Massimo Cruciani: Going to photograph the photographer’s paintings

Just towards the original gate of the medieval city of Assisi is a small studio that overlooks that overlooks the green Umbrian hills below. It’s raining and cloudy out but there is a warm glow coming from the Massimo Cruciani’s gallery. I am accompanying Elise D. on an interview as photographer. As soon as I enter I am taken with a large painting of an Italian poppy field. The red is instantly striking but as I look closer I am equally struck by the way the drops of gold in the center of the poppies glow and the way that the dark azure sky swirls onward towards its glass horizon.
As we wait for Massimo, Elise and I wander around the gallery. There are several other works of the countryside, villages with houses stacked up on each other and sunflowers. There are also several booklets with photos of his collections that include paintings of cities such as Hong Kong and San Diego. Among these books I notice a book of photography, The Long Road East, in both Italian and English with the face of a serious little boy on the cover.
His daughter, who works in the gallery, informs us that the book is a collection of the photos Massimo took on a road trip he took from Turkey to India when he was 22. The black and white photos portray a strange sort of journey. It’s the sixties and the two young men in the photographs are skinny with shaggy hair cuts. There are images of their Volkswagen beetle and a few of them posing proudly or making silly faces. There are both urban and rural landscapes but what stands out are the portraits- elderly men and women, women holding their babies, children playing, men working. I shut the book with the impression that its author is trying to say something through his photography that is both joyful and serious. It is a statement on life.
Massimo, like his painting of the poppies, is larger than life. He is tall and thin and wears a knit cap that covers his salt and pepper curls. He is a youthful sixtyish. He waltzes over to us and suggests that we go to the café next door for the interview as he is famished. He insists that we order, at the very least, something to drink and worries that we’re going hungry though we assure him we’ve just had a large lunch.
Elise begins her questions and I move around shooting some video footage and snapping photos. When he moves towards the camera waving with a smile and asking which way he should look I can’t help but laugh. The interview resumes when I tell him not to worry about it and to try to ignore the camera.
Massimo was born in Rome where he started out as a set photographer. Although we’ve met with him to talk about his glass paintings, he admits that his true love is photography. He worked as a set photographer and on assignment for magazines and newspapers in Rome during his early twenties. When his equipment was stolen at the age of 28, another artist offered to help him out by teaching him how to paint. By combining different techniques of the artists he worked with, he began to paint directly onto glass with acrylic paint and found his own style. He moved to Assisi in 1981 and enjoys the culture as well as its low-key atmosphere. He seems clueless in regards to his success as a painter perhaps because he never intended to be one. The way he tells it, it seems one day someone just happened to buy several paintings and then his style just happened to catch on. Before he knew it, he was shaking hands with the pope, heading to exhibitions all over the world and, of course, selling paintings.
When Elise finishes up her questions and closes the interview, Massimo takes this as his cue to interview us in turn and we talk about where we are from, what we are studying and discovering in Assisi. But I am anxious to ask him about his photography. He does not take many pictures these days, “Yeah but stupid photos you know like of my kids, my lovers, myself. I’m not too much into it anymore.”
He published The Long Road East a few years ago and is happy that the trip he set out on as a young man is now a beautiful collection of his early work. Although Massimo is honest about preferring photography over painting, he is remarkably positive about the direction his life took and rightly so. He appears much more the happy-go-lucky type then tortured artist. He does, however, confess he misses his dark room and seems a bit mournful regarding today’s digital revolution and the disappearance of film. This turns the conversation towards the instantaneous nature of today’s newer technology and I find myself explaining the way blogs work to Massimo who is wondering if he should add one to his website.
“I’d rather have a publisher. I’d rather write a book” I say as we explain how difficult it is to garner enough interest in a blog in order to make a living off it.
“That is some crazy idea. Start putting yourself naked or something like that” he remarks with a twinkle in his eye.
“Something shocking?” I ask as I wonder if he’s actually making a serious suggestion.
“No” he says, “But something that makes people say, ‘Oh let’s go there.”
His cell goes off and we continue talking for a while. Once finished, Massimo pays for his sandwich and our drinks (I offer to pay for mine but he shrugs it off, “It’s only two euros”) and we head back into the gallery to take a few photos of him with his paintings. He smiles mischievously, “So, should I take off my clothes?”
Thankfully, Massimo has already garnered enough interest in his artistry without having to resort to such blatant exhibitionism. No doubt his generous spirit has helped him along the way. He suggests Elise and I each pick out a print of his paintings. When I say I can not decide between the village scene or poppy field he tells me he’ll give me both of them and Elise should pick two as well. He tells us we’re both smart girls so one day we will be able to afford one of his glass paintings.
“Come back and say goodbye before you leave Assisi” he tells us as we head out onto the stone street. I promise I will. I already know what book I am bringing home as a souvenir.


UPDATE: I wrote this while still in Assisi. When I returned to buy the book, Massimo sold it to me for less than half-price and I couldn't be happier with my souvenir. In fact, he gave all of us in the class wonderful deals on the book and prints. Grazie mille Massimo! It was lovely to meet you!
Elise's much more official and well-written article on the artist is up on the IJSA blog. It's under "Assisi" and is called "Artist's Town." Read it!

Everything Is Beautiful

Before I came here I watched a mini-series that aired here in Italy a few years ago, The Best of Youth. It chronicles the lives of two brothers starting from their early twenties in the seventies to today. At one point, one of the brothers, Nicola writes his sister from a trip abroad, “Everything is beautiful.” As time goes on his radical declaration is tested. It may sound strange but I identified so strongly with each of the characters that as I watched I felt as if I were given a glimpse into my own future. I related on an intimate level with the story portrayed on screen.
The political, social and spiritual transformations felt so familiar. The natural progression of relationships with their pain and dysfunction simultaneously wrapped up with joy and love is universal.

When Nicola is a bit older, his sister asks him if he still believes in the words he wrote to her as young man. He confesses that he’s not sure. Some things are beautiful but too many are terrible. I confess I too have felt conflicted this week. One minute I am in love with the small moments and then I’m thrown off by the difficult ones.

Beautiful is coming back from Orvieto and falling asleep to the sounds of a party in the patio below me. I dangerously craned my neck out to try and see but a canopy of vines prevented me from truly spying. I loved those sounds- the way the voices carried on the night wind and how when they couldn’t decide on what to play they would skip through the tracks. When I woke up late the next day I eventually wandered to the window again. I looked out onto the Umbrian countryside perfectly lighted with the midday sun. This time I could hear someone playing the accordion. It was so unexpectedly cinematic and lovely.

Terrible is the nauseous feeling I have as I try to write an article about a trial that disturbs me beyond belief. It is exhausting to feel close to something so horrific because it becomes familiar. You put yourself in the place of someone else and play out the scenario in your head wondering how you would react if you were in their shoes over and over again. It is painful. I see my own failure through the failure of others.

I think, however, beauty is most accurately represented in grace. I walked into a store with our instructor to speak with the owner about a potential interview she said something but I didn’t understand. A man called out the translation, “She says you’re beautiful!”
I think I managed to say ‘Grazie’ and I felt my heart swell up with gratefulness. By saying something that she didn’t have to say she allowed me a moment of beauty. She did not say that I was ascetically pleasing or attractive or that I was good, nice or right. Somehow that allowed me to revel in it.

How can we all be so awful and then so wonderful?
Everyday I find myself content and discontent. I am faced with the unexpected reconciliation and all I can say is that I have so much left to learn. I wonder which character would be me right now. I’m not halfway yet. This is just the beginning but by the end of the series, Nicola can say it again.Everything is beautiful. I am not sure that I can say it but I think I can hear it- just like I could hear the party down below and know it was there without seeing it. I know that someone sees beauty in me even if I do not.
I know that life is beautiful. Everything is.

Assisi

Today in the Basilica when Brother Stephan was showing us the ancient texts I was most thrilled when I understood what he said and managed to ask a question. As impressed as I was with the texts- the gold plating, their age and history- I could not help but wonder what made Brother Stephan chose to pursue a religious life. He was just as interesting to me because he represented the idea of continuing history. Those books so full of facts and clues about the past somehow brought him along on a present day journey that crossed our own prospective paths.
The same thing happened when led up to the Hall of Prayer by Brother Silvestro. He led us up a flight of staris and out onto a long balcony that wrapped around the basilica. It was surrounded by a low wall that provided us with an expansive view of Assisi, the surrounding hillside and valley below.
I was initially struck by the beauty but was that much more conscious of it when Brother Silvestro told us to turn off our cameras and take it in. He seemed concerned by our almost instantaneous picture-taking. I wondered if our eagerness to take pictures appeared to be a lack of reverence. He smiled and was gentle. He wasn’t pious in the way that one stereotypically might associate with the obviously religious.
What is important about places like the Hall of Prayer is not something that can be captured in a photo such as its architecture and structure but rather the purpose and intent behind it. The arches are meant to symbolize hands in the shape one makes while praying. As one prays they are also covered in prayer. This was the place Brother Silvestro chose to show us. It is not open to the public. Because of this I had to assume that this unique place meant something to him.
He also led us to the oldest part of the Basilica where the monks of St. Francis’s order lived. He answered my questions and seemed to appreciate my attempts to use Italian and didn’t mind deciphering my Spanish- my first actual conversation with an Italian on this trip!
I wonder what sparked his desire to commit himself as a friar. I loved the way his face expressed so much of what he must have been saying in the Italian I didn’t understand. And even so, he was saying something by choosing to show us what he did, by his generosity and obvious delight in our awe. I can’t help but wonder if living a life of devoted connection to God, he was enabled to connect with us.
This is what impresses me about Assisi- not its stoic walls or ornate cathedrals nor its ability to attract tourists to snap away at them but the fact that people like Saint Francis and Saint Clare established it as a community, an order, of those who wish to live a life like Christ. It remains a remarkable testament to something not found in well-worn paths but in halls of prayer.