An Elegant Dialogue of Old and New

In the mid-to late-1960s, Minimalism was the first art movement of international significance forged exclusively by American-born artists. More commonly associated with sculpture than with painting, Minimalist art banished representational imagery in favor of geometric form. It got rid of the pedestal, which had long elevated sculpture above the plane of daily human experience. And it embraced industrial fabrication, which eliminated the equally elevated touch of the artist’s hand.

Early 20th century Russian and Dutch Constructivist art influenced Minimalist artists. Yet something distinctly democratic and deeply American characterized these Minimalist traits.

However, the first great collector of Minimalist art was not an American but an Italian. Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, a Milanese businessman who for 10 years had been acquiring Abstract Expressionist canvases by Mark Rothko and Franz Kline, hybrid painting-sculptures by Robert Rauschenberg and Pop works by Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg, went for Minimalism big-time.

Actually it made sense: By the ‘60s Panza was keenly attuned to American art, but he was still an outsider. He could recognize distinctive qualities in such a radically new but profoundly American aesthetic while a hesitant American collector might still be busily trying to sort out the forest from the trees.

Whatever the case, Panza’s enthusiasm for American Minimalism did not exactly endear him to the Italian art world of the day. It would be a very long time before contemporaneous Italian sculpture, which came to be called Arte Povera (“poor art”) for its handcrafted reliance on humble and earthy materials, gained substantial international support from other sources. But now that it has, Panza’s long-standing affection for American Minimalism is not merely taken in stride in Italy, it’s embraced.

Evidence for that easy reconciliation can be found in a somewhat unusual place. A four-year restoration and renovation of the Gran Guardia, the largest historic palace in the graceful city of Verona, midway between Milan and Venice, was completed this month. The 17th century palace is in the center of town, directly across the square from the 2,000-year-old Roman arena where opera singers have long since supplanted ancient gladiators.

Designed as a convention and trade center, the new Gran Guardia is being inaugurated by a small but imposing exhibition of Minimalist art from the collection of some 300 works Panza sold to the Guggenheim Museum in 1991. (The Rothkos, Rauschenbergs, etc., had been acquired by L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 1984.)

It’s rather difficult for an American to imagine using an exhibition of major Minimalist art to celebrate the opening of an urban convention center. In conversation, several Veronese members of the art world likewise expressed no small surprise. Credit is given to the city’s forward-thinking mayor, Michela Sironi Mariotti, and her diligent assistant, Giampiero Beltotto, for pulling it off. The result is so exquisite that the worthiness of the idea seems, in hindsight, obvious.

Fourteen works by seven artists are on view, including wall drawings by Sol Lewitt and floor sculptures made from metal plates by Carl Andre. Other sculptures from the earliest phase of Minimalism range from Dan Flavin’s sequence of vertical white and yellow fluorescent tubes, “Untitled (to Henri Matisse),” made in 1964, to Donald Judd’s 1973 horizontal wall sculpture in which eight progressively longer rectangular boxes of purple anodized aluminum alternate with eight progressively shorter voids of the same shape.

The radiant color in Flavin’s fluorescent sculpture spills into the room, encompassing the space in which a spectator stands, while the spatial voids in Judd’s sculpture assume a surprising physicality. Before Minimalism, sculpture had always had a distinct outside and a distinct inside. Here, those distinctions disappear. In Minimalist sculpture, space supersedes form as a concern; space becomes a fluid field that envelopes the perceptual apparatus of the viewer.

That’s one reason Minimalist sculpture eats up gallery exhibition space faster than Starbucks gobbles vacant storefronts. At the palatial Gran Guardia, space is hardly a problem. Large, elegantly proportioned rooms--most with 36-foot ceilings--do just fine.

The renovation has given these palatial rooms simple oak floors, off-white walls and pale gray trim on the doors. It doesn’t look industrial, but a stylish version of that vocabulary is blended seamlessly with the classical proportions of the 17th century building. Put a Robert Morris sculpture of repeated prism shapes, constructed from aluminum I-beams, into that environment and an eloquent dialogue ensues. The space-and spectator-enhancing sculptures make the rooms feel sumptuous yet scaled to human sensibilities.

In fact, Panza’s initial interest in Minimalist art had something to do with his notion of its radical extension of older European traditions. At the Gran Guardia, an ethereal 1987 installation by James Turell offers a good example of Panza’s view of historical continuity.

Turrell’s “Night Passage” is installed in a large pitch-black room. After entering, viewers need several moments for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.

As they do, a horizontal rectangle of pale blue color begins to come into view at the far end of the room. The closer one gets, the brighter it becomes. Stand directly in front of the wide blue rectangle and it appears to be an indeterminate volume of colored cubic space hovering in the blackness.

The sculpture is actually quite simple. A rectangular hole has been cut into a false wall built several feet in front of the room’s far wall. Blue fluorescent lights are hidden behind the false wall. The resulting perceptual illusion immediately recalls modern sources: Most obviously, the installation looks like a movie screen in a darkened theater. The cinematic story that unfolds, however, is a narrative of changing visual perception.

Seeing this work in Italy offers other potent connections that are not modern. One of the great treasures of Milan’s Brera Gallery is Raphael’s 1504 masterpiece, “Marriage of the Virgin.” The now-famous painting was commissioned for an altar dedicated to the Virgin’s wedding ring. It depicts a Christian mystery told in the “Golden Legend.”

Mary’s many suitors were to present wooden rods to the high priest of the temple, who would give Mary’s hand to the one whose rod bloomed. The image conjured by the miracle is sexual yet chaste, foretelling the virgin birth of Jesus.

Mary and Joseph are shown in the foreground of Raphael’s painting, which is roughly as tall as a standing man, and they’re flanked by other temple virgins and rejected suitors. The upper half of the painting is dominated by the classical domed temple. In the church--Raphael’s patron--the central mystery of Catholic Christianity is housed and perpetually reenacted.

All lines in the composition lead to the temple door, which is wide open and positioned at the visual heart of the painting. You look right through the temple: The open door frames a clear blue rectangle of heavenly sky, which shimmers above the landscape beyond.

Turrell’s perceptual environment of shimmering blue space is another kind of miracle, which has to do with a decidedly secular spirit. But the connection between these two works, separated by nearly half a millennium, is inescapable.

You see it again in Lawrence Weiner’s 1971 text piece, which is printed in large, bold letters above a row of Palladian windows on a wall facing the grand staircase that takes visitors to the exhibition on the Gran Guardia’s second floor.

“Over and Over Over and Over and Over and Over and Over” the text says. Recalling what might once have been carved into stone on a classical building’s entablature, the work unfolds a commanding sense of poetic continuity through time.

Not far from the Gran Guardia is San Zeno Maggiore, arguably the finest Romanesque church building in Northern Italy, started in the 9th century and with a magnificent 12th century bronze portal. Over the free-standing main altar is Andrea Mantegna’s beautiful painting of the Virgin and Child surrounded by saints. The painting was made and taken to San Zeno’s altar about 600 years after the place was built.

For Verona maybe it’s not that unusual after all to rededicate an old building with new art. Over and over over and over ....

Gran Guardia, Piazza Bra, Verona, Italy, through October.