“The history of art is a history of prophecies. It can be written only by beginning from the point of view of a completely current present, since every age poses its own new, though non-inheritable, occasion of interpreting exactly those prophecies that the art of past epochs contained within itself.”

Walter Benjamin

I’ll Be There Forever / The Sense of Classic is a exhibition conceived and organized by Acqua di Parma and curated by Cloe Piccoli, art critic and art director of Acqua di Parma Contemporary Art Projects. Under the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Affairs, the Municipality of Milan, and the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan – the most prestigious and widely acknowledged academy for art in Italy – the exhibition aims to reveal the dialogue between classic and contemporary art in the work of some of the most interesting Italian artists of today.

I’ll Be There Forever / The Sense of Classic is the first contemporary art exhibition produced by Acqua di Parma, representing a further development of the company’s significant commitment to art and culture. The exhibition explores a theme of international relevance – the classic in contemporary art, and how artists approach this concept. The notion of the “Classic” in this instance is not a style or citation but an atmosphere, an inspiration, a fleeting and ephemeral element with a persistent presence.

The curator Cloe Piccoli says: “In I’ll Be There Forever, the classic is not intended as a canon. It is not the concept of balance, grace and harmony. Not the idea of the Athenian democracy in the days of Phidias, not even that of man at the centre of the universe, of Piero della Francesca. Not Bramante, Andrea Palladio in Venice or Leon Battista Alberti at Santa Maria Novella. Or, at least, not only this. The idea of the classic in I’ll Be There Forever is that of a process of intricate growth that puts different elements in relation to each other, forming a new dialogue that invents new forms and meanings. But it is also the idea of the classic as memory, belonging, sharing. As Italo Calvino wrote: ‘We use the word Classics for those books that are treasured by those who have read and loved them’. ‘The classics are books that exert a peculiar influence, both when they refuse to be eradicated from the mind and when they conceal themselves in the folds of memory, camouflaging themselves as the collective or individual unconscious’.”

Palazzo Cusani

Located in Via Brera in the heart of Milan, Palazzo Cusani is a private residence originally designed by Giovanni Ruggeri in the seventeenth century and renovated between 1775 and 1779 by Giuseppe Piermarini, with a new superb Neoclassical rear façade in the courtyard. Perfectly preserved frescoes and stuccoes in the original Baroque style adorn Palazzo Cusani’s ceilings, cupolas, fixtures, mirrors and fireplaces in the ancient Milanese residence. The symbolic iconography of the palazzo is completed by the wooden flooring with meticulous inlays.

The architectural complex is full of layers, then, with a central connecting feature, the interior staircase that would bear out the thesis that the designer of the Palazzo was connected with the school of Francesco Maria Richini. In this mixed situation, where a neoclassical spatial arrangement establishes a dialogue with later mannerism, the studio designs a sequence of spaces that reflect two architectural models.

Further info at www.illbethereforever.com