![]() With a magnificent bust of emperor Hadrian, whom I have painted with his eyes wide open and shining, obsessed with love. It shows us as we were then and as we are now.Īnd you connect David Bowie to the emperor Hadrian In the background, there are film clips from Robert Siodmak’s The Last Roman (1968) and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. So in the first room, titled Para Bellum (Prepare for War) we have a statue of a torso of Emperor Domitian, dressed as a fighting Hercules (from the National Museum of Rome), which evokes a composition of mine about the myth of Achilles and Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons, with whom Achilles falls in love only after he kills her. I chose film clips from various eras, from the early twentieth century to the present, to project in each room, that would show the world through the eyes of different directors and reflect back on Roman art. I related each piece to my own work that I had painted and decorated over the years. I had access to the Roman museum storerooms, a trove of treasures never exhibited, never seen before. Daily life was like this, the evidence is there in the statues. They devoted themselves to the pleasures of the flesh, to sex, with no limits of age or gender. They took drugs, their banquets were euphoric. They drank wine abundantly and ate rich foods. ![]() But, let’s face it, the ancient Romans were sleazy. It was us, over the decades, who burdened them with the meaning we wanted to give them. But the truth is that these works were completely free. But that is the vision that has remained with us up till the 20th century when the great identity crisis of the nation-state drew on the history of our ancestors and bent it to their own needs for order and superiority. When we talk about classic art we think of amphitheaters, white marble statues frozen in formal poses. It stems from the need to change our point of view and thus approach classic culture without fear and adoration. It is, of course, a tribute to Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Where does this title come from? Vita Dvlcis (the sweet life? He smiles and takes us on a tour of his latest work, with the quiet modesty and pride of a landlord showing off the new house he just built. Vezzoli arrives for our interview in his “work outfit”: shorts, T-shirt and sneakers, all black. His latest exhibition, currently showing at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, is entitled “Vita Dvlcis: Fear and Desire in the Roman Empire.” Over the years, Vezzoli has collaborated with the likes of Sharon Stone and Natalie Portman, Lady Gaga and Bianca Jagger, Damien Hirst and Frank Gehry.Īn artist and intellectual, a craftsman and academic, Vezzoli has for years been committed to creating a dialogue between the pop art of films and fashion, and the classical tradition, creating an easily accessible and universally understandable, yet utterly original, language of his won. ![]() Luc Besson Cleared of Rape Allegations by French Court
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