:: ANNA MARIA ARTEGIANI

VITTORIO SGARBI

Woe to Anna Maria Artegiani, failure to Perugia pharmacist who converted to the practice integral of painting around the late Eighty, if we could not paint the spirit, meaning it especially what kind of religion, and in a sense cross, without drastic distinctions between a confession and another, as if to this world everyone, despite the diversity of forms, we had a way substantially common to feel the existence supreme entity. But art, fortunately dell'Artegiani, has had, among its major historical peculiarities, also to represent the unrepresentable. residues archaeological us say that since the dawn of civilization, representation of the divine purpose mainly apotropaic, was one of major concerns of man. Fundamental, art greek-Roman, it is was the work of humanization of the divine, corresponds in fact to the deification human (the body was represented in accordance with a canon of ideal proportions) functional vision immanent universe in which nature and spirit were a perfect match, in sign of the satisfaction of basic needs. Then came Christianity, in At first, averse to paganism, inclined to marry the aniconic of the Jewish tradition of which was the son, in later also adopted by Islam. Totally change the route, representing any aspect of the events the divine spirituality, so as to make art an essential tool in understanding dogmas and other theological truths otherwise difficult to assimilate at the mass of the faithful, it was the winning move Christianity, encouraging not just the primacy exercised in the culture Western. But even coming from the West, iconism divine has played a indispensable role in Buddhism, Hinduism, in the religions of pre-Columbian civilizations, just to mention a few, always trying to reconcile the spiritual ideal and one of the form, the heavenly beauty and the earthly. Of these assumptions, the Artegiani is well conscious when it says it wants to do art "sensitive to the sanctity of life and the mystery hidden in the human. " Any proposal that aesthetics is proposed similar goals can only assume a value of mediation between the physical and the metaphysical, the infinitely blurred the absolute spirituality and of distinguishable everyday spirituality. in other words, the art proposes, exactly as it happened with the turn dell'iconismo to provide exempla through which the immeasurable can risultarci edible adattatoa parameters more suited to our ordinary costumes civilians. the more able in this intent, says the Artegiani, the more the work Art will exhaust its task through the climbing of its sheer physicality, a prelude to the real enjoyment of those who looks at the inner. so good, in theory. in practice, the problems to be addressed are not lacking. one, for example, is what art is, between theories of angels, monks, rabbis, Orthodox monks, imams, monks Zen and Sufi dervishes who in lively, enchanted figurative repertoire dell'Artegiani, one another almost seamlessly of continuity, as belonging to one big family, can focus too much on externals of spirituality religious, for example on the more details of its customs, especially with regard to non-Western cultures, encroaching thereby exoticism. That is not a sin, Having regard to the systematic use of which has made Western art, not just figurative (I think a lot of music too contemporary, infarcitasi Siddhartha and gilgamesh) but perhaps you might correct the shoot above the target primary there had proposed. Another issue is that that ended in crisis iconism Byzantine Empire, the more spiritual than ever to have covered the Mediterranean basin, when you realized that the worship of the faithful was moving from religion to art, seen as its form of objectification. The religious art, in short, is capable of becoming the religion of itself, as happens regularly in our days, basically atheists, yet ready to venerate the blades tiziano or the sacred frescoes of Michelangelo. When I see certain frontal portraits dell'Artegiani, probably his works stylistically the most complete, strictly paratactic perfection in every aspect of the face, in an extreme sense of idealizing the classical canon, I wonder, in fact, if the true religion of the author is not art, beauty and socialite, perhaps dressed sacred, the real purpose of contemplation. But in that case, not ravviserei any real contradiction, beauty may very well refer only to itself. Otherwise, we should consider all contradictory the best religious art of the past.
Vittorio Sgarbi