{"id":17169,"date":"2026-01-26T08:09:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T07:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/?post_type=magazine&p=17169"},"modified":"2026-01-26T08:09:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T07:09:31","slug":"luca-pignatelli-robert-mapplethorpe","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/en\/magazine\/luca-pignatelli-robert-mapplethorpe\/","title":{"rendered":"Classicism, matter, and the Dionysian: artist Luca Pignatelli face to face with Robert Mapplethorpe"},"content":{"rendered":"Robert Mapplethorpe\u2019s and my themes are not always similar or overlapping, but a central and, in a certain sense, regulating theme concerns the approach to an architecture \u2012 in Mapplethorpe\u2019s case, that of the body, in mine, that of the face \u2012 that harks back to a distant aesthetic, continually manipulated and thus rendered ultra contemporary.
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\r\nThere is a formal moment in Mapplethorpe, namely the construction of a monument through delicacy, poetry, and his instinct to refine forms, that brings him closer to certain aspects of classicism, understood as order; spiritual value determined by repetition and by forms that become exact. In Mapplethorpe, I see the fusion and encounter of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. In my work, contamination occurs through an aesthetic of matter \u2012 the choice to use materials that have always had a different existence, such as train tarpaulins, sheet metal, hemp, arises from the desire to give them new life by changing their intended use. I look to recent archaeology, while Mapplethorpe was perfectly immersed in 1980s New York. There\u2019s also a glamorous component that recalls Helmut Newton, a fashion photographer and creator, like Mapplethorpe, of a mysterious, psychoanalytic world tied to the sexualization of the body. For Mapplethorpe, this sexualized body isn\u2019t simply a method of emancipating the body itself, especially the male one. His gestures are never charged with vulgar sexuality; they become almost taxonomic, anatomical, even in the most gruesome scenes. These are encounters of organs: his clearly emancipated vision has nothing to do with the commercialization of the sexualization of a body. He preserves a cool, almost healing essence, as if it were a sieve capable of filtering.
\r\nLUCA PIGNATELLI TALKS ABOUT ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE<\/h2>
\r\nClassical beauty, which often represents order, has a destabilizing effect: everything is brought back within this aura. Then there are flowers, which I love dearly and which are the fruit of a highly successful attempt at humanization. Flowers emanate a pulse that has to do with the human body. In my work, the material is rough, harking back to the world of Rauschenberg, Burri, Fontana, to what in the twentieth century broke away from the academicism of the smooth and perfect canvas. Tears, additions, and stitching have happened, and I tend to represent figures from the fourth century, such as the muses, on canvases that bear stitching, revisions, interventions, and sutures. They are bodies that come from a distant time, but bear the marks of their translation into painting. For the last fifteen years I have used a partly mechanical system, an evolution of Warhol\u2019s silkscreen: with liquid inks, I can transfer images onto the canvas in an attempt to transform sculpture \u2012 the same sculpture that Mapplethorpe photographed \u2012 into a painting through photography. Every translation generates changes and enriches. I therefore feel close to Mapplethorpe, even if there are substantial differences.
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\r\nReturning to the idea of \u200b\u200bform as monument, Mapplethorpe uses the body as a formal monument, while I work on the monument as the body of history. What interests me is the stratification of this history: I reflected on how much of history was almost in a state of reclusion, in art history books, in museum storage. For me, it\u2019s important to bring all this to life in a sort of circular, non-periodic time, permeated by spirituality.
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\r\nLuca Pignatelli<\/strong>","protected":false},"featured_media":17030,"template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categorie_magazine":[343],"class_list":["post-17169","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","categorie_magazine-words-from-marte"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nClassicism, matter, and the Dionysian: artist Luca Pignatelli face to face with Robert Mapplethorpe - Marsilio Arte<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Luca Pignatelli uses classicism as a lens through which his work engages with that of Robert Mapplethorpe, on show in Milan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/en\/magazine\/luca-pignatelli-robert-mapplethorpe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Classicism, matter, and the Dionysian: artist Luca Pignatelli face to face with Robert Mapplethorpe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Luca Pignatelli uses classicism as a lens through which his work engages with that of Robert Mapplethorpe, on show in Milan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/en\/magazine\/luca-pignatelli-robert-mapplethorpe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Marsilio Arte\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/MarsilioArte\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4.-Arianna-2025-tecnica-mista-su-telone-ferroviario-150x300-cm-1-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1254\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@MarsilioArte\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/en\/magazine\/luca-pignatelli-robert-mapplethorpe\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/en\/magazine\/luca-pignatelli-robert-mapplethorpe\/\",\"name\":\"Classicism, matter, and the Dionysian: artist Luca Pignatelli face to face with Robert Mapplethorpe - 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