ON FILIPPO SANGIORGIO

I have finally seen Filippo Sangiorgio's "the exploded house" which he made back in 1917 near the lake of Piana degli Albanesi and it is the most extraordinary work of art i have seen or even just immagined to date. Moreover, the idea that such a sofisticated mind (capable ofconceiving such thing) should be associated with an illetteraten Sicilian man born in a family of shepards and brought up in the least cultured environment possible, makes the whole thing somewhat of a miracle.
The first time i had heard of this house must have been a couple of years ago when, on the way back from Corleone to Palermo, the car i was in broke down and we had to spend the night in a little cottage by the lake of Piana. There i overheard a german couple trying to explain that they were looking for a bombed house in the area. I didn't pay too much attention at the time.
 
Then a few months later in Los Angeles a friend mentioned a bombed house in Italy and i asked if she meant one in Sicily. It turned out to be the same one of the couple in the cottage and this time i was eager to hear the whole story, which she knew in details. A guy on the mountains near Palermo had been producing the most amazing art in a very similar manner as those artists that in more recent years have been known as "land artists", "poveristi", etc. the big differences with all these others being that he didn't know anything about contemporary art at all (he spent his whole life on those mountains, never ever stepping foot in Palermo), that the products of his intellect were going to remain hidden away on this rocky hills for almost a century and he wouldn't have had any sort of recognition for his intuitions, whatsoever. But then, that's life! And it probably adds a good deal of mistery and fascination to his odd case. How is it possible that a person which such a personal background, who has never read a book in his life and never had a chance to see what was going on in the world outside his village, could nurture the desire of turning a vision like that into a shrine? As you approach the site the first thing that catches your eyes is nothing. Emptiness for the three miles that separate the new motorway exit from the bombed house.
Then you finally .get to the place and... god!
It took me so long to understand what it was that I was looking. I was expecting the sight of the ruins of a house or even just abig crater in the ground with no signs of a house or something compatible with the effect of a blast. Instead i found myself staring at a gigantic woman that then turned out to be (as i moved around it) a big wrecked wall. part of the perimetrical wall of Sangiorgio's house. Then behind it, the rest of the house unveiled. The first approach was aunique visual experience. It was like getting on a film set during a lunch break and i could walk along fake alleys leading to the secrets of a film on the make. The "house" isn't composed of just one building, it's more like a cluster of buildings of various sizes with little bridges connecting one to another. Structurally the whole compound is still intact, which is by itself quite amazing considering the impact of the explosion. accoring to an old lady named Giusina who appeared out of nowhere on the back of a donky claiming to be the only person in chargeof looking after the site, Sangiorgio detonated a blasting charge of some 400 kilos of dymanite! Had to belive by the look of the buildings. But then she took me for a short walk down to a huge rock sticking out of the fertile soil (abundantly cultiveted in the area exept there) and pointing at an evident fracture in it said"do you see that? This rock is at about 200 mt from the house. Look, the blast cut it in two halves! That is the house, the sheepfold, the cattleshed and barn he helped his father building as a kid. He knew they would have resisted!" But then the question is why did he decide to do such a job? Was he mad? No. Or rather, perhaps. The old keeper lead me to little hut not too far, hidden behind a wall of bushes and explained that she is trying to turn into Sangiorgio's museum with the help of some goodwilling peasantsfrom the area. "In the last two or three years" she said "there has been an increesing number of peaple coming here to see the "exploded house". They make lots of questions, just like you! They want to know everything. But we don't really know much of Sangiorgio. We know he was crazy and lived here alone since his parents died. But Giacinto knew that Sangiorgio had this habit to bury his works once he had finished them. It's turning into a good business with allthis foreigners here and peaple from the village are making profits, so we decided to build a little house and display the junk we find under the soil near the house. Sometimes we aren't even sure if it is his work but it doesn't matter, we clean it and put it in the hut and tourists are as happy as kids in a candy shop when they look at those sketches and pieces of junk!" She opened the door and let me into the hut.
That day started in the weirdest way for me (of course i won't say why as it isn't really relevant) and i had felt a little bit uneasy since i left my hotel room. Now i thought i knewthe reason for it. All those unexplainably beautifully vicious works in the hut were somehow inflicting their black magic onto me. So much so that what had happened that morning in the hotel, now looked to me as a clear omen. Now it all made more sense. The "exploded house wasn't an isolated act of madness. All of his works perspired pure insanity. 　

　 ............>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> But then, was it Sangiorgio's work or was in the old lady's? After all it was her who arranged the "museum"!<<<<<<<<<<<
Now i looked at her in a totally new way as i came out of the hut and saw her climbing on top of the donkey. she gave me the key and asked me to lock the door. the (...)