Page 236 - THE DECAMERON: 100 Days on 100 Etchings by Petru Rusu

A Dialogue Around
The Origins of The
Middle European
Expressionism
In Petru’s engravings for Boccaccio’s Decameron, the
twisted frenzy of the bodies arouses an impression of
true release. It is a release that breaks limits, avoiding the
difference between styles, social situations and historical-
geographical sites. They are not “illustrations” confined
to a particular moment of the European history: although
within the images there are some allusions to the fashion
of that age, a sort of set-designing care, everything
wrapped around a dance of vitality that doesn’t want to
accept stylistic appearances. In the end, the sensation
we have is a dépaysement deriving from this attitude, not
from a method. A dépaysement that is not a metaphorical
book learning distance, but an aspiration for the totality
that excludes pedantic philological discriminations.
While he was setting up his exhibition, an Italian pointed
out some similarities with Chinese art. Someone else
found analogies with the vivid chromatic of the popular
Mexican engravings. Nevertheless, the exoticism of Petru
Rusu’s images comes from a sort of poetic latitude, from
a distance that he assumes in front of the narration of
the facts. It is -at the most-the same exoticism used by
Boccaccio when he imagined Saladin traveling around the
Christian world, around Lombardy, to test the hospitality
and the magnanimity of the same people he wanted to
fight.
There is an entire cycle of medieval legends about Saladin.
Recently, I have met an eminent art scholar, descendant
of a distinguished Crusader knight that had the fortune
to benefit from that magnanimity. He was captured by
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Saladin, who then set him free, on the condition that he
paid the ransom once he had returned to his house. But
when the knight returned home, he didn’t find any money
to pay the ransom. So, he decided to go back to prison.
Saladin was impressed by his gesture, and set him free
once again only on the condition that he change his name
to Saladin d’Anglure. This name still exists after 800 years.
I make this example, because the exoticism of Petru
Rusu tells of a magnificent East. An East of admiration
and wonder, that has nothing to do with the tendency
to indulge in detailed descriptions. It is this exoticism
I am writing about. An exoticism that Russu seems to
bend into science fiction, populated by characters that
look like ancient Egyptians or Chinese princes dressed
with hundreds of jade stones, as the ones discovered by
the archeologists. Boccaccio will not be angry for such
interpretation. He himself-while he was writing about
Dante-used to wonder if his illustrious master might have
been angry up above.
Boccaccio will not be angry, because he himself look a
lot of freedom regarding the epic matter he utilized. It
was the freedom of a superior distance. Boccaccio was
the first author capable of dominating the most different
subjects-both from a social-historical and popular-
dialectal point of view-with that distance that belongs
to the artistic discipline. I think that this example is very
important not only for those who create illustrations for
books, but also for those artists who confront themselves
with this gigantic masterpieces’ provocation.