VISIONARIES AND THE ART OF PERFORMANCE

Already on display at London's Guildhall Art Gallery (December 11, 2018 - April 30, 2019), the exhibition testifies to a visionary quality that is not the exclusive prerogative of a particular period or personality, but a defining characteristic of the essential lines of creativity. In the art of William Blake (1757-1827) that springs from a personal decoding of Enlightenment rationalism (however opposed) to support of that yearning for spirituality that distinguishes his opera, in the art of Pre-Raphaelite visionary Edward Coley Burne Jones (1833-1898) who decorates churches in search of the meaning of the divine through an interpretive vision that turns to symbolism, in the art of John Latham (1921-2006), who focuses his attention on the cosmos and theoretical physics to signify that transcendence expressed from Blake and Burne Jones by other means, a lucid and persistent visionary tension is decisive, contrasting with the great Enlightenment utopia. The Spoleto exhibition is enriched by the participation of new artists: Ulay (b. 1943) a visionary of twentieth-century performance art, pioneering a visceral approach to performance and body art, experimenting with emotional relationships, physical pain and the use of film footage; his work "in the making" extends to the present day and together with a collection of "Age of Future" artists , exemplifies what it means to be visionary in the twenty-first century. A thin thread connects this exhibition to the city of Spoleto. Sir Denis Mahon and Gian Carlo Menotti were not only similar in their generosity and philanthropy, but also in their love ofopera opera. The encounter between the two great men is witnessed, and although Sir Denis is best known for his academic contribution to 17th-century Italian painting, his second passion should not go unnoticed.