Art and Architecture of the Shoah. Open Problems

Paolo Coen - Università della Calabriapaolocoen.blogspot.it

Chapter I

David Gafni, Holocaust Museum’s upgrading, Kibbutz of Yad Mordecai, Israel, 2003-2005The Honey Farm?

Kibbutz Yad Mordecai.Honey, yes. But it hasn’t been always this way.

Mordechai Anielewicz (Wyszków, 1919 – Warzaw, 8 may 1943)

Nathan Rapaport, Mordechai Anielewicz, 1960, Kibbutz Yad Mordecai, with the water-tower destroyed in 1948 by the Egyptian’s troops on the background

The Shoah in Israel, a subject of countless re-interpretations and reflections in the world of arts

Flashback Scene - Waltz with Bashir

Chapter II

The Risiera, i.e. rice mill, of San Sabba, Trieste, ItalyThe musealization of the architect Romano Boico1968-1975

Romano Boico, leftJean Fautrier, right

Romano Boico, leftAlberto Burri, right

The Risiera of San Sabba:Some problems of conservation

What they’ve done to the Risiera?

Chapter III

The Italian Memorial, 1977-1980, once Auschwitz National Museum

Primo Levi, Lodovico Belgioioso, Pupino Samonà, Luigi Nono

It is old wisdom, and so already warned Heinrich Heine, a German and a jew: those who burn books end up burning men, violence is a not-estinguished seed.

Primo Levi

Why?Why closing the Italian Memorial?Why transferring it to Italy?Because of it – supposed – didactic inefficiency?Maybe.Here’s a better answer.

Well, why art, then?

Hubert Lanzinger, The Standard Bearer, c. 1935, USHMM

Here’s the answer. Because through the art – no matter if you make it, appreciate it, write about it or even criticize it and

laugh at it – one may find a way to escape and denounce tyranny.

Any kind of tyranny. Avoiding pornography and rethorics.

Because true art reveals ways previously unknown. so widening our vision of the world.

2011 - Drive, by Nicolas Winding Refn, “A real hero, a real human being”