Three suppositions about objects found in a virgin land - made on looking at the paintings and objects of Antonio Caputo da Roma.

Fabulous: on old galoshes and a new pair of specs.
Theatrical:
Catastrophic: on images, traces, impressions and other archeological remains
Epitaph for the unknown Philistine

I. Fabulous: on old galoshes and a new pair of specs.
The story of the galoshes is well known.Wherever they are found as soon as they are worn all wishes may be granted and the wearer can walk through different periods and centuries. Andersen recounts how much good or bad luck may eventually follow the wearer.

I imagine something similar may have happened to Antonio Caputo da Roma. Antonio is walking along, lost in thought, when he comes across a pair of specs lying in the grass at the side of the road. A pair of specs! We will see whether they bring him good luck or bad .. He picks up them up, puts them on and the world is no longer recognisable . He sees everything in a new light.

What he does not know, but we do, is that these glasses used to belong to an extraterrestrial being who, having given our world the once over, fled with them to his own planet vowing never to come back. But we are left wondering what Antonio himself sees . He sees exactly what he had in mind when walking along lost in thought – nothing at all. This nothing is multiplied by the glasses and takes on forms that give increasing anguish the longer they are looked at.

For example there is a group of beings we can recognise as men but above the empty outline of their arms and shoulders they have a nought as big as an ostrich egg where their heads should be. Here and there a couple of lines indicate their sightless eyes or dumb mouths . Nothingness stares all around .
Other groups of nothing are prevented by a black line from seizing anything that looks like having an existence,from swallowing it up into the same voracious vampire of nothingness.Then a black- railed ship appears, with a crew made up of noughts, moving across a grey- blue paper sea . Could it be the remains of the art group zero?

Maybe the pretence of the fake champions is the most frightening,its presence is everywhere; : there is the silhouette of a man’s shape,vegetation seemingly cut out of paper. pretend coloured flowers,maybe the shape of a fish here and there. We are shown the last remnants of a nature used up a long time ago,.torn from its protection, cut into pieces, chewed and swallowed. There is a very different kind of excrement too - that of the conquerer digested and shat by history. We see what the universal historic metabolism has left us of the sun king Ra.,of the huntress Diana,of the mysterious Sphinx, of our Christian sentiment of pity. Everywhere we see little boxes like children’s coffins from where we expect smoke to rise but no -one is left to receive the sacrifice and no one is left who feels the need to sacrifice.

The most curious thing seems to be a little ivory coloured monument. It alone does not flee but celebrates the so-called ‘reunion of the spirit’ a couple kneeling face to face in search of their orgasm. Perhaps after came all those ‘ births from the head’ that have made our world into what it is now and have literally anulled it, filling it with nations of noughts.
Since Antonio himself had no other planet to flee to he has put down on paper. and canvas or turned into sculpture all that he saw through those extraterrestrial spectacles.

Thus in a certain sense he has managed to free himself –a crafty pretence to liberate himself from the general misery, to transform the misfortune seen through the glasses. This has brought him his reputation as an artist along with a good bit of money we hope!And since art is really a planet on a spiritual plane in the end it has brought his escape too.

II. Theatrical

Another idea comes to mind about the Commedia dell’Arte and similar cultural remains on seeing part of a ship with Orpheus and Euridyce glimpsed behind a cabin window-probably as they are crossing the river Lethe ( do we hear the strains of Gluch?)

In the composition entitled ‘Enigma’ I notice a mirror like a round porthole reflecting a mysterious man. Maybe this is a self portrait that reveals man as an enigma not only to others but to himself too.Is there a hidden exhortation to seek the solution? Let’s try..We know that Antonio comes from the sun- blessed and rainfree people who invented the Commedia dell’Arte -.. We know too that destiny brought him to the slippery slopes of the theatre where he acquitted himself well contributing to the staging of many operas and performances from "Parsifal" to'"Idomeneo", from'"Hamlet" to Don Gil dalle calze verdi".

Maybe he learned from this experience that a role, rather than a man, is hidden behind a mask and perhaps more than anything he sees the roles that men play behind their ever- changing masks.
Take for example that of a certain ‘Walther’ named ‘Rebus,’ or the mask ‘Erda’ which could be unzipped to reveal only God knows what goddess! Then there’s the drawing of a face that looks like a chessman or maybe the White Queen from Alice in Wonderland.-but we don’t need to guess at’ Parsifal’

Another illusion’Hillary’ has the air of lady of the castle wearing a head piece over long hair,four round eyes behind glasses, a moralist’s bitter little mouth surrounded by lots of gold coins that look like Hillary. It can’t be wife of the American president-too disrespectful? ‘Margot’ -fresh from a face lift is still in bandages, just a giant mouth like a lopsided tennis ball can be seen.’Fatima’ belongs either in a harem or a prison with her reproachful black slanty eyes. ‘Yoko’ is an enormous fingerprint or maybe a playing field full of freckles. Round her head something like shooting stars-it can’t be Yoko Ono!I Is this what happens when you think about John Lennon too much? Why is ‘Orlando’ winking like that with his reddened ,round moon face, a wrinkled mouth of truth in turquoise large enough only for a little finger.

Here is’Palma’much destroyed by Pablo Picasso! What do we notice about ‘Alice’ -more wonderful than wonderland? A couple of horns emerge right and left of her neck and above her round face a blue flower grows out of her brain as from a flowerbed. Then the imperturble Maid of Orleans stares at us from beneath her helmet of chainmail with eyes like boiled eggs, as if Schiller had hidden her in our garden for Easter. ‘Luther’does no work: he looks like an unshaven pirate about to capture St Peter’s and the Vatican. Last there is Japanese ‘Shinsu’ like a well fed opera singer..He’s wearing a halo of flowers on his head as though about to sing’Butterfly’ at any moment.

After this the curtain falls and the show is over.Have we seen a tragedy,a drama a comedy or rather a farce? What is left when that bubble that pretends to be life bursts? Will it be just a memory of many colours or a memory to be blown away by a curious wind?This too is a world that in the end dissolves into nothing, leaving at most a pair of shadows more or less real.It leaves without doubt a lot of refuse,empty shells and skin- those masks as though fixed with our Antonio’s image;something tangible that can be framed and hung on the wall as a welcome sign.A little ironic, a bit controversial , wicked and cheerful at the same time.As serious as a charade.

III. Catastrophic

A word as fatal and serious as ‘charade’ inevitably brings Goethe to mind and postulates that life is serious but art is serene. It is something similar to the atomic bomb falling from Faustian clouds where all the puppet theatre of life is broken into a thousand pieces.Here a last idea springs to mind! It is hard to believe but they say that after the bomb fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki human beings were impressed on the walls and burnt into the ground; pale blotches similar to cave drawings , traces of a real life .Maybe in the future we will all leave such traces without needing a catastrophe-we will do it by ourselves.

Now we have to imagine someone coming out with a lantern in search of human beings, like the Greek philosopher or the poet Grabbe,.and what will he find in the end? Images,only images of a past world.

I see our Antonio swinging his shaky lantern in search.He seems to be surrounded by a real and orderly world but this consists only of images made by a huge rubber stamp that has pressed on life and squashed it flat. He returns from his trips to these unexplored no-man’s lands bringing back the things he has found ,for example the ‘Image of a garden’ to be seen in one of his exhibition catalogues. He has been where that garden no longer exists. His masks too, whether drawn, carved or painted are nothing but the images or illusions of beings similar to the man whose imprint he has found on the way.

I think I can see the trick. With archeological precision he has brought piece by piece into the realm of his fantasy a destroyed world. Here he can recreate and recompose the pieces as fine and colourful as he likes making a cabinet of curiosities for himself.. Like everyone he is king of his fantasy which comes to life through his fingers and is also under his complete control.. Here he is an absolute monarch- enough to make the queen of England jealous.

In conclusion we may say that he continually and very craftily manages to trick not only death but life itself, and in particular all that is born from our heads that we call God. Congratulations Antonio! Attention though- this will work only as long as fantasy lasts. Once it is exhausted man will strike and where man strikes not a blade of grass can grow!
Dear friends, maybe we are fleeing not from the world and the nothingness around us but rather from that ruffian and blackguard that lies within us.

 

IV. Epitaph for an unknown philistine.

Remember: art, and only art if communicated as such, can greatly prolong life but it can make life eternal only in the few rarest cases. . After which one no longer takes advantage of it!
 

Read information about Heinz von Cramer on Wikipedia