In the arms of unconsciousness
A few days back we reprised an article from
Italian newspaper La Repubblica about how Blond Ambition Tour‘ stylist Jean Paul Gaultier has been inspired by the work of Italian painter Fabrizio Clerici for a costume for Madonna on that show and how later, she again, was inspired by Clerici‘a work for some imaginary for her ‘Bedtime Story‘ video.
Today we are happy to show you, courtesy of Archivio Clerici, two of the images that have inspired Madonna’s work.
Here are Solo per Arpa (1946) and Passeggiata sul gallo a due teste (1951) that are also published on a new book about Fabrizio Clerici by Nicoletta Campanella.
The story about Jean Paul Gaultier‘s inspiration published by La Repubblica, comes straight from the book on the author by Nicoletta Campanella, published in Italy by Sellerio.
In her interesting text Seduzioni per Utopia, Campanella mentions in a unique way, all the inspirations and contaminations that can be found in the Bedtime Story video. Here’s an abstract about Madonna, courtesy of the author:
One day, in New York, Jean Paul Gaultier goes to the Museum of Modern Art that exposes by chance Duo per arpa e cello (1944) by Fabrizio Clerici:
Gaultier sees it, stops, it reminds him a lot about the surrealist Parisian photogtaphy from the sixties, he goes back: he likes it! He asks more information: He wants to taste this Clerici and he likes him a lot. It’s 1990, his explosive year, also because Madonna asks him to design costumes for her Blond Ambition Tour: that Clerici really appears to him as a trace of genius: he gives Madonna, for a scene of the show, the most secret reinterpretation of Italian art, in costume and fashion history, of Solo per Arpa (1946)!
Splendid, Madonna!!!
…She agrees, then she is taken by enthusiasm as well…because that Fabrizio Clerici, she also finds him a genious, but she makes him hers: the projection of her soul. So, in 1994, when she works on the treatment for her Bedtime Story music video, directed by Mark Romanek, she evokes the eye of Horus, exaclty like Fabrizio Clerici used to do each time he drew or paint them.
Bedtime story… the most sensational celebration pop music offered to the Italin visionary-fantastic art… reprises the iconography of Fabrizio Clerici, Leonor Fini, along with their most surrealist friend Leonora Carrington, and borrows from them.
The narration of the video is a reworking of the creative value of dream, as a place of discovery, knowledge, spiritual creation: Madonna sings “Words are useless, especically sentences” and in the chorus: “Let’s get unconscious honey/Let’s get unconscious”; vision takes shape from an allusive sandy paradise, like the one from “io” by Fenions: Madonna’s head takes shape from the center of Horus’ eye and becomes consistent… while her mouth starts speaking: “Today is the last day that
I’m using words”. Her face looks like the ones Clerici draw in Testimoni oculari from 1943 and again Testimoni oculari from 1946…
So it happened that Fabrizio Clerici has been chosen – because of Jean Paul Gaultier – by another woman – the woman of our today: Madonna – sensitive
and maker of herself in her own times, just like those noble women were, in their way and their world, from Emilia Kuster Rosselli, to Ida Pozzi Borletti, from Luisa Feltrinelli Doria, Esmeralda Ruspoli to Anna Maria Cicogna Volpi…who, as friends, lovers, fans, promoters, had elected him.
Nicoletta Campanella, Fanions. Seduzioni per Utopia, in Fabrizio Clerici. Opere 1937-1992, catalogo della mostra, Sellerio
Image of Clerici’s works courtesy of Archivio Clerici.
Written text: (c) Nicoletta Campanella