critical anthology

walter mac mazzieri

In my opinion, in front of "cases" like Mazzieri's case, critics- who make use of rather functional relational instruments when they follow the footsteps of trend or poetics- should, first of all, take note of their objective limits, limits that coincide with those inveterate ones in the rules of a "discipline". I say this to clear the ground immediately from the dangerous misunderstanding because of which, wanting to save the originality of an artist difficult to set in the conventional mould, we always end up to give in to the temptation to set him in those places of culture where his uniqueness gets lost irreparably.Crispolti is right when he defines Mazzieri as an "out" painter, only touching, in order to deny it, the correspondence with the mighty "popular acting" of the great fresco Mexican artists. Reducing this upsetting restless visionary artist, who is nonetheless wrapped by practical experience and spirits, in a more or less close relative of the masters of Surrealism, of the Imaginary or of any other merely aesthetic category, is first a misunderstanding and then an abuse. I can't write about the painter here, having to write about his graphic work: but in my opinion also Mazzieri's graphics is based on the very original structures that support his artistical language bent on the projection of an individuality so marked to seem disrespectful in the present cultural standards. The fact is that Mazzieri constructs, with his "magic"contaminations that are a mixture of very common "truths" and symbolic golds ( not symbolistic), a platform showing a situation of heterodox culture but authentically influencing the contemporary figurative outline.Suffice it to consider the inexplicable mystery of unconscious phenomenons that makes the art work- beyond the surrealist mechanisms of refined automatisms- the puzzle which is useful to understand why the theorizations of systematic critics, who should solve such puzzle, are only "logic" hardenings and depauperation of the work itself. Artists like Mazzieri are not cut out for "educated" or similar readings that engrave particular characteristics where each connotation becomes a limit and narrow-mindedness. For this young guy critics should find their place in a situation of complete open-mindedness in order to enter somehow his role as a scoffer of every category, including the very common ones of space and time inside which the graphic work documented here is created.First of all the narration seems to proceed through apparently unrelated and self-closed "tales";nonetheless it's clear the skill with which the game of empty and full spaces and the constant coming up of the figure-background relation on the basis of sudden changes are magically constructed. The order of images is clear and carefully planned, even though it doesn't correspond to a particular linguistic rule. This increases the strength of persuasion and almost of constraint towards the appeal Mazzieri's work exerts on the puzzled watcher who is also obliged to a visual itinerary of clear evidence and absolutely unpredictable, to a complete participation and detachment. The fact that in those etchings you can meet Eastern myths coming back to life on the Apennines is a thing of some importance in order to demonstrate how Mazzieri always brings back to himself exterior contributions and gives almost nothing to the cosmopolitan taste or to the exotic taste typical of historical surrealist painters. The "mystery", I was talking about previously as a primary value of the art work, becomes the puzzle of a very particular "ego", full of ancient fears and disturbing peacefulness that are inexpressible through ways different from those of open imagination, that is the only instrument that leaves space to the absurd without mortifying it in the dimension of the unthinkable. Man's fears and terrors that , caked in earth and in unbelieved memories, live their weird life in Mazzieri's sheets, dark like ancient sheets narrating everyday men, ahistorical and plunged into the most anguishing history of "present times". Of the man who is-Crispolti writes - a "case" of imaginative violence.

critical anthology

walter mac mazzieri