ART, WHATEVER IT TAKES

Since the early pandemic in 2020, Rome Art Program has conducted a series of interviews, “Art, Whatever It Takes.”
Artists, Art Critics, and Art Historians living in Italy, the U.S., and U.K., share their insights during these powerful times.

Interview with Joseph Santore

Joseph Santore is a New York artist, teaching at Bard College, NY

and at the NYSS NewYork Studio School, NY.

RAP: Where do you live ? And what is your background?

Joseph Santore: I live in midtown Manhattan, three blocks from Penn Station. My studio is in LIC Queens. I’m originally from South Philadelphia. I still don’t consider myself a New Yorker after forty-six years. I grew in South Philadelphia, in the Parish of St Mary Magdalen de Pazzi, the first Italian speaking church in the country. I grew up six blocks from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell . When I was a kid my gang and I would walk up there and run through Independence Hall and and jump on the Bell and try to swing it. We were rough kids always fighting, stealing, and generally causing trouble. I knew street corners hangouts and poolrooms, storefront speakeasies, barrooms, after hour clubs and bust-out joints. Directly around the corner from my house was a free art school, The Fleisher Art Memorial. A bunch of us snuck in one night but got kicked out for throwing clay at a nude model, we were disappointed because she didn’t look like Brigitte Bardot. I drew and painted from the time I was small, but was a bad student who was uninterested in school and did not read. I did love movies, movies taught me about history and mythology. My older brother Charlie was an illustrator and an interesting guy, a great pool shooter and great street fighter, who had gone to the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. I wanted to be an illustrator like him once I finally went to school, but wound up in painting department and I never looked back.

RAP: In your opinion is there a “creative method”?

Joseph: I have never given much thought to the “creative method” or any method. It’s been a long road with a lot of wrong turns. I try to keep working.

RAP: The “lock down moment” can set you on the path of some important change(s) in your creativity and style…Has this happened to you ?

Joseph: Right now there are no changes but I’m sure in the months ahead, maybe years ahead there probably will be. Events, things, dreams have an often have a strange and circuitous way of finding a way into my work. Time is an issue now, how liquid the days are, as hours melt into days and days into weeks. I’ve been thinking a lot about time especially since I’m running out of time. I continue to go to my studio mostly every day. I walk from my place in mid-town to the subway stop at 53rd and Lexington Avenue (see the pict of the desert M station). I take the train one stop to LIC. I photographed many empty streets, and got to look at places that I usually never get close to. Not that much is different in my life from before the virus because except for models and maybe meeting friends for lunch I would rarely see anyone. My models won’t come now, and most of my friends have disappeared and everything is closed anyway. I go out every day, I go shopping for food, and walk and run miles, I would go mad if I stayed inside all day.

RAP: What normally inspires you? Which is the most important inspirational source you have found in Rome?

Joseph: Rome has alway been a dream for me, from the time I was a small boy I’ve been obsessed with Rome and Romans. I watched all the all movies growing up, you name it I saw it. In recent years I read obsessively about the history of Rome, many books by Tom Holland, Adrian Goldsworthy, and Mary Beard, straight historical stuff to fiction like Robert Harris’s, Cicero series. I once lived in Rome for seven months. I remember the light in the morning, I remember walking the winding streets over and over again, I remember walking along the Appian Way. Dreams inspire me if there is such a thing as inspiration and sometimes a color, like a bright orange truck on the street, or the large yellow wall of a building. I do look at other artists for help and sometimes find it in unusual places. Piero is someone I think about often, along with Duccio and the other Sienese painters, Lorenzetti, Sassetta and Giovanni de Paolo. Luca Signorell’s Last Judgement in the Duomo at Orvieto is a favorite, also the Masaccio’s in Florence, and of course Giotto’s in Padua, Florence and Assisi. I do remember frescos by Memmo di Filippuccio in the Palazzo Pubblico in San Gimignano, that depicted every day life, sometime unusual for the time. I am presently working on a painting influenced by Lorenzo Lotto’s mad Annunciation, the one where Mary is kneeling with her hands out in front of her, the one with the frightened cat behind her. Old movies and old paintings I guess are my greatest source of inspiration now. My wife works in the theater and for years I went to many plays. The light and staging had a great affect on my work, probably the most direct influence in my life. I still see my studio as a kind of stage set. I would sit in the theater at at times wishing I could freeze the actors on the set, empty out the theater and draw. I often made drawings from my memory of the plays.

RAP: Is there a difference in working in Rome for an artist? What art medium do you prefer to work in?

Joseph: I’ve never painted in Rome so I wouldn’t know. If I was there and decided to work outside, (I’ve never painted landscapes or cityscapes in my life except for very early rooftops in South Philadelphia where everything is flat) I would probably draw with pencils or work in watercolor. Generally I paint with oils, and draw with pencils and charcoal. I did stop painting for eight years and used only watercolors, it was an exciting, and strange journey.

RAP: Specific events and historical conditions have a significant role in the creative process; how does this pandemic emergency affect the Arts?

Joseph: People have lived through all sorts of things and carried on. Rome has seen it’s share of pandemics in the past, invasions, disruptions, wars, etc. In the city of Pisa there is a painting in a museum in the Camposanto, the cemetery, right behind the Leaning Tower and Baptistry. This giant fresco is called the Trionfo della Morte or the Triumph of Death and it depicts, in the first section of the mural, the story of the plague or “Black Death”. It might be the largest painting ever. Everyone is having a hard time right now, artists who can’t get to there studios, many stuck at home with small children to look after. At least artists can do something at home, draw or possible paint if their studios are where they live. Dancers are not so lucky and for the theater it’s even worse because everything is shutdown. Opera and theater depend on close collaboration and it is impossible to carry on without actors, singers and dancers working closely together. I teach pain ting and drawing at Bard College and the shutdown occurred right after spring break and everyone is teaching online to finish the semester. Many of the students are depressed, and have no hope for the immediate future, no summer jobs, or programs like the Rome Program. I have managed to keep my class together and keep them working on projects but it hasn’t been easy and obviously not the same as working directly with them in the studio.

RAP: How are you feeling at this difficult moment and what made you feel this way? …are you optimistic for the future?

Joseph: I’m getting old so I have to be optimistic because I have things to do. I regret wasting time in my younger years but I guess every regrets that.

RAP: What can Art contribute to history? Will “Art save us” ?

Joseph: Civilizations crumble, but great ones like Rome that spanned a thousand years, have left a legacy that will always be with us. Rome was reborn as a Christian city, churches were built, and great paintings were made to decorate them, and sculptures to fill them. The new and the old were combined in ways that created a unique tapestry, a weaving together of time, from the giant stones used in Etruscan foundations, to the bricks and marble, and concrete of the republic and empire. The ancient bronze she wolf, probably Etruscan, nursing the babies Romulus and Remus, is a good example of fusing together different images from different times. I don’t know if art can save us, but it will out live us and hopefully be there in years to come for humanity to contemplate and marvel over.

RAP: What is your most ambitious dream?…and the greatest sacrifice that you have made for your Art?

Joseph: I hope to keep painting and drawing until I drop. I hope to paint one last large painting, maybe not as large as the ones I painted when I was younger, but large enough to be both a physical and mental challenge. I’ve begun studies for a new painting loosely based on Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula’s Dream. I use to try to approach every painting as if it were the last painting, as if someone was on the way to take my brushes away. It added an edge, a way of not being complacent. I use to make little drawings of a frog dancing on the nose of an alligator, metaphorically it was, I guess, the image of the artist I wanted to become. I don’t know if I’ve sacrificed much for the sake of art, I would have to think longer about that.

RAP: Recently, the artistic and cultural message of Italy and Rome was reemerging as a great “work in progress”, …is this your point of view?

Joseph: I don’t know anything about this and really can’t answer it.

RAP: Which is your favorite Italian, or Roman, place(s) of art (Museum, Gallery, Monument…) ?

Joseph: There are so many places… The city of Rome itself is like a gigantic work of art, an unmatched installation. I love Trajan’s Column, like the first movie reel, the Arch of Titus, the Pantheon, the Marcus Aurelius equestrian bronze at the top of the Capitoline Hill, Michelangelo’s design of the hill itself. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the Last Judgement and paintings Pauline Chapel. My god I could go on and on from the Caravaggio’s to the drawings on the backs of Etruscan mirrors, the bronze boxer, the Ara Pacis and the Mouth of Truth, the Laocoon Group in the Vatican, and the marble copy of the bronze Dying Gaul at the Capitoline… and the place where Spartacus was crucified and where St. Peter met Christ. I remember marveling over the foot print of St. Peter in stone or marble in the small Romanesque Church dedicated to the meeting between Peter who was fleeing Rome and Jesus. ‘Whither goest thou?” Peter asks or “Quo Vadis” , “To Rome to be crucified again”, Jesus answers. Peter’s courage returns and he returns to Rome and his own crucifixion, choosing to be crucified upside down because he was not worthy to die in the manner of his lord. This moment is depicted in the great paintings of Caravaggio and of Michelangelo… There’s so much I love in Rome and Italy and so much I haven’t yet seen. Luca Signorelli’s Last Judgement in the Duomo at Orvieto is a favorite of mind, a wild hallucinatory painting. I did get to go down into the tombs in Tarquinia, and see the painted walls with color as vivid as they were painted yesterday. I would like to visit Ravenna to see the great mosaics there. I still have never been south, to Naples and Pompeii, and to Basilicata the area where my grandparents were born, the land once know as Lucania, an ancient place, a place of fierce warriors who resisted, along with the Saminites, Roman rule until the Roman general Sulla crushed them in the 1st Century B.C.

RAP: Which period of Italian Art do you prefer? What is your favorite Italian work of art?

Joseph: This is almost an unanswerable question. I’ve been looking more and more at earlier Renaissance painting, the Sienese painters I mentioned earlier, Piero, Fra Angelico, and Uccello, specifically his great fresco of Noah’s flood on the walls of the cloister at Santa Maria Novella in Florence. I don’t think I can pick one painting, or sculpture. I do find great solace in Giovanni de Paolo’s Paradise, in the Lehman Collection at the Met. My friend, the painter, Helen Miranda Wilson sent me a reproduction after my mother died in 2007.

RAP: How has Rome personally influenced you as an artist and a person?

Joseph: I do want to return to Rome, it’s always with me, the memories of my time there when I was young, the discoveries I made there, the moments of peace I found sitting by an ancient temple of Hercules the Victor along the Tiber, the thrill of rushing through St.Peter’s, even running when no guards were in sight just to get to the Sistine Chapel and spend a few moments alone before the crowds arrived. This was before the the ceiling and Last judgment were cleaned. I remember reading Punic Wars by Titus Livius-Livy, it was awhile ago, and how he described Hannibal’s army being encamped just twenty miles from Rome. He tells how the land that the invaders were camped on came up at auction in Rome and that someone purchased it. Rome survived and triumphed in the end, eventually defeating and destroying Carthage. The republic turned into an Empire, and the empire turned from bricks and tenements to the marble and splendor that we see in movies, filled with blaring trumpets and parading legions. We all know the names of the great Romans. We know also the great paintings that document the history of the city from the Death of Lucretia, the Battle of Zama, and Pope Leo meeting Attila the Hun. It’s the legionnaires that fascinate me, the small men, with small swords and iron legs who when they weren’t fighting were building roads. The last time I visited Rome I did not go into the city but instead drove to the town of Nemi outside the city. The town where the Emperor Caligula built an artificial lake to hold sea battles. So what is Rome to me I’m still trying to figure this out, to sort through the jumble of images from Victor Mature, in the movie The Robe, clutching the red robe that Christ had worn to Anita Ekberg frolicking in Trevi Fountain in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. I lived for awhile in Trastevere on the Piazza De’ Renzi where I had a ground floor apartment that belonged to a friend. This was 1973- 74. Rome seemed like home and even though I could barely speak the language I felt like I belonged there. In the Fellini’s Roma I remember a dark haired actress looking toward the lights of the city at night and with a sigh simply saying the word Roma, one word filled with much love and longing.

RAP: What’s your goal? What role does the artist have in society? Any final thoughts and advice?

Joseph: My goal is to keep working as long as I can. I don’t really know about the role of an artist in society. What appealed to me when I was young was the idea that an artist was separate from society, that artists didn’t have to adhere to a normal way of living. I guess I found a certain freedom in choosing to be a painter, a way of living somewhat outside of what was expected of people. I really never had much of a choice, it’s all I ever did once I made the decision to do it.

www.josephsantore.com