The Memory Paintings of Franco Magnani
Franco Magnani spent most of the first 24 years of his life in Pontito, a small town in the hills of Tuscany. Until recently he had not returned to Pontito or even seen so much as a a photograph of the town. However, at age 31, he began to experience vivid dreams of his boyhood home. He developed an obsessive all-consuming fixation with his past, and could think of little else, resulting in what Oliver Sacks calls “a sort of half existence in the present.” Though he had no experience as an artist, Magnani felt compelled to paint the visions from his childhood that were intruding compulsively on his consciousness. The paintings, some of which are shown here aside actual photographs of Pontito, are astonishly accurate — but also telling in their idealized distortions of this lost paradise.
After an exhibit of Magnani’s work was mounted at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1988, he had the opportunity to return to Pontito. The town was practically uninhabited.
* More on Stephen Wiltshire, the “Human Camera.”
October 12th, 2006 at 10:57 am
That’s kind of a sad story isn’t it? The town is almost deserted? Seems like the guy wished he could return there once he was about to retire..
Lovely paintings btw, although I think you have to keep in mind he probably doesn’t know about perspective, which explains the main differences with the photo’s.
October 16th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
I think there are other interesting differences. At least in the examples here, Magnani adds color–flowerpots, red roof tiles, a child in a red shirt–and deletes “unaesthetic” details like a downspout. I don’t mean to be harsh–the feat of memory is remarkable and the paintings are handsome. But his memory, like most people’s, adds charm and subtracts squalor or dullness.
October 20th, 2006 at 10:41 am
Well…it IS almost deserted now, there were probably flowerpots when he was a kid…possibly even a child in a red shirt?
November 2nd, 2006 at 3:38 pm
And so they took the downspouts when they deserted the town? Uh huh…
December 14th, 2006 at 2:55 am
That’s interesting! I remembered one chemist who dreamed of particles moving that eventually they attached to one another forming a certain compound. The compound was unknown at first but soon it was found to be something that could be synthesized in the laboratory. This person was Kekule and he dreamt of benzene.
The same thing with the painter in this blog, his paintings were from his dreams. It must have been something so weird for most of us but sometimes our dreams bring us to places where we never thought to be existing.
John