Books, “Better the Art of Prozac”: presentation in Rome with the author Lorella Pagnucco Salvemini

The presentation of Lorella Pagnucco Salvemini's book entitled Meglio l'Arte del Prozac was held yesterday in Rome at the Caffetteria del Palazzo delle Esposizioni. At the presentation, together with the Author, Marco Bussagli and Senator Giuseppe Scalera. The room was packed and the speeches were brilliant. Giuseppe Scalera underlined the courage of the Author who, far from the logic of the market, has returned a truthful image of contemporary art with all its contradictions. Marco Bussagli, on the other hand, wanted to emphasize the literary ability of the Author, on her refined and frank language at the same time, as well as on the acumen of critical reading that is difficult to find elsewhere, without prejudice or complacency. The book is the collection of several dozen articles that cover the entire career of the Author, a militant critic since the days of Arte In , a historic magazine in Italy, founded by her husband, Giancarlo Calcagni, and directed by her for a long time, until her husband's death. The book is not, obviously, a pharmaceutical handbook that prescribes doses of Michelangelo or Raphael, Monet or Canova according to the patient's needs, to improve their quality of life. The title is inspired by one of the articles published in the collection that returned the clear clinical evidence of the NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim according to which frequenting the Works of Art, with massive doses of beauty, favors the rebalancing of the state of mind. On the contrary, the book is a precious handbook for the knowledge of the meaning and value of Art (not only visual, but also literary) in today's society, according to the intelligent point of view of the Author. Structured in chapters divided into paragraphs that correspond to the individual articles, the text puts in succession Amori per sempre , L'800 in testa , '900 va' a comprende , Oddio. The Contemporary , Today It Goes That Way and Venetia Triumphans, whose titles are in themselves programmatic of Lorella Pagnucco Salvemini's critical vision.

The starting point, Loves Forever , constitutes the 'hard core' of those inalienable values ​​on which everything else can be built. The book opens, in fact, with a tribute to Marguerite Yourcenar and her Memoirs of Hadrian . An occasion that offers the possibility to reflect both on the greatness of the Belgian writer (who became interested in the character after reading a phrase by Flaubert that identified the era of Hadrian as that magical and unrepeatable moment between the still flourishing Antiquity and nascent Christianity) and on the figure of the emperor and his famous epigram dedicated to the poetic departure of the soul from the body ( Animula vagula blandula / hospes comesque corporis / quae nunc adibis in loca / pallidula rigida nudula / nec ut soles dabit iocos , or: «O lost and sweet little soul / guest and companion of the body / that now you will depart towards places / pale, cold and bare / nor as usual will you play [with me] anymore») which can be considered, precisely because it is poetry, the manifesto of the value of art, the only true mockery of death. Lorella Pagnucco Salvemini then wrote her declaration of love to Alda Merini, but, immediately afterwards, unable to hold back any longer, she – an art historian – abandoned herself to paying homage to Caravaggio, Rubens and Velázquez.

The chapter ends with a personal memory that is another declaration of love – this time professional – to Cesare De Michelis, patron of Marsilio Editore for a long time, as well as an intellectual, essayist, university professor and – last but not least – friend and, in some ways, Pygmalion of the Author. The second chapter, as has been said, is dedicated to the nineteenth century because, as the Author revealed, her acquaintance with that century passed through her grandmother's stories and, therefore, it is as if she had had direct experience of that world by which she was fascinated as demonstrated by the homage to Boldini, Hayez, Silvestro Lega and Zandomeneghi who represent as many declinations of it: from the splendor of the Belle Époque , to the classical and magical monumentality of Painting, up to the apparently provincial intimacy of the small ancient world and the pomp of the Ville lumière .

This harmonious vision of a distant age is in stark contrast to the reflection on the contradictions of contemporary art, underlined with implacable irony and with the tip of the pen, as when the Author enjoys the idea that a sculpture like Him (Hitler in prayer) by Maurizio Cattelan was purchased by the magnate and collector Enrich Marx, as she says, with a surname that is too cumbersome. Nor can she refrain from noting how evident the kitsch is that pervades a work like Jeff Koons' Pluto and Proserpina , exhibited without much regard for the masterpieces that have been present for centuries in Piazza della Signoria in Florence. It is not possible to repeat here all the gleanings and the savoury annotations of the Author, but certainly the juxtaposition between Botticelli's Venus and Chiara Ferragni who poses next to it for the joy of her legions of followers , not without an intent - not even too veiled - to establish an analogy, leaves room for various considerations on our time. The review ends with an ironic Venetia Triumphans that takes into consideration the Exhibitions of the famous Venice Biennale from 1993 to 2024, saving (rightly) practically none of them. Luckily, as an Artist, I exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1986, the splendid one on Art and Alchemy , curated by Maurizio Calvesi, so ... I was saved.