4

FROM PAST TO PRESENT,

Rz'roL - a castle for cofltemporary art Andrea Bruno

Architect, born in Turin in 1931. Teaches architec- tural restoration in the Faculty of Architecture of the Turin Polytechnic. Divides his time between rehabilitating historic buildings for contemporary use and designing new ones, in Italy and abroad. Restored the arch of Ctesiphon in Iraq and was a Unesco consultant for the restoration of the minaret of Jam and the fort of Herat in Afghanistan. Also designed the Italian Embassy in Kabul and the Italian-Iraqi Institute of Archaeology and Restora- tion in Baghdad. Has also mounted exhibitions and reorganized museum collections (Royal Armoury of Turin, Ghatnï Museum) and is in charge of the restoration and architectural programming of the Rivoli Castle as a museum and, in collaboration with other architects, of the restoration of the former San Giovanni Hospital, which is to become the new Regional Museum of Natural Sciences.

2 Rivoli Castle is situated on a hill near the Susa Valley, overlooking the hamlet and a vast plain as far as the Alps and the foothills framing the city of Turin.

Rivoli Castle, a composite construction dating from various periods, is now all that remains of the grandiose project designed by Filippo Juvarra for Victor Amadeus II of Savoy in 1718 (Fig. 2).

Owing to the strategic nature of the site, a fortified complex existed there from medieval times. Duke Emmanuel Philibert, having regained the Cisalpine Savoy territories after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 15 5 9, decided to establish his court in Rivoli, and made Francesco Paciotto da Urbino responsible for adapting the castle to his re- quirements. His son Charles Emmanuel I, who was born in the.castle, commis- sioned the court architect, Carlo di Castellamonte, to design a palace worthy of the growing importance of the House of Savoy at the end of the sixteenth century.

In 1693, during the war of the League of Augsburg, the castle was sacked and burned by the troops of the French General Catinat. Victor Amadeus II decided to rebuild it, but work was delayed by renewed hostilities and by the siege of Turin. In 1711 Michelangelo Garove drew up a project on which work proceeded under the direction of An- tonio Bertola until i 17 14 when Victor Amadeus II summoned the abbot- architect Filippo Juvarra to Turin and en- trusted him with carrying out his grand design of building a palace to rival the most prestigious courts of Europe.

The impressive scale of Juvarra's pro- ject is evidenced by the drawings kept in the archives, by the works of court painters (Fig. 3 ) and also by a model in wood found in the cellars of the castle in 1945. His plan was never carried out in full. Unexpected political complications interrupted the work in 1727 while the pillars of the entrance hall were still being erected; and all work abruptly ceased on the site, thus sparing the wing of the seventeenth-century 'Gallery', which had been due for demolition to make way for another new wing corresponding to the one which had just been completed.

The lack of reception rooms and stair-

cases made the castle unsuitable for use as a court residence, and the House of Savoy began to regard the property as a burden.

In 1792., however, Victor Emmanuel, Duke of Aosta, asked the architect Carlo Randoni to continue work on the building. Randoni, besides seeing to the interior decoration, sought to solve the problem of access between floors by designing a grand staircase worthy of the building, but his work, too, was inter- rupted by the invasion of Napoleon's troops in 1798. Work started again after the restoration of the monarchy, but the monarch's death in 1824 removed any further reason for completing it.

With the passage of time the building fell increasingly on evil days; around the middle of the eighteenth century it was divided up and rented out as apartments, and from 1861 onwards it was used as a barracks. Acquired by the municipality of Rivoli in 1883, it continued to be used for the same purpose. In addition to the damage resulting from these various uses, the building suffered from air-raids dur- ing the Second World War. Thereafter, neglect and indifference, combined with the ravages of time, caused still further decay.

The first studies preparatory to a general plan for its restoration date back to 1960, but owing to the lack of funds the plan could not be carried out. Mean- while the ineffective protection afforded by the roof led to a weakening of the timberwork, which gave way in places. With many of the window frames gone, rapid deterioration set in inside the building as a result of exposure to wind and rain.

In the autumn of 1978 the building began to collapse. Practically without any roof above it, the ceiling of a large reception-room on the second floor gave way. The Piedmont Region authorities, responsible for the building and its dependencies, immediately voted the funds required to make it suitable for public use and cultural purposes, in the context of a broader scheme to rehabili- tate the surrounding grounds. It was also

5

F R O M PRESENT TO FUTURE

decided to carry out structural repairs im- mediately in order to prevent the com- plete collapse of the building.

the castZe was converted into a museum

Once its rehabilitation had been decided on, the problem was what purpose the huge building should serve. The purpose had to be consistent with the nature of the building, and decided on before resoration plans were drawn up. The choice had also to take into account broader social and economic re- quirements. Once restored, the castle should not remain a mere relic of the past; it could and should provide a driv- ing force in the context of a more general regional policy.

It is common knowledge that as a ma-

jor industrial city Turin has been par- ticularly affected by the decline in employment caused by technological progress. One way of solving this prob- lem was to create new openings in the ter- tiary sector, for instance in tourism, which is relatively stagnant despite the ci- ty’s remarkable artistic and architectural attractions. Fierce ‘competition’ from other Italian centres such as Venice, Florence and Rome made it necessary to turn to maximum account the city’s special cultural advantages - of a kind possibly not to be found anywhere else in Italy, indeed seldom elsewhere in Europe - while also remedying the lack of cultural facilities available to the com- munity.

Italy has no museum of international contemporary art. The National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome has certainly not

3 Model of Juvarra’s project: the architect’s cross-section showing the insertion of the new staircase.

4 Juvarra’s project, reflecting the monarch’s ambition to have a magnificent palace, provided for the demolition of the long seventeenth-century ‘Gallery’ and for a ground plan without an inner courtyard, extending along the crest of the hill. A block emerging from the centre was to house a vast entrance hall on the ground floor and a large reception-room on the floor above. Two stairways, one on either side, were to give access to the apartments situated in the wings.

6 Andrea Bruno

5 The great ribbed vault, whose structurally complex masonry.can now be seen from a gangway crossing it diagonally.

6 A steel staircase suspended from two cables and supported by the lift shaft leads to the top floor through a vault, with a blue sky painted on i t , which gives access to the highest level of the museum.

succeeded in fulfilling this function, han- dicapped as it is by complicated problems of architectural remodelling and a very limited budget for new acquisitions. Yet the country evinces keen interest in con- temporary art: one has only to think of the Venice Biennale, and the large number of exhibitions held in private and public galleries. However, there is nothing permanent - no centre in which significant examples of contemporary art are always on show. Turin has always had a penchant for contemporary art, thanks to famous artists and collectors and to ex- hibitions held in the 1950s and 1960s which made it a pioneer city in Europe -Le muse inquietanti on metaphysical and surrealist painting, IL sacro e profano on the art of the sym- bolists; I l CavaLiere Azzurro on the Blaue Reiter movement; Combattimento per un immagine on the relations between photography and painting, all thanks to the critic Luigi Carluccio.

Many ideas were mooted concerning the use to which the castle might be put. The one chosen was suggested by a great art-lover and famous collector of modern art, Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. On a visit to the castle he saw that it would make an ideal setting for the definitive arrange- ment of his extensive collection of con- ceptual art and environmental works. Unfortunately, although negotiations with the regional authorities reached an advanced stage, they came to nothing and, as we know, an important nucleus of works from the Panza Collection left Italy for the Museum of Contemporary Art under construction in Los Angeles.

Panza di Biumo had none the less paved the way for future action.

It was decided to set up a mixed public and private centre of international con- temporary art (an almost revolutionary idea in Italy) with a view ultimately to creating a museum which would house a permanent collection and hold exhibi- tions which would put it into the fore- front of the world’s museums.’

In order to solve the problems involved in managing the castle as a museum, the Piedmont Region authorities created a cultural association composed of cor- porate and individual members, known as the ‘Castello di Rivoli-Comitato per 1’Arte in Piemonte’. The statutory pur- pose of this non-profit-making associa- tion is to enhance the artistic and cultural heritage of the Piedmont Region; to this end, it is entitled to make use of the buildings of the castle with full in- dependence as regards intellectual and artistic policy.

The statutes of the Association are modelled on those of a limited liability

1. The choice of a director was obviously a very delicate matter, and an effort was made to find an international figure of proven experience in this specific field, if possible someone who could take an independent stance, at least in so far as the aesthetic divisions of the Italian critics were concerned. Rudi Fuchs, who was both suitably qualified (as director of the Von Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, and organizer of the last ‘Documenta’ in Kassel) and immediately available, was offered the post. With the agreement of the Piedmont Region authorities he mounted an experimental exhibition, lasting exceptionally a full year, from 18 December 1984 to 18 December 1985, to test the suitability of the building for such a purpose and the reaction of the Piedmont community and Italian and foreign visitors. The figure of 100,000 entrance tickets sold in nine months, and the extensive coverage and favourable comments in the world press, confirm that the combination of contemporary art with the setting of Rivoli Castle has all the signs of being a success for the future.

Riuoli- a castle for contemporary art 7

company, with its general assembly delegating authority to a board of direc- tors. Under the board of directors there are sectoral directors who are left com- pletely free to carry out and co-ordinate activities through the preparation of plans covering several years. The accounts are subject to external audit in the normal way.

The museum ilz the casde

Anyone visiting Rivoli Castle now that it has become a museum of contemporary art is suddenly transported back into the atmosphere of the past, with building work proceeding on a noble site. The grandiose project of the architect Juvarra and Victor Amadeus II, only half com- pleted, is to be seen from afar on the road from Turin or the Susa Valley. The vast unfinished building on the hill overlook- ing the plains around Turin intrigues and astonishes by its size and by the obvious fact that its construction was suddenly abandoned. What was to have been the magnificent palace of the House of Savoy has kept the magic aura of all great un- finished works. The site on which work was arrested 250 years ago has been reopened. The purpose of the ‘resto- ration’ is to preserve intact all vestiges of the original forms of architectural and figurative expression, while meeting the new functional requirements of a museum.

The castle lacked staircases on the same scale as the building itself; the monu- mental stairway designed by Juvarra never went beyond the first flight. Stairs and a lift had therefore to be designed to give access to the various floors. From the ground floor flights of reinforced con- crete lead up to the ‘piano mobile’ around the well of the stairway. From there, a steel staircase suspended from two cables and supported by the lift shaft leads to the top floor through a vault, with a blue sky painted on it, which gives access to the highest level of the museum (Fig. 6). Continuing his itinerary, the visitor can recognize the successive historical periods and stages of construc- tion, deliberately left visible, since they are essential to the viewing and understanding of these unusual volumes, arrested in space before their structure and decoration was complete. Such is the case with the great ribbed vault, whose structurally complex masonry can now be seen from a gangway crossing it diagonal- ly (Fig.5). The curious visitor will set aside the visible architectural reality

around him and allow his fancy to roam in another world, outstripped by the imagination of the architect. The panoramic balcony commanding a view of both the past and the future (Fig. 7) is an ideal observation point from which to look down on the eighteenth-century work-site 30 metres below, suspended in time and transformed into a museum. The layout of the building, on the site originally planned, the use of coloured stone and marble and the addition of copper facings to protect the unfinished masonry of the great entrance hall, are all intended as a sober statement, based on faithful scholarly accuracy, of what the ar- chitect origninally had in mind.

Continuing his itinerary, the visitor sees examples of different schools of art reflecting a variety of aims and tastes, some objects never finished, others almost disintegrated. From one room to another can be seen a variety of half- finished attempts at decoration, some- times contrasting but always pleasing. Such contrast was appreciated, and we find that it is still appreciated, as demonstrated by Rudi Fuchs in the way he has arranged his exhibition Overtzre, at present on show in these rooms (Fig. 8).

A passage from his introduction to the exhibition is most enlightening:

In musical terms, an overture contains the main themes of the musical work that is to follow. This exhibition should be regarded as an overture, a suggested outline of what a permanent museum might be on this site. The grouping of contemporary art works in the castle does not follow any par- ticular scheme. The castle has many different rooms, some of them still with their original eighteenth-century decoration, others in such a poor state of conservation that the walls and ceil- ings have had to be repainted white.

But whatever its condition today, each room has its distinctive features. This basic fact was one of the aspects to be taken into account in mounting the exhibition. The works shown here em- phasize the visual contrasts. This type of arrangement is also in keeping with the highly individual character of con- temporary art. There is no predomi- nant, international style governing ar- tistic expression, as there was in the Baroque period in which Juvarra designed the castle. The various art forms of our period could of course be described as Modern art. but the real

7 The panoramic balcony is an ideal observation point.

8 Andrea Bmno

object of modern art is the intense ex- pression of individual ideas in intense- ly individual ways . . . . This is a period in which the artist is seen as an in- dependent individualist, often a revolutionary, he does not sing the praises of his own time, but is fre- quently critical, polemical and pro- vocative. All this is apparent in the various rooms of the castle: going around the exhibition, one can observe and experience these different stand- points, ideas and feelings . . . . The ex- hibition has no particular story to tell; its purpose is to show the great splen- dour and diversity of contemporary

art. There are people who deplore the absence of a single predominant style. I for one believe that the current diver- sity is much better: it is a welcome sign of open-mindedness, of an interna- tional outlook and of the vitality of our culture. The artists represented in the exhibition are some of the protagonists of that international outlook. A single style, with a single focus, would mean that everything else was seen in terms of that style, that everything that did not fit into that stylistic framework was rejected as second-rate or provincial.

[ Translated from Italian]

8 From the exhibition Overtzcre in1984-85 Above: Giuseppe Perrone, Paesaggio verticale 2, 1984, bronze and cloth; right: Michelangelo Pistoletto, Persone nere, 1984, polyurethene.