Since Rome finds it impossible to shake off all those associations of antiquity that attach to its brand, we thought we would go in search of modern Rome. In the centre of Rome, just off the Via del Corso, is Richard Meier's museum of the Ara Pacis, probably the most important antiquity in Rome, it is the altar Augustus built to celebrate peace; in fact he meant victory. The Museum, like all Meier's contemporary buildings is intersecting slim, sheets of white concrete, set at harmonious angles to glass in the roof and in the walls. The whole effect is simple and dramatic, celebrating all the renunciations and clarity of the modern and setting them against the ambiguities and paradoxes summoned up by all great historical monuments. Tradtional Romans wished for something more, well, traditional, but the effect of the glass ceiling and walls is to bathe the altar in an ethereal light, whilst allowing the person looking at the altar to see beyond into the city and the world. The altar is given its special aura without being disconnected from the city, past and present. If architecture is the relationship between light and space this building is a triumph.
Richard Meier has another amazing building, his Jubilee church built for the Millennium, which for the Roman Catholic church was a Jubilee year. John Paul II, with the audacity for which he was renowned, decided that Rome needed another church (some might say like a hole in the head) - and what a church they got, designed by a Jewish American. It is in the outer suburbs, getting there involving a longish drive from the centre through many underpasses and flyovers. The neighbourhood is undistinguished, apartment blocks like barriers and barracks surround the church. At ground level are the random selection of disconnected shops and bars which Italian town planners never succeed in resisting. In the midst of this the Church soars three parallel, sail-like curved white planes, evoking a dome without being one. The other side is straight and flat and, as with the Ara Pacis, glass intersects everywhere. Inside the church all is light and white, creating, as intended, a heavenly quality. High above the altar is a solitary, unadorned crucifix against a backdrop of sheer white. All the wood inside the church is light and warm and, the organ is set against the light oak, its chrome pipe standing out against wood and white.
The parishioners are standard issue modern Italian Catholics, disproportionately old and poor, many of the men hanging around outside smoking for much of the mass; lots of pushchairs in a country where reproduction has largely been abandoned for the higher pleasures of consumption and lifestyle. The locals seem quite at home in their hyper-modern settting - but all simplicity and clarity quickly unleashes a suppressed force for entropy (it's kind of thermo-dynamic law). The application of the irrepressible urge for disorder comes in the form of cheap indoor plants, distributed around the church, arbitrarily interrupting the clear lines the architect so carefully sought and so brilliantly achieved.
You can find modern art, as well as architecture, in Rome too. No modern art museum is complete without its acronym and in Rome it is MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. The show we saw was an identikit contemporary art show, you could see something similar in twenty European cities. The artist must have several implausibly mixed ethnic origins, there must be a large element of fairly ponderous video and the work should tell the viewer something of the (usually rather banal) passion and horror with which the artist contemplates contemporary society - the personal perspective being apparently easier to communicate than the scientific or technocratic. This show was by a Iranian-Italian and was her animated videos of mankind's confused and horrible relationships with animals and biodiversity. So one video showed a man stabbing an irritating pet dog in his living room. Another longer video described the collapse of biodversity as witnessed by a modern day voyager on a modern day Beagle. This was juxtaposed with a video of a family argument. Geddit?
An even more flash up to date acronymous museum is planned for Rome designed by the Queen of flash modernity, Zaha Hadid, for whom the greatest sin is that a new building might in any way refer to its surroundings. She has that in common with one or two other superstar architects: Frank Gehry; Daniel Liebeskind. The building was scheduled for completion in early 2006. In February 2008 it remained a deserted fenced-off scene of large, angular, grey concrete lumps randomly distributed. The architecture may be modern but Italian builders are apparently immutable. Maxxi is yet to come.
As well as architecture and art, you can encounter the modern in food too. Gusto is a whole collection of food buying opportunities - shops, cafes, restaurants - on the same square as the Ara Pacis. The food is delicious - but all Italian. Another, perhaps even more cutting edge restaurant is in a backstreet behind the Pantheon. Its confusingly traditional name is Trattoria. The restaurant is all pale wood and digital art installations. The kitchen is encased in glass so you can watch Africans and Bangladeshis cook modern Sicilian cuisine. My pasta starter came with oranges, potatoes and deep-fried anchovies - how modern is that? Delicious, actually; from Sicily via Southern California. None of the waiters were Italian. Ours waitress was Chinese and had dyed her hair blonde - a little echo there of life at the cutting edge in London or New York.
But one can't suppress the feeling that Romans have an abiding attachment to their traditional dolce vita. In Gusto and Trattoria only Italian food and Italian wine are sold. Most of the high end fashion shops on the Via Condotti are Italian. A few global French brands make it -Chanel, Lanvin - but the Brits, the Japanese, the Americans are nowhere in sight. If you buy a hat in Rome the shop still has a hand-operated machine for stretching the headband to fit. And perhaps the biggest signal of all are the smoothly dressed elderly Italian men in pastel coloured v-neck sweaters, carefully ironed corduroy trousers and unbuttoned, swinging, pleated green Loden overcoats, leaning close together and muttering to one another as they stroll past an ancient monument with their hands behind their backs. Italians have not - and perhaps will not - embrace the future, why should they?
(Thanks to Paul Docherty for finding the Jubilee church and restaurant recommendations)
For photos of modern Rome go to www.flickr.com/photos/gerardlemos/sets
Richard Meier has another amazing building, his Jubilee church built for the Millennium, which for the Roman Catholic church was a Jubilee year. John Paul II, with the audacity for which he was renowned, decided that Rome needed another church (some might say like a hole in the head) - and what a church they got, designed by a Jewish American. It is in the outer suburbs, getting there involving a longish drive from the centre through many underpasses and flyovers. The neighbourhood is undistinguished, apartment blocks like barriers and barracks surround the church. At ground level are the random selection of disconnected shops and bars which Italian town planners never succeed in resisting. In the midst of this the Church soars three parallel, sail-like curved white planes, evoking a dome without being one. The other side is straight and flat and, as with the Ara Pacis, glass intersects everywhere. Inside the church all is light and white, creating, as intended, a heavenly quality. High above the altar is a solitary, unadorned crucifix against a backdrop of sheer white. All the wood inside the church is light and warm and, the organ is set against the light oak, its chrome pipe standing out against wood and white.
The parishioners are standard issue modern Italian Catholics, disproportionately old and poor, many of the men hanging around outside smoking for much of the mass; lots of pushchairs in a country where reproduction has largely been abandoned for the higher pleasures of consumption and lifestyle. The locals seem quite at home in their hyper-modern settting - but all simplicity and clarity quickly unleashes a suppressed force for entropy (it's kind of thermo-dynamic law). The application of the irrepressible urge for disorder comes in the form of cheap indoor plants, distributed around the church, arbitrarily interrupting the clear lines the architect so carefully sought and so brilliantly achieved.
You can find modern art, as well as architecture, in Rome too. No modern art museum is complete without its acronym and in Rome it is MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. The show we saw was an identikit contemporary art show, you could see something similar in twenty European cities. The artist must have several implausibly mixed ethnic origins, there must be a large element of fairly ponderous video and the work should tell the viewer something of the (usually rather banal) passion and horror with which the artist contemplates contemporary society - the personal perspective being apparently easier to communicate than the scientific or technocratic. This show was by a Iranian-Italian and was her animated videos of mankind's confused and horrible relationships with animals and biodiversity. So one video showed a man stabbing an irritating pet dog in his living room. Another longer video described the collapse of biodversity as witnessed by a modern day voyager on a modern day Beagle. This was juxtaposed with a video of a family argument. Geddit?
An even more flash up to date acronymous museum is planned for Rome designed by the Queen of flash modernity, Zaha Hadid, for whom the greatest sin is that a new building might in any way refer to its surroundings. She has that in common with one or two other superstar architects: Frank Gehry; Daniel Liebeskind. The building was scheduled for completion in early 2006. In February 2008 it remained a deserted fenced-off scene of large, angular, grey concrete lumps randomly distributed. The architecture may be modern but Italian builders are apparently immutable. Maxxi is yet to come.
As well as architecture and art, you can encounter the modern in food too. Gusto is a whole collection of food buying opportunities - shops, cafes, restaurants - on the same square as the Ara Pacis. The food is delicious - but all Italian. Another, perhaps even more cutting edge restaurant is in a backstreet behind the Pantheon. Its confusingly traditional name is Trattoria. The restaurant is all pale wood and digital art installations. The kitchen is encased in glass so you can watch Africans and Bangladeshis cook modern Sicilian cuisine. My pasta starter came with oranges, potatoes and deep-fried anchovies - how modern is that? Delicious, actually; from Sicily via Southern California. None of the waiters were Italian. Ours waitress was Chinese and had dyed her hair blonde - a little echo there of life at the cutting edge in London or New York.
But one can't suppress the feeling that Romans have an abiding attachment to their traditional dolce vita. In Gusto and Trattoria only Italian food and Italian wine are sold. Most of the high end fashion shops on the Via Condotti are Italian. A few global French brands make it -Chanel, Lanvin - but the Brits, the Japanese, the Americans are nowhere in sight. If you buy a hat in Rome the shop still has a hand-operated machine for stretching the headband to fit. And perhaps the biggest signal of all are the smoothly dressed elderly Italian men in pastel coloured v-neck sweaters, carefully ironed corduroy trousers and unbuttoned, swinging, pleated green Loden overcoats, leaning close together and muttering to one another as they stroll past an ancient monument with their hands behind their backs. Italians have not - and perhaps will not - embrace the future, why should they?
(Thanks to Paul Docherty for finding the Jubilee church and restaurant recommendations)
For photos of modern Rome go to www.flickr.com/photos/gerardlemos/sets
No comments:
Post a Comment