Contemporary American art on display in Rome highlights Baroque style

This 2018 ink and acrylic painting by Lorna Simpson depicts a series of blue-toned brick building facades in a photographic style. Day for nightRefers to a film technique where a night scene is filmed during the day, a classic example of cinematic technique. Currently, Simpson’s painting hangs in a dazzling neo-Rococo apartment on the top floor of Rome’s Palazzo Barberini. There, it is the focus of a major exhibition of the same name, which revolves around the concept of playing with reality, with the work confronting political, social and cultural tensions in the United States.

The exhibition, titled “Day for Night: The New American Realism,” features works from the private collection of Beirut collectors Tony and Elham Salameh, and will be on view at Palazzo Barberini through their Aïshti Foundation until September 8. The Salamehs are one of the world’s most prolific and respected collectors of contemporary art, with a focus on American art. “Day for Night” showcases their extensive collection, featuring 150 works by major contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Mark Bradford, Faith Ringgold, Tshabalala Self, and Arthur Jafar, among others. Curated by Massimiliano Gioni of the New Museum and Flaminia Gennari Santori of the Palazzo Barberini, the exhibition is a powerful survey of contemporary American art, offering both boundary-pushing interventions in the birthplace of the Baroque and a daring investigation of some of the most outspoken American artists working today.

“Day for Night” is the first major exhibition of contemporary art to take place in the 17th-century Palazzo Barberini, which normally exhibits Italian art from the 16th to 19th centuries. Also notable is that the exhibition takes place in the palace’s ornately decorated Rococo rooms, which are not usually open to the public.

From the moment visitors enter the exhibition, they are drawn to the concept of “American Realism.” “Salamés’ collection itself suggested the theme of this show because such an important nucleus of works in the collection are by American artists,” Gioni explained. The show builds a picture of the US through artists who are simultaneously documenting and questioning the country’s fraught recent history. Notions of light and dark are also front and center in a nod to Caravaggio, the master of painting.” [Salamés’collectionitselfsuggestedthethemeofthisshowbecausesuchanimportantnucleusofworksinthecollectionarebyAmericanartists”GioniexplainedTheshowbuildsapictureoftheUSthroughartistswhoaresimultaneouslydocumentingandquestioningthecountry’sfraughtrecenthistoryNotionsoflightanddarkarealsofrontandcenterinanodtoCaravaggiothemasterofChiaroscuroBecause the Palazzo Barberini houses the world’s largest collection of “Caravaggist” paintings – paintings created by the 17th century artist in the style of the master.

This is evident from the first gallery visitors enter, which features work by Nicole Eisenman, Dana Schutz, and Salman Tur. “They are all interested in the grotesque and a form of narrative that doesn’t shy away from the omnipresent darkness,” Gioni said. “Eisenman’s paintings dark light (2017)—the image of a man, perhaps the artist’s alter ego, casting the flash of a flashlight into the night—seems like a perfect allegory for the role that art plays in revealing the truth in a world where truth itself is unravelling. It’s no mere coincidence that the character holding the flashlight is also wearing a red hat that resembles a “MAGA” hat: things seem to be more complicated than an allegory of painting and truth.”

“Day as Night” builds on the previous exhibition, “Dark Light,” named after Eisenman’s work and also curated by Gioni, which will take place at the Aïshti Foundation in Beirut in 2022. The new version of the exhibition speaks directly to the Italian context and present moment. “Some works return in both exhibitions, but the focus in Rome is much clearer,” says Gioni. “The Baroque, a product of illusion and propaganda, spectacle and trompe l’oeil, grandeur and religion, was born at the Palazzo Barberini, fusing an uncanny combination of the organic and inorganic, the artificial and the natural—an art that deliberately confused reality and fiction.” This premise was key to the curators’ decision to delve into “American Realism.”

The exhibition is all the more relevant now that the US election is approaching, which has heightened the issues addressed in the artists’ work, from racism and prejudice to climate change and immigration. “The focus on the US, especially in this year, has also added a different tone – almost a vertigo, I fear,” Gioni said, “around conversations and debates that are bound to become increasingly heated.”

In a room on the first floor that Gioni affectionately calls the “Crazy Landscape Room,” works by Nate Lowman, Matthew Huang, Josh Smith, Sarah Hughes, and Sterling Ruby allude to the climate crisis through intensely colored landscapes and depictions of storms and destruction. Next door, works by Andra Ursuta, Joan Semmel, Sanja Kantarovsky, Richard Prince, and Janiva Ellis offer, in the curator’s words, a “rhapsody about the body.” Here, raw and powerful depictions of the female form inevitably surface with references to the ongoing debate over women’s bodily autonomy in the United States.

The exhibition also intoxicates with its contrast between its ancient settings and the cutting-edge contemporary art on display, particularly through a series of interventions on the upper floors. A large sculpture by Urs Fischer of a horse and a hospital bed crossed together – reimagining the tradition of equestrian sculpture – sits in the atrium, just in front of a 17th-century master staircase designed by Francesco Borromini. Meanwhile, Maurizio Cattelan’s pigeons roost in the Atrio Bernini on the other side of the building.

Elsewhere, new sculptures by Charles Ray reimagine archangels, transforming classical figures into soft-bodied surfer figures. The sculptures are located in the Sala Ovale, which offers views of the monumental Pietro da Cortona ceiling frescoes. The Triumph of Divine Providence (1632–39) and a statue of Apollo outside the gardens.

Most striking, however, is the dazzling series of rooms in the Rococo Apartments, in which Gioni makes extensive use of abstraction and the work of black artists. “A unique system of values ​​emerges in these apartments, in the textures of silk wallpapers, frescoes, marble and mirrors,” Gioni notes. The atmosphere of excess, as well as colonialism, expressed through murals depicting indigenous peoples, required a deft curatorial touch. The curatorial emphasis here, Gioni says, is not on “the grotesque and the interplay of dark and light” but on “texture and abstraction.”

“I began to explore the work of artists like Frank Bowling, Peter Bradley, Melvin Edwards, Sam Gilliam, and Jack Whitten, who balanced abstraction with political engagement in the 1960s and early 1970s,” Gioni notes. “These black painters asserted their right to formalism and abstraction, challenging the notion that their work had to depict the struggles of the African American community during the Civil Rights Movement.” The rooms also feature work by Lebanese artists, an obvious nod to Salameh’s background, and by a younger generation of black artists who also powerfully confront history and politics rather than depicting them figuratively.

Another great example of the contrast between old and new is the huge salon-style exhibition in the Sala Marmi, featuring works by the likes of Ludovic Nkoth, Anna Weyant, Jordan Casteel and Derrick Adams, each of which captures the power of portraiture in a unique way.

“The dazzling beauty of the Salon exhibition halls was characteristic of many collectors in the 17th century: it was a symbol of wealth, power and connoisseurship,” Gioni said. There are many grotesque elements in these portraits, which Gioni weaves into the exhibition’s ground floor, challenging the canon of Western art history and its narrow notions of beauty and power.

The room also embodies the enormous logistical effort required to realize the exhibition. “The Sala Marmi is essentially a brand new room built on a scaffolding system that supports the walls on which more than 60 paintings are hung,” explains Gioni. Transporting the artworks from Beirut and around the world to the historic Palazzo Barberini and installing them in such a protected landmark building was a daunting challenge, Gioni explains. “It was forbidden to even hammer a nail into the wall,” he points out.

Yet these challenges never stopped Tony Salamé, who had always dreamed of hosting an exhibition in Italy because of his deep connection to the country—a passion that began when he first came to the country as a teenager, through his extensive travels working for fashion and luxury brands, and ultimately led to his Italian citizenship. Salamé was drawn to the opportunity to exhibit at Palazzo Barberini from the beginning. “I was struck by the beauty of the place,” Salamé says. “Rome is famous. Also, Palazzo Barberini and the collections are very relevant to me.”