Here is my new and improved review--
A Memory Artist: An Artist Paints His Childhood Home From Memory
Exploratorium, The Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception
San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
May 22, 1998 to January 10, 1999.
Online exhibit indefinitely available at http://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/magnani/index.html
Reviewed by Jennifer Trautwig
Picture your childhood home as vividly as you can. Can you envision the structure of the house, its colors and textures? The dynamics of the yard you romped and played in? Now broaden this image to include the surrounding area with your home as just one among the many. Do you have the image firmly in mind? Good, now paint it exactly as it was, right down to the texture of your front door. How close to reality do you think you could get? Odds are, not very.
A Memory Artist: An Artist Paints His Childhood Home From Memory highlights an artist who seems to have accomplished just that.
Franco Magnani is a self-taught artist whose subject matter is drawn from the depths of his memory. Through the meticulous arrangement of his paintings juxtaposed with photographs of the nearly exact composition, but decades later, A Memory Artist attempts to explore the issue of reliability on the part of the human memory by effectively demonstrating its strengths and weaknesses.
The online exhibit is broken down into seven easily navigable sections: Introduction, Memories of Home, Crossroads, Constructing Memories, Time and Memory, Pontito Today and About the Artist, as well as two links to commentary and memory terms of significance. By navigating the links in the path outlined, the average art enthusiast experiences a wonderful presentation of the artist’s passionate subject: a quaint village named Pontito, in remote northwestern Italy. The attention to detail as seen through the careful rendition of each cobblestone, coupled with the vivid color and awareness of the interplay between light and shadow, combine to create images of pristine beauty with an almost religious aura.
Working ones way through the website, the observer begins to develop a basic understanding of and appreciation for the power of human memory. Careful consideration and comparison of Magnani’s paintings with the juxtaposed photograph from 1987 reveals that although there are slight distortions in all of his paintings, perhaps due to the natural decay of memory traces, there are three categories into which his paintings fall: images of memories that he portrayed with near perfection, such as the painting of the church which contains the exact number of steps leading up to the door; images that represent a compilation of several different views or moments that are blended together to form a single, cohesive experience, such as the painting depicting the path he would walk from the grocery store to his house; and images of idyllic memories that are sharpened in their composition, for example the painting depicting the path to the mountains which was reminiscent of walks with his father. In this last case, the mountains are depicted as closer and larger than in real life, thereby expressing their significance to the artist. Although the website makes it clear that memory has its weaknesses, the overall impression is that the strengths of memory outweigh any failings. It is this impression that creates a sense that the target audience is primarily the average art enthusiast and not someone who is more interested in the intricacies of memory.
For the more cognitively curious, the interest in the exhibit lies a little bit deeper and requires a greater degree of effort in order to truly appreciate Magnani’s efforts. It is only after perusing the memory terms link that one is able to attempt to look at the images with a cognitively critical eye. With terms such as sharpened, blending and decay of memory traces firmly in tow, and a quick reading of the “Introduction” and “About the artist” links, one is finally able to begin tackling the concept of reliability in remembering. But here too, the website falls short as it merely glosses over the events and mitigating circumstances leading up to Magnani’s burst of genius.
Representing Magnani’s work as characteristic of the power of memory fails to give credit to Magnani himself. The exhibit focuses on the beauty and awe of the paintings he creates without digging deeper to bring to light the unique events preceding their creation. Although the website is visually captivating and thought provoking on the issue of the power of memory, it falls short on the subject of reliability, and in this case reliability is highly dependent on understanding the man behind the paintings. These paintings are representative of one man’s memory and, although they may offer some insight into the general understanding of memory, they are unique to Magnani himself.
The subject of each painting is the unspoiled Pontito and the surrounding countryside of Magnani’s youth, a place he left for good in 1958. However, it wasn’t until 1966, following an unnamed illness, that Magnani began to give voice to his memory in the form of paintings. The exhibit fails to discuss the reasons for this sudden desire of Magnani to paint his past. By merely hinting at an “unnamed illness” and not digging deeper, the website alludes to a sense that there is nothing remarkable in Magnani’s past that could lead to this genius thereby creating a false sense that everyone is capable of similar bursts of genius under the right circumstances.
The website seems to present the idea that this is simply a favorite past time for Magnani, even going so far as to fail to reveal the fact that prior to 1966, Magnani had never painted. Where did this astonishing ability to paint and recreate his past come from? Oliver Sacks, noted neurologist and author, contends that the “unnamed illness,” alluded to by the website, may in fact be Temporal Lobe epilepsy, a condition that has often been linked to a variety of transcendent experiences. He further asserts that Magnani’s painting is more than just a simple past time. It is almost a compulsion. He believes that Magnani is so obsessed with Pontito that he thinks of little else, resulting in "a sort of half existence in the present." Sacks digs deeper into the shadows where the exhibit is lacking by creating an outline of the events leading up to the time period when Magnani’s creations began. He brings to light the devastation of the death of Magnani’s father followed shortly by the invasion of the Nazi’s in World War II. These traumatic events ensure that the sanctuary and innocence of Magnani’s childhood were forever destroyed and hint at Magnani’s fascination with recreating his lost paradise.
An additional section highlighting some of these more intriguing tidbits, links to other artists who are experiencing similar phenomena such as Stephen Wiltshire—the “human camera”, or the simple suggestion of a supplementary reading of Oliver Sacks’ An Anthropologist on Mars, * would do wonders for expanding the value of the online exhibit. The basic information offered by the website is interesting but more information would prove more thought provoking and informative to all. Overall the website is a spectacular source of images and basic information on the subject of human memory. It is a great first step but it falls short on truly educating the viewer by glossing over the details of Franco Magnani’s life and trivializing this incredible phenomenon that has swallowed him whole.
Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. Knopf. February 7, 1995.