PERFORMER: 8 Kendo wrestlers, a performer as ‘Ultramodern Sanbaso’, 18 bikers, a pianist, 2 percussionists
PROPS: Motorbikes, musical instruments
DURATION: Unknown
DOCUMENTATION: Photographs, script, video
RE-ENACTMENTS: None
CATALOGUE: P_1990_3522
An action carried out in 1990 for the ‘Giappone all’Avanguardia: il Gruppo Gutai negli anni Cinquanta’ exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma, a tribute to the Japanese Gutai group, attended by a Japanese delegation. At Superintendent Augusta Monferini’s invitation, Mauri opened the exhibition with a strikingly dramatic performance symbolically bridging East and West via the avant-garde. ‘What is most striking, infuses objective charge and lends ownership to the choice of this “homage” is an idea of “expression” rather than “art”, of no boundary between specificities that circulates in Gutai acts […] Futurism is immediately cited.’1 The performance was conceived as a concert for Intonarumori (Futurist enharmonic instruments), piano, percussion, motorcycles and Kendo wrestlers, where the Japanese-manufactured motorcycles were used sonically as well as visually. Piano and percussion were played live by maestros Antonello Neri, Gianluca Ruggeri and Antonio Caggiano from Rome’s avant-garde Musica Viva and Ars Ludi Ensemble respectively. In the centre of the room, eight Kendo warriors faced off against one another in several rounds, ‘symbols of violence reversed into pure forms of elegance, dynamics or dance’.2 In front of the musicians, in the middle of the two rows of motorcycles, a flashy red-clad figure slowly waved his long arms: ‘Ultramodern Sanbaso’, he was a citation from Gutai artist Kazuo Shiraga’s 1957 performance of the same name. Worn by one of Fabio Mauri’s assistants, the costume was the Japanese original given to the Galleria Nazionale.
1. F. Mauri, ‘Omaggio al Gutai’, 1990, in F. Mauri, Scritti in mostra. L'avanguardia come zona 1958–2008, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti, il Saggiatore, Milan, 2008, p. 85.
2. Ibid.
1990, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Giappone all’avanguardia. Il gruppo Gutai negli anni Cinquanta, 6 December, curated by Shinichiro Osaki, Augusta Monferini, Marcella Cossu.
Giappone all’avanguardia. Il gruppo Gutai negli anni Cinquanta, exhibition catalogue, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, edited by Marcella Cossu (Milan: Electa, 1990), pp. II-III (ill.).
Giorgio Di Genova, Storia dell’arte italiana del ’900: Generazione anni Venti (Bologna: Edizioni Bora, 1991), p. 406–407 (ill.).
Marcella Cossu, “Omaggio al Gutai. Avanguardia in concerto. 1990”, in Fabio Mauri. Opere e Azioni 1954-1994, exhibition catalogue, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, edited by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Cossu (Milan / Rome: Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori / Carte Segrete, 1994), pp. 249–253 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri: Male e bellezza – Das Böse und das Schöne, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle, Klagenfurt, edited by Arnulf Rohsmann (Klagenfurt, 1997), p. 18 (ill.).
Domenico Scudero, Avanguardia nel presente (Rome: Lithos, 2000), pp. 132, 150 (ill.).
Ludovico Pratesi, “L'uomo che proiettò Gesù sul corpo di Pasolini”, in Il Venerdì, no. 780, Rome, 28 February 2003, p. 101 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Scritti in mostra. L’avanguardia come zona 1958-2008, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2008), pp. 84–85, 301 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Io sono un ariano (Milan: Lampi di stampa, 2009), pp. 287–298 (ill.).
Elisabetta Catalano, Work with Fabio Mauri, edited by Laura Cherubini (Milan: Maretti Editore, 2013), p. 11 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri. Archivio di memoria, edited by Dionigi Mattia Gagliardi (Rome: Numero cromatico editore, 2015), pp. 148–149 (ill.).
Valérie Da Costa, Fabio Mauri: le passé en actes (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2018), no. 99, p. 176 (ill.).
