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A suspected arson assault in Naples destroyed a piece from Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Venus of the Rags (1967–1974) sequence yesterday, Wednesday, July 12. The piece was unveiled two weeks in the past within the metropolis’s central Piazza Municipio as a part of a city-wide initiative to deliver artwork into public areas.
Italian police introduced final evening that they arrested a 32-year-old unhoused man in reference to the incident. The authorities recognized the suspect by way of safety footage and traced him to a soup kitchen.
Pistoletto is considered one of Italy’s most well-known up to date artists, and iterations of “Venus of the Rags” are on view in museums worldwide. The almost 23-foot-high art work depicts the Historical Roman goddess of affection and wonder selecting by way of a heap of cloth scraps, with solely her again seen to the viewer. Pistoletto was a number one member of the late Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies Arte Povera (“impoverished artwork“) motion, which rejected conventional mediums and provided anti-establishment commentary on Italy’s reigning industrial and political powers. Arte Povera emerged alongside scholar protests within the nation, and Pistoletto has described the sequence as a press release on consumerism.
The blaze on Wednesday melted the polyurethane statue and incinerated the pile of rags, lowering the avant-garde set up to a burnt steel body. In an interview with Italy’s Corriere Della Sera newspaper, the 90-year-old artist mentioned that “the world goes up in flames anyway.”
“The identical spirits which are waging struggle are those that set the Venus ablaze,” Pistoletto advised the paper. He additionally posited a extra optimistic view, explaining that Venus of the Rags “requires regeneration, on the need to discover a stability and concord between two minds which are represented on the one hand by magnificence, and on the opposite by consummate consumerism, a catastrophe.”
Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi mentioned in a assertion that the native authorities would reinstate Pistoletto’s work, and fundraisers are circulating on-line to collect monetary assist for the undertaking.
On-line, some commentators are declaring the irony of elevating cash for the rebuilding of a sculpture that’s suspected to have been destroyed by an unhoused individual.
“Cherry on the cake: As a substitute of organizing a fundraiser to purchase garments for the unhoused man who burned it to place his determined scenario out of sight, we increase funds for ‘poor’ Pistoletto to do it once more,” one person Tweeted.
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