Writing Assignment 10 - Solo Trip to Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

Katie W, Carolyn, Maria, Shannon and I decided to head down to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna for our museum trip the other day. I'm really not a fan of modern art, but getting this experience wouldn't hurt, and maybe Italy's modern art would make more sense than what I'm used to.

Nope.

When you first walk in, you walk into single room full of artwork. Modern artwork. Modern artwork, most of which I just don't understand. There were a few that were interesting, like a painting of a newspaper and shoes, but many I just stood there, going, "Huh?" One of pieces was a bunch of what looked like cotton balls glued together in a circle behind a piece of glass.

One artist really caught my attention, and though I didn't get much of his work, I did spend a good deal of time staring at them, trying to figure them out. Leoncillo Leonardi (1915-1968) had four scuptures around the second room. Three of them were interesting and fun to look at. Katie said one of them even looked like a Picasso painting in 3D as a sculpture. As little as my knowledge of art is, I do know who Picasso is and what his artwork (kind of) looks like, and I agree.

Leoncillo Leonardi, Bombardamento notturno, 1954

The fourth sculpture, however, was absolutely fascinating. It depicted Saint Sebastian, chained to a pole and mortally wounded, yet in a very... odd way. When first glancing at this statue, all five of us thought it was a woman who was chained up. It was only after I read the title of the piece that I realized it was a sculpture of a (very famous) man. His head is tilted back and his hair is flowing. From a certain angle, it looks like he has breasts. Finally, if you get close enough, you can see that his toenails and fingernails are painted an unnatural pink color, as if he got a manicure/pedicure. Was Leonardi trying to effeminate Saint Sebastian?

Leoncillo Leonardi, San Sabastiano, 1939

 Luckily for me, those two front rooms were really the only modern/makes-no-sense pieces from within the last 70 years or so. The rest of the museum contained modern artwork from the 19th and early 20th centuries, some of which I actually recognized! (It finally pays to be friends with almost all art majors at school...) Check plus on me for not writing down the name of this piece (and I can't zoom in enough to see the title), but it is a Vincent Van Gogh piece! There was another one right next to this one. I really like his works, especially Starry Night (clearly, my purse does have a copy of that painting on it).

Another piece I found puzzling was a piece by Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860-1932). It showed a slew of dead bodies along a coast line, with the goddess Diana standing alone, looking off into the distance. The bodies included men, women, children, even a few animals (a tiger and a bull among them). These humans, according to the title, are slaves. Diana isn't depicted as a human-like figure, she's shown as a famous statue that we've already seen. What's odd is that Diana is the goddess of fertility (in this painting, at least), which one can associate with continuing life, but she is surrounded by dead bodies. It's a very eerie and disturbing painting, and it's a terribly depressing scene. We spent a good time debating what it could mean.

Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Diana di efeso e gli schiavi, (1898-1899)

Even though museums of art are never that exciting to me, I enjoyed myself here and loved looking at all the artwork!