Audioguide by eArs
3. DINING ROOM - PART 1
Dining rooms are places both for meetings and private moments. Summa used to invite only a few close friends to this room.
Here, we come face to face with Franco, or rather, his portrait. Look back at the entrance you just passed through and you will see a large gilded canvas: the Genealogical Self-Portrait.
Summa depicts himself in front of the Parthenon, his face changed into that of an Ephebe - an ideal depiction of a young man in Greek statuary. In the background are Leonardo da Vinci's polyhedrons, a gabled roof and a multicoloured sun. This is transfiguration through art, the origins of which are rooted in past centuries.
A space for conviviality, the dining room also hosts works by other artists: in the lower part of the wall opposite the self-portrait, we see some small frames. These are a selection of the 28 Homages sent in 2016 to Summa by friends, including Ugo La Pietra and Ettore Spalletti. These can be viewed later, in the corridor leading to the bedroom.
For those with whom he felt an affinity, Summa created rainbow T-shirts, depicted in the pastel paintings above the Homages. You will have to look up to see them, as did the public the first time they were displayed in 1978 at the Taide gallery in Salerno for the installation-performance Pensierazione, a play on the Italian words for “thinking” and “action”. The work is now in the collection of the Fondazione Maxxi Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo. In the Salerno gallery, the artist had intentionally left the remnants of the crayons used for the works on the floor below. Visitors – obliged to look upwards - stepped on them and, walking around the space, spread their colours on the floor, which became more and more colourful as time went on.
The artist had wanted to make it clear that the work of art was not a fait accompli, but an element in the making, completed only by the people who interact with it - consciously or not.
