Art & Architecture Reprinted from ARTFOCUS/67, Fall'99 © ARTFOCUS MAGAZINE CARLOSCARPA A Venetian Post-Modernist Intervening with History @ The Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, Canada May 26 to October 31, 1999 By Andre Seleanu Carlo Scarpa and sculpture of Santa Cecilia, Museo di Castelveccio (1956-1973), Verona, 1965 Gelatin silver print, photo by Ugo Mulas Carlo Scarpa, Fonatzione Querini Stampalia (1961-1963), Venice; detail of the model of the horizontal section including garden and bridge, 1998 basswood, photo by Michel Boulet Carlo Scarpa, Museo di Castelveccio (1956-1973), Verona; Cangrande cut, 1997 Chromogenic colour print, photo by Guido Guidi

Carlo Scarpa's architectural drawings in colour pencil on cardboard which has acquired a rosy hue, are characterized by a fluidity and a freedom unique for what are essentially templates for work to be done. They are a mirror of the man. In one place they show a painstaking regard for detail, while in another the masterís hand is carried away by impressionist élan, suggesting a fluid quality in unison with the moods of water and light he tried to integrate in architecture. He could create complicity with the artisans executing his projets, so that vagueness rather than hampering work, infused them with Scarpa's spirit. By all accounts, Scarpa was ambidexterous; he could at the same time do a separate detail with each hand. Scarpa's drawings, which possess the intricacy of art works are accompanied by his student Guido Guidiís photographs of the complex architectural restorations and original realizations (such as a new exhibition gallery at the Antonio Canova museum), Scarpa undertook in Italy. Together, they form the exhibition Carlo Scarpa, Intervening with History, presented during the summer of 1999 by Montreal's Canadian Centre for Architecture. The photos by Guidi (like Scarpa, a Venetian) capture essential qualities we associate with Italy : a celestial light which seems to be that of both spirit and faith, complexity in dealing with architectural space seasoned by severity - for in some ways Scarpaís interventions were more in tune with the joyous rationalism of the Quattrocento, revised by the Venetianís fugue and delight with materials, than say, with Michelangeloís Seicento pre-baroque grandeur. Yet Scarpa (1906-1978), like Marco Polo, like the Venetians who diverted the Fourth Crusade to sack Byzantium in 1204, had himself an irresistible attraction for all that Europeans dream of as the East, from Byzantium to Japan. For good measure, he was also attracted by Frank Lloyd Wrightís Falling Water and his fluid ìarchitecture of democracyî, and, eclectically, to both a royal necropolis in Zimbabwe and a ziggurat in Iraq. And like a basso continuo in the shaping of Scarpa's sensibility is the understated sobriety of 18th century London, where Scarpa liked to acquire umbrellas, suits, pipes. Scarpaís architecture, a constant striving, exploration óreflects perhaps the only possible attitude in an epoch characterized by change at its own exponential rhythm. He openly acknowledged influences from European modernism : Mondrian, Paul Klee, Rothko; in his work we encounter the Taoist symbol of two interlocking circles representing man and woman ówhether in the Olivetti showroom in St. Mark's Square in Venice, or in the sprawling funeral chapel of the Brion family tomb-memorial. (One of Scarpa's last achievements, completed in 1969, where the artist is also interred). The Art Gallery Revisited Scarpa's increasing posthumous renown rests on a new vision of the museum and more generally, of the historial monument. After the Second world war, Italy, as much of Europe, lay ravaged by fighting and bombing. In the conversion of the Palazzo Abatelli (1954) located in Palermo, damaged by Allied bombs and in the restoration of Verona's 14th century Castelgrande citadel óhe demolishes a Napoleonic fortress wall, then cuts a section through the fortress wall, revealing the intricacy of medieval construction- Scarpa creates the modern, uncluttered museum look, singling out paintings and sculptures. He wants the viewer to have a one-to-one relationship with the object. In the Canova museum, skylights capture fragments of sky. He casts concrete as if it were a fluid. Marble, wood, glass, iron are integrated in historial settings on their own modern terms, but the final look and feel of monuments is harmoniously syncretic, and even their historial role appears to be enhanced.In Guidi's photos, the focus is the opening to light, the magic of light; we see the brilliance- refracted and reflected- of the Veneto- by turns, the metallic reflections of the Alps and the powerful contrasts of the Mediterranean. Scarpa's acceptance of the past revisited in modern terms, his (Venetian) fascination with textures and the mechanics of detail, make him appear as a personality of reference for post-modern esthetics. His investigations and solutions, documented by a gold mine of drawings and photographs, suddenly have an unusual relevance in an age concerned with the transformation of industrial buildings into post-industrial museums, commercial or living spaces. The Scarpa exhibition is thus a milestone event at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, which has an outreach vocation of increasing public awareness and debate about the role of architecture in society. Members of the Centre, along with Heritage Montreal, are involved, for instance as consultants, in the transformation to new uses of the oldest industrial district in Canada, Sault-au-Recollet, along the Lachine Canal. Carlo Scarpa in Murano A companion exhibition Art Glass by an Architect (1926-1947) - Carlo Scarpa in Murano, at the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts, adds to the understanding of the wellsprings of Scarpa's sensibility. As a glass designer, working with historical Venetian glass manufacturers, Scarpa creates coloured and textured glass designs, inspired by amphors, vials, cups with Renaissance, Roman, Greek and Phoenician roots. This is further proof of Scarpa's mystical integration into a Mediterranean ethos. But Scarpa, who was fascinated with strairways, creates serrated ziggurat- like structures in the Brion Sanctuary. He adds emotional intensity to a flight of stairs in the Olivetti Showroom. By a mysterious twist of fate, Scarpa died in 1978 after a fall along a stairway in a Japanese temple; an incident which almost seems to belong to a Japanese ghost-story, as retold by Lafcadio Hearn, a turn-of-the-century American interpreter of Japan. For Scarpa, a Uomo universale, in art and architecture have been the means to explore myriads of elusive worlds. All photos courtesy Canadian Centre of Architecture, Montreal. Article online©ARTFOCUS Website for Info: http://www.cca.qc.ca