Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Roberta Scorranese is a rare example of a journalist and writer who combines a monstrous working capacity with the talent of take a sideways look at things, and to reveal aspects that escape us. His new book confirms this, This is what the body is for (Bompiani).
A minute, or a little more. This is the average time we spend in front of a work of art in a museum or exhibition. This is the conclusion reached by Tedi Asher, a neuroscientist who works at Peabody Essex Museum (Pem) of Salem, Massachusetts.
We look at works of art very little, we photograph them more often. Or we comment on them. But when was the last time we sat down to contemplate The Fornarina by Raphael in the Barberini Gallery in Rome o The kiss by Hayez in the Brera Art Gallery?
Art nails us to a truth that often goes unnoticed: we don’t look, we judge. We don’t listen, we criticize.
A bit like we do with the body that has fallen to our lot: without realizing it we force him to remain in the cockpit of a car for hours, or we inflict grueling training sessions on him without criterion.
The body, like a work of artis not a backdrop against which to project the sumptuous film of the brain. What if we tried to contemplate it? If we listen to the body and look at it simply for what it is, without judgments or moral frills, we will understand the extraordinary strength of Michelangelo’s muscles. We will feel the pure grace of Raphael’s women’s breasts, we will understand why Caravaggio’s penitent Magdalene is so human in her tiredness.
Works of art are an extraordinary opportunity to reclaim the feeling of the bodyanalyzed by Georges Bataille, by Simone de Beauvoir, by Julia Kristeva, by Carlo Ginzburg (in his research on Piero della Francesca).
“This is what the body is for” by Roberta Scorranese (Bompiani)
And also by Patrizia Cavalli, who in one of her poems wrote: «This is what the body is for: you touch me or you don’t touch me, / you hug me or you push me away. The rest is for fools.” Here, concludes Scorranese, the rest is for the crazy or the blind at heart.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.
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