I spent the final weekend of November in Rome, visiting a friend who's working out there. I've been lots of times, including a three-month stint learning Italian when I was 19, so my recent trips have been less about major tourist attractions and more about finding delicious things to eat and drink, catching temporary art exhibitions and wandering around in a hungover haze gazing up at all the beautiful architecture.
This week's blog will focus on art, and next week I'll make myself wish I was back there by describing some of the fantastic food we ate too much of.
My first stop after arriving (by plane rather than train - it was going to cost £500 to go by rail - FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS), before even dropping my bag at my friend's flat was Georgia O'Keeffe: A Retrospective, at the Fondazione Roma Museo, right in the centre of town. This is the first ever European travelling show of works by the American modernist painter and it's well overdue. Running until 22 January, the exhibition includes paintings, drawing and sculptures from throughout O'Keeffe's long career, as well as many photographs of the artist taken by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. The show contains fewer of the famous large-scale flower paintings than I was expecting (see below), but more than makes up for it with the breadth of other work that is included. In particular, the abstract paintings she produced in her later years are really striking.
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| Georgia O'Keeffe, Purple Petunias, 1925 © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011 |
After getting back to London, I interviewed the show's curator, Barbara Buhler Lynes, director of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in New Mexico, for a piece for the February/March issue of European CEO (after it closes in Rome, the show travels to Munich and Helsinki), so look out for that if you're interested in reading more about the show and about O'Keeffe generally.
Later that evening, my friend took me to an art space I'd never heard of before, the extraordinary Complesso Monumentale Santo Spirito in Saxia, a three-minute walk from St Peter's. The American artist Ian Tweedy was installed in the massive deconsecrated church for a painting performance called Retracing my steps. Wielding a paint brush on a 4m pole, he picked out details of photographs from his personal archive that were being projected as a slide show onto an enormous canvas at the end of a cavernous dark space. I found it difficult to engage with initially, but ultimately became almost hypnotised by his making process. Certainly an artist I'll look out for in the future.
The venue's website hasn't been updated in terms of upcoming events, but if you're planning a visit to Rome, it's worth contacting the team to see if anything's happening there during your trip, as it's a fantastic context in which to view contemporary art.
The following day found us at the Scuderie del Quirinale for Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del '400, which runs until 15 January. Although rather light on Botticellis, it's a charming, manageably-sized show for anyone interested in Renaissance painting, and also includes some intricately worked wooden doors from the period. Less well known than his father, Fra Filippo Lippi, or his teacher, Botticelli, Filippino certainly warrants a couple of hours of your time.
On your way up to the exhibition galleries, stop and look at the wonderful ramp-like spiral staircase, a reminder of the building's original use as the stables of the Quirinale Palace. Best to avoid, however, the overpriced and badly designed gallery café, which you reach by walking through the rather grand restaurant.
The final art experience of the weekend was a visit to MACRO to see Carston Höller's Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes, winner of the international jury prize at this year's Venice Biennale (running until 26 February). The crazily striped walls and flashing lights of the slowly rotating swing carousels make the museum's enormous temporary exhibition gallery into a psychedelic space. This new installation is slower burn than the slides Höller set up in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2006/07, but there's something at once soothing and discombobulating about sitting in a swinging seat, being slowly revolved past stripes and stripes and stripes.
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| My friend Anna enjoying the installation |
We didn't have time for a proper perusal of the rest of MACRO's collection, so I'll definitely be returning on my next visit to Rome. And I'll make sure I'm there at lunchtime, to tuck into the delicious-looking buffet in the museum's gorgeous, light-filled Ristorante MACRO 138. We missed out this time, but the tables loaded with salads, vegetables, antipasti and pastas were pretty tempting. Located on the top floor, with tables spilling out onto the sun trap roof terrace, it looks like the ideal place for a classy couple of hours of wining and dining (all-you-can-eat, including mineral water, €20 per person).
Not bad for two and a half days I don't think, and I haven't even mentioned the five churches we popped into on Sunday afternoon. Check back next week to read about the weekend's food and drink adventures, including a funky bar in Ostiense, an osteria in a converted garage in Trastevere, and a restaurant full of police chiefs near Piazza Venezia.
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