Venus of the Rags
When we talk about vandalism we usually are discussing slashing paintings or pouring corrosive materials on them but this one is very different. This one involves fire.
Venus of the Rags
Before we get into the actual incident that I alluded to above I want to talk about this artwork. Venus of the Rags was created by modern artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. Pistoletto was born on June 23, 1933 in Italy and he worked in his father’s restoration workshop in Turin until 1958 when he branched off and started to create artwork on his own. He started his career with painting and moved on, in the 1960s, to sculptural and performance-based work.
He created Venus of the Rags in 1967 and several versions of this installation have been installed in museums around the world. It depicts a huge statue of the Roman goddess Venus, who represents love, sex, beauty, and fertility, and juxtaposes her right next to a giant pile of rags that Pistoletto used to polish his mirrored and metal artworks. The work represents a commentary on consumerism and the degradation of society. Pistoletto was a member of the Arte Povera (poor art) movement which prioritizes using cheap or found materials, proving that art doesn’t have to contribute to waste and consumerism.
The Attack
In 2023, a version of Venus in Rags was installed in Naples Italy and less than two weeks later it was up in smoke, literally. The entire statue was engulfed in flames, reducing the artwork to just the metal frame, it burned through the rags quickly and completely melted the polyurethane statue. The mayor of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi, expressed his “deep dismay at what happened to the Venus Of The Rags” and he said “now, however, is the time for a response from the city: I have already heard from Pistoletto, the work will be redone. Violence and vandalism will not stop art, regeneration and culture in Naples” (Schrader, 2023).
They had a plan to recreate the artwork in partnership with Pistoletto and they started a crowd sourcing campaign to raise the money to do so.
By just a few weeks later, the Italian police arrested a suspect in connecting to burning down the statue. He was identified as a 32 year old man who they traced to a soup kitchen using security footage of the crime. I couldn’t find anything about what happened to this man or if he has stood trial or been punished in any way.
However, Pistoletto was able to create a new version of Venus of the Rags and he even built it using the charred metal skeleton as the base of the new work. It was reinstalled in Naples’ Piazza Municipio in March 2024 and was displayed there for three months before moving to its permanent home. And this time, there were no incidents.
Works Cited
Guy, J and Braithwaite, S. “Naples Gets New “Venus of the Rags” Artwork After Original Destroyed by Fire”. CNN. 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/06/style/venus-of-the-rags-replaced-intl-scli
Schrader, A. “An Alleged Arson Attack Has Destroyed Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ‘Venus of the Rags’ Installation in Naples”. ArtNet. 2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/pistoletto-venus-of-rags-installation-destroyed-arson-naples-2335830
Schrader, A. “Italian Police Have Arrested a Man Suspected of Burning Down a Prized Arte Povera Installation in Naples”. ArtNet. 2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/police-arrest-man-michelangelo-pistoletto-venus-of-the-rags-fire-2337214