«It is not possible to form a correct idea of Italy without having seen Sicily: here lies the key to everything». This is the phrase with which Goethe introduces us to Sicily. In the pages of his diary, an important role is also dedicated to one of the best known and most visited monuments in Sicily: Villa Palagonia in Bagheria. Superb and eccentric villa. Its construction began in 1715 at the behest of Don Ferdinando Gravina and Crujllas, 4th prince of Palagonia, peer of the kingdom, knight of the Golden Fleece, prestigious honor of the kings of Spain.
Thinking about the architecture, the decorations of the villas, churches and noble palaces of the time, all designed to enhance the wealth, faith and aristocratic origin of the owners, it seems difficult to imagine that a nobleman of the time could give life to something so unsettling that it arouses oxymorons such as terribly beautiful, attractive and repulsive and so on. Nicknamed, not surprisingly, the “Villa of Monsters”, due to the particular decoration that adorns the external walls made up of statues in “Aspra tufaceous stone”, depicting fantastic animals, anthropomorphic figures, statues of ladies and knights, musicians and caricatures various. The villa fascinates with this dark and magical atmosphere immortalized forever in eternal mobility. And Goethe probably couldn’t do anything else, giving voice to his feelings, other than coining a new term to express his dismay in the face of the unexpected: Palagonisch.
And it is this neologism that gives the exhibition project its title; neologism that underlies the guiding idea of his figure: artistically reveal the “palagonal”, the terribly beautiful, and reveal it by making it sensitively accessible to the public. Visiting the exhibition at the Haus Der Kunst of the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa one remains amazed, disoriented, almost devoid of categories of judgment because one observes what one does not expect and this reaction “overwhelming, usually surprising, yes achieves by combining what is apparently incompatible: law and arbitrariness, wisdom and foolishness, living and dead, fun and horror.”
Looking at the works of the three artists, Giuseppe Agnello, Gabriele Massaro And Stefan à Wegen, some topos are intuited: the unknown, the fear of the other, references to myths and fairy tales, a “bizarre and baroque” aesthetic. With this brief introduction, and with a lot of curiosity, I approach the curators of the exhibition, Alessandro Pinto And Michael Kortlanderthrough some questions that tell “the creation of an ‘upside down world’, a ‘counterworld’ and therefore an antipode to the familiar order of things”.
What is art for artists?
«For artists, art is a necessity, the need to express themselves, to find ways and codes to share their message».
What is Palagonisch?
«Palagonisch is an intuition of Goethe. Faced with an unexpected vision, although anticipated by reports and readings, that of Villa Palagonia in Bagheria and its sculptures, Goethe feels repulsion and attraction at the same time. The principles of the grotesque seem to be recognized in his description, especially in the ars combinatoria between unexpected elements. This description had to be defined with a neologism, namely palagonisch. In the text of the Italienische Reise, palagonisch appears about fifteen times and each time it seems to express this duality, attraction and repulsion towards an object”.
What is horribly beautiful for them and the first image that comes to mind?
«The three artists did not express the horribly beautiful in a programmatic way, that is, with works created for the exhibition. But it was we curators who took up the concept of palagonisch and consider it an aesthetic category again. From there we moved on to selecting those intelligible artists according to this category, but the list was and is truly extensive. It seems to us that the palagonisch it is also a category of man, that sense of attraction and repulsion that one feels every day and for objects or situations that are even very distant from each other”.
What is beautiful and unpleasant in art?
«In art, beautiful and unpleasant are two sides of the same coin. Edgar Allan Poe came to mind while we were preparing the exhibition and above all his comment on the title of the collection “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”. Two principles that fit into each other, the drive to express the extraordinary in the grotesque and the need to order it according to the medium used, the arabesque, giving it a form for the public. But they are restless principles, they change according to historical moments, artistic and cultural trends.”
Did the artists work together and did their comparison exist?
«There was no direct discussion, but an exchange of opinions mediated by us curators.
Two out of three have visited Villa Palagonia. But not in view of the exhibition. Villa Palagonia is part of an artistic and cultural heritage that remains hidden, sediments and, even if in a non-direct way, inspires the artists.”
What did they think about when creating their works?
«The three artists have different backgrounds and drives. Stefan in Wengen he creates his works starting from well-known, recognizable images and then transfiguring them into painting through a disturbing presentation. In Gabriele Massaro instead one has the perception that his works are the result of a broad debate on the medium of painting. His layers of colours, the different techniques used and the motifs depicted pose questions about what painting is and what his role is in today’s art. With Giuseppe Agnello sculpture returns to shaping, in a lyrical way his works take us to an arcane time, at first glance an ancient time, but instead common and today, where the materials he used are, the alabaster stones, the salt, the casts of plants to determine their perception”.
