PERFORMER: Miklós Jancsó, Pia Nascimento, Maria Carta, Danka Schröder, Gil Cagné, Giulia Matta
PROJECTION: Miklós Jancsó , Red Psalm , 1972
16 mm film, colour, sound, 87 min.
PROPS: First station (Studio d'arte Cannaviello, Rome): a 16mm-film projector, chair. Second station (Wax Museum, Rome): Gran Consiglio installation and Abraham Lincoln's stage . Third station (Studio of the photographer Elisabetta Catalano): scaffolding, a light, cups, coffee, photographs
DURATION: Unknown
DOCUMENTATION: Photographs, notes
RE-ENACTMENTS: None
CATALOGUE: P_1975_3484
Oscuramento was a three-part action in Rome that took place in three different locations around town on 8 April 1975. The audience travelled on buses specially laid on for the event. The first ‘station’, entitled Intellettuale, took place at the Studio d’arte Cannaviello and featured special guest Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó. This was the first time that Mauri screened a film, in this case Red Psalm, on a man’s torso: ripping through the dark gallery, the projection beam irradiated the chest of the man who directed the movie, creating a ‘sculpture of flesh and light’ similar to an ‘X-ray of the spirit,’1 which became famous in the subsequent ‘Pasolini’ version (inv. 985). The film projected was a hymn to resistance against political oppression; the place, the gallery space, was configured as a starting point for an action that moves from its ‘natural’ artistic container to the urban space. The second ‘station’, La Storia, was held at the Wax Museum in Rome, at Piazza Santi Apostoli. A ticket handed out at Studio Cannaviello permitted access to the second floor of the museum. Among the wax mannequins populating the tableaux of major historical events, two performers ‘insinuate themselves into the scene while at the same time camouflaging themselves and, popping out of the frame, acting as a variation in the order of the fake’.2 Motionless but real, Brazilian model Pia Nascimento inserted herself onto the stage of the opera house, taking the place of the female waxwork in a scene reproducing Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. In the corridor next to the hall of the Fascist Grand Council, singer Maria Carta intoned a lament culminating in cries of pain, overlapping the sound of Fascist hierarchs echoing through the halls dedicated to ‘Great Italians’. The third station, Oscuramento, was a few steps from the Museum, at photographer Elisabetta Catalano’s studio. The same ticket handed out at Studio Cannaviello entitled the bearer to a ‘drink’: ‘war coffee’, barley and chicory, offered to the public in a studio ‘darkened’ as was the custom during air raids. Illuminated by a spotlight-type projector manoeuvred from the top of a scaffold to create a blue-lit setting, in a sensual Loris Azzaro dress, model Danka Schroder danced with stylist Gil Cagné to the sounds of 1930s–70s hits. This was ‘the inner flap of public history, its psycho-sentimental resonance, the confidentiality of the couple in the bright circle and halo of catchy music. That is, how the “happy few” in an unhappy age survive and remember it. Or how they arrange to survive once again.’3 Glancing round, the audience caught sight of window panes obscured by photo-portraits of contemporary politicians, industrialists and dictators – Augusto Pinochet, Eugenio Henke, Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura, Amintore Fanfani, lan Smith, Graziano Verzotto, William Colby, Isabelita Perón, Michele Sindona, Pino Rauti, Randolfo Pacciardi and Eugenio Cefis – ‘constituting, precisely, the primary reason for the blackout’.4
1. F. Mauri, ‘Azioni: note’, in Oscuramento, catalogue of the exhibition (Studio d’arte Cannaviello, Rome, 1975), Rome, 1975, n.p.
2. A. Boatto, ‘Ritorno indietro / Ritorno in avanti’, ibid., n.p.
3. Ibid.
4. F. Mauri, unpublished text, Fabio Mauri Archive, Rome.
1975, Rome, Galleria Cannaviello; Museo delle Cere; Studio Catalano, Oscuramento, 8 April.
1975, Rome, Palazzo Taverna, Oscuramento (conference), in I lunedì dell’architettura, 26 May.
2022-2023, Rome, MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Tutto è santo / Il corpo politico, 16 November 2022 – 28 May 2023, curated by Giulia Ferracci, Hou Hanru, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.
Fabio Mauri, “Oscuramento”, in Art dimension art, no. 2, Rome, April–June 1975, pp. 48–49 (ill.).
“Oscuramento di Fabio Mauri”, in Data, no. 16–17, Giampaolo Prearo, Milan, June–August 1975, p. 38.
Fabio Mauri. Oscuramento, exhibition catalogue, Cannaviello Studio d’Arte, Rome (Rome, 1975), .
Catalogo nazionale Bolaffi. Pittori e gallerie italiane nella stagione artistica 1974/1975 (Turin: Giulio Bolaffi editore, 1975), p. 278 (ill.).
Costanzo Costantini, “Il fascismo ritornante”, in Il Messaggero, Rome, 14 April 1975, p. 3 (ill.).
Catalogo nazionale Bolaffi. Segnalati Bolaffi 1977 - 59 artisti scelti da 60 critici (Turin: Giulio Bolaffi editore, 1976), p. 111 (ill.).
L’Esperienza. Orientamenti attuali del lavoro artistico, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo Pretorio, Certaldo (Florence), edited by Lara-Vinca Masini (Florence, 1977), n.p. (ill.).
Perimetri, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo Taverna, Rome, edited by Achille Bonito Oliva (Rome: Incontri internazionali d’arte, 1978), n.p. (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Le proiezioni 1970-1978 (Macerata / Falconara: La nuova foglio editrice - piano inclinato / Galleria del Falconiere, 1978), n.p. (ill.).
Identité italienne. L’art en Italie depuis 1959, exhibition catalogue, Centre Pompidou, Paris, edited by Germano Celant (Florence: Centro Di Edizioni, 1981), p. 472 (ill.).
Documenti per l’arte contemporanea. Fabio Mauri: Che cosa è, se è, l’ideologia nell’arte, no. 11, Il Bagatto, edited by Simonetta Lux, Rome, 1984, pp. 19–20 (ill.).
Francesca Alfano Miglietti, Arte Pericolosa (Milan: Prearo Editore, 1991), p. 96.
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. 152–154 (ill.).
Fermata d’autobus, exhibition catalogue, Spazio Flaminio Atac, Rome, edited by Achille Bonito Oliva, Renato Mambor (Rome: Carte Segrete, 1995), p. 88 (ill.).
Roma in mostra 1970-1979, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, edited by Daniela Lancioni (Rome: Edizioni Joyce & Co., 1995), p. 85.
Massimo Mininni, Arte in scena: La performance in Italia 1965-1980 (Ravenna: Danilo Montanari Editore, 1995), p. 129.
Fabio Mauri: Male e bellezza – Das Böse und das Schöne, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle, Klagenfurt, edited by Arnulf Rohsmann (Klagenfurt, 1997), p. 44 (ill.).
30. Cannaviello 68/98, exhibition catalogue, Studio d’Arte Cannaviello, Milan (Naples: Tullio Pironti Editore, 1998), n.p. (ill.).
Lucilla Meloni, L’opera partecipata: L’osservatore tra contemplazione e azione (Catanzaro: Rubbettino editore, 2000), pp. 48–49, 138 (ill.).
Lea Vergine, Ininterrotti transiti (Milan: Rizzoli, 2001), p. 243 (ill.).
Francesca Alfano Miglietti, Manuale delle passioni: Incontri, scontri e tensioni di arte contemporanea (Milan: Skira, 2007), p. 198.
Stefano Chiodi, “Attraversando lo specchio dell'ideologia. Intervista con Fabio Mauri”, in Reset, no. 100, Milan, March–April 2007, p. 86 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Scritti in mostra. L’avanguardia come zona 1958-2008, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2008), pp. 40–43, 276–279 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Io sono un ariano (Milan: Lampi di stampa, 2009), pp. 149–158 (ill.).
Federica Boràgina, Fabio Mauri. Che cosa è, se è, l’ideologia nell’arte (Catanzaro: Rubbettino editore, 2012), pp. 69–71, no. 13, p. 70 (ill.).
Ennesima. Una mostra di sette mostre sull’arte italiana, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo della Triennale, Milan, edited by Vincenzo De Bellis (Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2015), Vol. “La performance dal tempo sospeso: il tableau vivant tra realtà e rappresentazione”, pp. 69–73.
50. Studio d’arte Cannaviello 1968-2018, exhibition catalogue, Studio d’Arte Cannaviello, Milan, edited by Dario Falzone, Enzo Cannaviello (Milan, 2018), pp. 26–28 (ill.).
Valérie Da Costa, Fabio Mauri: le passé en actes (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2018), no. 100, p. 181 (ill.).
Laura Cherubini, Contro corrente: I grandi solitari dell’arte italiana: Alighiero Boetti, Gino De Dominicis, Luciano Fabro, Fabio Mauri, Vettor Pisani, Marisa Merz (Milan: Christian Marinotti edizioni, 2020), p. 117.
Marcella Vanzo, “Il corpo si fa poesia. Fabio Mauri e le sue prime performance”, in Artedossier, no. 387, Florence, May 2021, p. 43 (ill.).
Stefano Chiodi, “Dalla voce alla presenza. Il corpo del poeta nel tempo dello spettacolo”, in Engramma, no. 181, Venice, May 2021, p. 376 (ill.).
Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, “Pier Paolo Pasolini. Tutto è santo. Il corpo politico”, in Pier Paolo Pasolini Tutto è santo / Il corpo politico, exhibition catalogue, MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome, edited by Giulia Ferracci, Hou Hanru, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2022), pp. 11–19 (ill.).
