After Michelangelo Pistoletto’s monumental version of Venus of Rags, which was set on fire a few days after its installation and then reinstalled at the artist’s expense, and after Gaetano Pesce’s work Tu si ’na cosa grande, which stirred up a great deal of controversy, a new monumental work was installed again in Naples ’ Piazza del Municipio on June 5, as part of the Napoli Contemporanea program of urban exhibitions and installations, desired by Mayor Gaetano Manfredi and curated by Vincenzo Trione.
It is Silent Hortense, a giant 7.50-meter-high polyester resin work resting on a 120-centimeter steel-framed painted wood base, for a total height of nearly nine meters. Created by sculptor Jaume Plensa, originally from Barcelona, the work depicts the face of a young woman, Hortense, crossing her hands over her mouth, “as if in an invitation to silence,” reads the press note published on the Naples City Council website. Created with digital technologies from a real model, the sculpture, it reads, “recalls, in its imperfection-free candor, ancient statuary and at the same time, in its relationship with the context, demonstrates a distinctly contemporary sensibility.”
It will remain installed in City Hall Square until Aug. 19, but it is already causing discussion especially because of the hand over mouth gesture, which is being read as an invitation to be silent.
“After the ’Fish of the Fish’ that we were told was a Punchinello worth hundreds of thousands of euros. After the Venus of Rags that they pretended was donated and instead lies in storage, also costing hundreds of thousands of euros. After the mamozio that towers menacingly over Palazzo Ottieri, in a grotesque challenge to the memory of Masaniello... Now in the Piazza Municipio, comes the mouth-stopping monkey. A work with a pretentious title, Silent Hortense, which seems rather the perfect symbol of today’s Neapolitans: shut up, resigned, with their hands over their faces,” said independent regional councilwoman Marì Muscarà, as written in an article in Napoli Today.“This time, more than offended, we are represented. Represented in the deafening silence of those who do not see, do not hear and above all do not speak,” the councilwoman continued. “Naples is falling apart, now even the crosswalks no longer exist, and they put up statues inviting people to be quiet.”
“I see that even this work has already begun to enliven the debate,” commented Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi. “It means it has hit the mark: art must create emotion and discussion, and I think that is a positive thing.”
“I think contemporary art has to propose questions,” said Jaume Plensa. “I always work with the idea of people’s individuality. In this case I look for silence as a personal decision to feel again all the vibration and personal ideas. Naples is a city that has a great tradition of communication with others and it seems to me a perfect place to talk about individual communication. Today we talk, we talk but maybe not about the fundamental things.”
“Implicitly, it is an invitation to reflect on the meaning and value of silence in a time that is instead invaded by a hypertrophy of communication,” Trione commented, “and it is also a way to invite silence after the many inappropriate remarks pronounced about both Pistoletto’s and Pesce’s work: sometimes we could use a little seriousness, first to think and then to pronounce judgments and observations.”
Photo by Chiara Silvestri.
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| Naples, new artwork with young woman covering her mouth with her hands causes discussion |
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