Tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini

Intellettuale, 1975, by Fabio Mauri
Thursday 3 March 2022, 5 pm – 9 pm
4 – 5 – 6 March 2022, 11 am – 7 pm
Castello di Rivoli, Theater

Thursday 3 March 2022, 7 pm
Special intervention by Laura Curino who reads Petrolio by Pasolini

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Bologna, 1922 – Ostia, 1975), the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea is organizing a tribute to the great writer, poet, author, film and theater director.

To celebrate the anniversary, the installation with projection, Intellettuale (Intellectual), 1975, (“Il Vangelo secondo Matteo” di/su Pier Paolo Pasolini [The Gospel According to St Matthew” by/on Pier Paolo Pasolini]), created by the artist and friend of Pasolini Fabio Mauri (Rome, 1926–2009), will be presented from Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 March in the Museum Theater.

The audience in the hall will be able to witness a re-presentation of Intellectual, presented for the first time on May 31, 1975 in Bologna on the occasion of the inauguration of the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna. At the time, on the short external stairs of the museum in front of the main door, Mauri had placed Pier Paolo Pasolini, dressed in a white shirt and a denim jacket, on a high wooden chair and projected on his chest the film of which he was the author, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St Matthew, 1964, 137 min.), transforming him into a ‘human screen’ and physically revealing the birth of the ‘intellectual sign’ ‘inside’ the author’s body. The volume of the sound, excessive compared to the reduced size of the image, amplified the bewilderment exercised by the action both on the public and on Pasolini himself. The author and the work thus formed a sculpture of flesh and light, a compact unit, demonstrating with the strength of a ‘vision’ that they are one. The action Intellectual was immortalized in 15 photographs taken by the photographer Antonio Masotti who was sitting on the ground in the audience, mostly made up of childhood and adolescent friends of Mauri and Pasolini. The artist’s choice to project the film on Pasolini’s body represented the objective responsibility of the author of the film, forced to experience the effects of his work on himself. The action also offered an opportunity to deepen the concept of ‘reflection’: the white of the shirt that ‘reflects’ the images of the film and the writer who ‘reflects’ on himself emphasize the dynamism of the author-work-audience relationship. Following the assassination of Pasolini, which took place a few months after the presentation of the action in Bologna, Mauri transforms the work Intellectual into an installation-monument to the memory of his killed friend: at the Teatro in Trastevere in Rome, on the occasion of the solo exhibition Fabio Mauri: Without Ideology (9 December 1975), the images of The Gospel According to St Matthew slide on Pasolini’s white shirt hanging from the back of an inexorably empty chair and from the next room we hear the voice of Maria Carta who, with closed lips, modulates a biblical dirge while the second half of the same film is projected on her face.

Over the years, the installation Intellectual, 1975, has been presented in numerous international institutions including in the great retrospective curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in 1994 at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. The last presentation in 2021 when it was included in The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Furthermore, on Thursday 3 March at 7 pm in the Museum Theater, the actress and playwright Laura Curino (Turin, 1956) will read an excerpt from Petrolio by Pier Paolo Pasolini, a new edition edited by Maria Careri and Walter Siti for Garzanti in bookstores from 3 March. Defined over the years as a prophetic text, the chronicle of an initiatory journey or the novel-truth about the death of Enrico Mattei (Acqualagna, 1906 – Bascapè, 1962), Petrolio is one of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s most famous books. Through the story of Carlo, an engineer of the Turin bourgeoisie willing to do anything to make a career, grew up in a left-wing Catholic environment and then an accomplice in a crime, Pasolini takes his experimentalism to the extreme: ellipsis instead of the debut, seven different prefaces, a realistic and crude representation of eros, and an extreme variety of stylistic registers ranging from lyric to non-fiction, from journalistic to visionary and allegorical. As the author confides in a letter to Alberto Moravia, this novel is «the preamble of a will, the testimony of what little knowledge one has accumulated»; remained unfinished, it is surrounded by an aura of mystery that still feeds its myth.

Thanks to Achille Mauri and Studio Fabio Mauri, Associazione per l’Arte L’Esperimento del Mondo.

The event is part of the collateral activities of the Espressioni project supported by Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT.

Biographies

Pier Paolo Pasolini (Bologna, 1922 – Ostia, 1975) is a writer, poet, author, film and theater director. During the years of high school, together with Fabio Mauri, Luciano Serra, Franco Farolfi and Ermes Parini he created a literary group for the discussion of poems. After studying at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Bologna, where he graduated in 1945 with a thesis on Pascoli, Pasolini moved to Casarsa in Friuli and remained there until 1950 when, to escape the scandal caused by the public denunciation of his homosexuality, settles with his mother in Rome. From this moment, until his death by assassination on November 2, 1975 at the Ostia seaplane base, his biographical story coincides with the tumultuous activity of writer, director and intellectual committed to testifying and defending his own radical diversity, often also in court.

Fabio Mauri (Rome, 1926–2009) is considered one of the masters of the Italian avant-garde of the second postwar period. In November 1942, with his close friend Pier Paolo Pasolini, in Bologna he founded the monthly magazine of literature, art and cultural policy ‘Il Setaccio’. He lives between Bologna and Milan until 1957, and then moves to Rome. Mauri’s first solo show, held in 1955 at the Galleria Aureliana in Rome, was presented by his friend Pasolini. In addition to the solo exhibitions dedicated to him and the group exhibitions in which he is invited to participate, his works were exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1954, 1974, 1978, 1993, 2003, 2013, 2015, while in 2012 his performance Che cosa è la filosofia. Heidegger e la questione tedesca. Concerto da tavolo (1989) is presented at the Hauptbahnhof in Kassel as part of dOCUMENTA (13). For twenty years he taught Aesthetics of Experimentation at the Academy of Fine Arts of L’Aquila and in 2009 he was appointed Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Laura Curino (Turin, 1956), Turin author and actress, one of the major interpreters of narrative theater. In her repertoire, texts of new dramaturgy and classical texts. Since 2015 she has been the artistic director of the Teatro Giacosa in Ivrea. One of the founders of Teatro Settimo, she participated as an actress and author in most of the productions in the 25 years of the company’s life. Since 2001 she has collaborated with numerous theaters, including Teatro Stabile di Torino and Piccolo Teatro di Milano, festivals, companies, institutions, radio and television. She teaches theater writing at the Catholic University of Milan and holds conferences, seminars and workshops in Italy and abroad. Among the many texts and shows staged Il Signore del cane nero, storie su Enrico Mattei (2010), directed by Gabriele Vacis, also inspired by Petrolio by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Among the numerous awards: Ubu Award (with Teatro Settimo) 1993, Anct Award – National Association of Theater Critics 1998, Hystrio Award for dramaturgy 2003.