When Franco Battiato was eight years old he wrote an essay at school titled “But I… Who am I?” The question traumatized his teacher, who worriedly called the Italian musician’s mother to tell her. In the family that remained a pure anecdote. However, it was not a casual question. In reality, it is the question that pursued this eclectic artist until his death at the age of 77 in 2021 and, in a way, it is the question that the curators of the exhibition, Giorgio Calcara and Cristina Battiato (the artist’s niece), would also like the exhibition dedicated to his figure to answer, Hereafterwhich the Maxxi Museum in Rome is hosting until April 26. “We are talking about a giant of culture who has expressed himself through music, but also through philosophy, spirituality, painting, cinema. He never held back. He was always willing to discover with the curiosity of a child, which is why we can talk about many facets of his existence,” Giorgio Calcara assures this newspaper.
For the first time, Battiato’s work and some touches on his life become a museum object and that is why the exhibition, organized by the Italian Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Franco Battiato Foundation, has created a certain expectation in Italy, where these days also coincide with the cinema premiere of a passionate biopic titled The long journey and the publication of several books, including Working with a geniuso – Franco Battiato told by his artists (Working with a genius – Franco Battiato told by his artists). Gianfranco D’Adda, who was Battiato’s drummer and percussionist for decades, signs that book and lends memorabilia to the exhibition such as the poster in Arabic and the Japanese flags they used during the album’s tour. The era of the white boar or the white jumpsuit that Battiato wore to go on stage when he released his album Fetusa classic of seventies psychedelia. The comic has also just been published in Spain Battiato. The extraterrestrial, de Maurizio di Bona and Alessio Cantarella.
Organized into seven thematic blocks with titles such as Mysticism, Success, The man o Experimentation, This exhibition, modest in size, tries to take a look at the different moments and searches that the Sicilian artist went through. He doesn’t quite achieve it, perhaps because he goes through all the topics on tiptoe, without delving into any of them.
In the eighties, Italy and Spain danced to the rhythm of I am looking for a permanent center of gravityincluded on the disc The master’s voice (His Master’s Voice), with which Battiato became the first Italian artist to sell more than a million albums. He was a musician, but also a tireless traveler, a dedicated mystic, a reserved intellectual, a painter and a filmmaker. In his prolific lyrics he mixed irony, literature, spirituality, philosophy, social criticism and poetry. He experimented with avant-garde sounds, chamber music, Arabic music, opera, pop, rock and multiple genres, building a vast map of sounds. However, in the sample it is only possible to enjoy five great hits from the eighties, although yes, in an impeccable sound space built with cutting-edge technology. “Battiato loved everything technological,” emphasizes the commissioner.
With more than thirty albums behind him, there are objects in the exhibition that will undoubtedly excite his fans, such as the first portable synthesizer in history, the EMS Synthi AKS. When it went on sale in 1971, Battiato traveled to London and spent his only savings on purchasing a device that was also used by Brian Eno or Pink Floyd (who signed with him The dark side of the moon), being the three artists who knew how to get the most out of it when musical experimentation and psychedelia were in full swing. From that time, pamphlets are also displayed announcing those concerts where he put on his aviator glasses – years later he changed them for sunglasses – at events in which he sometimes limited himself to creating unconnected sounds and leaving the stage, to the astonishment of his audience.
And if Battiato achieved anything in that search for himself, it was surprising. “He read a lot and that’s why we created an environment with the books that were on his table, focused on spirituality. He meditated twice a day on several rugs that he also used in concerts and with which we made an installation and we also projected what he saw at dawn from his window in his Sicilian house at the foot of Etna. He also embraced painting and that’s why we show many portraits that he made of his friends…”, explains Calcara.
One wonders whether the paintings, if not signed by Battiato, would be shown in a museum. “Well, he did not seek excellence, but simply paint, but he dedicated many hours to it,” explains his niece Cristina Battiato, also president of the foundation that bears her uncle’s name. “He was, above all, a very generous person, both spiritually and materially,” he says.
In the exhibition there is only one score, of a little-known song from the sixties, and there are no notebooks with lyrics or letters or papers that give a glimpse of the person beyond the images on album covers, posters or photo shoots. Did he give them all away? “The truth is that I don’t know. He didn’t have any photographs of him at home, nor any awards, I think that when he published a song he no longer considered it his and maybe someone has them, but at home I have found few things. He wrote a lot on the computer… At the Battiato Foundation we have some sheet music, but not many,” explains Cristina Battiato. Reflections on him by close collaborators, or historical contextualizations in relation to Italy, are also missed, since his career spans half a century. There is also no information about his childhood or his mother, to whom he was very close. The truth is that little is learned about his personal life or his opinions, although perhaps the commissioners wanted to respect his obsession with privacy.
“Many considered him a teacher precisely because of his way of being in the world and for that inner wisdom that he transmitted in simple everyday gestures and in his tireless desire to learn more,” explains Calcara. In fact, it is no coincidence that he cast the filmmaker and psychomagus Alejandro Jodorowsky as Beethoven in his anarchic film musiciansremembered in the exhibition with a large poster. Battiato, who followed the teachings of the guru-philosopher George Gurdjieff, often sought friendship with unclassifiable figures such as Jodorowsky, philosophers, experts in metaphysics, spiritual teachers and anyone who could contribute something to his inner search. He also helped young musicians and created a record label for this and also a publishing house, Ottava, to publish the books that he could not find in Italian, although they do not appear in the exhibition.
But when talking about this brilliant nonconformist, the most important thing is the music, as curator Calcara concludes: “When you learn his lyrics by heart, when you sing them, they pierce your heart and when they come out of your mouth they are like a balm for the soul.”