The lecture “Paolo Sorrentino: The Universal Language of Art” by Nikola Ivanović, curator of the Gallery of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad, organized as part of the exhibition “Inspired by Italy”, was held in the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, on Thursday, September, 12th, 2024, starting at 7 p.m. At the beginning of the program, Tatjana Mihailović, PhD, museum advisor of the National Museum Kraljevo, greeted the audience and introduced the guest.
The Italian director Paolo Sorrentino often quotes the history of art in his works, and recognizable art works are an integral part of the staging. Nikola Ivanović, in his lecture, analysed those works of art that are related to two of his series: “Young Pope” (2016) and “New Pope” (2020). The analysis begins with the very opening of the series “The Young Pope”, in which the main character seems to be walking down a corridor, passing in front of the exhibited paintings, mostly works of the Renaissance and Baroque. However, such a corridor does not exist in the reality of the Vatican, where the series films it, but rather nine selected paintings by Sorrentino and one sculpture by the contemporary artist Mauricius Cattelan (“The Ninth Hour”, 1999). Ivanović connects each of these works with individual episodes of the series, explaining how the director interprets them: from the conceptual level, in the sense of theological, cultural and symbolic, through the construction of visual relationships within the scenes, to the construction of the characters themselves, above all the main role the young pope.
For the second series, “The New Pope” (2020), he also starts from the tip, which is inspired by contemporary artistic interpretations of religious themes, as in the case of Gerard Dotori’s work (“The Crucifixion”, 1927), or the choreographic solutions of Shobana Jeyasingh, created for the 10th Biennale of Dance in Venice. Sorrentino also finds challenges in those works of baroque art that were provocative in their time, such as the works of Paolo Veronese in the 16th century, which interpreted the Gospel scenes in the contemporary mise-en-scene. Also, the influence of Renaissance and Baroque art can be felt in the framing itself, especially the influence of Caravaggio, which affects the structure of the scenes. Through his lecture, Nikola Ivanović pointed out that Sorrentino’s conceptual solutions, which use a network of recognizable visual symbols, reveal the way in which the apparatus of the universal language of art functions.