Cinquesensi
May 2023
Reality does not exist "Battiato style"
This is the year-zero of portraits, in the land where the desire to see who we are has been renewing itself for centuries, always in the same way, and re-emerges from an unfathomable substratum, which urges us to investigate our self, never separated from our soul, through our image. But who would we have entrusted with the task of replicating our image, and who would have gone so far as to dare “stealing our soul”, and who would have been the executor or the instigator of this theft? We have been seen, unsurprised to learn that someone has reshaped our appearance, unaware of how we would really like to see ourselves, or how we would like to be remembered. The image of us is in the hands of those who have looked at us, observed us, and redesigned our “icon”.
The history of this portrayed humanity, as it appears, seems to have begun in the first century BC, from the discovery of 600 painted tablets with the faces of men who inhabited the area of El-Fayum, south of Alexandria in Egypt. Evidence of a place and a great civilisation that reached us intact and is remarkable in its already evolved pictorial seriality. It is the most ancient visual testimony of a vast iconographic repertoire that has returned the faces of men, women, and children still there looking at us many centuries later as if they were our contemporaries, without appearing other than us. Then this imprint, this aptitude to be represented, took the path of centuries of painting by humans, of portraits, from ancient Egypt to the Middle Ages, reaching the turning point of artificial intelligence, to which we are now entrusting and handing over the future and
the representation of us. We are already here.
The history of this portrayed humanity, as it appears, seems to have begun in the first century BC, from the discovery of 600 painted tablets with the faces of men who inhabited the area of El-Fayum, south of Alexandria in Egypt. Evidence of a place and a great civilisation that reached us intact and is remarkable in its already evolved pictorial seriality. It is the most ancient visual testimony of a vast iconographic repertoire that has returned the faces of men, women, and children still there looking at us many centuries later as if they were our contemporaries, without appearing other than us. Then this imprint, this aptitude to be represented, took the path of centuries of painting by humans, of portraits, from ancient Egypt to the Middle Ages, reaching the turning point of artificial intelligence, to which we are now entrusting and handing over the future and
the representation of us. We are already here.
With millennia of painting history, an infinite number of “schools”, and trends as reference, many questions remain in the interpretation and to which poetics we should attribute to Franco Battiato’s paintings, for a respectful and plausible placement in the artistic panorama. Something is taking shape, albeit far from any cultured suggestion. Furthermore, it is not the task of this exhibition to propose an in-depth examination, with the certainty, moreover, that it would be inadmissible to add anything beyond the illuminating contribution of Manlio Sgalambro, who, resorting in turn to Il Senso della Bellezza (The Sense of Beauty) by George Santayana, emphasises that “the strength of a painting is that of restoring an absence”. There is no doubt that Franco Battiato succeeds in this, but there is something equally indicative and perhaps even more stimulating and questioning, albeit simple and lapidary, in the judgement given by his friend Francesco Messina.
When confronted with the maestro’s new portraits, he states, with disarming naturalness, that “... now, it may also be true that Battiato began painting, as he claims, ‘violently challenging himself’, it may even be that today he is more attentive to the physiognomy of his characters than to the academic rules of portraiture, but he has certainly produced, perhaps unintentionally, but with surprising consistency, the most ‘Battiato-style’ paintings imaginable.”
So, what does ‘Battiato-style’ mean? To begin with, it means being an artist of great renown, with the ability of safeguarding for himself that piece of his private life that often even ordinary people lack. One could compare him to an artist, who at the height of his success felt the need to stop and investigate something else, something profoundly new and different from his paintings. Measuring himself at a mature age with a language that is also beyond his own reach, to have known how to start studying the grammar of a new language - even with the help of a teacher -, again without asking himself the most ridiculous questions - did I do well? Badly? How will I be judged? But the notoriety of visual artists, however vast, is limited to the enclosure of their circles and does not have to contend with thousands of fans crowding theatres, or the media interference that gives no respite. Overcoming this impediment and knowing how to defend themselves with ease, means approaching a ‘Battiato-style’ likeness but it does not mean being one yet. He goes further.
Here it is a matter of measuring oneself against a deeper void, moving the limit of risk forward, listening to silence, not the one that accompanies you during a holiday, but the one you present yourself to naked and ready for a definitive birth.
“Language is the founding element of mankind’s humanity” and perhaps to reach this, one could experiment with vocal exercises, going back as far as the vocal and out-of-tune sounds of childhood, accepted without shame, the same that help us rediscover the harmony between us and the world. Here then, something begins to resemble the ‘Battiato-style’, where even a renowned painter can toss colours aside and start again by listening to a few, yet authentic soundtracks, restoring the task and ability to identify a tone that is uniquely its own to hearing because, as Alfred Tomatis argued “the most important thing to remember is that the brain does not produce energy, it captures it, and it is the ear that supplies it”. The primordial traces of our harmony date back to before our birth and, if we are aware of them, we can imitate them and become possible and responsible receptors in turn. It can be considered a journey of style simplification, accompanied by a different research practice, quite similar to that of Süphan Barzani, for example. A little-known painter, he was born in Ionia on March 23, 1945 (an Italian municipality that existed between 1939 and 1945 and was later rescinded). All we know about him is that he lived by composing music and poetry, writing films and painting, and retired to a hilly area at the foot of Mount Etna. Some say that his paintings have a Byzantine essence, others recall the Old Sicilian inflection of some of his early songs, passed off by him as medieval finds. He loved the desert and contemplated its silence. He had not given his soul to painting, but rather one more reason to redeem his being an artist. Barzani is likely a pseudonym, as it is the name of a Kurdish leader who died in exile in the United States, Süphan is an inactive volcano that rises north of Lake Van, in Armenian territory. It could also be the name of a poet. Whether this way of life far from chaos is sufficient to define what it means to be an artist or to ensue a ‘Battiato-style’ is unclear. However, it offers the possibility of investigating mysteries that one cannot say if of the soul, the spirit, or art, but would be a good lesson for those in art that are “too full of themselves”, and therefore a good suggestion for those who, overnight, would be willing to listen, with humility, only with the desire to give back the gift of credibility and affection to someone, which for Franco Battiato “is the feeling that comes closest to the truth”. A viaticum, to better understand his painting that we could certainly define as auroral, leaving
the vexata quaestio on how to interpret it forever open, but which, if it were necessary to find an answer at any cost, it would be in the manner of Barzani: “...picciotti, it ended like this, without
a real reason!” (‘Battiato-style’)
When confronted with the maestro’s new portraits, he states, with disarming naturalness, that “... now, it may also be true that Battiato began painting, as he claims, ‘violently challenging himself’, it may even be that today he is more attentive to the physiognomy of his characters than to the academic rules of portraiture, but he has certainly produced, perhaps unintentionally, but with surprising consistency, the most ‘Battiato-style’ paintings imaginable.”
So, what does ‘Battiato-style’ mean? To begin with, it means being an artist of great renown, with the ability of safeguarding for himself that piece of his private life that often even ordinary people lack. One could compare him to an artist, who at the height of his success felt the need to stop and investigate something else, something profoundly new and different from his paintings. Measuring himself at a mature age with a language that is also beyond his own reach, to have known how to start studying the grammar of a new language - even with the help of a teacher -, again without asking himself the most ridiculous questions - did I do well? Badly? How will I be judged? But the notoriety of visual artists, however vast, is limited to the enclosure of their circles and does not have to contend with thousands of fans crowding theatres, or the media interference that gives no respite. Overcoming this impediment and knowing how to defend themselves with ease, means approaching a ‘Battiato-style’ likeness but it does not mean being one yet. He goes further.
Here it is a matter of measuring oneself against a deeper void, moving the limit of risk forward, listening to silence, not the one that accompanies you during a holiday, but the one you present yourself to naked and ready for a definitive birth.
“Language is the founding element of mankind’s humanity” and perhaps to reach this, one could experiment with vocal exercises, going back as far as the vocal and out-of-tune sounds of childhood, accepted without shame, the same that help us rediscover the harmony between us and the world. Here then, something begins to resemble the ‘Battiato-style’, where even a renowned painter can toss colours aside and start again by listening to a few, yet authentic soundtracks, restoring the task and ability to identify a tone that is uniquely its own to hearing because, as Alfred Tomatis argued “the most important thing to remember is that the brain does not produce energy, it captures it, and it is the ear that supplies it”. The primordial traces of our harmony date back to before our birth and, if we are aware of them, we can imitate them and become possible and responsible receptors in turn. It can be considered a journey of style simplification, accompanied by a different research practice, quite similar to that of Süphan Barzani, for example. A little-known painter, he was born in Ionia on March 23, 1945 (an Italian municipality that existed between 1939 and 1945 and was later rescinded). All we know about him is that he lived by composing music and poetry, writing films and painting, and retired to a hilly area at the foot of Mount Etna. Some say that his paintings have a Byzantine essence, others recall the Old Sicilian inflection of some of his early songs, passed off by him as medieval finds. He loved the desert and contemplated its silence. He had not given his soul to painting, but rather one more reason to redeem his being an artist. Barzani is likely a pseudonym, as it is the name of a Kurdish leader who died in exile in the United States, Süphan is an inactive volcano that rises north of Lake Van, in Armenian territory. It could also be the name of a poet. Whether this way of life far from chaos is sufficient to define what it means to be an artist or to ensue a ‘Battiato-style’ is unclear. However, it offers the possibility of investigating mysteries that one cannot say if of the soul, the spirit, or art, but would be a good lesson for those in art that are “too full of themselves”, and therefore a good suggestion for those who, overnight, would be willing to listen, with humility, only with the desire to give back the gift of credibility and affection to someone, which for Franco Battiato “is the feeling that comes closest to the truth”. A viaticum, to better understand his painting that we could certainly define as auroral, leaving
the vexata quaestio on how to interpret it forever open, but which, if it were necessary to find an answer at any cost, it would be in the manner of Barzani: “...picciotti, it ended like this, without
a real reason!” (‘Battiato-style’)