Um… Come again?

Yes, Sandro Bondi, the Italian Minister of Culture actually said that, and also that he has a definite distaste for Modern Architecture. It’s a little surreal, really, considering that this is coming from the top culture official one of the world’s most prolific and influential artistic countries. The Italians have led the way through centuries of art and architecture, and have produced some of the greatest examples of Modernism – architecture, art and furniture – in the whole of the movement over the past 100 years.

The sad part of this is not that Bondi actually said it, but that he’s following suit with Italy’s current prime minister, media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, who has launched several well-documented tirades of late on a few different planned Modern buildings in Rome. Not that Berlusconi could ever have been said to be an important arbiter of taste, but this is just a little mind-boggling, and it’s gotten a lot of play in European media and drawn a lot of ire from Italian artistic and architectural institutions. Rightly so, I might add.

Here’s another gem from Bondi, from the article that appeared in the Italian magazine Grazia, and subsequently in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on July 13 – it’s July 15 as I write this:

"I struggle to find evidence of beauty in contemporary art. If I go to an exhibition I pretend to understand, like many others. But, honestly, I don't understand."

Um… Come again?

The response from the arts community was swift and angry. Here’s what Francesco Bonami, a curator of the very important Venice Biennale, had to say in Italy’s La Stampa:

"Bondi appears to have fallen asleep in 1895, when the Biennale was launched, to then reawake in 2008," he said. "You cannot rely on an antiquated concept of beauty, that's like wanting to go back to the horse and cart."

Well said. I couldn’t agree more. One of Berlusconi’s attacks focused on a planned building, designed by New York City architect Daniel Libeskind, who is the chief architect on the Freedom Towers at the site of the twin towers in Manhattan. The attack concerned the building’s “Modern” curved design. I kid you not; Berlusconi asked if the building couldn’t be straightened out.

Um… Come again?

Lebiskind was quick to repsond with a savage bard about Mussolini, fascism and how “everything that was not straight or in line was also deemed perverted art.”

There has been no response since from Berlusconi or Bondi. I don’t know about you, but this is just bizarre.

Here’s a link to the Guardian.

-Noah Fleisher, Aug. 15, 2008