What is Michelangelo good for? - By Tomaso Montanari

This one I am presenting today is one of those books that, once read, you will never tire of rereading and appreciating: I myself have read it three times. We are talking about A cosa serve Michelangelo? by Tomaso Montanari, a Florentine art hist orian, professor of modern art history at theFederico II University in Naples and for some time now also a blogger for Il Fatto Quotidiano. Why is this a must-have book in your collection and why do I recommend it so highly? Let’s go in order.

What is Michelangelo good for? by Tomaso Montanari

To begin with, one of Tomaso Montanari’s main merits is that he has produced a book that is truly for every audience, for everyone, that does not require a knowledge of the subject and is suitable for anyone: enthusiasts, students, insiders, but also (and with a hint of hazard one would think above all) citizens who want to understand how a few things work in Italy, the “home of art,” with regard precisely to the way cultural heritage is managed (an expression that, moreover, Montanari defines as a fortunate-as damning-syntagma, and we will see later why)... all starting from an illustrative story, namely the purchase by the Italian State of a Christ attributed to none other than Michelangelo Buonarroti, sold by the antiquarian Giancarlo Gallino for the sum of three million two hundred and fifty thousand euros: according to experts, in reality it would be a wooden crucifix produced by a Florentine atelier of the fifteenth century that made similar works almost in series (and consequently the sum spent would be disproportionate).

Montanari uses the story of the Gallino Christ to introduce us to a world made up of silent art historians, who moreover, according to Montanari, “find their own silence very convenient” (lack of self-esteem and opportunism are, according to the author, the main reasons), but also of power games that instrumentalize art for the purposes of the most blatant propaganda (the case of the Christ attributed to Michelangelo is an example of this as well), of works of art transformed into marketing tools: hence, among other things, the reason for the “harmful syntagma” cultural good. Because the work of art today is no longer seen as a means of producing culture, intelligence, awareness and respect, but as a means of making cash: in fact, according to Montanari, “the income produced by works of art is not economic, but intellectual and cultural.”

A system, the one put in place in recent years, that in the long run risks becoming harmful, because the ministerial marketing proves to focus on a few museums and a small number of so-called masterpieces known to all: the result consists in the fact that the most popular complexes are congested and overcrowded and smaller realities struggle every day against the lack of means and resources. A cult of the few masterpieces that is even more harmful in a country whose uniqueness, using Montanari’s words, “consists in the density of a widespread heritage that is inseparable from the urban and natural landscape in which it has endlessly stratified over millennia.”

And we find a direct consequence of this way of looking at works of art in exhibitions: few are, according to Montanari, those that are organized on the basis of serious scientific and philological criteria and that aim to bring about new discoveries or to educate the public about an artist (or a group of artists). Exhibitions that have little or nothing scientific about them, that bring up “big names” (identified by Montanari in"Caravaggio, Leonardo, Van Gogh or the thaumaturgic label of the Impressionists") or those organized according to the format of the "display of a single masterpiece," or even worse those that are purely propagandistic (such as the one organized in Naples in which a real Michelangelo was juxtaposed with the alleged one to make it seem as if the attribution made sense), or confessional, are all the rage.

And if we think about exhibitions, in the field of art history the damage that senseless exhibitions do is not only devastating (to the environment, to art historians, to the public, to all of us) but it is also very insidious, because in Italy the strange association of ideas prevails according to which art history is an expression always associated with culture. But if we think of cinema, paraphrasing an example from Montanari, it would never occur to anyone to call one of the many vulgar and laugh-out-loud Christmas comedies a “cultural product”: it is good to know that even in the exhibition sector there are shows that have the same cultural depth as cinepanettoni.

Montanari’s critique then continues through the newspapers (where one never finds, to link back to the subject of exhibitions, negative reviews) to arrive at theuniversity, which is not spared: the recent 3+2 system is accused by Montanari of having created a whole series of degrees in cultural heritage that would not offer a complete preparation and would delude young people by promising job outlets for a job that “does not exist in the real world.”

A book of criticism only? No, because although Montanari could be blamed for the fact that the pars destruens of his volume occupies 6/7 of the discussion, the author lays the groundwork for a pars construens by trying to point a way out of this system, and then it will be up to us to debate and expand on his proposals, which are aimed primarily at those in the field: Montanari’s idea is mainly to return art history to art historians, who should begin to be more present, to speak to the public, to organize good exhibitions, to make people discover that solid and inseparable relationship that exists between art, environment and landscape and constitutes a “network of relationships” that art historians must “make alive and speaking.” When we approach this heritage with more awareness, when we begin to see it almost as an entity that not only excites us but also speaks to us and teaches us, then we too will probably be helping to change the system and save our art.

So, ultimately, what is Michelangelo, that is, what is art history for? To know our heritage in order to protect and save it (because we don’t think that protection is reserved only for insiders: protection also comes through us, through our behavior), to make us love beauty, to share values, to respect art and consequently our fellow human beings, to make us become aware and intelligent citizens.

What is Michelangelo good for?
By Tomaso Montanari
Einaudi, 2011
129 pages
10 €

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