Thanks to Rob Budrick for the OCR'd text! :)
Sorry about the formatting. ;)
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(Colum aligato to No 27 and No 28 of "The Signs of Man")
The publisher readers
Other publishers have in their catalog on "Atlantic Codex" by Leonardo da Vinci;
I'm proud to have my necklace signs of man Codex Seraphinianus.
The "Seraphinianus" was designed and written by a scribe today
in a room in Rome from 1976 to 1978.
My first intention was to propose a gloss to writers condegni from Barges at Calvin
but I realized it would be a mistake to introduce explanations in a work
encyclopaedic in nature, created to explain itself.
Stormed a convent, and meet the basic needs of food and plunder,
Hun or some other barbarian ignorant of certain alphabets will be entered until the Library,
and there will be peeled with a wonderful illuminated manuscript.
I want the reader to browse the Codex Seraphinianus''as that warrior;
or as a child still has not learned to read, but rejoices dreams
and fantasies that the pictures suggest.
He sometimes thought reprint, facsimile edition,
voumni of the eleven thousand "Ch'in-ting Ku-chin, T'u-shu chi-ch'eng''
("Collection of paintings and writings of ancient and modern period compiled by imperial order")
but I feared the frustration of those among the members of my club, unaware that the ancient Chinese.
The two volumes of this compendious Codex Seraphinianus "
written in an easy italic print. Semitic, will be easier and transparent for everyone.
Like seeing two quatrains and two triplets, not difficult to recognize the sonnet
so the reader will find it hard to recognize in the Codex Seraphinianus "a metric from encyclopedia,
with a first volume devoted to the natural sciences (botany, zoology, teratology, chemistry, physics
and mechanical) and a second dedicated to human sciences (anatomy, ethnology, anthropology,
mythology, linguistics, cooking, games, fashion and architecture).
It is clear that the Codex Seraphinianus''belongs to a wealthy family of companies and mirages
which includes the "Naturalis Historia" Pliny, "De Rerum Natura, Lucretius'',
the Speculum maius''''Vincent of Beauvais, up to the 'Encyclopedie' of Diderot and d'Alembert
or the most recent and valuable efforts of my colleagues Giulio Einaudi and Livio Garzanti.
Looking at the partitions, the reader will perhaps have the impression of listening
music without words of knowledge.
Planches in the Codex Seraphinianus "'reflected a science and a world
with similar and dissimilar from ours, as rumors of the same declination.
This leaflet is not intended as an introduction to flying, but a kind of packing slip.
Well then will the reader to tear it, so any contamination with the virus alphabetical
the wonders of the Orbis Pictus Seraphinianus mate.
Cover of the first edition of the Codex Seraphinianus published by Franco Maria Ricci in 1981.
Alessandro Riva
The secret strength of some inventions are
in their ability to persist in our
deep memory, even against our
regardless of the will and spend
the years, and together in the vague
knowledge that they will never understand
whole or, in any event
still fail to embrace the
everything from A to Z, to store them in
our memory as a fact accomplished,
in short, to make her epistemological
own - as if, to them, could not be
never had reason at all, as a force
that draws us in virtue of its capacity
of sottrarcisi in passing continuously
surprising us each time with
new inventions, new tricks, or new
Unexpected tricks of language, which forces us
constantly reexamine
all, and what it implies (the world
which he describes with his value systems,
its language, etc..) with new eyes, according
a parallel reading, if not alternative,
which previously had no
taking no account. One of
these is the Codex Seraphinianus, mysterious
hybrid more than a thousand heads, whose phantom
twenty-five years - since, that was published
for the first time in Italy, for types
Franco Maria Ricci '- is estimated with unsuspected
lightness between lovers, scholars,
bibliophiles, critics, writers, linguists,
historians, mystics, artists, herbalists fantastic
Scientists pseudoalchimisti, and then experts
Occult cryptologists, esoteric, complottologi,
ufologists and so on, and almanacs
fantasizing, involvement in cross-
of every aspect - even the most unexpected
- Scientific and humanistic culture, as well
that mass culture, not excluding
the most bizarre and obscure. See, for
believe the dozens of Internet sites
dedicated to this creature is omnivorous and comprehensive,
the numerous unofficial sites,
those dedicated to the futile attempt (albeit
pursued with consistency and determination
matched only by their absolute and total
futility) to decode and transcribe into
one of the many known languages 2, accomplices
the many false trails built with internal
hoc by the author, such as the famous (but unreadable)
pseudostele Rosetta placed with
wicked fun, within the same
volume. Twenty-five years, the pages
Codex is completely unknown
the general public, and also (semi)
unknown in their real essence of physics,
even to most fans,
of bibliophiles and scholars - because of
deliberately elitist character and sectoral
the elegant and expensive
editions of Franco Maria Ricci, and rare
foreign editions appeared in the meantime
foreign markets' - continued
to adopt their peculiar and highly
alienating suggestion, through the story
of those who possedeva4, or had
chance to view from somewhere
true, or through the photos on internet
the rare few reproductions catalog
the even more rare appearances in exhibitions
government ', but mainly through
texts, articles, essays or analysis that concerned - so, in fact, through the
paratext the book (the supreme paradox, for
work without a real text, if
not, precisely, that, illegible, written
serafiniana language, to be known
almost exclusively through its
paratext) - in short, means that infinite
tam tam that always accompanies
in a disordered and highly
chaotic and seemingly random,
but for this more branched
- More on that later accumulation
as a result of an orderly direction (like
what happens on Wikipedia,
"The free encyclopedia" where not the case
Codex has long been a motto all
its) - the emergence of some genuine "cases"
worldwide.
At first, he wanted Luigi Serafini
even omit his name from
title or the cover of Codex:
wanted, according to the letter, the suggestion
work that was, so to speak, write,
disappear, leaving only a trace
in the body and between the lines (illegible)
work itself, as the anonymous author
the songs of Ossian, or that, which then
Codex is often compared, the famous
Voynichb manuscript, or the infinite
herbals and medieval codices and incunabula, the
traces of the perpetrators of which are lost in the folds
the centuries. But the desire to be part
work, to be literally
camouflaged inside, far from being
motivated by snobbish pose of modesty or
from one of those witty pensatine type
conceptual often characterize the
biographies of artists in the age à la page
current was actually the first, and already well
firmly structured event
an attitude of inevitable svagatezza
and disregard for what we call
"Real" nature of mimesis and confusion
life lived and imagined, between physical existence
and mental experience, imagined, dreamed,
between work and biography: what feature,
even then, the inevitable fate
Artist, in which, increasingly, the fragile
boundary between what we call
biographical reality and what we call,
Instead, (re) construction of literary, psychological,
imaginary staff tend
inevitably to overlap and intersect
unabated. Are testimony - even if
worth something - biographies listed
some of his (rare) or in some catalogs
of his interviews, which state roughly
thus: "Luigi Serafini lives between Rome and
Milan, in an imaginary city where Street
Pipe comes out in Piazza Cordusio "(but
sometimes' the author has replaced "Via Condotti with" Via del Tritone, thus remaining,
as we shall see, closer to Rome
of his childhood, and that of creation
Codex, rather than the more traditional Rome
and canonical and we would perhaps
expected, then, even the replacement of
Piazza Cordusio "with" Buenos Aires "
as an example of the Milan hybrid,
chaotic and so little "Milan", where
Serafini has not only study but also
set some of his recent works;
Corso Buenos Aires as the site of
"Spleen" Milan ", as defined
the same artist ', "the walk on Sunday
afternoon, 'window-shopping', the
look without buying, ethnic dummies,
lemon yellow hours, now blacks chocolate
bars on the sidewalk, "where" is beautiful
controsole walk with others, seeing
without being seen. " Another biography
9, a bit 'less synthetic, says instead:
Luigi Serafini was born in Rome in 1949. For
several years carrying out various activities in preparation
Villa Borghese, in the area that goes
Pincio by up to Deer Park, and includes
the Borghese Museum and Zoo
. On October 6, 1955, playing ball,
falls on the glass and cut his hand:
decides to start drawing. Between
1956 and 1958 more than six hundred images recopies
from books, encyclopedias, lecture notes,
newspapers. After school in a college
of Piarists now in decline, falls
of Architecture, where he became interested in pentominoes,
golden sections and labyrinths applied.
Between 1971 and 1973 traveling to America,
Europe, Middle East and Equatorial Africa
. In 1976, after closing the door
house, he decided to write an encyclopedia
that stops accidental
1978. Since 1979, carries out home
Rome and sometimes in Milan. " For Seraphim
the artist who, as written by Vittorio
Sgarbi, "lives in a perpetual state of
mirage 10, also his biography becomes
field of play, rumor, legend,
fantastic reworking of a posteriori
as a function of daily life
alienating and reversal (or
simply by revisiting a
another view) of reality. For example,
reads as the artist tells the time
of his birth, in an interview
to Armando Adolgisol '
The biographies are exemplary, in general,
trying to understand the image
he himself, or wants to give of himself, the artist
But in the case of Seraphim, there is another
reason for leaving, even before the work
Thus the "text" in the sense seraphim
close, from what is around you: biographies,
So, yes, but also dedications, exergue,
quotes scattered in various books and
catalogs. Well, and again, you
should be distributed, to understand the work, from paratext
Seraphim, who can say that
sometimes more and speak more clearly
do not speak as his - generally
illegible - texts. Just paratext in fact,
are constantly camouflaged the
clues to the origins of his work,
his approach to work and the relationship
same with reality and with the formation of
his poetic universe. "This work was
made aware of the fiction that
there is a reality, "read at the opening of a
catalog. "Therefore, any reference to
imaginary people or events is to be considered
real chance. " It is no coincidence, then,
that even a trivial fall playing
football is traced the origin of
their ability to design, and even
the act of coming into the world will become subject
transfiguration fantastic and fun
narrative elaboration. We still
Once aware of the overthrow, and
However, no less clearly hallucinating,
terms of what we would call today
reality and fiction (ricordiamocelo when
return to address the issue of
Codex). "Seraphim, the artist strives to upset
conventions, to produce visual routes
collision between distant languages and alternative
to build a striking disorder
finds that the first inhabited areas of cultural
politely kept distance between them, "
wrote Achille Bonito Oliva. "The eye
the artist sees and provides. Part of
statistics and then look removes paralysis
conventions and introduces surprise
and derision. The world is not seen as
a place frozen, but as an area of
imploded emotions and therefore able, in
Somehow, and altered to produce
high temperature glow ".
To keep paratext seraphim
14 is still a catalog law, mo 'dedication
Final: "In memory of my father, an engineer
dreams, which in 1953 built a
TV in the room near the kitchen. "
This story (I apologize to readers, and
with them the same Serafini), is told
fully, it is very symbolic
that construction of metarealtà
serafiniana whose understanding is essential
to understand the genesis of
Codex. "My father," she explained some
years ago the artist in an interview "
"Built with his own hands a television. The
made at home with CRT, screen and
everything. I followed the construction of this monster
mechanical, with trepidation and a bit '
distress. " "I saw literally the birth
TV near the kitchen when
Gradually the lit vacuum tubes "
tell in another interview,
issued to Patrizia Valduga 16. Era - is
worth emphasizing - 1953 and the Fair
Milan, the first experimental television broadcasts
had reached, after Turin,
Rome also "the television culture" does not
still had stormed into our lives,
with its cargo of a spectacular
cheap and fictionalization of
real. "I remember the first images when
finished installing the thing. Were reversed
. So for a bit ', we had to
watch the TV instead. " This anecdote,
said, is indispensable for understanding
the genesis of Codex, since
closely and has the flavor of imprinting
seraphim unquestionably is, in fact,
the (first) construction - or reconstruction - of
a world on the contrary, the Seraphim child:
a world where reality and fiction
confuse and chase each other relentlessly, but
never meet, because one is the
mirror (perfect reversed) the other;
a world on the contrary, therefore, inevitably
suspended between reality and fiction, closed
inside the screen of a television, yes,
but - is worth emphasizing - not a TV
any means an instrument craft
built by his father, "the engineer of dreams"
(Which, it is said, built a house
submarine), which, as a novel
Cagliostro appears able, in the imagination
child (but already fatally seraphim)
at will to reshape the
real. After all, even today, all we could
ask and the child Serafini
What is the straight world and which is
reversed? And where reality begins and ends
our private individual myth, the
our own reconstruction of the world,
of life, of reality itself? How could he,
Many years later, wrote to Italo Calvino
About Codex7, "images of the existing
twist and overlap their
linkages ", thus creating a parallel universe
alternative ("our" universe, in fact,
made from impressions, and projections, and illusions,
and patterns compared to what we call
real), other than to speculate and
one shared by others: a universe
that when the recognition is described
or represented by others (in this case
becoming an "other" universe, a universe,
in fact, always "parallel" but fatally
different from ours), whenever there
produces surprise, wonder, excitement
(As is done precisely to us all
Viewing Codex), but also a subtle
thick with anguish - are not so much as
Calvin also wrote, "from its diversity
from ours, because of its similarity "
- At least in its basic structures.
Because it is not so much to deny
reality, but to apply a point of view
another, alienating than traditional
or shared by all. It is no coincidence,
then, the love of seraphim some
extraordinary makers and assemblers languages
parallel, as of Fosco Maraini
Fanfole, which can be found here and there, in
paratext seraphim, references and citations
(We traveled for thousands of years between splagi / down
criptocorni down in streets, / brushed away
the Arcagi s Mongi teloprenici and quidiosi
./ Help, horror! The stomach, the smebri / s'aggrecciano
enfani druniti on, or fall bustrenici
the affebri / viturpi with tubes and allupiti
. . . ). It is not the end, even this one
poetry perfectly understandable, though
written in a language apparently
geezer, other than our own? It is not,
including this language, like seraphim,
syntactically and structurally
consistent not only perfectly logical,
although very different from ours? It is only
a matter of displacement: the displacement
point of view, precisely what
we call real.
It is this creation (and, consequently,
of recognition) of another
perspective on reality, a fundamental question,
that allows us to understand the genesis of
works considered "visionary" (Calvin)
"Fantastic" (Sgarbi, Zeri), or "hallucinatory"
(Peter Schwenger), such as that
we are dealing with. And that is why the story
TV can be reversed - to
symbolic level - key to understanding
even the genesis of the Codex: why
is the first performance of another point
of view as possible on real is the creation of
a new world, built ad hoc measure
of Serafini, Serafini of that child
Meanwhile he studied diligently to College
and spends his summers in the countryside
a great-aunt, whose house was full
full of memories and souvenirs from
from its thousands of exotic travel (the track of
which perhaps has been in thousands of small, quirky
iconography alien or exoticized
Codex). And this child Serafini,
even then, perhaps, beginning to regret not
thinking of having a little blood 'of
the anarchic madness, very fin de siecle
eccentric yet highly inventive and
even mechanics - the kind of mechanical
craft, a little 'na?fe fundamentally
fantastic, the period in which there
more inventors, not only
engineers a bit 'obtuse but fitted master
and degree of specialization abroad - in short
have already assimilated into their
DNA that gust of madness over the top and somewhat
bizarre that has always crossed,
as a karst river, his family. Not
is no accident that even then, the child Serafini
- Or the subsequent reconstruction of
their childhood by Seraphim
adult (bottom of little importance) the
everyday was a receptacle of all kinds
adventures of highly symbolic and real
irrreali or that they were: "One day, as
miracle, came to the house of an aunt an astronaut
American, accompanied by Mayor
Rome, home precisely where he was born
because previously belonged to his
family. It was the living personification
of history that, for a whim of fate,
I looked out the dining room ", will tell
Serafini yet to witness the
This anecdote, apparently surreal
(I imagine that the astronaut looks out
in the kitchen with plenty of space suit and helmet,
as in children's film Zathura,
Space adventure), the artist has shown me,
One day, the plaque on the facade remained
of her aunt's house in Via Tevere, in
Ludovisi district: "Here was born Michael
Collins / intrepid astronaut / mission
Apollo I1/Primo Man on the Moon. " The
childhood memory for Seraphim, unrolling
so, so simple after all,
with the naturalness of the great adventures
fiction, through "normal" flavors
Child, in its staff
transfiguration, we are just history, myth,
legend. "The Arrive soit que la réalité
trop complexe pour la transmission oral
ou écrit. Seoul to the legends peut exprimer
d'une facon here embrasser puisse le monde
entier "reads mo 'exergue of the catalog
The Seraphim Theatre pittura19. So, with
remarkable ease and a touch of guasconeria,
Serafini biography in real and imaginary
seem to merge - in a sort
of terrain vague, in a no man's land where
is difficult to trace the sheer
biography - historical anecdote and reversal
all seraphim, the terms of
real.
He knew very well describe this
continuous mixing of true fiction
and imagined reality, Pino Corrias, in a
beautiful article published in "La Repubblica"
for twenty-five years of Codex 20:
Luigi Serafini is neither in heaven nor on earth,
but at the end of a corridor black inside
a green room walls, where the chairs
hanging from the ceiling. Flap between the alphabets,
and plays with the clouds, like the characters
Ink by Raymond Queneau, one
Flowers blue. In a surreal night away,
thirty-months, he imagined a
writing (perhaps) do not read and a world
that (perhaps) not seen with men
become Tong, eggs flying, trees
upside down, zoology plant, insect and
crocodiles. He made an Encyclopedia
wonderful, surprising and useless resembling
As to the real world is like a dream
the mystery of mirages ". And, to decrypt
this encyclopedia - Codex, AP
point - Corrias found a "key": "And
the story of its history. The very funny
Adventures of Luigi Serafini. Born architect
House imaginary, but then becomes
artist and traveler for three trips, as
three waves of fate, America, East
Africa "- and here I leave you to read later,
Corrias text, which tells precisely the
"Very funny adventures" by Luigi Serafini
by land and sea, starting in
across America as he recounts
himself, looking Utopia (Utopia
a word that I saw for the first time
with my own eyes during a long journey
American in the early seventies.
I saw architecture "organic" for
Frank Lloyd Wright, as nell'intrinseca
utopian dimension of American society,
Standing in between quell'altalena
and work space, nature and artifice. Since
I learned how Utopia is a food,
an essential nutrient "and return
below the basic meaning
covers for Seraphim, the very concept of
Utopia), and ending with a rather Serafini
arrested by a squad of soldiers
Congolese, and finally released because believed
mad, perhaps because they too had
including what he later realized George
Sweet, when he saw for the first time
Codex, and he described the "Journal" with
lapidarietà brilliant: "You could doubt
him, but his sparkling wit '21.
On the other hand, trace, in this
tourbillon real madness and crazy reality, the real
from the false, the plausible from what is rather
unrealistically adherent to or lived
is real, as well as difficult, absolutely
irrelevant for it is precisely this short-circuit
between real and imaginary, or rather between
adventures and real ability to look at that
same reality from another point of view, a
viewpoint imaginative and alienating, so
to make them seem crazy, incredible,
paradoxical, that is the secret of
creation of meta-reality that typically
serafiniana, where fantasy becomes as
miracle, reality, and vice versa reality
seems to vanish and instead dissolve in
they are thin on facts and myths
legends, becoming vague sequence
fattoidi of taste strangely unreal.
What is certain is that Luigi Serafini
start typing the Codex at age 27.
It is 1976, and the artist is in Rome, in a
attic on the fifth floor of a dirt
called Via Sant'Andrea delle Frate,
number 30, in the heart of Baroque Rome,
where even the streets and buildings have
preserved the names and memories of the Counter
Popes: The Way crosses the Largo
Nazareth, home to the College still
Nazareth, who attended the same Serafini
from elementary to high school, and basically
emerges, strangely enough, on a large building
austere bearing a plaque that
reads: "Here lived and died / Gianlorenzo Bernini /
sovereign art / which bent /
reverent / Papi Principles Peoples. " Side,
Via Capolecase, there is the palace of the Propaganda
Fide, and not far from the church Borromini,
although incomplete, of
Sant'Andrea delle Frate. Around, a
crossroads of streets that bear names and suggestions
bestiary of strange seraphim
(The names have to do with us, as
in which our subconscious reacts "says
later, and not surprisingly, the artist in an interview
issued hyacinth Pietrantonio22
): Via del Tritone, Via della Salamandra
Palazzo del Bufalo, on the door of the latter,
still stands a good head
buffalo that seems straight out
from a page of Codex: expected
to see her off, at any moment,
stone, become flesh and blood stand out
flight.
From his attic, then, Serafini
dominates this crossroads that reminds
his childhood (in the house to
side, at number 24, lived the rest of
his life, and when one is moved, it did
to go in the adjoining building: where
glimpsed the idea, made material, Physics of
travel only as a displacement
mental. In between, however, for Seraphim, there
has a degree in architecture and many
Travel around the world that we
discussed earlier). From his attic
then, and roofs, on which sometimes vague
bringing the girls to drink tea as
in a wacky adventure worthy of Mary
Poppins, Serafini dominates this crossroads
road: see the domes, many of Rome
century, but see above, and
close, the extraordinary inventions Borromini,
Baroque contortions lantern
the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frate,
cloister in which he was baptized, and where
a series of lunettes still bears the trace
of frescoes which celebrates the life of St.
Francesco di Paola and own one of these
frescoes, looking at today, seems to bring us back
a strange iconography serafiniana;
represents the saint on top
a promontory and, before him, a herd
of cows that enter the water, and heads,
swimming toward the shore. "For Collum
suspense ferunt your IUSS iuvenci famuli ut,
longa et celeres aequora secant "23 states
the inscription that accompanies it. Singular
coincidence (but there are, then, the coincidences?
Or even the herd of cows
amphibious marked individually, without
know, Serafini child's imagination?)
between this image and obsession -
born from one of the many "fantasy
extravagant and valuable, labyrinthine and shiny "
in the words of Giorgio Manganelli 24 - of
Serafini adult to breed, and specifically
25 for the cow: cow transformed
hybridization, metamorphosed; made oviparous,
plant, invertebrate, mollusc and
whatever, in many paintings and drawings
later, especially sculptures (the famous
Bay windows, but also the most recent Cowburger
in love, cow with human hands and early
turned into hamburgers, made
for the Cow Parade in Florence
2005 and later subjected to repeated vandalism)
. Iconography, the cow and
her male counterpart, the bull, the other
Party has a long tradition,
Starting for example from Greek mythology:
think of the legend, the concentration
Europa, ravished by Zeus in the form of
bull and transported by sea to Crete:
what Europe brings to mind our
origins, albeit by mythological. Time
Serafini conceived as a series of bay windows,
Europe had taken shape a curium
sa collective phobia, that of the so-called
"Mad Cow" on which the artist played in a manner
fun and irreverent, at
its staff Milan (the public
was invited to join as a tragedy
old, hiding behind a mask
the shape of a cow: postponing,
mentally, that cow mask
that just puts it in Prometheus, when
tired to flee from the anger of Hera, screams
all his despair to the heavens: "Can you hear me?
I am the girl you cry / I, masked
horns, heifer! ") 26.
To get back to us, or rather to Seraphim
pre-codex is here, then, from the fifth floor
an attic in Via Sant'Andrea
of Fratta - where some time has
established the architecture together with
"A member who in his spare time catching cobwebs
lies on the white canvas and immobilizes
with the fixative "27 - that Luigi Serafini
begins on a Sunday in 1976,
to draw and write the Codex.
Begins, almost by chance, to design and
writing the Codex, that undoubtedly
become his Great Work, the
summa its poetic, visual and philosophical quell'enciclopedia
the absurd, the fantastic,
impossible (but made with "obstinacy
by amanuensis "as written
John Mariotti, as well as precision
and accuracy of the design of
details, the same internal logic syntax,
so that the set is absolutely
and completely plausible in the eyes of
anyone) is that the Codex Seraphinianus,
that "a vast encyclopedia of world
hypothetical somewhat similar to Earth,
with many creatures that resemble
humans at various levels, and other creatures extremely
weird moving here and there "
as written by the scholar (and Pulitzer Prize)
Douglas Hofstadter2s carefully
annotated and commented in the "Handwriting
meticulous cursive and agile, and (we admit)
clear that we are always
a hair from being able to read and yet there
escapes in every word and every letter "
(Calvin) 29.
"I remember the day and circumstance"
Seraphim to tell about Pino Corrias 30
Birth of the Codex. "I called
a friend and tells me to take that step
go to the cinema. And I, without knowing
why, I say: no rest at home, I do
encyclopaedia. And when I put the phone down,
really begin to draw. Begin
by a man, then a screwdriver,
leaf, a gear. And I write, row after
line, imaginary captions, slipping in
automatic pause and white signs dancing ..
. A table after another, without missing
ever, for days, weeks, months. " Thus,
with the same ease with which the world
real is transfigured, in memory of the artist
in history, myth, legend, its
fantasy world that is born, yes, imaginary,
crazy, utopian, distorted, sometimes a bit '
disturbing, "Teratology" (Calvino 31), a
world in which history has lost its way
natural to find another, parallel and
unstable, ever-balance paradox
and fiction, "in a climate of rationalism
transfigured, invented, released by processes
mentally different than usual (...) in
each spark invention, each flame
found a suggestive and disturbing "
(Zeri32), yet also "fully
understandable and, so to speak, livable;
not at all surreal, as might appear
at first: "a parallel universe,
governed by its internal laws, strict and infallible "
(Sgarbi).
Certainly, in analyzing the Codex, the
first approach is the most obvious and immediate
and the structure of the Encyclopaedia
canonical, ie "images of books
science, the chapters on anatomy of the eye,
stomach, heart, or books
natural sciences and botany "as
Sgarbi wrote again, or rather, as
instead emphasized Zeri, a work that
"Summa resembles a medieval division
for subjects, classes and subclasses:
Codex tackles fact, in its rigorous
structure, all categories of knowledge,
both in the field of natural sciences
in human terms - although, as we shall see,
with continuous changes and contamination
between one and another, so as to talk of
description of "another world", a "universe
alien "or" parallel ". Flora, fauna, physical,
mechanics, anatomy, mythology, writing,
food, clothing, strings-
architecture: every aspect of this mysterious
parallel universe here is gutted, described
minutely described, and (albeit to a
language unknown to us) analytically
described in the Codex, in a surprisingly stirring constantly, unceasing and mutual
of all categories and all aspects
the real: "Like Ovid's Metamorphoses,
Serafini believes contiguity and the
permeability of each area of existence "
Calvin again emphasized. And a
certainly bizarre world, and equally
certainly surprising and unexpected,
Seraphim of this, where the fish are shaped
of eyes that come from the sea surface
as the periscope of a submarine, where
the plumed can have three heads or tails
the shape of a lance to pierce the eggs (but
in the subsequent development of art serafiniana,
in which the simple design and
teratological design gives way to
creation benintesto increasingly bizarre beings
and metamorphic, but in three dimensions,
theory of strange birds pictured in the Codex
takes the form of real galligalline,
ie Galgalline - neologism
seraph who would say one hundred percent,
except that it also appears, unbelievable
but true, the national road map
a remote village of Belluno Cesiomaggiore, where the road appears to Galgallina
alongside the more prosaic ways Via Dante
Foscolo - volatile, the seraphim, with
two heads, one for just a cock and
the other, where the seat would normally
Rooster, hen, and vice versa), where
the rainbow is not a natural phenomenon
strange but worldwide, perhaps the source
mechanical, electromagnetic, perhaps, or maybe
who knows what deviltry of heaven, complete with
mysterious flying machine capable of creating it;
where men gradually take the shape
their homes, to identify with
completely, where the deer possess
leaves that grow on their horns,
benintesto always that the head is planted
pot, where there are fish with diver
built and fish with a ponytail,
fish with bones and fish-shaped broom
dishes to jump on the water, and so on, and where
Lastly, some machinery to construct
all provided is completely useless.
Serafini, in fact, gave perhaps the best
self-developing complicated machinery,
or sometimes animal-machines, or machines-
human beings, whose complexity is
always directly proportional to useless,
the emptiness, the stupidity of the end
which should serve, thereby forever
diametrically opposed, in some
case, compared to more recent creations, such as
the macchinossima and absolutely unsightly,
Wim Delvoye Cloaca Turbo,
huge machinery to produce a
tiny curl of shit too true, and
having more contrast, in
playful spirit and playful, the very famous
useless machines Bruno Munari, the various engines
lizard turtle tired, the
agitators queue for lazy dogs, the filipes.
All machines with their own existence
independent of their condition,
we say, psychological, like
those serafiniane (each has its own
special personality, "he said, no case
Munari describing his useless machines:
"One day they are lively and agitated, and
days after falling into an incomprehensible
hibernate "a phrase that may well be
Output from the mouth of Seraphim, as
gloss that followed: "After all the machines
profits are often boring with their rhythm
uniform constant). It is not really a
this regard, the comparison between risky
machines, although, for now, only projects,
by Seraphim with those of another mad
machinery maker visionary and supremely
unnecessary, with all their kit
conception, design, implementation and then
true, and even promotion,
publicizing of (fake) launch
market, and so on, the Finnish architect Alvar
Gullichsen, highly visionary artist
and yet rigorous in construction
internal rules to its own universe,
that in the late eighties created
the Bonk Business Inc., holding imaginary
for over a century would always
according to (verosimilissima) fiction artist,
dysfunctional and useless machinery,
but with a true trademark of
real advertising campaigns and true / false
documentation of all types and kinds of
great visual impact and communication.
Moreover, in its complex and abstruse
machines absolutely useless (as
rules of our universe: not according to
those of his, that we are, however, to
still completely unknown), Serafini
has been able to really like wrote
Sgarbi yet, be "in balance between Leonardo
and Eta Beta, the first possessing
hand and the talent, the second solution
impossible ".
"Reflecting," Calvin is 34 to emphasize,
"We would think that the peculiarity
Serafini's language must be more than
Alphabetical syntactic but: things in the universe
language that evokes such
we see illustrated in the tables of its
encyclopedia, are almost always recognizable,
but the connection between them to appear to
upset with combinations and relationships
unexpected ". "Looking at the Codex," echoes
John Mariotti 35, "we see a reality
mineral or botanical or faunal change through
a stable part of the game, or root,
which combines with prefixes, suffixes and interfissi.
In his fictional universe
Seraphim was able to give an
that the imaginary universes wont unfortunately
missing: the grammaticality.
Here then, this Codex, there appears
really like a big, tireless, multilayered
complex and not only the anthem
utopian dimension of fantasy, of
creation of other realities, parallel to
commonly accepted, caused by
simple shift of perspective on
what we call real, and on the remix
continuous and incessant different levels,
gender and language and scientific fields;
but also a hymn to the infinite possibilities
language - whatever it is - to reinterpret
reality, to bend and shape
functionally to their needs and
to their worldview.
Thus, under the banner of Utopia (Utopia
Over time he learned to Seraphim
considered "a food, nutrition
fundamental ") and ambiguity, the circle
seraphim back to close.
"In some ways," Frederick gloss
Zeros, "Serafini par propose the mixed
bulk pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which
tries, so provocative, to hide
the true ultimate sense, masking in a thousand
ways, the most absurd and unthinkable, perhaps
to make it more difficult (and enlightening)
discovery ".
In his speech fatally impossible
to decipher, in the midst of impossible machines
to build and of which no
will never discover the secret operation,
between animals ever seen, beautiful flowers
and peoples in which all characters are mixed
and all the races of the world beyond that
never seen in any world, and where the characters
uínani dissolve in those animals
those animals in those plants, those
than mechanical plant, etc. to-
I'infinitc, the Utopia of Serafini takes slowly
pious inexorably shape unfolds
before our eyes with the naturalness of
great mythological tales and the great
epics of the past, invented forms, languages,
syntactical and mathematical games,
from now on, will never be incomprehensible
: Will, simply, and undeniably
serafiniane: or belonging
the mad, mad mad world of inequality
author of the Codex.
1 The first edition was published in the Codex Seraphinianus
Franco Maria Ricci, Milan, in 1981 in two volumes
(127 +127 pp., 108 color plates +128).
2 Among the many attempts to translate the language of the Codex
remind those made by the Bulgarian linguist Ivan.
Derzhanski, who claims to have identified the key for interpreting
the numerical system seraphim, which would develop
based on 21, and the former navy cartographer
American Jim Marshall.
Third edition in one volume is published in the U.S.
by Abbeville Press, New York, 1983, the same year the Codex
is published by Prestel in Germany, Monaco, the Netherlands
by Meulenhoff-Landshoff, Amsterdam. In 1993, Franco
Maria Ricci published in French, the fifth edition of the Codex
in one volume, with a preface by Calvin, and a sixth
in Spanish with a preface by the same writer again.
4 There are numerous internet forums, where boaters,
from all over Europe, as well as several countries Quail
Canada, Mexico and the United States, tell each other how
came into possession of Codex, when it has been bewitched,
and give advice on how and at what price can be
in possession of a copy. For all, this statement copy
some of Voodoo from Dallas: "I fell
in love with the book as soon as one saw it and HAD to have it. "
Five hundred tables of the Codex were taken in February 1981,
Palazzo Grassi by Vittorio Sgarbi (Orhis Pictus, 100 tables from
Codex Seraphinianus, Venice, Palazzo Grassi, in February 1981).
Then the outputs of public boards Codex
were extremely rare.
6 The so-called Voynich Manuscript is named to his first
Buyer, Wilfrid M. Voynich (1912). Written in an alphabet
unknown, is amply illustrated with images
apparently fantastic. Find them in the
manuscript of a letter of purchase for 600 ducats opens two
hypothesis: that Rudolph has been cheated them (unlikely) or
that he himself has been commissioned.
7 Luigi Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, curated by Achille Bonito
Oliva, Rome, on the occasion of the exhibition at Foundation Mudima,
Milan, March 1998.
8 Interview with Patrizia Valduga, La Repubblica, 2002.
9 Biography in Orhis Pictus, op. cit.
10 Vittorio Sgarbi, Fictions of Serafini, Serafini in, Italian Factory
exhibition catalog, in "Italian Factory, the new
Italian art scene ', 50th International Exhibition
Art of Venice, from June to October 2003.
11 Read the interview below to Armando Adolgiso
in 2005 for "Enterprise. Voices and thoughts from space. "
12 Louis Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit.
13 Achille Bonito Oliva, in The Theatre of Painting, op. cit.
14 Louis Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit.
15 Interview with Alessandro Riva "Carnet Arte"
June / July 2004.
16 Interview with Patrizia Valduga in La Repubblica, 2002.
17 Italo Calvino, The encyclopedia of a visionary in Collection
sand, Mondadori, 1994 (first edition with pictures, Garzanti,
1982).
18 Interview with Alessandro Riva "Carnet Arte"
June / July 2004.
19 "It happens that reality is too complex for the transmission
oral or written. Only the law can express it
that can embrace the water a whole "Alpha 60, supercomputers
controlling Alphaville. J homonymous film. L.
Godard, 1965. In Luigi Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit.
20 Pino Corrias, The Encyclopedia of the other world, 'La Repubblica',
2006.
21 Giorgio Soavi, Aloisio in Toyland in the newspaper,
1982. Following the game instinctively and disguises
serafiniani identity mixed up, turns to his Soavi
will, in a play hide and seek with the reader, the name
Luigi Aloisio in Latin derivation.
22 Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, interview with Luigi Serafini, catalog
Exhibition unlikely, 1990, Castle Volpaia (Siena).
23 "1 bullocks, as servants, bring your orders hanging
neck, and speed through the deep sea "(for open sea
is meant the Strait of Messina).
24 Giorgio Manganelli, Pulcinella: a thousand and none in Corriere
della Sera, 1984.
25 The issue of cow Serafini dedicated in 2001, an exhibition
Milan: Cows and Serafini, Le Bureau des esprits, catalog
by Alessandro Riva, Giancarlo Prearo Publisher.
26 "What the current phobias that afflict the mantle spotted
Europe has had for a short season,
face of a mad cow (just before the sulfur profile
Bin Laden overshadow all the dreams and imagination incubators
West) is one of those jokes of history and
of fate that only the great gods and fools can
recognize as such. "
27 Pine Cornas, op. cit.
28 Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas, Basic Books, 1985.
29 Italo Calvino, op. cit.
30 Pino Corrias, op. cit.
31 Italo Calvino, op. cit.
32 Federico Zeri, op. cit.
33 Italo Calvino, op. cit.
34 Italo Calvino, op. cit.
35 John Mariotti, Mr. Fantasy, in "L'Espresso", 1981.
36 Federico Zeri, op. cit.
Collum for your suspense ferunt IUSS iuvenci ut famuli, et celeres aequora longa secant
Places Codex: the frescoed lunette in the cloisters of the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frate, Rome.
Places Codex: the lantern of the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frattee the goldfish pond in the cloister of the church.
Giorgio Soavi
Codex Seraphinianus
Books by Franco Maria Ricci's series "The
Signs of Man "are made for probable
descendants of emperors or royal families
which, with the contempt that it is their own,
not only treat subjects as if
not exist, but when you deign to
browse books, they must be large
as a plantation and in the paper
magnitude, if they expedient to do so, we must
be room for castles, rivers and dairies
to produce cheese and dairy delights.
The books have this jattanza Ricci,
do not care for the afflicted or thin, but
are filled with chocolate cream and marron
glacé, and if something's left between your teeth
are not spices, but corals beryl and topaz
her uncles, the Magi of Parma, have
bequeathed. This short book
sumptuous unbearable. I look at them
nauseated by their looks.
However when, a few years ago,
Young appeared before me Aloisio Serafini
and, in perfect silence, let me browse
The tables have now been collected
and just published by Franco Maria Ricci
(Codex Seraphinianus, 2 volumes, 1981, LIT
300, 000) my first thought was to strike
the individual who was watching me to kill him
and take possession of those originals.
Never seemed more propitious occasion to murder: no-one had seen him
come into my studio and no one but the
usual potted who walk for Milano
impossible hours, I have seen out with
the burden of his lifeless body dragged
for standing up to the canal
which, for obvious reasons, will not name.
So they were just things, and nem-
less than me and skinny curavo dell'esserino
pale in front of me, having already
with fast fancy removed and placed
properly on the bottom of muddy
canal itself. Everything was going so for
best when, as in novels,
always suspected the worst, a
presence leaked, became material, and
that moment I realized that
Aloisio was unfortunately subject: I never
could kill him to take possession of
His drawings, and this is because he, like
all mortals, and there had reports
lived its own life, had knowledge
: Someone, in short, knew him. A
Catherine certain I had spoken, she
had arranged the appointment: if
someone on the police station, was
was questioned after his death,
would tell what he knew. Oddly
said: the police is very good. But why
is? Because ordinary people, who always knows
, talk, tell, invent things plausible.
The skin was then Aloisio Serafini
safely, and how hard he tried not to
have epidermal reactions to my joyful
comments for his great skill in being
crazy, that these drawings were so
was created almost a normal conversation,
as often happens between a non-delinquent
- The author of these notes - and survived.
He, aware of his talent,
let me vent. What I had
now said in the first half hour?
I had never seen anything like it;
that was brilliant, everything I wanted;
that was totally insane and therefore
deserved a great writer. What for?
Serafini I addressed this question if
not with the eyes, even those falsely
discharged or absent from the problem. Thus began
to look at the comments
around, not bury, the drawings
color of his stories of animals and human
undergoing transformation. The transformation
species according to a herbalist, stationers,
surveyor and builder of sweet
daubs of nature designer of machinery
to produce rainbows that do not exist
and, consequently, its private
alphabet, inventor of a department store
objects from which spurt flying animals
and a colorful circus of pleasures and
Discussed in an obsessive entertainment
Persian language that of Marco Polo
toys invented by the wayside.
Comments or texts in the form of chapters
and captions were, of course,
written in Persian or better in language-are adjacent to mountain ranges of the states
more neighboring Persia, a language most
written and spoken, although for the truth ...
I retraced my steps and I began to read
explanations that page. .. (Number
illegible) describing the adventurous celebration of a people who seemed
indulge and fly for joy while under
them, intricate machinery for conservation
gas hilarious miss out
small clouds in contact with
the air turned into fireworks,
but an artifice that had its own name
or specific qualities than those of
be surprising, propelled as if by
an amusement park a few windmills
fathers had produced children or child
which accompanied the exploits. But it's all
here? We ask readers of fantasy books
. In fact this was only the beginning,
because what I would like to make
focus is language, the Persian-writing
Cyrenaica, who has wandered far
without a specific skill, but went
walking on the shore of a sea in which,
at other times, cropped heads or bodies of
Cycladic sculpture, people without a real
religion without a country, and perhaps without
diseases of any kind, people who had
of marine debris, which could in
cloudless day perfect time to
bite white pebbles or pink, as if
were stuffed with almonds. That man-bea
I had this awful and Aloisio Seraphim?
One could doubt him, but his
sparkling wit.
While I strive to say what
this elf that looked weakened without
smallest of approval or disapproval,
joy procured from epileptic
his inventions, I always thought what
writer could comment on these
fantastic designs and crazy in love so
just tell between someone and a
crocodile, and the spectacle of what it
remained on the bed of love passion
was, of course, a crocodile, but what?
A crocodile that he accepted as a pledge
feminine sides of love and roses, that
meat for which we are all going blessed
in a trance when caressed,
as he had done lightly,
the body is with us, the real
accomplice who will sacrifice.
The name did not come out because Aloisio
let me contemplate his plans for two
hours only and then left. Now that the books
I'm here on my desk and I resume my
silent but deafening conversation with me
same to digest his fairytale world, and
I look more calm - calm and strong
the losers - his Persian texts, I begin
understand that the language he has invented
perfectly true and legible. Just take
in small doses, as is done with the verses
the Bible. Even there, a world teeming
it gives battle to survive the
behind a huge landscape with a sun
blinding seems to indicate that, with the help
of darkness, a massacre will be given
meal at dawn tomorrow, maybe the monsters
the wizard Aloisio Serafini were born at the time
of the great modern wars, and time
it took specimens created a
race which, while remaining within the limits and ineffable
minor child, devouring candidly
any kind of prototype in order not to proliferate
people too orderly, capable of distinguishing
at first glance with which
cells must salad dressing, toys,
Emperor's clothes and all the paraphernalia
pastimes of those who
burned indelibly period
most inventive of our lives.
in the newspaper, 1981
Federico Zeri
The Universe transfigured
Ten years ago, in 1972, Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York State, set up
a unique exhibition entitled "The
Civilization of Llhuros, and consistent (it
claimed) in the findings of excavations at
Vanibo, Hund Draikum, and other centers
an unprecedented culture llhurosciana, flowery
Asia Minor, near Lydia.
The rich never failed to card catalog
geographical bibliography and reproductions of
exhibits, including works of art next to
figurative art (sculptures, frescoes), there was a
series of strange objects (nose flute) as well
artifacts (such as lemon squeezer, wrenches,
irons) mysteriously changed
and "displaced" to functions in nature
sacred: all commented, very seriously,
in the archaeological sense. But the whole collection
(And the very idea of "civilization llhurosciana)
was the product of fantasy
artist Norman Daly, author of the alleged
and inventor finds very funny (although
sometimes heavy with sexual doppisensi)
all superstructures described minutely
in bizarre catalog.
The case of this exhibition is perhaps extreme, but
is not an isolated incident: probably
the theme of "civilization invented" not
until then had been conducted so thoroughly,
until tangible object or place second
a register of humor so hot
. But it is certain that, at least in
literature, is an issue that comes down in Europe
an old tradition: it is safe
say that the first home they should be identified
in Plato's Republic.
Then it is specified in the Utopias
Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or choose to describe themselves
a geographical location (which may be
a fabled China or some equally
mythical savage people as it happens
Enlightenment in the eighteenth century), it is always
a towel that is reprocessed into
political sense, moral, religious or
humorous, indeed, is a real kind
that has flourished in our century, thanks to
visions of "future" Zamyatin, Huxley and
Orwell, and (in the wake of Rabelais and
its pseudo-references) has had on the register
literature, the most subtle variations and modulations
to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, or Ernesto
Bioy Casares.
All this comes to mind watching
(You can not just say "reading") work
unique and fascinating, just now published
in two volumes by the publisher Franco Maria
Ricci Codex Seraphinianus Luigi Serafini
a young Roman architect and between
1976 and 1978 drew hundreds of
sheets that are being released through a
made beautiful typography. Defining
this? I said that it is asking a
reference to the tradition of civility
invented, "but there is more surprising because,
Following images are inexhaustible
a formula of exceptional mental
richness and variety. We find (the
state history) and Arcimboldi Bosch
the "useless machines" Munari, the "Temples
Egg "by Fabrizio Clerici, Gaudí, as well
the science fiction literature, the alchemy
Minutes of Jules Laforgue, the wild
mechanism of paradoxical abstraction of
Raymond Roussel, the surreal game of metamorphosis
Alberto Savino, and many things
yet. And likely the same Serafini
becomes aware of the ground, so varied and
stratified, where sinks his work, is
suspect that this is not the result
studies have direct exchanges conscious of
knowledge accurate and thought out, resulting
instead a kind of "evolutionary time"
given the psychological and the cultural,
understood in the broadest sense,
also in geographical respects. The structure and
images of the Codex in fact a touch
log intonations that is limited neither
boundaries, ranging from fancy to the paradox,
Horror from the sensational, the logogrifo
the joke humorous, caricature by intuition
mysticism.
Already the system work (that
Summa resembles a medieval division
for subjects, classes and subclasses)
introduced in a climate of rationalism transfigured
invention, released by processes
mentally different than usual, and the description
seraph to the university "shall
by images of meticulous precision
and clarity, and because of a write
also fantastic, whose impeccable cursive
is and is not showing all the characteristics of
communication calligraphic true and authentic,
also specified in numbers, but
then remains in the closed indecipherable hieroglyph,
close tightly without
possibility of penetration.
Said the second sharp precision
which is conducted by Codex, and it seems appropriate
play at least one of about four
pages which are the two compounds
volumes. There remains, however, to deny the validity of
examples, the fact that only knowledge
total of all makes
adequately the meaning allowing
value judgments: it is impossible
a choice in the body of a huge fire,
that every spark is an invention,
each flame found a suggestive and perplexing.
In fact, images that are far
were chosen to comment rating
in the press have focused on certain sheets
that although full of humor, are among
the less significant, such as with the
couple who, during an embrace, it becomes
a crocodile, or the other with fish
that, emerging from the water surface, resemble
wide-eyed. And yet, a
of the most unusual of the Codex is a mixture
the various strands of discourse, the absence
any relationship between the multiple discursive
tones, timbres and tones that occur
unconnected, almost random, just like
facts of everyday life, which only
memory gives meaning of rational
performance.
If the Codex is the bearer of a message more
intimate and deep, you must look within
the constant interweaving of images and
references, often misleading and sometimes
equipped with a charge like that quick
the pun, the joke and pun
minutes. In some ways, it seems Serafini
propose mixed in bulk, the pieces of a
gigantic puzzle whose endeavor, so
provocative, to conceal the true ultimate sense,
masking in many ways, the most
absurd and unthinkable, perhaps made more
difficult (and enlightening) the discovery.
If these critical intentions are real, then
Italo Calvino has hit the mark in
what is the sharpest since the review here
appeared Codex, published the first issue
FMR's magazine, art by Franco
Maria Ricci. Calvin has highlighted the
relationship between two tables, one showing
a sort of Rosetta Stone, where pseudoscrittura
accompanying the images is
combined and made a comparison with another
series of signs, very different and mysterious like
primordial particles, the same as
elsewhere are out in droves by
ray of light of a street lamp, wrapped
the dark night.
Then the suspicion arises that Serafini
the written word (the verb is received
to fixate and measures communicative power)
is equal to the essence of light,
that light is the very origin of the intellect,
that pervades the whole Universe itself.
Maybe I'm wrong, but many clues make me
think that in this cosmology, the apparent
diversity, infinitely varied, is redo
to one principle, which animates everything,
and that, after all, remains identical to itself:
because, in other words, everything is divine.
If so, then the Codex is the expression
a sort of "amauricianesimo, more insight
reasoned that expression of a message
deeply religious, such as
Mozart's operas (and this is a name
I've heard speak out by the author). Certainly we are facing
text an exceptional figure, even for
its eccentricity with respect to artistic culture
Italian Journal of the moment:
so outside the norm that it is likely
that dismal coryphaei art criticism
engaged, politicized academic fintorivoluzionaria, try to ignore it or
bury, or at least sticky label
jarring and confusing.
There is to be a prophet to foresee
Codex urged to come in the same car
ary which is in turn tried to
drowning De Chirico, Savino, Clerici, Licini
and everyone who owned a
visual vocabulary free from the boundaries of-
the parish, the neighborhood, the festival regional
the provincialism that has infected
almost two centuries pollutes Italian painting.
in La Stampa, 1981
Vittorio Sgarbi
Seraphiniana the Methodus
One room apartment in a great
city, a light wood table, chair,
stacks of books scattered among white paper. The door
bathroom ajar, frequent noise
by car, muffled by the closed windows.
At eye level, library shelves,
volumes of natural sciences of anatomy,
local history and a modern edition of the Encyclopédie; higher narratives:
The Aleph by Borges, the complete works of Sade
Klossolwski and some first editions
Fine Savinio (Sound Box, New
Encyclopedia), the dinner of the ashes of Jordan
Bruno, the Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake, The Baron in the Trees
Italo Calvino, Don Quixote, rare books
figured.
So you can rebuild (or perhaps any
other setting would be plausible) space
physical and mental, where a man of talent,
with eyes closed to reality, imagine
Encyclopedia fantastic, an explanation
Full and detailed and of a world
that does not exist. Or rather, exists in its
rational rules, but no less absurd to
operation, those for which there are cars,
trains, cinemas, television with
twenty channels, comedians and objects in themselves useful
transform men into sardines and larks,
often tortured with constraints
bodies, colors unbearable odors.
With consistency and absence through a process
construction of alienation.
Serafini invented a parallel universe,
governed by its internal laws, strict
and infallible, often designed to demonstrate
the goodness of a method (Serafina)
another (the newspaper): everything is
expressed through teaching boards illustrated
and commented in a language invented-
tion but not non-existent, if there is a universe
ready to accept it.
Serafini seems to mean that there is
difference between what is true and what a
true for many, because the human experience,
articles, civilization and history are a
Convention groups, as demonstrated
anthropological diversity of a region than
its neighbors, from similar
anthropocentric principles. At different latitudes
living civilization of China and
Greek East and the West, for the deception
time that does not actually belong to
conventions and runs straight as shown
the inexorable aging of our
body. Civilizations overlap, live
simultaneously and in parallel,
but they defend themselves with boundaries, walls, rivers,
mountains and walls, and with walls
apartments.
Serafinocentrico is anthropocentric. And the same position in the sixth century
BC Xenophanes had said,
reasonably doubt the existence
gods, or at least those of an Olympus
built in the image and likeness of man
greek. "Men believe that the
were born and have a voice and body
similar to theirs. . . Therefore, the Ethiopians do their
Camus and the blacks, the Thracians say that
blue eyes and red hair, and even oxen,
horses and lions, if they could imagine
their gods in their similarity. Poets
have encouraged this belief.
Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the
also what is the object of shame and
reproach among men wrongs, adultery and mutual
deception. "
Serafini knows how Xenophanes
nothing like what is on the presumed
to be absolute, and therefore assumes
for details of his absolute and
consecrates him with an encyclopedia, where an
that irony is not an ingredient staff
but a universal category. Certainly the
His image of the world is ruled by
demiurgic idea, and he stands as
a deity that gives order and law, statutes
creating and implementing rules for
remove from anarchy and chaos than any other
possible arrangement and administration.
To this end click the picture
detailed, describing every detail
with meticulous realism and refined
pictorial and graphic execution, emulating,
surprisingly without imitation, the
great Italian illuminators of the fifteenth century,
especially Ferrara who gave shape
profane to the Bible Borso d'Este, and choirs,
Missals, Breviaries, Gospels. On the other
part, as these codes, with discoveries
symbols, are unicorns, invented landscapes,
two-headed birds, flowers of all kinds
botany, perhaps twisted to draw
a candlestick, as long ago
Bestiari happened in medieval or
bas monstrous and fantastic cathedrals
Romanesque.
Serafini introduces us to its code
(Consisting of about six hundred plates) with
image of a young professor, with hair
long scarf and jeans, which indicates
a sort of Rosetta stone where the language
serafiniana invention is placed against
hieroglyphics invented as a language:
it is a bilingual notice and bifid
explaining without explaining, stating programmatically
differences and the translatability
forms that do not affect the substance. E
a subtle way to warn that its
world exists and is "speakable", in
same way that there is ours or any
another which is only understandable
conventional.
On this basis also
Serafini world is fully understandable
and, so to speak, livable, not at all
surreal, as might appear at first.
The names of Magritte and Ernst, while evocatili,
have no room in the library of Seraphim
whose images are inspired rather
those of scientific books, chapters of
anatomy of the eye, stomach,
heart, or the books of natural sciences and bo-
tank. Put aside the tables on the city of light
rainbow city and the bay, or those on
samples of the human species, worthy of
highest fantasy Schifanoia (compare
Cossa of the lazy man with meat
white-green door tied at the ankles,
as a template by shooting, the
own shadow): here the homo sapiens, at its
primitive stage, is a man-tree, animal
earth, or man-fish shell Wicker
twisted, worn as a diver,
and house on stilts. The city serafiniana
is a labyrinth in construction as a
huge amphitheater that has more to go
live elsewhere architects with hand-pencil
implement projects to construct buildings
with playing cards (then the currency of the King
of money can be replaced by a lens
a monocle as porthole window), cemeteries
architectures are of glass that enclose
block colored bodies, as in cubic
ice. The health system is
by physicians able to repair the meat
on the skeletons defeating mechanically
death, the children return for
teeth is made welcome by a device that
transforms the operation into a game of basketball-
Tabletop, where the tooth is the ball.
The design addresses major seraphim
even small domestic problems: the so
dining table becomes an inclined plane
which can drop crumbs while
objects are supported by appropriate media
tilted in the opposite direction. The World
power consists of fat people
ininteressanti as mandarins and Chinese
mounted on seats equipped with helmets bright
by hairdressers for women.
In short, everything has a place and a box
order meticulous and perverse universe
seraphim, where even the man undergoes
deformation profile of the plant kingdom
twisting arms or feet as a chair
Thonet, but always, as in
our world, to the end (of property) of a
supreme will for us inscrutable
which allocates wars, floods and famines.
How surprising then the delicious, thin
serafiniana perversion.
in Orbis Pictus exhibition catalog,
Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1981
John Mariotti
Mr. Fantasy
His name is Luigi Serafini. Debuted at large
: An exhibition in Venice and two volumes published
Franco Maria Ricci. And the repertoire
encyclopaedia of an imaginary universe.
Is entitled Codex Seraphinianus. On
two volumes which make up does not appear
author's name.
Although the text will abound, not a single word
could be deciphered, writing
Fingerprint Semitic alongside the rich and
nice set of images. Printed
publisher Franco Maria Ricci in the series
"The Signs of Man" is in bookstores in these
days. Meanwhile, an exhibition of one hundred of its
tables will be open Nov. 28 in Venice
Palazzo Grassi.
This encyclopaedia illustrated with a
fictional universe, different from ours, and
but not radically dissimilar, manifests,
in a resolute way, and unexpectedly,
a young Roman of thirty years: Louis
Serafini. A book like its tacit requires
also have some discretion about the author.
Who is the Seraphim, and such intentions is
did your patient's fatigue is not so important
to know. Codex is a work which
agrees with the naive approach.
It may well happen that, taking into
hand, readers of long memory remember
children themselves in the act of browsing
a picture book. Although we were not then
still able to read, not for this
were the only images to attract our
attention, and the distribution of alphabetic signs
on the page, and their relationship with
figures, we also deeply interested.
Existed, the counterpoint
illustrations that we could recognize, and
signs remaining undeciphered a kind
small, muffled music of knowledge,
be explored.
Only the will to put us in a condition
not unlike may have fed
scribe from the obstinacy with which Louis
Serafini filled with incomprehensible writing
the two volumes of his work. But
Codex Seraphinianus not only has the charm
of "books with figures" to our dear
childhood imitating, through the layout
and the distribution of matter, which
apparent from the illustration, the shape
an encyclopaedic repertoire we
confronts, with great clarity, some
fundamental elements of knowledge.
Actually, the intention could also
seem parodic. From the time of
Of Vincent of Beauvais Speculum maius is
encyclopedias reflect ambition and
almost suck the universe within a series
of words and phrases with meaning. Write
and illustrate an encyclopedia in which words and phrases
not have any sense, seems to
this mock draft. However,
this intention is not satirical is seen in
Codex Seraphinianus, no clue, indeed,
I would say that there is a kind of devotion in
Serafini absolute fidelity with which reproduces
in a fantasy world, all
knowledge workers and its primary operations:
the apparent act, the act of change,
the act and dell'analogizzare metaphorize.
The latter, which also produces some
humorously surrealistic invention, it is
perhaps the least interesting. Are other
two to be the charm of the Codex Seraphinianus
. As the shapes of words together
in declensions and conjugations, and
stones, plants, animals in groups
imposed by the disciplines that study, so
creatures of fantasy are Serafini
aggregated and displayed, both in their entirety
fixed and variable both through tables
which may not be aware of the classification
and teaching.
Leafing through the Codex, we see a reality
mineral or botanical or faunal change
through a sturdy part of the game, or root,
which combines with prefixes, suffixes and
interfissi. In his fictional universe
Seraphim was able to give an
that the imaginary universes soles unfortunately-
little miss: the grammaticality. It would be a
unfortunate that the Codex is praised Seraphinianus
only the new elegance of the de-
ment, forgetting the most important value:
His grace epistemological.
in L'Espresso, 1981
Giorgio Manganelli
Pulcinella: a thousand or none
Luigi Serafini "designer" is the author of
graphic invention that classic, authentic
masterpiece, which is the Codex Seraphinianus,
published by Franco Maria Ricci in
1981. Now, with his extravagant imagination and
valuable, labyrinthine and shiny, addresses a theme
loving and angry, popular and archaic
: A fable or myth, or a tragicomedy
Pulcinella. With the collaboration inventive
P. Cetrulo of "Napule" (where P stands for
Polecenella), Serafini has designed a story
mental, an essay, a nursery rhyme,
epic or, as the authors want a
suites.
What ever this Pulcinella
Pulcinellopedia? (The title refers to the slight
games, but intricate, the Gymnopédies of
Erik Satie.) It tends to be a
only, not as exceptional,
and as its lone inhabitant
world and this world to glimpse
rather than a drawing or map, where an island
Far Contrada that comes close to
pretty much those lands, Trallalero, Quiproquo,
Tricca. So Punchinello is a loner,
but is protected by its multiplicity
, Because, although rarely, or never at all,
he encounters other images of man
or woman, if he meets continuously
same, splits, warps in a Punch
Composite, endless Pulcinella
; Knows metamorphosis, becomes a tree
- With branches full of leaves - Punch-
table, stool, umbrella.
The myth has it that he is Pulcinella
constantly accompanied by something
that belongs, as decorating-
vine belongs to Bacchus: spaghetti;
not every time the suite is dominated
from spaghetti, but when they appear are
intensely dramatic: thus we see a
Pulcinella crucified by forks charges
spaghetti, spaghetti killed at short, and
his triumph shows him in a sort of empyrean
overlapped on a donkey, while the
his feet on the ground, smoking a bowl of
noodles surrounded by faithful pulcinelleschi
: Figures, both of which are suspect
a Christian family of phantom
Pulcinella. Elusive, in fact: indeed,
more than once alluded to as Pulcinella
to a shape, an act of invention
nothing, and we also see that a Punch
removes the mask and is revealed faceless.
Appears here, and appeared in the Codex, a
singular quality of fantasy graphics
Serafini say something without laughter
joy, indeed, a kind of darkness, a fund
darkly manic, a magical iteration
superstitious and that seems to allude to a
as are gestures conjure elaborate Neapolitan
apotropaic. Beautiful juggler
image, Serafini makes Polecenella
a ghost does not exist and multiple,
nothing innumerable, with a fragment
of collective memory and a prophetic epiphany.
As myth, the Pulcinella is timeless,
constantly born and dies,
is indeed related to everything that comes
and dies, and a drawing gently unsettling
shows a Punch as it prepares
to steal the hourglass of death because
ghost immortal Punch is set
and wise fool, the hero is a coward, perhaps
the only hero humanly possible.
in Corriere della Sera, 1984
Douglas Hofstadter
Questing for the Essence of Mind
and pattern
Codex Seraphinianus is a much more elaborate
work. In fact, it is a highly idiosyncratic
magnum opus by an Italian architect indulging
His sense of fancy to the hilt. It Consists
of Two Volumes in Invented in Completely
Language (Including the numbering system,
Which is Itself Rather esoteric), penned Entirely
by the author, accompanied by Thousands
Beautifully Drawn of color pictures of
The most fantastic scenes, machines, beasts,
feasts, and so on. It purports to be a vast
Somewhat of a Hypothetical Land encyclopedia
like the earth, with many creatures
resembling people to Various degrees, But
many creatures of unheard-of bizarreness
promenading Throughout the countryside.
Serafini has sections on physics, chemistry,
Mineralogy (Including many drawings of
elaborate gems), geography, Botany, zoology,
sociology, linguistics, technology, architecture,
sports (of all sorts), clothing,
and so on. The pictures Have Their Own Internal
logic, But They Are Filled to Our Eyes
with utter non sequiturs.
A typical example depicts an automobile
Some chassis covered with huge piece of
What Appears to be melting gum in the shape
of a small mountain range. All over the
gum are small insects, and the wheels of the
"Cars" Appear to Have melted as well. The
explanation is all there for anyone to read,
If They Can Serafinian decipher. Unfortunately,
No One Knows That language. Fortunately,
On Another page there is one picture of
a scholar standing by what is in Apparently
Rosetta Stone. Unfortunately, the only
language on it, besides Serafinian Itself, is
an unknown kind of hieroglyphics. Thus
The Stone is of no help the unless you Already
Serafinian know. Oh well .. . Many of the
pictures are grotesque and Disturbing, But
Extremely beautiful and others are visionary.
The inventiveness That Took to it like
Up With All These conceptions of a Hypothetical
land is staggering.
in Metamagical Themas, New York 1985
Franco Marcoaldi
On the opposite of utopia
Who is this elf forties who are
came to see his great, bare
Roman house (to join, on
background, the music gently obsessive
Philip Glass) is not easy for me to say. A
painter? An architect? A designer? A
sculptor? Luigi Serafini - than he is - is
all these things. But clinging
one or more of these labels, the Goblin
We shelled a hand still
time. Probably because any "definition"
ill fits a character
Amphibious by nature: perennial pot
boiling, which makes life form invented
Utopia in the flesh. He says: "Utopia is a
word that I saw for the first time with
my eyes during a long trip to America,
in the early seventies. I saw
architecture "organic" by Frank
Lloyd Wright as nell'intrinseca size
utopian American society,
quell'altalena permanent space in between
work, nature and artifice. Since then I have learned
Utopia is like a food, nutrition
fundamental. Always,
but especially if you carry a craft,
with crayons and building blocks.
What is the utopia that stretch their
Seraphim of the facts clearly show retracing
its rich and noble work.
Since its debut, striking without
clamor: the publication of the Codex Seraphinianus,
libroni two large, thickly painted
and written with an alphabet fantastic universal
that soon "published" in Germany,
Holland 'and the United States, among others enthused
Italo Calvino, who wrote: "The writing serafiniana,
if you have the power to evoke a world
where the syntax of things is overturned, it must contain
the mystery hidden beneath its surface
indecipherable, a deeper mystery
concerning the internal logic of language
and thought. "
The key to this mystery lies
probably follow the directions
of Calvin himself, in adherence to the idea
Ovid's Metamorphoses, according to which
all territories of existence are mutually
contiguous and permeable: the anatomic and mechanical
; The human and the plant, and the zoo
ore, the arms and technology, the wild
and metropolitan. Here then, the
to be alone in its upcoming "exits" from here
a couple of months, the publication of volume
Architecture at Franco Maria Ricci,
a treatise on architecture fantastic suspended
Leon Battista Alberti and between Lequeu, an exhibition
Hong Kong paintings and sculptures on the theme
threshold, the divide between the West
and East (hence the choice of cittàponte,
back next part of China
Communist). And finally one more exhibition
Amsterdam, this time with sculptures of smoke,
small Buddha steelwool from which
mouth spreads in space, thanks to a system
smoke, this ineffable subject.
Do, do, do. If you go to find, Louis
is always busy doing something. "Starting
Codex I never thought of a design
of my artistic work, but simply
I attended the event onset.
As if you did it alone, becoming
I thing that I was by sliding-
do, or that canvas that chair. " If something
Serafini is recognized, it is that
that he never worried about the "success"
nor have to economize and
exploit the success of its own "sign" from
repeat endlessly as a mark of
factory (very frequent appearance in many artists
post-war).
Thus begins the long design activity
industrial; then there are the crazy houses built
Marche, the fanciful sculptures
ceramics. All the while with a mobility
surprising that, even in the presence of a sign
recognizable, it prevents the search
of any apparent and pigeonholed
of his work.
Take the painting. And this canvas
I have before my eyes, which is a
obliquely man suspended in a sky-sea
blue, to bless the moon. Its
Dual head, bigger heart. Dress
a skirt of fish, stocking leopard head
. This figure seems to have been crossed
from classicism, romanticism,
symbolism. It seems that the same conceptualism
- Too pretentious and sententious -
then had to leave quickly
field to the more "serious" play by the Surrealists,
Finally, the imagined figure
affabulatoria and has taken over.
A Serafini like the reverse delusional
reality. And it is eager to hunt
. But I also have a wish, and I would not
I left here not knowing if
There is, at bottom, a precise poetic around
it moves constantly this volcano
lit. If anything binds them
His chairs with the curl, his paintings of
world to come, its bestiaries Teratology.
And finally this is outside the perimeter, to delimit
two words: iconic and vivid.
in L'Espresso, 1990
Achille Bonito Oliva
The Theatre of Painting
"Making a copy is not everything, but
copy all the things, and since
This total does not exist, except as an idea
in our consciousness, the true realist copy
just an idea. From this point of view
be a mistake to define this more precisely,
as idealism "(Jose Ortega y Gasset
Adam in Paradise, 1910). Here the assumption of
which to define the work of Luigi Serafini
that makes a painting as a deposit
of stylized images and contaminated, but
out of all pride and thus totalizing
from any form of idealism. The artist moves
side of the linguistic contamination
eclecticism and stylistic meaning
metalinguistic awareness and work
and therefore adopt a sensitivity
Mannerism. Uironia is the weapon with which
Serafini away all traces of self
Ideally, any identification between reality and
language. The reality of art is the language,
the pool of images making up
memory iconic artist, who
goes a step further by identifying
style and language. In this sense
Serafini acts within a line
resumed the tradition of Mannerisms
specific one that develops in the second
mid-sixteenth century, under the sign
the eccentricity and the eccentricity of
bizarre formal and exasperation fantastic
. The work becomes necessarily
artificial product, says Ortega y
Gasset, as must the disjoint
nature to articulate the aesthetic form. The
nature, the modern artist, is layered
language, consisting of a forest
styles. In this forest no stylistic
there are categories or primates, high areas or areas
Low: everything is the result of an accumulation
which converge diverse and references
belonging to cultures too far apart
them. The tool is used by Seraphim
the course of the quotation, which becomes
a way for the artist to resume
models which, however, is not identified. The
resumption refers to a stylistic means
track deviated and deviant. The deviation
inevitably means change,
a loss of identity for the same model
used. The language becomes finding
a simple compositional element image
that intersects with others, from
other contexts, less golden.
Many languages are stacked and carried
within and sculpture at the center
many collisions that shatter the
sense of unity and bring them along lines
ironic twist and distortion.
Economy of waste holding work
seraphim, based on crushing
each unit, which then means abandoning
a unifying point of view of art and
world itself. Surrealism, Dadaism, Cubism,
futurism, abstract art, pop art to
and the resumption expressionist become the sequence
within which the artist stabilizes construction
their own devices, artifacts coming
to the fierce, grotesque shooting
a kind of realism, understood as a style
follows the bad taste of totalitarian ideology
and perhaps the bad taste to any ideology
. The grotesque becomes the stylistic
which acts as glue, able to bind
iconographic materials by disparate
an approach, however, never stable. Instability
models leads to instability
each definition, the inevitable need
the language of force along the tangent precisely
the grotesque, a necessary theatricality
able to found the performance.
Serafini uses a kind of theatricality
image, ability to allow
maximum detection and reading. He founded
painting as a visual theater of multiplicity,
through a sensitivity throughout Mannerist
living on the crushing and description
the special and unusual. The frame
framework became the frame of a stage
that works on the accumulation dream
and distribution of linguistic findings
according to an order striking and explicit second
the natural destination of the work,
which is that of mass society. The difference
between historical and neo-mannerist mannerism
consists in the destination
necessarily alter the stylistic. In
first case, the artist moves under pressure
purchasing a refined and cultured, a
ultimately interpersonal exchange. In
second case, however, the contemporary artist
moves under the stimulus of a client
impersonal and within a context
that knows no shades, but approval
and inattention mentioned Walter
Benjamin. The theatricality in this context is
precisely the status that accompanies the occurrence
of things, which enables each gesture
find recognition.
Serafini amplifies its stylistic references,
submit them to the optics of a dilated
sort of magnifying glass, capable of
produce a recognition of places of
levy language.
Everything is clear. The image is the product
an artifice, a work of art built to
by assembling exhibits a
language everyone speaks. Fertility
language becomes a weapon to be able to cross
all territories of the iconography, from
the high end of art history, that
low in the history of costume and news
. The image was created by the collision between
different fields of reference, then mixed
inside the convention imagery
collective. The collective imagination becomes
Filter paradoxical light on the artist
language, where he seems to abandon
his personal vision and adopt instead
explicit signs at the edge of kitsch, a
museum that collects electronic and blatant
all styles not limited chronological
and geography.
Of course this imaginary lives
a reality with a high reproducibility,
standardized and headed towards multiplication.
So Seraphim tends to spend his images
further into the optical board
animated, replacing Kafka Disneyland
the sense of estrangement with the
hedonistic dream. Everything is possible
the plot between metaphysical infinitely small
out of scale with an enlarged detail
. In this gap lies the ability of art
: Difference and produce weight loss.
To do this the artist must pursue a
ironically aimed toward a to-tal
the. A look that stands outside the Earth,
thus transcending the gravitational weight
to arrive at a distance sidereal.
From here the artist, who became absolute and ironic eye,
obviously can aim the complexity
of things. From here though the eye-artist
see the world transformed into a forest
petrified at the same time life styles.
The world is inhabited by the language, conventions
occupy the entire territory,
including private domestic space
the viewer.
Serafini, the artist, then strives to
upsetting the conventions, to produce routes
visual collision between distant languages
and alternative, to build a striking disorder
finds that between the first inhabited areas
cultural politely kept at a distance
between them. The artist's eye sees and provides.
Part of a statistical look and then removes
paralysis of the conventions and introduces
surprise and derision. The world is not
seen as a place frozen, but as
a space of emotion and then imploded
able, somehow, to produce change
and high filament temperature.
Serafini apparently thinks that the
Convention also means social exchange
and so erotic. Ultimately art becomes
the new field of gravitation, where
there high and low, horizontal and vertical
and creates the space where the party understood
as relief and compensation, fertility
language, but in the world.
Exhibition catalog,
Milan, Fondazione Mudima, 1998
Pasquale Chessa
The art of "cow"
Aristotle owes much of its fame to the invention
of leapfrog. That is, each horse
is different but all lead to
the essence of the horse. Many centuries later
Luigi Serafini, even if that is an architect
paint a bit 'is the philosopher, will try again with the
"Cow." In Milan, until the end of the year
The rooms in the gallery Bureau
des esprits, Via Cerva 6, have exposed a
series of cribs under bell jar in
protagonosta is the idea that the cow, ie
the cow. " From Cow to the bay,
Cow sharpener by the rat of Europe,
Seraphim is the raid zoological
between two extremes: Beginning and End of
Civilization. Of course could not miss
the bull, but is a deuteragonist philosophically
gregarious, even when glimpsed
behind the Ariadne of Naxos translated into
neopop dance style or clinging to Last
tango of Crete. On duty at the entrance,
wear a mask Cow
(But there is also that of the bull). By reporting
King's letter in which Giorgio Soavi asks
Pope to buy cribs blasphemous unnatural
of Serafini.
in "Panorama", 2001
Patrizia Valduga
Interview
But where you're better, in Rome or Milan?
I live and work in an imaginary city where
Via del Tritone in Piazza Cordusio emerges.
I find complementarity: I have joined in
an imaginary metropolis, like Paris.
Codex you did here, you were born in Milan as
artist. You have a lot to this city.
Even all you can say.
But now tell us all the evil you can.
And improper to speak ill of a nomad
a place. Why constantly moving
takes only the best things.
I can not believe that an artist could love
Milano and Rome.
Paradoxically Milan is the most Roman of Rome:
Here you can see through the thistle and decumanus the
Brodsky argued that cross the track to be
the true meaning of the dream of Constantine, or
the cross as the ideogram of the City. Since
place to meet and exchange the old
Mediolanum has its nomen omen in
Today's Media. Since then, laboratory
what can happen in Italy.
Milan is colorless compared to Rome.
No, it's a very colorful city. Has only
problem of the 'enlightenment. " Moisture
creates a diffused light that flattens. But
with the Fohn. ..
But Baroque Rome. . .
Here is a legacy which is the anticlassical
Borromini baggage brought to Rome.
Borromini is so called because it works with
Borromeo, he was Francesco Castelli, Ticino
certify the bill as Swiss
hundred francs.
But in art it is more provincial Rome.
And Italy is peripheral sites of production
are elsewhere. Missing exhibitions
that create the atmosphere of the year, as in Pa-
rigid or New York. Everything is a bit 'set.
Well, if she cries Athens, Sparta does not laugh.
From America come emphasized the real
crap.
Hegemony is also this. Do crap
hegemony in place is better than them
elsewhere.
If you do not see evil, sets out your assets.
I am very fond of the Ambrosiana in
Bramantino particular blade, with
devil frog that turned into huge,
perhaps one of the most disturbing paintings, a
bit 'metaphysical, a bit' symbolist, a bit 'surrealist
. Then Brera and Poldi Pezzoli. And the Museum
Archaeology with a garden always
desert. And then those fringed velvet drapes
applied to the gates in case of mourning and that transform
a facade of baroque Viennese
in the Siglo de Oro.
And what you still love?
The neo-classic, that you can enjoy only here in Italy
and Trieste. I was fascinated, just arrived,
Foro Buonaparte not see in writing and
Bonaparte. It means a lot. I like
history of canals and still see them through
those facades of houses without
they do not make sense.
Are you working on the Views of Corso Buenos
Aires. I want to talk?
It is a place of spleen. The promenade
Sunday afternoon, "window-shopping,
the look without buying, dummies
multiethnic, now lemon yellow, now blacks chocolate
bars on the sidewalk on a Sunday
of life that fascinates me greatly. Between
the other gives me an idea of the Russian Prospekt. And then
it's nice to walk with others in controsole,
seeing without being seen.
What does it mean to put next to a person
his two small?
And the photography that plays with the film, which
is movement, Kine, the space-time. Multiplied
Cando expressions, created around the person
its variations. Always with photography,
I am working on an idea of picture
double and triple.
To whom do you feel the debtor, who are the architects
of your mind? Certainly the first is your father
But he was an engineer, and built in house
a submarine.
And a TV. I saw literally
born television near the kitchen,
when lit gradually valves
tubes. A person certainly
important for me was Jordan Falzon,
theosophical and multifaceted character, friend
Breton and translator, artist and critic, and
"Massacre of Christians by Ungaretti!
He was also an actor, or if he played better
same as the Voice of the Moon movie
Fellini who collaborated. Here lived in Progress
Genoa 1. And here is dead.
Do you think that art can serve a useful purpose in society?
Should understand what is now the art,
because there is competition in the object
consumption, which gives immediate pleasure,
calling on all scientific
our sensory perception.
What distinguishes a commodity from
an art object?
Time. We live immersed in a dimension
consumption. "For the posters will judge"
I happened to say.
Meanwhile the market does what it wants, can
mock us for centuries.
For centuries, no, the arc of our lives
yes. Today for many the market is no longer the
half, but the end. You're either in or you're out,
and work will be replacing a total
.
Have you been to Turin to the foundation of Patrizia
Sandretto Re Reba. . .
Yes, I understand. When has he uttered a
the name is time to go home. ..
Longer than MOMA, the Met, Tate and the Louvre, along
... No, there are still state. Me
say it is curated by a former artist.
And to finish with a flourish, Victor Hugo and Celine:
"L'amour, c'est la extase the unique" or "L'amour
C'est l'infini mis à la portée des caniches. " Love
for you is the only ecstasy is the infinite set
the reach of poodles?
It is a poem by Auden who is called Truth
I pray you, love. Have led to
nature of ecstasy, I quit. What
More important is knowing how to fall: maturity is,
fund, to be able to commute.
in La Repubblica, 2002
Gianluca Marziani
At the curtain back Codex
Wonderland
After more than twenty years still seethes Codex
Seraphinianus Luigi Serafini. His
mammoth dictionary "visions", a tome
encyclopedic 400 pages in fine
Cellulose connoisseurs, was released in 1981 for
publisher Franco Maria Ricci. On paper there
is also among strange plants, animals absurd
metaphysical mazes, flying machines,
food, arcane phrases of an alphabet, equations
mathematical symbols, drawings and boundless
number of anomalies visionary. A project
neoilluminista be refined and cultured, mid
between naturalism "scientific" and the vein
surrealist fantasy. The Codex was the acrobatic
surprise of this young author
surprising, capable of telling the ideas
a ritual that reinvents a pictorial
parallel reality of the late twentieth century.
As often happens in Italy, beautiful
ideas run free, and some of Oltrestivale
captures for the development practice to
Philippe Decouflè example, a man of cinema
and theater in Paris in 1961 with a past
circus, music videos and commercials with author
big international names. Just in these
days (March 24 to 28), far
Codex (1987) and subsequent Decodex
(1995), is staged at the Opéra de Lyon
Tricodex third stage of a formal action
Codex Seraphinianus with its global
mutant and stories poetically absurd
each page. Decouflè is the confirmation of a
passion that has lasted for over fifteen years,
a kind of ritualistic obsession with which
building forms of a shared dream.
For Serafini is an ideal "marriage"
distance: two unusual and unclassifiable talents,
theory and practice designed danced
that cling to the stage in a journey
between size and dazzling pictorial
three-dimensional body.
Luigi Serafini, born 1949, artist transverse
DNA is an infected infecting
between painting, drawing, sculpture,
design, set design, writing, costumes, architecture
. The last leg of its journey
are digital works that elaborate, through
minor modifications, painting paintings
classic. The ironic yet another gesture from a
eclectic creator of visual vertigo, past
in collaboration with Federico Fellini
The Voice of the Moon for the sculptural work
Naples underground. In the capital
Naples has always been an unmistakable
combination of mysticism and sensuality, seraphim
worked at the Mater Dei stop contributing
(Under the artistic direction of
Achille Bonito Oliva) to an urban project
among the most successful in the world. If you go back to
Milan, our story rewinds to
1981, when he participated in the first Serafini
shows in Memphis, the group of Ettore Sottsass
which promoted an alternative design,
ipercolorato, pop in the hearts and innovative
laminated plastic surfaces. Serafini,
After that baptism between sculpture and design,
objects created for companies like Sawaya
& Moroni, Artemide, Edra, Kundalini. From
set and costume designer featured collaborations
with TV programs but also
with the Teatro alla Scala and the Piccolo Teatro
Milan. As a writer has published texts
for Archinto Bompiani and Fandango. It should be
always a good potter. Paints
right technique and vibrant imagination. He designed
Longanesi for a new version of
Pulcinella entitled Pulcinnellopedia (1983).
Who has more say than it is to write
in front of a top creative without
barriers in front of the multifaceted talent
impressed the staff in the many imaginary
aspects of everyday life. Lessons Notes
to those who like Andy Warhol, Gio Ponti, Philippe
Stark, Bruno Munari and other masters
contamination.
in "Mirror" "La Stampa", 2004
Armando Adolgiso
Enterprise. Voices and thoughts from space
The guest next to me is Luigi Serafini. He
Nicola Debian Bug Tracking System wrote: "I feel
Italo Calvino at the bottom was a bit 'jealous
of those with an arabesque design
unable to create a world. Perhaps the definitive book
Calvin is the one that reads
watermark in the drawings and Luigi Serafini
fish-eyes peering surfacing
the surface of the page or in arabesques
invented by the artist in the books: alphabet
living does not mean anything and
absorbs the pure sign. "
Welcome aboard, Louis. . .
Tiger, tiger burning bright. . .
. . . And this is also bright Chardonnay DOC
Colli Piacentini "La Jara" Torre stove. . .
here the glass. . . that's it. Now listen:
Captain Picard is very good for the lodarne
Guide to Rome would say, "is a nice handle"
But we're in space, sketches "to handcuff"
prudent to send you on
Earth, as always wonder starting the conversation
with my guests, your portrait. . . interior
. . . In short, who is second Luigi Luigi. . .
The stars I see spill away, here in this
door, I suggest some considerations
(Cumulative sideribus) accomplice exquisite
e. wine. . Congratulations to these fine glasses
Beryllium-Alpha Centauri-style!
So .. . waters broke and I was born to
10.30, now ocean of August 4, 1949
in my grandmother's house via a Cassiodorus,
Prati in the earthly city of Rome.
It was an ordinary day for sparrows (Passer
Italiae) that had nested as
Each year the trees overlooking the
elementary school Umberto. But it was not
so for my mother and even for me,
I was suddenly to breathe a
strange mix of oxygen, nitrogen and dust
pollution. I did not know yet, but
I was beginning to exist for me and
others and it was immediately weighed. A beginning
symbolic of my interaction with the law
of universal gravitation, I thought
father an engineer, but soon was taken
from doubt because, if nothing in the universe
created nor destroyed, the total weight
the planet, in spite of my birth,
could be changed to an ounce ... and
thought that for the same reason at a certain
was planned to leave the place.
A bit 'is displeased with himself, a little'
with Newton, and went into the kitchen to drink
Yoga Massalombarda a greedily.
Judging by the drink was for him a
terrible moment! Now, a cruel exercise:
in thirteen words (not one more or one less)
as many as the letters of your name,
Define telegram for my customers
your presence in the art scene. . .
One Sunday in 1976, instead of going
Codex Seraphinianus cinema began. ..
Here is a choice that we are all grateful.
The high technology that surrounds us here on board I
with the theme of your speech in 1984:
"Technology fantastic." What interests you
particularly in technology, and you have noticed
Someone - strictly fantastic-dasegnalare
to my customers?
Yes, behold, two great technologies of the second
generation that particularly interest me
:
The first: Molecular Teleportation. Anyone
may install a conveyor Tele -
in / out in your shower enclosure, without sacrificing
water, either hot or cold. This
technology can send and receive millions
digitized molecules, which are shipped
(Out) via fiber otticoepatiche as
of common e-mail. Just turn a tap
to be disintegrated, after a good
shower that uses the electrolytic capacity
water (H20). In a few nanoseconds
it will be reassembled (in) in the shower
some other area of the planet. Top
you can check some inconvenience in the service
(Especially from Italy to abroad)
so you need to restore (there are
financial incentives in future) the
own bathroom, isolating the shower compartment
with armored doors to avoid surprises,
namely that we are suddenly with a
stranger in the house, and come fully
naked. . .
. . . Excuse but instead of that kind, could not
be there to pass or what Julia Roberts
be excluded?
. . .It is excluded as a precaution, better think
the worst.
I see. Better to be sighted. . .
The second technology fantastic Cloning
. I am most looking forward to the possible scenarios
sports and military that will be felt
the evolution of technology on. E
easy to predict that some famous clubs seek
to clone their samples and then
a team, for example, only Batistuta.
Let us then imagine a game
where a team of all-meets Totti
an all-Inzaghi. Certainly the speaker
work is simplified because it will
announce only numbers, but how will
Instead the game? There will be a risk
that is repeated with the same scheme
and maybe play with the same result,
same corner, the same admonitions, in short,
the same tape loop? Creed
the Football League in line with UEFA
must then intervene to determine the percentage
clones that teams can
to field results for variables
and so save the football pools from bankruptcy.
Another interesting aspect
cloning is that we will sooner or
then the plutocrats so madly in love
themselves, to think about a world they
likeness and begin
to be cloned. Are formed so the whole
populations are identical, but
the same temper greedy speculator
father. At this point it will add
another deeper identity
. And if we further question
legacy we have all the elements
foreshadow a frightening scenario,
that of terrifying Clone Wars, and
the inhabitants of Rome North'll see
fleets of spaceships over the battlements on fire
Don Orione.
When I'm on planet Earth, including a trip
space and the other, dress right there, on Monte Mario,
and Sunday, when I see the crowded bus
supporters ranging Olimpico, entertainment,
believe me, is no less terrible! The versatility
of your actions, m'autorizza to ask: in
which areas (visual arts, literature, music,
theater, comics, videos, etc.) we believe
are today the most interesting research
new modes of expression?
Ever since Madonna Holy Bishops
Plants & Animals broke away from the bottom
mosaic of gold of Byzantine churches,
Artists did not want another
that maybe the movies or on television as
the windows of Gothic cathedrals still bear witness.
Giotto with the cycle of Assisi was
a forerunner. Assisi began precisely
the inexorable long march of time
bolero, to Hollywood.
Of course it's difficult to follow them in all its
raids. . . for example, know that Louis is also
gastronome? Yes. . . So, in your
view, what is the greatest honor and greatest
failing Italian restaurant?
The great virtue is the endless variety of oils
olive oil, while the great defect is to use so
just that gift smallness Reve-
rendissima, Our Lady of the Quail us
graciously offers, or its eggs
with those delicious shells marked by speckles
in earth, and whose secrets are all to decipher
with / its / a lover.
All guests of this tavern space before
to leave, imposes a reflection on Star
Trek. . . What does that VideoMate
in our imagination?
A model structure for that purpose
example we are using here and now in
our game.
We are nearly there Serafynya, inhabited planet
by aliens who use a certain Codex Seraphinianus
as abacus and horoscopes, but also
as bollettario, breviary, Erbolario, calendar,
rhyming, file, spelling book, cookbook, and
railway timetable. . . if you fall, you better
stop the bus. . .
. . .In the forest of the night.
. . .This nightcap Chardonnay
DOC Colli Piacentini "La Jara Torre
Stove. . . I salute you as a must on the Enterprise
: Long life and prosperity!
www.adolgiso.it, 2005
Pino Corrias
The encyclopedia of the other world
Luigi Serafini is neither in heaven nor on earth,
but at the end of a corridor black inside
a green room walls, where the chairs
hanging from the ceiling. Flap between the alphabets
and plays with the clouds, as the characters
Ink by Raymond Queneau, one
Flowers blue. In a surreal night away,
thirty-months, he imagined a
writing (perhaps) do not read, and a world
that (perhaps) not seen with men
become Tong, eggs flying, trees
upside down, zoology plant, insects and crocodiles
. He made great encyclopaedia,
unsettling and useless, which resembles the
real world what a dream looks like
Mystery of mirages. Twenty-five years
lives inside that mystery. And now it celebrates
. It is called Codex Seraphinianus, is a
two-dimensional world, a sequence of inventions
colored, published in 1981 between
volumes shiny Franco Maria Ricci
admired the fantastic worlds of Jorge Luis
Borges and they are stated in Bodoni font. From
Black & gold this time the Codex (which attracted
Italo Calvino and Federico Zeri called a
"Eccentric charm") entered into legend
small parallel universes. The approximately
thirty thousand copies which then circulate in
world are unavailable. But they left
an indelible trail, which is dematerializing
be reconstructed in the mouth of the net. Tens
sites in the world reproduce his tables
color and its thick pages of calligraphy
invented, and therefore slightly tilted
towards the abyss. There is even a former cryptographer
U.S. Navy, this
Jim Marshall, who claims on his website
have found the key Codex: typing
any word in the interactive window,
appears translation seraphim. E
there is a Canadian site that not only show
magical ancestry tables confirms
its navigators Luigi Serafini there
indeed, once lived in Italy, has much
traveled and probably still lives
today anywhere in the world.
Luigi Serafini, 56, thin eyes, smile
long hair gray, actually
traveled. The point of any planet
which we live and the Pantheon, which is visible from all
the windows of his house in Rome. His house
is a simplified version of the Codex.
Has seventeenth century paintings on aluminum repaid
recolored and enamel, blue deer
coma with light, plasma screens, zebras
and other herbivores in large plastic
glass cases. And a black grand piano,
surrounded by inflatable chairs, abandoned
eight years ago from his penultimate
girlfriend. Serafini is by Duchamp and passes
by Topor. He worked in the group
Memphis with Ettore Sottsass. Designed
homes with marble columns blue colored crystals
. Digital paints and invents oil. The
Codex is born without reason and without purpose, in
At a sort of trance began infallible
basis and lasted two and a half years.
"I remember the day and circumstance," says
Serafini. One afternoon in 1976:
"I called a friend and tells me to step
take that go to the cinema. And I without
knowing why I say no, rest home,
I do Encyclopaedia. And when I put
down the phone, really began to draw.
I start with a man, then a screwdriver,
a leaf, a gear. And I write, row
by line, imaginary captions, slipping
automatically: signs and break dancing
White .. . A table after another, without
never wrong, for days, weeks, months. "
Creating a writing that is like water on
glass, transparent, but not penetrable, which
makes us feel exactly as described by
Calvin, "always a hair's breadth from being able to read."
Writing that pretends to explain the forms
unexplained drawings, which in turn generated
by fantastic metamorphosis, where "the anatomical
and the mechanical blend, the human
and the plant is complete. " Naturally
Codex has no translation
plausible than that which his eyes at-
tributes. But at least one key exists. It is the
story of its history. The very funny
Adventures of Luigi Serafini. Born architect
House imaginary, but then becomes
artist and traveler for three trips, three as
Waves, America, East, Africa
. Beginning with the first ticket
of his life, year 1971, to New
York, via Amsterdam. "Starting from a life
very dusty, middle-class family, school
to Piarists, no colors. Suddenly
I explode in front of the shimmering canals of
Amsterdam and then the vertical of the Holy
America, with its ribs and electrical
also lisergiche, Timothy Leary, buses
Greyhound, Chicago, hippie communes, the
Utopias housing, Fourier, the geodesic domes
Paolo Soleri. Everything was exciting,
Again, like the world to start again before
in my eyes, rifiorisse, would change the proportion
and light, including the sad streets of Alabama,
where for three years was abolished
segregation. " After oceans of America
the land route eastward, Ararat, and
then, following the Euphrates and the Tigris to the ancient
Babylon. The sun, the desert space.
All in force, by contrast, the boundaries of
ordinary life and unhinge forever. So
Serafini ends Architecture and opens a
study of a room and half in Spanish Steps
window in front of the dome of the church
Sant'Andrea delle Frate of Borromini
with a partner who in his spare time catching cobwebs
lies on the white canvas and immobilizes
with fixative. Then there is Africa. Where
all the mysteries of color and melt
multiply worlds intertwine and metamorphosis
. "I know a huge black in Rome,
elegant, rich, trafficker
diamonds. He says that land in Brazzaville,
in the former French Congo, and gives me a
draw the house. I agree, he disappears.
Reappeared six months later. He moved to
Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Sends me a
ticket. Find a limousine at the airport.
I deliver another ticket, and
a visa. " In Brazzaville there are military
everywhere and a little war going on between Sinophile
and-Soviet helicopters in flight
food and music in the streets, dancing and bullets
. Go and visit the land is cultivated
to peanuts and there are zebras in the distance. Sa-
on the canoe up the river Congo.
When visiting, is surrounded and arrested
by a patrol in camouflage. Ends by
alone in a big cell, where a colonel arrives
questioning him, with spectacles
mirror. He finds himself in the shoes of unexplained
a Roman architect who turns into a pirogue
a war and worked in houses lacking.
"In fact it was all so surreal, so crazy,
that even I get scared, but laughing. I laugh so
I take a fool, and instead
shoot me to make checks on my
identity. Thus appears a kind of console
Italian, which is actually an engineer Agip,
nice, Milan, which guarantees
for me. I left the dream within in his Mercedes
. When arriving in Italy is precisely
1976, and the disorder of all life
and all forms of transit that has seen a
day he was born "this need testamentary
to leave a mark forever. " For the
always is the Codex. More than three hundred tables, a
thousand drawings, no meaning. Says:
"I liked the idea of playing with life,
accommodate the continuing transformation of
and nature.
The idea not only to change the world,
as mentioned in the squares of the time, but
even invent another from the beginning "
. It ends in mid-1978. Other uses
two years to find a publisher enough
crazy to publish a book that costs ten
times more than any other book, and that
no compensation law. "When I came from
Franco Maria Ricci says "I felt
as a grocer spent running with the
His ham marble and tries to sell
slices. " Ricci (instead) to buy all
tables. And then the public in two volumes, with
box of black silk, jewel typographical
that on eBay today, traveling between the fifteen
and twenty thousand euros. Codex start surfing,
arrives with new editions in half of Europe
. Then the dark. Until the new light of
network, which improves the digital maze maze
of Serafini. "And upgrading the
concludes "says" twenty-five years later, as
if it had been designed on purpose. " For
tell the irraccontabile, to show
the invisible. To convince us to start
ever, after the end.
in "The Republic", 2006
Joan Bentley
Interview apocryphal in Roseto Comunale
The signal arrived at nightfall during
a break in traffic has cleared
Lungotevere momentarily from the cloud
gas that obscured the view of Ponte Sisto.
For a moment I saw the heraldic fairs
a hand traced on the walls of
banks, making an imperceptible movement,
The sting of fulminating glance
synchronic in my direction. At the same
Instant display of my cell phone is appeared
Message: 13 hours - while you start
to decline - arrive with a little 'delay
- To say about the rosarum.
It took me a bit ', but then I decrypted:
Louis Serafinus appear to Roseto Comunale
began to visit and initiation phase rosarum
declination rose-pink, mantra
mandatory for visitors to the garden.
I have a couple of questions to ask him, and if they are
rosae flourish. We'd love to see it
how is it that for twenty five years
his Codex Italy has undergone a
sort of spontaneous blackout, except pipelines
and convinced exceptions.
In Italy recently, which was mentioned, even less is
is seen in exhibitions and conferences, and accidents
it is written. It is possible that the reason for
this black hole located exactly at the
where the Codex was designed to have
do with the phenomenon of cancellation
point of origin in compliance with the
rule that requires the unknowable place
place the original source logistics
Opera inspiration? As if his
unavailability until clearance is to be charged
to spell. Could it be that the issue
arises dramatically in these terms:
Italy or Codex? (Not unlike
"O Rome and Orte?") The silence and distracted
while thinking of him makes me-Louis
to believe that here, as on pages
his Codex, the passive waiting for a response
as another is a form of misunderstanding
. Even his person goes for signs
and puzzles and is therefore required attitude
active, look good design, adhere to
dominant lines, curves and meeting its
the convolutions, carefully follow the
scrolls of writing that is tracking
the surrounding air, then proceed to
deciphering. In his large painting Nocturne
Napoleon or Oath of
Thank you and the Carpathians, is not short-circuit
between an event commemorated by
commemorative painting and its deformation
surrealistic who settled in the observer,
As the real doubt that what he
shown is the authentic, historic event
as manifested in all its
prodigious truth and staggering wealth
details, for which the previous
appears to be an apocryphal mannered
attempt to represent purged and cleansed
its unique singularity. As
this is being done on time
facing a part of its production
Art, the suspicion is more than legitimate.
The Oath in fact seems a faithful reproduction
what happened on that fateful
plane with the two sides facing each other
in their glittering uniforms separated
by a space full of solemnity in
Big Carp which tends to turn
Orazi, traces the symbolic distance,
it contains the meaning.
Since we are the Municipal Rose Garden,
I ask him how welcome mood
the news that the roses and other flowers (chrysanthemum,
wisteria, peonies, violets, etc.) begin
superfine ingredients to be reconsidered
culinary preparations? And yet,
If seeing these superb flowers, not
it captures the idea that it would be a start
more aesthetic if they were to eat the roses
us? "Yes, their forms and fragrant scents
We have the illusion that we should desire to enjoy, but
them, the roses that have fed us,
Today, unbeknownst to us, and now, as we depart,
flaunt sated and the lush
bloodiest colors .. .. "
www. humerus. en, 2006
Camillo Langone
Codex Seraphinianus or
Luigi in Wonderland "
Stuff from the rich, the Codex Seraphinianus. A
Parma we had in the house only the daughters of
industrial, ugly and stupid women,
foolish enough to think that courtship
was directed to them. No, it was directed
Codex, one was at home and invite
goal is not the meat but the paper,
that magnificent Fabriano used by Franco
Maria Ricci for an art book already entered
legend. Towards the end of evening ended
on the couch looking through all the amazing
object, and only after you remember a certain
commitment early the next morning: sin
to sleep at least a few hours
just had to escape. Obvious that
Manfrina could not go on much,
just long enough to be impressed by
Borges always that world of alphabets
invented and animals exist. The first
edition of 1981 consisted of two volumes
for a total of 160, 000 pounds, which the
coefficients are revalued
300 euros today. It was a good
sum for a rookie like Luigi
Serafini, a young Roman artist, but investment
was secured by the Marquis
Ricci, the elegantiarum arbiter of those happy years
. The operation worked mainly
Parma, not because the local bourgeoisie loved
Beauty, indeed, not because they had a
patronage mind when ever: parmesan
Ricci, a Parma and the Parma
Contemporary does not deserve (rather
the eighteenth century), in force rose buttonhole
backgrounds and blacks had established its
refined as the only brand library
place where a woman resident of the Enza
and Taro could procure gifts
prestige. And so, in Christmas street
Garibaldi was the row of ladies, furred,
and so on shelves plans and noble
suburban villas began to form a
small collection of great books delicious.
Erte was strong and Petitot, Ligabue and
Tamara de Lempicka, but eventually managed to
Small library sneak in Confindustria
and also confcommerciali Seraphim
a single living artist catalog elegantly
necrophiliac. The usually brash culatello
of Parma: today the first edition of
Codex travels into the stratosphere last year
eBay two volumes appeared in
$ 19,000. These quotations suggest
satisfaction and regret in the author, if
his time had been hoarding it now
would be rich. Serafini, while alive, was and remains
more incomprehensible to an Egyptian scribe
dead for thirty centuries: the Codex is a
performance of various arts, printing and figurative
is surprising because of bizarre, object
Publishing with few precedents in history
perhaps the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili published
by Aldus Manutius in 1499, another vortex
puzzle. Images are tables Encyclopedia
a parallel world, a
swarming manual of zoology fantastic
ads with human, plant, amoeboid,
abstract. A subtitle could be:
Luigi in Wonderland. " Captions
not explain a damn thing since
composed seraphim, doodles that can
remember some remote Asian alphabets,
the Oriya, the Sinhalese, Telugu, Georgia,
Thai, but vaguely. Twenty-five years
that anyone Codex hands
try to understand something, no way, the artist
Joker takes the game even
aspiring breakers drawing a kind
the Rosetta stone: first the usual alphabet
mysterious, the other a different alphabet
shape but the same for impenetrability.
Calligraphy and drawings have cost two
years of painstaking work, the time between
woman was gone and a cat
had arrived in an attic of Way
Sant'Andrea delle Frate property right
Church. More than a rental
paid a donation: then an artist
could afford the bohemian center
Traduzione Twenty-five years, good anniversary
and see if Italy will find the means to
celebrate worthily so much work. Doubt
is legitimate since the eighties carefree
spendthrift and is truly a millennium past,
and the few available public money
are thrown in to promote bi
works from the titles in English, certainly not in
Latin. The company's low cost is not
conceivable a slogan like that thought
by Ricci for his FMR: "The magazine more
beautiful world. " Today, moreover, even
Franco Maria Ricci is Franco Maria Ricci.
After selling the publishing house, the last
aesthetes retired in campaign
Parma planning a big maze.
Sometimes it seems wishing to return
game but, pending the grass grows, the horse
(Serafini) decided to republish
Codex elsewhere. The challenge of iniquity
time will assist the Rizzoli which ensured
the same card and the same number of tables
the first edition, but as a single volume
at a price faced by a score
no furs (not to be brave
means to be suicides, and especially
Parma are no longer the industrial one
time).
in "Il Foglio", 2006
Massimiliano Fuksas
Happy birthday!
CODE, ICIS-Codex, book blocks together
together, caudex: axis. Book manuscript before
the invention of printing. Collection
laws, constitutions, rescripts made first for
order of the Roman emperors.
I do not like either the codes or laws imposed
from above. I do not like any heavier
the desire to occupy other dimensions.
I never loved the camel
passing through the eye of the needle or the poor
that does not put even one foot. The only
useful code is the illusion of building
behavior, but without much conviction.
The art of forgetting is also the art of
Neutrinos move thousands of miles
away. The Codex is a collection of Neutrinos
bombarding a spectral light
the pupil touches the optic nerve. Good
Birthday Neutrino!
Rome, Campo de 'Fiori, 2006
Places Codex: windows
building and the door of the study by Luigi Serafini
Via Sant'Andrea delle Frate in Rome.
Places Codex: the railway station and the lighthouse Pedaso.
Introduction by Alessandro Riva 3
Codex Seraphinianus Giorgio Soavi 15
Ltuniverso transfigured by Federico Zeri 17
Vittorio Sgarbi's Methodus Seraphiniana 19
Mister Fantasy by John Mariotti 21
Pulcinella: a thousand or none of Giorgio Manganelli 22
Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern Douglas Holfstadter 23
On the utopia of Franco Marcoaldi 23
The theater painting by Achille Bonito Oliva 24
Shi cow "Pasquale Chessa 26
Interview by Patricia Valduga 27
Curtain up, back to the Codex of the wonders of Gianluca Marziani 28
Enterprise. Voices and thoughts from space Armando Adolgiso 29
Lenciclopedia other world Pino Corrias 31
Interview apocryphal in Roseto Comunale di Giovanna Bentivoglio 33
Codex Seraphinianus or Luigi in Wonderland "by Camillo Langone 34
Happy birthday! Massimiliano Fuksas 36
© 2009 RCS Libri SpA, Milan
All rights reserved
www.rizzoli. rcslibri. com
ISBN 978-88-17013895
Not sold separately from the volume of Luigi Serafini Codex Seraphinianus.
The publisher readers
Other publishers have in their catalog on "Atlantic Codex" by Leonardo da Vinci;
I'm proud to have my necklace signs of man Codex Seraphinianus.
The "Seraphinianus" was designed and written by a scribe today
in a room in Rome from 1976 to 1978.
My first intention was to propose a gloss to writers condegni from Barges at Calvin
but I realized it would be a mistake to introduce explanations in a work
encyclopaedic in nature, created to explain itself.
Stormed a convent, and meet the basic needs of food and plunder,
Hun or some other barbarian ignorant of certain alphabets will be entered until the Library,
and there will be peeled with a wonderful illuminated manuscript.
I want the reader to browse the Codex Seraphinianus''as that warrior;
or as a child still has not learned to read, but rejoices dreams
and fantasies that the pictures suggest.
He sometimes thought reprint, facsimile edition,
voumni of the eleven thousand "Ch'in-ting Ku-chin, T'u-shu chi-ch'eng''
("Collection of paintings and writings of ancient and modern period compiled by imperial order")
but I feared the frustration of those among the members of my club, unaware that the ancient Chinese.
The two volumes of this compendious Codex Seraphinianus "
written in an easy italic print. Semitic, will be easier and transparent for everyone.
Like seeing two quatrains and two triplets, not difficult to recognize the sonnet
so the reader will find it hard to recognize in the Codex Seraphinianus "a metric from encyclopedia,
with a first volume devoted to the natural sciences (botany, zoology, teratology, chemistry, physics
and mechanical) and a second dedicated to human sciences (anatomy, ethnology, anthropology,
mythology, linguistics, cooking, games, fashion and architecture).
It is clear that the Codex Seraphinianus''belongs to a wealthy family of companies and mirages
which includes the "Naturalis Historia" Pliny, "De Rerum Natura, Lucretius'',
the Speculum maius''''Vincent of Beauvais, up to the 'Encyclopedie' of Diderot and d'Alembert
or the most recent and valuable efforts of my colleagues Giulio Einaudi and Livio Garzanti.
Looking at the partitions, the reader will perhaps have the impression of listening
music without words of knowledge.
Planches in the Codex Seraphinianus "'reflected a science and a world
with similar and dissimilar from ours, as rumors of the same declination.
This leaflet is not intended as an introduction to flying, but a kind of packing slip.
Well then will the reader to tear it, so any contamination with the virus alphabetical
the wonders of the Orbis Pictus Seraphinianus mate.
Cover of the first edition of the Codex Seraphinianus published by Franco Maria Ricci in 1981.
Alessandro Riva
The secret strength of some inventions are
in their ability to persist in our
deep memory, even against our
regardless of the will and spend
the years, and together in the vague
knowledge that they will never understand
whole or, in any event
still fail to embrace the
everything from A to Z, to store them in
our memory as a fact accomplished,
in short, to make her epistemological
own - as if, to them, could not be
never had reason at all, as a force
that draws us in virtue of its capacity
of sottrarcisi in passing continuously
surprising us each time with
new inventions, new tricks, or new
Unexpected tricks of language, which forces us
constantly reexamine
all, and what it implies (the world
which he describes with his value systems,
its language, etc..) with new eyes, according
a parallel reading, if not alternative,
which previously had no
taking no account. One of
these is the Codex Seraphinianus, mysterious
hybrid more than a thousand heads, whose phantom
twenty-five years - since, that was published
for the first time in Italy, for types
Franco Maria Ricci '- is estimated with unsuspected
lightness between lovers, scholars,
bibliophiles, critics, writers, linguists,
historians, mystics, artists, herbalists fantastic
Scientists pseudoalchimisti, and then experts
Occult cryptologists, esoteric, complottologi,
ufologists and so on, and almanacs
fantasizing, involvement in cross-
of every aspect - even the most unexpected
- Scientific and humanistic culture, as well
that mass culture, not excluding
the most bizarre and obscure. See, for
believe the dozens of Internet sites
dedicated to this creature is omnivorous and comprehensive,
the numerous unofficial sites,
those dedicated to the futile attempt (albeit
pursued with consistency and determination
matched only by their absolute and total
futility) to decode and transcribe into
one of the many known languages 2, accomplices
the many false trails built with internal
hoc by the author, such as the famous (but unreadable)
pseudostele Rosetta placed with
wicked fun, within the same
volume. Twenty-five years, the pages
Codex is completely unknown
the general public, and also (semi)
unknown in their real essence of physics,
even to most fans,
of bibliophiles and scholars - because of
deliberately elitist character and sectoral
the elegant and expensive
editions of Franco Maria Ricci, and rare
foreign editions appeared in the meantime
foreign markets' - continued
to adopt their peculiar and highly
alienating suggestion, through the story
of those who possedeva4, or had
chance to view from somewhere
true, or through the photos on internet
the rare few reproductions catalog
the even more rare appearances in exhibitions
government ', but mainly through
texts, articles, essays or analysis that concerned - so, in fact, through the
paratext the book (the supreme paradox, for
work without a real text, if
not, precisely, that, illegible, written
serafiniana language, to be known
almost exclusively through its
paratext) - in short, means that infinite
tam tam that always accompanies
in a disordered and highly
chaotic and seemingly random,
but for this more branched
- More on that later accumulation
as a result of an orderly direction (like
what happens on Wikipedia,
"The free encyclopedia" where not the case
Codex has long been a motto all
its) - the emergence of some genuine "cases"
worldwide.
At first, he wanted Luigi Serafini
even omit his name from
title or the cover of Codex:
wanted, according to the letter, the suggestion
work that was, so to speak, write,
disappear, leaving only a trace
in the body and between the lines (illegible)
work itself, as the anonymous author
the songs of Ossian, or that, which then
Codex is often compared, the famous
Voynichb manuscript, or the infinite
herbals and medieval codices and incunabula, the
traces of the perpetrators of which are lost in the folds
the centuries. But the desire to be part
work, to be literally
camouflaged inside, far from being
motivated by snobbish pose of modesty or
from one of those witty pensatine type
conceptual often characterize the
biographies of artists in the age à la page
current was actually the first, and already well
firmly structured event
an attitude of inevitable svagatezza
and disregard for what we call
"Real" nature of mimesis and confusion
life lived and imagined, between physical existence
and mental experience, imagined, dreamed,
between work and biography: what feature,
even then, the inevitable fate
Artist, in which, increasingly, the fragile
boundary between what we call
biographical reality and what we call,
Instead, (re) construction of literary, psychological,
imaginary staff tend
inevitably to overlap and intersect
unabated. Are testimony - even if
worth something - biographies listed
some of his (rare) or in some catalogs
of his interviews, which state roughly
thus: "Luigi Serafini lives between Rome and
Milan, in an imaginary city where Street
Pipe comes out in Piazza Cordusio "(but
sometimes' the author has replaced "Via Condotti with" Via del Tritone, thus remaining,
as we shall see, closer to Rome
of his childhood, and that of creation
Codex, rather than the more traditional Rome
and canonical and we would perhaps
expected, then, even the replacement of
Piazza Cordusio "with" Buenos Aires "
as an example of the Milan hybrid,
chaotic and so little "Milan", where
Serafini has not only study but also
set some of his recent works;
Corso Buenos Aires as the site of
"Spleen" Milan ", as defined
the same artist ', "the walk on Sunday
afternoon, 'window-shopping', the
look without buying, ethnic dummies,
lemon yellow hours, now blacks chocolate
bars on the sidewalk, "where" is beautiful
controsole walk with others, seeing
without being seen. " Another biography
9, a bit 'less synthetic, says instead:
Luigi Serafini was born in Rome in 1949. For
several years carrying out various activities in preparation
Villa Borghese, in the area that goes
Pincio by up to Deer Park, and includes
the Borghese Museum and Zoo
. On October 6, 1955, playing ball,
falls on the glass and cut his hand:
decides to start drawing. Between
1956 and 1958 more than six hundred images recopies
from books, encyclopedias, lecture notes,
newspapers. After school in a college
of Piarists now in decline, falls
of Architecture, where he became interested in pentominoes,
golden sections and labyrinths applied.
Between 1971 and 1973 traveling to America,
Europe, Middle East and Equatorial Africa
. In 1976, after closing the door
house, he decided to write an encyclopedia
that stops accidental
1978. Since 1979, carries out home
Rome and sometimes in Milan. " For Seraphim
the artist who, as written by Vittorio
Sgarbi, "lives in a perpetual state of
mirage 10, also his biography becomes
field of play, rumor, legend,
fantastic reworking of a posteriori
as a function of daily life
alienating and reversal (or
simply by revisiting a
another view) of reality. For example,
reads as the artist tells the time
of his birth, in an interview
to Armando Adolgisol '
The biographies are exemplary, in general,
trying to understand the image
he himself, or wants to give of himself, the artist
But in the case of Seraphim, there is another
reason for leaving, even before the work
Thus the "text" in the sense seraphim
close, from what is around you: biographies,
So, yes, but also dedications, exergue,
quotes scattered in various books and
catalogs. Well, and again, you
should be distributed, to understand the work, from paratext
Seraphim, who can say that
sometimes more and speak more clearly
do not speak as his - generally
illegible - texts. Just paratext in fact,
are constantly camouflaged the
clues to the origins of his work,
his approach to work and the relationship
same with reality and with the formation of
his poetic universe. "This work was
made aware of the fiction that
there is a reality, "read at the opening of a
catalog. "Therefore, any reference to
imaginary people or events is to be considered
real chance. " It is no coincidence, then,
that even a trivial fall playing
football is traced the origin of
their ability to design, and even
the act of coming into the world will become subject
transfiguration fantastic and fun
narrative elaboration. We still
Once aware of the overthrow, and
However, no less clearly hallucinating,
terms of what we would call today
reality and fiction (ricordiamocelo when
return to address the issue of
Codex). "Seraphim, the artist strives to upset
conventions, to produce visual routes
collision between distant languages and alternative
to build a striking disorder
finds that the first inhabited areas of cultural
politely kept distance between them, "
wrote Achille Bonito Oliva. "The eye
the artist sees and provides. Part of
statistics and then look removes paralysis
conventions and introduces surprise
and derision. The world is not seen as
a place frozen, but as an area of
imploded emotions and therefore able, in
Somehow, and altered to produce
high temperature glow ".
To keep paratext seraphim
14 is still a catalog law, mo 'dedication
Final: "In memory of my father, an engineer
dreams, which in 1953 built a
TV in the room near the kitchen. "
This story (I apologize to readers, and
with them the same Serafini), is told
fully, it is very symbolic
that construction of metarealtà
serafiniana whose understanding is essential
to understand the genesis of
Codex. "My father," she explained some
years ago the artist in an interview "
"Built with his own hands a television. The
made at home with CRT, screen and
everything. I followed the construction of this monster
mechanical, with trepidation and a bit '
distress. " "I saw literally the birth
TV near the kitchen when
Gradually the lit vacuum tubes "
tell in another interview,
issued to Patrizia Valduga 16. Era - is
worth emphasizing - 1953 and the Fair
Milan, the first experimental television broadcasts
had reached, after Turin,
Rome also "the television culture" does not
still had stormed into our lives,
with its cargo of a spectacular
cheap and fictionalization of
real. "I remember the first images when
finished installing the thing. Were reversed
. So for a bit ', we had to
watch the TV instead. " This anecdote,
said, is indispensable for understanding
the genesis of Codex, since
closely and has the flavor of imprinting
seraphim unquestionably is, in fact,
the (first) construction - or reconstruction - of
a world on the contrary, the Seraphim child:
a world where reality and fiction
confuse and chase each other relentlessly, but
never meet, because one is the
mirror (perfect reversed) the other;
a world on the contrary, therefore, inevitably
suspended between reality and fiction, closed
inside the screen of a television, yes,
but - is worth emphasizing - not a TV
any means an instrument craft
built by his father, "the engineer of dreams"
(Which, it is said, built a house
submarine), which, as a novel
Cagliostro appears able, in the imagination
child (but already fatally seraphim)
at will to reshape the
real. After all, even today, all we could
ask and the child Serafini
What is the straight world and which is
reversed? And where reality begins and ends
our private individual myth, the
our own reconstruction of the world,
of life, of reality itself? How could he,
Many years later, wrote to Italo Calvino
About Codex7, "images of the existing
twist and overlap their
linkages ", thus creating a parallel universe
alternative ("our" universe, in fact,
made from impressions, and projections, and illusions,
and patterns compared to what we call
real), other than to speculate and
one shared by others: a universe
that when the recognition is described
or represented by others (in this case
becoming an "other" universe, a universe,
in fact, always "parallel" but fatally
different from ours), whenever there
produces surprise, wonder, excitement
(As is done precisely to us all
Viewing Codex), but also a subtle
thick with anguish - are not so much as
Calvin also wrote, "from its diversity
from ours, because of its similarity "
- At least in its basic structures.
Because it is not so much to deny
reality, but to apply a point of view
another, alienating than traditional
or shared by all. It is no coincidence,
then, the love of seraphim some
extraordinary makers and assemblers languages
parallel, as of Fosco Maraini
Fanfole, which can be found here and there, in
paratext seraphim, references and citations
(We traveled for thousands of years between splagi / down
criptocorni down in streets, / brushed away
the Arcagi s Mongi teloprenici and quidiosi
./ Help, horror! The stomach, the smebri / s'aggrecciano
enfani druniti on, or fall bustrenici
the affebri / viturpi with tubes and allupiti
. . . ). It is not the end, even this one
poetry perfectly understandable, though
written in a language apparently
geezer, other than our own? It is not,
including this language, like seraphim,
syntactically and structurally
consistent not only perfectly logical,
although very different from ours? It is only
a matter of displacement: the displacement
point of view, precisely what
we call real.
It is this creation (and, consequently,
of recognition) of another
perspective on reality, a fundamental question,
that allows us to understand the genesis of
works considered "visionary" (Calvin)
"Fantastic" (Sgarbi, Zeri), or "hallucinatory"
(Peter Schwenger), such as that
we are dealing with. And that is why the story
TV can be reversed - to
symbolic level - key to understanding
even the genesis of the Codex: why
is the first performance of another point
of view as possible on real is the creation of
a new world, built ad hoc measure
of Serafini, Serafini of that child
Meanwhile he studied diligently to College
and spends his summers in the countryside
a great-aunt, whose house was full
full of memories and souvenirs from
from its thousands of exotic travel (the track of
which perhaps has been in thousands of small, quirky
iconography alien or exoticized
Codex). And this child Serafini,
even then, perhaps, beginning to regret not
thinking of having a little blood 'of
the anarchic madness, very fin de siecle
eccentric yet highly inventive and
even mechanics - the kind of mechanical
craft, a little 'na?fe fundamentally
fantastic, the period in which there
more inventors, not only
engineers a bit 'obtuse but fitted master
and degree of specialization abroad - in short
have already assimilated into their
DNA that gust of madness over the top and somewhat
bizarre that has always crossed,
as a karst river, his family. Not
is no accident that even then, the child Serafini
- Or the subsequent reconstruction of
their childhood by Seraphim
adult (bottom of little importance) the
everyday was a receptacle of all kinds
adventures of highly symbolic and real
irrreali or that they were: "One day, as
miracle, came to the house of an aunt an astronaut
American, accompanied by Mayor
Rome, home precisely where he was born
because previously belonged to his
family. It was the living personification
of history that, for a whim of fate,
I looked out the dining room ", will tell
Serafini yet to witness the
This anecdote, apparently surreal
(I imagine that the astronaut looks out
in the kitchen with plenty of space suit and helmet,
as in children's film Zathura,
Space adventure), the artist has shown me,
One day, the plaque on the facade remained
of her aunt's house in Via Tevere, in
Ludovisi district: "Here was born Michael
Collins / intrepid astronaut / mission
Apollo I1/Primo Man on the Moon. " The
childhood memory for Seraphim, unrolling
so, so simple after all,
with the naturalness of the great adventures
fiction, through "normal" flavors
Child, in its staff
transfiguration, we are just history, myth,
legend. "The Arrive soit que la réalité
trop complexe pour la transmission oral
ou écrit. Seoul to the legends peut exprimer
d'une facon here embrasser puisse le monde
entier "reads mo 'exergue of the catalog
The Seraphim Theatre pittura19. So, with
remarkable ease and a touch of guasconeria,
Serafini biography in real and imaginary
seem to merge - in a sort
of terrain vague, in a no man's land where
is difficult to trace the sheer
biography - historical anecdote and reversal
all seraphim, the terms of
real.
He knew very well describe this
continuous mixing of true fiction
and imagined reality, Pino Corrias, in a
beautiful article published in "La Repubblica"
for twenty-five years of Codex 20:
Luigi Serafini is neither in heaven nor on earth,
but at the end of a corridor black inside
a green room walls, where the chairs
hanging from the ceiling. Flap between the alphabets,
and plays with the clouds, like the characters
Ink by Raymond Queneau, one
Flowers blue. In a surreal night away,
thirty-months, he imagined a
writing (perhaps) do not read and a world
that (perhaps) not seen with men
become Tong, eggs flying, trees
upside down, zoology plant, insect and
crocodiles. He made an Encyclopedia
wonderful, surprising and useless resembling
As to the real world is like a dream
the mystery of mirages ". And, to decrypt
this encyclopedia - Codex, AP
point - Corrias found a "key": "And
the story of its history. The very funny
Adventures of Luigi Serafini. Born architect
House imaginary, but then becomes
artist and traveler for three trips, as
three waves of fate, America, East
Africa "- and here I leave you to read later,
Corrias text, which tells precisely the
"Very funny adventures" by Luigi Serafini
by land and sea, starting in
across America as he recounts
himself, looking Utopia (Utopia
a word that I saw for the first time
with my own eyes during a long journey
American in the early seventies.
I saw architecture "organic" for
Frank Lloyd Wright, as nell'intrinseca
utopian dimension of American society,
Standing in between quell'altalena
and work space, nature and artifice. Since
I learned how Utopia is a food,
an essential nutrient "and return
below the basic meaning
covers for Seraphim, the very concept of
Utopia), and ending with a rather Serafini
arrested by a squad of soldiers
Congolese, and finally released because believed
mad, perhaps because they too had
including what he later realized George
Sweet, when he saw for the first time
Codex, and he described the "Journal" with
lapidarietà brilliant: "You could doubt
him, but his sparkling wit '21.
On the other hand, trace, in this
tourbillon real madness and crazy reality, the real
from the false, the plausible from what is rather
unrealistically adherent to or lived
is real, as well as difficult, absolutely
irrelevant for it is precisely this short-circuit
between real and imaginary, or rather between
adventures and real ability to look at that
same reality from another point of view, a
viewpoint imaginative and alienating, so
to make them seem crazy, incredible,
paradoxical, that is the secret of
creation of meta-reality that typically
serafiniana, where fantasy becomes as
miracle, reality, and vice versa reality
seems to vanish and instead dissolve in
they are thin on facts and myths
legends, becoming vague sequence
fattoidi of taste strangely unreal.
What is certain is that Luigi Serafini
start typing the Codex at age 27.
It is 1976, and the artist is in Rome, in a
attic on the fifth floor of a dirt
called Via Sant'Andrea delle Frate,
number 30, in the heart of Baroque Rome,
where even the streets and buildings have
preserved the names and memories of the Counter
Popes: The Way crosses the Largo
Nazareth, home to the College still
Nazareth, who attended the same Serafini
from elementary to high school, and basically
emerges, strangely enough, on a large building
austere bearing a plaque that
reads: "Here lived and died / Gianlorenzo Bernini /
sovereign art / which bent /
reverent / Papi Principles Peoples. " Side,
Via Capolecase, there is the palace of the Propaganda
Fide, and not far from the church Borromini,
although incomplete, of
Sant'Andrea delle Frate. Around, a
crossroads of streets that bear names and suggestions
bestiary of strange seraphim
(The names have to do with us, as
in which our subconscious reacts "says
later, and not surprisingly, the artist in an interview
issued hyacinth Pietrantonio22
): Via del Tritone, Via della Salamandra
Palazzo del Bufalo, on the door of the latter,
still stands a good head
buffalo that seems straight out
from a page of Codex: expected
to see her off, at any moment,
stone, become flesh and blood stand out
flight.
From his attic, then, Serafini
dominates this crossroads that reminds
his childhood (in the house to
side, at number 24, lived the rest of
his life, and when one is moved, it did
to go in the adjoining building: where
glimpsed the idea, made material, Physics of
travel only as a displacement
mental. In between, however, for Seraphim, there
has a degree in architecture and many
Travel around the world that we
discussed earlier). From his attic
then, and roofs, on which sometimes vague
bringing the girls to drink tea as
in a wacky adventure worthy of Mary
Poppins, Serafini dominates this crossroads
road: see the domes, many of Rome
century, but see above, and
close, the extraordinary inventions Borromini,
Baroque contortions lantern
the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frate,
cloister in which he was baptized, and where
a series of lunettes still bears the trace
of frescoes which celebrates the life of St.
Francesco di Paola and own one of these
frescoes, looking at today, seems to bring us back
a strange iconography serafiniana;
represents the saint on top
a promontory and, before him, a herd
of cows that enter the water, and heads,
swimming toward the shore. "For Collum
suspense ferunt your IUSS iuvenci famuli ut,
longa et celeres aequora secant "23 states
the inscription that accompanies it. Singular
coincidence (but there are, then, the coincidences?
Or even the herd of cows
amphibious marked individually, without
know, Serafini child's imagination?)
between this image and obsession -
born from one of the many "fantasy
extravagant and valuable, labyrinthine and shiny "
in the words of Giorgio Manganelli 24 - of
Serafini adult to breed, and specifically
25 for the cow: cow transformed
hybridization, metamorphosed; made oviparous,
plant, invertebrate, mollusc and
whatever, in many paintings and drawings
later, especially sculptures (the famous
Bay windows, but also the most recent Cowburger
in love, cow with human hands and early
turned into hamburgers, made
for the Cow Parade in Florence
2005 and later subjected to repeated vandalism)
. Iconography, the cow and
her male counterpart, the bull, the other
Party has a long tradition,
Starting for example from Greek mythology:
think of the legend, the concentration
Europa, ravished by Zeus in the form of
bull and transported by sea to Crete:
what Europe brings to mind our
origins, albeit by mythological. Time
Serafini conceived as a series of bay windows,
Europe had taken shape a curium
sa collective phobia, that of the so-called
"Mad Cow" on which the artist played in a manner
fun and irreverent, at
its staff Milan (the public
was invited to join as a tragedy
old, hiding behind a mask
the shape of a cow: postponing,
mentally, that cow mask
that just puts it in Prometheus, when
tired to flee from the anger of Hera, screams
all his despair to the heavens: "Can you hear me?
I am the girl you cry / I, masked
horns, heifer! ") 26.
To get back to us, or rather to Seraphim
pre-codex is here, then, from the fifth floor
an attic in Via Sant'Andrea
of Fratta - where some time has
established the architecture together with
"A member who in his spare time catching cobwebs
lies on the white canvas and immobilizes
with the fixative "27 - that Luigi Serafini
begins on a Sunday in 1976,
to draw and write the Codex.
Begins, almost by chance, to design and
writing the Codex, that undoubtedly
become his Great Work, the
summa its poetic, visual and philosophical quell'enciclopedia
the absurd, the fantastic,
impossible (but made with "obstinacy
by amanuensis "as written
John Mariotti, as well as precision
and accuracy of the design of
details, the same internal logic syntax,
so that the set is absolutely
and completely plausible in the eyes of
anyone) is that the Codex Seraphinianus,
that "a vast encyclopedia of world
hypothetical somewhat similar to Earth,
with many creatures that resemble
humans at various levels, and other creatures extremely
weird moving here and there "
as written by the scholar (and Pulitzer Prize)
Douglas Hofstadter2s carefully
annotated and commented in the "Handwriting
meticulous cursive and agile, and (we admit)
clear that we are always
a hair from being able to read and yet there
escapes in every word and every letter "
(Calvin) 29.
"I remember the day and circumstance"
Seraphim to tell about Pino Corrias 30
Birth of the Codex. "I called
a friend and tells me to take that step
go to the cinema. And I, without knowing
why, I say: no rest at home, I do
encyclopaedia. And when I put the phone down,
really begin to draw. Begin
by a man, then a screwdriver,
leaf, a gear. And I write, row after
line, imaginary captions, slipping in
automatic pause and white signs dancing ..
. A table after another, without missing
ever, for days, weeks, months. " Thus,
with the same ease with which the world
real is transfigured, in memory of the artist
in history, myth, legend, its
fantasy world that is born, yes, imaginary,
crazy, utopian, distorted, sometimes a bit '
disturbing, "Teratology" (Calvino 31), a
world in which history has lost its way
natural to find another, parallel and
unstable, ever-balance paradox
and fiction, "in a climate of rationalism
transfigured, invented, released by processes
mentally different than usual (...) in
each spark invention, each flame
found a suggestive and disturbing "
(Zeri32), yet also "fully
understandable and, so to speak, livable;
not at all surreal, as might appear
at first: "a parallel universe,
governed by its internal laws, strict and infallible "
(Sgarbi).
Certainly, in analyzing the Codex, the
first approach is the most obvious and immediate
and the structure of the Encyclopaedia
canonical, ie "images of books
science, the chapters on anatomy of the eye,
stomach, heart, or books
natural sciences and botany "as
Sgarbi wrote again, or rather, as
instead emphasized Zeri, a work that
"Summa resembles a medieval division
for subjects, classes and subclasses:
Codex tackles fact, in its rigorous
structure, all categories of knowledge,
both in the field of natural sciences
in human terms - although, as we shall see,
with continuous changes and contamination
between one and another, so as to talk of
description of "another world", a "universe
alien "or" parallel ". Flora, fauna, physical,
mechanics, anatomy, mythology, writing,
food, clothing, strings-
architecture: every aspect of this mysterious
parallel universe here is gutted, described
minutely described, and (albeit to a
language unknown to us) analytically
described in the Codex, in a surprisingly stirring constantly, unceasing and mutual
of all categories and all aspects
the real: "Like Ovid's Metamorphoses,
Serafini believes contiguity and the
permeability of each area of existence "
Calvin again emphasized. And a
certainly bizarre world, and equally
certainly surprising and unexpected,
Seraphim of this, where the fish are shaped
of eyes that come from the sea surface
as the periscope of a submarine, where
the plumed can have three heads or tails
the shape of a lance to pierce the eggs (but
in the subsequent development of art serafiniana,
in which the simple design and
teratological design gives way to
creation benintesto increasingly bizarre beings
and metamorphic, but in three dimensions,
theory of strange birds pictured in the Codex
takes the form of real galligalline,
ie Galgalline - neologism
seraph who would say one hundred percent,
except that it also appears, unbelievable
but true, the national road map
a remote village of Belluno Cesiomaggiore, where the road appears to Galgallina
alongside the more prosaic ways Via Dante
Foscolo - volatile, the seraphim, with
two heads, one for just a cock and
the other, where the seat would normally
Rooster, hen, and vice versa), where
the rainbow is not a natural phenomenon
strange but worldwide, perhaps the source
mechanical, electromagnetic, perhaps, or maybe
who knows what deviltry of heaven, complete with
mysterious flying machine capable of creating it;
where men gradually take the shape
their homes, to identify with
completely, where the deer possess
leaves that grow on their horns,
benintesto always that the head is planted
pot, where there are fish with diver
built and fish with a ponytail,
fish with bones and fish-shaped broom
dishes to jump on the water, and so on, and where
Lastly, some machinery to construct
all provided is completely useless.
Serafini, in fact, gave perhaps the best
self-developing complicated machinery,
or sometimes animal-machines, or machines-
human beings, whose complexity is
always directly proportional to useless,
the emptiness, the stupidity of the end
which should serve, thereby forever
diametrically opposed, in some
case, compared to more recent creations, such as
the macchinossima and absolutely unsightly,
Wim Delvoye Cloaca Turbo,
huge machinery to produce a
tiny curl of shit too true, and
having more contrast, in
playful spirit and playful, the very famous
useless machines Bruno Munari, the various engines
lizard turtle tired, the
agitators queue for lazy dogs, the filipes.
All machines with their own existence
independent of their condition,
we say, psychological, like
those serafiniane (each has its own
special personality, "he said, no case
Munari describing his useless machines:
"One day they are lively and agitated, and
days after falling into an incomprehensible
hibernate "a phrase that may well be
Output from the mouth of Seraphim, as
gloss that followed: "After all the machines
profits are often boring with their rhythm
uniform constant). It is not really a
this regard, the comparison between risky
machines, although, for now, only projects,
by Seraphim with those of another mad
machinery maker visionary and supremely
unnecessary, with all their kit
conception, design, implementation and then
true, and even promotion,
publicizing of (fake) launch
market, and so on, the Finnish architect Alvar
Gullichsen, highly visionary artist
and yet rigorous in construction
internal rules to its own universe,
that in the late eighties created
the Bonk Business Inc., holding imaginary
for over a century would always
according to (verosimilissima) fiction artist,
dysfunctional and useless machinery,
but with a true trademark of
real advertising campaigns and true / false
documentation of all types and kinds of
great visual impact and communication.
Moreover, in its complex and abstruse
machines absolutely useless (as
rules of our universe: not according to
those of his, that we are, however, to
still completely unknown), Serafini
has been able to really like wrote
Sgarbi yet, be "in balance between Leonardo
and Eta Beta, the first possessing
hand and the talent, the second solution
impossible ".
"Reflecting," Calvin is 34 to emphasize,
"We would think that the peculiarity
Serafini's language must be more than
Alphabetical syntactic but: things in the universe
language that evokes such
we see illustrated in the tables of its
encyclopedia, are almost always recognizable,
but the connection between them to appear to
upset with combinations and relationships
unexpected ". "Looking at the Codex," echoes
John Mariotti 35, "we see a reality
mineral or botanical or faunal change through
a stable part of the game, or root,
which combines with prefixes, suffixes and interfissi.
In his fictional universe
Seraphim was able to give an
that the imaginary universes wont unfortunately
missing: the grammaticality.
Here then, this Codex, there appears
really like a big, tireless, multilayered
complex and not only the anthem
utopian dimension of fantasy, of
creation of other realities, parallel to
commonly accepted, caused by
simple shift of perspective on
what we call real, and on the remix
continuous and incessant different levels,
gender and language and scientific fields;
but also a hymn to the infinite possibilities
language - whatever it is - to reinterpret
reality, to bend and shape
functionally to their needs and
to their worldview.
Thus, under the banner of Utopia (Utopia
Over time he learned to Seraphim
considered "a food, nutrition
fundamental ") and ambiguity, the circle
seraphim back to close.
"In some ways," Frederick gloss
Zeros, "Serafini par propose the mixed
bulk pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which
tries, so provocative, to hide
the true ultimate sense, masking in a thousand
ways, the most absurd and unthinkable, perhaps
to make it more difficult (and enlightening)
discovery ".
In his speech fatally impossible
to decipher, in the midst of impossible machines
to build and of which no
will never discover the secret operation,
between animals ever seen, beautiful flowers
and peoples in which all characters are mixed
and all the races of the world beyond that
never seen in any world, and where the characters
uínani dissolve in those animals
those animals in those plants, those
than mechanical plant, etc. to-
I'infinitc, the Utopia of Serafini takes slowly
pious inexorably shape unfolds
before our eyes with the naturalness of
great mythological tales and the great
epics of the past, invented forms, languages,
syntactical and mathematical games,
from now on, will never be incomprehensible
: Will, simply, and undeniably
serafiniane: or belonging
the mad, mad mad world of inequality
author of the Codex.
1 The first edition was published in the Codex Seraphinianus
Franco Maria Ricci, Milan, in 1981 in two volumes
(127 +127 pp., 108 color plates +128).
2 Among the many attempts to translate the language of the Codex
remind those made by the Bulgarian linguist Ivan.
Derzhanski, who claims to have identified the key for interpreting
the numerical system seraphim, which would develop
based on 21, and the former navy cartographer
American Jim Marshall.
Third edition in one volume is published in the U.S.
by Abbeville Press, New York, 1983, the same year the Codex
is published by Prestel in Germany, Monaco, the Netherlands
by Meulenhoff-Landshoff, Amsterdam. In 1993, Franco
Maria Ricci published in French, the fifth edition of the Codex
in one volume, with a preface by Calvin, and a sixth
in Spanish with a preface by the same writer again.
4 There are numerous internet forums, where boaters,
from all over Europe, as well as several countries Quail
Canada, Mexico and the United States, tell each other how
came into possession of Codex, when it has been bewitched,
and give advice on how and at what price can be
in possession of a copy. For all, this statement copy
some of Voodoo from Dallas: "I fell
in love with the book as soon as one saw it and HAD to have it. "
Five hundred tables of the Codex were taken in February 1981,
Palazzo Grassi by Vittorio Sgarbi (Orhis Pictus, 100 tables from
Codex Seraphinianus, Venice, Palazzo Grassi, in February 1981).
Then the outputs of public boards Codex
were extremely rare.
6 The so-called Voynich Manuscript is named to his first
Buyer, Wilfrid M. Voynich (1912). Written in an alphabet
unknown, is amply illustrated with images
apparently fantastic. Find them in the
manuscript of a letter of purchase for 600 ducats opens two
hypothesis: that Rudolph has been cheated them (unlikely) or
that he himself has been commissioned.
7 Luigi Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, curated by Achille Bonito
Oliva, Rome, on the occasion of the exhibition at Foundation Mudima,
Milan, March 1998.
8 Interview with Patrizia Valduga, La Repubblica, 2002.
9 Biography in Orhis Pictus, op. cit.
10 Vittorio Sgarbi, Fictions of Serafini, Serafini in, Italian Factory
exhibition catalog, in "Italian Factory, the new
Italian art scene ', 50th International Exhibition
Art of Venice, from June to October 2003.
11 Read the interview below to Armando Adolgiso
in 2005 for "Enterprise. Voices and thoughts from space. "
12 Louis Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit.
13 Achille Bonito Oliva, in The Theatre of Painting, op. cit.
14 Louis Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit.
15 Interview with Alessandro Riva "Carnet Arte"
June / July 2004.
16 Interview with Patrizia Valduga in La Repubblica, 2002.
17 Italo Calvino, The encyclopedia of a visionary in Collection
sand, Mondadori, 1994 (first edition with pictures, Garzanti,
1982).
18 Interview with Alessandro Riva "Carnet Arte"
June / July 2004.
19 "It happens that reality is too complex for the transmission
oral or written. Only the law can express it
that can embrace the water a whole "Alpha 60, supercomputers
controlling Alphaville. J homonymous film. L.
Godard, 1965. In Luigi Serafini, The Theatre of Painting, op. cit.
20 Pino Corrias, The Encyclopedia of the other world, 'La Repubblica',
2006.
21 Giorgio Soavi, Aloisio in Toyland in the newspaper,
1982. Following the game instinctively and disguises
serafiniani identity mixed up, turns to his Soavi
will, in a play hide and seek with the reader, the name
Luigi Aloisio in Latin derivation.
22 Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, interview with Luigi Serafini, catalog
Exhibition unlikely, 1990, Castle Volpaia (Siena).
23 "1 bullocks, as servants, bring your orders hanging
neck, and speed through the deep sea "(for open sea
is meant the Strait of Messina).
24 Giorgio Manganelli, Pulcinella: a thousand and none in Corriere
della Sera, 1984.
25 The issue of cow Serafini dedicated in 2001, an exhibition
Milan: Cows and Serafini, Le Bureau des esprits, catalog
by Alessandro Riva, Giancarlo Prearo Publisher.
26 "What the current phobias that afflict the mantle spotted
Europe has had for a short season,
face of a mad cow (just before the sulfur profile
Bin Laden overshadow all the dreams and imagination incubators
West) is one of those jokes of history and
of fate that only the great gods and fools can
recognize as such. "
27 Pine Cornas, op. cit.
28 Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas, Basic Books, 1985.
29 Italo Calvino, op. cit.
30 Pino Corrias, op. cit.
31 Italo Calvino, op. cit.
32 Federico Zeri, op. cit.
33 Italo Calvino, op. cit.
34 Italo Calvino, op. cit.
35 John Mariotti, Mr. Fantasy, in "L'Espresso", 1981.
36 Federico Zeri, op. cit.
Collum for your suspense ferunt IUSS iuvenci ut famuli, et celeres aequora longa secant
Places Codex: the frescoed lunette in the cloisters of the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frate, Rome.
Places Codex: the lantern of the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frattee the goldfish pond in the cloister of the church.
Giorgio Soavi
Codex Seraphinianus
Books by Franco Maria Ricci's series "The
Signs of Man "are made for probable
descendants of emperors or royal families
which, with the contempt that it is their own,
not only treat subjects as if
not exist, but when you deign to
browse books, they must be large
as a plantation and in the paper
magnitude, if they expedient to do so, we must
be room for castles, rivers and dairies
to produce cheese and dairy delights.
The books have this jattanza Ricci,
do not care for the afflicted or thin, but
are filled with chocolate cream and marron
glacé, and if something's left between your teeth
are not spices, but corals beryl and topaz
her uncles, the Magi of Parma, have
bequeathed. This short book
sumptuous unbearable. I look at them
nauseated by their looks.
However when, a few years ago,
Young appeared before me Aloisio Serafini
and, in perfect silence, let me browse
The tables have now been collected
and just published by Franco Maria Ricci
(Codex Seraphinianus, 2 volumes, 1981, LIT
300, 000) my first thought was to strike
the individual who was watching me to kill him
and take possession of those originals.
Never seemed more propitious occasion to murder: no-one had seen him
come into my studio and no one but the
usual potted who walk for Milano
impossible hours, I have seen out with
the burden of his lifeless body dragged
for standing up to the canal
which, for obvious reasons, will not name.
So they were just things, and nem-
less than me and skinny curavo dell'esserino
pale in front of me, having already
with fast fancy removed and placed
properly on the bottom of muddy
canal itself. Everything was going so for
best when, as in novels,
always suspected the worst, a
presence leaked, became material, and
that moment I realized that
Aloisio was unfortunately subject: I never
could kill him to take possession of
His drawings, and this is because he, like
all mortals, and there had reports
lived its own life, had knowledge
: Someone, in short, knew him. A
Catherine certain I had spoken, she
had arranged the appointment: if
someone on the police station, was
was questioned after his death,
would tell what he knew. Oddly
said: the police is very good. But why
is? Because ordinary people, who always knows
, talk, tell, invent things plausible.
The skin was then Aloisio Serafini
safely, and how hard he tried not to
have epidermal reactions to my joyful
comments for his great skill in being
crazy, that these drawings were so
was created almost a normal conversation,
as often happens between a non-delinquent
- The author of these notes - and survived.
He, aware of his talent,
let me vent. What I had
now said in the first half hour?
I had never seen anything like it;
that was brilliant, everything I wanted;
that was totally insane and therefore
deserved a great writer. What for?
Serafini I addressed this question if
not with the eyes, even those falsely
discharged or absent from the problem. Thus began
to look at the comments
around, not bury, the drawings
color of his stories of animals and human
undergoing transformation. The transformation
species according to a herbalist, stationers,
surveyor and builder of sweet
daubs of nature designer of machinery
to produce rainbows that do not exist
and, consequently, its private
alphabet, inventor of a department store
objects from which spurt flying animals
and a colorful circus of pleasures and
Discussed in an obsessive entertainment
Persian language that of Marco Polo
toys invented by the wayside.
Comments or texts in the form of chapters
and captions were, of course,
written in Persian or better in language-are adjacent to mountain ranges of the states
more neighboring Persia, a language most
written and spoken, although for the truth ...
I retraced my steps and I began to read
explanations that page. .. (Number
illegible) describing the adventurous celebration of a people who seemed
indulge and fly for joy while under
them, intricate machinery for conservation
gas hilarious miss out
small clouds in contact with
the air turned into fireworks,
but an artifice that had its own name
or specific qualities than those of
be surprising, propelled as if by
an amusement park a few windmills
fathers had produced children or child
which accompanied the exploits. But it's all
here? We ask readers of fantasy books
. In fact this was only the beginning,
because what I would like to make
focus is language, the Persian-writing
Cyrenaica, who has wandered far
without a specific skill, but went
walking on the shore of a sea in which,
at other times, cropped heads or bodies of
Cycladic sculpture, people without a real
religion without a country, and perhaps without
diseases of any kind, people who had
of marine debris, which could in
cloudless day perfect time to
bite white pebbles or pink, as if
were stuffed with almonds. That man-bea
I had this awful and Aloisio Seraphim?
One could doubt him, but his
sparkling wit.
While I strive to say what
this elf that looked weakened without
smallest of approval or disapproval,
joy procured from epileptic
his inventions, I always thought what
writer could comment on these
fantastic designs and crazy in love so
just tell between someone and a
crocodile, and the spectacle of what it
remained on the bed of love passion
was, of course, a crocodile, but what?
A crocodile that he accepted as a pledge
feminine sides of love and roses, that
meat for which we are all going blessed
in a trance when caressed,
as he had done lightly,
the body is with us, the real
accomplice who will sacrifice.
The name did not come out because Aloisio
let me contemplate his plans for two
hours only and then left. Now that the books
I'm here on my desk and I resume my
silent but deafening conversation with me
same to digest his fairytale world, and
I look more calm - calm and strong
the losers - his Persian texts, I begin
understand that the language he has invented
perfectly true and legible. Just take
in small doses, as is done with the verses
the Bible. Even there, a world teeming
it gives battle to survive the
behind a huge landscape with a sun
blinding seems to indicate that, with the help
of darkness, a massacre will be given
meal at dawn tomorrow, maybe the monsters
the wizard Aloisio Serafini were born at the time
of the great modern wars, and time
it took specimens created a
race which, while remaining within the limits and ineffable
minor child, devouring candidly
any kind of prototype in order not to proliferate
people too orderly, capable of distinguishing
at first glance with which
cells must salad dressing, toys,
Emperor's clothes and all the paraphernalia
pastimes of those who
burned indelibly period
most inventive of our lives.
in the newspaper, 1981
Federico Zeri
The Universe transfigured
Ten years ago, in 1972, Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York State, set up
a unique exhibition entitled "The
Civilization of Llhuros, and consistent (it
claimed) in the findings of excavations at
Vanibo, Hund Draikum, and other centers
an unprecedented culture llhurosciana, flowery
Asia Minor, near Lydia.
The rich never failed to card catalog
geographical bibliography and reproductions of
exhibits, including works of art next to
figurative art (sculptures, frescoes), there was a
series of strange objects (nose flute) as well
artifacts (such as lemon squeezer, wrenches,
irons) mysteriously changed
and "displaced" to functions in nature
sacred: all commented, very seriously,
in the archaeological sense. But the whole collection
(And the very idea of "civilization llhurosciana)
was the product of fantasy
artist Norman Daly, author of the alleged
and inventor finds very funny (although
sometimes heavy with sexual doppisensi)
all superstructures described minutely
in bizarre catalog.
The case of this exhibition is perhaps extreme, but
is not an isolated incident: probably
the theme of "civilization invented" not
until then had been conducted so thoroughly,
until tangible object or place second
a register of humor so hot
. But it is certain that, at least in
literature, is an issue that comes down in Europe
an old tradition: it is safe
say that the first home they should be identified
in Plato's Republic.
Then it is specified in the Utopias
Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or choose to describe themselves
a geographical location (which may be
a fabled China or some equally
mythical savage people as it happens
Enlightenment in the eighteenth century), it is always
a towel that is reprocessed into
political sense, moral, religious or
humorous, indeed, is a real kind
that has flourished in our century, thanks to
visions of "future" Zamyatin, Huxley and
Orwell, and (in the wake of Rabelais and
its pseudo-references) has had on the register
literature, the most subtle variations and modulations
to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, or Ernesto
Bioy Casares.
All this comes to mind watching
(You can not just say "reading") work
unique and fascinating, just now published
in two volumes by the publisher Franco Maria
Ricci Codex Seraphinianus Luigi Serafini
a young Roman architect and between
1976 and 1978 drew hundreds of
sheets that are being released through a
made beautiful typography. Defining
this? I said that it is asking a
reference to the tradition of civility
invented, "but there is more surprising because,
Following images are inexhaustible
a formula of exceptional mental
richness and variety. We find (the
state history) and Arcimboldi Bosch
the "useless machines" Munari, the "Temples
Egg "by Fabrizio Clerici, Gaudí, as well
the science fiction literature, the alchemy
Minutes of Jules Laforgue, the wild
mechanism of paradoxical abstraction of
Raymond Roussel, the surreal game of metamorphosis
Alberto Savino, and many things
yet. And likely the same Serafini
becomes aware of the ground, so varied and
stratified, where sinks his work, is
suspect that this is not the result
studies have direct exchanges conscious of
knowledge accurate and thought out, resulting
instead a kind of "evolutionary time"
given the psychological and the cultural,
understood in the broadest sense,
also in geographical respects. The structure and
images of the Codex in fact a touch
log intonations that is limited neither
boundaries, ranging from fancy to the paradox,
Horror from the sensational, the logogrifo
the joke humorous, caricature by intuition
mysticism.
Already the system work (that
Summa resembles a medieval division
for subjects, classes and subclasses)
introduced in a climate of rationalism transfigured
invention, released by processes
mentally different than usual, and the description
seraph to the university "shall
by images of meticulous precision
and clarity, and because of a write
also fantastic, whose impeccable cursive
is and is not showing all the characteristics of
communication calligraphic true and authentic,
also specified in numbers, but
then remains in the closed indecipherable hieroglyph,
close tightly without
possibility of penetration.
Said the second sharp precision
which is conducted by Codex, and it seems appropriate
play at least one of about four
pages which are the two compounds
volumes. There remains, however, to deny the validity of
examples, the fact that only knowledge
total of all makes
adequately the meaning allowing
value judgments: it is impossible
a choice in the body of a huge fire,
that every spark is an invention,
each flame found a suggestive and perplexing.
In fact, images that are far
were chosen to comment rating
in the press have focused on certain sheets
that although full of humor, are among
the less significant, such as with the
couple who, during an embrace, it becomes
a crocodile, or the other with fish
that, emerging from the water surface, resemble
wide-eyed. And yet, a
of the most unusual of the Codex is a mixture
the various strands of discourse, the absence
any relationship between the multiple discursive
tones, timbres and tones that occur
unconnected, almost random, just like
facts of everyday life, which only
memory gives meaning of rational
performance.
If the Codex is the bearer of a message more
intimate and deep, you must look within
the constant interweaving of images and
references, often misleading and sometimes
equipped with a charge like that quick
the pun, the joke and pun
minutes. In some ways, it seems Serafini
propose mixed in bulk, the pieces of a
gigantic puzzle whose endeavor, so
provocative, to conceal the true ultimate sense,
masking in many ways, the most
absurd and unthinkable, perhaps made more
difficult (and enlightening) the discovery.
If these critical intentions are real, then
Italo Calvino has hit the mark in
what is the sharpest since the review here
appeared Codex, published the first issue
FMR's magazine, art by Franco
Maria Ricci. Calvin has highlighted the
relationship between two tables, one showing
a sort of Rosetta Stone, where pseudoscrittura
accompanying the images is
combined and made a comparison with another
series of signs, very different and mysterious like
primordial particles, the same as
elsewhere are out in droves by
ray of light of a street lamp, wrapped
the dark night.
Then the suspicion arises that Serafini
the written word (the verb is received
to fixate and measures communicative power)
is equal to the essence of light,
that light is the very origin of the intellect,
that pervades the whole Universe itself.
Maybe I'm wrong, but many clues make me
think that in this cosmology, the apparent
diversity, infinitely varied, is redo
to one principle, which animates everything,
and that, after all, remains identical to itself:
because, in other words, everything is divine.
If so, then the Codex is the expression
a sort of "amauricianesimo, more insight
reasoned that expression of a message
deeply religious, such as
Mozart's operas (and this is a name
I've heard speak out by the author). Certainly we are facing
text an exceptional figure, even for
its eccentricity with respect to artistic culture
Italian Journal of the moment:
so outside the norm that it is likely
that dismal coryphaei art criticism
engaged, politicized academic fintorivoluzionaria, try to ignore it or
bury, or at least sticky label
jarring and confusing.
There is to be a prophet to foresee
Codex urged to come in the same car
ary which is in turn tried to
drowning De Chirico, Savino, Clerici, Licini
and everyone who owned a
visual vocabulary free from the boundaries of-
the parish, the neighborhood, the festival regional
the provincialism that has infected
almost two centuries pollutes Italian painting.
in La Stampa, 1981
Vittorio Sgarbi
Seraphiniana the Methodus
One room apartment in a great
city, a light wood table, chair,
stacks of books scattered among white paper. The door
bathroom ajar, frequent noise
by car, muffled by the closed windows.
At eye level, library shelves,
volumes of natural sciences of anatomy,
local history and a modern edition of the Encyclopédie; higher narratives:
The Aleph by Borges, the complete works of Sade
Klossolwski and some first editions
Fine Savinio (Sound Box, New
Encyclopedia), the dinner of the ashes of Jordan
Bruno, the Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake, The Baron in the Trees
Italo Calvino, Don Quixote, rare books
figured.
So you can rebuild (or perhaps any
other setting would be plausible) space
physical and mental, where a man of talent,
with eyes closed to reality, imagine
Encyclopedia fantastic, an explanation
Full and detailed and of a world
that does not exist. Or rather, exists in its
rational rules, but no less absurd to
operation, those for which there are cars,
trains, cinemas, television with
twenty channels, comedians and objects in themselves useful
transform men into sardines and larks,
often tortured with constraints
bodies, colors unbearable odors.
With consistency and absence through a process
construction of alienation.
Serafini invented a parallel universe,
governed by its internal laws, strict
and infallible, often designed to demonstrate
the goodness of a method (Serafina)
another (the newspaper): everything is
expressed through teaching boards illustrated
and commented in a language invented-
tion but not non-existent, if there is a universe
ready to accept it.
Serafini seems to mean that there is
difference between what is true and what a
true for many, because the human experience,
articles, civilization and history are a
Convention groups, as demonstrated
anthropological diversity of a region than
its neighbors, from similar
anthropocentric principles. At different latitudes
living civilization of China and
Greek East and the West, for the deception
time that does not actually belong to
conventions and runs straight as shown
the inexorable aging of our
body. Civilizations overlap, live
simultaneously and in parallel,
but they defend themselves with boundaries, walls, rivers,
mountains and walls, and with walls
apartments.
Serafinocentrico is anthropocentric. And the same position in the sixth century
BC Xenophanes had said,
reasonably doubt the existence
gods, or at least those of an Olympus
built in the image and likeness of man
greek. "Men believe that the
were born and have a voice and body
similar to theirs. . . Therefore, the Ethiopians do their
Camus and the blacks, the Thracians say that
blue eyes and red hair, and even oxen,
horses and lions, if they could imagine
their gods in their similarity. Poets
have encouraged this belief.
Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the
also what is the object of shame and
reproach among men wrongs, adultery and mutual
deception. "
Serafini knows how Xenophanes
nothing like what is on the presumed
to be absolute, and therefore assumes
for details of his absolute and
consecrates him with an encyclopedia, where an
that irony is not an ingredient staff
but a universal category. Certainly the
His image of the world is ruled by
demiurgic idea, and he stands as
a deity that gives order and law, statutes
creating and implementing rules for
remove from anarchy and chaos than any other
possible arrangement and administration.
To this end click the picture
detailed, describing every detail
with meticulous realism and refined
pictorial and graphic execution, emulating,
surprisingly without imitation, the
great Italian illuminators of the fifteenth century,
especially Ferrara who gave shape
profane to the Bible Borso d'Este, and choirs,
Missals, Breviaries, Gospels. On the other
part, as these codes, with discoveries
symbols, are unicorns, invented landscapes,
two-headed birds, flowers of all kinds
botany, perhaps twisted to draw
a candlestick, as long ago
Bestiari happened in medieval or
bas monstrous and fantastic cathedrals
Romanesque.
Serafini introduces us to its code
(Consisting of about six hundred plates) with
image of a young professor, with hair
long scarf and jeans, which indicates
a sort of Rosetta stone where the language
serafiniana invention is placed against
hieroglyphics invented as a language:
it is a bilingual notice and bifid
explaining without explaining, stating programmatically
differences and the translatability
forms that do not affect the substance. E
a subtle way to warn that its
world exists and is "speakable", in
same way that there is ours or any
another which is only understandable
conventional.
On this basis also
Serafini world is fully understandable
and, so to speak, livable, not at all
surreal, as might appear at first.
The names of Magritte and Ernst, while evocatili,
have no room in the library of Seraphim
whose images are inspired rather
those of scientific books, chapters of
anatomy of the eye, stomach,
heart, or the books of natural sciences and bo-
tank. Put aside the tables on the city of light
rainbow city and the bay, or those on
samples of the human species, worthy of
highest fantasy Schifanoia (compare
Cossa of the lazy man with meat
white-green door tied at the ankles,
as a template by shooting, the
own shadow): here the homo sapiens, at its
primitive stage, is a man-tree, animal
earth, or man-fish shell Wicker
twisted, worn as a diver,
and house on stilts. The city serafiniana
is a labyrinth in construction as a
huge amphitheater that has more to go
live elsewhere architects with hand-pencil
implement projects to construct buildings
with playing cards (then the currency of the King
of money can be replaced by a lens
a monocle as porthole window), cemeteries
architectures are of glass that enclose
block colored bodies, as in cubic
ice. The health system is
by physicians able to repair the meat
on the skeletons defeating mechanically
death, the children return for
teeth is made welcome by a device that
transforms the operation into a game of basketball-
Tabletop, where the tooth is the ball.
The design addresses major seraphim
even small domestic problems: the so
dining table becomes an inclined plane
which can drop crumbs while
objects are supported by appropriate media
tilted in the opposite direction. The World
power consists of fat people
ininteressanti as mandarins and Chinese
mounted on seats equipped with helmets bright
by hairdressers for women.
In short, everything has a place and a box
order meticulous and perverse universe
seraphim, where even the man undergoes
deformation profile of the plant kingdom
twisting arms or feet as a chair
Thonet, but always, as in
our world, to the end (of property) of a
supreme will for us inscrutable
which allocates wars, floods and famines.
How surprising then the delicious, thin
serafiniana perversion.
in Orbis Pictus exhibition catalog,
Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1981
John Mariotti
Mr. Fantasy
His name is Luigi Serafini. Debuted at large
: An exhibition in Venice and two volumes published
Franco Maria Ricci. And the repertoire
encyclopaedia of an imaginary universe.
Is entitled Codex Seraphinianus. On
two volumes which make up does not appear
author's name.
Although the text will abound, not a single word
could be deciphered, writing
Fingerprint Semitic alongside the rich and
nice set of images. Printed
publisher Franco Maria Ricci in the series
"The Signs of Man" is in bookstores in these
days. Meanwhile, an exhibition of one hundred of its
tables will be open Nov. 28 in Venice
Palazzo Grassi.
This encyclopaedia illustrated with a
fictional universe, different from ours, and
but not radically dissimilar, manifests,
in a resolute way, and unexpectedly,
a young Roman of thirty years: Louis
Serafini. A book like its tacit requires
also have some discretion about the author.
Who is the Seraphim, and such intentions is
did your patient's fatigue is not so important
to know. Codex is a work which
agrees with the naive approach.
It may well happen that, taking into
hand, readers of long memory remember
children themselves in the act of browsing
a picture book. Although we were not then
still able to read, not for this
were the only images to attract our
attention, and the distribution of alphabetic signs
on the page, and their relationship with
figures, we also deeply interested.
Existed, the counterpoint
illustrations that we could recognize, and
signs remaining undeciphered a kind
small, muffled music of knowledge,
be explored.
Only the will to put us in a condition
not unlike may have fed
scribe from the obstinacy with which Louis
Serafini filled with incomprehensible writing
the two volumes of his work. But
Codex Seraphinianus not only has the charm
of "books with figures" to our dear
childhood imitating, through the layout
and the distribution of matter, which
apparent from the illustration, the shape
an encyclopaedic repertoire we
confronts, with great clarity, some
fundamental elements of knowledge.
Actually, the intention could also
seem parodic. From the time of
Of Vincent of Beauvais Speculum maius is
encyclopedias reflect ambition and
almost suck the universe within a series
of words and phrases with meaning. Write
and illustrate an encyclopedia in which words and phrases
not have any sense, seems to
this mock draft. However,
this intention is not satirical is seen in
Codex Seraphinianus, no clue, indeed,
I would say that there is a kind of devotion in
Serafini absolute fidelity with which reproduces
in a fantasy world, all
knowledge workers and its primary operations:
the apparent act, the act of change,
the act and dell'analogizzare metaphorize.
The latter, which also produces some
humorously surrealistic invention, it is
perhaps the least interesting. Are other
two to be the charm of the Codex Seraphinianus
. As the shapes of words together
in declensions and conjugations, and
stones, plants, animals in groups
imposed by the disciplines that study, so
creatures of fantasy are Serafini
aggregated and displayed, both in their entirety
fixed and variable both through tables
which may not be aware of the classification
and teaching.
Leafing through the Codex, we see a reality
mineral or botanical or faunal change
through a sturdy part of the game, or root,
which combines with prefixes, suffixes and
interfissi. In his fictional universe
Seraphim was able to give an
that the imaginary universes soles unfortunately-
little miss: the grammaticality. It would be a
unfortunate that the Codex is praised Seraphinianus
only the new elegance of the de-
ment, forgetting the most important value:
His grace epistemological.
in L'Espresso, 1981
Giorgio Manganelli
Pulcinella: a thousand or none
Luigi Serafini "designer" is the author of
graphic invention that classic, authentic
masterpiece, which is the Codex Seraphinianus,
published by Franco Maria Ricci in
1981. Now, with his extravagant imagination and
valuable, labyrinthine and shiny, addresses a theme
loving and angry, popular and archaic
: A fable or myth, or a tragicomedy
Pulcinella. With the collaboration inventive
P. Cetrulo of "Napule" (where P stands for
Polecenella), Serafini has designed a story
mental, an essay, a nursery rhyme,
epic or, as the authors want a
suites.
What ever this Pulcinella
Pulcinellopedia? (The title refers to the slight
games, but intricate, the Gymnopédies of
Erik Satie.) It tends to be a
only, not as exceptional,
and as its lone inhabitant
world and this world to glimpse
rather than a drawing or map, where an island
Far Contrada that comes close to
pretty much those lands, Trallalero, Quiproquo,
Tricca. So Punchinello is a loner,
but is protected by its multiplicity
, Because, although rarely, or never at all,
he encounters other images of man
or woman, if he meets continuously
same, splits, warps in a Punch
Composite, endless Pulcinella
; Knows metamorphosis, becomes a tree
- With branches full of leaves - Punch-
table, stool, umbrella.
The myth has it that he is Pulcinella
constantly accompanied by something
that belongs, as decorating-
vine belongs to Bacchus: spaghetti;
not every time the suite is dominated
from spaghetti, but when they appear are
intensely dramatic: thus we see a
Pulcinella crucified by forks charges
spaghetti, spaghetti killed at short, and
his triumph shows him in a sort of empyrean
overlapped on a donkey, while the
his feet on the ground, smoking a bowl of
noodles surrounded by faithful pulcinelleschi
: Figures, both of which are suspect
a Christian family of phantom
Pulcinella. Elusive, in fact: indeed,
more than once alluded to as Pulcinella
to a shape, an act of invention
nothing, and we also see that a Punch
removes the mask and is revealed faceless.
Appears here, and appeared in the Codex, a
singular quality of fantasy graphics
Serafini say something without laughter
joy, indeed, a kind of darkness, a fund
darkly manic, a magical iteration
superstitious and that seems to allude to a
as are gestures conjure elaborate Neapolitan
apotropaic. Beautiful juggler
image, Serafini makes Polecenella
a ghost does not exist and multiple,
nothing innumerable, with a fragment
of collective memory and a prophetic epiphany.
As myth, the Pulcinella is timeless,
constantly born and dies,
is indeed related to everything that comes
and dies, and a drawing gently unsettling
shows a Punch as it prepares
to steal the hourglass of death because
ghost immortal Punch is set
and wise fool, the hero is a coward, perhaps
the only hero humanly possible.
in Corriere della Sera, 1984
Douglas Hofstadter
Questing for the Essence of Mind
and pattern
Codex Seraphinianus is a much more elaborate
work. In fact, it is a highly idiosyncratic
magnum opus by an Italian architect indulging
His sense of fancy to the hilt. It Consists
of Two Volumes in Invented in Completely
Language (Including the numbering system,
Which is Itself Rather esoteric), penned Entirely
by the author, accompanied by Thousands
Beautifully Drawn of color pictures of
The most fantastic scenes, machines, beasts,
feasts, and so on. It purports to be a vast
Somewhat of a Hypothetical Land encyclopedia
like the earth, with many creatures
resembling people to Various degrees, But
many creatures of unheard-of bizarreness
promenading Throughout the countryside.
Serafini has sections on physics, chemistry,
Mineralogy (Including many drawings of
elaborate gems), geography, Botany, zoology,
sociology, linguistics, technology, architecture,
sports (of all sorts), clothing,
and so on. The pictures Have Their Own Internal
logic, But They Are Filled to Our Eyes
with utter non sequiturs.
A typical example depicts an automobile
Some chassis covered with huge piece of
What Appears to be melting gum in the shape
of a small mountain range. All over the
gum are small insects, and the wheels of the
"Cars" Appear to Have melted as well. The
explanation is all there for anyone to read,
If They Can Serafinian decipher. Unfortunately,
No One Knows That language. Fortunately,
On Another page there is one picture of
a scholar standing by what is in Apparently
Rosetta Stone. Unfortunately, the only
language on it, besides Serafinian Itself, is
an unknown kind of hieroglyphics. Thus
The Stone is of no help the unless you Already
Serafinian know. Oh well .. . Many of the
pictures are grotesque and Disturbing, But
Extremely beautiful and others are visionary.
The inventiveness That Took to it like
Up With All These conceptions of a Hypothetical
land is staggering.
in Metamagical Themas, New York 1985
Franco Marcoaldi
On the opposite of utopia
Who is this elf forties who are
came to see his great, bare
Roman house (to join, on
background, the music gently obsessive
Philip Glass) is not easy for me to say. A
painter? An architect? A designer? A
sculptor? Luigi Serafini - than he is - is
all these things. But clinging
one or more of these labels, the Goblin
We shelled a hand still
time. Probably because any "definition"
ill fits a character
Amphibious by nature: perennial pot
boiling, which makes life form invented
Utopia in the flesh. He says: "Utopia is a
word that I saw for the first time with
my eyes during a long trip to America,
in the early seventies. I saw
architecture "organic" by Frank
Lloyd Wright as nell'intrinseca size
utopian American society,
quell'altalena permanent space in between
work, nature and artifice. Since then I have learned
Utopia is like a food, nutrition
fundamental. Always,
but especially if you carry a craft,
with crayons and building blocks.
What is the utopia that stretch their
Seraphim of the facts clearly show retracing
its rich and noble work.
Since its debut, striking without
clamor: the publication of the Codex Seraphinianus,
libroni two large, thickly painted
and written with an alphabet fantastic universal
that soon "published" in Germany,
Holland 'and the United States, among others enthused
Italo Calvino, who wrote: "The writing serafiniana,
if you have the power to evoke a world
where the syntax of things is overturned, it must contain
the mystery hidden beneath its surface
indecipherable, a deeper mystery
concerning the internal logic of language
and thought. "
The key to this mystery lies
probably follow the directions
of Calvin himself, in adherence to the idea
Ovid's Metamorphoses, according to which
all territories of existence are mutually
contiguous and permeable: the anatomic and mechanical
; The human and the plant, and the zoo
ore, the arms and technology, the wild
and metropolitan. Here then, the
to be alone in its upcoming "exits" from here
a couple of months, the publication of volume
Architecture at Franco Maria Ricci,
a treatise on architecture fantastic suspended
Leon Battista Alberti and between Lequeu, an exhibition
Hong Kong paintings and sculptures on the theme
threshold, the divide between the West
and East (hence the choice of cittàponte,
back next part of China
Communist). And finally one more exhibition
Amsterdam, this time with sculptures of smoke,
small Buddha steelwool from which
mouth spreads in space, thanks to a system
smoke, this ineffable subject.
Do, do, do. If you go to find, Louis
is always busy doing something. "Starting
Codex I never thought of a design
of my artistic work, but simply
I attended the event onset.
As if you did it alone, becoming
I thing that I was by sliding-
do, or that canvas that chair. " If something
Serafini is recognized, it is that
that he never worried about the "success"
nor have to economize and
exploit the success of its own "sign" from
repeat endlessly as a mark of
factory (very frequent appearance in many artists
post-war).
Thus begins the long design activity
industrial; then there are the crazy houses built
Marche, the fanciful sculptures
ceramics. All the while with a mobility
surprising that, even in the presence of a sign
recognizable, it prevents the search
of any apparent and pigeonholed
of his work.
Take the painting. And this canvas
I have before my eyes, which is a
obliquely man suspended in a sky-sea
blue, to bless the moon. Its
Dual head, bigger heart. Dress
a skirt of fish, stocking leopard head
. This figure seems to have been crossed
from classicism, romanticism,
symbolism. It seems that the same conceptualism
- Too pretentious and sententious -
then had to leave quickly
field to the more "serious" play by the Surrealists,
Finally, the imagined figure
affabulatoria and has taken over.
A Serafini like the reverse delusional
reality. And it is eager to hunt
. But I also have a wish, and I would not
I left here not knowing if
There is, at bottom, a precise poetic around
it moves constantly this volcano
lit. If anything binds them
His chairs with the curl, his paintings of
world to come, its bestiaries Teratology.
And finally this is outside the perimeter, to delimit
two words: iconic and vivid.
in L'Espresso, 1990
Achille Bonito Oliva
The Theatre of Painting
"Making a copy is not everything, but
copy all the things, and since
This total does not exist, except as an idea
in our consciousness, the true realist copy
just an idea. From this point of view
be a mistake to define this more precisely,
as idealism "(Jose Ortega y Gasset
Adam in Paradise, 1910). Here the assumption of
which to define the work of Luigi Serafini
that makes a painting as a deposit
of stylized images and contaminated, but
out of all pride and thus totalizing
from any form of idealism. The artist moves
side of the linguistic contamination
eclecticism and stylistic meaning
metalinguistic awareness and work
and therefore adopt a sensitivity
Mannerism. Uironia is the weapon with which
Serafini away all traces of self
Ideally, any identification between reality and
language. The reality of art is the language,
the pool of images making up
memory iconic artist, who
goes a step further by identifying
style and language. In this sense
Serafini acts within a line
resumed the tradition of Mannerisms
specific one that develops in the second
mid-sixteenth century, under the sign
the eccentricity and the eccentricity of
bizarre formal and exasperation fantastic
. The work becomes necessarily
artificial product, says Ortega y
Gasset, as must the disjoint
nature to articulate the aesthetic form. The
nature, the modern artist, is layered
language, consisting of a forest
styles. In this forest no stylistic
there are categories or primates, high areas or areas
Low: everything is the result of an accumulation
which converge diverse and references
belonging to cultures too far apart
them. The tool is used by Seraphim
the course of the quotation, which becomes
a way for the artist to resume
models which, however, is not identified. The
resumption refers to a stylistic means
track deviated and deviant. The deviation
inevitably means change,
a loss of identity for the same model
used. The language becomes finding
a simple compositional element image
that intersects with others, from
other contexts, less golden.
Many languages are stacked and carried
within and sculpture at the center
many collisions that shatter the
sense of unity and bring them along lines
ironic twist and distortion.
Economy of waste holding work
seraphim, based on crushing
each unit, which then means abandoning
a unifying point of view of art and
world itself. Surrealism, Dadaism, Cubism,
futurism, abstract art, pop art to
and the resumption expressionist become the sequence
within which the artist stabilizes construction
their own devices, artifacts coming
to the fierce, grotesque shooting
a kind of realism, understood as a style
follows the bad taste of totalitarian ideology
and perhaps the bad taste to any ideology
. The grotesque becomes the stylistic
which acts as glue, able to bind
iconographic materials by disparate
an approach, however, never stable. Instability
models leads to instability
each definition, the inevitable need
the language of force along the tangent precisely
the grotesque, a necessary theatricality
able to found the performance.
Serafini uses a kind of theatricality
image, ability to allow
maximum detection and reading. He founded
painting as a visual theater of multiplicity,
through a sensitivity throughout Mannerist
living on the crushing and description
the special and unusual. The frame
framework became the frame of a stage
that works on the accumulation dream
and distribution of linguistic findings
according to an order striking and explicit second
the natural destination of the work,
which is that of mass society. The difference
between historical and neo-mannerist mannerism
consists in the destination
necessarily alter the stylistic. In
first case, the artist moves under pressure
purchasing a refined and cultured, a
ultimately interpersonal exchange. In
second case, however, the contemporary artist
moves under the stimulus of a client
impersonal and within a context
that knows no shades, but approval
and inattention mentioned Walter
Benjamin. The theatricality in this context is
precisely the status that accompanies the occurrence
of things, which enables each gesture
find recognition.
Serafini amplifies its stylistic references,
submit them to the optics of a dilated
sort of magnifying glass, capable of
produce a recognition of places of
levy language.
Everything is clear. The image is the product
an artifice, a work of art built to
by assembling exhibits a
language everyone speaks. Fertility
language becomes a weapon to be able to cross
all territories of the iconography, from
the high end of art history, that
low in the history of costume and news
. The image was created by the collision between
different fields of reference, then mixed
inside the convention imagery
collective. The collective imagination becomes
Filter paradoxical light on the artist
language, where he seems to abandon
his personal vision and adopt instead
explicit signs at the edge of kitsch, a
museum that collects electronic and blatant
all styles not limited chronological
and geography.
Of course this imaginary lives
a reality with a high reproducibility,
standardized and headed towards multiplication.
So Seraphim tends to spend his images
further into the optical board
animated, replacing Kafka Disneyland
the sense of estrangement with the
hedonistic dream. Everything is possible
the plot between metaphysical infinitely small
out of scale with an enlarged detail
. In this gap lies the ability of art
: Difference and produce weight loss.
To do this the artist must pursue a
ironically aimed toward a to-tal
the. A look that stands outside the Earth,
thus transcending the gravitational weight
to arrive at a distance sidereal.
From here the artist, who became absolute and ironic eye,
obviously can aim the complexity
of things. From here though the eye-artist
see the world transformed into a forest
petrified at the same time life styles.
The world is inhabited by the language, conventions
occupy the entire territory,
including private domestic space
the viewer.
Serafini, the artist, then strives to
upsetting the conventions, to produce routes
visual collision between distant languages
and alternative, to build a striking disorder
finds that between the first inhabited areas
cultural politely kept at a distance
between them. The artist's eye sees and provides.
Part of a statistical look and then removes
paralysis of the conventions and introduces
surprise and derision. The world is not
seen as a place frozen, but as
a space of emotion and then imploded
able, somehow, to produce change
and high filament temperature.
Serafini apparently thinks that the
Convention also means social exchange
and so erotic. Ultimately art becomes
the new field of gravitation, where
there high and low, horizontal and vertical
and creates the space where the party understood
as relief and compensation, fertility
language, but in the world.
Exhibition catalog,
Milan, Fondazione Mudima, 1998
Pasquale Chessa
The art of "cow"
Aristotle owes much of its fame to the invention
of leapfrog. That is, each horse
is different but all lead to
the essence of the horse. Many centuries later
Luigi Serafini, even if that is an architect
paint a bit 'is the philosopher, will try again with the
"Cow." In Milan, until the end of the year
The rooms in the gallery Bureau
des esprits, Via Cerva 6, have exposed a
series of cribs under bell jar in
protagonosta is the idea that the cow, ie
the cow. " From Cow to the bay,
Cow sharpener by the rat of Europe,
Seraphim is the raid zoological
between two extremes: Beginning and End of
Civilization. Of course could not miss
the bull, but is a deuteragonist philosophically
gregarious, even when glimpsed
behind the Ariadne of Naxos translated into
neopop dance style or clinging to Last
tango of Crete. On duty at the entrance,
wear a mask Cow
(But there is also that of the bull). By reporting
King's letter in which Giorgio Soavi asks
Pope to buy cribs blasphemous unnatural
of Serafini.
in "Panorama", 2001
Patrizia Valduga
Interview
But where you're better, in Rome or Milan?
I live and work in an imaginary city where
Via del Tritone in Piazza Cordusio emerges.
I find complementarity: I have joined in
an imaginary metropolis, like Paris.
Codex you did here, you were born in Milan as
artist. You have a lot to this city.
Even all you can say.
But now tell us all the evil you can.
And improper to speak ill of a nomad
a place. Why constantly moving
takes only the best things.
I can not believe that an artist could love
Milano and Rome.
Paradoxically Milan is the most Roman of Rome:
Here you can see through the thistle and decumanus the
Brodsky argued that cross the track to be
the true meaning of the dream of Constantine, or
the cross as the ideogram of the City. Since
place to meet and exchange the old
Mediolanum has its nomen omen in
Today's Media. Since then, laboratory
what can happen in Italy.
Milan is colorless compared to Rome.
No, it's a very colorful city. Has only
problem of the 'enlightenment. " Moisture
creates a diffused light that flattens. But
with the Fohn. ..
But Baroque Rome. . .
Here is a legacy which is the anticlassical
Borromini baggage brought to Rome.
Borromini is so called because it works with
Borromeo, he was Francesco Castelli, Ticino
certify the bill as Swiss
hundred francs.
But in art it is more provincial Rome.
And Italy is peripheral sites of production
are elsewhere. Missing exhibitions
that create the atmosphere of the year, as in Pa-
rigid or New York. Everything is a bit 'set.
Well, if she cries Athens, Sparta does not laugh.
From America come emphasized the real
crap.
Hegemony is also this. Do crap
hegemony in place is better than them
elsewhere.
If you do not see evil, sets out your assets.
I am very fond of the Ambrosiana in
Bramantino particular blade, with
devil frog that turned into huge,
perhaps one of the most disturbing paintings, a
bit 'metaphysical, a bit' symbolist, a bit 'surrealist
. Then Brera and Poldi Pezzoli. And the Museum
Archaeology with a garden always
desert. And then those fringed velvet drapes
applied to the gates in case of mourning and that transform
a facade of baroque Viennese
in the Siglo de Oro.
And what you still love?
The neo-classic, that you can enjoy only here in Italy
and Trieste. I was fascinated, just arrived,
Foro Buonaparte not see in writing and
Bonaparte. It means a lot. I like
history of canals and still see them through
those facades of houses without
they do not make sense.
Are you working on the Views of Corso Buenos
Aires. I want to talk?
It is a place of spleen. The promenade
Sunday afternoon, "window-shopping,
the look without buying, dummies
multiethnic, now lemon yellow, now blacks chocolate
bars on the sidewalk on a Sunday
of life that fascinates me greatly. Between
the other gives me an idea of the Russian Prospekt. And then
it's nice to walk with others in controsole,
seeing without being seen.
What does it mean to put next to a person
his two small?
And the photography that plays with the film, which
is movement, Kine, the space-time. Multiplied
Cando expressions, created around the person
its variations. Always with photography,
I am working on an idea of picture
double and triple.
To whom do you feel the debtor, who are the architects
of your mind? Certainly the first is your father
But he was an engineer, and built in house
a submarine.
And a TV. I saw literally
born television near the kitchen,
when lit gradually valves
tubes. A person certainly
important for me was Jordan Falzon,
theosophical and multifaceted character, friend
Breton and translator, artist and critic, and
"Massacre of Christians by Ungaretti!
He was also an actor, or if he played better
same as the Voice of the Moon movie
Fellini who collaborated. Here lived in Progress
Genoa 1. And here is dead.
Do you think that art can serve a useful purpose in society?
Should understand what is now the art,
because there is competition in the object
consumption, which gives immediate pleasure,
calling on all scientific
our sensory perception.
What distinguishes a commodity from
an art object?
Time. We live immersed in a dimension
consumption. "For the posters will judge"
I happened to say.
Meanwhile the market does what it wants, can
mock us for centuries.
For centuries, no, the arc of our lives
yes. Today for many the market is no longer the
half, but the end. You're either in or you're out,
and work will be replacing a total
.
Have you been to Turin to the foundation of Patrizia
Sandretto Re Reba. . .
Yes, I understand. When has he uttered a
the name is time to go home. ..
Longer than MOMA, the Met, Tate and the Louvre, along
... No, there are still state. Me
say it is curated by a former artist.
And to finish with a flourish, Victor Hugo and Celine:
"L'amour, c'est la extase the unique" or "L'amour
C'est l'infini mis à la portée des caniches. " Love
for you is the only ecstasy is the infinite set
the reach of poodles?
It is a poem by Auden who is called Truth
I pray you, love. Have led to
nature of ecstasy, I quit. What
More important is knowing how to fall: maturity is,
fund, to be able to commute.
in La Repubblica, 2002
Gianluca Marziani
At the curtain back Codex
Wonderland
After more than twenty years still seethes Codex
Seraphinianus Luigi Serafini. His
mammoth dictionary "visions", a tome
encyclopedic 400 pages in fine
Cellulose connoisseurs, was released in 1981 for
publisher Franco Maria Ricci. On paper there
is also among strange plants, animals absurd
metaphysical mazes, flying machines,
food, arcane phrases of an alphabet, equations
mathematical symbols, drawings and boundless
number of anomalies visionary. A project
neoilluminista be refined and cultured, mid
between naturalism "scientific" and the vein
surrealist fantasy. The Codex was the acrobatic
surprise of this young author
surprising, capable of telling the ideas
a ritual that reinvents a pictorial
parallel reality of the late twentieth century.
As often happens in Italy, beautiful
ideas run free, and some of Oltrestivale
captures for the development practice to
Philippe Decouflè example, a man of cinema
and theater in Paris in 1961 with a past
circus, music videos and commercials with author
big international names. Just in these
days (March 24 to 28), far
Codex (1987) and subsequent Decodex
(1995), is staged at the Opéra de Lyon
Tricodex third stage of a formal action
Codex Seraphinianus with its global
mutant and stories poetically absurd
each page. Decouflè is the confirmation of a
passion that has lasted for over fifteen years,
a kind of ritualistic obsession with which
building forms of a shared dream.
For Serafini is an ideal "marriage"
distance: two unusual and unclassifiable talents,
theory and practice designed danced
that cling to the stage in a journey
between size and dazzling pictorial
three-dimensional body.
Luigi Serafini, born 1949, artist transverse
DNA is an infected infecting
between painting, drawing, sculpture,
design, set design, writing, costumes, architecture
. The last leg of its journey
are digital works that elaborate, through
minor modifications, painting paintings
classic. The ironic yet another gesture from a
eclectic creator of visual vertigo, past
in collaboration with Federico Fellini
The Voice of the Moon for the sculptural work
Naples underground. In the capital
Naples has always been an unmistakable
combination of mysticism and sensuality, seraphim
worked at the Mater Dei stop contributing
(Under the artistic direction of
Achille Bonito Oliva) to an urban project
among the most successful in the world. If you go back to
Milan, our story rewinds to
1981, when he participated in the first Serafini
shows in Memphis, the group of Ettore Sottsass
which promoted an alternative design,
ipercolorato, pop in the hearts and innovative
laminated plastic surfaces. Serafini,
After that baptism between sculpture and design,
objects created for companies like Sawaya
& Moroni, Artemide, Edra, Kundalini. From
set and costume designer featured collaborations
with TV programs but also
with the Teatro alla Scala and the Piccolo Teatro
Milan. As a writer has published texts
for Archinto Bompiani and Fandango. It should be
always a good potter. Paints
right technique and vibrant imagination. He designed
Longanesi for a new version of
Pulcinella entitled Pulcinnellopedia (1983).
Who has more say than it is to write
in front of a top creative without
barriers in front of the multifaceted talent
impressed the staff in the many imaginary
aspects of everyday life. Lessons Notes
to those who like Andy Warhol, Gio Ponti, Philippe
Stark, Bruno Munari and other masters
contamination.
in "Mirror" "La Stampa", 2004
Armando Adolgiso
Enterprise. Voices and thoughts from space
The guest next to me is Luigi Serafini. He
Nicola Debian Bug Tracking System wrote: "I feel
Italo Calvino at the bottom was a bit 'jealous
of those with an arabesque design
unable to create a world. Perhaps the definitive book
Calvin is the one that reads
watermark in the drawings and Luigi Serafini
fish-eyes peering surfacing
the surface of the page or in arabesques
invented by the artist in the books: alphabet
living does not mean anything and
absorbs the pure sign. "
Welcome aboard, Louis. . .
Tiger, tiger burning bright. . .
. . . And this is also bright Chardonnay DOC
Colli Piacentini "La Jara" Torre stove. . .
here the glass. . . that's it. Now listen:
Captain Picard is very good for the lodarne
Guide to Rome would say, "is a nice handle"
But we're in space, sketches "to handcuff"
prudent to send you on
Earth, as always wonder starting the conversation
with my guests, your portrait. . . interior
. . . In short, who is second Luigi Luigi. . .
The stars I see spill away, here in this
door, I suggest some considerations
(Cumulative sideribus) accomplice exquisite
e. wine. . Congratulations to these fine glasses
Beryllium-Alpha Centauri-style!
So .. . waters broke and I was born to
10.30, now ocean of August 4, 1949
in my grandmother's house via a Cassiodorus,
Prati in the earthly city of Rome.
It was an ordinary day for sparrows (Passer
Italiae) that had nested as
Each year the trees overlooking the
elementary school Umberto. But it was not
so for my mother and even for me,
I was suddenly to breathe a
strange mix of oxygen, nitrogen and dust
pollution. I did not know yet, but
I was beginning to exist for me and
others and it was immediately weighed. A beginning
symbolic of my interaction with the law
of universal gravitation, I thought
father an engineer, but soon was taken
from doubt because, if nothing in the universe
created nor destroyed, the total weight
the planet, in spite of my birth,
could be changed to an ounce ... and
thought that for the same reason at a certain
was planned to leave the place.
A bit 'is displeased with himself, a little'
with Newton, and went into the kitchen to drink
Yoga Massalombarda a greedily.
Judging by the drink was for him a
terrible moment! Now, a cruel exercise:
in thirteen words (not one more or one less)
as many as the letters of your name,
Define telegram for my customers
your presence in the art scene. . .
One Sunday in 1976, instead of going
Codex Seraphinianus cinema began. ..
Here is a choice that we are all grateful.
The high technology that surrounds us here on board I
with the theme of your speech in 1984:
"Technology fantastic." What interests you
particularly in technology, and you have noticed
Someone - strictly fantastic-dasegnalare
to my customers?
Yes, behold, two great technologies of the second
generation that particularly interest me
:
The first: Molecular Teleportation. Anyone
may install a conveyor Tele -
in / out in your shower enclosure, without sacrificing
water, either hot or cold. This
technology can send and receive millions
digitized molecules, which are shipped
(Out) via fiber otticoepatiche as
of common e-mail. Just turn a tap
to be disintegrated, after a good
shower that uses the electrolytic capacity
water (H20). In a few nanoseconds
it will be reassembled (in) in the shower
some other area of the planet. Top
you can check some inconvenience in the service
(Especially from Italy to abroad)
so you need to restore (there are
financial incentives in future) the
own bathroom, isolating the shower compartment
with armored doors to avoid surprises,
namely that we are suddenly with a
stranger in the house, and come fully
naked. . .
. . . Excuse but instead of that kind, could not
be there to pass or what Julia Roberts
be excluded?
. . .It is excluded as a precaution, better think
the worst.
I see. Better to be sighted. . .
The second technology fantastic Cloning
. I am most looking forward to the possible scenarios
sports and military that will be felt
the evolution of technology on. E
easy to predict that some famous clubs seek
to clone their samples and then
a team, for example, only Batistuta.
Let us then imagine a game
where a team of all-meets Totti
an all-Inzaghi. Certainly the speaker
work is simplified because it will
announce only numbers, but how will
Instead the game? There will be a risk
that is repeated with the same scheme
and maybe play with the same result,
same corner, the same admonitions, in short,
the same tape loop? Creed
the Football League in line with UEFA
must then intervene to determine the percentage
clones that teams can
to field results for variables
and so save the football pools from bankruptcy.
Another interesting aspect
cloning is that we will sooner or
then the plutocrats so madly in love
themselves, to think about a world they
likeness and begin
to be cloned. Are formed so the whole
populations are identical, but
the same temper greedy speculator
father. At this point it will add
another deeper identity
. And if we further question
legacy we have all the elements
foreshadow a frightening scenario,
that of terrifying Clone Wars, and
the inhabitants of Rome North'll see
fleets of spaceships over the battlements on fire
Don Orione.
When I'm on planet Earth, including a trip
space and the other, dress right there, on Monte Mario,
and Sunday, when I see the crowded bus
supporters ranging Olimpico, entertainment,
believe me, is no less terrible! The versatility
of your actions, m'autorizza to ask: in
which areas (visual arts, literature, music,
theater, comics, videos, etc.) we believe
are today the most interesting research
new modes of expression?
Ever since Madonna Holy Bishops
Plants & Animals broke away from the bottom
mosaic of gold of Byzantine churches,
Artists did not want another
that maybe the movies or on television as
the windows of Gothic cathedrals still bear witness.
Giotto with the cycle of Assisi was
a forerunner. Assisi began precisely
the inexorable long march of time
bolero, to Hollywood.
Of course it's difficult to follow them in all its
raids. . . for example, know that Louis is also
gastronome? Yes. . . So, in your
view, what is the greatest honor and greatest
failing Italian restaurant?
The great virtue is the endless variety of oils
olive oil, while the great defect is to use so
just that gift smallness Reve-
rendissima, Our Lady of the Quail us
graciously offers, or its eggs
with those delicious shells marked by speckles
in earth, and whose secrets are all to decipher
with / its / a lover.
All guests of this tavern space before
to leave, imposes a reflection on Star
Trek. . . What does that VideoMate
in our imagination?
A model structure for that purpose
example we are using here and now in
our game.
We are nearly there Serafynya, inhabited planet
by aliens who use a certain Codex Seraphinianus
as abacus and horoscopes, but also
as bollettario, breviary, Erbolario, calendar,
rhyming, file, spelling book, cookbook, and
railway timetable. . . if you fall, you better
stop the bus. . .
. . .In the forest of the night.
. . .This nightcap Chardonnay
DOC Colli Piacentini "La Jara Torre
Stove. . . I salute you as a must on the Enterprise
: Long life and prosperity!
www.adolgiso.it, 2005
Pino Corrias
The encyclopedia of the other world
Luigi Serafini is neither in heaven nor on earth,
but at the end of a corridor black inside
a green room walls, where the chairs
hanging from the ceiling. Flap between the alphabets
and plays with the clouds, as the characters
Ink by Raymond Queneau, one
Flowers blue. In a surreal night away,
thirty-months, he imagined a
writing (perhaps) do not read, and a world
that (perhaps) not seen with men
become Tong, eggs flying, trees
upside down, zoology plant, insects and crocodiles
. He made great encyclopaedia,
unsettling and useless, which resembles the
real world what a dream looks like
Mystery of mirages. Twenty-five years
lives inside that mystery. And now it celebrates
. It is called Codex Seraphinianus, is a
two-dimensional world, a sequence of inventions
colored, published in 1981 between
volumes shiny Franco Maria Ricci
admired the fantastic worlds of Jorge Luis
Borges and they are stated in Bodoni font. From
Black & gold this time the Codex (which attracted
Italo Calvino and Federico Zeri called a
"Eccentric charm") entered into legend
small parallel universes. The approximately
thirty thousand copies which then circulate in
world are unavailable. But they left
an indelible trail, which is dematerializing
be reconstructed in the mouth of the net. Tens
sites in the world reproduce his tables
color and its thick pages of calligraphy
invented, and therefore slightly tilted
towards the abyss. There is even a former cryptographer
U.S. Navy, this
Jim Marshall, who claims on his website
have found the key Codex: typing
any word in the interactive window,
appears translation seraphim. E
there is a Canadian site that not only show
magical ancestry tables confirms
its navigators Luigi Serafini there
indeed, once lived in Italy, has much
traveled and probably still lives
today anywhere in the world.
Luigi Serafini, 56, thin eyes, smile
long hair gray, actually
traveled. The point of any planet
which we live and the Pantheon, which is visible from all
the windows of his house in Rome. His house
is a simplified version of the Codex.
Has seventeenth century paintings on aluminum repaid
recolored and enamel, blue deer
coma with light, plasma screens, zebras
and other herbivores in large plastic
glass cases. And a black grand piano,
surrounded by inflatable chairs, abandoned
eight years ago from his penultimate
girlfriend. Serafini is by Duchamp and passes
by Topor. He worked in the group
Memphis with Ettore Sottsass. Designed
homes with marble columns blue colored crystals
. Digital paints and invents oil. The
Codex is born without reason and without purpose, in
At a sort of trance began infallible
basis and lasted two and a half years.
"I remember the day and circumstance," says
Serafini. One afternoon in 1976:
"I called a friend and tells me to step
take that go to the cinema. And I without
knowing why I say no, rest home,
I do Encyclopaedia. And when I put
down the phone, really began to draw.
I start with a man, then a screwdriver,
a leaf, a gear. And I write, row
by line, imaginary captions, slipping
automatically: signs and break dancing
White .. . A table after another, without
never wrong, for days, weeks, months. "
Creating a writing that is like water on
glass, transparent, but not penetrable, which
makes us feel exactly as described by
Calvin, "always a hair's breadth from being able to read."
Writing that pretends to explain the forms
unexplained drawings, which in turn generated
by fantastic metamorphosis, where "the anatomical
and the mechanical blend, the human
and the plant is complete. " Naturally
Codex has no translation
plausible than that which his eyes at-
tributes. But at least one key exists. It is the
story of its history. The very funny
Adventures of Luigi Serafini. Born architect
House imaginary, but then becomes
artist and traveler for three trips, three as
Waves, America, East, Africa
. Beginning with the first ticket
of his life, year 1971, to New
York, via Amsterdam. "Starting from a life
very dusty, middle-class family, school
to Piarists, no colors. Suddenly
I explode in front of the shimmering canals of
Amsterdam and then the vertical of the Holy
America, with its ribs and electrical
also lisergiche, Timothy Leary, buses
Greyhound, Chicago, hippie communes, the
Utopias housing, Fourier, the geodesic domes
Paolo Soleri. Everything was exciting,
Again, like the world to start again before
in my eyes, rifiorisse, would change the proportion
and light, including the sad streets of Alabama,
where for three years was abolished
segregation. " After oceans of America
the land route eastward, Ararat, and
then, following the Euphrates and the Tigris to the ancient
Babylon. The sun, the desert space.
All in force, by contrast, the boundaries of
ordinary life and unhinge forever. So
Serafini ends Architecture and opens a
study of a room and half in Spanish Steps
window in front of the dome of the church
Sant'Andrea delle Frate of Borromini
with a partner who in his spare time catching cobwebs
lies on the white canvas and immobilizes
with fixative. Then there is Africa. Where
all the mysteries of color and melt
multiply worlds intertwine and metamorphosis
. "I know a huge black in Rome,
elegant, rich, trafficker
diamonds. He says that land in Brazzaville,
in the former French Congo, and gives me a
draw the house. I agree, he disappears.
Reappeared six months later. He moved to
Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Sends me a
ticket. Find a limousine at the airport.
I deliver another ticket, and
a visa. " In Brazzaville there are military
everywhere and a little war going on between Sinophile
and-Soviet helicopters in flight
food and music in the streets, dancing and bullets
. Go and visit the land is cultivated
to peanuts and there are zebras in the distance. Sa-
on the canoe up the river Congo.
When visiting, is surrounded and arrested
by a patrol in camouflage. Ends by
alone in a big cell, where a colonel arrives
questioning him, with spectacles
mirror. He finds himself in the shoes of unexplained
a Roman architect who turns into a pirogue
a war and worked in houses lacking.
"In fact it was all so surreal, so crazy,
that even I get scared, but laughing. I laugh so
I take a fool, and instead
shoot me to make checks on my
identity. Thus appears a kind of console
Italian, which is actually an engineer Agip,
nice, Milan, which guarantees
for me. I left the dream within in his Mercedes
. When arriving in Italy is precisely
1976, and the disorder of all life
and all forms of transit that has seen a
day he was born "this need testamentary
to leave a mark forever. " For the
always is the Codex. More than three hundred tables, a
thousand drawings, no meaning. Says:
"I liked the idea of playing with life,
accommodate the continuing transformation of
and nature.
The idea not only to change the world,
as mentioned in the squares of the time, but
even invent another from the beginning "
. It ends in mid-1978. Other uses
two years to find a publisher enough
crazy to publish a book that costs ten
times more than any other book, and that
no compensation law. "When I came from
Franco Maria Ricci says "I felt
as a grocer spent running with the
His ham marble and tries to sell
slices. " Ricci (instead) to buy all
tables. And then the public in two volumes, with
box of black silk, jewel typographical
that on eBay today, traveling between the fifteen
and twenty thousand euros. Codex start surfing,
arrives with new editions in half of Europe
. Then the dark. Until the new light of
network, which improves the digital maze maze
of Serafini. "And upgrading the
concludes "says" twenty-five years later, as
if it had been designed on purpose. " For
tell the irraccontabile, to show
the invisible. To convince us to start
ever, after the end.
in "The Republic", 2006
Joan Bentley
Interview apocryphal in Roseto Comunale
The signal arrived at nightfall during
a break in traffic has cleared
Lungotevere momentarily from the cloud
gas that obscured the view of Ponte Sisto.
For a moment I saw the heraldic fairs
a hand traced on the walls of
banks, making an imperceptible movement,
The sting of fulminating glance
synchronic in my direction. At the same
Instant display of my cell phone is appeared
Message: 13 hours - while you start
to decline - arrive with a little 'delay
- To say about the rosarum.
It took me a bit ', but then I decrypted:
Louis Serafinus appear to Roseto Comunale
began to visit and initiation phase rosarum
declination rose-pink, mantra
mandatory for visitors to the garden.
I have a couple of questions to ask him, and if they are
rosae flourish. We'd love to see it
how is it that for twenty five years
his Codex Italy has undergone a
sort of spontaneous blackout, except pipelines
and convinced exceptions.
In Italy recently, which was mentioned, even less is
is seen in exhibitions and conferences, and accidents
it is written. It is possible that the reason for
this black hole located exactly at the
where the Codex was designed to have
do with the phenomenon of cancellation
point of origin in compliance with the
rule that requires the unknowable place
place the original source logistics
Opera inspiration? As if his
unavailability until clearance is to be charged
to spell. Could it be that the issue
arises dramatically in these terms:
Italy or Codex? (Not unlike
"O Rome and Orte?") The silence and distracted
while thinking of him makes me-Louis
to believe that here, as on pages
his Codex, the passive waiting for a response
as another is a form of misunderstanding
. Even his person goes for signs
and puzzles and is therefore required attitude
active, look good design, adhere to
dominant lines, curves and meeting its
the convolutions, carefully follow the
scrolls of writing that is tracking
the surrounding air, then proceed to
deciphering. In his large painting Nocturne
Napoleon or Oath of
Thank you and the Carpathians, is not short-circuit
between an event commemorated by
commemorative painting and its deformation
surrealistic who settled in the observer,
As the real doubt that what he
shown is the authentic, historic event
as manifested in all its
prodigious truth and staggering wealth
details, for which the previous
appears to be an apocryphal mannered
attempt to represent purged and cleansed
its unique singularity. As
this is being done on time
facing a part of its production
Art, the suspicion is more than legitimate.
The Oath in fact seems a faithful reproduction
what happened on that fateful
plane with the two sides facing each other
in their glittering uniforms separated
by a space full of solemnity in
Big Carp which tends to turn
Orazi, traces the symbolic distance,
it contains the meaning.
Since we are the Municipal Rose Garden,
I ask him how welcome mood
the news that the roses and other flowers (chrysanthemum,
wisteria, peonies, violets, etc.) begin
superfine ingredients to be reconsidered
culinary preparations? And yet,
If seeing these superb flowers, not
it captures the idea that it would be a start
more aesthetic if they were to eat the roses
us? "Yes, their forms and fragrant scents
We have the illusion that we should desire to enjoy, but
them, the roses that have fed us,
Today, unbeknownst to us, and now, as we depart,
flaunt sated and the lush
bloodiest colors .. .. "
www. humerus. en, 2006
Camillo Langone
Codex Seraphinianus or
Luigi in Wonderland "
Stuff from the rich, the Codex Seraphinianus. A
Parma we had in the house only the daughters of
industrial, ugly and stupid women,
foolish enough to think that courtship
was directed to them. No, it was directed
Codex, one was at home and invite
goal is not the meat but the paper,
that magnificent Fabriano used by Franco
Maria Ricci for an art book already entered
legend. Towards the end of evening ended
on the couch looking through all the amazing
object, and only after you remember a certain
commitment early the next morning: sin
to sleep at least a few hours
just had to escape. Obvious that
Manfrina could not go on much,
just long enough to be impressed by
Borges always that world of alphabets
invented and animals exist. The first
edition of 1981 consisted of two volumes
for a total of 160, 000 pounds, which the
coefficients are revalued
300 euros today. It was a good
sum for a rookie like Luigi
Serafini, a young Roman artist, but investment
was secured by the Marquis
Ricci, the elegantiarum arbiter of those happy years
. The operation worked mainly
Parma, not because the local bourgeoisie loved
Beauty, indeed, not because they had a
patronage mind when ever: parmesan
Ricci, a Parma and the Parma
Contemporary does not deserve (rather
the eighteenth century), in force rose buttonhole
backgrounds and blacks had established its
refined as the only brand library
place where a woman resident of the Enza
and Taro could procure gifts
prestige. And so, in Christmas street
Garibaldi was the row of ladies, furred,
and so on shelves plans and noble
suburban villas began to form a
small collection of great books delicious.
Erte was strong and Petitot, Ligabue and
Tamara de Lempicka, but eventually managed to
Small library sneak in Confindustria
and also confcommerciali Seraphim
a single living artist catalog elegantly
necrophiliac. The usually brash culatello
of Parma: today the first edition of
Codex travels into the stratosphere last year
eBay two volumes appeared in
$ 19,000. These quotations suggest
satisfaction and regret in the author, if
his time had been hoarding it now
would be rich. Serafini, while alive, was and remains
more incomprehensible to an Egyptian scribe
dead for thirty centuries: the Codex is a
performance of various arts, printing and figurative
is surprising because of bizarre, object
Publishing with few precedents in history
perhaps the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili published
by Aldus Manutius in 1499, another vortex
puzzle. Images are tables Encyclopedia
a parallel world, a
swarming manual of zoology fantastic
ads with human, plant, amoeboid,
abstract. A subtitle could be:
Luigi in Wonderland. " Captions
not explain a damn thing since
composed seraphim, doodles that can
remember some remote Asian alphabets,
the Oriya, the Sinhalese, Telugu, Georgia,
Thai, but vaguely. Twenty-five years
that anyone Codex hands
try to understand something, no way, the artist
Joker takes the game even
aspiring breakers drawing a kind
the Rosetta stone: first the usual alphabet
mysterious, the other a different alphabet
shape but the same for impenetrability.
Calligraphy and drawings have cost two
years of painstaking work, the time between
woman was gone and a cat
had arrived in an attic of Way
Sant'Andrea delle Frate property right
Church. More than a rental
paid a donation: then an artist
could afford the bohemian center
Traduzione Twenty-five years, good anniversary
and see if Italy will find the means to
celebrate worthily so much work. Doubt
is legitimate since the eighties carefree
spendthrift and is truly a millennium past,
and the few available public money
are thrown in to promote bi
works from the titles in English, certainly not in
Latin. The company's low cost is not
conceivable a slogan like that thought
by Ricci for his FMR: "The magazine more
beautiful world. " Today, moreover, even
Franco Maria Ricci is Franco Maria Ricci.
After selling the publishing house, the last
aesthetes retired in campaign
Parma planning a big maze.
Sometimes it seems wishing to return
game but, pending the grass grows, the horse
(Serafini) decided to republish
Codex elsewhere. The challenge of iniquity
time will assist the Rizzoli which ensured
the same card and the same number of tables
the first edition, but as a single volume
at a price faced by a score
no furs (not to be brave
means to be suicides, and especially
Parma are no longer the industrial one
time).
in "Il Foglio", 2006
Massimiliano Fuksas
Happy birthday!
CODE, ICIS-Codex, book blocks together
together, caudex: axis. Book manuscript before
the invention of printing. Collection
laws, constitutions, rescripts made first for
order of the Roman emperors.
I do not like either the codes or laws imposed
from above. I do not like any heavier
the desire to occupy other dimensions.
I never loved the camel
passing through the eye of the needle or the poor
that does not put even one foot. The only
useful code is the illusion of building
behavior, but without much conviction.
The art of forgetting is also the art of
Neutrinos move thousands of miles
away. The Codex is a collection of Neutrinos
bombarding a spectral light
the pupil touches the optic nerve. Good
Birthday Neutrino!
Rome, Campo de 'Fiori, 2006
Places Codex: windows
building and the door of the study by Luigi Serafini
Via Sant'Andrea delle Frate in Rome.
Places Codex: the railway station and the lighthouse Pedaso.
Introduction by Alessandro Riva 3
Codex Seraphinianus Giorgio Soavi 15
Ltuniverso transfigured by Federico Zeri 17
Vittorio Sgarbi's Methodus Seraphiniana 19
Mister Fantasy by John Mariotti 21
Pulcinella: a thousand or none of Giorgio Manganelli 22
Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern Douglas Holfstadter 23
On the utopia of Franco Marcoaldi 23
The theater painting by Achille Bonito Oliva 24
Shi cow "Pasquale Chessa 26
Interview by Patricia Valduga 27
Curtain up, back to the Codex of the wonders of Gianluca Marziani 28
Enterprise. Voices and thoughts from space Armando Adolgiso 29
Lenciclopedia other world Pino Corrias 31
Interview apocryphal in Roseto Comunale di Giovanna Bentivoglio 33
Codex Seraphinianus or Luigi in Wonderland "by Camillo Langone 34
Happy birthday! Massimiliano Fuksas 36
© 2009 RCS Libri SpA, Milan
All rights reserved
www.rizzoli. rcslibri. com
ISBN 978-88-17013895
Not sold separately from the volume of Luigi Serafini Codex Seraphinianus.
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Great! I'll read it soon. Very great idea, indeed.
ReplyDeleteI'm belgian, so i'll translate this in french, and finally have a google translation of a google translation. It's going to be hard to read, but it's better than nothing ;)