PERFORMANCE:Elisabetta Catalano,Tra Immagine e Performance

The society depicted by Elisabetta Catalano is rooted in artistic and cultural production and is comprised of artists, intellectuals, poets and the works that their faces reflect. It is the portrait of a free community of thought and creation whose working method is not the result of a cold sociological vision, but is actually based upon participation and the sharing of creative processes.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MAXXI Archive

Many artists used Catalano’s images in order to produce works of art. In particular, the ‘70s saw Catalano produce photographic sequences, which were often born or reconstructed in her studio, in order to document the actions and performances of various artists. At the heart of the exhibition “Elisabetta Catalano Tra immagine e performance” are the performances of: Joseph Beuys “Scultura invisibile” (1973), Fabio Mauri “Europa bombardata” (1978) Vettor Pisani “Lo scorrevole” (1972) and Cesare Tacchi “Painting” (1972), recounted through photos that were destined to become iconic images of the performance itself. A dual tribute, therefore: to one of the great post-war Italian photographers, a testimony through her elegant and sensitive lens to a generation of artists and intellectuals and, at the same time, to the history of performance art. The exhibition features slides, color photos, vintage prints, correspondence and proofs, documents recounting the complexity of the creative process. Joseph Beuys. Invisible sculpture: In 1973, Joseph Beuyshad Elisabetta Catalano take a photo of himself while holding something in his hands and creating an Invisible Sculpture. Elisabetta Catalano makes the figure of the artist emerge from the dark background in order to offer his invisible gift, his leg bent so as to give the impression of movement. In fact, this case is very different from the others under scrutiny here: Joseph Beuys, while in Rome for the great interdisciplinary event called “Contemporanea”, went to Elisabetta Catalano’s studio for a portrait and came up with the idea for the performance on the spot. Beuys was accompanied by his gallerist Lucio Amelio, collector Pasquale Trisorio and Graziella Lonardi, founder of the association Incontri Internazionali d’Arte. Fabio Mauri. Europa bombardata: This action was supposed to take place in the Santa Lucia church of Bologna, within the framework of Metafisica del quotidiano, but this was not possible due various reasons, including political ones. The artist wanted to avail herself of the church, which had served as the gym of Liceo Galvani, namely the school Fabio Mauri himself had attended, to recreate various events that had taken place under Fascism and Nazism, including a party organised by the German high society of the ‘30s. The aim was to recreate a historical memory of the Fascist period through fragments of stolen memories such as carpets, armchairs and a pair of boxing gloves. The project envisaged using a certain corner of the church that had already been used as a ceramic laboratory and bore resemblance to Buchenwald’s crematoriums (although the artist finally decided not to use this area owing to its having been repainted in silver and gold. Building upon this supposedly very complex project, Elisabetta Catalano produced a photographic sequence in her Roman studio with model Danka Schröder posing as Young Germany, thereby creating one her most iconic, famous and published photos. Cesare Tacchi. Painting: 1968 saw Cesare Tacchi present Cancellazione d’artista, a radical gesture that shocked bystanders, at Plinio De Martiis’ La Tartaruga gallery. Tacchi, who had already tried to understand how to render the deletion process reversible in a project dating back to 1968, carried out a closed-door performance in Elisabetta Catalano’s studio in 1972. During said performance, he had his image re-emerge from behind a transparent sheet of glass. Two works were born out of this collaboration: in Autoritratto, Tacchi holds a glass panel shaped like a painting. The picture shows the artist’s torso, whereas the translucent panel only frames the artist’s face, under which the title is written. Painting (initially called Action painting), on the other hand, consists of a backwards sequence of 24 shots in which Tacchi is shown standing behind the painted glass that covered everything but his hands in the first picture and reversing the deletion process. Catalano shows the artist while he removes every last patch of paint and goes back to the initial position. Vettor Pisani Lo Scorrevole:  In 1970, Vettor Pisani started working on the Scorrevole (of which he presented different versions), a work born out of the analysis of Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass. However, there is a big difference with Duchamp’s female hanged body: in the photos that Elisabetta Catalano took for Pisani, the body is not hung, the rope is horizontal rather than vertical, and the feet touch the ground. The body is slightly suspended, but it also composed, and shows no sign of pain. Pisani based his composition on ceremonial rituality: the emotionless body is naked, and the woman tied to the Scorrevole is a reference to the tragedy of existence as the meaning of life. The naked body represents one’s relationship with their feminine side, psyche and soul, which leaves the body as a result of an esoteric initiation ritual. Pisani’s sister was the one to interpret the female character on the occasion of the 1972 edition of Documenta. The 1972 sequence shot in Catalano’s studio with model Monica Strebel is called Esperimento and was later published in a book. The clock plays a central role, as it is a reference to the theme of destiny: space (the horizontal track) and time (the clock) are the coordinates in which our lives are anchored.

 Info: Curator: Enrico Ponis, MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Via Guido Reni 4A, Rome, Duration: 3/4-22/12/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.maxxi.art