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| Colour, sentiment of a city * |
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by Paolo Rizzi |
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| New Ghetto: nocturnal outdoor, 1988 |
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A city of adventure? A dubious and dangerous
Circe the Sorceress? A myth of Decadence?
An ambiguous Venus Anadyomene? Venice could also be this, as imagined
by poets and artists in the last century. There is a kind of romantic
concretion which envelops the city, as expressed eloquently by Georg
Simmel. However, before Romanticism, before Turner and even before
Francesco Guardi, the historiography shows us a totally different soul
of Venice. A lively city, bustling with merchant trade, with contrasting
moods: a city of such beauty that it does not disappear in the face
of death, as Barrès said,
but strides excitedly towards life. That is it: it is this Venice more
than the other, which Ernani Costantini looks to, and which he portrays
in his paintings. Something which pulsates from below and which breaks
all literary facades: something which gathers to itself the instinctive
vitality of a natural living organism. It is difficult, extremely difficult,
to represent Venice outside of the Myth in which it seems to be so
inextricably bound. This Myth entwines it; and the more cultural the
viewpoint, the more it shows through. We should return to the era of
President de Brosses or even to that of Voltaire, when Venice could
be observed in the fullness of its frenetic activity (as Voltaire wrote: “I
will go to Venice: it is a free country, where there is nothing to
fear”). But also this pre-Romantic Venice was to end up being
transformed into a Myth or at the very least into a banal filmography.
Which is ‘truer’ Gentile Bellini or Canaletto? Perhaps
it is a question of going beyond this: to take in the ‘colour’ of
the city, in an almost timeless way. Colour, as Sergio Bettini observed,
which coincides with ‘sentiment’. The colour of Venice
is its distinct natural tone. In fact, as Bettini writes: “The
inherent taste of Venetians was for colour: a bright, flowing colour,
open to experience, to time: the time of nature and the time of man.
Sentiment, that is, in which is also intended what we call nature,
and therein it looks for and finds an answer”. |
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The images which Ernani Costantini has
drawn from his city should be seen and interpreted through their use
of colour. This is the fundamental difference between his painting
and that which generally comes under the generic title of Impressionism.
Both, to be sure, have their inspiration in reality, that is in the ‘eye’ of
Monet. Impressionism however, tries to capture the phenomenal aspect
of nature: it aims to reproduce on canvas the freshness of a fleeting
encounter with things. Ernani Costantini on the other hand, like many
artists of the historical period following impressionism, aims to give
us the “sentiment of colour”. It is a phase which is also
categorically later, nourished by a veil of nostalgia, as if the artist
was re-opening his eyes after having kept them half-closed as he savours
and re-savours the sense of the image he is enjoying. Venice, then,
becomes the spleen, it becomes a state of mind. But beware: Ernani
Costantini, a man of culture, rejects cultural concretions. He wishes
to conserve his sentimental virginity. Despite the seductions which
are forever lying in ambush (“In the morning sometimes – wrote
Barrès – in Venice I heard Ifigenia, but the vermillion
of the sunset recalled Jezebel…”) he does not lose touch
with the ‘naturalness’ of the city. Away with the “golden
sheets spread over the bones” (Musset); but gone also are
the new oleographs à la Cecil B. de Mille of holiday postcards.
Eyes open; sentiment flows spontaneously. The colour is not only the ‘local
tone’: it is an evocative colour, a transmutation, a transformation
which comes from the pure soul of a person in love. |
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| Saint Mark church: daytime interior, 1987/88 |
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| Venice: daylight outdoor, 1988 |
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This is why each painting has its own colour:
that is its own state of mind. Venice, as Ernani Costantini has understood,
is a city of a thousand facets. As Sergio Bettini notes once more: “Venice
like no other city, possesses a willing character of limitless interpretations”.
The clichéd view of Venice as a museum city, the object of univocal
contemplation, is as wrong as can be: its city structure is at the
same time artificial, in so far as it is built by man, and natural,
a sort of outlet nature, which makes it open, malleable, always accessible
to a semantic re-interpretation. According to Proust, Venice is “one
of the forms of the soul”; and the great French author always
describes it obliquely, by allusion, through evocation, unable to resist
a more direct viewing (“A deep azure intoxicated my eyes, a feeling
of freshness, of dazzling light enveloped me and in my desire to capture
the sensation, just as I had not dared to move…”). Venice
becomes a place of sentiment; and sentiment can change: it changes
each time, on impact with things. A city “well-versed over time”, and therefore
resolute in colour and rhythm: a city which Costantini portrays in
the variations of spirit, in the tones, in the branches, in the threads,
even though he never loses touch with his own life, always pulsing
and tangible. In brief: the sounds and the silences of Venice; the
shades and the flashes of light; the disenchantment and the affectionate
tenderness; the irony and love. The willingness of Venice towards this
spectrum of emotions is at its height. We see it in every one of his
paintings: in the ever-changing hues, which reflect the atmospheric
variations, and, at the same time, the sentimental changes. Now a blue
veil dilutes our vision, and shrouds it in the specific shade of sentiment;
now the vivid colours leap out, also extremely vivid, to allow the
free movement of an organism, which is also and above all the motion
of the spirit. Vivacity and indolence; fine transparencies and flashes
of light; moments of abeyance and moments of frenzy; a gentle cadence
and a catlike pounce… Venice is also this: in fact, it is especially
this. |
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It is a nocturnal scene
in the Ghetto, lit by a thousand mysterious lights; it is the eruption
of curious angels from the striking mosaics of St. Mark’s; it
is the milky flow of St, Mark’s Basin sounding
like a melodic wave; it is also (why not?) the burlesque fall of the
Zanni from Tiepolo’s
fresco. Sometimes the lens becomes wide-angled, as if in an attempt
to capture the immensity of the meeting of water and sky; other times
it is reduced, until it gently picks out the beat of a wisteria in
a hidden courtyard. The city dimension becomes the soul dimension.
Everything mutates, everything changes.
This is why these paintings should be judged by a standard different
from those normally used. We are beyond the avant-guarde (and this
is only too clear); but we are not talking of realism, nor verism,
nor naturalism; and neither, as we have said, impressionism. The game
of sentiments and states of mind prevails. One must be in harmony with
them. Listen with our inner ear, as Mallarmé said. Perceiving
the faintest echoes, the mysterious resonances of such a willing city,
so changeable, so prehensile. Beware of appearances: as Simmel said,
they become lies once they no longer correspond either to reality nor
to its antithesis. Ernani Costantini has a pure heart: for him the
ethic and aesthetic tend to coincide. His images of the Anadyomene
city rise from the waves drenched in spray and algae: they reject all
that is spurious. Aschenbach is far away. Venice, over there, is again
one of the conditions of the soul. |
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| Façade in Santa Maria Nova, Venice, 1987 |
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*^ From the catalogue
of the exhibition Living in Venice |
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