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‘From the former Prison of Villa Altieri emerges the Atelier against the idolatry of contemporary art’ by Sergio Mario Illuminato
There is a sacred place in art: the Atelier; where the artist lives intellectual and creative production, where every vulnerability is laid bare in failures and mistakes, where he learns the work of alchemist of living matter. It is in this intimate cathedral that he separates himself from the noise of daily life and expands the voices of time he wants to be reached by, to embrace the authenticity and beauty of how to see the world.
Here the truth of his human experience no longer needs to be translated into words but a single glance suffices. Not everyone is allowed to cross the threshold of the atelier simply because not many are willing to steal the soul of genuine inspiration, of learning the truth of life to which the artist wants to adhere and the genesis of his revolutions. It is here, in the atelier, that he allows himself to discover the cracks, the tunnels, the underground passages of this continuous intellectual and spiritual work which then, in the exhibition spaces of the created devices, seems to become a real and unitary artistic vision.
It is difficult to reveal to those who have not frequented them the power that cages an atelier, the overflowing variety of materials they guard. Because the history of art is the history of ateliers through the centuries.
Just browse through the titles of books piled up in a creative workshop to discover that, going back to the roots of the Greeks and Romans, one experiences in these spaces the mimesis discussed by Aristotle and Plato’s supreme idea of beauty. The concept of di-segno of giants of the Renaissance such as Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and the emerging idea of genius referring to the artist not only as a craftsman, but also as a philosopher and man of science. In the ateliers you touch with your hands in the Baroque how the protection of powerful families and rulers has con-fused artistic expression and power, up to modernity where ateliers become places of experimentation and rebellion, bringing forth philosophers capable of influencing artistic practice with concepts such as the subjective experience of reality, the sublime… continuing with the avant-gardes in this experience of wonder and terror regarding personal truth. The titles on the shelves of the atelier are many and heterogeneous, covering social, cultural, political, scientific and other matters that have led humanity to where we find ourselves today.
If we add to the books the collected fragments of objects, tools and matter without reason, one feels as if on the set of a dystopian science fiction film where man has left and the apocalypse has left behind only the factory of his ideas.
Wandering through the Atelier allows us to delve into the artist’s re-creative spirit and understand from the deposited mnemonic traces that the zero-hour for art, to experience an existence, does not exist.
We had no other choice but to bring the enjoyment of art back to its refuge to tell of the discomfort and suffering that many experience in seeing contemporary creativity struggling to regain its social function in a time without depth, where injustices and disorientation lead many to live on the margins, observing from afar the chaos of the world.
We have tried to rekindle, against the removal operated by the caste of artists and the system of our days, the fire that is still lit at the center of the atelier to tell of the strength and vital energy compressed in the creative destruction of the relocations identified by Parmiggiani in his childhood. In the mythological nihilism of Kiefer’s dark hypogeal spaces.
Because the most significant space in our hearts continues to be reserved above all for the Informal and for the protagonists who erected the amphitheater in which our sky is near.
In the museum hall on the ground floor of Villa Altieri we have grafted the ruin of the ‘Communicating Artistic Organisms’, in their most intimate arrangement, near some statuary memories from the ancient and modern eras of the 16th and 17th centuries and a small Lapidary, accompanied by a profusion of clues and every essential and preparatory tool of the creative process of all the transdisciplinary artists complicit in this experience.
Left here and there on the glass floor of the Loggia through which it is possible to see the ancient cobblestone flooring of the Villa and the remains of some archaeological stratifications that emerged during the restoration works, we find books, film frames, photos, dance movements, sounds, a bric-à-brac of objects that strip the ambiguity of art of the against verse against those who want to remove the common understanding of feelings and sensitivity to certify their elitist status as artists and increase the exchange and use value of devices that have extinguished the transformative power of art and its ability to inspire change and personal growth.
Thus simply a helical cycle of the creative process is brought to the spect-actors in the Atelier of Villa Altieri in Rome to try to preserve the authenticity of art and promote emotional connection between individuals and their own cathedrals of vulnerability.
In this intricate labyrinth of creativity and reflection, there is one detail we did not want to overlook: the spaces reserved for the young. State Higher Education Institutes and Academies of Fine Arts have a crucial role in the future of art and its social function. It is essential to pass on the baton of our experience, our efforts and our discoveries to those who will follow in our footsteps. The former Prison of Villa Altieri is not only a physical place, but also a mental one, where the promise of a new generation blends with the legacy of past centuries. It is here that art becomes a bridge between the past, the present and the future, an anchor of continuity and innovation for the generations to come.