In 17th-century Holland, specifically in 1636, the tulip mania erupted, perhaps the first documented in the history of capitalism. A year earlier, a sale of forty bulbs fetched a sum of 100,000 guilders in one of the ‘hosting colleges," which were venues for auction. These were illegal but endemic, expressing a desire for speculative madness that led to rapid enrichment, to gardens with mirror games that illusorily multiplied quantity and floral beauty for visitors and buyers, increasing the fever of possession. But then, what happens to all speculative bubbles occurred (and consider that a ton of butter cost 100 guilders and eight fat pigs, 240 guilders, compared to a Semper Augustus – one, not two – sold for 6,000 guilders, while an average annual income was no more than 150 guilders). In February 1637, unable to command crazy prices any longer, fire sales, bankruptcies, and suicides began. In our time, flowers still support economies, particularly the Dutch one, and in Italy, the Ligurian one, with Sanremo as its capital. Suddenly, a bold Blanco arrives.
I recall that the Latins, to say white, used *blancus* and *albus*, because they had a different chromatic sensitivity, with the former indicating chalky and the latter polished marble. Blanco, on the other hand, sings in a way that means nothing to me, a non-accusation, which doesn't even make me say that I don't like it. I'm only just now learning of his adolescent existence, which was unknown to me, and would have remained so without the 'challenge of the flowers', which was not that of Barletta or the 'stolen bucket', but rather a malfunction of earphones, unknown to Tamagno and Pavarotti, but also to Nilla Pizzi and Achille Togliani, and even, I'm told, to Morandi, Al Bano, and Ranieri, who were on the same stage as Blanco. He kicks the flowers, destroys the flowerpots, and transforms a floral display of compositional genius into a suburra-style informal arrangement, a lesson in reverse compared to the magic of the Italian garden, which is a composition of ornamentation and geometry. A nasty chapter in the society of spectacle at all costs, a defeat for the pedagogy and psychology of the other as a source of the self, which would otherwise be barren.
It's not Narcissus, but vulgar narcissism.
KLESSIDRA | EDITED BY FRANCESCO GALLO MAZZEO
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