A display of exhibition, a pacifist speech, an afternoon of games, a misadventure of the imagination; it’s a happening entrusted solely to objects.
Words CARLA MONTEFORTE
Of an artist who lived only a handful of years, thirty-three to be exact, who lived his life recklessly among beautiful women, motorcycles, in a Rome of the early sixties that would create the art district and the school of Piazza del Popolo, with friends like Kounellis, Schifano, Mattiacci, Penone, Tacchi, Ceroli, and masters like Toti Scialoja; of an artist who retrieved agricultural tools, ruins in fields, women’s lips, and the back of a black woman, using raffia, synthetic materials, iron, and bitumen; who had himself photographed as a model playing among shepherd’s staves, large rakes, and clods of earth, and who swung on fake vines and within a sea cut into slices; in short, of such an artist who at one point asked his father to destroy many of his works, and who worked in a fake workshop where only a few friends actually had access; of an artist who, to support himself in his studies and the sweet life of those years, chose to work as a graphic designer and illustrator at Lodolo Film, one of those advertising agencies that made history in animation and certain television, like Pagot; and who seems to have been a set designer and also an actor; well, of such an artist, whose true major exhibitions came immediately on the day after his death, it would seem quite unlikely today to propose something new, truly unprecedented and decisive to the world of art.
And yet our distracted, compulsive, and scatterbrained time, rapacious and ultimately with a short memory. Pascali explored the relationship between sculpture and stage elements and juxtaposed sculpture and everyday objects. He created works that from afar appear to be ready-mades, but upon closer inspection reveal themselves to be made from reclaimed materials. He questioned the potential of a ‘fake’ or ‘simulated’ sculpture. He titled the works as if they were solid bodies, winking at his audience, in turn aware that they were empty volumes. He used natural elements like earth and water along with construction materials like asbestos, and divided his seas and fields into modular units. He brought new consumer products and synthetic fabrics into the studio to create animals, traps, and bridges. And while the complexity of his approach to sculpture is indisputable, the factor that makes his artistic practice so brilliant and original is another. Pascali is an artist always relevant because he was an ‘exhibitionist’.
Pascali understood that post-war artists had to devote as much energy to exhibition activities as they did to refining works in the studio. Being an exhibitionist meant, first and foremost, creating engaging environments with one’s works, albeit temporary, environments that were more than the sum of their parts. Secondly, the exhibitionist had to procure as many exhibition opportunities as possible and then take control of them. Thirdly, the exhibitionist recognized the importance of having images of the exhibition before and after installation. Fourth, the exhibitionist had to infuse new life into his work for each exhibition, and above all, he had to radically change his approach to the realization of each exhibition project. All these elements are traceable in Pascali’s dazzling career.
Pascali, among the greatest exponents of post-war Italian arte povera, as seen in the many photos portraying him, activates his works, speaks to us, plays with us, enters them, uses them as stage props, amulets that ferry him into another realm and context, where he can explore a different way of being himself, or rather a facet of his self: missiles, costumes, cylinders, stylized shapes, nets, traps, pedestals, revolvers, huge sections of animals, dinosaur bones.
Pascali’s art was indeed arte povera, but it was full of desire, energy, and a desire to express oneself, to show oneself. A desire to laugh out loud, at everything. That lust for life that exploded like a long wave in post-war ItalyHe was bored at school. Today we might say ADHD, neuroatypical; once it was called being an artist, if one could. Poor academic results led him down the path of set design, and thus of a manual, artisanal, physical knowledge. During classes, he would draw submarines, and then when he got home, he would build them, thus abandoning scientific studies. In 1955, at the age of twenty, he moved from Puglia to Rome to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, particularly following the lessons of Toti Scialoja and beginning to experiment with materials, then as a student moving from set design to the world of advertising in all its forms, from copywriting to set design, from graphic design to photography and acting. His creativity found the most fertile ground to flourish in the years of economic boom.
Then in 1964, pop art burst onto the scene in Italy with the so-called “Biennale of the Americans,” which saw protagonists like Jasper Johns, Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and was won by Robert Rauschenberg. The 32nd Art Biennale sparked outrage and indignation and, like all rebellious children, Pascali – then 29 years old – rode these boring and excessive adult feelings, using them as fuel to develop his own personal pop art. After an initial moment of crisis and confusion, during which disorder, unexpectedness, uncertainty, and misunderstandings burst into his path, leading him to destroy almost all the works he had created up to that point, in 1965 he organized his first solo exhibition at the La Tartaruga Gallery in Rome. The exhibition featured works full of humor (such as “The Colosseum,” “Ruins in a Field,” “Close-up of Lips”), yet at the same time characterized by extreme formal precision (such as “The Pregnant Woman” or “Motherhood,” or “Little Theater”), capable of surpassing pop art itself from an artistic realization standpoint. Pascali changes, reinvents himself, every trace of provincialism disappears, and he becomes one of the most admired and well-known figures in Rome. Like a scolded child, he mocks authority, prejudices, and complexity for its own sake, used as a tool for gatekeeping. In the span of four years, he gives life to numerous exhibitions (four and a half “collected” in the Podium and recreated for the first time), riding on a wave of unbridled, joyful, irreverent creativity. He experiments with everything, classic and innovative materials, natural and industrial, from wood to Eternit, from earth to synthetic fur, from straw to plastic, through steel wool and canvas, from vinavil to hair lacquer. The extensive ground floor of the Podium is dedicated to the use of materials, which, in addition to Pascali’s works, includes a rich collection of contemporary magazines on the subject. This production is always populated by irony, the desire to mock and be mocked. Pascali ranges between metamorphoses, distant places, transforming waste into precious objects, perhaps because he perpetually moves on the line of this ambiguity and a certain complicity with his audience (just think of the “Seta Bachi” of 1968, or “1 cubic meter of earth” of 1967): advertisements, trinkets, cigarette ash, everything can become art if taken in hand by a magician, by a wise illusionist.
His perfect reproductions of weapons from 1965 (such as “Self-propelled cannon” or “Great NaturA. Morta,” “Peace Dove” missile, various machine guns) are famous, so much so that while transporting them to Gian Enzo Sperone’s gallery in Turin in 1966, he was stopped by the police, who mistook the cannon, which he was towing, for a real weapon. Reality always surpasses fiction, and Pascali spent a lot of time explaining to law enforcement – unlike Magritte – that yes, that was a cannon, in every respect, but it was harmless because at the same time, it was only a sculpture. This obsession with weapons recalls that of children for toy soldiers. “Who said that play erases the tragedy of existence? When you are in the game, you have to play, and necessity is not freedom,” says Anna Paparatti, a friend of Pascali’s, who took him to see a performance by the Living Theatre that changed his life, once again, bringing him closer to performance art. Indeed, Pascali began to increasingly use his objects in a performative manner, developing more consciously what he already did during carousel shows. Or he imitates them, assumes their appearance, as in the photo taken by Ugo Mulas for L’Uomo Vogue, in which he is portrayed while doing “the candle,” in sandals, alongside “Easel,” a work from 1968. The sandals themselves are a fundamental detail because Pascali’s art is the art of a man who wants to free himself from social and existential constraints, both internal and external to his feelings. Pascali, in fact, does not at all fit the stereotype of the artist withdrawn into himself, withdrawn into his studio. He is an exhibitionist, as emphasized by Godfrey himself and as demonstrated by the magnificent collection of photos taken by some of the greatest photographers of the time, collected in the South gallery – Claudio Abate, Andrea Taverna, as well as Mulas himself: Pascali plowing under his “Blue Widow” (1968) – a huge spider made of blue hair; Pascali emerging from a piece of “Ruins in a Field” (1964), with a little cloud on his head; Pascali riding his missile; Pascali with a sort of strap-on with a missile-penis in front of “The Arabian Phoenix”; Pascali “in Trap”; Pascali dressed in a raffia costume reminiscent of some Zulu disguises, and so on and so forth, one could never tire of it. In Pascali’s art, there seems to resonate a warning about the seriousness of play, the impossibility of breaking its rules, under penalty of destroying the world itself. When children pretend, they are actually deadly serious. To play, and to derive the greatest satisfaction from play, as from any work of fiction, an indiscriminate and totalizing act of faith is absolutely fundamental. One must believe in it blindly, at any cost. Not surprisingly, we play to challenge ourselves, which allows us to acquire skills, to test ourselves and adapt, which is why playing often implies struggle with others, travel, adventure. And to play, rules and constraints are fundamental because they are the main tool for defining a context.
A maniacal attention to creating an environment, an atmosphere, his exhibitions were never simple selections of individual works side by side, but everything stemmed from the creation of a space emerged from the relationship between the parts and their meanings. The importance of the exhibition is its life, which is why it was crucial for Pascali to obtain as many exhibition opportunities as possible because with each occasion the context changes, and thus also the possibility of making art, just like in architecture if one starts to compose with this kind of sensitivity. Once the space was obtained, for Pascali, it was crucial to take total control of it, like an actor on a stage, and finally to gather images, to shape a sentimental archive, which allowed for a continuous emotional reconnaissance between before and after, the change of perceptual state triggered by art. Pascali was a sensitive soul, art gave him pleasure, like speed, maniacal, histrionic creation. It’s no coincidence he loved jazz, he wandered around the city in perpetual search of something, collecting objects, small treasures of no value, stacking everything in his studio, which he shared with many people, he was a regular presence at the Piper, the most popular club in Rome at the time. He read voraciously, adored cinema, completely immersed himself in it, losing all perception of its boundaries. He was fascinated by the accumulation of objects displayed in shop windows, by their colors, by the many different textures side by side, but also by zoo cages, enclosures, which transformed him from exhibited subject-object to spectator, ecstatic observer, captivated. And he was constantly drawn to his original environment, the sea, which he also reflects in his art, just think of “32 square meters of sea” from 1967, or “The Sea” from 1966, too delicate to be moved, but also the beautiful “9 m2 of puddles”, also from 1967, which explores the theme of water on what could be a portion of artificial rock or a sidewalk, the vision of the sea in the city, which reflects us in parts, which seems deep but is very shallow.
Pascali runs towards the sea, on his motorcycle. He falls, gets up, certainly doesn’t stop running, until he dies on his motorcycle, very young, at 32 years old, in 1968, at the dawn of what then became a fundamental socio-cultural turning point of the twentieth century. Leaving us with an even stronger image of himself because eternally young, explosive, reckless.
