«Artistic heritage may need a bit of a show, a staging, in order to be understood» says Francesco Vezzoli in his introduction to Musei delle Lacrime. Conceived for the Correr Museum by Francesco Vezzoli in collaboration with curator Donatien Grau, the exhibition intersects several levels of interpretation, each handled with great intelligence.

Francesco Vezzoli, “Musei delle Lacrime”, 2024, installation view at Museo Correr, Venice, photo credit Melania Dalle Grave DSL Studio, courtesy APALAZZOGALLERY

At first glance, the exhibition takes the form of a dialogue between the works of the Correr picture gallery and those of Vezzoli. The artist seamlessly intermingles his interventions into the setting, contrasting the medieval and Renaissance aesthetics of the collection with a distinctly camp taste. The canvases on which Vezzoli grafts his narrative often follow on well-known masterpieces from art history (often ‘altered’ by mistaken identities and allegorical sabotages), alternating inkjet prints and stitch-and-cross embroideries, which mimic the kitsch of tourist stall souvenirs which the visitor may still have impressed in his gaze when he crosses the museum threshold. The mixture of these ‘auteur fakes’ with works that are authentic expressions of the imitated epochs, generates an immediate sense of disorientation, exacerbated by the embroidery that Vezzoli has executed upon each of them. Repeatedly reiterating the topic of tears, excluded from the art history because of not being considered manly, the artist combines suggestions from the 1970s and 1980s pop culture – especially from its queer circles – with a profound knowledge of art history and an intimist and autobiographical dimension.

From left to right: Francesco Vezzoli, “Le Gant d’amour (After de Chirico and Jean Genet)”, 2010, detail, inkjet print on canvas, metallic embroidery, custom jewelry, paper, 74.5 x 61.5 cm; “Omaggio a Salvo (Studio Per “Self-Portrait As A Self-Portrait”)”, 2013-2016, detail, laserprint on canvas with metallic embroidery, 32 x 23 cm, courtesy the artist and APALAZZOGALLERY

This latter aspect finds its measure in the choice of subjects embroidered by Vezzoli ‘at night, in complete solitude’ (as curator Donatien Grau specifies in the introduction to the exhibition) and in the audio guide tracks, written and read by Vezzoli himself. In this audiovisual narrative, Giotto and his patron, the usurer Enrico degli Scrovegni, are matched with Andy Warhol and the entrepreneur Steve Wynn, who is responsible for the expansion of Las Vegas; the rediscovery of Salvo’s ‘Arte Povera’ is related to the beatification of Fra’ Angelico; Kim Kardashian becomes the Madonna Annunciata and Richard Gere, the original object of desire of the nine-year-old Vezzoli, interprets Botticelli’s Venus. The ‘conflagration of times and aesthetics’ (again in the words of the curator) to which this carousel of infiltrations leads is punctuated by portraits of the architect Carlo Scarpa, depicted with different identities.

Francesco Vezzoli, “La nascita di American Gigolò (After Sandro Botticelli)”, 2014, inkjet print on canvas, metallic embroidery, 136 x 208 cm, courtesy the artist and APALAZZOGALLERY

Carlo Scarpa himself, who had curated the staging of the picture gallery in the late 1950s, is the interlocutor in another of the conversations carried on by the exhibition. The display of Musei delle Lacrime, availing itself of the brilliant intuitions by designer Filippo Bisagni, sets itself in continuity with the one conceived by the Venetian architect, reflecting on the possible ways to grant the works their own physical and intellectual space within a museum, without renouncing a brazenly postmodern taste. From this point of view, it is interesting to note how the highly original visual inventions of the late medieval period accommodate Vezzoli’s pop and, at times, deliberately trash suggestions, surprisingly well. For this reason, perhaps, the first part of the exhibition is more enjoyable than the second. The watershed is the daring layout of the central room, in which the wooden ‘Madonna’, which Carlo Scarpa positioned three metres above the ground, leans towards the Birth of American Gigolò, equally set up in a tilted position on a pink and grey background, that in turn aims to echo Scarpa’s choices. Aside Net of this dichotomy, the entire exhibition comes across as a successful experiment, especially given its communicative premises.

From left to right: Francesco Vezzoli, “Portrait of Paulina Porizkova as a Renaissance Madonna with Holy Child crying Salvador Dalì’s jewels (After Lorenzo Lotto)”, 2011, inkjet print on canvas, metallic and cotton embroidery, fabric, custom jewelry, watercolour, 115 x 80 cm; “Selfie Sebastian (Self-portrait as Saint Sebastian by Andrea Mantegna)”, 2009-2014, inkjet print on canvas, metallic embroidery, custom jewelry, 169 x 70 cm, courtesy the artist and APALAZZOGALLERY

The museum is effectively reinterpreted by Vezzoli and Grau as a cultured place, but one that is never closed it on itself, one that is capable of providing the voice to a style of popularisation that remains usable without dumbing down and without renouncing complexity and eclecticism. Musei delle Lacrime is open until 11th November this year.

Kamil Sanders

Info:

Francesco Vezzoli. Musei delle lacrime
17/04 – 24/11/2024
curated by Donatien Grau
Museo Correr
Piazza San Marco, 52 Venezia
www.correr.visitmuve.it

Kamil Sanders

Born in Venice in 1998, after graduating from high school, he moved to Milan where he studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. In 2023 he published his first essay for the Calibano series by Prospero Editore: “Tradizione e Trasgressione. Note dall’India per un’arte indipendente”. In 2024 he won the Europa in Versi Giovani prize, which was followed by the publication in 2025 of his anthology “sillabario del terribile incanto” by Quaderni del Bardo Editore. He is currently attending the two-year course in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at Naba in Milan.