See Naples and Live – 13: Bloody Weird

 

Scene from an Orgies Mysteries Theatre event

Just when you think that Naples can't get any weirder... it gets weirder.

When my good friend Z from Latina (whom I'd last seen during An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – see this blog March to October 2020) joined me for some of my time in Naples, I suggested a visit to the Hermann Nitsch Museum (knowing that she was keen to see some modern art).

However, I had absolutely no idea what I was letting us both in for. 

It didn't start well. The doors were locked and the place seemed closed (even though I'd had it confirmed by email that it would be open). Fortunately, I went for a walk around the back of the building, spied someone in a kitchen, and – after a bit of hand signalling – he made it clear that he would come and let us in. There was no one else in the large three-storey gallery – just this young curator and us.

It almost felt like the beginning of a low-budget horror movie... and that's pretty much the direction in which things were about to go...

I was busy examining what appeared to be huge blood-stained pieces of wood and canvas (which is what they turned out to be) when Z nudged me into looking at the video screen above us. I watched a succession of naked young men and women led ritually before a crowd of onlookers to take up crucifixion-type poses and then have jugs of blood force-fed into their dribbling lips or poured over their genitals. 

This was all part of performance artist Nitsch's extraordinary decades-long oeuvre of what he calls his Orgies Mysteries Theatre – an explosive mixture of stripped human bodies, pseudo-religious ceremonies and copious quantities of animal blood and guts (literally) – or sometimes fruit such as strawberries and tomatoes (any colour as long as it's red).

The large bloody stains at my feet were the leftovers from one of these "orgies", themselves now artworks.

At this point I felt slightly sickened and if I had been there on my own I might have left. But Z has a more open mind than I do, and we both persevered. And I'm glad that I did. Because I came to realise that this is genuine art...

Nitsch knows exactly what he is doing in shaking up the spectator or visitor and making them face the question: 'What exactly do I think about this?'

Other pieces feature unnervingly neat layouts of little piles of tissues... and medical instruments that made one think of torture and suffering rather than surgery and healing. It is the stuff of nightmares... maybe Nitsch's, maybe our own.

Finally, we walked down an ominous and inexplicably awful subterranean corridor lined with large black and white abstract images and carefully arranged benches that looked as if they were waiting for bodies to be laid on them. It all induced a feeling that I had not experienced in quite the same way anywhere – apart from when I once visited the prison huts of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

If you want to get some idea of what Nitsch is all about – and have a strong mind and stomach – visit https://www.museonitsch.org/en/.

See Naples and Live – 12: Half Man, Half Fish

 

Strange figures abound on the streets of Naples – some so odd that there is not always agreement as to who they even are...

Just up the road from the apartment in which I stayed in the Universita district was the bas-relief of this intriguing character, adorning a wall.

Some refer to him as "the hairy man", as if he were a kind of urban Bigfoot. But the large dagger he carries has led to him being given more specific identities.

Some claim that this is a depiction of Orion – the giant huntsman who ended up placed among the stars by Zeus.

But most people – including me – prefer to see this as the much more fascinating Cola Pesce (or Nick the Fish), a legendary character bound up strongly with Naples and with Sicily, and also with the ubiquitous Sirens who once held terrifying sway along the Odyssean coasts of south-western Italy (of which more soon in this blog).

Cola (short for Niccolo) was a boy who spent so much time swimming that his mother said he might as well be a fish. And that's what he more or less became, spending most of his time in the sea. When he wanted to travel long distances, he allowed himself to be swallowed by a large fish – and then, when he reached his destination, he used his knife to cut the fish open from the inside and escape.

The king heard of Cola's prowess and used him to locate treasure in the Bay of Naples, and also to report back on how the island of Sicily was supported by vast pillars rising from the seabed.

To find out how deep Cola could go, the king asked him to follow a cannonball fired into the sea. Cola did as he was ordered and caught the cannonball way down in the depths... but then the sea mysteriously closed over him and trapped him there forever.

The image of "the hairy man" or perhaps "the wavy man" is said to have been found in the 13th century but it's been argued that it is much, much older.

It certainly looks like Cola, the boy who grew up to live – and die – in the sea.

But there are other depictions of the marine hero... See below for a more contemporary one, also from the streets of Naples.

See Naples and Live – 11: A Home from Home

 

Naples is certainly a place of dramatic juxtapositions... rich and poor, sacred and profane, the living and the dead... but surely none more bizarre than the house of US civil rights heroine Rosa Parks sitting in the courtyard of the Palazzo Reale?

It's such a weird transplantation that it somehow seems utterly normal. You have to do a double take or two before you can assimilate the fact that, yes, this is what you are actually looking at...

This white clapboard house used to stand in Detroit, where Parks went to live after her 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a bus made Alabama too hot for her.

In 2008 the house was due for demolition but Parks's niece bought it and gave it to artist Ryan Mendoza. After failing to get support to save the building, Mendoza took it to pieces and moved it to his studio in Berlin.

A plan to take it back to the States to be part of a civil rights exhibition fell through... and that's when Naples stepped in and offered space for it to be displayed, under the title Almost Home.

Perhaps it is the incredible nature of the journey of the Rosa Parks house that somehow resonates with the lives of all of us.

How on earth did we end up where we are? Is "almost home" as good as being home? Or is "almost home" the nearest we're ever going to get to a neat ending?

See Naples and Live – 10: Market Forces

Sometimes it's impossible to see a place that you really want to see... because it just isn't there any more.

Many things drew me back to Naples... but one in particular was the chance to visit the Piazza Mercato, the historic Market Square that I previously wrote about and featured paintings of in this blog (An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Street Fight in Naples – 19 January 2021).

I was prepared for disappointment (I knew that it was now all but abandoned) but not on the level that I was to experience it.

The piazza had once been the almost-theatrical centre stage of life – and death – in Naples.

The 17th-century Masaniello revolt had taken place here, going through every possible stage from euphoric celebration to the darkest violence.

It was a place of public torture and execution... and it was also a place of commerce and the joys of life... all played out beneath the backdrop of Vesuvius, the volcano that could erupt and wreak havoc at any moment.

Domenico Gargiulo made the most remarkable depiction of its heyday (see below). But when I finally walked out across that desolate space, I couldn't even manage to get a decent photograph to convey the terrible emptiness of it.

My picture at the top of this post is a mess... a picture of the hodge-podge at just one corner of the square. That obelisk fountain was one of two built in the 18th century – which added little to the place. The only common feature in my picture and Gargiulo's is the tower of the Carmine church.

The past is definitely another piazza...

Piazza Mercato by Domenico Gargiulo

How Journalism Works

I'd better declare my interest at the beginning...

Some time ago, when I was writing a music column for an evening paper, I received an advance copy of Waterloo by Abba. This was prior to their Eurovision appearance and I had no idea who they were. My review simply stated that this was without doubt a number one hit record. 

The rest is history... two master composers, two great singers, a band that rivalled the Beatles in producing pop music with universal appeal. What's not to like?

Abba's recent return has been a general cause of excitement. But today the Telegraph carries a piece by someone called Ed Power, basically using several hundred words to sneer at Abba for saying they won't be doing any more after their comeback album and ongoing hi-tech London stage show.

Ed Power suggests that this may be because their new music isn't very good – and that's why they are not contemplating doing proper concerts. The more likely reason why two divorced couples in their seventies (who now have completely different lives) might not want to go out on the road together seems to have escaped Ed Power. As has the fact that they possibly have nothing left to prove.

Strangely, exactly two weeks ago, someone called Ed Power wrote a lengthy positive puff piece for the new Abba show and album in the Telegraph.

What happened in between? Abba gave an exclusive interview to the Guardian... 

See Naples and Live – 9: Deeply Moving

Galleria Borbonica             ©Nigel Summerley

As I've already mentioned (see this blog 14 October 2021, See Naples and Live – 2: Going Underground), some of the most remarkable sights of Naples are below street level, one of the most unusual being the Galleria Borbonica.

This was originally a huge tunnel commissioned by the Bourbon king Ferdinand II in 1853. His aim was to have an underground link from his palace to the army barracks (and to the Bay of Naples). He lived in troubled times, and the tunnel would ensure that either his troops could come and rescue him and/or that he could escape from the city by sea.

The tunnelling hit so many technical hitches that the king never saw it properly completed.

But in the Second World War it came into its own as a vast air-raid shelter. And in the 1970s it became a municipal dump for abandoned cars and scooters (many of them still there today).

During the war it was fitted with electric lights and extremely basic toilet facilities for the crowds who had to live underground while bombs rained down destroying their city. They had swapped one kind of hell for another...

But one piece of graffiti that one of them left behind summed up their situation – and perhaps also the spirit of Naples.

It reads "Noivivi". Just one word that probably should be two: "Noi vivi". But even then it wouldn't be, strictly speaking, grammatical.

But what it translates as is "Us alive". It must have been a message of defiance and hope and positivity written in the dark and filth and despair of the tunnel. And it meant: "We are still here. We survive."

See Naples and Live – 8: You Couldn't Make It Up

"Do that mean what I think it do?" as they say in Tennessee.

Well, yes, it appears to. And it's not just the name of one of Naples' most popular nocturnal eating spots... it's also a franchise spreading across Italy.

Just a few doors up from where I was staying in the Universit
a area of the city, it's especially popular with students.

I didn't sample its wares, preferring to frequent more traditionally named eateries. But for some reason it always made me smile on the way home after a night out.