I have been preoccupied with two recent portraits by Adamo Macri. It wasn't until I was working in a garden among irises in June when various ideas came together. There's no logical explanation for this, but I believe it has something to do with the colour of these particular irises. Among his many other gifts, Macri is a master in the use of colour, and my admiration often begins with his carefully selected palette. The irises were (as the blooms have long faded) blended gold and bronze with touches of delicate beige, copper, pink and purple. Their colour kept reminding me of Macri's beautiful and complex portrait Carnevale. Yes, the title, along with the portrait, immediately makes us think of the famous Venetian carnival. There are so many elements, however, in this work that it's impossible to reduce it to a singular meaning or reference point. Moreover, it’s useful to remember that the idea of carnival or carnevale can involve more than an elaborate costume party and parade of bedizened boats on the Grand Canal.
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| Carnevale |
Still thinking of colours while forking through a pile of leaf mould and mixing it into a new vegetable plot, I also recalled Macri's mysterious and paradoxical portrait, Salò, with its earthy tones of brown and black. Once again, I paused to make sense of my impressions, which were, and still are, deeply influenced by the title. I thought of Pasolini's controversial film, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, released in English as Pasolini's The 120 Days of Sodom, and of course, I also recalled the Marquis de Sade's infamous novel, The 120 Days of Sodom, which Pasolini loosely adapted for his screenplay. That is not all, for Mussolini's fascist state was popularly known as the Salò Republic, named after a small town on Lake Garda where the dictator sometimes resided and housed his Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So, just like Carnevale, Salò consists of multiple meanings, and studying the sombre portrait can lead a viewer in several directions.
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| Salò |
There are other meanings for Salo, including a robot by that name in Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction novel, The Sirens of Titan, but they carry me too far afield. In any case, Macri is more deeply influenced by film than he is by fiction. Fellini, Bergman, and Greenaway come to mind, among others, as he is the first to point out, and he is alert to historical, political and mythological influences in modern life. He often constructs portraits, and I think "construct" is a useful word here, by layering narrative strands from art, mythology, cinema, popular culture, manipulating and redefining appropriate details and elements, as if he is creating a sculpture as much as he's dressing a character for a performance or portrait. To quote his words from an interview, such portraits allow viewers "to instantly grasp a fraction of what is being communicated." Carnevale and Salò are both so richly imbued with intimations, subtleties and references that I am entranced by their beauty and technique, even as I seek to uncover (more than just a fraction) what the artist so adroitly blends and folds in as he re-creates old stories or identities to make something new and compelling.
Many of his portraits incorporate veils or masks of one style or another, all of which contribute to a sense of mystery; that is to say, the essential mysteriousness of mind and heart. Indeed, in very recent portraits simply entitled AM 2022 I, II, and III, the veil or mesh or screen itself seems to be the focus of interest, the thing we notice most because of its pre-eminence. Although we don’t see AM’s or Adamo Macri’s uncovered face, we can examine contours, identify fragments of, or covert allusions to, other works, but the face covering is the inescapable fact. Complete understanding of his shifting identity is ever elusive. And this elusiveness of meaning in a Macri portrait is as important as meaning itself.
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| Adamo Macri 2022 I, II, III |
In a sense, Macri creates a photography of masks and veils, apparent throughout his creations, as a perusal of his catalogue of images will attest. The purpose of such an artistic enterprise is not to play tricks, but to incorporate the notion of a never-ending narrative, the seduction of the unrecognizable, a belief that fragments of stories or allusions to stories, whether fictional or real, cinematic or literary, historical or mythological, scientific or fantastic, are intrinsic to, indeed inextricable from, the very basis and nature of his art. The origin and inspiration of his work, regardless of explanations or theories, remain veiled or hidden from prying eyes of the viewer. The hero of the story, the persona in these photographs and others, cannot be known because unmasking or unveiling is never entirely possible. Perversely, all the more reason, I say, to delve into and mull about their mystery.
Despite the violations depicted in Pasolini's film, or described in de Sade's novel, or enacted in Mussolini's republic, there's an eerie, other-worldly gentleness about Macri's Salò portrait, an aura of seeming innocence (and the word "seeming" is crucially important) behind the complicated and delicate veil. The face is more or less expressionless, and the innocence seems to arise from the adroit use of dark colours and subtle lighting, rather than in facial expression per se. Having said that, I remain startled by the eyes. Although they appear to be the look of a man who means no harm, the more I study them, the prominent left eye in particular, the more I sense deception and ulterior motives peeping between head band and veil. Hair and moustache become indistinct from the dark body, and the portrait leads me to imagine strange events beneath the earth, in the halls of the god Hades who snatched Persephone from the bright world of burgeoning spring and carried her to his dark caverns. One recalls Bernini’s statue, The Abduction of Proserpina, to give the lady her Latin name. Although this could well be mere imagination on my part, or the influence of the title and its associations, I think it has much to do with the ability of the artist to bring together all his artistic and technical skills to imbue the portrait with intimations of what cannot be defined.
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| The Abduction of Proserpina (Gian Lorenzo Bernini) |
The combined effect of colour, cosmetics, and the placement of the facial covering like fine lace scarcely touching the skin compel my attention. The eyes seem to be gazing out, not directly at the viewer, which is a rarity in a Macri portrait, but at what they perceive of alternative events and reality, or else preoccupied with what lies within. This portrait reminds me of a religious figure, say a monk or nun, peering through a grille of a convent or monastery, silently observing an alien world. My allusion to religion here is not arbitrary because religious feeling, perhaps awe in the presence of the unknowable, is evident in several Macri portraits. The same figure could also be malevolent, privy to shocking secrets and behaviours, enticingly diabolic, either devout or debauched. One should be wary, therefore, not to be seduced by the seemingly gentle beauty behind lace, and not to be taken in by the illusions of art. Which, of course, is what art encourages us to do.
The head in the Carnevale portrait is top-heavy with a crown of convoluted, writhing shapes in gold and bronze and intricate miniature sculptures, reminiscent of my irises. They also remind me of similar structures in Macri’s art of the triffid and elsewhere in his oeuvre. The colours of the head dress are reflected in the skin tones, the richly embroidered and furred robe, and even the elaborate cross, the latter item evident in other Macri portraits, for example in the recent Deus Ex Machina. A careful study of this latter portrait reveals that, as an artist, Macri never wastes the potential of an idea or item, and often refits it to suit a new creation.
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| Deus Ex Machina |
Macri’s Carnevale, therefore, not only reminds us of the elaborate charade in Venice, it also points to the role of carnival itself: its potential to be subversive, satirical and subtly political. A release valve from the pressures of the day and the horrors of the news, a carnival invites and permits just about anything, especially if one is disguised. In the spirit of carnival, we can dress richly, preposterously, pretentiously, and call attention to the absurdity of political pretensions, mock and violate social norms, and thumb our nose at authority and repressive regimes. We can delve in dark matters without moral compunction, for carnival liberates us from repression and paralyzing self-consciousness.
In the same spirit, Macri occasionally presents us with the comic and satirical, just for the fun of it, just to turn our self-importance and pomposity upside down, as in the clever portrait with the highly-charged name, Deus Ex Machina, which reminds me of a 19th century London chimney sweep. Both funny and disturbing, the figure seems to be laden with a jumble of elements taken from other portraits, as if the artist is making fun, not only of himself, but also of someone like me who tries to meander among the intimations and imagine plausible scenarios. Tilted hat, mask, cross, strands of hair, penetrating stare: all speak volumes of possibilities. I remember that humour is not always light-hearted and rejuvenating, but can also be dark and savage. Many devils in Lucifer’s realm, fallen angels all, are comedians and tricksters. And that is the mesmerizing genius of these Macri portraits, because they embody contradictions and paradox, and play with our beliefs, longings and illusions, whether moral or amoral, good or evil, or anywhere between the extremes.
In that regard, the Salò portrait can be viewed as a silent witness to personal or social ills and violations. The severe palette of black and brown tones, the eyes and the darkness of the undifferentiated body, all hint at restrictions and disturbances of dangerous kinds, perhaps like those made explicit in Pasolini and de Sade. Which is not to say the artist in any way is subscribing to actions or beliefs in film and book. One has to be careful not to “read” or “see” mere equivalences or autobiography in a Macri portrait. Regardless of his influences or manipulation of ideas, he is not an imitator, but an inspired originator of multiple identities, including those of the viewers, as the brilliant portraits Carnevale and Salò so dramatically demonstrate.
Kenneth Radu has published books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction, including The Cost of Living, shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. His collection of stories A Private Performance and his first novel Distant Relations both received the Quebec Writers' Federation Award for best English-language fiction. He is also the author of the novel Flesh and Blood (HarperCollins Canada), Sex in Russia: New & Selected Stories, Earthbound and Net Worth (DC Books Canada).
