Lancette Arts - Archives: Italian Mosaics at ROM

The New Mosaic
A tantalizing new view at an old art

By Alidë Kohlhaas

For several days prior to coming to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) to view its latest exhibit, The New Mosaic: Selections from Friuli, Italy, my mind had been steeped in 12^th century Northern Italy. I had read Umberto Eco’s latest book, Baudolino, whose protagonist comes from an area around Alessandria, south of Milan and north of Genoa. And while the book is centered around the Lombard region, it still had the power to put me in the perfect mood for viewing this small, but exquisite exhibit of an ancient art as seen through the eyes of modern artists working in the mosaic format. The show consists of around 40 pieces from the Friuli School and another 12 from the ROM’s own permanent collection.

********

The modern mosaics, all created between 1995 and the present, were produced in the medieval town of Spilimbergo in northeastern Friuli-Venezia Giulia in the Italian Alps. This town traces its roots back to the 12^th century when it was a feudal possession of the German family of Spengenberg, from which it got its name. In other words, the town so famous for its mosaic workers, was once under the rule of Frederic Barbarossa, who features so largely in Eco’s Baudolino. It seems a thin thread that connects the book's atmosphere to the current exhibit, but it is strong enough to allow the past to meld into the present in a tantalizing manner.

The town is the perfect place for a revival of the mosaic arts. In Spilimbergo, located between two rivers, artisans of the past had no difficulty finding the needed material in the rivers’ large rocky banks and among the colourful pebbles in the rivers themselves. These craftmen were renowned even centuries ago for their ability to create stunning mosaics. Today the artists and artisans in Spilimbergo no longer rely solely on the local raw materials. Trained at the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, founded in 1922, they also use pieces of glass, enamels, ceramics, marble, terra cotta, limestone, and whatever other suitable materials they can find, even man-made materials.

The general impression is held that mosaics are something created in the dark past, but we forget that even here in Canada mosaics grace many of our much more recently built public buildings. The most obvious is the ROM itself. Enter the building’s rotunda and look up and there is a perfect example in the high, luminous ceiling that deserves far more attention then we give it. Curator Sheila Campbell, who put this show together, said that the Italian workmen, who put the mosaic on the ceiling in 1932, may well have been trained at Spilimbergo, although she has not been able to find definite proof.

This, as it may be, is just to illustrate that mosaics have never really been out of fashion. In the 1950s, students at the Vancouver School of Art, for an example, also worked with mosaics and produced modern designs with many of the same materials now being used by the students at the Scuola Mosaicisti. In fact, some of the pieces in this show remind me of what some students at the VSA produced. But, for various reasons, this art form then slipped into obscurity again, and now it is returning in full force. No longer is it something carried out by artisans following a pattern laid out for them. Today, artists, as in the 1950s, make it their medium of choice. The end result, as this exhibit shows, is quite magnificent.

The origin of the word is not to be confused with the biblical expression "Mosaic Law", which is related to Moses. Instead it is one of those frequent quirks of the English language, which has the same spelling for unrelated words. The word mosaic as related to the making of pictures with little pieces of colourful stones comes to us rather circuitously, without any biblical connection. It is Middle English from the Norman mosaique, which the French got from the Italian mosaico, which they, in turn, got from medieval Latin mosaicus, which is a derivative of the Greek mouseion, which literally means work pertaining to the Muses. These nine Muses were, of course, Zeus’s daughters, and so were the protectors of the liberal arts. The word museum, a place where we now keep much of the works created by artists and artisans, has the same root.

It is roots that one looks for in mosaics. To give the visitor a sense of the ancient history of this art form, the ROM has provided from its own collection a 1.23m x 1.53m section from a Syrian mosaic dating to the 5^th Century AD of a donkey. This is ancient, but not as old as the mosaics found at Pompeii, a city founded in 600 BC, and demolished by an eruption in 79 AD. We now know that there are examples of this art form dating to at least 800 BC.

On entering the exhibit, one is greeted by a huge head (Testa) that looks expressively at the visitor. It is quite impressive and one can see why the ROM used it on its promotional material. Then one is faced by a wall-high triptych: Stele Tensioni di Segno-Colore: Nero, Stele Bianco and Stele Azzuro, all created in 1996. The colours are shrill and very modern. But the images fascinate the eye.

There are too many pieces in this exhibit to mention them all, but one must point out that the small pieces under glass out of the ROM's collection are worth a special look; they appear to have been painted with a delicate brush, but are actually made with minute pieces which must have been laid in with very delicate tweezers.

Because there are too many to describe all, one hopes that the pictures presented here will give a good idea of what is being created in mosiacs these days and will entice you to make a visit to see the real thing. But I want to mention four works especially. There is the piece called Zebra, which is a subtlety coloured study of what the notes describe as virtual movement. It is captivating despite its almost monochrome appearance. The Avvenimento, 2000 is an abstract painting in stone, so to speak, and holds ones attention. Tappeto 4 is reminiscent of a woven rug, the impression created by the uneven shape of the piece. And finally, Crucifisso, which features a wrought iron Christ set over an inversed cross of a continuous mosaic frieze, based on a medieval illumination. It is striking, and at the same time again recalls work done at the VSA by one student, who used raw steel in combination with his mosaic. It seems nothing is new, and yet everything is when looking at this show.

The New Mosaic: Selections from Friuli, Italy will be on show at the ROM until March 16, 2003.