No one needs a “Lonely Planet” travel guide unless they are using it as a directory of places to avoid. Guides books are only as interesting as the demographic they cater to, and from the sorts of people who shove around clutching their lonely planet city guide … No thank you. A sense of curiosity and an all encompassing disdain for the “peanut crunching crowd” is really all one needs to find adventure and that is exactly what happened to my best friend and I while we were in Florence.
Florence is a strange beast. Practically everyone on the streets is a tourist. It’s like an amusement park for adults feigning an interest in culture and history. Masses of middle aged men and women stroll through the city in their white sneakers and ankle socks deciding where to eat next and wondering whether they should go back to the souvenir shop to pick up an extra set of novelty shot glasses for their nephews. Immigrants from Africa and South East Asia man most of the market stalls and most of the market stalls (and shops) sell cheap knock offs that are most probably not made in Italy.
By lunchtime of the second day, both of us are keen to escape the History Channels version of Euro Disney. We decide that climbing a hill in search of Fort Belvedere is preferable to languishing with the mumbling masses. In the blistering heat we head across the bridge.
It is a steep climb, and steep climbs are excellent crowd thinners. We ambled up the uneven steps to or last destination for the day. On our way into what appears to be just another large house with a sprawling guardian, the usher warns us sternly. “Don’t put your bags on any of the surfaces and don’t touch anything.” A curious thing for an usher to say, but it’s hot, this is Italy and it’s almost sunset. There are no pressing reasons to expect everything to make sense and I am certainly too tired to attempt to decipher the cryptic statements. We trudge up to the entrance.
There’s really not much to take note of other than a pretty decent view of Florence. And an old house. At least we have escaped the masses.
On one side of the house, there’s a statue. A bronze figure on a black block in a coat. The figure holds his coat up to the wind, or maybe to the world. It’s interesting but it isn’t until the figure starts buzzing with a strange mechanical sound that our attention is finally directed towards the installation.
We have accidentally, stumbled upon Spiritual Guards, a collection of work by the artist Jan Fabre but we don’t know that yet. For the moment, the random bronze statues have turned the sunset into a scene from an Italian surrealist movie. The pale fading colors. The crisp crunch of feet grinding over gravel. The city of Florence in the distance, Tuscan hills to the left. Spectacularly outrageous bronze sculptures. Two lines of gargoyle like heads, also cast in “bronze”. Bewildered travellers wandering around slack jawed trying to make sense of what they’re seeing.
Everything we see is a juxtaposition. The art happens in the incidental contrasts that somehow make us keenly aware of the space that we are in.
In front of the old house, on the highest point of the terraces there is a man in space suit. His arms are out stretched.
The installation unfolds and changes our experience of the space. It is as if the air itself has become part of some larger architectural form. Each element is placed such that it is impossible to see it straight on in its entirely. One has to crouch, crane and rubber neck to get a full sense of the forms on display, and yet no matter how much one tries, it can’t be done.
Behind the house, there is a man on a small ladder. He holds a ruler up to the sky.
Approaching each element is a visual metamorphosis. They change. The closer one gets, the further away one is from seeing the structures completely. Frozen performance art. Viewers circle each theatrical piece.
Near the entrance there is a man in a pool of water crying. Watery tears fall down his face into the pool and he carries a book. You can hear him crying. Or is he laughing. I’m inclined to think he was laughing so hard at the absurdity of life that he started crying.
We’ve arrived at the perfect time. Sunlight is angled such that from certain places the bronze sculptures look as if they are melting. From other places the contrast of light and shadows completely changes their appearance.
On the far right of the house is a line of bronze bathtubs filled with water. There is a bronze man inside one of them.
I am most drawn to the lines of bronze busts pulling faces at the sky. Dramatic and theatrical. Bold statements, though I don’t know exactly what they are supposed to say. I’m not really one to care too much about artistic statements. Either you get a message from a piece of artwork or you don’t. It’s art. Explanation aren’t necessary.
In the back yard there are pieces of bronze armour strewn across the grass, alongside parts of insects. Inside the house there are golden bugs on pedestals.
And there were no explanations. There were no plaques telling the viewer when the pieces were made, or by whom they were made, or why which only added to the experience. It would never have been the same if I had walked in there knowing what I was going to see, or knowing something of the artist who created the pieces.
The magic was in the complete lack of information.
Weeks later. Once home, I did some reading on the artist. Jan Fabre. Now I know that I saw, an exhibition called “Spiritual Guards.” Two of the pieces in the exhibit were: “The Man who measures the sky” and “The Man who directs the stars.”
It occurs to me that places, just like art, are best seen without expectation or prior knowledge. “Not all those who wander are lost.”