In Broad Daylight

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Gabriele Pedulla. In Broad Daylight

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IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

Movies and Spectators after the Cinema

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As common and insignificant as they might seem, each of these elements makes its own contribution, at once real and symbolic, to the institution that connoisseurs call simply “the white cube.” This is the official residence of Art: a room without shadows, white, clean, and artificial—ascetic as a clinic and cold as a cenotaph to the unknown soldier. Comfortable but also a tad inhospitable (just enough to make visitors maintain the required respectful attitude), purposely conceived so that the works of art can display themselves in a sort of defensive eternity, removed from time and its vagaries.

All of this, naturally, has its price. The gallery not only encourages the aesthetic participation of its visitors, but also, in an anxiety of purity, proclaims its own distance from the outside world, imposing pre-emptive sanctions on any attempt to break down boundaries. Protected from the effects of contact with everyday life, which goes on undisturbed, the white cube resembles a limbo where, while the eyes and the mind are always welcome, the body is barely tolerated, giving rise to a curious Cartesian paradox in which the visitor is and is not there at the same time, entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the work—the only legitimate activity in a space dedicated to this single end.

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