Until January 12th Antiquarian Library Gonnelli Casa d’Aste di Firenze (via Fra’ Giovanni Angelico, 49) hosts the exhibition Grotesques and arabesques in black – Flesh, death and the devil in the graphics of Symbolism edited by Emanuele Bardazzi. A mysterious and compelling journey into symbolist and visionary European graphics between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through its most original and disturbing expressions.
The title of the exhibition is a tribute to Tales of the grotesque and arabesque by Edgar Allan Poe, in which the grotesque was associated with the gothic, the monstrous and the terrifying with stories dominated by the theme of death, apparitions of deceased spirits, mystery and the subconscious, while the subtitle intentionally cites the famous Flesh, death and the devil in the romantic literature of Mario Praz – published for the first time in 1930 and in an enlarged edition in 1942 – which is still considered today an innovative and fundamental literary critical essay for focusing on the European romantic culture of the second half of the nineteenth century and its agony in the Turn-of-the-century decadence.
In a game of mirrors, the exhibition and its catalog are divided into eight sections, retracing in an analogical way the various themes addressed by Praz in his book.
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Franz von Stuck, Sensuality (Sensualità), 1889-1891 circa. Aquaforte
The first section Spleen and ideal. Abysses and redemptions of Decadence focuses on the key writers of French literature of the second half of the 19th century: from Charles Baudelaire to The evil flowers to Jules Barbey D’Aurevilly as Devilishby Joséphin Péladan with his volumes of Decadence Latine a Joris-Karl Huysmans con Over there accompanied by illustrations by Félicien Rops, Armand Rassenfosse, Fernand Khnopff, Alméry Lobel Riche and Henry Chapront.
The second is entirely dedicated to Max Klinger, forerunner of the surreal, between myth, drama and estrangement, with engravings from Intermezzi, Cupid and Psyche, On Death II and from other cycles, in addition to the famous Isle of the Dead.
The third from the title The Queen of Spades explores the theme of the eternal feminine, from the misogynistic vision of the femme fatale and the woman as the devil’s puppet to the controversial one of the so-called “satanic” feminism, i.e. linked to the reclamation of female sensuality and the liberation from gender roles established by moralistic and chauvinist. Among the artists represented there are, in addition to Rops with his famous PornokratesOtto Greiner con The devil shows the woman to the peopleFranz von Stuck con SensualityMarcel-Lenoir con The monster, up to the illustrations of Salome by Oscar Wilde made by Aubrey Beardsley, Marcus Behmer and Alastair.
The fourth Ecstasy, torment and transgressions of Eros delves into the most diverse aspects of love and sexuality, from the libertine images of Franz von Bayros to the dramatic and grotesque implications of jealousy and possession described by Willi Geiger in his cycle of etchings One Love.
The fifth Macabre dances and horrors of war contains various representations of the skeleton related to Danse Macabre and to Death and the Maiden by Marcel Roux, Karl Reisenbichler, August Brömse, James Ensor, Odilon Redon, Alfred Kubin, Jan Kon?pek and the editions of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories illustrated by Harry Clarke, Henri Evenepoel and Romeo Costetti. The theme of war with its atrocities is instead represented by some terrifying engravings from the series Guerro by Valere Bernard. The sixth, Darkness and Light, is the section that most closely adheres from a stylistic point of view to the artifice of the arabesque. The drawing and engraving virtuosity, capable of creating skilful plays of deep blacks combined with flashes of light through the use of ink or aquatint, evokes dreams, visions, nightmares and hallucinations in which one can also discover the precursors of dark fantasy art Contemporary. They range from the nocturnal atmospheres of Rudolf Jettmar to the distressing ones of Marcel Roux from the collection Variationsalong with a number of books such as Hamlet of Shakespeare illustrated by John Austen, The rime of the ancient mariner of Coleridge illustrated by Willy Pogany up to the disturbing fairy tales depicted in taste Art Nouveau there Wilhelm Schulz.
