Monday 29th June 2020 – Cathedral

2020 Duomo 60x180cm olio su tela

This Monday’s Duomo starts from a provocation that we faced in a dinner few days ago: Can art be a way of experiencing work? To implement – not only represent – a new way of working? Can it still “employ” the society? These questions are taken from an intervention by Francesco Fornasieri that you can read here.
In this article the author reflects on the fact that, during the Middle Ages, the construction of large cathedrals including the Milan Cathedral meant the opening of jobs, wealth, prestige, trade in materials, exchange of skills and culture, enlargement of urban spaces: what we will call growth in today’s terms.
This is why it is said << Milan built the Duomo and the Duomo built Milan >>. Today, however, one of the dramatic aspects of contemporary art is the distance from everyday life and from “people”, from workers in particular.
The article then continues talking about the interesting contemporary experiences of Damien Hirst and Christo. It seems to me an interesting starting point, also to understand what role art has today in the society in which we live: can it still make a contribution?
I feel like saying that the rules of art today are a bit all skipped and it seems to me that more than artistic movements I see artists who stand out for their personality and offer their contribution to the world. As an example, I like to remember Gerard Richter, a contemporary German artist who made painting his main medium and used multiple different languages to testify his time, going from abstract to figurative, maintaining the same stylistic rigor.
There is one of his works on Piazza Duomo that has always struck me, because this vision of the square so blurry seems to me to speak very well of our time, of how sometimes we see things so a little blurry without understanding well what we have in front of.
I think that today art can still make its contribution, perhaps not in the same form as cathedrals in the Middle Ages, but it can offer new visions and worlds capable of making us reflect and excite us. It is up to us to open our eyes and see what is interesting in the midst of the stormy sea of this world and decide in which direction and artists to look.
Happy Monday and good week to all!