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January 12, 2004

Ciao Italia

I was in Italy this past week and a half, so I got to miss out on all the freezing cold. I was in Florence, looking at museums and stuff. It was okay. Being in a town with thousand-year-old buildings was the best part.

I like travelling, except for the actual travelling part. Being in new places is great, but getting there isn't half the fun - it's none of the fun.
The trip ended up being quite a lot more banal than I expected, partly because it was off-season and the weather was cloudy and damp (not that I have anything to complain about regarding the weather), but also because Florence seems like a rather dull town. Once I got tired of the museums, which happened pretty soon, I had to look for things to do. And as a tourist town, Florence's eateries seemed divided into touristy places which were expensive, not very good, and full of tourists; or towny places where they clearly didn't want me there.

With the jet lag I woke up at 5 this morning, then took a nap at 3, only to wake up with a cold. I know it's the stupid airplanes (9 hours in dry air and people coughing) and I always get stuck next to armrest-hogs. It was interesting to compare the Munich airport with the one in Pisa. The Munich one was, of course, spotlessly clean and efficient and the one in Pisa was not. Even though the wine in Florence was quite good (the restaurants make their own and don't put sulfites or anything in) I really enjoyed those hefeweisses I had at the airport.

Also, the German airport was full of stuff related to Lego and PlayMobile (the new Viking ship kit looked cool) while the Italian one just had liquor, porn, and cigarettes.

There are three things of which Italy has more than any other country in the world: art, wine, and dogcrap on the sidewalk. It's also the only place I've been where the locals are more obnoxious than the American tourists. You can always tell the Italians from the other tourists because they have a cigarette in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and they never stop talking. Even in the museums, the employees spent the entire time talking with each other.

I looked at weather info for Florence, and other than June and July, every month typically gets at least two inches of rain. It only rained maybe three times when I was there (including one really awesome thunder/hail storm - running through the ancient alleys with lightning overhead and big hailstones smashing everywhere was truly cool) but overall it was gray and very damp. The sun came out a few times, and then it was really beautiful - the mist would rise revealing ancient parapets on the horizon.

Apparently, a full 60% of all the UNESCO-registered artworks in the world are in Italy, and half of them are in Florence; it was clear that some places had more statues and paintings than they knew what to do with. The Pitti, for example, actually had the paintings stacked three-high on the walls. There were lots of statues outside, and that was nice - they look much better outside than in. Most of Pitti's stuff was just mediocre portraits.

The Uffizi was probably the best museum in terms of layout and collection, although the lighting was terrible: plexiglass over each work and a florescent bulb just above and in front so you got glare no matter what angle you looked from. It was odd because they have some landscapes of the Tuscan countryside, but near a window that revealed the real Tuscan countryside, and the view through the window was much better. I discovered that my tastes are rather pedestrian - I liked the Botticelli stuff most.

The Academia had the David and lots of other religious works, mostly stuff taken from old cathedrals. That stuff wasn't really interesting to me. The work was crude and of value from an historic rather than aesthetic standpoint. David was quite impressive in person - photos don't capture the grandeur of it. I noticed that the right hand was significantly out of proportion to the rest of the body and I wondered if Michaelengelo had intended a message of restraint since the large hand almost completely conceals the sling it carries. Also the detail on the hand seemed more pronounced than on the rest of the body, almost as though it were carved separately. They said the left hand had been reconstructed but the right was supposed to be original.

When I first got to Florence I imagined myself being inspired to draw and paint all day, and there were plenty of art stores. But I ended up having no desire to paint at all - what I really wanted to do was chisel marble. I even came up with some ideas involving Atlas or Hercules or some other really strong dude trying to lift a big block of stone on his shoulders - I'm probably remembering something I saw elsewhere.

I wound up spending more time reading than visiting museums. I hadn't realized just how central Florence was in the development of Western culture, so I bought books on Leonardo (my new hero), Gallileo, and the Renaissance in general. I even bought 'The DaVinci Code' in the airport on my trip over. The writing was pretty bad but it was a page-turner and I thought it might reveal something about what I would find in Florence (it didn't).

In some ways Florence is like Athens or Memphis or other places from antiquity since the only culture they have is ancient, while the modern culture is completely dominated by American imports. I bought a clock radio for the apartment and listening to the channels I found it was 100% American top 40 music - no Verdi opera or European classical or Jazz. On TV, other than news and game shows, the programs were all dubbed American shows like Cagney and Lacey. Even in bookstores the majority of titles were translated copies of John Grisham and Tom Clancy. It was kind of sad, although their Espresso bars are still holding out against Starbucks - there are no Starbucks in Italy, but the first one just opened in Paris. Florence was free of litter (other than dogcrap and cigarette butts) and that's from having no takeout food.

Man, I bet there's a Lego David somewhere. There's a Lego version of just about everything else.

One other thing about the trip that was cool was learning about the nature of an 'artist' 500 years ago. I'm sure you know already, but I didn't realize how much those guys had to be engineers as well - figuring out the pulleys and winches and all to get the ball to the top of the dome, for example. One guy I had dinner with quit his job as cartographer in Canada to be become a restorer of furniture and antiquities in Florence (the only industry there, and the main business outside of tourism). He described himself as an artisan, and I think I understood that word a little better seeing what goes on there, it's making things that are useful (chairs, buildings, plazas) while making them as beautiful as possible. I also got a better understanding about how most of what we call art is really advertising, as true then as it is now. All those statues and portraits were to essentially to promote the Medicis or the Church. These are old concepts, but it was good to get a fresh look.

There's a company in Milan that sells kits to make Leonardo's inventions out of balsa wood and dowels. I hope they can ship to the states.
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Posted by mslaybau at January 12, 2004 06:29 AM

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