Journal Journal ofJournal Italian Translation of Italian Translation V ol. XI No. 1 Spring 2016 Editor Luigi Bonaffini ISSN 1559-8470 Volume XI Number 1 Spring 2016 JIT 11-2 Cover.indd 1 8/11/2016 1:12:31 PM Journal of Italian Translation frontmatter.indd 1 8/12/2016 1:01:09 PM Journal of Italian Translation is an international Editor journal devoted to the translation of literary works Luigi Bonaffini from and into Italian-English-Italian dialects. All translations are published with the original text. It also publishes essays and reviews dealing with Ital- Associate Editors Gaetano Cipolla ian translation. It is published twice a year. Michael Palma Submissions should be in electronic form. Joseph Perricone Translations must be accompanied by the original texts, a brief profile of the translator, and a brief profile of the author. Original texts and transla- Assistant Editor tions should be on separate files. 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Cosma Siani Make checks payable to Journal of Italian Marco Sonzogni Translation Joseph Tusiani Journal of Italian Translation is grateful to the Lawrence Venuti Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation for its Pasquale Verdicchio generous support. Paolo Valesio Journal of Italian Translation is published under the aegis of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures of Brooklyn College of the City University of New York Design and camera-ready text by Legas, PO Box 149, Mineola, NY 11501 ISSN: 1559-8470 © Copyright 2006 by Journal of Italian Translation frontmatter.indd 2 8/12/2016 1:01:09 PM Journal of Italian Translation Editor Luigi Bonaffini Volume XI Number 1 Spring 2016 frontmatter.indd 3 8/12/2016 1:01:09 PM Each issue of Journal of Italian Translation features a note- worthy Italian or Italian American artist. In this issue we present the work of Vanni Macchiagodena. The essay that follows was penned by curator Anthony Molino for the artist’s most recent exhibition, entitled Sintessenze (a neologism combining the Italian words sintesi and essenza), on display this past spring at the Fortress of Civitella del Tronto (Teramo). MACCHIAGODENA: THE EVOLUTION OF AN OBSESSION “If the recurrent theme of [Henry] Moore’s work is infancy, this is not of course to say that everything Moore did should be considered in this light. Watteau’s recurent theme was mortality; Rodin’s submission; Van Gogh’s work; Toulouse Lautrec’s the breaking point between laughter and pity. We are talking about obsessions which determine the gestures and perceptions of artists throughout a life’s work, even when their conscious attention is elsewhere. A kind of bias of the imagination. The way a life’s work slips towards a theme which is home for that artist.” (John Berger, Portraits)” In light of Berger’s intuition, and in line with the title and focus of this exhibition of Vanni Macchiagodena’s work, I would like to draw attention to the one theme, the one iconographic figure, which comes closest to the kind of obsession that Berger equates with an art- ist’s “home”. The theme wherein the artist takes refuge, that becomes a veritable place where the artist protects, replenishes and redefines himself. It’s odd, even for a psychoanalyst such as myself, to speak of the evolution of an obsession. How indeed does something fixed, repetitive, obstinate in its unyielding recurrence end up evolving? But over the years I have witnessed first-hand the process whereby Macchiagodena has remained faithful to the “home” that is for him the figure of Saint Martin, while at the same time subjecting that figure to the kind of stripping down that characterizes so much of his recent work, and defines both the focus and scope of this show. In a public conversation of mine with Macchiagodena and the renown Italian sculptor Giuliano Giuliani, Vanni made explicit the present-day aim of his art. He said that his ambition is to be able to re- present a theme or figure which, “stripped” of its historically evocative frontmatter.indd 4 8/12/2016 1:01:09 PM and defining iconographic traits, would remain capable of transmit- ting the theme’s essential message across time and space. Profoundly respectful of the tradition out of which he originates, Macchiagodena looks to achieve what I’ve termed the sintessenza (“synthessence”) of an idea, of a story, of an iconographic tradition. He strives to achieve a plastic representation of the archetypal kernel, if you will, of the figural concept that has become his Object. Like astrophysicists who relentlessly pursue the echo or image of our origins, who sound black holes and gravitational waves to retrace the history of who and where we are, and of how we’ve come to be, Macchiagodena – in both his painting and scupture – does something of the same, rekindling, in his fertile folly, a dream not unlike Plato’s theory of Forms. So what’s this all have to do with Saint Martin? The figure of the 4th-century saint is a fruitful obsession which has long preoccupied Macchiagodena. It’s endured for years in his painting, in his sculpture and printmaking – and is, as one would expect, duly and variously present in the Sintessenze exhibit. A few years ago I had this to say: “In Macchiagodena’s case, the saint’s gesture (the offer of his cloak to a naked beggar)… seems to me charged with a symbolism that transcends traditional representa- tions. Macchiagodena’s frequent references to the legend of St. Martin allude, I believe, to the function of art itself, to its highest and most noble function: namely, to the often desperate attempt to restore an ancestral link with the Other; to insist on the neces- sity of one’s offering, of one’s contribution– at once both ethical and aesthetic – to the life of the polis. To a community which, ever increasingly, and ever so sadly, instead identifies the artist with the beggar at the margins of society, contemptuously ignoring both the artist’s role and the scope of his message: that is to say, ignoring the very gift he means to share with us, his fellow men.” Today, at a remove of several years from this statement, I stand by every word. But I want, and need, to say more, as the artist’s obsession has become, in a way, my own. For awhile, I flirted with the idea that what might fuel Macchia- godena’s obsession was a shifting identity crisis of sorts. As Martin would inhabit equally Vanni’s paintings and sculpture, I imagined that the saint’s division of his cloak was a way for the artist to identify equally with soldier and beggar: that is to say, alternatively, with painter and sculptor. I know people who appreciate Vanni more in one guise than the other: some who swear by the what they deem frontmatter.indd 5 8/12/2016 1:01:09 PM to be the sculptor’s superior talent, others who rave at the painter’s mastery of his craft. Knowing the man as I do, and suspecting that he’d have no part of transposing to the arts the evangelical dictum that would have no person serve two masters, I could envision the cloak being cut in two as the artist’s way of making a statement about himself. As a means of dealing with the likely tension that could well result from the demands – both internal and external, subjective and environmental – of two metiers, of two ways of being, of two fundamental but potentially mutually exclusive vehicles for the necessary expression of one’s talents. But there’s yet another reading of the artist’s obsession, a quite simple one, that I’d now like to offer. As Macchiagodena has worked tirelessly, in recent years, to approach the sintessenza of things in his work, doesn’t it make sense that the figure of Saint Martin should have remained omnipresent in his practice? Doesn’t it make sense that in a practice only occasionally inhabited by the human figure (which has, by the way, almost totally disappeared from his paint- ing, save for the occasional evocation of Martin), the one figure that persists, obsessively, emblematically, is one whose very mythos involves the act of stripping down? Martin’s defining gesture is, in fact, one of divestiture. His is a gesture that opts for the essential, that disposes of the superfluous: ultimately, both saint and beggar, remain warmly wrapped even in half a cloak. And, my guess is, each half could in turn be further divided still: for the miracle of art, of Macchiagodena’s art at this stage of his life and career, is the equivalent of a wager staked precisely on that possibility. So no, as Berger says about the function of Moore’s and other artists’ idiomatic obsessions, Saint Martin is not the only lens through which to view the totality of Macchiagodena’s production.