A suspected arson attack in Naples destroyed a work by Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto Venus of the rags (1967-1974) series yesterday, Wednesday July 12. The piece was unveiled two weeks ago in the city’s central Piazza Municipio as part of a citywide event initiative bringing art into the public space.
The Italian police announced last night that they stopped a 32-year-old homeless man in connection with the incident. Authorities identified the suspect through security footage and trace him at a soup kitchen.
Pistoletto is one of Italy’s most famous contemporary artists, and iterations of “Venus of the Rags” are In view in museums around the world. The nearly 23-foot-tall artwork depicts the ancient Roman goddess of love and beauty picking through a pile of scraps of fabric, with only her back visible to the viewer. Pistoletto was a prominent member of the late 1960s and early 1970s Arte Povera (“impoverished art“), which dismissed mainstream media and offered anti-establishment commentary on Italy’s reigning industrial and political powers. Arte Povera emerged alongside student protests in the nation, and Pistoletto has describe the series as a statement on consumerism.
Wednesday’s fire melted the polyurethane statue and incinerated the pile of rags, reducing the avant-garde installation to a scorched metal frame. In an interview with Italy Corriere Della Sera newspaper, the 90-year-old artist said “the world is going up in flames anyway”.
“The same spirits that wage war are the ones that set Venus on fire,” Pistoletto told the newspaper. He also offered a more optimistic view, explaining This Venus of the rags “calls for regeneration, on the need to find balance and harmony between two spirits that are represented on the one hand by beauty, and on the other by consummate consumerism, a disaster.”
The mayor of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi, said in a statement that the local government would restore Pistoletto’s work, and fundraisers are circulating online to raise financial support for the project.
online, some commentators are point out the irony of raising funds for the reconstruction of a sculpture believed to have been destroyed by a homeless person.
“The icing on the cake: instead of organizing a fundraiser to buy clothes for the homeless man who burned him to put his plight out of sight, we are raising funds so that the “poor” Pistoletto do it again,” one user said. Tweeted.
