Ritrografia no. 32 Title 1: "Flowers and Cocks" Title 2: The Flower of Happiness

Journey between Ferrara and Rome.

Protagonists: Vittorio Sgarbi and Franco Ariano Maestro Illu Minato.

TTG Travel Experience Exhibition Rimini, 11 ^th October 2023

The exhibition created by Sgarbi, titled "Flowers and Cocks, from De Pisis to Mapplethorpe" is at risk of censorship because there are many articles that would like to ban it solely because of the provocation proposed by the title, which is, moreover, taken from the exact words written by Mapplethorpe: "I am looking for perfection in form. I do that with portraits. I do it with COCKS. I do it with FLOWERS”, he claimed.

Now instead, someone would like to turn the title into "Do it with flowers" , "Between pity and prayer", "Pride and prejudice" or even "Between grace and damnation".

All of this is almost ridiculous in relation to the fact that, in homage to Mapplethorpe at the Stammtisch in Dusseldorf, an exhibition entitled precisely "Cocks & Flowers" has already been held. At this point I begin to wonder what the real serious, insurmountable problem is. Is it the inversion of the position of the 2 terms, imposing "Flowers" in first place over "Cocks”?

Vittorio explained that: " A title like this, without hypocrisy, is a way to redeem what has always been sin, shadow, obscurity and concealment. It is as if one should be ashamed of that "tool", so used every day on every front. So I was very pleased to receive a phone call from Zavagli (Repubblica journalist, ed.) as he observed how there was no desire to provoke, but only a desire for absolution ...".

Over time I have come to realise that Vittorio can resist grasping a new "Flower", with sacrifice!

On the contrary, he cannot at any cost fail to possess a work of art that has seduced him. The following is what happened this morning during the press conference.

While Sgarbi was explaining the motivations that led him to conceive the exhibition, I jumped on the table and showed him my Ritrografia no. 32, "Flower of Happiness", as from yesterday renamed "Flowers and Cocks" , in his honour.

Vittorio immediately appreciated it, desired it, took it in his own hands and placed it next to him saying:

“Beautiful, bravo, congratulations, we"ll show this one to the Ministry of Culture right away” .

I replied: "No".

He said, "What do you mean, no? Didn"t you bring it for me?"

Me: "Not really."

Him: "Why?"

Me: "I still have to finish it."

Him: “No, no, this is already finished, it"s perfect. The Ministry already has a special niche ready to display it”.

Me: "All right. Tonight I"ll finish it and then we"ll take it to Rome".

In short, tomorrow Sgarbi will have to go to Rome for institutional commitments and he will take my Ritrografia no. 32 to exhibit at the Ministry. Due to a series of improbable and certainly unrepeatable coincidences, I find myself travelling from Ferrara to Rome, with Vittorio Sgarbi as my passenger, and me as the driver of my car. He and I, alone, for five hours.

Here are the facts that fate created for this meeting to happen:

- Vittorio"s first car was stolen and the first driver fired;

- the second car was taken, legally, from the Ministry and the second driver dismissed;

- the third car, a Maserati, this time a rental, waiting in an “unsual” car park in Rimini, was not ready;

- Guido, faithful to Vittorio over the centuries, is stuck between Cattolica and Rimini, waiting for the Maserati;

- Nino is in Rome;

- Alessandro is in Rho Ferrarese;

- Pietro has to stay in Modena;

- Sauro has changed job;

- Sabrina is busy;

- Max, who accompanied him until yesterday, must be in Milan today;

- Giuseppe caused a night-time quarrel with Vittorio, which ended in tragedy and his consequent abandonment of the "ship", hopefully temporary.

At this point, the question is: "Who will accompany Sgarbi to the Ministry of Culture?"

Answer: "Flowers and Cocks", Id Est, me.

During the voyage, among the many phone calls, comes the rejection of the Mapplethorpe Foundation.

"Flowers and Cocks", as the name of an exhibition, which in truth proposes a dialogue between painting and photography, is a brilliant idea, illu-minated, indeed it is superior to it.

And what is there beyond being illu-minated? There is the absolute, the sacred.

“"Cock" and "Pussy" are sacred. Without them neither humanity nor the animal kingdom would exist.

So, Vittorio: "If someone doesn"t want you, they don"t deserve you!" If the foundation doesn"t want to participate, all the better! The exhibition "Flowers and Cocks, WITHOUT Mapplethorpe" will take place ”.

Thanks to you Vittorio, I was able to make my "artistic coming-out" that goes beyond the Ritrografie made to reveal my discoveries about Van Gogh.

Until today, the world around me always pointed at and criticised me when I expressed myself with works in which "sexual" subjects and objects were present. In my atelier, I have many Ritrografie with “Flowers” and there are also many iron, wooden, aluminium, small, large, painted and hidden, cocks.

I have also created works with pussies made of wood, plastic, made from real nests, with fabric, clitorises, holes, eyes, bondage, chains, nipple pullers and anal tails.

I also invented and patented ERECTUS Wine, made with the bunches ("Cocks") turned up facing the sky until harvest. In 2011 Christie"s in Geneva broke all records. It was the most valuable first vintage (2009) wine ever sold.

Then I found a medieval cage inside which naked girls and boys were squeezed, crushed and closed inside, defying the limits of physics and human mechanics. I created other Ritrografie, such as the "Flowers of Pussy” and the "Sweat Sat” ", painted with girls who wanted to leave their "mark" in the history of art.

"I am ready and I deserve it!”

It"s happening exactly as it happened with COVID. They want to close us down, censor, limit, abuse power which, as you said, is a strong power precisely because there is someone who, recognising it as such, bows to it. So, please don"t submit to it. It is already the exhibition that everyone would like to see, especially the younger ones and those who would despise it.

What will probably happen is that "Flowers and Cocks" will be the only "non-exhibition" to have only one work, Ritrografia no. 32, which you signed with me, for an exhibition that has never been held and will never be held.

Yesterday at the TTG Fair in Rimini, during the official presentation, you publicly praised this work and you were so attracted by it to the point of wanting to exhibit it at the Ministry.

Now, Vittorio, after the umpteenth refusal, I wrote this letter while driving and I would like to read it to you. Would you like to hear it?"

Sgarbi"s reply: "No, I don"t give a "fuck"".

Me: "But why?"

Him: "Because the exhibition won"t take place anyway! ”

Me: "Exactly, in fact Ritrografia no. 32 is the only work for an exhibition that doesn"t exist and it"s magnificent! Well Vittorio, if I can"t read it to you, at least I can tell you about it while I"m driving."

Him: "I don"t care, I don"t want to listen to you!"

Me: I didn"t give up and started: “Do you know that the Stammtisch in Dusseldorf has already held an exhibition called "Cocks & Flowers"? Plus the Venice Biennale 2022 was full of "Cocks", "Pussies", chunks of flesh, blood and do you know that Abramovich in 2019 recreated the work "Naked Doorway" in which two human beings, naked and standing in front of each other, form a doorway and touch visitors with "Cocks", ass, tits and "Pussy"? The first time was at the Galleria di Arte Moderna in Bologna, in 1977, and then at MOMA and the Royal Academy of the Arts in London. On all occasions the critics confirmed that it was "art", everything was fine and nobody thought about the children who could see it”.

Him: "Where did they do it in 2019?"

Me: “In Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, "The Cleaner", 2018-19. Marina was hailed by everyone, while your exhibition was censored because of the name, according to them, was "provocative". All this fury against a title happens in a world where any child can access Onlyfans, YouPorn, PornHub, "Cruciani"s La Zanzara" or "Lo Zoo di 105" without any problem”.

I understand that "Flowers and Cocks" is no longer just an exhibition or a work of art.

It is a symbol of freedom like Courbet"s "L"origine du monde" , a key capable of "opening" doors in the minds of those who would like them "closed". But why are these doors so closed? "Flowers and Cocks" is scary, so scary.

The confirmation lies in this banal, but not too banal, mental exercise: try saying in public to a stranger: "Do you know the exhibition "Flowers and Cocks"? Easy, no?”

At this point I understand how closely this Ritrografia no. 32 is connected to my Ritrografia no. 44 “CRATOS” (originally DEMO-CRATOS, before the "Demi" ended up, as slaves, in the W.C. of power)".

Banning "Flowers and Cocks" just because of its name is like banning the sauna just because you are in the nude, so provincial, reductive, above all unnatural. Would you have the courage to take your partner or companion so wonderfully and naturally exposed in the warm meadow of a sauna full of other different "Flowers and Cocks" ?

Every one of us, religious people included, has a head full of "Flowers and Cocks" . These thoughts have been there since we were born naked, until the SICK powers forced us to cover ourselves. And "covering" is precisely a synonym for "censorship". And censorship, combined with a lack of tolerance of diversity, is at the root of wars.

For each of us, the memory probably goes back to those early childhood moments, so strong in terms of emotion, in which each of us was forced to relate to other naked bodies in public changing rooms or at school. From that moment on, our minds were filled with "Flowers and Cocks" , to which everyone attached a thousand different adjectives and meanings. At that time the doors of our minds were closed and the keys were thrown into the vast sea of fear. An ever-expanding sea, just like the space that surrounds us. Everyone thinks, but they dare not say, so they close off their thoughts!

People think that missiles and bombs are made of metal, they actually come later in life. They are first of all bad thoughts, like censorship. They are doors and "harbours" that close, against freedom, against life, against humanity. "Flowers and Cocks" allows you to do what power no longer wants to happen, it makes you think, as Cicero said, "To think is to live", so it makes you afraid. Fear of confrontation, of being inadequate, of losing, fear of what one does not understand, does not know or despises. Precisely for this reason, if you read to the end, you will no longer be afraid of the infamous word "Cazzo", which your mind will have memorised exactly 61 times in Italian and 4 times in English.

And who knows what the great artificial deficiency will understand about "Fiori e Cazzi"?!

In summary: ““Cock” and “Pussy” are neither right, nor left, neither good nor bad.

They are nature, they are life.

Whoever does not want this exhibition denies nature and life.

Therefore, respect "Flowers and Cocks"!

I want to live and to live I need art.

Art is freedom. Censorship is against life, the mother of all wars”.

MINISTRY of CULTURE

3RD FLOOR - DIRECTORATE GENERAL BUDGET

“Fiori e Cazzi”

Ritrografia no. 32

Franco Ariano Maestro Illu Minato

If all of the above were not enough, I refer you to quotations from unsuspected personalities, who, when speaking of "Cocks", literally expressed themselves in the following terms:

1. Italo Calvino

Corriere della Sera, 12 February 1978, headline: "Beyond the polemic on coarse talk on the radio. There is swearing and swearing". Taken from the book "Italo Calvino. Una Pietra sopra. 1980. Le Parolacce (1978). Pages 303-305:

"[...] Our language has words of unparalleled expressiveness: the same voice "Fuck" deserves all the good fortune that has allowed it to impose itself on the synonyms of the various dialects from the parlances of central Italy. [...] It must therefore be respected, making an appropriate and not automatic use of it; if not, it is a national asset that deteriorates, and "Italia Nostra" should intervene. [...] There is an attitude of, let us say, "secularisation" of obscene words, in the sense of using them no more and no less as one uses any noun of a concrete thing or verb of action, dissolving their sacral halo: an attitude that is morally sharable, but that cannot overlook the fact that the choice of one locution or another to say the same thing always has a cultural significance, and ends up conveying very different meanings. The semantic transparency of a word is inversely proportional to its expressive connotation. [...]

And it is a linguistic wild card".

2. Meo dei Tolomei

Poet of the playful-realist current of the late 13th century.

The first written attestation of the term "cock" in the meaning we also modernly attribute to it is found in this sonnet of his:

"For if thou fearedst no shame, thou wouldst go with eyes bowed down

And never wouldst thou appear among people. Thou bearest the gonfalon of the sciaurati,

Son of the one whose ass is so gnawing, That all the cocks of the world have wearied.

3. Franco Sacchetti

From here on, the term will find more and more space, certainly in everyday language, but also in playful and burlesque literature. And still in the fourteenth century, we will find it in his rhymes (CXXIIb, 9):

"Ch"io ho il "Cazzo" mio, che è tanto vano

That sleeps on his balls, and does not awake

And it is five years or more that he was not healthy.

4. Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno"s "Candelaio", first edition Paris 1582.

From the 16th century onwards the attestations of use of this term multiplied. In the "Candelaio" it appears among other things with the value of an interjection, just as it would be used today, in sentences:

""Shit", said intra me. Costei ne vuole!

"Fuck", what a good latrone he is!"

5. Antonio Vignali

Academician of the Intronati (Arsiccio Intronato).

The "Cazzaria"

The text was first published in Venice around 1531.

Also in the 16th century, he published this obscene little masterpiece, a work in which

which deals with "the reasons and circumstances of fucking", develops into a dialogue

sodomitic-goddess dialogue in which references to the political events

of Siena at the time.

6. Pietro Aretino

"Sonetti lussuriosi", published in 1526.

From the same period are the "Sonetti lussuriosi", inspired by the erotic engravings of

Marcantonio Raimondi.

The language of the sonnets is, needless to say, rather explicit:

"This "cock" I want, not a treasure!

This is he, who can make me happy!

This is indeed an Empress"s "Cock"!

This gem is worth more than a well of gold.

7. Antonio Canova

And later, among the unsuspected, here he is with:

"Oh "Fuck" "Fuck"!

Did you ever dare to believe that I had got my head up my ass for the knighthood?"

8. Giacomo Leopardi

Letters to his brother Carlo, 1800.

"True literature of whatever kind is not worth a "Fuck" with

foreigners".

9. Cesare Zavattini

Radio: "Voi e io, punto a capo", 25 October 1976.

At the microphones of Radio Rai he made the director of the programme tremble and the listeners jump on their chairs by saying

chair the listeners by saying:

"And now I"m going to say a word that so far on the radio no one has ever said

no one has ever said on the radio.

A pause in silence and then: "Fuck".

It seems to have been the first time the word "Fuck" was uttered on the radio.

After the inevitable, predictable and pointless controversy, the term has since acquired

new dignity or, as Umberto Eco would say, "a new innocence".

10. Umberto Eco

"La bustina di Minerva", Bompiani 2011: on the 1999 "dickishness".

"When a language frees itself of certain taboos, a state of new

innocence. For some time now, not only children but also a large part of their

parents really believe that "mess" only means "noise" or "disorder",

and even people of rank say "cool" about a pretty boy, having

completely forgotten that the term masculinises a heavy appreciation

once used for the opposite sex. There is therefore the possibility that the next

generation will believe in good faith that "Fuck!" just means

"golly!" and that "dick!" is a synonym for "gabble!" already

recommended by Tommaseo.

What causes my deepest concern, however, is how one will then be able to

mention the male member, on those desirable occasions when people

abandoning surfing the Internet for a moment, will seek to have

physical relations with some being of the similar or opposite sex. We will not risk that,

through excessive dulling of lexical freedom, certain fundamental organs can no longer

can no longer be designated in a literal manner, so that the partner understands what

what we mean, and the impossibility of soliciting that mutual

offer of recesses and excrescences that is so necessary to implement (as we will say

then) intercourse?"

11. Gregorio De Falco

On 13 January 2012 at Giglio Island the Costa Concordia cruise ship is about to

sink and the terrible captain Schettino did not rise to the occasion

abandoning the ship before the passengers. Captain De Falco, who

coordinates the rescue operation from land, takes the reins of the situation and, in a famous

agitated phone call, he orders him: "Get on board, "Fuck"!"

The sentence with "fuck", in which the interjection also takes on a particular role due to the fact that it

fact of being inserted in a formal context underlined by the form "go up", with the

"her" and not "you", became so famous that it became a true "idiom",

quoted in a thousand situations and even written on T-shirts.

12. Alessandro Barbero

"La voglia dei cazzi e altri fabliaux medievali", 2020

A freer, yet more usable translation, which reveals spicy, lively and

sarcastic, typical of a sharp and desecrating medieval mentality, to most is completely

unknown and unsuspected.

"This book collects translations of twenty very libertine fabliaux, which show

not only the relationship with sex in 1200, but also the blatant nonchalance

expressive ease for which perhaps, let us confess, we are not ready" - V. Desalvo, Repubblica

"A subject that in the hands of a historian of the calibre of Alessandro Barbero,

equipped with the right irony and wit, has been transformed into a highly enjoyable volume,

full of surprising gimmicks" - La Stampa

"The critical fortune of fabliaux has been steadily growing over the

recent decades. The French Middle Ages has left us around one hundred and fifty of these

rhymed poems, generally of octosyllables, a few hundred lines long,

and of mostly erotic, if not frankly obscene, content".

Alessandro Barbero proposes a translation of these very enjoyable poems

moving away from the traditional philological approach. The fabliaux are written in verse, in

lingua d"oil and as such translated into modern French. The operation attempted, with flattering results

flattering results, was to re-propose their freshness and immediacy to a wider audience, accustomed to the

wider audience, accustomed to reading prose as the contemporary one is. It is a

freer translation that reveals spicy, lively and sarcastic stories, typical of a

sharp and desecrating medieval mentality, completely unknown and unsuspected to most.

In short, even though the use of the word "cock" continues to spread, the term remains for centuries confined to vulgar jargon, proper to family communication, dialect, within the male audience, or proper to "lustful", playful and curious literature.

Since the late 20th century, the "cultural revolution" has cleared the term into wider circles, proclaiming it with flying colours as the number one swear word in Italy, pronounced indiscriminately and proudly by both male and female audiences.

"Flowers and Cocks"