Manhattan is an island. And no one can deny that, because geography says so. It is the heart of the Big Apple. Until recently, all eyes in the world were on it; now, a little less so. But not because it has diminished, but because others aspire to be its equal, or to surpass it. But until now, no one has succeeded (just like the Venice Biennale, which was there and has remained there, number one). All this time, from the Second World War until today, despite pitfalls and detractors, what has happened: it is called New York and nothing else. Action Painting, Pop, Fluxus, it was born and grew there, then went out into the wider world. What would the Everything, Without Pollock, Oldenburg, Maciunas, it would be incomplete. It's true, the map has expanded, and that's good, because it means that the dialect it has become Language And the particular, the general. Revolutionary artistic births have diminished, it's true, due to the stupor that is gripping us all, straight lines have become zig-zags, the map has faded and wandering has multiplied.
I recall that Giotto, in that era, between the new and the old, chose the ancient; I don't say this as a method, but as an example to remember. In this hot summer, a prelude to fiery weather and, with no spring or autumn and little winter, Claes Oldenburg has died, inventor of a beautiful, pleasant, metaphysical daily life, making an elegy for current events and objects. He is a protagonist of pop, with his antenna in consumer society, in the sclerosis of all languages. others (a sort of neo-impressionism and expressionism, together). Merging the high with the low, the back with the front, in a new baroque, of the disposable, in a flow of gossip columns, in sculptures, paintings, performances, in the wake of Duchamp and Dubuffet, but above all of himself, in the company of Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, J. Johns. A nice merry-go-round. A real whirl!
KLESSIDRA | EDITED BY FRANCESCO GALLO MAZZEO
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