“I have carefully considered this. ”Not to laugh at human actions, nor to weep, nor to detest them, but to understand them." This is from Baruch Spinoza, who since 1670 advised against laughing at human actions, nor weeping over them, nor detesting them, but understanding them. I apply this to Hermann Nitsch (and I always apply it, to everything, to the positive and the negative); certainly, there is always room for error or interpretative weakness, but that is to be expected. What is certain is that the visual arts, after the historical avant-gardes, Cubist, and Dadaist movements, cannot be critically reflected upon, nor clinically analysed, with the principle of beauty and ugliness, horizontal or vertical, monofocal or multifocal, but rather with the principle of comprehension, first (and therefore much more than apprehension) and then with the derived application of emotion, pleasure, and displeasure. I have been saying this since someone asked me the cunning question about Piero Manzoni's artist's shit, thinking they would make a good impression... but they did not.
I come to Nitsch. My physical, emotional, linguistic, philosophical (…yes, philosophical…) immersion took place in the Nitsch Museum of Beppe Morra in Naples; it was a upheaval, a descent into hell but then an ascent to see the stars again. A departure from the gut, from physical feeling, in a succession of blood, blood, blood, made of outcomes of cathartic actions, of “horrifying” ritual slaughters, from a post-theatre of madness, in a continuum, which is a descent and loss into the enigma of death. An abyssal cleansing, bordering on good and evil and beyond, surpassing them, in a festival of the etymological sacred, to then sniff, sniff, sniff, touch, touch, touch and see, see, see. What can I say… a deep mirror of all of ourselves, readers of Masoch, De Sade, but also of Calasso and Santillana. Goodbye H.N. But stay with us!
KLESSIDRA | EDITED BY FRANCESCO GALLO MAZZEO
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