The characters of L'Orlando Furioso, the feats of brave knights, the passion for Angelica which will later become madness of love will relive from 4 October 2014 to 11 January 2015 at Palazzo Magnani in Reggio Emilia in the great exhibition "L'ORLANDO FURIOSO: ENCHANTMENTS, PASSIONS AND FOLLIES. CONTEMPORARY ART READS ARIOSTO” which intends to read and reinterpret Ariosto's imagery in a contemporary key, full of suggestions and connections of evident relevance.
The exhibition intends to celebrate Ludovico Ariosto, born in Reggio Emilia in 1474 and died in Ferrara in 1533, the famous author of Orlando Furioso.
It is known that the Orlando Furioso - if we consider the various editions, the translations into foreign languages, the theatrical adaptations (how can we forget the memorable staging by Luca Ronconi and Sanguineti in 1969, which will also be documented in the exhibition by some photographs by Franco Vaccari) – is one of the works that have enjoyed wider admiration and interest over time, albeit with some periods of obscuration, precisely because of its intimate, so “modern” structure, with the perennial interlocking of plots, “in a world", as Gianni Celati writes, "where everyone acts in states of enchantment or fixation, products of the game of fate", "with an idea of the world as pure wonder without beginning and without end" - and this is at the root of the harmony of American literary culture with Ariosto, in a country in constant search for a frontier to reach and cross. Even in the artistic field, the fortune of Ariosto and his chivalrous poem was widespread - among the many names that we could mention are those of Titian and Guido Reni, of Fragonard and of Doré, with the infinite metamorphoses of the character over the centuries of Angelica (among which Roger saves Angelica by Ingres, preserved in the Louvre in Paris), as well as in modern and contemporary illustration and cinema.
The Palazzo Magnani exhibition, forty years after the celebrations of the five hundredth anniversary, in 1974, of Ariosto's birth in Reggio Emilia - which produced various exhibition initiatives, in particular at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara - starts in some way from those premise – it is not by chance that the Reggio exhibition will re-propose the Homage to Ariosto by Franco Vaccari –, presents some later works, such as for example the images taken by Luigi Ghirri in the Mauriziano, and then focuses on the results of the comparison between painters, sculptors, illustrators , Italian and foreign comics authors and photographers, with the figure of Ariosto and the text of Orlando Furioso, to verify the influence on the creative imagination of a vision of the world and of human existence that cannot be consigned to the archives of the past.
The exhibition summarily revisits Ariosto's fortune in the past, starting from the precious collection of editions of the Furioso owned by the Panizzi Library of Reggio Emilia, and intends to propose the suggestions exerted by his figure and the atmosphere, and above all by specific episodes of the poem about some of the most important Italian and foreign contemporary artists: painters and sculptors (Tullio Pericoli, Emilio Isgrò, Giulia Napoleone, Ruggero Savinio, Mimmo Palladino, Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, Piero Pizzi Cannella, Franco Vaccari, Claudio Parmiggiani, Pat Andrea, Antonio Seguí, Vladimir Velickovic, Manolo Valdés, Joe Tilson, Philippe Favier, James Nares, Omar Galliani, Davide Benati, Roberto Barni, Giuseppe Bergomi, Graziano Pompili, Giuliano Della Casa, Lucio Del Pezzo, Elio Marchegiani, Umberto Mariani, William Xerra, Concetto Pozzati, Franco Guerzoni, Mirco Marchelli, Simone Pellegrini), illustrators and comic book authors, such as Lorenzo Mattotti, Gianluigi Toccafondo, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Matteo Casali, Paolo Bacilieri, Tuono Pettinato, Francesca Ghermandi, and the proposition of part of the saga by Alejandro Jodorowsky on the "metabaroni", the perfect warriors, some tables by Guido Crepax, Sergio Toppi, Grazia Nidasio, photographers like Marco Bolognesi (who will produce some photographs, with updated reconstructions based on the suggestions of contemporary cinema, on the episode in which Ariosto speaks of the siege of Paris, emblem of the fate of the fallen city, Constantinople), and like Nino Migliori and Vittore Fossati, who are going to visit Ariosto's places – his birthplace in Reggio Emilia, the house in Ferrara, the Garfagnana: Ariosto had public assignments from the Este family.
As can be guessed from these first indications, the exhibition intends to verify the persistence of Ariosto's fortune, and of his Orlando Furioso, the ability of the poem to move the imagination, not only in literature (to limit ourselves to just one example, Italo Calvino and the current, growing attention in the American Faculties of Literature), but in artistic fields such as painting, sculpture, illustration and comics, photography, which are considered in this exhibition languages with equal dignity, each of which may be able to establish contact, to fascinate people with different levels of knowledge and sensitivity, even young people – particular effort will in fact be dedicated to the relationship with the students, also providing for direct interventions by artists participating in the exhibition. Therefore, the exhibition aims to demonstrate, in comparison with the "planet Ariosto", the topicality of his figure and his work, bringing out, through different languages, themes and motifs that are extraordinarily topical in contemporary societies .
THE ORLANDO FURIOSO: ENCHANTMENTS, PASSIONS AND FOLLIES
CONTEMPORARY ART READS ARIOSTO
MAGNANI PALACE - REGGIO EMILIA
4 October 2014 - 11 January 2015
