QUASI FURORIS
edit by Fedor Kriška

I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with the work of the Italian visual artist Renato Meneghetti (or rather, a smaller part of if) on my three-day visit to the artist’s studio in Bassano del Grappa, near Padua, in January. In view of the fact that I do not have a more intimate knowledge of the contemporary Italian art scene and its broader connections, the following observations are only valid as my personal declaration of the fragments of his work that constitute the framework of the current exhibition in Bratislava.

Renato Meneghetti is the author of a rich and extensive creative story. Since 1970, his original mission has been the establishment and artistic leadership of the graphic and design studio DDD Design. Nevertheless, this reality has not in the slightest way prevented him from dealing with other, freer and unconstrained artistic disciplines; the reality is in fact precisely the opposite. He began with monotypes and collages, continued with painting, plastic art, coloured radiographs, ceramics, glass objects, music, film and photography, installations and the realized architectural design of his studio, currently an automobile museum.

The artist claims friendship with the renowned avant-garde artist Lucio Fontano and his personal or private sociological survey of society as the two principal prerequisites of his human and artistic development since the late 1960s. In one of the artist’s personal confessions, he states, “My works have grown out of unexpected imagination and subsequent execution with maximum fervour,” and, “The best dogma is to have no dogma.” This might account for his overt pleasure in changing his aesthetic and creative programme while retaining the quality or sincerity and plausibility of works executed in miscellaneous techniques and from various viewpoints.
A special position in the artist’s extensive production is reserved for an unusual and relatively unique artistic discipline that he himself named radiography, and whose main constituents are radiograms.

Man’s eternal desire to penetrate beneath the surface of things was partly accomplished by W.C. Roentgen through his discovery of the form of radiation known as X-rays. The results of this historic invention inspired a marked stage in Meneghetti’s rich multi-layered visual story.

Radiograms provide a multiple stimulating inspiration for the artist’s own expression. The exhibited works substantiate the theory that even documentary photographs can become a reflection of the author’s inside. Even what he reveals in them, how he handles them and what he draws of them sufficiently reflect his opinion, his viewing and taking of the world, or the sensitivity and strength of his conscience. Radiograms may be understood as invariable facts that in connection with other, real facts produce an effective artefact with extensive meanings. Here the artist draws on the knowledge that things or actions, persisting in their usual places in a common environment and time, are sterile and uninteresting. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary to move them, or rather to change the perspective of them, in order that they might surprisingly reveal themselves in their unique functions in new circumstances and relationships.

And he may perceive them as a visual inspiration for his pictures that have nothing in common with the original model except an optical resemblance.
The artist likes working with a secret, a hint, a symbol, counterpoint and absurdity, employing them purposefully. He is attached to the means of expression of hyperrealism as well as authorial exaggeration.
He combines techniques and, in front of our eyes, he changes the identity of motifs, quotes artistic propositions from older artists beside his own definitions. He purposefully returns to certain themes and artistic problems in order to assess their possibilities thoroughly, if possible, and to approximate the optimum expression of an idea.
He is frequently inspired by radiograms of the human body (the skull, spine, joints, hands, fingers), bodies of animals, birds, wood and a landscape, which on the one hand he transfers to canvas and treats by painting or assembling, illumination, location in space and their movement. The method of insight into the kernel of a phenomenon by X-rays does not always need to come out according to the artist’s intention, but it will undoubtedly always generate a significant stimulus towards its subsequent development and completion. It is undeniably interesting that even this scientific method of cognition does not bring more objectivity, more definitive truths to artistic expression. The results above all provoke the author as well as the viewer into imaginative perception.

These works, oscillating between fact and metaphor, are exciting and disquieting, since reality and fantasy touch, intertwine and overlap there, inevitably inspiring us into change or a substantial enrichment of our view of the world and our mission and role in it.
The pictures inspired by a straightforward tragedy, the execution of Italian resistance fighters at the end of World War II in the artist’s residence in Bassano del Grappa, are some of the most impressive. The artist manages to tackle even this perverse triumph of power and violence by his brilliant handling of hint and detail: no pathetic scenes, no literary-didactic narratives. The detail of the hanged men’ legs in the morning mist at the crack of dawn suffices. It is an extremely effective representation of a historical fact, a reminder and warning to present-day as well as future generations.
With regard to the artist’s sophisticated painting technique, it must be emphasized that Meneghetti uses colour pigments diluted with pure spirit, which he then applies in thin transparent layers on primed canvas in order to produce an effect on light absorption and reflection through their magical qualities. Light plays an important role in the artist’s expression: it transilluminates colour radiograms and thus activates and animates them, casts shadows on installed objects’, creates various intensive reflections on the painted surfaces, adds to the singular atmosphere in the arrangement of spaces and installations…Not without accident, M. Grünewald, G. L. Bernini, F. Goya and E. Munch who were well aware of the function of light in the construction of magical or dramatic effects in their works, remain some of his favourite artists.

Despite the perfect and meticulous elaboration of all the exhibited works, the process of their creation is, according to the author, like the eruption of a volcano. “My works always grow out of unexpected intuition and violent madness,” Meneghetti reveals about his creative method. And, in fact, only this method, this overpressure and internal inevitability is able to generate works of art that have the right to address sensitive viewers, since they bring the artist’s sincere message, albeit if, naturally as in this case, it is conveyed in a unique language and in a high visual culture and powerful visual expression.

On the basis of the above-stated, I will attempt to conclude my observations with a quotation from Cicero’s immortal work De oratore: “I often hear that nobody can become a good poet without the inflammation of his soul and the symptoms of a certain furore” (…sine inflamatione animorum existere posse et sine quodam adflatu quasi furoris).

Fedor Kriška