Those Rich Americans

I am bothered in so many ways by this article (L'art fait fortune à Palm Beach, February 7) by Harry Bellet in Le Monde. It is supposedly about the Palm Beach Classic, a "new antiquities market" in West Palm Beach (Florida): according to their Web site, this year is the eighth annual installment of the sale, which ended today. However, most of the piece is devoted to softcore gawking of wealthy potential clientele for this venture, across Lake Worth in the exclusive neighborhood of Palm Beach. Not only does the nexus of wealth and fine art disgust me in many ways, but the salivating over the outrageously ostentatious lifestyle of this tiny sliver of Americans reinforces the absurd stereotype of Americans as obsessed with money and status. Here is my translation of an excerpt:

In Palm Beach, you see convertible Ferraris parked with the keys left in the ignition: they are watched over by cameras installed at each intersection, on the traffic lights. The sky here is always blue. That is the reason why wealthy Americans come here to warm their rheumatism when snow is covering the rest of the United States.

When he moves into his winter house, William Koch (Bill to his friends), carries in his luggage the Botero sculptures that he cannot do without: several tons of bronze that follow him in his travels and come to winter on the lawns of this garden that, stretching out on each side of his very large house, covers the whole width of the island. Botero is one of his friends: the Colombian artist even dedicated to him a portrait, representing Bill dressed as a chubby little sailor, holding a miniature sailboat model under his arm.

In his cellar, Bill has dozens more: all the boats that have won the America's Cup since its inception are lined up as models in glass cases. The one from 1992 is his, a boat using revolutionary technology (Le Monde, May 19, 1992). He had his Boteros transported to the lawn of the house he rented then, by the San Diego Yacht Club. Bill is a passionate sailor and collector. He also likes good wine: his cave holds around 35,000 bottles of the best vineyards and requires twenty employees. At the entrance, a touchscreen computer allows you to choose a vintage and to find the bottle thanks to a detailed map. At the back, in an alcove, there are a half-dozen rarities behind a gate: Château Lafite 1737, brought back by Thomas Jefferson from his ambassadorship in France.

What does any of this have to do with an antiquities market or just with art in general? Well, the rest of the article does examine what Bill Koch and some other collectors buy for their homes. I am always disturbed when Europeans believe that this sort of story represents a large part, or even the majority, of the American population. When talking with people in Europe, I often have to make clear that the average American (someone like me) has a lifestyle remarkably similar to that of the average European. Often, especially when an American is traveling in Europe, the assumption is that you must be wealthy.

Lest we think that this sort of voyeurism is a European phenomenon, the sale and Mr. Koch were also covered in an article (Everything Is Hardly Enough, February 5) by Christopher Mason in the New York Times. At least there, it's in the Home and Garden section, instead of the Culture section. (There are even pictures of Mr. Koch's house in the much more detailed write-up by Julie Carlson (Bordeaux, Boats and Botero: The Passions of Collector William Koch, February 4) in Antiques and Fine Art.) I am all for rich people spending money on art, especially when the money goes to artists, but if you want to be thoroughly depressed about how too much money ruins art by making it elitist and inaccessible, read Souren Melikian's report (Time to sell in a hot market, February 7) on recent art auctions in the International Herald Tribune.

The Return of the Art Movie

So I went last night with a couple friends to see the restored version of The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965; here is the screenplay in English) at the new E Street Cinema, in downtown Washington. (In case you missed it, here is how film critic Michael O'Sullivan wrote up this new theater, E Street Cinema A New D.C. Landmark, January 4, in the Washington Post.) When it opened on January 9, the E Street Cinema identified itself as "an eight-screen luxury movie theatre specializing in first-run independent and foreign language films." I naturally assumed that a cinema that shows anything but indigestible blockbusters (yes, I am talking about the last two Matrix coproliths) would follow a few standard conventions.

When I first moved to Washington (I see no need to be specific, so let's just say it was long ago in the last century), I used to go with some regularity to worship at the altar of foreign cinema. The only shrines to this neglected religion were the Biograph Theatre, which was converted in a quite unsophisticated way from an old car dealership on M Street in Georgetown, and the Key Theater, not far from it. The former was replaced by a drugstore in 1996, and the latter by a designer hardware store in 1997. Part of the fun in seeing a different kind of movie was surviving the surroundings: sitting in a room where porno films had been shown at another time that day, leaving scraps of food for the poor rat inhabitants, and being one of a handful of people in a cramped space with seats that had not been cleaned or disinfected since 1974.

Since the lamentable closing of the Georgetown independents, for foreign films or anything off the beaten path, you were pretty much limited to the screenings of the American Film Institute National Theater at the Kennedy Center, which is terribly inconvenient. A short time back, an eclectic little place called Visions Cinema Bistro Lounge opened on Florida Avenue, but I have not been thrilled with it. The E Street Cinema has a storefront on E Street NW between 10th and 11th, but all the screens are in the basement of that block, some of them at a considerable distance through a warren of tunnels. It's disturbingly posh and well lit: if having 25% less track lighting and less expensive carpet and tile would have kept down the ticket price ($9.25!), I think it would have been a good trade-off. Still, you can buy European chocolate or a cappucino instead of the more traditional cinema fare, which is nice. The screen for The Battle of Algiers was small, but the seats were comfortable. Plus, when you leave the theater and walk down 11th Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, you will see one of the most beautiful buildings in the District of Columbia, especially in the dense fog of a rainy night.

Also now playing at the E Street Cinema: Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon), Touching the Void (Kevin Macdonald), The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet; see his official Web site in French), Girl with a Pearl Earring (Peter Webber), Monster (Patty Jenkins), My Architect: A Son's Journey (Nathaniel Kahn), and Big Fish (Tim Burton; see Todd's review on January 17). If I still thought that the Oscars were at all relevant, I would now have a better chance of seeing some of the more obscure entries. Even so, Washington has a long way to go before we can enjoy the range of film viewing experiences available in Paris, for example, because of the burgeoning number of small theaters that show eclectic assortments of current and past movies. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, look at the list of movies playing there right now.

Year of George Sand

On July 1 of this year, novelist and revolutionary George Sand (1804–1876) would be 200 years old, so be prepared for all sorts of celebrations in France (here is the official Web site of the Année George Sand). If you needed any more proof that the French are crazy for this sort of literary event, you will be happy to know that Sand will be honored in France as part of the Journée des femmes [Women's Day], the Printemps des poètes [Springtime of Poets], and the Semaine de la langue française, as well as a special national birthday celebration on July 2 and a local one in Berry on July 4, and a special stamp with her picture will be issued. This information comes by way of an article (Lancement officiel de l'année George Sand [Official start of the Year of George Sand], February 6) in the Nouvel Observateur:

On Tuesday, the president of the National Assembly [the French national legislature], Jean-Louis Debré, and the Minister of Culture, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, opened the Year of George Sand, which will be celebrated with numerous tributes to the author of La mare au diable who was born two centuries ago. They were expected at the Hôtel de Lassay at 7 pm to attend a reading/performance presented by high school students around the novelist's texts.

The ceremony could not take place in the Assembly's official chamber (hémicycle), as emphasized the organizers of the year, coordinated by the Ministry of Culture, because that is a place "where she refused even to consider sitting, at a time when women did not have the right to vote and civil law authorized inequality between men and women." George Sand was recognized by her contemporaries as one of the greatest writers of her time. Nevertheless, the 20th century largely misunderstood this exceptional woman who fought so much for the ideals of freedom. Today, there is no finished version of her complete works and few of her books are available in bookstores, out of the 244 listed in the bibliography established for the Web site about the year.

She was born Aurore Dupin and took on the name George Sand. According to the year's organizer, Reine Prat, her extraordinary output includes tales, short stories, novels (feminist, light, or "peasant"), plays, articles, and more than 30,000 letters which are "one of the most beautiful bodies of correspondence in our literary history." George Sand's home in Nohant is now classed as a French national monument. You can see Nadar's photograph of her in her later years from the Getty, but her portrait by Delacroix (shown above) is far more flattering.

Les Arts Florissants (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second part of a review of a concert by Les Arts Florissants at the Kennedy Center in Washington on February 3. Here is Part 1.

William Christie, founder and director of Les Arts Florissants (image at right from frenchculture.org), was born in Buffalo. After his university studies at Harvard and Yale, he moved permanently to Paris in 1971 and established his now-famous group in 1979. He had studied harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick and knew French Baroque music before he moved to France. For an article announcing the concert of Les Arts Florissants in Chicago (Les Arts Florissants, February 1, in the Chicago Sun-Times), Wynne Delacoma printed portions of an interview she had with William Christie, who told her why Charpentier's music interested him when he started Les Arts Florissants:

"It's a style of music I like very much," he said of the composer whose little "idylle en musique" composed in 1685-86 provided Les Arts Florissants with its name. "It's a very personal kind of language, very colored and very rich. More than that, the fact that he wrote for small groups of singers and instrumental players was just perfect for me because that's exactly what I had when I founded my own ensemble in 1979. The pieces he wrote seemed to fit us perfectly well."

How did he first come into contact with Charpentier's music?

"I got to know the music of Charpentier in the States, through modern editions of his works. . . . The most important were done by my friend Wiley Hitchcock way back, 40 or 50 years ago. When I came to Europe, all of the autograph manuscripts were in Paris."

This is the sort of story that makes a musicologist's heart sing. H. Wiley Hitchcock, eminent historian of French Baroque music (the H. numbers attached to Charpentier's works stand for "Hitchcock," from his 1982 catalogue of the composer's complete works) and champion of American music, does research and publishes an edition; William Christie tackles the scores with a group of talented performers; years later, I can listen to concerts and a pile of recordings of Charpentier and other composers from Les Arts Florissants. This is why we do what we do. (If you want to find out more about Charpentier's autograph score for Les Arts Florissants, take a look at this page from Charpentier specialist Patricia Ranum, who has published numerous Musicological Musings on her Web site.)

The second opera on the program Tuesday night, La Descente d'Orphée aux Enfers (H. 488, c. 1686), featured a ninth singer as Orpheus, Scottish tenor Paul Agnew, who was extraordinary in this role. In the second scene, Orpheus learns that his bride, Euridice (Sophie Daneman, in a sadly small role here), has died of a snakebite. In his aria "Lâche amant, pourrais-tu survivre" (Cowardly lover, could you outlive), on the word "Mourons!" (Let us die!), there is a very high retardation, a loud note that is resolved to a soft higher note, which Agnew sang with such force and grace that it took my breath away.

French choral music of this time is often in a deceptively simple homophonic style. Charpentier wrote very effectively in this style for the chorus that ends Act I, "Juste sujet de pleurs" (True cause for tears), sung by the nymphs and shepherds as Orphée departs to the underworld in search of Euridice. The slow succession of harmonies created a powerful impact as shaped by Christie and his singers. This last moment in the world of mortals is followed, in Act II, by a darkening of tonal color, as Charpentier silences most of his treble instruments. In this performance, three more viole da gamba players joined the bottom-heavy continuo group, which plays for most of the time in the underworld scenes, along with the reedy organ at Christie's hands.

This opera is much more a tour de force for a single voice, Orphée, than the ensemble piece of Les Arts Florissants. Agnew excelled in the several beautiful and difficult arias by which Orpheus relieves the torments of three famous shades in hell (Ixion, Tantalus, and Tityus) and charms Prosperpina and, through her, Pluto. All in all, the audience was vocal in its appreciation of this performance, with many shouts of "Bravo" for the various singers who took bows. When soprano Sunhae Im brought William Christie from his place at the harpsichord, however, I was the only one in the house to yell a loud "Bravo." People in front of me glanced back, curious why I was so impressed with the keyboard player, apparently without knowing that none of this would be possible without him. Not only the miracle that is Les Arts Florissants, but so much else in the world of Baroque music performance. As Erica Jeal, writing in The Guardian, put it:

More than any of his contemporaries, Christie has been an educator as much as a performer and tastemaker: not just of his audiences, not simply through his decades of teaching at the Paris Conservatoire, but by example. A quick glance at the biographies of Marc Minkowski, Christophe Rousset [whose group Les Talens Lyriques will be at the Library of Congress on April 21] and Emmanuelle Haïm will confirm this. For aspiring conductors of Baroque opera, playing continuo under Christie is an education par excellence.

The ending of Charpentier's La Descente d'Orphée is enigmatic and uncertain: as Orpheus and Euridice depart, the chorus of spirits and shades begs him to stay so they can hear his voice forever. We are not informed if the couple make it to the world of the living successfully, but in this performance, I truly would have liked Mr. Agnew and Les Arts Florissants to stay a little while longer. In fact, the audience applauded heartily at the conclusion of this opera: seeing the performers take a last bow and return to their instruments, we thought they were going to play an encore and stopped applauding. Embarrassed, they left the stage in silence before I could yell "bis!"

William Christie and his musicians have made recordings of Charpentier's Les Arts Florissants (1992) and La Descente d'Orphée aux Enfers (1996). If you want to catch Les Arts Florissants before they go back to France, you have three more chances: at Alice Tully Hall in New York on February 5 and 7, and at Emory University's Schwarz Center in Atlanta on February 9.

Les Arts Florissants (Part 1 of 2)

One of the main areas of my research in music history is French Baroque court ballet and opera. My doctoral dissertation was in this area, and I have written here about this fascinating period of music before, on October 13 and October 15. I mention this as a sort of disclaimer: because of my interests, I was inclined to like the performance of Les Arts Florissants last night at the Kennedy Center here in Washington. In the 25 years since William Christie (image at left from Laureto Rodoni's page on Rameau's Les Indes Galantes) founded this group in Paris (see my post on January 14, Happy Anniversary to Les Arts Florissants), they have created the absolute best sound in French Baroque performance. I was thrilled to have the chance to hear one of their rare performances in Washington. (I will not go as far as James R. Oestreich, who has publicly begged Christie to come back to live in the United States: see Reasons to Like William Christie, February 1, in the New York Times. What could possibly convince Christie to abandon France? The superior arts funding in the United States? Greater support in American culture for musicians and scholars? As Daffy Duck put it so well, it is to laugh.)

The smaller, intimate Eisenhower Theater was quite full, but I was disappointed to see a fairly large number of empty seats in the orchestra, especially toward the back and along the sides. This is probably due partly to the limited audience for French Baroque opera and partly to the very expensive ticket prices, even for the Kennedy Center. (Tickets at the Kennedy Center were $60 to $90, while the prices for the very same concert at Symphony Hall were $15 to $35: is the cost of living in Washington really three to four times more expensive than in Chicago?). You may remember my post about the Vienna State Opera (Opera and the Way Things Should Be, December 28), which regularly sells a large number of very cheap standing places on most evenings, shortly before curtain. How difficult would it be for the Kennedy Center to sell off unpurchased seats, an hour before curtain, on a first-come-first-served basis, for $5? I can tell you that I, for one, would be willing to stand in line from time to time for such an opportunity.

After opening at the Cité de la Musique in Paris on January 13 and 14, this production has toured several European cities. Erica Jeal reviewed the performance at the Barbican in London (in The Guardian, January 22), as did Anna Picard (in The Independent, January 25). Wynne Delacoma reviewed the performance (Inventive ensemble makes 300-year-old music live anew, February 3, in the Chicago Sun-Times) at Symphony Hall in Chicago on February 1. This concert consists of semistaged productions of two of the short chamber operas of Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704), in honor of the 300th anniversary of that composer's death this year and the 25th anniversary of Les Arts Florissants. The first was Les Arts Florissants (H. 487, 1685–1686), from which this group took its name. Both of these short operas were first produced in Paris at the Hôtel de Guise, the residence of Charpentier's faithful patroness, Princesse Marie de Lorraine, usually known as Mademoiselle de Guise. (This building was owned by several families over the course of its history, including the Clisson, Guise, Soubise, and Rohan. The old entrance can still be seen at 58, rue des Archives. The entire group of historic buildings and gardens now houses the Archives nationales de France and the Musée de l'Histoire de la France.)

The sides of the small stage were occupied by the instrumentalists, with the violins, flutes, and oboes to house left, and the continuo group (viola da gamba, bassoon, theorbo, and William Christie at the harpsichord and organ) to house right. The singers played the space in between and behind them, which was often filled with lighted flowers on long stems mounted on rounded bases that allowed them to tilt back and forth. These were the only real set or prop item in the production. The costumes, designed by Christian Lacroix, were black tuxedos for the men, which they wore carelessly casual, without jackets and with shirts untucked and tieless ("as though they're waiting for a prefect to tell them to put their ties back on," as Erica Jeal put it). The women wore simple, off-the-shoulder gowns of a creamy hue, streaked with garish color, almost as if from fluorescent highlighters. The overall effect reminded me of the practiced nonchalance of a Rococo painting (say, François Boucher's Lovers in a Park, 1758, from the Timken Museum of Art, San Diego).

Christie's elegant solution to the problem of how to mount a travelling opera production is a minimalistic approach to musical personnel: the eight singers performed all of the choral parts as well as the solo roles. This works because a full staging is not required, so that the same singers can perform as the chorus of guerriers (warriors) and then appear in the solo roles of the competing allegorical characters, La Poésie, La Musique, La Peinture, and so on. Christie chooses his singers carefully, and this group are all strong as soloists as well as ensemble singers, something that is not necessarily common in the world of opera. Moments like the hushed, sotto voce choral response in the first scene ("Il vaut mieux manquer de les dire/Que de les dire faiblement" [Better not to speak of Louis's exploits at all than to speak of them feebly]) were exquisitely done. Christie understands the full dynamic range of his ensemble and manages it to greatest effect. From where I sat, I delighted in watching him at the keyboard: as one movement or section ended, his hand would rise to conduct with minimal, graceful, and precise gestures the next tempo and character. The most striking voices in the first opera were Sophie Daneman, who brought a powerful stage and vocal presence to the role of La Paix (Peace); and Cyril Auvity, who gave an excellent performance in the role that Charpentier created for himself, La Peinture (Painting), written for a taille, the very high tenor voice so favored in the French Baroque period.

Because he was out of favor with court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, Charpentier was not able to receive much patronage from Louis XIV. This opera is an homage to the French monarch, apparently in the hope of influencing the king favorably: it shows the triumph of La Paix (peace) over La Discorde (conflict) under Louis's wise reign and the desire of the fine arts to please him. In her review of the London performance (see above), Anna Picard disapproved of Christie's decision to perform Les Arts Florissants this year, a work she calls "ravishingly scored but devoid of plot . . . As sentimental gestures go, performing the opera from which the group drew their name has a tinge of self-indulgence."

For my part, I thought the choice of this work quite à propos, since it effectively implores a government to see that war and strife can ruin a country and to turn its attention to the sponsorship of the fine arts under the tutelage of peace. Now there was no strident tone or sign in the performance that broadcast an antiwar message (no burning American flags or Bush-Blair effigies, which are far too crass for the refinement of this group) and I have no idea whether this interpretation was actually in the minds of William Christie or Vincent Boussard, who did the staging, but I think that message has a certain immediate relevance in today's Washington. I only wish that our very own American Roi-Soleil had been there to hear the extraordinary sarabande that concludes the opera, sung and played as reverently as a prayer, as the lights darkened to leave only the flowers glowing:

O paix si longtemps désirée, Que tes fruits à goûter sont doux, Tu ramènes les temps de Saturne et de Rhée, Demeure toujours avec nous.

O Peace, so long desired, How sweet-tasting are your fruits; You bring back the time of Saturn and Rhea; Remain with us forever.

To be continued. Go to Part 2.

Believe It...Or Not — by Mark Barry

I was going to write about a conversation I had last night over dinner. It centered around the tale of a right-leaning group that hacks into the software of NASA's Mars rover Spirit and cuts off the flow of imagery back to Earth. The theory is that some of the pictures beaming back were showing signs of previous life on the big red dust bowl; since this is a conflict with the Earth-centered story of life's beginning, the group threatened to destroy the little buggy if NASA didn't censor the pictures before presenting them to the public. I personally don't care if dinner stories are true or not, they only have to be entertaining. Thank goodness we still have Hubble orbiting, safe from budget cuts and sending back imagery that would never give support to a creationist point of view (like the Hourglass Nebula, shown at right).

Instead, my real reason for writing is unbelievable imagery of a different nature. While driving my daughter to and from school, I get to share the most incredible sunrises with her in the morning, and fantastic sunsets in the afternoon: wonderful billowing cloud formations, supported by deep blues, purples, and magenta, topped by wild oranges and screaming yellows. If one were to paint an imaginary landscape, would we ever think of using these combinations of color? What is the true meaning of natural? Nature is everything, and "natural" is only a limitation of our imagination. Perhaps we should be forgiving when a friend wears a striped shirt with plaid pants. The natural world is constantly showing any combination has possibilities: it's not always a harmonic coexistence.

Claude Monet (Vétheuil, Setting Sun, 1901, Musée d'Orsay) and Vincent Van Gogh (The Starry Night, Saint-Rémy, 1889, Museum of Modern Art) come to mind first as painters who were known for pushing the color, which led to the Fauve group of artists (for example, Maurice de Vlaminck, The Blue House, 1906, Minneapolis Institute of Arts), and so on, to artists working today, such as Paul Resika or Helen Frankenthaler. This doesn't even scratch the surface, since I'm only mentioning Western European art because of time restraints (I have to get back to painting): there are so many cultural interpretations, African, Asian, Latino, and Native-American, forever influencing the way we see the world.

The Perfect Use for the Lottery

An item on the news from France 2 tonight (no information available by Internet yet, but you can watch the broadcast here, if you follow the links for France 2, Journal de 20h, February 2) introduced me to a really cool concept, which someone should implement here in Washington. The piece was about the Artothek in Berlin, a sort of lending library for actual works of art. For a nominal subscription fee of 50 euro centimes (62¢) per month, you can take home six sculptures, paintings, or engravings for a period of 6 months. When you return your six items, you can take out six more. The works shown are not multimillion dollar pieces, to be sure, but there was a small Rodin piece, a Warhol painting, and small works by Delaunay, Braque, and many others. How is this possible, you ask? Well, when anyone in Berlin does not claim a prize in the national lottery, the money goes into the fund to support the Artothek, and they can buy things to put on the shelves. The report showed people thumbing through racks of sealed artwork, while librarians dissuaded people from "looking for names" and just choosing art that took their fancy. At the end of the report, it showed the Andy Warhol painting that was going home that day with the France 2 cameraman. They also use some of their budget to buy the work of local artists, which is a nice way both to support the regional art market and acquaint living artists with possible future buyers. I love this idea, and I think one of the presidential candidates should leap at the opportunity to propose funding this in the United States.

According to their Web site, one such Artothek (possibly the one featured in the France 2 report?) is an arm of the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin (the Berlin central and federal state library). It was created in 1968, and its collection focuses on modern and contemporary art, with the goal of stimulating interest in modern art among Berliners. In addition to 1,200 actual works of art, there is a library of 2,000 art prints for study purposes, which can also be borrowed. Another article (Rent a Picasso, by Julia Ucsnay, for WDR) mentions several variations on this sort of institution around Germany, sometimes connected with municipal or regional libraries, sometimes run as small museums or as rental companies primarily for businesses. I found some information in Dutch on artotheks, so I'm guessing this phenomenon exists in the Netherlands, too.

Forgotten Paintings at the Uffizi?

A short item (Tableaux "oubliés" aux Offices [Forgotten paintings in the Uffizi], January 26) from France Télévisions Infos tipped me off to a special exhibit at the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence. I mai visti: Inventario di affetti, sponsored by the Amici degli Uffizi (Friends of the Uffizi), is a show of 25 paintings normally held in the museum's storage spaces and rarely shown; it will be on display until February 28 in the Sala delle Reali Poste, a separate space on the museum's ground floor that was once a royal post office. It is, I understand, the third such exhibit of "never before seen" paintings at the Uffizi (here is an article on last year's exhibit). Information so far is pretty scarce, but here is a partial list of the works that are on display:

• Titian, Portrait of Sixtus IV (recently restored and attributed to Titian)
• Canaletto, View of the Doge's Palace, Venice
• Lorenzo Larciani, Allegory of Fortune
• Beccafumi (Domenico di Giovanni di Pace), Holy Family with St. John
• Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Pool of Betsaida
• Gherardo delle Notti, Adoration of the Shepherds (damaged in 1993 bombing)
• Federico Barocci, Madonna della Gatta
• Giorgio Morandi, Self-Portrait (1921)
• Henry Moore, Reclining Figure (drawing)
• Giacomo Balla, Portraits of Luce and Elica, his daughters
• Michelangelo Pistoletto, Self-portrait with collector
• Mimmo Paladino, Saladino Paladino (Self-Portrait)
• Igor Mitoraj, Double Self-Portrait

Understandably, given the nature of the show, images of these works are difficult to locate. One Italian blogger who saw the show (Alias Libera/Mente on January 6) remarked, "Molto interessante e soprattutto...con pochissima gente. Da vedere" (Very interesting and, above all, with very few people. Worth seeing).