My Lai, Vietnam
Forty-two years ago today, U.S. Army forces massacred hundreds of women and children in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai (the My Lai Massacre). No justice was ever done and only one man, William Calley, was convicted of murder—in the end he only spent 3½ years under house arrest.
The world has not forgotten…
Viterbo, Italy
Only an hour or so north of Rome, Parco dei Mostri (Park of the Monsters), built in the mid-16th century, was hidden by overgrown grass until it was rediscovered by chance in the midst of WWII and revealed to the eyes of the world. My Argentinian designer friend Ronald Shakespear, a columnist for America Late, shares in words and his pictures his thoughts and feelings when visiting what he refers to as “a poetic labyrinth.”
“A one-of-a-kind construction, Parco dei Mostri is located in Viterbo, Lazio, Italy, just 112 kilometers away from Rome. Also referred to as the Sacro Bosco (Sacred Grove), it was built by Renaissance architect Pirro Ligorio and commissioned by prince Pier Francesco Orsini (circa 1552) in memory of his beloved wife Giulia Farnese. The place is spellbinding and dramatic, and inspired Mujica Lainez to write his novel Bomarzo, which later gave rise to an opera set to music by Alberto Ginastera, which was banned in 1967 by Dictator Juan Carlos Ongania. Restored in 1954 by current owner Bettini Giovanni, the Parco has recovered its splendor and appears magically before our eyes as homage to the artistic nature of its creator.
I have gone back to the Parco several times to take pictures of the stone monsters, which appealed to the likes of Salvador Dali, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini, among other illustrious visitors. Filled with fantastic images and ideas about life and death, the park relives Dante, Petrarch and Ariosto. A plaque warns visitors:
CHI CON CIGLIA INARCATE ET LABBRA STRETTE
NON VA PER QUESTO LOCO MANCO AMMIRA
LE FAMOSE DEL MONDO MOLI SETTE
(He who does not visit this place with a frown and tight lips will not be able to admire the seven wonders of the world).
Asking about the way to Rome.
Elena, my wife, is Italian. She was the first to tell me about Bomarzo, forty years ago. I will never thank her enough for taking me there, some 112 kilometers from Rome. Bomarzo is a modest town that used to be the hunting grounds of Renaissance cardinals.
For years I thought that the hordes of tourists gathered around those sacred stones, here and there, were a banal, prosaic horror. Later—belatedly—simple people made me discover the value of those stones and fundamentally the empathic perception that the public has of them.
Human pilgrimages are endless and often touching. Mecca, the Wailing Wall, Maracana, Morumbi, the Trevi Fountain, the Roman Coliseum, Disneyland, Rodrigo’s sanctuary, Lujan, the Chinese Wall, Boca Juniors’ soccer stadium, and so on… The Roman Coliseum is fantastic; mock sea battles used to take place there after the arena was flooded. An exemplary cistern constructed in the first century a.C. One prophetic step forward for imagineering (simulation engineering), a precursor of Rem Koolhass and Ray Bradbury.
In the end, people go where people go.
The second Renaissance.
Apparently—no evidence exists of this—the modern world knew nothing about Parco dei Mostri until WWII. It was at that time, legend has it, that an American regiment camped at Viterbo… and one soldier with diarrhea had to go “do his business” in the early hours of the morning. He suddenly found himself surrounded by stone monuments, and ran away in terror. The rest is history.
Something similar happened 100 years ago, when Machu Picchu was discovered by Hiram Bingham. Or more recently with the Terracotta Army discovered in 1974 in China, close to Xi’an and built as homage to Emperor Qin Shi Huang. The Terracotta Army is formed by more than 7,000 life-size sculptures of soldiers, horses and chariots made of clay and earth. As we can see, chance usually has a role to play in major discoveries.
Pictures, pictures, pictures.
Back in the 1960s I made a few dozen portraits for my book Caras y Caritas, published by Jorge Alvarez. In addition to Borges, Orson Welles, and “Mono” Villegas, among others, I spent a long afternoon with Mujica Lainez and Jorge Romero Brest at Instituto Di Tella. I made portraits of them both, and we talked about Bomarzo, naturally; that conversation ignited the fire of curiosity.
I personally paid three visits to Bomarzo, which provided me with long hours of pleasure. Every picture takes its time; some of the sculptures are surrounded by fences and are located in a semi-wild terrain, as is the case of the Turtle, which can be found at the bottom of a ravine. Photographers are sometimes weird people: I tend to take the same pictures over and over again.
A poetic labyrinth.
Bomarzo is a poetic labyrinth. I have devoted my life to urban itineraries; making them legible involves deciphering their codes. This has led me to my worldly trade of wayfinding in big spaces such as the Subway, Temaiken Zoo, the streets of Buenos Aires, etc. (see www.shakespearweb.com).
It takes a God-given talent to be able to “read” space as Leonardo, Michelangelo or Brunelleschi did. For the rest of us, it takes Cyclopean efforts. Nothing at the Parco is rational; amidst this array of surprises, visitors need to discover every artistic event by themselves. Capturing the entirety, the full dimension of it all, is almost impossible. I simply cannot describe the beauty of the Giant Turtle, the Mouth of Hell, Hercules, and Hannibal’s Elephant Devouring a Roman Legionary. They are my favorites.
Mujica Lainez wrote: “The famous white elephant—a gift from Manuel of Portugal to Pope Leon X—which, after his death and following orders of the Pope himself, was painted by Raphael. Elephants were no strangers to the symbology of the 16th and 17th century: there is the black obsidian elephant found by Poliphilo (the hero in Francesco Colonna’s work), which has a female and a male statue, where antagonistic principles are represented. This elephant was probably inspired by a coin of the time, and is also present in Bernini’s work at the church of Santa Maria Minerva in Rome.” Bomarzo’s influence on the art world can be seen in Manfredo Manfredi’s oil painting Alla maniera di Bomarzo, Norberto Villarreal’s surreal drawings, the portraits of Pier Luigi Farnese and Maerbale Orsini, and the wonderful pictures taken by Enzo Regazzini for Olivetti’s famous almanac.
The luxury publication FMR No. 12, published by Franco Maria Ricci in 1983, includes an extraordinary fifteen-page piece on Bomarzo with articles by Elemire Zolla, Manfredi Nicoletti and Manuel Mujica Lainez, and photographs by Massimo Listri: a veritable jewel.
All the roads will take you there.
In spite of popular belief, the park is relatively small; walking it all will take as much time as a visitor’s curiosity demands. The place has astonished me every time. Bomarzo captures one’s fancy like few places do. An absolutely appropriate inscription can be seen on an obelisk: Sol per sfogare il Core (Just to set the heart free). Freedom is beautiful, but it is also dangerous. The winding paths of Bomarzo multiply themselves and sometimes you have to start over. On the other hand, who wants the extreme order of rationalists? As Oscar Wilde said, “ordering a library is impossible for someone who can read.” Getting lost is usually delightful. Or it can be tragic. Just like Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll suggests: “If you do not know where you are going, all the roads will take you there.”
Thanks Ronald. (The above text is lightly edited and drawn from the original post [in Spanish] at America Late and a re-post on the SEGD website. (Sorry, links are broken).
Winnipeg, Canada
People sometimes ask me two things: 1) Why the first thing you come to when you visit the Circle website is a quote by Karl Marx? and, 2) Whether this doesn’t turn away business in droves?
I answer the first question with something like… Well, I think Marx was a brilliant man, and I find his correlation of “cause and effect” to express this crucial point more eloquently than most, and certainly more succinctly than I could. I answer the second question with… Well, if the fact that we quote Marx on our website is a potential deal-breaker, we choose to view this as an acid test (and a suitable barrier to entry, per se), and we’re likely better off never even hearing from such folks.
I happen to believe we can learn from almost anyone and anything—as long as we keep our minds open and exercise discernment—which is why we also quote sources ranging from Walt Disney, to Winston Churchill, to the Bible.
Wisdom is where you find it, no?
(snapshots in time)
In the course of searching for one particular image, I was happy to chance across quite an eclectic collection of famous photographs on the blog Iconic Photos. Shown above: first use of 3-D glasses in a cinema, demise of the Hindenburg, Jane Goodall with a wee chimp, celebrating the 40-year anniversary of communism in Moscow, and Dali with a rhinoceros (the latter is for you, Jennifer).
Winnipeg, Canada
Last night I suffered a massive crash to my e-mail application… and it appears I have lost thousands of incoming e-mail messages from the past few months. Please forgive me if you do not hear from me as a result. If you had written me recently and have not received a reply to your message or query, please contact me again (or better yet, please re-send your recent message).
I am working to retrieve and restore whatever e-mail messages can be salvaged… in the meantime, please forgive the radio silence, and thanks for your understanding.
Tehran, Iran
Homa Delvaray is a talented, prolific, and articulate young Iranian designer whose works are currently on exhibit in the Vitrin Rooz (virtual gallery) until 9 March. Shown above are a few of her posters and book covers.
Keep up the great work, Homa…
London, U.K.
“The media landscape is changing rapidly. The way people communicate is changing the way marketers have to think about how to reach consumers…”—watch a compelling, short, statistical, fact-filled, entertaining “must see” piece from economist.com (Sorry, they broke their link) here.
(thanks to friend ‘Segun Olude for the link)
São Paulo, Brazil
My designer/architect friend Marcelo Aflalo of universdesign has sent me some images their recent work for São Paulo’s public library (which has just launched last month in the pouring rain)—an approach using three-dimensional typography “designed to promote the pleasure of reading, and grant access to anyone.” Project scope included the logo, overall identity, visual communications, environmental design, the interior color palette (furnishings, etc.) and some of the architectural elements. In Marcelo’s words…
“The idea is to bring libraries and the pleasure of reading closer to the booming ‘C class,’ more familiar with TV and Internet than anything that resembles literature. The library has a small collection of books (around 40,000) compared to a regular library, but whatever you need they’ll find for you—on demand. It will also host storytellers, musicians and performers. Readers will be encouraged to make the bridge between movies and the written word through more than a hundred large screen computer terminals connected to a fairly big mainframe. There are various lounge areas according to age and behavior. One can read at the terraces or at the café area. Consistent to the overall concept there are no ‘forbidden’ signs—everything is allowed and the limits are set by the users. There is an adult only section (the one behind the frosted glass wall with the gray silhouettes) with literature with erotic/sexual content, violence, and drug related subjects. The kids’ area is also divided by age and all have a multipurpose booth.
The text with the name of the library is set in many different typefaces to show diversity and there are some black and white figures holding colorful reading material. All the pictures and the silhouettes were shot at the park around the library and are regular users of the area. The idea is to bring the space closer to the general public by depicting some of them. Accessibility is behind every design decision, from the size of the type set on the signage to the ‘Braille’ map on both floors. The letter faces on the reception desk are based on printing box sets. The big foundry type at the entrance pays homage to Bodoni, Helvetica, Baskerville and Prospera creators. Prospera? Yes, its a beautiful type face designed by a good friend who lives in Galena (by the Mississippi), and was one of the first typefaces designed on a Mac, back in the 80’s. It was never cast to be printed mechanically (I love this contradiction, my private joke).
The folded paper airplanes are 10 feet long and were printed with images from great pages in history or utilitarian references. There is one by Michelangelo, one is from a beautifully-designed Portuguese dictionary, one carrying comic strips by Angeli (well known around here), one with the musical score written and hand corrected by musician Antonio Carlos Jobim (samba of the jet plane), and so on—all taken from originals and authorized.
Although we haven’t done much architecture lately, we came out with the final solution for the terraces and the café area and the reference here are sailboats and the idea of freedom, acquired when you read a book and create your own scenario…”
Great job, Marcelo—your love of typography really shines through!
(I’ll admit I’m a little envious).
Bozen, Italy
Watch a great 45-minute documentary with Reinhold Messner, “the world’s greatest mountaineer,” here. (Broken link, sorry). Reinhold looks back over his career with surprising candor and self-revelation, along with rare film footage of his astonishing climbs of the world’s highest mountains.
