It’s a curious title. . .and when said in a certain way it sounds like music. This was my experience when I first saw the phrase “MODERATE LA VELOCITA” while traveling in Italy a few years ago. This words were illuminated in the electronic signs above the highway.
I was in Italy on a sort of pilgrimage traveling from place to place where I could see the works of the Old Masters. Whilst driving I was often confronted with the curious words above the road. (The meaning of which, ahem. . . I didn’t comprehend at the time!) The phrase in lights would be flashing on and off and would become, silently, like music to me. Given my preoccupation with the Italian artworks I was traveling around to see, the blinking signs somehow became a part of my visual experience of the art. They entered into my dialogue with the Old Masters.
Back home I had already been working on a series of drawings and paintings stemming from a quotation of a famous detail from Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam.” When I associated my paintings with the roadway phrase, because of my memory of the experience of Italy, they obtained a different and very concrete level of meaning. So, this is how the current series of prints, previously titled “Seven Attempts at Creation” got its name.
By the way, the phrase means, “reduce your speed.”
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