Rome Journal: Bacon, Freud and The School of London

“The scream comes to me very well, but I have lots of problems with smiles,” said Francis Bacon. His “Study for a Painting” (1952), is currently exhibited in "Bacon, Freud and The School of London"show at the Chiostro del Bramante. The screaming mouth in the painting recalls the famous scene from the Odessa steps sequence of Eisenstein’s Potemkin. And there were of course Bacon's famed Screaming Popes modeled on the figure of Velasquez’s” "Portrait of Pope Innocent X." Bacon’s screaming figures also prefigure Billie Whitelaw’s rendition of Beckett’s Not I (1973) in being a form of emotional invective. The London School, which also included Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach and Paula Prego, whose works are also represented in the current show, was soused without being Dionysiac. To some extent the drinking appears to have been joyless, desperate and like their abstract expressionist counterparts often on the edge of violence. They drank at the Gargoyle and at Colony Room Club and the alcohol was an intrinsic part of the esthetic. How to calculate its etiology and effects is another matter. One of the early paintings on view “Girl With a Kitten” (1947) depicts Freud’s wife Kathleen Garman's steely blank eyes. She's not so much cuddling her cat as squeezing its neck. Garman appears again in the famed Girl With a White Dog (1950) and its pet and breast is almost an essay in bestiality. Which is to say that Freud like Bacon was not concerned with classic notions of beauty, despite the elegance of his draughtsmanship  The curators point out Freud wasn’t so much interested in nudes as “naked figures.” His paintings like those of the nightlife figure Leigh Bowery are an emotional striptease. Did he, Bacon and the other painters of the London School seek to see mankind at its worst or was their mandate simply to make great art, glass in hand? 

Rome Journal: Castel Sant'Angelo

photo of  Castel Sant'Angelo by Francis Levy

A poem by the Emperor Hadrian is engraved on a marble plaque in Castel Sant’Angelo. Marguerite Yourcenar translated it in her classic Memoirs of Hadrian, a fictional letter from Hadrian to his youthful successor Marcus Aurelius. “Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again….Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes…” Actually the massive rotund turreted structure, a geometrical hybrid of spherical and rectangular shapes, was, as the words of the poem indicate, originally the site of the emperor’s tomb, which was built in the First century—its popular appellation deriving from the apparition of the archangel Michael by Pope Gregory I in 590. Besides his Villa (Adriana outside Rome in Tivoli) and his tomb, Hadrian was also responsible for the Pantheon which in real estate terms would make him one of the great developers of antiquity. Actually, the Castel, may be Rome’s first adaptive re-use building having housed not only a tomb containing the remains of the Imperial family right up to Caracalla, but also a fortress, a prison and a Renaissance dwelling in which the apartments of several popes including Paul III Farnese were located.

Rome Journal: Civilzation and Its Contents

Picelle (photograph by Francis Levy)

Civilization and Its Discontents is Freud’s famous tome about the price exacted by the social contract. But Hadrian’s Villa Adriana, approximately 28 KM from Rome on the Monti Tiburtini, is an example of the kind of rewards that can result from the more benign aspects of human kind’s attempt to tame the innocence of nature. The Villa itself has spawned its own legion of  commentators including Piranesi in 1781 who diagrammed the 30 buildings which comprise its grounds and which Hadrian began constructing in 118 A.D. the year he came to power. From 1831-6 Agosto Penna produced realistic drawings incorporated in Viaggio Pittorico some of which convey an almost 3-D virtual reality effect. Marguerite Yourcenar was the first female member of the Academie Francaise. Her classic novel Memoirs of Hadrian is memorialized by the Largo named after her which graces the entrance to the grounds. The Canopus with its magnificent sculpture lined pool is one of the most frequented cited structures of the Villa, but the Picelle, the arcaded court and long pool in which a line of cypresses are reflected provides one of the most magnificent odes to man's pursuit of beauty, the sky above the earth below. Civilization. Hadrian's was not unblemished. Anti-semitism became more prevalent under his rule and he famously repressed the Bar Kokhba revolt. Still the ambition and creativity of the Villa Adriana exemplifies the best impulses of an empire which produced Augustus and an unparalleled system of jurisprudence whose legacy lives on today.

Rome Journal: Woody Allen's "A Rainy Day in New York"

Can we say that at the end of one’s career as well as life, all of  existence passes by. That was the theme of Bergman’s masterpiece Wild Strawberries. In A Rainy Day in New York, the Woody Allen film currently being released in Rome and elsewhere in Europe (but not the States), this occurs to decidedly disappointing effect. All the familiar citations are there from Ortega y Gasset and Derrida, the kind of music played at the Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle,   Central Park (where the film attempts a romantic finale) and even a cameo appearance from Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X" at the Met. The screenplay writer Ted Davidoff (Jude Law) catches his wife coming out of the The Albert on University after a tryst, and a temperamental director Rolland Pollard (Liev Schreiber) who once made a film about Venice, a la Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You (l996), recuses himself to the Astoria Film Studios. The protagonist is named Gatsby Welles  (Timothy Chalamet) and there’s talk about romantic meetings under a clock (like the one where Holden Caufield meets Sally Hayes in The Catcher in the Rye). The whole Allen crew is intact with Santo Loquasto on sets and Vittorio Storaro cinematography. Even the typeface of credits is the same. Further, Allen is still attracting name actors, despite the fact that he can’t get distribution in the States. However in terms of its setting, A Rainy Day In New York is a faint shadow of movies like Manhattan and Annie Hall. Trite aphoristisms and flimsy quips take the place of memorable and sparking dialogue. Gatsby’s brother innocently asks about his brother’s date, who turns out to be a prostitute, “you think a girl like that wants to live from hand to mouth?” There's a generational perversity to the film too. Most of the youthful characters seem to inhabit the lifestyles of an older generation and despite all his controversies Allen’s not afraid of broaching the tired theme of older men's infatuation with younger women.The characters of the director, his screenwriter and a heartthrob Francisco Vega (Diego Luna) all fall for Gatsby’s 21 year old girlfriend Ashleigh Enright (Elle Fanning). Allen should probably be commended for speaking his truth. However, the universe of the move is so hackneyed and self-referential as to verge on being a parody of Allen himself. Allen’s New York was always a wonderful romantic comedy illusion, but in the case of A Rainy Day in New York, it’s impossible to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy it. 

Rome Journal: Repeat Performance

Repeat Performance is a l947 film noir about a woman who gets to repeat a year again. It’s like Groundhog Day. That’s a little what Rome's like. The iconography is so strong and intractable that you’re instantaneously caught in a feeling of well-earned déjà vu. The art comes from distinguishing one past remembrance from the last while occasionally enjoying some overrides, which is to say, experiences that wipe out past prejudices created by the strong brew most visitors receive—and which in turn creates a seemingly impenetrable gauntlet of preconception. Everyone waxes about the beauty of Rome, but you may one day wake up and feel like you're trapped in an antiquity which is not just a street or piazza but more  a time warp that carries with it a welter of historical association. You can, for instance, literally go back to the spot where Caesar cried “Et Tu, Brut?,” the Largo di Torre Argentina. When you go to the Piazza Venetia with its famous wedding cake monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, it’s hard not to feel that history is following you around like one of the pickpockets you’re always warned to beware of. Rome is a like a colorful parent who’s left his or her imprint on you and who you both embrace and want to free yourself from, of course without having to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Knives Out

Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is a classic whodunit of the Agatha Christie Murder on the Orient Express variety. You have your cast of suspicious characters, all possessing, nefarious and incriminating motives. In this case the mystery takes place in a house rather than a train. The fact that the corpse discovered happens to be a mystery writer, Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) who's become fabulously rich due to his plots adds another dimension. You need a savvy detective in this genre and one with some easily identifiable traits. In this case Daniel Craig of James Bond fame plays the part of Benoit Blanc, who speaks with a big time Southern drawl. Jamie Lee Curtis, plays Linda Drysdale, Thrombley's eldest daughter and and yes suspect and a beleaguered one at that. Maria Cabrera (Ana de Armas), the fall guy or girl is the one figure of modest means and it looks like she’s going to take the rap for a crime she didn’t commit, even by way of accident. Knives Out is pure genre entertainment whose pleasure derives from the venerable history of murder and mayhem. Parsing the plot is a little like chess with all its famous moves and plays. It’s all derivative and one of the pleasures comes from seeing which one (s) are being employed and in what combination. Yet on another level the experience of seeing a movie like Knives Out is the reverse of getting into the seat of a self-driving car. Here from the very beginning, you take the wheel. You’re presented with a problem that has to be solved. And even if you aren't right in your analysis, there’s the pleasure of justice and poetic justice being served as the strands of plot (and it's a very ingenious one in this case) are woven together to a climax.

Happy New Year!

Enrico Caruso

Imagine suddenly finding yourself in a large auditorium. The curtain goes up and every seat is filled. There's a thunderous applause. You find yourself studying the perimeter of the round circle of luminescence in which you find yourself serendipitously placed. You've never been a performer. You don’t know anything about acting and have been given no lines to speak. You don’t play any instruments and are totally unable to carry a tune. This could be your chance to expatiate on any topic, but being given the opportunity to come forth with your grievances or remedies you find yourself tongue-tied. However, before you have a chance to pull yourself together, the tables turn. People start to speak out. It turns out the audience are the ones who will be doing the talking. You're there simply to listen to what they have to say—in this case about you. You begin to realize that the assembled crowd have all been part of your history. And now the familiar faces going back to childhood and leading right up to your adult years, all begin their reminiscences one after the other in chronological order. Some are funny and affectionate and others are sad, desperate and sometimes angry and at the end it's not you who take the bow, but they who you applaud, crying out in the end, “encore, encore.”