Leonardo’s Madonna dei Fusi
Leonardo da Vinci spent some five years living and working in and around Arezzo and the city is proud to host his painting ‘La Madonna dei Fusi’ for five months. The painting was commissioned in 1501 by Florimond Robertet, secretary of state to Louis XII. It is now privately owned by an American collector and is particularly dear to the Aretino heart as the background features local countryside.
Pink Films
In Japan, pink is the colour of sex, in the same way that blue is in the west. Because the restrictive censorship laws here (all filmed pubic hair must be hidden or digitised), film-makers, artists and cartoonists have long been forced to come up with ingenious ways of being erotic without actually showing anything. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of gay cinema, where the showing of on-screen sex is simply not an option. Instead, Japanese gay erotica tends to be mild and suggestive, a sort of visual Mill and Boon. Video has dealt what may be a fatal blow to this gentle sub-genre, so if you’re curious, catch it while you can at the venue below, one of the stalwarts of the gay community. All films are in Japanese. Tickets on sale at vending machine.
François Delfosse
François Delfosse is to visual art what Sylvia Plath is to poetry and PJ Harvey to rock music. Using charcoal, crayons, Indian ink and paint, the Belgian artist depicts abstract images of confusion, angst and pent-up emotions that cannot fail to disturb. Traces of both Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat can be detected in his nervous breakdowns on canvas. This particularly applies to two works that he completed last year: ‘Morning are broken’ and ‘Edimbourg tatoo’.
Louise Attaque
In just two years, these four men (none of whom are called Louise) have grown into France’s biggest rock act, selling over two million albums. Largely acoustic, they combine the standard guitar/bass/drums format with the virtuoso violin playing of Arnaud Samuel. Although their lyrics are in French, their quirky pop vision has been compared with that of The Violent Femmes, whose singer, Gordon Gano, produced the Frenchmen’s first album. Their second album, ‘Comme on a dit’ (‘As we said’), was recently released to an enthusiastic response from their expanding fanbase.
