The last two posts were dedicated to the power of colours. Let's continue the "thread" today (pun totally intended as you will see from the contents of this post...) by looking at a colourful and arty "yarn", the one feautred in this installation by Franco Summa entitled "De Pictura: Il Filo di Arianna" (De Pictura: Ariadne's Thread; 1978-2009).
The artist painted a long canvas strip in vivid colours and then spun it on a big wooden spool. At the same time he applied a strip of colours on reproductions of paintings from the 1200s to the 1500s (there are different versions of this installation, a longer one includes reproductions of paintings by Giotto, Duccio, Piero Della Francesca, Paolo Uccello, Michelangelo, Raphael and many more).
By following the coloured line you discover it ends up on a blank canvas portraying an artist with his back to the audience painting the line. The colourful thread evokes Ariadne helping Theseus finding his way out of the Minotaur's labyrinth with a ball of thread, but in this case the physical and metaphysical coloured line is a way to explore the past and look into the future.
Summa is indeed hinting here at the fact that chaos and confusion reign supreme in the art world, but also in our lives, which means that quite often we feel confused about the creative paths that we should choose.
The colourful thread becomes therefore a way to trace back our origins to the masters of art to find new strength and inspirations to write our future, a great message to give out at the beginning of September, as we slowly leave Summer behind to embrace next season's challenges.
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