists who depict men, often a “male artist” or a powerful male. 

The exhibition closes with another urban installation, Till Death Tears Us Apart (2017), by one of America’s most famous urban artists, Mark Jenkins, created in collaboration with the Wunderkammern Gallery. A provocative search for a kind of man’s “absolute end”. Jenkins’ installation is dramatic and destabilising, but it’s also immersive and surreal in its hyper-realistic structure, especially because it’s in a museum space, away from a typical daily life location. This unusual situation and position makes it seem even more enigmatic and ambiguous, a perspective that’s typical of the famous American urban artist. 

The exhibition also includes a collection of art films titled ”UN SUPERMASCHIO” [A SUPERMALE], created with the Experimental Cinematography Centre - Cineteca Nazionale [National Film Library], in partnership with CSC – Italian National Archive for Industrial Film, curated by Annamaria Licciardello (Cineteca Nazionale), and dedicated to experimental Italian cinema of the 60s and 70s, through which the viewer investigates the male filmic “super-ego” of this period. In fact the title is taken directly from a novel, which was turned into an unfinished work by Alfred Jarry (Le Surmâle, roman moderne, 1902), in turn quoted in an art film by Ugo Nespolo (Un Supermaschio, 1975-76), on the theme of man – the superman – dedicated to his variety, including his love, in relation to bourgeois western society. Film season programme on a fortnightly basis. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue (Gangemi Editore) with original articles by: Arianna Angelelli, Ritanna Armeni, Claudio Crescentini, Alessandra Grandelis, Mark Jenkins, Annamaria Licciardello, Francesca Lombardi, Andrea Minuz – with contributions by Anselma Dell’Olio, Alex Pagliardini, Federica Pirani, Fiorenza Taricone and Daniela Vasta

From July to October, events will be organised in support of the exhibition, featuring open-air events, talks and readings in GAM’s cloister-garden and in the Casa del Cinema, aiming to widen the thematic gaze towards other forms of artistic language, with multi-vocal activities which span from poetry to literature, from action to theatre. 

EXHIBITED ARTISTS

Claudio Abate, Vito Acconci, Valerio Adami, Franco Angeli, Giacomo Balla, Gianfranco Baruchello, Mirella Bentivoglio, Vinicio Berti, Umberto Bignardi, Tomaso Binga, Felice Carena, Lisetta Carmi, Elisabetta Catalano, Claudio Cintoli, Gino De Dominicis, Giorgio de Chirico, Agnese De Donato, Willem De Kooning, Shepard Fairey, Flatz, Rosa Foschi, Franco Gentilini, Gilbert & George, Guerrila Girls, Alberto Grifi, Renato Guttuso, Mark Jenkins, Alfredo Leonardi, Carlo Levi, Sergio Lombardo, Urs Luthi, Renato Mambor, Carlo Maria Mariani, Fabio Mauri, Alessandra Mercadini, Ugo Nespolo, Luigi Ontani, Pax Paloscia, Pino Pascali, Luca Maria Patella, Giuseppe Penone, Anders Petersen, Lamberto Pignotti, Cristiano Pintaldi, Fausto Pirandello, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Piero Sadun, Franco Sarnari, Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Howard Schatz, Mario Schifano, Toti Scialoja, Scipione, Gino Severini, Cesare Tacchi, Tato, Paolo Ventura, Francesco Vezzoli, Andy Warhol, Erwin Wurm, Alba Zari and others.