Half century after the making of one of the most famous films of all time, La Dolce Vita by FEDERICO FELLINI, the young Italian filmmaker and writer, MAURO APRILE ZANETTI points out in his interdisciplinary narrative-essay of authentic heretical empiricism, “the light and monumental presence” of a GIORGIO MORANDI still life. This element, which up until now has gone practically “ignored” by both general audiences, as well as official film critics and international specialists, appears in one of the film’s richest and most beautiful sequences, yet paradoxically also the least remembered: Steiner’s intellectual salon.

The book is literally painted with words, further brought to life through the original painting-illustrations by Italian painter and art director, Piero Roccasalvo-RUB who has been inspired by ZANETTI's humorous vision on FELLINI's movie as for a storyboard of a new film-editing or for a cartoon.

The art critic Renato Miracco—co-curator together with Maria Cristina BANDERA (ROBERTO LONGHI Foundation) of the largest MORANDI retrospective ever held in the U.S.A.. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (GIORGIO MORANDI, 1890-1964, AUTUMN 2008)—highlights in his preface to ZANETTI's book, published in the series so-called Bloc-notes Edition by the Italian Institute of Culture of New York, that “The author should be recognized for having thoroughly investigated an aesthetic element of which there’s no trace even in the exhaustive literature dedicated to FELLINI’s filmmaking.”

As ZANETTI cleverly demonstrates, this uncanny MORANDI “sign-of-art” (a still life) in La Dolce Vita, entails the pure question of perception (in both the filmmaking and the vision: watching is not seeing,) which in this case does not only mean recognizing it (the quotation as transparent mimesis of art,) but better realizing what this still life (its poetical opacity) renders visible, comprehensible and possible in the film.

By means of the MORANDI chromatic-sign, ZANETTI defines Steiner’s salon as: “the still life of La Dolce Vita”; in other words, the vanity of the vanity fair—a real memento mori inside that great film-tabloid about that universal tribune of the Via Veneto café-society (jet set people.) In this way, FELLINI'S thetrical microcosm portrays universal life. ZANETTI arrives at his conclusion that Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) and Steiner (Alain Cuny,) only in contemplating and observing the MORANDI, go beyond tha dolce vita's goossip life style (paparazzi cynicism as a universal season of Dante's Inferno,) being able to discuss about the future of art (painting and poetry as an act of resistance) and also about existence and the ultimate sese of life.

Features of the book
Elegant catalog size 10"x13"; 112 pages. Limited edition at 1000 numbered copies. Written in Italian and translated in English. Preface by by RENATO MIRACCO. Illustrated with original paintings by PIERO ROCCASALVO-RUB.

 

With our thanks to Mauro Aprile Zanetti for providing this press release and information.
Updated March 2011