{"id":16676,"date":"2014-09-21T11:01:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-21T09:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/litalia-in-croce-2\/"},"modified":"2015-10-08T15:54:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T13:54:55","slug":"litalia-in-croce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/litalia-in-croce\/","title":{"rendered":"L\u2018Italia in croce"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first idea of \u201cL\u2018italia in Croce\u201c dates back to 1976, year of the above drawing. The project at that moment wasn\u2018t realized for the tricky policy situation of those years<\/em><\/p>\n

Italy needs a dynamic, young political class, one that\u00a0is aware of the changes that this ever-shifting time throws at us.\u00a0A political class that will value and honour creativity and work.\u00a0A political class that, instead of spending its time blabbing away, will come out with plans that will help our country and will make it progress into the future to advantageously face the huge competition of the other countries of the world.\u00a0A political class that will stop wasting its energies in fruitless mutual attacks.\u00a0A political class that will come up with big plans and will accomplish them, giving the country the wellbeing\u00a0it deserves and its youth the work they are entitled to have.\u00a0A political class that is capable of reforming the Italian schooling system and making it instrumental to giving young people the skills they need to fit in with the complexity of this day and age.\u00a0I want to raise a debate between the \u201chealthy\u201d figures of the Italian public and non-public life, trying to keep out the \u201cmediocrities\u201c, the hot-air merchants and the old party fighters, the conformists and all those whose inactivity, self-righteousness, selfishness and conservatism have \u201ccrucified\u201d our country\u201c.\u00a0Gaetano Pesce, January 2011<\/p>\n

from Murray Moss to Gaetano Pesce\u00a0<\/strong>April 19th 2011<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Dear Gaetano,\u00a0I wanted to write to you (please excuse this email rather than hand written\u2026.)\u00a0to tell you how moved I was\u00a0by L\u2018Italia in Croce.\u00a0I wept.\u00a0It is so rare when a work needs no explanation \u2013 that\u00a0a powerful image, so clear and shockingly articulate\u00a0in its metaphor \u2013 can convey profound ideas and become\u00a0a call to action, to change,\u00a0to revolution.\u00a0And, strangely, it was also\u00a0so beautiful.\u00a0Poor Italy, writhing on the Cross in such human agony, with grace and yet obvious disappointment \u2013 dying for our sins.\u00a0And the Priest almost ready to read to us, again, perhaps this time not with futility, the Sermon \u2013 the Constitution.\u00a0I hired as a driver in Milan\u00a0a student \u2013 Federico \u2013 who\u00a0is 22 years old and finishing his studies in Political Science. I hired him last year as well.\u00a0He has NO interest\u00a0in \u201cdesign\u201c, and is an angry young man. In the car,\u00a0we talk, and he told me he and his friends were so angry and desperate about their country, and depressed, that he was hoping to get a job in another country \u2013 to leave Italy.\u00a0I invited him to go with me\u00a0to see L\u2018Italia in Croce.\u00a0His mouth fell open \u2013 he read the wall text and shook his head and was amazed.\u00a0You spoke for him \u2013 you made visual what he and his friends were feeling and thinking.\u00a0He had never heard of you.\u00a0He didn\u2018t know this was possible, or allowed.\u00a0Thank you for being such\u00a0a Patriot to Italy, which we all love and wish to prosper.\u00a0You are wonderful.
\nLove, Murray<\/p>\n

I first encountered my friend Gaetano Pesce\u2018s \u201cvoice\u201c nearly forty years ago, when as a young man I visited Emilio Ambasz\u2018s remarkable exhibition, \u201cItaly: The New Domestic Landscape\u201c, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.\u00a0In the catalogue to this exhibition, Gaetano\u2018s installation \u2013 a project involving the discovery\u00a0of a small subterranean city, belonging to the epoch known as \u201cThe Period of the Great Contaminations\u201c – is the sole entry in the chapter titled, \u201cDesign as Commentary\u201c. In his description of this futuristic evaluation of our own epoch, Gaetano articulates a list of \u201cmotivations\u201c that lead to the establishment of this architectural typology, including \u201csymbolism as\u00a0a refuge\u201c and \u201cthe architect\u00a0as adversary\u201c.\u00a0Years later, in 1995, in his intervention \u201cTemporanea\u201c, where he installed his remarkable and poignant object, \u201cUn vaso (goto?<\/span>) per Venezia\u201c at the Caff\u00e8 Florian in Piazza St. Marco during the time of the Biennale, again Gaetano created his own chapter on \u201cDesign as Commentary\u201c; the vessel, which sadly depicts the Lion\u00a0of Venice as The Pink Panther, is adorned with the artist\u2018s written hopes for his beloved city: \u201cA toast to Venice…so that she become a focus of modern life, modern behaviour, progress, services, joys, optimism, discoveries, trust in the future, courage, openness to the culture of the contemporary world….and not a place of prejudice, protection, conservatism, immobility, soporific locution, museum-cult of the past, reactionary example, hopeless venue for future generations, full of torpor, provincialism, mute and nostalgic enterprises…\u201c.\u00a0And here we are once again. Years later. He will not stop. (Will he stop if we listen?<\/span> if we DO SOMETHING?<\/span>).\u00a0In this island of Italian Culture on the Island of Manhattan, Gaetano places in our midst his \u201cL\u2018Italia in Croce\u201c.\u00a0It is clear and loud (\u201cBoom!\u201c), this 2000 year-old message of suffering and sacrifice and despair, and yet perhaps the most universal, articulate, and long-lasting signifier\u00a0of a hopeful metamorphosis.\u00a0Please everyone understand that Gaetano is not (and never has been) the \u201carchitect as adversary\u201c, as he indirectly characterized himself (?<\/span>) in his catalogue description of the 1972 MoMA exhibition I first mentioned. (To me) Gaetano \u2013 over and over again \u2013 is quite the opposite: he is a shepherd amongst us.\u00a0His Symbol is The Question Mark \u2013 for some more tortuous than the Cross.\u00a0Thank you, Gaetano,\u00a0for Caring.\u00a0Thank you, Sir, for your Bravery.\u00a0Thank you, Sir, for Asking.\u00a0With love and gratitude,
\nMurray Moss<\/p>\n