Peter Friedl Fiaba, 1997
The sisters of the previously deceased gallerist Lucio Amelio, legendary well beyond Naples, asked Friedl for a project proposal for an individual exhibition in the gallery whose fate now lay in her hands. Oriented on Neapolitan mythology, but mainly on the myth of new beginnings, Friedl began to work with the gray felt carpet which was laid out in the room. The sacrosanct carpet is apparently inseparably tied to the history of Joseph Beuys in the Galleria L. Amelio. Also in the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, on the occasion of the exhibition “Das Jahrhundert der Moderne,” it asserted its discreet presence in the Beuys Installation from the collection Amelio, “Terremoto in Palazzo.”
In this respect, Friedl’s proposal was an iconoclastic act. The supposedly destructive component was, however, only a part of the project, which did not attempt to merely destroy the carpet, but rather to give it a new purpose for the sake of the necessary new beginning. “Fiaba” is the Italian translation of Goethe’s “Märchen” from the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten. In a lecture about it in 1902 by Rudolf Steiner, the term “social art” appears for the first time: leitmotif of the Beuysian concept of art. On the prison island Procida located off of Naples, lived another equally legendary story teller who Friedl wanted to call on to hear her tell a tale. Its main motif should then be cut out of the solidly glued carpet; the cut out forms would then immediately be discarded. After the exhibition, a decision would have to be made about a new floor, possibly in another color. Friedl’s proposal also intended for a mobile duplicate of the carpet image to be made. This identification with the Neapolitan “ideal of the kaput,” which, at any rate, processed the myth to a gallery ware, did not find any appreciation. The project was never carried out.(1)
NOTES:
Text by Roger M. Buergel
Peter Friedl Fiaba, 1997
The sisters of the previously deceased gallerist Lucio Amelio, legendary well beyond Naples, asked Friedl for a project proposal for an individual exhibition in the gallery whose fate now lay in her hands. Oriented on Neapolitan mythology, but mainly on the myth of new beginnings, Friedl began to work with the gray felt carpet which was laid out in the room. The sacrosanct carpet is apparently inseparably tied to the history of Joseph Beuys in the Galleria L. Amelio. Also in the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, on the occasion of the exhibition “Das Jahrhundert der Moderne,” it asserted its discreet presence in the Beuys Installation from the collection Amelio, “Terremoto in Palazzo.”
In this respect, Friedl’s proposal was an iconoclastic act. The supposedly destructive component was, however, only a part of the project, which did not attempt to merely destroy the carpet, but rather to give it a new purpose for the sake of the necessary new beginning. “Fiaba” is the Italian translation of Goethe’s “Märchen” from the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten. In a lecture about it in 1902 by Rudolf Steiner, the term “social art” appears for the first time: leitmotif of the Beuysian concept of art. On the prison island Procida located off of Naples, lived another equally legendary story teller who Friedl wanted to call on to hear her tell a tale. Its main motif should then be cut out of the solidly glued carpet; the cut out forms would then immediately be discarded. After the exhibition, a decision would have to be made about a new floor, possibly in another color. Friedl’s proposal also intended for a mobile duplicate of the carpet image to be made. This identification with the Neapolitan “ideal of the kaput,” which, at any rate, processed the myth to a gallery ware, did not find any appreciation. The project was never carried out.(1)
NOTES:
Text by Roger M. Buergel