Invisible City: Napoli

See the monastery, beaten by water and frozen water. It is ancient, two months old now but several years in imagination and centuries in writings. There is the sink where rushing water and soap work to remove oil and pigment. Listen to the echoes of hymns off of white plaster, and you know all the words, and you sing along with them over the sound of cleaning, Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. Hymn 100, and you remember it as a joke and a nuisance, suggested every week and sung every week because of its number and because small children love it. And now you love it because it is old and found true, and the thunder directly overhead obscures it but does not interrupt it.

See the fields of Orvieto last week on a warm day when disaster was announced and all were shaken and one was not there, and you were not to blame and everyone says this but it is not enough. Feel the brown cliffs carved away standing behind you and watch the wind move the fields so that they flow away but stay where they have been for centuries, used and not used in turn. Now they are used for distraction and comfort. They are far below and will soon be experienced but will not have the same presence unless seen from far above.

See the room in Venice where excess revealed what is good and the reminder was almost lost but was in the dizzying gold of the cathedral, and the water flowed around, beauty and undoing, release and entrapment so that your mind knows a new way to conceive of its place, and also your soul.

See the earth that is not there but for tiny islands until you walk out and find it to be there. Walk out.

~

I am reading Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities, and it is excellent.

This past weekend ended two intense weeks of drawing, in which more than just my drawing changed. Without going into an inappropriate amount of detail, I will say that I realized two weeks ago that some aspects of my life were not true and good, and I began to work to change that. My drawing followed suit, and so Holy Week really became that (holy) for me. I started to turn a corner that is still being turned. And yet, last week something traumatic happened here (again, I’m withholding details because they are sensitive and personal to some) that worked to correct a negative influence on our program, but was still painful for everyone. Please continue to pray for healing out of this. So the last two weeks were full of intense work, spiritual juggling, and physical and emotional exhaustion.

It may seem somewhat strange, then, that I chose to go with my friends Jake, Jana, and Allyson to Napoli. This city is infamous for being dirty and filled with crime, home of Mafiosi and scooter-driving purse-snatchers. It is an intense city to be sure, but there is also a great amount of art and other cultural activities. I had been in the area two years ago, but only in the Amalfi coast region, Pompeii, and Capri, below the city. This was going to be a totally new experience for me.

Because we had come out of such a packed time, we decided to take things as slowly as we could. We arrived via train around 4, and hiked halfway across the city to our hostel, Giovanni’s Home. We of course had no idea what to expect from the hostel, since each is so different, but we had seen that it got great reviews and was fairly cheap. Giovanni welcomed us in, gave us water, and proceeded to give us a map, a book about Napoli, and loads of information about all there was to do in the city, with a brief history lesson for each thing. He drew on our map where we should go, which parts were dangerous, and where the best pizza was. He reassured us about the crime rates, which were on the whole fairly low compared to many other cities in Italy (Rome had 3 times as many reported petty thefts), and explained that out of all the killings that year, only three were not Mafia related. Despite that, he warned us against going into the Quartiere Spagnoli on the west side of the city, which has such a fine grid of tiny crisscrossed streets that the police simply cannot control it. It was kind of interesting later on to be walking on the larger street that ran along the area’s border, and have this dangerous zone right next to you…kind of the same sort of thrill that comes from playing with fire.

But back to Giovanni…the man is a saint. Not only did he provide us with all that help, but he cooked us amazing food that evening after we came back from looking at some of the major churches. He served us and the few other hostel companions wine and then pulled out his guitar and taught us “Funiculí Funicula” and played some American classics. We began to see why Hostelworld had titled him “most fun” a few years ago.

The next morning we basically just walked around the city…into an old castle, looking for comfortable shoes for Jana in the fashion district, stopping in Zara, looking at Mount Vesuvius while eating enormous pannini made of buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes. In the early afternoon we took a short tour of the Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest continuously active opera house in Europe (which, I imagine, means the whole world). It was absolutely gorgeous inside, six tiers of boxes and a stage as big as the audience space. Apparently musicians who are in high demand consider it an honor to perform there, and many have made it their only stop in Italy. We noticed that there was a Mozart opera playing that evening, and were informed that student rush tickets for 15 euro would be available an hour before the performance…upon this good news, we decided to accept the fact that we would be woefully underdressed, and do all that we could to get tickets.

After relaxing a little bit back at the hostel, we ate a quick meal of pizza followed by limoncello and walked back to the theatre to get tickets. Even though we were about half an hour too early for the student time, the man in the box office gave us tickets anyway, and we were able to secure a fourth floor box all to ourselves, stage left. The opera was Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio). The gist is that the main character’s lover, Kostanza, and one of his servants and one of her servants were captured by a caliph and forced to join his harem. The servant in charge of the harem is an evil man, the main character tries to get his lover back, etc. etc. The opera was actually one of Mozart’s earlier operas, and greatly influenced what became new trends in the German take on the form. The music was, of course, excellent, and that theatre is one of the best acoustically…as far as I could tell, there was no electronic amplification.

The staging, however, was updated to modern times, and was (as Jake likes to describe it) as if Lil John and Snoop Dogg had recycled the music and reset the stage. All the action took place on a giant revolving yacht (replacing the caliph’s house) placed center stage, which was pretty cool, but then the evil servant came out with five very scantily clad sunbathing women. From there it went downhill…the main character works his way onto the boat by bringing a bag of cocaine, and at the end of the second act and right before intermission, as the sun bunnies were gyrating to Mozart’s crescendoing strings, one of the women took off her top and then walked into the boat’s interior. It was so out of place and so unnecessary, and combined with the late time, we decided to take a taxi back to the hostel. Very disappointing for sure, but the voices and music were still excellent and the experience of attending an opera in a place like that is to die for.

Sunday morning we attended a long-winded mass at a gaudy baroque church (I missed San Giovanale), accompanied by Giovanni and Steve, one of the guys we’d befriended at the hostel. Giovanni took us to a pasticceria to get our morning’s sfogliatelle and cappuccini (sfogliatella is a Neapolitan pastry made with light dough and ricotta cheese, and are unspeakably delicious). He very graciously paid for us and went back to the hostel, while Steve came with us to the MADRE, Napoli’s modern and contemporary art museum. The collection was great, and had some more unusual or atypical pieces by some of my favorites, like Richard Serra (I had no idea he sculpted with thick cloth). The piece that stood out to me most was Dark Brother by Anish Kapoor. It was a giant very dark blue rectangle on a stainless steel floor…but all of a sudden your mind began to question what it saw, since it appeared that there was more to this piece. I suspected, but my suspicions were not confirmed until I asked one of the docents standing near: it was in fact a 3 meter deep hole, painted and formed in such a way as to give the illusion of not being a hole. Kapoor’s work is fantastic, and they also had another (simpler) piece by one of my current favorites, Olafur Eliasson. There was also a large retrospective of an Italian conceptual artist with whom I wasn’t familiar, Alighiero Boetti. His work was lovely, and spoke to me because it was all about grids and permutations of things, anything. I love those very simple concepts that can be carried out in almost endless different forms.

Upon returning to the hostel, Giovanni once again cooked for us: linguini with squid, died with the squid ink! The dark purple may not have looked the most appetizing, but I loved it. Definitely the most unique meal I’ve had here so far. After lunch we went for a final long walk around the city, and then had a long train ride back to Orvieto, late Sunday evening.

The whole weekend was great…Napoli, while admittedly dirty in many parts, had a tremendous beauty that the grit made unlike the “normal” Italian look. The streets were narrow, tall, and dark, with all manner of railings and balconies and sheets hung off the walls. The smells would cycle through trash to steaming sfogliatelle to old fish to clean wood to excrement to basil and garlic, and back again. The traffic was ten times more insane than in Rome. There was graffiti everywhere, but it was for the most part very artistic, and really wacky! It felt like a real city to me, and it was nice to be back in a truly urban space. Not only that, but the company was great. Jake is by far one of my best friends here, Jana comes from a classical schooling tradition and knows what to read and is up for a good conversation anytime, and Allyson is smart and fun to hang out with. All in all, a good close to the “semester.” You can see photos from the trip by clicking on this link (it works even if you don't have Facebook): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=87030&id=537430582&l=249a37cfd5

Portrait painting with Catherine Prescott started on Monday, and we dove straight in. Everyone, including myself, has already made a great amount of progress in just these few days, and I like discovering that oil paints are for some reason a very fast and loose and just comfortable medium for me. It’s very exciting, and I can’t wait to see where we go with this.

Speaking of art, I’ve been reading a lot of different articles and such that I brought with me on art criticism and history and the like. As always, it makes me excited to read more by other people that these articles mention. I read a fascinating review of Vija Celmins’ work (which was a wonderful discovery for me) by James Romaine. He will be my main adviser/professor/mentor in my art history and criticism studies at NYCAMS in the fall.

Did I mention NYCAMS before? My friend Erin (who is here in Italy as well) and I found out a couple weeks ago that we officially were accepted into the New York Center for Art and Media Studies for next semester! So in the fall I will be living in Brooklyn Heights and taking classes in middle Manhattan, along with an internship of some sort. I’m extremely excited about that…it seems to essentially be like a semester of grad school in New York City while an undergraduate. The best thing.

Yesterday we went to Florence for the day…I’ll write more about that soon. For now, I’ll close this long overdue post with some images from my drawing class.

This is my final drawing, on three sheets...it's of a really sweet minimalist well in a recently redesigned piazza in Orvieto (the most modern spot i could find!).


Here is an image of our second to last critique on two separate drawings we did, a still life and a Caravaggio-esque chiaroscuro drawing somewhere in the monastery.


My Caravaggio drawing...

Music Part 2

I did end up going to the concert on Thursday evening as well, which was held at 9 pm in the same place as before. This time the same pianist as before accompanied a mezzo-soprano in four lieder from “Wilhelm Meinster” written by Goethe and composed by Franz Schubert. It’s been a while since I’ve heard sung German (in a classical music context), and I love it. The soprano’s voice was rich, with the perfect amount of vibrato (some, but not a ridiculous amount, which annoys me after a while), and filled the space and was well matched and balanced by the piano. I’m always a little worried when I consider going to see a purely soprano performance, and that’s probably influenced by most of those taking place in a college context, but from the beginning I was set entirely at ease.

One of the gentlemen in the crowd was the composer of the next three songs, which were very modern without being all that innovative, and so they kind of annoyed me. They were also a little destructive to the soprano’s voice. The really crazy thing, though, was that halfway through the last one, I began to feel off-balance. I quickly realized that everyone seemed to be feeling the same thing, and that the curtains on the tall windows were being rocked back and forth. Being in a large room about three stories off the ground during an aftershock (it registered as 4.9 at the epicenter) was unlike any experience I’ve had before. We’ve had other aftershocks here, but I hadn’t felt any yet; people asked me what it was like, and did it make a sound. I always expected to feel a sort of up and down vibration, as from a massage chair, accompanied by a rumbling sound, but neither was the case. Instead, it felt as though whatever was wrong with the world at that moment was inside you, that everything outside of you stayed in place but that you yourself were being gently moved back and forth; in the same way, there was no sound but what came from within yourself, not as a rumbling but as the deepest, sustained tone that could only be heard the way Beethoven heard.

The amazing thing is that neither the pianist nor the soprano missed a beat! (Neither did they when the guy in front of me couldn’t find his sharply ringing cell phone, and then sat and read the text when he finally found it…I wanted to strangle him) The rest of the concert continued without incident. There were four songs in Italian by F.P. Tosti, whom I’d never heard of, which were very lovely, especially the last one Che dici, o parola del Saggio? Following these were two songs by Brahms, Meine Liebe ist grun and Minnelied. They encored with a perfect, light song by Schubert, op. 32 Die Fiorelle.

Speaking of encores, I forgot to mention that the pianist and clarinetist encored at the last concert with a Gershwin piece, Prelude II. I can’t believe that I forgot this, because I really liked the piece. The way in which it was written, it forced the clarinet to sound more like a saxophone, with low, throaty sounds and sharp brassy notes, really remarkable.

While I’m on things that I forgot, don’t forget to go back and look at my Rome post to see the photos from it, if you haven’t already.

I walked back alone after the concert. This, combined with the impact of the aftershock and the more introspective mood that the music had put me in, caused me to write the first decent poem that I’ve written in a long time. You can find it here. It likely still needs some work, but I like it enough already to go ahead and post it.

Last evening was the Stations of the Cross procession from San Giovenale to the church in the Pzza. della Republica. We held candles with semi-transparent colored paper shades around them and followed the priest and a simple wooden cross, winding in a long, lantern-lit procession through the medieval quarter of town. Candles were placed along the route and people looked out of their windows high overhead as we stopped to pray and sing and walk onto the next station. It was a good, reflective commemoration of Good Friday, and I left with O Sacred Head, Now Wounded haunting my head. Here are some photos:


Today I got some painting clothes at the market. I finished my still life yesterday, and my Caravaggio drawing should be finished this evening.

Again, do not forget the significance of this week. Pray for me and my fellow choir members tomorrow, and be joyful in the good news of the Resurrection!

Music Update

Ok, so I was wrong...the music that we saw last night was Brahms, Stravinskij, and Poulenc. It was wonderful, we walked not into the main theatre like I expected (which is amazing, 4 stories of box seats!), but into a side room that was about three stories tall and painted all over the walls. Here's a photo I took with my phone:

The pieces were smaller, only for clarinet and piano. The Brahms (my favorite) was the Sonata for clarinet and piano in F Minor, op. 120 no. 1. As soon as the first movement ended, I broke into a smile, both because it was wonderful, but also because no one clapped! The first time I've been to a concert when someone didn't applaud in between movements. This reminds me, at this concert there was one of those Classical Music Aficionados that I love running across at these sorts of things. He of course sat in the front row, an older balding gentleman with thick horn-rimmed glasses and a tan plaid ill-fitting suit paired with black shoes. I know that he heard the most of anyone there.

The Brahms consisted of four movements, allegro appassionato, andante un poco adagio, allegretto grazioso, and vivace. When it ended, the clarinetist came back out to perform 3 short Stravinskij pieces for clarinet solo. These were light and playful, but also technically excellent, showcasing the player's great control. The pianist rejoined him after a small break to duet again on the Francis Poulenc piece, of which I was not as great a fan. Hilary loved it, though, as she had played it for her clarinet final exam. Afterwards, she and Heather and I walked around the space admiring it. I think it is wonderful that there in this smaller theatre is a space (or, I assume, spaces) for moments such as this, and enormous and lavish room to house the creation of a small piece of excellence.

Sunday there is another performance, purely piano, of Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, and Moskowsky. And tomorrow is a piano and soprano performance of Schubert, Brahms, Tosti, and Bianchi...I'd love to go to all of them, but I might just do the Sunday performance. It's so great to be back in a classical music context.

That was Sunday evening...Monday was another gorgeous warm sunny day. A few of us had a nap-time sunning session out in the courtyard, and then we helped host some neighboring small children with easter crafts and an egg hunt. Yesterday continued the culture begun on Sunday when we went to the Palazzo del Gusto, the Palace of Taste, for a wine tasting. We tried a couple different makers of the Orvieto Classico, which is one of the few whites that I've been able to get excited about. Even more importantly, I got from the woman running the wine tasting a bunch of literature about the association of 17 area wineries and other information about local Umbrian wines.

Today we watched the Sigur Rós film Heima on the large projector and sound system. Gorgeous. Do you want to know what true artisanship is like? Watch that film.

My drawing has, I think, turned a corner. We are doing "Caravaggio" style drawings in which we need to create, with srong light and shadow, an atmosphere of some sort. This is going well, and so is the light and shadow still life we are all working on in class. Now that the element of directed and intentional light has been introduced, I have something to be excited about, which helps.

Do not forget the significance of this week.

Rome and My Week

Tuesday, 31 March. Hard to believe that I have lived in this country for 40 days already…I just looked out of the monastery window and saw a flood of clouds sweeping out of the sky and through the tiny valleys, with streams emitting steam that rises up to meet the vapor in the air. The grey, wet air pulls out the greens surrounding us, making them cool and lush. It’s unbelievable that I can look out a window and see a small green hill, out of which arises a medieval tower partially shrouded in mist.

This past weekend was spent in Roma, with the smaller group that comprises my drawing class. Three full days of touring and, most importantly, living in that space has made me appreciate it much more than I had previously. I was exposed to a gentler, homier, more livable side, one of small canyon-like alleys and small candle-lit bars that connected me to my life here in Orvieto. There were even moments of perfect stillness and silence, solitude, only a hundred meters away from the crowded piazze full of gawkers and foreigners peddling useless trinkets and ill-gotten bags.

Don’t get me wrong – the three days were intense, a whirlwind tour of Baroque Rome. Boromini’s design of Ch. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, right next to Bernini’s Ch. Sant’ Andrea al Quirinale. Drawing on the Spanish Steps. Boromini’s San Ivo. Group drawing of a panorama of Piazza Barberini. A wonderful tour of the Vatican collection; we saw Raphael’s School of Athens in a very humid room, another Raphael that I actually really loved (I forget the name, but it was an enormous oil combining both the Transfiguration and the healing of the possessed boy), an amazing unfinished DaVinci drawing/painting that was just as good (if not better) than a finished work, the modern and contemporary collection that contained some marvelous work.

But the artistic highlight of the weekend for me was that much of it was a search across Rome for one particular artist – Caravaggio. The Madonna di Loreto at Chiesa di Sant’ Agostino showed the touching humanity of a stressed and busy Mary receiving dirty pilgrims while holding a fitful Jesus. The Conversion of Saul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter at Ch. di Santa Maria del Popolo were incredible in the blend of monumentality and simplicity of composition and, as always, the naturalism of his figures. The Vatican museum held Caravaggio’s Deposition – the face of the central figure gently lowering Christ was one of the most compassionate faces I’ve seen.

There was, however, a Crime Against Humanity that occurred on this Caravaggio pilgrimage. Ever since I had seen the Calling of St. Matthew on the large projector screen in my darkened art history classroom last year, I had fallen in love with both the painting and the painter. Of all the art contained in Italy, I most wanted to see this painting. We stopped outside the Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi, which contains the three paintings in Caravaggio’s St. Matthew cycle, and Matt gave a half hour long build up to the importance of Caravaggio and of these paintings, and then we went inside. I was horrified to find that the side chapel in which these paintings reside was under restorative work, and that there was scaffolding preventing entry. Even worse, however, was that, unlike most of the time when paintings are being restored, instead of everything being covered by an opaque curtain you could see through parts of the scaffolding. That I could make out about a fifth of the Calling was like being given a crouton and denied the rest of the sumptuous meal. Utter tragedy, as you can see here:


However, the weekend was not ruined by any means. We had a delicious pizza meal in Trastevere one night, Jake and Josh and I bought a delicious cannolo pie one morning for breakfast (yes, a connolo pie; imagine a connolo in pie form, and that’s what we ate), and for our second evening Matt bought sausage which he baked, along with pasta, beans, salad, and bread. We cooked and ate everything in the guys’ apartment; it was one of the best meals I’ve had here.

Let me tell you about the apartments, or, rather, the guys’ apartment. Incredible. It was so large and so nice, we knew as soon as we walked in that we would need to keep it secret from the girls for as long as possible. Here are some photos (sorry about the poor quality).

We walked in the door to find this: Matt and Jake and Kelsie hard at work making the apartment smell delicious. Check out those sausages in the oven:

We had satellite TV that carried essentially the BBC News and a lot of Arab porn channels. Go figure...never thought that watching "Sexy Iran" would ever be an option.
Oh wow, look at Jake trying to be macho

Jake and I shared this bedroom.
Sick bathroom. We had two of these.
The last day we had some free time in the afternoon (after seeing Michelangelo’s Moses) before we needed to catch the 5 o’clock back to Orvieto, so Erin, Jess and I went to Galleria Doria Pamphilli. We had a great time walking through the old palace, which contains a private collection that is the home to two early Caravaggios, a beautiful Giuseppe Ribera, some Caraccis and Titians, and, the highlight of the museum for me, Velasquez’s Pope Innocent X. The portrait is fantastically awing, and it felt odd to be standing in front of the actual image that Francis Bacon refused to see in person, in spit of it being the basis for one of his best themes.

I know this is a brief and not very detailed account of the weekend, but to bombard you with endless description of everything would be pointless. You simply need to be here to understand and appreciate some things. I know that’s frustrating, but it’s for the same reason that it is better to be standing in the aura and physical space of Caravaggio’s Deposition, with your feet and head hurting and your shoe untied and the floor creaking as you step up to it, than to try and pretend that you can learn everything from it by looking at a poster website’s photo that’s two shades too yellow. In many ways this website and these entries are exercises in futility; these are my experiences and I want desperately to share them with everyone I know and love in a way that they understand as I understand, but it cannot be so. These are my experiences, and I am afraid that I am able to give you only the poorest of accounts of them.

Saturday, 4 April. I hope that the above section isn’t alienating in some way, perhaps it was the rainy and foggy weather that put me into that more melancholically introspective mood. In any case, the weather has cleared up beautifully, and spring is as exciting and lush as Boticelli’s painting. Thursday Erin and Jake and I climbed up onto two enormous rocks on the cliff face to watch from a dizzying height the evening settle on the surrounding hills and valleys; we took our passagiata up the Corso Cavour, met an interesting and knowledgeable British photographer, and went on to dinner.

Yesterday was the most gorgeous day yet. Much of the first half of it I spent in relative solitude, which was refreshing. This has been the first weekend with no trips or anything for a long while, and it feels wonderful to relax. I stayed in the sun as much as possible in a park attached to San Paolo, leaving with my head cleared somewhat by prolonged and undirected observation of the landscape that dropped away from under my feet, and by the peculiar combination of laziness and energy that the sun gives. In the later afternoon I went down into Orvieto Scalo with Hilary Meakin so that we could get haircuts, which was an experience; I have, though, the best haircut of my life, and one apparently derived from a D&G style, to boot. That evening I got to videochat with my dear friend Seth and his girlfriend Emily for a bit on Skype, and then came back and watched Once with good friends.

Today was also given over to beautiful weather; after lunch some of us couldn’t resist ordering gelato and sitting on the steps of the Duomo for an indolent hour of people-watching. Upon returning, I talked with Matt about my drawing so far. I feel as though I am at that point where I need to make some crucial decisions and discoveries so that I can move above the mediocrity that I’ve attained so far. I have not talked a whole lot about the drawing class…it is intense, and for me, frustrating. I’m so unused to being limited to one medium or method of making images; even without touching color in printmaking there were a host of exciting ways to make marks and images. Now, I need to relearn how to simply push black onto white with my hand and create. 9th grade was my last formal drawing course, so this is a struggle. In addition, my own preferences are so shaped by either minimalistic leanings or conceptual meaning that to draw a realistic still life that means nothing about life or will ever be worth remembering is a huge challenge. I could be satisfied with a solitary line on a large white sheet. I get bored easily and quickly with what I am drawing, and I draw slowly and cautiously. All of these things and more are enormous inhibitors of me just making a drawing. I am at the point where, somehow, and I don’t know how, I need to turn off my head and just draw the damn thing. So the past two weeks have been a fight for me, resisting what is best for me. I hope it gets through to me soon.

Matt showed us the work of Vija Celmins, whom I’d seen before but never really knew what was behind her paintings and drawings. She does massive drawings of things like the waves in a section of sea – just waves, no horizon, no boat, just the water and the shapes it makes. She obsessively draws the photorealistic pieces over months. I don’t know how she does this, but I feel like there is something in that work that is key to me learning what I need. At the risk of getting introspective in a sappy way, I also feel like perhaps the struggle I’m going through with drawing parallels some of the internal struggles I have with my own life and my own character right now. I’d rather talk about the already finished drawings than do them, and in some ways I view everything similarly. This is wrong.

Sunday, 5 April. Today, Palm Sunday, has been eventful in some small but touching ways. I’ve begun, with a small group of other Gordon in Orvieto students, to sing along with the choir at San Giovenale. We are rehearsing for next Sunday, but today we sang along with them (learning the songs as we went), and took part in the Palm Sunday procession into the church. It was a heartfelt service, as we stood for the reading of the Passion narrative. I’m definitely looking forward to next Sunday’s festivities, and the holy rites of this week.

This afternoon has been given over to drawing, which is going better. I’m not psyching myself out so much now. I need to go now, however, because Heather, Hilary and I are going to a Brahms and Schubert concert at the local theatre here in Orvieto…should be great.

Venezia + Bologna

I like Venice.

This might seem somewhat obvious to you – who wouldn’t like Venice? To be honest, though, when my family and I were there two summers ago, I didn’t particularly care for it. I can’t remember exactly why this was (I do think that a major part was that when we had calamari at a restaurant, I found it below par), but I remember coming away thinking that the place was too gimmicky for my taste. Now, we did have some amazing experiences there, like a glass-blowing demonstration and seeing Murano glass worth tens of thousands of euros, and the chance discovery of Alessandro’s book-binding shop (more on that later), and it is beautiful in many ways. Still, when put up against Rome and Florence and Amalfi, I enjoyed it the least.

This trip changed all that for me. Friday morning my friends Jess, Abby, Jake, Heather, and Ryan and I all departed early in the morning to take the train to Firenze and on to Venezia. We then hiked the mile and a half of winding streets and stairs and bridges until we located our hotel, the Hotel Bel Sito. We discovered through a series of snafus that the lodging was actually going to be quite a bit more expensive than we had figured on, but it ended up being worth it; the rooms were beautiful, breakfast was included, and we were a 5 minute walk from Piazza di San Marco, the center of Venetian life.

Jake and I took a quick walk while everyone got settled, following the “PER S.MARCO →” signs that had led us from the train station. About two minutes into this, we walked over a bridge and I stopped him. There, right in front of us, was “La Ricerca,” Alessandro’s shop! Let me give you some background into this. When my family was in Venezia, we broke away from the tour at one point to try and go to Harry’s Bar, a ritzy place right off of Piazza S. Marco, which is famous for two things: being the hangout spot of Ernest Hemingway, and the birthplace of the Bellini, a drink made with prosecco and frozen peach sorbet. Since Hemingway was of course no longer slouched on the stool nursing his Montgomery martini, we were there for the drink. Unfortunately, Dad was wearing capris, and so, because trousers were required, we were unable to actually enter. This was for the better, both because Harry’s Bar is overpriced and overrated, and because it caused us to wander down some side alleys.

We were first drawn to the shop with the green weathered awning because of the masks. Since it was early July, the tourist catcher shops and kiosks were bulging with the same Made in China chintzy masks. When you start to see something everywhere you begin to never see it, like the leaves on trees or tiles on roofs. The masks in Alessandro’s shop were like delicate leaves with the sun behind them, lighting their patterned ductwork and casting a glow on your upturned face. These masks were unique because instead of the normal paper slathered with paint and fake gold, these were simply single colored irregular pieces of leather molded over a form – imagine a face pressing itself out of a piece of thin wet leather, folds falling away from tightened areas, and you have some idea. This one is a little atypical:


The owner, Alessandro, was a young guy who was very conversant. We came to find that most things in his bookbinding shop, of which the masks were only a small portion of the inventory, were handmade in his workshop about a block away. The walls were lined with leather-bound journals filled with paper milled in Amalfi, cards, letters, and all manner of fine stationary. Being used to (but never completely comfortable with) a world of mass-production, the shop had already an aura of something special, and likely would have stuck in my memory anyway.

But what made Alessandro and La Ricerca one of my family’s top experiences in Italy was the personal attention he paid to us. He was genuinely interested in speaking with people who were like him, appreciative of quality and original manufacture, so that he was speaking with us, not pitching sales. To me and my family, that is the best way to encourage us to buy something, when we know that the money will be used to help continue the production of excellence. Alessandro not only answered our questions about everything in his store, but also decided to take us back to his workshop to show us how everything was made. Only after taking last semester’s printmaking course can I fully appreciate everything we saw in the tiny, bursting space – stacks of gorgeous, creamy paper, a press, inks, sheets of leather hanging from hooks in every available spot. Alessandro explained to us that when he has an idea, he creates a couple of versions and then sets them out in his store; if they sell well, he creates more, and then adds them to his line of products. We left his shop with the perfect close to our trip, heartened that even in that Philistia of commercialism a spark of truth was able to thrive.

And thrive it has. La Ricerca was even more crammed with new, wonderful products, including intaglio prints from a local artist. But what was even more exciting to me was that, after almost two years, Alessandro remembered me and my family! He was just as accommodating as before, inquiring after the health of my family, asking questions about our program, and giving us helpful hints for getting around Venezia (including the fact that you can take a gondola ferry across the Grand Canal for 50 cents). It felt great to have a sort of connection there, and it brought back memories that were even better now that I was returning on my own. It also was great to introduce fellow artists to this thing that had drawn me so much before.

We did not spend the weekend hanging out in a shop, however. Friday evening we wandered around, and then Saturday we spent a full day of tourism. In the morning we had a delicious breakfast, then walked back to San Marco. I hadn’t had the chance to go inside the Basilica di San Marco last time, so I was not leaving before doing that. The outside of the church is impressive enough, grand, but not in an enormous way like San Pietro in Rome. The inside, though, was even more astounding; it fully earns the nickname “Chiesa d’Oro,” Church of Gold. The ceiling is completely covered with golden mosaics – every square inch, with tiles less than a square centimeter. Dome after dome after dome, laid out in a Greek cross…I could go on, but it won’t do it justice. Like the Basilica di San Francesco, it was clearly (although not as emotively) a sanctified space.

We crossed the Grand Canal to eat lunch and visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a museum of 20th century and contemporary art housed in her former home in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. It was so refreshing to see art from our era once again! The collection was really great, too, because it included the more unusual, atypical works of famous artists. For instance, a Kandinsky that I would have sworn was a Paul Klee, or Morandi paintings that weren’t of his normal subjects, or a Calder wall-art piece. There were some really famous works there, however, which I had no idea I would see – Max Ernst’s Attirement of the Bride, for instance, or René Magritte’s Empire of Light (which was really cool). In addition, they had some works by artists who I really love, like Jenny Holzer’s Garden Bench (which I copied into my Moleskine in its entirety) or a sculpture by Anish Kapoor. There was a small exhibit highlighting Furturism, which was alright (not my favorite genre)...but then there was a masterful show called Theme and Variations. From the Mark to the Zero. This was curated by Luca Massimo Barberini (I loved it so much I asked a nervous docent), and had actually just opened the evening before. It contained a group of artists who in some cases would never have their work placed next to each other. The purpose was to show how there is a visual language that is related to our perceptions of written language, and that in both cases language can be reduced to a point of zero - basically, it can be deconstructed down to a point of nothing. The writing introducing the exhibit, and explaining different rooms, was so great, I copied certain parts down. Here are two:

"The obsessive repetition of a symbol or a sign leads ultimately to a condition of zero, a tabula rasa that purifies matter, translating it into minimal and monochrome surfaces...the monochrome inscribes the infinite in the finite, written on the 'pages' of the space around it."

and

"...experiments which, through an investigation of sign, color, and space establish the new syntax of the 'zero': letters and words are no longer recognizable and evocative, but rather concretely translated into the minimal elements and basic coordinates of the experiences of space, time and existence."

After the Guggenheim we took naps, went to the market by the Rialto bridge, ate, and then went on a nighttime gondola ride. This was gorgeous because, since it was the low season, the water was clear of traffic and silence pervaded the dark, narrow canals.

A note about Venezia: it changes your conception of moving through space. Everywhere there is some element constricting movement. You may be walking along a street that is 4 feet wide, and there is no break until you come to the intersection with another street or a small campo. On either side there is a three story wall; forward or backwards are the only possible directions for your body, it is movement upon one single line. Or perhaps there is a canal on your right. This is even more playful with your consciousness because now you have open space on your right, but still without the possibility of using it. Once again, a single line is only possible. Further complicating things, at some points there is a bridge that breaks into this open space on your right, but only in an illusionistic way. It is, again, a single line, although one that includes now vertical motion. The single line is never continuous, though; it is always broken after a short distance by a forced turn, so that to reach something a quarter of a mile away requires charting a path that looks like the New York skyline. I believe this is why everyone is drawn to the Piazza di San Marco – here, one can move in any way she wants. The space, which is not actually that large, seems enormous. Pigeons rising in flight only accentuate this effect. Even after just a day and a half of walking through Venezia, it seemed odd to have that sense of restriction lifted upon leaving. I wonder what it would be like to be one of the American interns working at the Guggenheim for six months, and becoming completely adjusted to moving and thinking in that way, and then leaving. It’s just interesting, is all.

In the morning we booked it back to the train station (ALLA FERROVIA →) to catch our morning train to the city of Bologna in Emilia Romana. Dana had told me that the city was renowned for its beautiful people, and this was true, but we were there primarily for two other elements for which it is famous: Giorgio Morandi and FOOD. They came in that order, as we walked to the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte in the center of town to access the Museo Morandi. It was, as most Morandi paintings and exhibits are, pretty incredible, and they actually had a lot of his prints (after taking the printmaking course last semester, I’m boggled at how he was able to fit in so many lines so close to each other), but in comparison to the exhibit at the Met last fall, which completely spoiled me, it felt a little lacking. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered that the SAME exhibit is now in Bologna! Unfortunately it’s in a different museum on the other side of town, so we weren’t able to make it then, but hopefully the chance to go back will come up before it closes 13 April. The Museo Morandi also had a special exhibit of industrial photography by Bernd and Hilla Becher...rows of beautiful black and white shots of water tanks and cooling towers from industrial centers all over the world.

After viewing the Morandis, we located a restaurant that Jake had researched. We knew that we wanted to eat well in Bologna since it would likely be the best meal we’d have in Italy, so we were prepared to spend a little more than usual. 25 euros seemed too little to pay for the dance that was played on my tongue. We ordered a DOCG Chianti Classico that was almost perfect, and I ordered a cream tortellini alla bolognese for my primo piatto, following it with a veal and prosciutto cutlet smothered in a cheesy cream of some sort with a side of spinach and mashed potatoes. I have never had an instance in which I became truly emotional about food, but halfway through that veal, as I savored a piece in my mouth, I began to become overwhelmed…no, I did not cry, but it was close! I know I have the tendency to hyperbolize sometimes, but I’m being completely honest, Jake and Ryan can attest to this. It will be a long time before I forget that meal…and it seemed criminal when I eventually grew hungry again.

The rest of the afternoon was spent lounging in a park on the outskirts of town. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we sat for about two hours next to a pond. We then walked back across town to the train station, kicked some Germans out of our reserved seats, and relaxed on the ride back to Orvieto. It was a great weekend, but definitely nice to be back in charted territory.

Today I saw a Ferrari. Tomorrow my drawing class goes to Roma for the weekend.

Primavera

Spring has arrived to Orvieto, and sooner than I expected it would. This afternoon I rolled up my jeans, took off my shoes and socks and sat on my third story stone window sill to take in the sun, much to the chagrin of one of the old nuns puttering around in the garden below (“Oh! Mamma mia!”). Besides frightened sisters out enjoying the warmth, below me was a flowering pink tree in full bloom inhabited by the biggest, blackest bees I’ve seen, grass that is beginning to grow lush and cool in the shade, rich, fresh upturned earth ready to be filled by more than the scattered palm bushes, inactive hoses leading to potted plants whose gorged soil leaked water onto the warm concrete paths, and everything else that makes a garden in the spring fresh and re-consecrated by natural birth and honesty in labor.

Yesterday, St. Patrick’s Day (which I only knew because my roommate is both Irish and was born on the 17th and had his 21st yesterday, which of course means absolutely nothing here), we all traveled to Florence (Firenze) for the first time on one of our many instructional trips. I was excited to go back, both because we’d been to Roma three times already and I’ve become sick of Baroque everything, and because Firenze was my favorite of the three major Italian cities my family and I visited two summers ago. We had a little bit of trouble with a delayed train in the morning, but got going soon enough. Looking back, I feel like it was a bit of an unusual day in terms of what we looked at and what we ignored. For instance, we completely ignored Santa Croce and the district, walked by the Palazzo Vecchio and didn’t even walk up into the sculpture Loggia, etc. But I did have a nice quiet lunch by myself, after which I walked up the street that houses the flagship stores for every major Italian designer (I still like Calvin Klein suiting best, but Zegna…wow). And, of course, Uncle Bobby, I peeked inside the Officine Panerai shop. I had time left before we met in front of the baptistery, so I walked into the Duomo, which I found actually disappointingly boring and plain. Dr. Skillen (or “J Skillz,” as we’ve come to affectionately call him) talked to us for a bit about the baptistery doors, led us over to view the Donatellos in the open air on the Guilds chapel, and across the Ponta Vecchia to Palazzo Pitti and back. While on the other side of the Arno, we stopped into a church briefly to view Pontormo’s “Deposition.” Now, I loathe Mannerism, but I do have to admit that it was an impressive painting; not only could I appreciate the balance of color and the movement, but it also looked much, much better in “real life” than in all the horrid reproductions I’ve seen of it.

Today we had our group presentations on different parts of the Catholic Catechism. My group covered Liturgy and the Sacraments. It went well, even if we were rushed for time. Keith Pecklers, a major figure in the Jesuit world (he’s ABC’s correspondent for all things Vatican) and also the presiding priest at the English-speaking church at Caravita, gave a talk on Ecumenism this afternoon, which was insightful. Tomorrow we have our final for this course, and then the rest of the day to finish up our papers and celebrate the local holiday of San Giuseppe, the patron saint of Orvieto.

Friday, my friends Ryan, Jake, Abby, Heather, Jess and I pack up to head out to Venezia for two nights, returning through Bologna on Sunday. It should be a great end to this first “semester” here in Orvieto. Monday begins Matt’s drawing course…I’m very excited for it.

Edit: how did I forget this? My favorite part of yesterday was going to the Dominican monastery San Marco (which is now just a museum) in Firenze. Why? The entire thing is filled with Fra Angelico frescoes! Every cell had its own...not to mention the awe-inspiring Annunciation, for which he is best known. I'm not even going to try to put into words the overwhelming nature of that place.

Assisi

While our days have been packed with class and eating and naps (yes!), we have found plenty to do in the evenings, especially on weekends. On Thursdays there is live music at one of our favorite caffes, Caffe Cavour; recently we also discovered a bar that hosts jazz and blues on the weekends (I think we're going to blues night tonight). These are really great times, because it's often a smaller group of us, out in the local sphere of things, sharing a bottle or two of wine and relaxing. This Thursday, we went to our friend Hilary's place (she is a British student who is teaching English here as part of her university requirements, I think I've mentioned her before) so she could show us the place and have some white wine (Orvieto makes the best white wine I've tried; that I actually enjoy drinking some type of white is a constant marvel to me) before we headed over to Cavour. We found, on arrival, that it was karaoke night...we decided that it might be fun all the same, so we stayed. It was kind of fun, even if we had no idea what was going on. The two English songs that did come up we didn't even know, which was too bad because the microphones were immediately passed to us. I also spilled chianti all over my white jacket (thanks for making me take the Oxyclean, mom), so I'll need to visit the drycleaners to try and get the remainder out. Oh well. The last song played, though, was "One" by U2, which I sang. So that was fun.

Friday we drove out to Assisi in three vans to spend what has been one of my favorite days here so far. We first visited the tiny church of San Damiano, where St. Francis first heard the call from Christ to repair his Church. Mistaking it to mean the crumbling physical church he was in, St. Francis sold all the possessions he had at the time to fix it up. It was only after doing so that he realized that Jesus had spoken to him about the Church universal. After walking through it, we had a time of singing in an olive grove next to it. Our friend Alessandro had driven one of the vans, and he brought a guitar for playing English and Italian praise songs.

We then loaded up and drove into the mountains, to visit the small Franciscan monastery Eremo di Carceri. "Eremo" means "hermitage," and it is called this because the monastery is built into the side of the mountain around the grotti (caves) that St. Francis and his followers used for hermitage and meditations. It was a lovely, perfectly serene place in the middle of the woods, with trails cut into the hill. I walked around by myself for a while, cool in the midday under the shade of ancient, gnarled black trees. This set me in a contemplative mood that stayed with me for the rest of the day.

Lunch was in the sun on the side of the mountain outside of Carceri - hunks of fresh bread, a red and green tomato salsa, olives, olive oil, prosciutto, salami, apples, sweet bread...wonderful.

We loaded up and drove into Assisi proper, to walk down to the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. I've been looking forward to seeing this for a long time, primarily because of the Giotto fresco cycle detailing the life of St. Francis. These are amazing, wonderful in their simplicity combined with their compelling arangement. However, I was completely unprepared for what lay beneath.

The Basilica is unusual because it consists of an upper and lower church; essentially, it is two full-fledged nave+transept+apse+side chapels stacked one on top of the other. You enter at the top, which contains the majority of Giotto's work (with a Cimabue thrown in), and then walk out the back to access stairs to the bottom church. This area completely astonished me. I'd been listening to Brooke Waggoner's song "Heal for the Honey" that morning, and in the climax of that song she sings "I'm undone, I'm undone, I'm undone." This phrase, in all the power and wistful beauty it contains in the song, instantly entered my head. The space was dark and vaulted, low and wide, and covered completely by paint, whether the ribs or the spaces in between. The altar was placed directly over the tomb of St. Francis, and there was an air of reverence all around. This only further increased when I descended into the crypt. Coming face to face with the bones of one of the largest figures in Christian history was inspiring and humbling. I spent some time in there praying, and then, since time was pressing, headed back outside. I wish I could have spent a lot more time there, and hopefully I'll be heading back at some point soon. I have never felt any place that was so consciously consecrated and serene as the hermitage and the Basilica. I felt spiritually drained and renewed at the end of the day.