Friday, September 21, 2012

Work of art - Padua, Italy

We Italians often complain about our local authorities, their incompetence, disorganization or bad faith. And with good reason, of course. Sometimes though, a government manager or employee does something nice. In that case it's the common citizen the one who will settle (i.e. mess up) the matter the Italian way.
Last year, in downtown Padua, my attention was caught by some municipality billboards providing historical information about the city in the middle-age.Very interesting, at least for those who promoted the initiative and myself, and hopefully for some other local citizen and tourist as well. One year later I went back to that same place to refresh my memory on the subject. I could remember an item - in via Zabarella - about the Carrerese slaughterhouse, the fraglia dei beccai (guild of butchers), the licenses and procedures used in that sector back in the thirteen century.
Well, if you take a look at the photo above you can see what I actually found. An unknown local artist decided to embellish the panel with one of his renowned chicken-scratches. Reading the original text is now impossible, but in order to admire such a refined masterpiece we are obviously willing to make bigger sacrifices than that.
Getting inside the delicate role of an art critic for a minute (even though I don't have any relevant competence) I have a couple of questions that I am going to list below:
1) Baby...why didn't you paint the wall of your children's room instead? Even using a dark shade of that special paint obtained from animal pigments that also have excellent fertilizing characteristics?
2) And then, what does it mean...how do you read it...I mean, WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU WRITE THERE???

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

they should kill those kind of "artists"! I hope one day to get one of them while is doing "art" I'll do same sign on their faces!
Giorgiomaria Masocco

Fabio said...

Giorgiomaria...great! Don't forget to use a very heavy brush!