Friday, June 29, 2007

Quirky Italian Artist Builds "Indescribable" Tribute to Italian Culture

The ANNOTICO Report

They don't quite know what to think about with Silvio Barile's, "creation", much like people were puzzled by the work of Somon Rodia, and his Rodia Towers in Los Angeles, that many tears later are held in the highest reverence.

A third well known Italian eccentric that is now also revered is Baldasare Forestiere and his Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno

http://historicfresno.org/nrhp/forest.htm

Monumental Obsession

Italian-American immigrant's passion for history is set in Quikrete

The Detroit News

Michael H. Hodges

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Visit Silvio Barile, 67, in his "Italian-American Museum" in Redford Township, and you enter a crazy-quilt landscape that is, quite literally, like nothing you've ever seen.

Let him guide you through his former pizzeria -- stacked to the ceiling with kitsch, from ceramic nuns to old Dean Martin and Connie Francis albums -- as he ticks off his artistic creations, most of which loom in the wonderland behind the store.

A short, astonishingly energetic man who moved to America as a teenager, Silvio's words spill out in accented torrents.

"OK," he says, threading past pyramids of Dei Fratelli spaghetti sauce and columns of unopened wine bottles that snake through the crowded store, "I got the Detroit David. I got a statue of Pope John Paul. There's Julius Caesar. I got Alexander the Great.

"And for the Red Wings fans," he adds with obvious relish, "I got a beautiful Stanley Cup."

All enormous. All hand-made. And all constructed out of cement.

Boiled down to its essentials, this is a tale of the relationship between an immigrant, an obsession, and several tons of concrete.

"It's out of another planet," says sculptor Sergio DeGiusti, who used to teach at Wayne State. "I've known Silvio for 30 some years. I've given lectures on him. There he is -- totally nuts."

Silvio's works are towering agglomerations in the "primitivist" style, statues with crudely crafted limbs and faces, encrusted with inlaid marbles, little dolls, clocks and bits of polished stone.

Behind the pizzeria-turned-museum, the courtyard he calls the "Appian Way" features a massive Augustus Caesar. Little figures representing Silvio's five children cluster at the emperor's feet.

Nearby is his tribute to the "Three American Kings," the boxers Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali.

Across the alley, Silvio's backyard is even more mobbed with statuary, including the "Birth of the American Venus," which boasts an embedded Liberty Bell and a small replica of the Mayflower.

Silvio shakes his head.

"It stuns me that I did this. It was so difficult. Little Silvio helped me," he says, referring to his 25-year-old son, "but I must be a crazy person."

He did it all, he says, to remind Italian-Americans of their heritage, and Americans of their need for spiritual renewal.

"I love the people of America terribly much," Silvio says, "but I want them to become a little better, a little bit more moral."

He rails -- in his charming fashion, albeit with the sharp words of an angry prophet -- against the immorality that's overtaken American culture, the sexual exploitation of women, and the prevalence of abortion and divorce.

Yet Silvio himself is divorced.

And up near the ceiling in his cheek-by-jowl storefront museum, there's a pin-up of a blonde wearing nothing but a radiant smile.

He shrugs. "Well, sometimes I make mistakes."

His unexpectedly strong language on moral issues created problems for anthropologist John Allan Cicala, who mounted an exhibit on Silvio's work at the 1992 Michigan Folklife Festival.

Cicala was out of state when the festival opened, so Silvio himself addressed visitors.

"You can imagine how that turned out," Cicala says by phone from Newburgh, N.Y. "The festival people called me in New Jersey and said, 'Can you come over and present for Silvio? He's alienating everyone with his talk about American women being whores.'"

"If you let him, he can be offensive," says Kathy Vander, who co-produced a documentary on Silvio entitled "Silvio: A Story About Art & Pizza."

"He's old-school. You just have to know how to take him. It's kind of a whole package."

Artistically, DeGiusti places Silvio in the tradition of inspired, self-taught visionaries whose obsessions sometimes border on the insane.

He calls Silvio "an anarchist," but will tell you flat-out that his statuary -- a classic example of "outsider art," not unlike Tyree Guyton's Heidelberg Project or the Watts Towers in Los Angeles -- unquestionably has artistic merit.

"Oh God, yes," DeGiusti says, "But I've always glorified this sort of art. These people live in their own fantasy world, and they're often deeply moved by religion."

Indeed, it almost feels like Silvio's creations -- studded with references to morality and spirituality -- serve a penitential purpose, the sinner creating to the greater glory of God (and, incidentally, to the greater glory of Italy, America and the Red Wings) as a way of expiating his own sins.

And the truth is -- to build concrete towers 20-feet high with your bare hands, and haul around boulders the size of large ottomans is a cause that requires religious devotion.

"John Prusak and I moved one of his sculptures out to Cranbrook for our premiere," says Matt Cantu, referring to the Silvio documentary he made two years ago with local filmmakers Prusak and Vander. (The 30-minute film is available at www.vanderfilms.com.)

"The statue was only three-feet high," Cantu adds, "but it took us half a day. It nearly killed us."

Like DeGiusti, Cicala finds a seriousness in Silvio's creations that others might miss.

"He makes these pieces with whatever is going through his head at the time," Cicala says, "but it is conceptual. It is thought through."

Others, like Cantu and DeGiusti, see a sadness -- or darkness -- behind Silvio's maniacal devotion, but you won't get much of that out of the artist himself.

Right now he's working on an American Colisseum, as well as a tribute to Pompeii, for which he purchased some enormous quartzite boulders.

"One rock is so beautiful," Silvio says. "I'm making it 'God's Throne.'"

In these massive constructions, DeGiusti is inclined to think he spots "the melancholy of the Italian immigrant," and tips his hat to the sacrifices Silvio has weathered in their creation.

"There's a price you pay for this kind of obsession. You have to be very self-centered to do these sorts of monuments. I mean, he's out there in winter. There's this incredible drive, and this incredible self-indulgence that's costly. It's cost him friends."

DeGiusti pauses.

"Silvio," he adds, "is an opera."

Barile's works are studded with dolls, clockfaces, marbles -- and in this case, the Statue of Liberty guarded by two Roman emperors.

Silvio Barile's 'Italian-American Museum'

Where: 26417 Plymouth Road, Redford Township. It's housed in Barile's former pizzeria.
Hours: Open most days during regular business hours or whenever Barile happens to be around. There's no formal schedule, however, and no telephone.
Admission: Free