Stendhal's Syndrome

Giuseppe Arcimboldo circa 1550

I so much wanted to write about the Quadriennale in Rome. It is a huge show which claims to survey all the important work going on in Italy at this time, and other related movements elsewhere in the world. It is an important international exhibition. I was unable to do so, however, to the extent that I desired due to the return of a malady I've had for several years now. This illness I have is a variation of Stendhal's syndrome, that condition he described when he became delirious from looking at too much art in Florence.

I still recall the day I was exposed to this illness and the appearance of its first symptoms after a short incubation. It was ten years ago and I was assisting with the installation of a show in a gallery. A young girl came in, about ten years old; it was her habit to stop by the gallery on the way home from school. She was acquainted with every one in the gallery since she was the daughter of a well known painter. Although young, she was nevertheless very familiar with the ways of galleries and often entertained us with her art knowledgeable banter.

I was standing next to a long wooden extension ladder that was lying flat on the floor when she came up to me and asked very matter- of-factly, "Whose piece is this?" She was asking about the ladder on the floor and it immediately struck me that it was very much like a work of art in every way. It lay on the floor at just the right angle to the walls, but even more, it expressed in metaphor, my feelings about my life at that time.
She was not serious of course. She did not really think that the ladder was a piece in a show, but children of artists have a remarkable amount of disrespect for art. Sometimes they have no interest in art at all. I think it aggravates them, but they are drawn into it none the less. Who can resist such banter? She continued, "It's like something I've seen by Kounellis." I was thinking of some way to reply but she went off to talk to some one else.

This then was the beginning of my illness, a confusion of perception. It expressed itself at first as an inability to distinguish what is and what is not art: an inability to separate the art from its immediate surroundings, and everything becomes elevated to the same exact degree of importance.Rome, Lateran Basilica

The presence of my symptoms of Stendhal's Syndrome existed in me in a state of incubation for some time, and would only surface when I had been looking at art for too long -- for example, after spending an entire day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One day, toward closing time in a museum, I don't recall which one, I found myself stopping exactly half- way between the paintings which were hung on a long expanse of gray velvet-covered wall. I would look at a small section of the velvet, skip past the next painting, and then proceed to another section of velvet between two other paintings. The paintings were those huge black ones in which all you can see is darkness, glare from the lights, and occasionally an elbow or knee emerging from shadows.

After looking at so many large black paintings, even the frames of which were hard work to look at, it was kind of a pleasure to look at the gray velvet. This kind of viewing was upsetting, however, to the guards who immediately became suspicious and asked politely if they could "help" me. When I replied that I didn't need any help, they would continue to eye me strangely and were only happy when I went on to another room.

At another time I could not tear myself away from watching a safe being moved by a tall crane when I was supposed to be going to the Museum of Modern Art to see an important exhibition everyone was talking about. By the time the safe was securely in place and all the people watching had satisfied themselves about which building it was intended for, the museum was closed and I was forced to return home without seeing the show.

I do not think, however, that this illness is at all unique to me. Who, for example can remember the scenes from movies we saw as children? On the contrary we remember the theatre very well but the movies hardly at all. I can't even remember the movies or the theaters. Instead I remember the sensation of emerging from the theatre and finding out that it was already completely dark outside where as when I went in it was still bright day. I would be disconcerted by the darkness. Walking home, I would be upset by disquieting thoughts. What might have happened out here during the day while I was beguiled and in a trance? Perhaps while I was watching some actor being stabbed on the screen, someone I knew and loved was dying in real life. And I would practically run home to assure myself that nothing had changed, that everything was all right.

When I arrived in Rome everything was already so strange. They have phones, but they are a different shape and color. There are taxis, subways, streetlights, and sidewalks, but all configured in such a different manner that everything seemed to be rushing toward me with a strange intensity. In many instances, I was unable to enter churches and museums because what was transpiring in front of these establishments was just too arresting. In short, there were simply too many safes being moved from one place to another for me to bring myself to enter. For example, I came across an especially large and impressive church, the Lateran Basilica, and on the steps was a person addressing a throng of people. He was talking about how the foundations of that church dated from Roman times and that it had been continuously revised and rebuilt. He explained in detail how a certain architect was asked to submit plans to the Pope for a reconstruction and that his plans were rejected. But the architect was undaunted; he so believed in his plans that he argued with the Pope. He had the audacity to argue with the Pope! He won the argument and the Pope accepted his plans.

How marvellous. I was transfixed listening to the story. I understood something important. We must all go and argue with the Pope, and we must win our argument!

I could not bring myself to enter the church; I didn't want to disturb that feeling. I walked away saying to myself, "I want to have an argument with the Pope, right away."Basquiat, "Man From Naples" 1982

But later that same day I felt that I really had to go and see the Sistine Chapel. For this there was a long line. I had to wait for two hours. In front of me in line was a great crowd of Japanese tourists all talking at once, and behind me another group of Germans talking a little louder.

I don't know what I thought about while standing in line. I thought about the second world war. I thought about how everyone is going to see the Sistine Ceiling, and Disney world. When it came time to buy my ticket, I got out of line and went away instead. I didn't see the ceiling, but lately I have been lying about it and telling people I went to see it.

I did, however, go to see both sections of the Quadriennale. One part was at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, and the other part at the Stazione Termini, which is the train station. I went to the Palazzo building first and once safely inside I turned all my attention to looking at the works of art. At the entrance, I was distracted for a moment by a homeless man who was making up a bed for himself in the porch of the Palazzo. I forced myself to ignore him and went directly into the exhibition without stopping.

I began looking at the paintings one at a time, spending about a minute on each work, going along in a pattern so that I wouldn't miss anything, but I soon began to encounter difficulties because the paintings were not hung on the walls but on strange monstrous portable walls that had been placed in the rooms in a very helter-skelter fashion. In some rooms, as many as six of these huge walls were crowded in at strange angles and there were very few works of art on the actual walls of the Palazzo.

I am a very traditional person and I like to go through a museum one room at a time and one wall at a time, and--like a mouse that runs along a wall and only changes direction when he gets to a corner--go through the space like I am sweeping it up in an orderly way. My intention of looking at everything carefully, therefore collapsed and I found myself looking at the blank walls instead of the art work. But the walls did not disappoint me. On the contrary, I have to state that I found the empty walls to hold my interest much more than the portable walls with their various paintings, but before I attempt to describe the walls I want to say something about the paintings on the portable walls.

You have already seen this kind of painting many times before. There were many large works of brooding textures and colors kind of smeared together over which some cryptic shape had been drawn in black by someone who must have gotten his or her arm broken. Also, in many paintings were unfinished words and phrases which had been smudged out in the style of fake illiteracy so familiar to us from Basquiat. There were many works which were large vague photographs of obscure subject matter, sometimes almost erotic, to which something had been done to to make them into art. Then there were an equal number of paintings in a traditional style in which some aspect of the image is meant to remind you that this is not 1496. There were unabashed attempts to do traditional Renaissance painting and sculpture that failed in all the various ways that paintings and drawings can fail, and finally there was a gondola.

The gondola spoke for itself, but the artist found it necessary to add a message to it in blue neon, but I confess that I didn't really look at these things very carefully and am probably not doing justice to them. I stood for a long time looking at the gondola, pretending to look at it because two firemen were also looking at it and were discussing something in Italian. I knew they were firemen because they were dressed up as firemen. I stood looking at the gondola because I was hoping to find out what Italian firemen think about modern art, but I was disappointed. They were discussing mushrooms, either how to find them or how to cook them, I don't know which.
The walls of the Palazzo are painted a flat white and are equipped with a great many electrical outlet plugs of all different types which are very interesting. The old buildings are solid masonry and so it has been necessary to run a lot of the wiring on the surface of the walls. Assortments of various sorts of plugs in large flat boxes affixed to the walls were connected to each other by wiring that ran on the surface of the wall, in narrow white rectangular conduit connected along the floor mouldings. Here and there in the middle of walls at about eye-level were plastic emergency phones whose wiring entered the same type of tubing. Rome is a city absolutely full of unfinished electrical and plumbing projects. If one looks carefully at these things and also at the infinite number of masonry projects inside and outside of every building in Rome where plumbing is being worked on, one begins to understand why it has been so difficult for Italy truly to enter the 20th century, even now when it is almost over.

The finest elements of the works on the walls were fire hoses with copper nozzles in glass vitrines, looking for all the world like ancient reliquaries. Above each vitrine of a hose there was a red metal plaque with a white image of a hose. On each plaque there was a number indicating which hose one was looking at. The first hose I came across was number 24, and I began to retrace my steps in an attempt to locate all 24 of them. I was frustrated, however, in my attempt to locate them all because the search led into places which were restricted to use by the museum staff and I soon found that I was being asked in Italian if I needed any "help." But rather than attempt to explain what I was doing I said I was lost, and the guards kindly escorted me back to the exhibition space.

Just before leaving the Palazzo, I discovered there was another floor where the exhibition continued. I went down a broad flight of stairs and at the bottom encountered many more rooms full of works of art. Here also I found emergency phones, strange electric plugs, fire extinguishers and more firemen. Now I began to understand that the firemen were not there by coincidence. It was obvious by the way they were seated, sprawled out and bored, that they had been assigned to that floor and spent their entire days there. Along with the fire hoses they were, to me, the most interesting thing in the Palazzo. Looking at them and listening to their conversation, realizing to what lengths everyone was going to prevent a fire, I suddenly felt that next to me stood Nero with his violin saying, "Yes, there must never be a fire like that one again." It was as if he was standing right there, but he disappeared before I was able to ask him a question I have always wanted to ask, "Were there violins back then?"

However by now it was time to go to Termini, that famous building of ill repute, immense and repulsive, but full of life like one of the huge whores in a Fellini film. Stranger things awaited me there.

I have never seen a space quite like the third floor of the Termini building, where the exhibition was. The proportions of everything were huge. The construction was done under Mussolini and the style of the furnishings remind one of a Marks brothers film, in that they are as modern as things could be in the forties. There were endless corridors, dusty and quiet, in which one found enormous bathrooms, small libraries, and waiting rooms obviously no longer in use. These places force one to imagine important dignitaries from foreign countries coming on state visits. Yes, here they would have freshened up, and there in the paneled library they may have read a journal while they waited. A fascist daydream completely realized in stone. And so, being in the grip of my malady, I was unable to look at the art but just staggered around looking at door casings, heat vents, ashtrays, countertops and also out of windows, where one could see a panorama of yet another wing of Termini filling up the entire skyline.

I soon found myself outside the exhibition hall walking down a long corridor, but no one stopped me or turned me back. Along the corridor ran an outside covered portico. I went out on to it and found that it was a great porch of travertine marble stretching into the distance as far as I could see. I walked along this porch for a while and then I came across a man having a caffe' at a little table. It was Benito Mussolini.
As soon as I saw him sitting there I knew that it was an aberration of my illness, just a hallucination, but he seemed so real, not like an apparition at all, and his manner was so hypnotic and compelling that I walked up to him and said, "Buon giorno."
"Have you been looking at the art?" he asked me.
"Yes," I replied.
"And what did you think," he inquired.
"Well, I thought there were a few good things in the Palazzo and..." He cut me off abruptly by raising his hand up as if he did not have time to listen to half-hearted praise.
"You're from New York aren't you? Sit down and have some coffee."
The Italians always know if you are from New York. I don't know why. A chair appeared and also a cup of coffee, or perhaps they had been there all along, I don't know.

I sat down, sipped my coffee and after a moment he launched into a bit of a dissertation, which I thought he might. He said, "You New Yorkers are always disappointed by the modern art that you see here in Rome. And I know why. We have good artists; I'm sure that you can see that. But here in Rome, there is no section of the city devoted to the important art of contemporary life. We have a gallery in this part, and a gallery in that part, but it is impossible to go from one to another and "see" shows as you say.

We have no SoHo here in Rome as you do in New York. So we have no pot to cook our art in. I was pleased when they chose my Termini building for this exhibit. This building is a city in itself and you could put ten SoHo's in it with room to spare. If I were still alive it would only be a short while and then by decree you would see something really important happening here in Termini. This is what Rome needs; Rome needs a SoHo more than anything."
Here he stopped and looked at me as if he wondered what I thought of his idea, and when I didn't respond he continued.
" You know, I've heard that SoHo is becoming just shops and boutiques now, like our Spanish Steps. You think that nothing will happen here, that we Italians cannot get anything done, It takes a dictator....." all of a sudden he stopped again and looked away into the distance.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "To have been like Franco and to have just gotten through that wretched time."
"And why is it so important to you that Rome have a SoHo?" I asked. "Everyone here seems too busy to look at art."
"Because we need a Joseph Beuys, and we need an Anselm Keiffer and we have neither. Modern art in Rome is used only as the frivolous backdrop of aristocratic society events, and we have to understand that it is an activity that is capable of redeeming the soul of a nation."

"But Beuys and Keiffer did not come out of SoHo," I said.

A confused, troubled look spread across his face, but then the preposterousness of the idea that Mussolini would have such thoughts caused his image to fade gradually into nothingness. I am quite sure that if he thinks about anything, it is about mushrooms, just like the firemen. I continued sitting at the table sipping my coffee, but then a policeman came out and asked me if I needed any help. After that he escorted me back to the exhibition hall. As I was leaving, I noticed that there were a lot of those little rooms in the exhibit with the black curtains over the doors behind which you find video installations. I can never get myself to draw back those curtains. What I usually see in those little rooms is always so much less than what I imagine I am going to see. Whenever I see one of those little black curtains, I just imagine something that might be behind it, and then walk by without disturbing it.

Richard Britell, Rome, late November, 1996