The walls of the Palazzo are painted a flat white and are equipped with a great many electrical outlet plugs of all different types which are very interesting. The old buildings are solid masonry and so it has been necessary to run a lot of the wiring on the surface of the walls. Assortments of various sorts of plugs in large flat boxes affixed to the walls were connected to each other by wiring that ran on the surface of the wall, in narrow white rectangular conduit connected along the floor mouldings. Here and there in the middle of walls at about eye-level were plastic emergency phones whose wiring entered the same type of tubing. Rome is a city absolutely full of unfinished electrical and plumbing projects. If one looks carefully at these things and also at the infinite number of masonry projects inside and outside of every building in Rome where plumbing is being worked on, one begins to understand why it has been so difficult for Italy truly to enter the 20th century, even now when it is almost over.
The finest elements of the works on the walls were fire hoses with copper nozzles in glass vitrines, looking for all the world like ancient reliquaries. Above each vitrine of a hose there was a red metal plaque with a white image of a hose. On each plaque there was a number indicating which hose one was looking at. The first hose I came across was number 24, and I began to retrace my steps in an attempt to locate all 24 of them. I was frustrated, however, in my attempt to locate them all because the search led into places which were restricted to use by the museum staff and I soon found that I was being asked in Italian if I needed any "help." But rather than attempt to explain what I was doing I said I was lost, and the guards kindly escorted me back to the exhibition space.
Just before leaving the Palazzo, I discovered there was another floor where the exhibition continued. I went down a broad flight of stairs and at the bottom encountered many more rooms full of works of art. Here also I found emergency phones, strange electric plugs, fire extinguishers and more firemen. Now I began to understand that the firemen were not there by coincidence. It was obvious by the way they were seated, sprawled out and bored, that they had been assigned to that floor and spent their entire days there. Along with the fire hoses they were, to me, the most interesting thing in the Palazzo. Looking at them and listening to their conversation, realizing to what lengths everyone was going to prevent a fire, I suddenly felt that next to me stood Nero with his violin saying, "Yes, there must never be a fire like that one again." It was as if he was standing right there, but he disappeared before I was able to ask him a question I have always wanted to ask, "Were there violins back then?"
However by now it was time to go to Termini, that famous building of ill repute, immense and repulsive, but full of life like one of the huge whores in a Fellini film. Stranger things awaited me there.
I have never seen a space quite like the third floor of the Termini building, where the exhibition was. The proportions of everything were huge. The construction was done under Mussolini and the style of the furnishings remind one of a Marks brothers film, in that they are as modern as things could be in the forties. There were endless corridors, dusty and quiet, in which one found enormous bathrooms, small libraries, and waiting rooms obviously no longer in use. These places force one to imagine important dignitaries from foreign countries coming on state visits. Yes, here they would have freshened up, and there in the paneled library they may have read a journal while they waited. A fascist daydream completely realized in stone. And so, being in the grip of my malady, I was unable to look at the art but just staggered around looking at door casings, heat vents, ashtrays, countertops and also out of windows, where one could see a panorama of yet another wing of Termini filling up the entire skyline.
I soon found myself outside the exhibition hall walking down a long corridor, but no one stopped me or turned me back. Along the corridor ran an outside covered portico. I went out on to it and found that it was a great porch of travertine marble stretching into the distance as far as I could see.
I walked along this porch for a while and then I came across a man having a caffe' at a little table. It was Benito Mussolini.As soon as I saw him sitting there I knew that it was an aberration of my illness, just a hallucination, but he seemed so real, not like an apparition at all, and his manner was so hypnotic and compelling that I walked up to him and said, "Buon giorno."
"Have you been looking at the art?" he asked me.
"Yes," I replied.
"And what did you think," he inquired.
"Well, I thought there were a few good things in the Palazzo and..." He cut me off abruptly by raising his hand up as if he did not have time to listen to half-hearted praise.
"You're from New York aren't you? Sit down and have some coffee."
The Italians always know if you are from New York. I don't know why. A chair appeared and also a cup of coffee, or perhaps they had been there all along, I don't know.
I sat down, sipped my coffee and after a moment he launched into a bit of a dissertation, which I thought he might. He said, "You New Yorkers are always disappointed by the modern art that you see here in Rome. And I know why. We have good artists; I'm sure that you can see that. But here in Rome, there is no section of the city devoted to the important art of contemporary life. We have a gallery in this part, and a gallery in that part, but it is impossible to go from one to another and "see" shows as you say.
We have no SoHo here in Rome as you do in New York. So we have no pot to cook our art in. I was pleased when they chose my Termini building for this exhibit. This building is a city in itself and you could put ten SoHo's in it with room to spare. If I were still alive it would only be a short while and then by decree you would see something really important happening here in Termini. This is what Rome needs; Rome needs a SoHo more than anything."
Here he stopped and looked at me as if he wondered what I thought of his idea, and when I didn't respond he continued.
" You know, I've heard that SoHo is becoming just shops and boutiques now, like our Spanish Steps. You think that nothing will happen here, that we Italians cannot get anything done, It takes a dictator....." all of a sudden he stopped again and looked away into the distance.
"Ah," he exclaimed, "To have been like Franco and to have just gotten through that wretched time."
"And why is it so important to you that Rome have a SoHo?" I asked. "Everyone here seems too busy to look at art."
"Because we need a Joseph Beuys, and we need an Anselm Keiffer and we have neither. Modern art in Rome is used only as the frivolous backdrop of aristocratic society events, and we have to understand that it is an activity that is capable of redeeming the soul of a nation."
"But Beuys and Keiffer did not come out of SoHo," I said.
A confused, troubled look spread across his face, but then the preposterousness of the idea that Mussolini would have such thoughts caused his image to fade gradually into nothingness. I am quite sure that if he thinks about anything, it is about mushrooms, just like the firemen. I continued sitting at the table sipping my coffee, but then a policeman came out and asked me if I needed any help. After that he escorted me back to the exhibition hall. As I was leaving, I noticed that there were a lot of those little rooms in the exhibit with the black curtains over the doors behind which you find video installations. I can never get myself to draw back those curtains. What I usually see in those little rooms is always so much less than what I imagine I am going to see. Whenever I see one of those little black curtains, I just imagine something that might be behind it, and then walk by without disturbing it.
Richard Britell, Rome, late November, 1996
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