Le Storie della Vera Croce project is spreading its wings ever wider thanks to a public programme devised by the artist consisting of a seamless series of tableaux vivants and a film retrospective.
Naturally, the public programme schedule depends on developments in the epidemic situation and on government measures in force, thus the Mattatoio di Roma advises visitors to consult the constantly updated schedule on our website.
Derek Jarman’s extraordinary film Caravaggio hit the cinema theatres in 1986. In this lofty masterpiece every day the Italian Baroque painter sets up a new tableau vivant, a small stage set with motionless figures, which he then uses to paint his pictures. Cinema history has seen several other instances in which tableaux vivants play a role in films that are quite other than motionless, for instance Pierpaolo Pasolini’s Curd Cheese and Decameron, or the entire filmography of Armenian director Sergey Parajanov (Sayat Nova in particular) and possibly even the more recent The Cross and the Mill by Lech Majevski, where the entire film one a vast landscape using real motionless figures to imitate Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Procession to Calvary.
In this phase of Presicce’s work, where painting has begun once again to play a leading role in his art (not that he every really abandoned it), he fills his project with a series of tableaux vivants designed to gather around them a specific number of painters who can use them as models in the course of these sessions. To that end, a new tableau vivant will be set up every two weeks and new artists on the Italian art scene will be called on to turn their hand to painting and drawing from life. For two years now Presicce has been curating a painting symposium at the Fondazione Lac o le Mon in San Cesario, Lecce, which a majority of those who practice this art have already attended, while others will be attending future editions. This unique platform, one of its kind, has led to the artist, who is better known as a performer, drawing the attention of many Italian painters who have thus rediscovered their faith in the ancient art of painting, discovering, or in some cases rediscovering, direct interaction with other equally inward-turning and isolated painters.
The Mattatoio di Roma will be giving both Presicce another unique opportunity to implement his performance art and many painters a chance to interact with other painters and with themselves in drawing and painting from life. Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio is merely an excuse for the artist to be able to focus his attention on works that he has always admired when staying in Rome, particularly The Conversion of St. Paul, or The Burial of St. Lucy which he saw recently in Syracuse.
Materials produced by participants will come together in a large paste-up book updated from time to time with images and still-lifes.
Scheduled tableaux vivants in the exhibition:
Thursday February 25, from 6.00pm to 8.00pm
Thursday March 18, from 6.00pm to 8.00pm
Thursday March 25, from 6.00pm to 8.00pm
Thursday April 15, from 6.00pm to 8.00pm
Thursday April 22, from 6.00pm to 8.00pm
Thursday April 29, from 6.00pm to 8.00pm