Capri Revisited
A translation by Dr William Hope, a member of the Salford Languages Research Group and of the Communication, Cultural and Media Studies Research Centre, has been selected for publication by New York’s Gagosian Gallery in one of its latest projects.
Cy Twombly at Casa Malaparte, Capri (2015) is a hardback volume to accompany a recent exhibition of work by the award-winning artist and sculptor Cy Twombly held on the island of Capri; the exhibition was hosted at a villa formerly owned by the Italian writer and journalist Curzio Malaparte.
Dr Hope has published several monographs and essays on the writings of Malaparte, who was a correspondent for the Italian newspaper Corriere della sera during the Second World War, and who published a number of controversial articles and essays from Axis-occupied territory in Eastern Europe.
In Cy Twombly at Casa Malaparte, the Gagosian Gallery included one of Malaparte’s writings, translated from Italian to English by Dr Hope as “Self-Portrait in Stone: A House Between the Greco and the Scirocco”, which outlines the construction of the writer’s futuristic villa on the eastern part of Capri in the late 1930s. The villa was famously used as the setting for Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film, Le mépris (Contempt), and continues to host art exhibitions and cultural events.