Reconstructing a civil attitude

“It really is the bare bones of a theatre but I think it has the essential.” Alberto Burri is one of the few Italian artists to have built bridges with the USA, following his imprisonment for non co-operation in Hereford (Texas) in 1943. He wrote the above words at the bottom of an axonometric sketch with the look of a doctor’s prescription, the fall-out from a profession never practised.

Then came his Teatro Continuo in the “Contatto Arte-Città” section of the XV Milan Triennale (1973), conjuring up memories of Paul Valéry’s Le Cimetière marin (1920) and Eugenio Montale’s Ossi di seppia (1925; translated as Cuttlefish Bones); that is to say, a continuation in time to Burri’s Grande Cretto, created in Gibellina, Sicily, between 1984 and 1989. We might perhaps substitute the word “theatre” with “city”: “It really is the bare bones of a city but I think it has the essential.” – so essential, indeed, that it has been transposed a thousand times to a theatre set, confirming once again the founding dialogue between the theatre and the city.

Reconstructing the Teatro Continuo today is not just making up for the harm done – its demolition because of its state of decay in 1989 undermined Burri’s relations with the city of Milan – or paying homage on the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth. Reconstructing is always a delicate affair and even more so in the case of a monument as difficult as a theatre, for its past and its future, for the where was it and how was it which usually makes a noise in itself and attracts the inevitable  and equally pointless whinging.

Reconstructing is, in this case, a credible philological action, partly thanks to Burri’s drawings and their consistent simplicity. The word may sometimes have a conjectural meaning – as for Bartolomeo Ammannati’s Fountain of Giunone group, reconstructed at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence for the 500th anniversary of the artist’s birth; in that case, it was a partially dispersed work designed for a location – the then Sala Grande of Palazzo Vecchio – transformed by Giorgio Vasari into what is now the Salone dei Cinquecento while the fountain was being sculpted. Moreover, there were no known original drawings for that work but scattered 3D marble figures and the odd vague description.

Also: the verb to reconstruct has another meaning when applied to reconstructing a design and project. So, the architects of the Prix de Rome redesigned and then reconstructed lost classical buildings, sometimes taking them farther north in an ante litteram dis-placement that is the opposite of site-specific. The design was again betrayed, with added risk, in Leonardo Ricci’s Palazzo di Giustizia in Florence, constructed, or rather re-constructed, on the basis of a few outline drawings and now as embarrassing a posthumous piece of architecture as Michelucci’s theatre in Olbia – as too would be, were it built today, the large sculpture-pavilion Burri designed for a square in his home-city of Città di Castello.

Reconstructing the Teatro Continuo is like reconstructing a piece of Milan’s cityscape, a previously missing part of a story involving other coeval works, such as Giorgio De Chirico’s Bagni Misteriosi (copy in situ; the original is now in the Museo del Novecento) and Arman’s Accumulazione Musicale e Seduta, also created for the XV Triennale. Although the classical Burri took a slight risk when he made the Teatro Continuo the cornerstone and measure of the routes linking the Arco della Pace to the Castle’s Torre del Filarete and crosswise the Arena Civico to Palazzo dell’Arte, home of the Triennale: four constructions dating from different epochs united by a contemporary work – exactly as a classical architect would have done.

Reconstructing a site-specific work – “an artwork created to exist in a certain place” –  of 1973 and not a generic “object” of whatever form and colour conceived by an artist as a “sculpture” (or “picture”) to be taken to any location.

Reconstructing a work rooted in that place, as much as a piece of the city’s architecture – I wonder whether Aldo Rossi would have accepted this definition. Reconstructing tension for the theatre space, a significant and evocative issue in relation to 20th-century Milanese tradition. Reconstructing a stage, starting from a void through which the eye can gaze, awaiting the appearance of human figures.

Reconstructing a kinetic work for a versatile stage; “The platform [will be] concrete, the wings iron, natural metal colour on one side and painted white on the other (the colour can be changed whenever so desired); they will be revolving, remote controlled and independent. My friend Enrico Cartelli is phenomenal at mechanics and will study the mechanism.” This is how Burri continued with his medical prescription. The catalogue (1990) described it as follows: “Raised base in reinforced béton brut 56 x 1.700 x 1.050 cm and 6 wings 600 x 250 x 25 cm, in steel and revolving on their longitudinal axis, painted white on one side.” – amidst the sculptures.

Reconstructing a civil attitude is one of the hidden meanings in the undertaking of Gabi Scardi, an independent curator in charge of NCTM e l’arte, a contemporary-art project privately sponsored by the NCTM legal practice. The service sector steps in for a country that has applied little more than zero-cost reforms to culture for years.

Reconstructing a civil attitude is one of the hidden meanings in the undertaking of Gabi Scardi, an independent curator in charge of NCTM e l’arte, a contemporary-art project privately sponsored by the NCTM legal practice. The service sector steps in for a country that has applied little more than zero-cost reforms to culture for years. Reconstructing the work is the task of Bergamo entrepreneur and collector Tullio Leggeri – the only person in the world who could, after formidable wrangles, have created a mock-up for children to climb on and grasp the meaning of Forte Pozzacchio (1914), a huge site-specific or anti-construction work excavated entirely in the rock close to Rovereto. We hope to meet Leggeri on site at the Teatro Continuo between now and March 2015 to pursue these thoughts live. Basically, what must be reconstructed are one horizontal and six vertical shadow lines; no roof, as Burri did not close it overhead; he did not complete the ancestral shelter. Instead, he virtually took a step back from the familiar work of the architect. Burri left the stars in the sky, without ever naming them.

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