In 2013, the highest proportions of those aged 30 to 34 having completed tertiary education were observed in Ireland (52.6%), Luxembourg (52.5%), Lithuania (51.3%), Sweden (48.3%), Cyprus (47.8%) and the United Kingdom (47.6%), and the lowest inItaly (22.4%), Romania (22.8%), Croatia (25.9%) and Malta (26.0%). You can read here the latest Eurostat results.
In Italy, 55% of adults aged 25-64 have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, much less than the OECD average of 74% (OECD Better Life Index). The level of tertiary attainment among 25-64 year-olds is one of the lowest among OECD and G20 countries with available data: 14.9 %, rank 34/36 (OECD Education at Glance 2013, you can download the full report here). We could rename Italy The Pleasure Land, or Pleasure Peninsula or the Pleasure Pen- (prefix from Latin paene (“nearly, almost”) Island: The Pleasure Penisland.... A word to the wise.
You can watch below the scene of the arrival in The Land of Toys (Pleasure Island in the Walt Disney adaptation (1940).
And here’s the passage where Lamp-Wick describes the Land of Toys to Pinocchio, in the book by Carlo Collodi (pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini) Le Avventure di Pinocchio: La storia di un burattino (1883; The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Marionette). You can read the whole book online here.
CHAPTER 30
Pinocchio, instead of becoming a boy, runs away to the Land of Toys with his friend, Lamp-Wick...
Lamp-Wick
"You are making a big mistake, Pinocchio. Believe
me, if you don't come, you'll be sorry. Where can you find a place that will
agree better with you and me? No schools, no teachers, no books! In that
blessed place there is no such thing as study. Here, it is only on Saturdays
that we have no school. In the Land of Toys, every day, except Sunday, is a
Saturday. Vacation begins on the first of January and ends on the last day of
December. That is the place for me! All countries should be like it! How happy we
should all be!"
Pinocchio
"But how does one spend the
day in the Land of Toys?"
"Days are spent in play and
enjoyment from morn till night. At night one goes to bed, and next morning, the
good times begin all over again. What do you think of it?"
"H'm—!" said Pinocchio,
nodding his wooden head, as if to say, "It's the kind of life which would
agree with me perfectly."
…
"Listen, Lamp-Wick," said the Marionette,
"are you really sure that there are no schools in the Land of Toys?"
"Not even the shadow of one."
"Not even one teacher?"
"Not one."
"And one does not have to
study?"
"Never, never, never!"
"What a great land!" said
Pinocchio, feeling his mouth water. "What a beautiful land! I have never
been there, but I can well imagine it."
“This was music I’d never heard before,” says Salieri, whose face melts into ashen jelly. “It seemed to me the voice of God.” From the initial production of Peter Shaffer’s ‘Amadeus’ at the National Theater in London in 1979, through all of the refinements that preceded the play’s New York premiere in 1980, and now, in the even more extensive rewriting and adjustments made by Mr. Shaffer for Milos Forman’s handsome, music-filled screen version (Amadeus 1984), one thing has remained constant and exhilarating . That is Mr. Shaffer’s ability to celebrate genius—in this case, that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—in a fashion that is simultaneously illuminating, moving and just. It’s a major achievement, especially in films where genius is usually represented and dramatized as some kind of ill-humored, social eccentricity (Vincent Canby, NYT)—see also How Amadeus was translated from play to film (Michiko Kakutani), and here's the movie script.
Adopting Howard Becker’s typology, we could interpret Salieri as the “integrated professional” and Mozart as the “maverick”—although only recognized mavericks are “true” mavericks, and once you are recognized you become part of conventional art world .
“The four modes of being oriented to an art world—as integrated professional, maverick, grassroots artist, or folk artist—suggest a general scheme for interpreting the way people can be oriented to any kind of social world, no matter what its focus or its conventional round of collective activities. Insofar as the world has built up routine and conventional ways of carrying on those activities its members usually engage in, people can participate in it as fully competent members who know how to do easily and well whatever needs to be done. Most of what is done in that world will be done by people like that—the generalized analogue of integrated professionals. If the activity is one that every member of the society, or every member of some large subcategory engages in, the folk artist may provide a closer analogue. Some people, knowing what is conventional, will nevertheless choose to behave differently, with predictable ensuing difficulties in involvement in the world’s collective activities. Some few of the innovations such people propose may be taken up by the larger world from which they have differed, making them into honored innovators (at least in retrospect) rather than cranks. Some will not know of the world’s existence, or care much about it, and invent the whole thing for themselves—the generalized version of the naïve artist. In this way, we might say (with rather more warrant than it is usually said) that the world of art mirrors society at large” (Becker 1976, 717).
Mozart vs. Salieri
Norbert Elias (1993) sees Mozart as a paradigmatic example of the passage from craftsmen’s art to artists’ art. Mozart’s curse was being “born into a society which did not yet know the Romantic concept of genius, and whose social canon had no legitimate place for the highly individualized artist of genius in their midst” (19). Mozart’s decision to become a free-lance artist, giving up his secure job with the archbishop of Salzburg, was taken in a period when “the social structure actually offered no such place for outstanding musicians” (29). Caught up in an unplanned social process and unable to support himself, Mozart would spend his remaining days in and out of poverty. Yet out of his suffering, Elias insists, Mozart created some of his most profound works, including Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and several of his late piano concertos (Kapsis 1994). Craftsmen’s art is produced for high-status patrons by low-status artists. Here the taste is subjugated to the patron, and art works are not revered in themselves. Artists’ art is instead created for anonymous buyers and marketed through dealers and impresarios. The artist has greater social status and more independence from the canons of taste of a small group of patrons. Art works, in a certain sense, becomes art works: admired in themselves and not merely as they reflect on the magnificence or taste of the patron.
According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1999) creativity is as much a cultural and social as it is a psychological event. Thus, creativity is the result of a cultural and social system who is making judgments about individual’s products. Csikszentmihalyi points out two prominent aspects of this system: a cultural, or symbolic, aspect (domain) and a social aspect (field). The creative process can be understood only at the intersection ,where individuals, domains, and fields interact: “For creativity to occur, a set of rules and practices must be transmitted from the domain to the individual. The individual must then produce a novel variation in the content of the domain. The variation then must be selected by the field for inclusion in the domain” (313).
You can find below some passages from Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (1996) where Mozart appears; and Csikszentmihalyi’s advice to cultivate curiosity.
“If someone becomes outstanding, we want to believe that unmistakable signs of greatness were there early for all to see. Whether it is the Buddha, Jesus, Mozart, Edison, or Einstein, genius must have revealed itself in the earliest years of life. In fact, it is impossible to tell whether a child will be creative or not by basing one’s judgment on his or her early talents. Some children do show signs of extraordinary precocity in some domain or other: Mozart was an accomplished pianist and composer at a very early age, Picasso drew quite nice pictures when he was a boy, and many great scientists skipped grades in school and astonished their elders with the nimbleness of their minds. But so did many other children whose early promise fizzled out without leaving any trace in the history books. Children can show tremendous talent, but they cannot be creative because creativity involves changing a way of doing things, or a way of thinking, and that in turn requires having mastered the old ways of doing or thinking. No matter how precocious a child is, this he or she cannot do. Mozart in his teens might have been as accomplished as any musician alive, but he could not have changed the way people played music until his way of making music was taken seriously, and for this to happen he had to spend at least a decade mastering the domain of musical composition and then produce a number of convincing works. But if the real childhood accomplishments of creative individuals are no different from those of many others who never attain any distinction, the mind will do its best to weave appealing stories to compensate for reality’s lack of imagination.” (112)
“Training, expectations, resources, and recognition are to no avail, however, if the young person has no hope of using his or her skills in a productive career. In our culture, a huge number of talented and motivated artists, musicians, dancers, athletes, and singers give up pursuing those domains because it is so difficult to make a living in them. In a study of American adolescents, we found that almost 10 percent of thirteen-year-olds wanted to be architects when they grew up. At a rough guess, this is probably a thousand times what the field of architecture can accommodate. It is not realistic to expect a great deal of talent to be attracted to a domain, no matter how important it is, if there is little chance of practicing it. The people who succeed in the smaller fields are like Vera Rubin, to whom not being an astronomer was “unthinkable.” After hope, one also needs to have real opportunities to act in the domain. It has been said that the great musical creativity that blossomed in Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was in large part due to the fact that each aristocratic court that ruled the many principalities had to have an orchestra to amuse itself and to show its superiority over the others. There was constant interest in and competition for new musical talent. A Bach, Handel, or Mozart had no difficulty in having his music performed and then evaluated by an eager crowd of connoisseurs. If there are fewer creative classical composers now, it is probably not due to a lack of talent but to a dearth of opportunities to display it.” (237)
"The important thing to remember is that creative energy, like any other form of psychic energy, only works over time. It takes a certain minimum amount of time to write a sonnet or to invent a new machine. People vary in the speed they work—Mozart wrote concerti much faster than Beethoven did—but even Mozart could not escape the tyranny of time. Therefore, every hour saved from drudgery and routine is an hour added to creativity.” (251)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996) tells us that curiosity is the starting point of creativity. How can interest and curiosity be cultivated, assuming that you feel the desire to do so? Here's some advice from Csikszentmihalyi. Try to be surprised by something every day. Try to surprise at least one person every day. Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to. If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity. Make time for reflection and relaxation. Find out what you like and what you hate about life. Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate. Develop what you lack. Shift often from openness to closure. Aim for complexity. Find a way to express what moves you. Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible. Figure out the implications of the problems. Implement the solution. Produce as many ideas as possible. Have as many different ideas as possible. Try to produce unlikely ideas.
References
Becker, Howard. 1976. “Art Worlds and Social Types.” American Behavioral Scientist 19, 6: 703-718.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1999. “Systems Perspective on Creativity.” In Handbook of Creativity, edited by R. Sternberg, 313-35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 313–35.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1996. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper.
Elias, Norbert. 1993. Mozart: Portrait of a Genius. Oxford: Polity.
Kapsis Robert E. 1994. “Musical Genius: Theme and Variations.” Contemporary Sociology 23, 3: 432-434.
Sadie, Stanley. 2006. Mozart: The Early Years, 1756–1781. New York: Norton.
Solomon, Maynard. 1995. Mozart: A Life. London: Hutchinson.
Before traveling outside of the United States and Canada, my concept of
America was most probably consistent with the pop-culture stereotypes. I considered it a
melting pot, a leading political power, the land of the free, as well as a
symbol of hope and opportunity. Moreover, when I tried to picture a typical
American, it conjured up images of obese, lazy, greedy, stupid and ignorant
people with little consideration of or tolerance for differences in other
individuals, lifestyles, societies, and cultures.
I found that my
peers both at home and on this trip have or previously had a similar concept of
America and what it means to be an American. Since traveling, my concept of America(ns) has
been confirmed in some regards, primarily through the realization that most
citizens of other countries view America almost exactly by my previous
definition. However, some components of that schema have altered. After realizing how
far this stereotype had traveled, I began to question it. The worldliness of
this conception frustrated me. Did I automatically embody all these negative
attributes? Was that the first thing people saw when they met me? I began to think of
all the people I knew that weren’t obese, lazy, greedy, stupid, and
ignorant. I came to the conclusion that Americans can’t achieve too strong,
specific, or narrow of a stereotype since the collective population entertains
every stereotype across the board. I found some of the attributes of my previous
American stereotype to be also present in other cultures. Eventually, my
concept of America and Americans became much weaker and broader.
Then, when I was
asked to define Italy and Italians according to my own concept, the first
images brought to mind were overly romantic scenes enriching and tantalizing to
every sense. The taste of the olive oil, the smell of the Chianti, the feel of the
supple leather, the whimsical sensation of walking down narrow, “Disney-like”
streets with brightly colored apartments and a street violinist playing in unison
with my footsteps. I pictured old, Italian men, complete with their short
stature, mustaches, and explicit hand-gestures, sweeping the streets in front
of their family-owned bakeries. I pictured very heavy-set, Italian mothers
creating overly abundant, culinary masterpieces for their very large and very
emotionally involved families. Furthermore, I thought of Italy (particularly
Florence) as “the museum of the world” that would contain all the richest
history and the artwork I would find to me my favorite in the world and most
pleasurable to my senses.
Content with the
romance of these images, I never dared to let my mind wander behind the scenes
of the façade that is Italy to give anything the chance to taint my completely
inaccurate portrait of perfection. However, now that I have been living “behind
the scenes of the façade,” I’ve been forced to taint the perfect painting, or
should I say ‘buon fresco’. I’ve been first-handedly exposed to the faults and downsides of
Italy. I’ve become aware of many accounts of political turmoil through protest
and conversation. From my experiences, it does not seem outlandish to say that the
majority of Italians are dissatisfied with at least a few aspects of the
current government system. I have been exposed to the unfortunate unemployment statistics causing
Italian “children” to live with their parents even into their 30s. I have also
experienced first-handedly and witnessed the incredible bouts of sexism and
vulgarity towards women that my mother warned me about.
Moreover, now that
I’m burnt out from visiting museums, I realize why I never went to them in the
first place. I’ve purposely neglected all but a few that America has to offer. My hometown in the
middle of nowhere in Connecticut has museums as well, but I’ve never made as
much of an effort to explore them as I have while in Florence. Why couldn’t it be
possible for me to like the contents of the museums at home more than the
contents of the museums in Florence? Does renaissance artwork have to be the
best in everyone’s opinion? Do I have to travel all the way Pisa to take a picture with a
particular building, even though I know nothing about the building itself and
Pisa has nothing else at all to offer me aside from it. That’s one expensive
and meaningless photograph. I thought it was called “The Leaning Tower of Pizza” when I was kid for
God’s sake.
This realization
helped me bring Italy (and Europe for that matter) down from the pedestal that
I had put it on. I was taking a picture to participate in a Rite of Passage. So that others could
look at my Instagram photo and be envious of me, like I was of them when they
were studying abroad.
Without these images
of perfection blinding my view, I was able to see Italy (and Europe) for what
it really was. This has helped me, once again, confirm and disconfirm some of the
aspects of my initial concept of Italy. Some confirmed facets of my conception are the
extreme sexism present in Italian culture – more than I have ever experienced
in America or elsewhere.
On a lighter note,
I’ve also confirmed their slow pace of life and active participation in “the
art of living”. I can also confirm that yes, the food the good. They way they live
is decadent and fabulous. It is in the moment. They appreciate the conversation and linger on
your words while Americans blink their vacant eyes and nod just waiting for
their turn to speak. They treasure hospitality. Their need to express their emotions
(exteriority) is also hard to miss and you witness small personal bouts of
theater in the streets – anything from a beautiful young couple kissing on the
steps of Santa Croce to an enthusiastic and passionate debate next to the
carousel in Piazza Della Republica. The stereotype of Italians expressive hand
gestures is also confirmed.
Family Matters: Portraits
and Experiences of Family Today ― Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, Palazzo
Strozzi, Florence (14 March-20 July 2014).
Portraits
and experiences of family today presents the works of eleven
international artists (Guy Ben- Ner, Sophie Calle, Jim Campbell, John
Clang, Nan Goldin, Courtney Kessel, Ottonella Mocellin and Nicola Pellegrini,
Trish Morrissey, Hans Op de Beeck, Chrischa Oswald, Thomas Struth) that encourage
an investigation into the images, dynamics and structures that define the
concept of family in the contemporary world. Each individual has his or her own
personal experience of family, but when we seek out a shared definition, what
do we mean by this term? Read more…
Pontormo and Rosso
Fiorentino: Diverging Paths of Mannerism― Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (8 March-20 July 2014) ― devoted to the work of Pontormo and of Rosso Fiorentino, the two painters who were without
question the most original and unconventional adepts of the new way of
interpreting art in that season of the Italian Cinquecento which Giorgio Vasari
called the ‘modern manner’….
Visitazione, Pontormo
Pontormo, always a favourite with the Medici, was
a painter open to stylistic variety and to a renewal of the traditional
approach to composition. Rosso Fiorentino, on the other hand, was more tightly
bound to tradition, yet at the same time he was fully capable of flights of
originality and innovation, influenced also by Cabalistic literature and
esoteric works. Read
more…
You
can watch Bill Viola’s The Greeting. Viola—one of most celebrated exponent of video art—relies little on
computer editing and uses slow motion in an intensive way.
