Yesterday was Father's Day, which I totally forgot until Alice asked me if I especially missed my dad...oops. Anyway, today was a gorgeous day temperature-wise, yesterday's rain having dropped the temperature into the 70s. It would have been a great day to go exploring, but we had to meet up at Piazza del Popolo at 3 to head out to the workspace of Enzo Cucchi, an Italian avant garde artist. So we take the metro to Termini, switch to my enemy, the B line, and take it alllll the way out to its northern extremity, Rebibia. Then we wander around a bit as Brunella figures out which bus we should be getting on; we get on the right one and ride about 15 minutes past some Roman suburbs and get out in front of a furniture factory. Ok. Then a car pulls up, which is apparently our ride, except there are 13 of us! Luckily this was followed by another car and an SUV, which I hopped in, and therein enjoyed a hair-rising ten minute drive down a road so narrow that we had to pull over into the ditch to let larger trucks pass, and zipped around a sharp turn only to screech on the brakes to avoiding colliding head-on with a semi. It was rather exhilarating.
Finally, we arrived at what looked like an airplane hangar, but was actually a set design factory; they were working on a set for Enzo's next installation at the Capodimonte museum in Naples, as well as a production of Midsummer Night's Dream at the Baths of Caracalla, and a production of Tosca at the Met. Part of the sets for Gangs of New York were also built there. Well! We saw a lot of wondrous things totally unconnected to the artist we'd come to meet, like these huge twenty-foot long snarling panthers that were apparently built for a haute couture fashion show, and a metal-working shop where the sweaty Italian craftsmen looked as though they did not appreciate being treated like animals gawked at in a zoo.
Enzo Cucchi uses some of the space upstairs as a staging area for his projects, which range from tiny paintings to the huge tri-partite installation for Naples, three gigantic, black circular chambers with staircases inside and out that you have to climb to see the pieces, which were, in a word, weird. That doesn't even go anywhere toward describing the man himself, though--imagine every idea you have associated with "European artist" and he would probably satisfy them all. Slicked back, longish hair, a white suit with a black turtleneck, incredibly distracted, running too and fro, speaking incredibly quickly with much hand-gesturing and lecturing sternly (in Italian) about what art 'is.' Note: artists do not think, they do; if you're thinking, you're not doing it right. Ok, sure. He was just really hilarious to watch! We all noticed that he and Brunella seemed to have some kind of connection; he kept touching her shoulder, and at one point when he kept barking at people she remarked that he was being extra nasty today, which she then translated as "antipatico" for his benefit, and he scoffed. Turns out they were married, for 13 years, and have a kid together! She so did not mention that beforehand.
Anyway, it took an hour to get out to this place and an hour to get back, but we only spent an hour there total. It was certainly an adventure, but we were all kind of like, what did we exactly gain from that besides an amusing show? I could have been in a church, dammit! Lol.
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