Piero Fornasetti

Date: 2012.04.21 | Category: Furnishings&Decor, Morbid Art | Response: 0

“So I dressed with remaining ceramics, furniture and objects;

so I placed a message in each, a small story, at times ironic and obviously wordless,

but audible to those who believe in poetry.”

Piero Fornasetti

Time ago, while I was watching the italian tv programme “Passpartout” I discovered the artist Piero Fornasetti. What caught my attention, as I am a lover of house-museums, was his strange and surreal house, full of fantastic stuff and unusual decoration, looking like a mix between a childish wunderkammer and a surreal labirinth. Later I found out that Piero Fornasetti has been a talented and eclectic illustrator and interior decorator, apart from being painter, sculptor, printer and creator of more than 11,000 items.

Born in Milan in 1913, Piero Fornasetti was basically a draughtsman, a fanciful and eclectic artificer of worlds made of paper. His art was mainly focused on the house, as a micro-universe and mirror of our inner world. He started as printer: he liked to print his drawings on cloths for foulards, ties and small pieces and decorative bronze and ceramic frieze objects. His personal and unique way of decoration is lead by an unrestrained immagination ranging from his classical roots and inspirations like Piero della Francesca, Giotto, pompeian and renassaince frescoes to metaphisycal and surrealist art, up to an all italian interpretation of pop art (like using the same woman’s face for his porcelain plates with hundreds of unique variations).

Fornasetti’s style was very far from the current 60′s-70′s taste, mainly rationalist and functional, and found a friend in Gio Ponti, who had similar tastes. He met the architect and industrial designer in the early ’40 and they started a friendship and several collaborations, like ‘The Lunar’ illustrated Calendar. He also started a series of decorative frescoes like the Palazzo Bo in Padova, the interior of the San Remo Casino, interiors for the Casa Lucano and took part, with his friend, in the interior decoration of the Andrea Doria ocean liner, designing the first class areas.

In 1979 Gio Ponti died and, the following year, Piero opened the shop “Themes and Variations” in London and started the first book project where he collected all his illustration and kept on his work until his death, happened in 1988. Today is Piero’s son, Barnaba, to perpetuate his father tradition by continuing to produce Fornasetti designs and reviving the most popular pieces, creating new ones, renewing hand crafted production in collaboration with industries which manufacture under license.

***

Scoprii Piero Fornasetti tempo fa, mentre guardavo Passepartout. La sua casa mi apparve come una wunderkammer infantile e un labirinto surreale, pieno di oggetti unici e strani. Fu così che conobbi l’arte di Piero Fornasetti, illustratore e decoratore d’interni oltre che pittore, scultore, stampatore di libri d’arte e creatore di oltre undicimila oggetti.

Nato a Milano nel 1913, Fornasetti è stato principalmente un disegnatore, eclettico e fantasioso inventore di mondi di carta. La sua arte è focalizzata sulla casa, vista come micro-universo e specchio dell’immaginazione più pura e segreta. Iniziò come stampatore, trasferendo su stoffe e sete i suoi motivi e anche su qualche oggetto d’arredamento in ceramica. La ricerca di Fornasetti si lascia guidare da un’immaginazione senza limiti e che spazia dalle basi fortemente classiche come Piero della Francesca, Giotto, le pitture pompeiane e gli affreschi rinascimentali fino alla pittura metafisica, al surrealismo e ad una interpretazione pop tutta italiana e ben più raffinata di quella statunitense come le variazioni dello stesso volto di donna (una cantante italiana degli inizi del ’900) tradotta in centinaia di modi diversi, utilizzando non già il colore, ma le forme.

L’interesse verso la creazione di oggetti ad esemplare unico e quindi la preferenza per l’artigianato, lo porta ad essere poco affine al gusto a lui contemporaneo ovvero quello razionalista e funzionale degli anni ’60-70′. Trova quindi in Gio Ponti una grande affinità artistica. Incontrato nei primi anni ’40, Gio Ponti sembra condividere con lui molte scelte estetiche. Negli stessi anni si dedica alla decorazione di alcuni ambienti come Palazzo Bo a Padova, gli interni del casinò di San Remo, la casa Lucano e, in collaborazione con l’amico, anche alcune cabine del transatlantico “Andrea Doria”.

La creatività prolifica e poliedrica che investe migliaia di oggetti e mobili, senza paragoni per fantasia e varietà, è attraversata da un linguaggio coerente e riconoscibile. La citazione e la parodia sono parte fondamentale della sua opera, che gioca con l’inverosimile senza tralasciare una velata ed elegante ironia. Le immagini di città impossibili con palazzi infiniti ricoprono paraventi e mobili, in modo da aumentarne la spazialità e confondere i confini dello spazio. Il mobile così non è più oggetto in una stanza, e come tale limite tangibile della realtà, ma continuo dell’immaginazione fantastica, illusioni labirintiche oltre le quali le pareti della stanza si annullano. Il trompe l‘œil è la tecnica principalmente usata per creare l’illusione della profondità e dello spazio infinito, uno spazio che ricorda Escher per il paradosso e Magritte per il nonsense.

Nel ’79 Gio Ponti muore e l’anno dopo Fornasetti apre un negozio a Londra chiamato “Temi e Variazioni”, si dedica all’edizione di un suo catalogo e continua il suo lavoro fino alla morte, avvenuta nel 1988. Oggi è il figlio Barnaba a portare avanti la tradizione del padre, continuando a produrre e a ravvivare i motivi Fornasetti.

source: fornasetti.com; mrpeacockstyle.blogspot.it; mixdesign.it

Art critic, Philippe Daverio, tours Piero Fornasetti’s Milan studio/apartment (originally designed in 1930) and chats with his son, Barnaba Fornasetti. The video is in Italian, but even if you don’t understand, this video offers a rare visual glimpse into the world of Fornasetti. You can see the chandelier made of shells and the red room, a room that contains only red book and book with the word “red” in their title.

Home:

Lina Cavalieri:

He is best known for his porcelain plates with unique variations of the same woman’s face. It’s funny and weird the obsession that Fornasetti had with this italian belle epoque singer and diva called Lina Cavalieri. I didn’t find anything about the reason why he chose her, probably there is no reason. Maybe he believed that she had the perfect face and so he thought to give to all his objects her face, the face he wanted objects to have if they were alive. His friend and partner Gio Ponti said about Piero: “He makes objects speak” and that’s probably what he was trying to do. It was a way to give beauty, to make them speak, to humanize them.

Fornitures:

The Fornasetti aesthetic research doesn’t conceive volumes. He is all focused in giving things a new face, literally or not. Using trompe l‘œil or just drawing deceitful cities on fornitures, it’s a way to give endless deepness to something flat and two-dimensional. Its aim is all about confusing fantasy and reality, mixing dimensions and that’s way Fornasetti’s home looks like a dreaming land. Fornitures are not considered as objects in a room, touchable limits of our reality, but as a passage through which fantasy can flow, just going through them.

Magazine cover illustration, sun chair in white, sun fabric, sun cube and a sun chair in gold.

Roman Foot umbrella stand,wallpaper, umbrella stands, lacquer trays, Adam (of Adam & Eve) plates—6 shown from a set of 12.

cd holder, butterfly lamp and lamp holder

Drawings and paintings:

Fornasetti was an eccentric illustrator. He took the lesson of the absurd from surrealism and melted it with the nonsense and irony.

Villa Cimbrone, Ravello

Date: 2012.04.16 | Category: Around, Gardens, Photodiary | Response: 0

Ravello seems to be the place where romantic and intellectual english men found the peace long yearned and sought after the wanderings of the Grand Tour. Villa Cimbrone, along with the other Villa Rufolo, it’s one of these places. The Villa belonged to aristocratic families since 14th century and until the first half of the 19th century, when it was abandoned and left in decay.

At the end of the 19th century, the Englishman and rich banker Ernest William Beckett (1856-1917), 2nd Lord Grimthorpe, visited the Villa and fell hopelessly in love with the place and in 1904 he bought part of it. He was visiting Amalfi’s coast in order to recover himself from the deep depression that afflicted him following the loss of his beloved wife Lucy Lee, who passed away at the age of just 28 while giving birth to his only son. Infact this part of Italy had earned an excellent reputation among foreigners for being a place to rediscover one’s soul and to regain the tranquillity for which they yearned.

Lord Grimthorpe decided to revive the Villa and make it : “the most beautiful place in the world”. The garden was partially redesigned, although its form was to a large extent determined by certain pre-existing elements, in particular the central path today called “The Avenue of Immensity” . Characterized by the aesthetic concepts of English architects and landscapers such as Harold Peto, Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, it was expertly organized, with various “episodes” and trails branching off from the central path that leads from the monumental entrance to the panoramic viewpoint.

Among the rich and varied native and exotic plants, in a delightful union between English landscaping and the tradition of Italian gardens, a large number of splendid decorative elements were added: fountains, nymphaea, small temples, pavilions and stone and bronze statues. They were the result of the strong influence of classical literature and the reinterpretation of the “Roman villa”. Trees and plants for the flowerbeds were chosen by the English botanist Vita Sackville West.

Villa Cimbrone often hosted gatherings of the prestigious Bloomsbury Group and the long central path, in May 1880, provided the backdrop to the famous horse ride by Cosima and Richard Wagner: “the view from there, for me, is the most beautiful of all”.

source: villacimbrone.com

The sixteenth century doorway

The cloister, a graceful little courtyard in an Arabian – Sicilian – Norman style.

The Villa is decorated by quotations on the walls like this one, by Terenzio.

Camelia tree

The Avenue of Immensity, thickly covered initially by climbing of unusual length, which was created in the early decades of the XVIIth century.

wisteria pergola

The Temple of Ceres, goddess of the Harvests, marks the end of the avenue and the entrance to the Terrace of Infinity.

The Terrace of Infinity, an incomparable natural balcony adorned with eighteenth century marble busts.

The Seat of Mercury, a XVIIIth century bronze copy of “Hermes at rest”, a statue from the school of Lisippo. To one side, as an invitation to pause,  an inscription in English erroneously attributed to the writer and poet D.H.Lawrence who found such inspiration here for his works, while we know today that the quotation is from Catullus: “Lost to the world of which I desire no part, I sit alone and speak to my heart, satisfied with my little corner of the world, content to feel no more sadness for death.”

The Rose Terrace. Here, within an arabesque balustrade, mindful of an old and absolutely English badminton court, in geometric flowerbeds, from May to October, ancient varieties of beautiful, scented French and English roses flower.

In the middle stands a light stone meridian; on the outer edges, four ornamental statues: Flora, goddess of Flowers and Spring, Leda with Swan, and two wrestlers, Damosseno and Greucante.

Flora, goddess of Flowers and Spring

David, a bronze statue produced by the Neapolitan sculptor Gioacchino Varlese, in imitation of the one by Verrocchio kept at the national museum in Florence.

Near the statue of Greucante, a poetic inscription by the Persian Omar Khayyam: “Oh moon of my delight which knows no decline, the moon in the sky is rising once more, thus, as it rises again in future, peeping through this very garden, it shall seek us in vain.”

The end of the visit will lead you to an open pavilion, called Tea-room. The esoteric connotations, much in vogue at the beginning of the last century, are clear, particularly in the choice and layout of the architectural elements. This is another place, conceived as a space to be lived in close harmony with the surrounding nature, which often saw representatives of the Bloomsbury Group of rebellious intellectuals reunited.

The Tea room is preceded by a splendid Italian garden, with rich flowerbeds of ancient roses and, in the centre, a fine marble fountain with cupids and various figures in relief.

In the area before the pavillion we can see an old stone well, four beautiful columns from roman times, carved in the middle ages with multiple figures in relief and two elegant bronze deer.

A representation of David by Donatello, beside the Tea room.

A shell shop in Amalfi

Date: 2012.04.13 | Category: Around, Furnishings&Decor, Wunderkammer | Response: 0

Incredible how sometimes life is.

I found this shop in Amalfi and it was the same shop I stopped by about 10 years ago, when I visited for the first time this city. It sells only sea-things, from shell to taxidermy fishes and everything is made of shells.

The religious statues used as decoration is a typical southern Italy feature and makes this place even more beautiful for me.

Everybody ashamed of loving pop: 90′s music

Date: 2012.04.10 | Category: Bizarre Icon, Fashion, Inspiration | Response: 0

Many times I tried to choose a period when people used to dress the worst way possible, a period when bad taste was the rule, but I always ended up thinking that we can’t choose one because first, fashion is a convention and nothing is beautiful or ugly at all and, second, what now we consider trash and old fashioned, is strongly influenced by what is fashionable today.

Then happens the unexpected: something that once was considered orrible and totally out of fashion, somehow starts to be worn by a few outsiders and then become popular. Things that were considered so orrible that no one even dared to mention and then, in a moment, they turn unpredictably in something cool. Nothing strage as we know that fashion lives of cycles and recycles.

This is what happening lately for the 90′s pop icon look. The stupid and frilly and plastic world that everyone hates and want to forget because it’s strictly connected to our stupid teenage period, is now making its way into fashion statements. So why everybody is ashamed to admit they like pop?

Everyone who, in the 90′s was a teen, has been a victim of pop industry, not only for buying plastic gadget and merchadise of all the boy-girl bands of the moment, but also for buying their album, which is worse. And nothing matters if, a few months later, one was listening to Marylin Manson, believing in a sort of redemption, as he was a fruit of music industry too, but with a darker make up. The sad thing was that also non-pop musician like Kurt Cobain or Bjork, ended up to be considered as pop because Success mechanism can’t prescind from mass.

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Eleggere un periodo come il peggiore in fatto di buon gusto è impossibile, primo perché la moda è una convenzione e perciò non c’è un bello o un brutto in assoluto e secondo perché ciò che oggi riteniamo orribile e totalmente fuori moda dipende ovviamente da ciò che oggi va di moda.

C’è poi un momento in cui, ciò che per anni è ritenuto orribile e indegno, preso in giro e scansato come la peste, diventa incomprensibilmente “cool”. C’è un momento in cui, alcune cose escono dalla spazzatura in cui erano state confinate dai “critici del buon gusto” e cominciano a riapparire, prima indossate da qualche outsider e poi sempre più diffuse, fino a diventare commerciali. E non c’è da meravigliarsi di questo, perché la moda vive sul riciclo e vive di cicli.

E poiché le vie del gusto sono infinite, ultimamente (in realtà già dall’anno scorso, come avevo scritto in questo post) quello che sta subendo questo effetto di rivalutazione è quel modo di vestire tipico delle icone pop degli anni ’90 e il loro stupido, colorato, appiccicoso mondo che ci ricorda il nostro periodo adolescente, ovvero quello che tutti vogliono dimenticare. Ma questa è la realtà e allora perché vergognarsi di dire che ascoltavamo le Spice Girls? Perché vergognarsi del pop?

Tutti quelli che negli anni ’90 erano adolescenti sono stati vittima, chi più chi meno, dell’industria del pop, comprando non solo i quintali di plasticosi gadget e merchandising delle varie band, ma anche (ciò che è peggio) i loro dischi. Poco contava che, nel giro di pochi mesi, uno si convertisse al più diabolico Marylin Manson per riscattarsi, perché anche lui era, in fondo, un prodotto dell’industria discografica, solo con un altro trucco. E anche chi non era pop, come Kurt Cobain o Bjork, alla fine finiva per esserlo, semplicemente perché il tritacarne del successo non può prescindere dalla massa.

images sources: lastfm.it; tumblr

1)The outsiders

The outsiders are the real 90′s girl who created new fashion languages not used before like Madonna or Gwen Stefani and Bjork, who also shared the same hairdo. Gwen Stefani was the lead vocalist for the band NoDoubt and she used to wear awful outfits, dyeing her hair of blue or pink or just styling with intricate pigtails and braid hairdo. She also loved fluffy bras, fake tattoos, pvc skirts, plastic wedged shoes and her most iconic thing: bindi face jewelry.

the bindi mania of Gwen Stefani

Face jewelry on the Fall 2012 runways of (clockwise from top left) Miu Miu, Ashish, Chanel, and Jeremy Scott.

MiuMiu and Chanel

Bjork:

Madonna:

here for more Madonna’s 90s look

2) The trashy girl

The english girl band Spice Girls sums all the bad taste of 90′s era. Slutty and trashy outfits made of chunky wedges or stiletto heels, bell-bottoms or baggy pants, cropped tops, leopard or camouflage prints, velvet, satin and sequinned dresses, mini leather skirts and feathered boa. A universe that Jeremy Scott used for his last fall/winter collection.

Shampoo:

Another english girl band, The Shampoo, a mix of trash and kinderwhore style, mixed with a lolitesque fake innocence look made of childish print on tshirts, satin dresses and shorts all in a nauseous pastel colours.

3) Kinderwhore

Popularized by Courtney Love, the lead singer of the band Hole, the kinderwhore look consists of of torn, ripped tight or low-cut babydoll dresses or nighties, heavy makeup, and leather boots or Mary–Jane shoes of various colors. Basically it’s a girl who want to dress in a childish way, resulting a bit dishevelled and messy. Meadham Kirchoff based all this spring summer collection on this kind of look.

Courtney with Drew Barrymore, another hit girl in the 90′s

5)Ghetto girl

For the first time in the 90′s started to appear r&b girls band like TLC and Salt&Pepa (even if they were born in the 80′s). Sporty look and heavy make up were their features along with a lot of chunky jewelry.

Aaliyah:

San Pietro, Roma

Date: 2012.04.08 | Category: Morbid Art, My own private Rome, Photodiary, Rome, Wunderkammer | Response: 0

The centre of catholic religion: Saint Peter in Rome, the biggest church of the world. As my reserch on Godliness is becoming more elaborate, I couldn’t wait any longer to visit the place considered as one of holiest sites in the world. I’ve been to S. Peter a lot of times and everytime the huge and imposing building and the richness of decoration impress me. It’s like all the holiness is concentrated here.  Happy Easter.

Giovanni XXIII’s spoil

Gianlorenzo Bernini’s baldacchino