Art weekend in Milan: all the exhibitions in the city

Forty-eight hours immersed in beauty (but also in a labyrinth, in a sort of horror film or in front of supermodels): do you like the idea? Then stop in Milan because the spring of art has already exploded and it is better to take advantage of it.

First step: Tortona area, al Mudec Museum of Cultures hosting this season’s #mustsee exhibit: Dalì, Magritte, Man Ray and Surrealism. Masterpieces from the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (until July 30) is truly remarkable and takes some time to enjoy properly. Room after room, in a path divided into six sections (don’t miss the effective animations of Storyille) we enter the magical world of Surrealism, the most original, dreamlike, nonconformist and fun of the Avant-garde. Since the 1920s, with a nod to Freud’s textsa plethora of artists (the best known names are those in the title, but let’s not forget Max Ernst, Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington, Eileen Agar) have overturned the rules of common representation to bring on canvas or sculpture the mysteries of the psychedreams and nightmares, the most shameful desires (the section of the exhibition dedicated to theerotic imagery), the funniest games. Rene Magritte – below you see one of his best-known works, it is located in the last room of the exhibition, which you will certainly photograph because it is set up with a fake green lawn as a floor – he surprises us with his enigmatic paintings, Man Ray enhances the pleasure in his Venus restored (a bust that incorporates the Venus de Milo, sensually bound) while di Salvador Dali we see a string of dreamlike paintings. We move between 180 masterpieces absolute, on loan from Boymans Museum of Rotterdam, famous for the quality of its collection. The Dutch institution is now closed for a major restoration project and this has allowed the loan of a series of exceptional works for this Milanese exhibition: an opportunity not to be missed.

Second stage: Prada Foundation, Porta Romana airport area. If you are an art lover, you know the address well and it is always worth a visit (including a coffee in the legendary bar designed by Wes Anderson). From this weekend until July 17, an unusual and disturbing exhibition will be presented in the huge spaces on the ground floor and in those of the Podium. Anatomical waxes was born in collaboration with The Observatorywhich is part of the Museum of Natural History and the University Museum System of the University of Florence, and the Canadian director and screenwriter David Cronenberg (that of La Mosca, Crash, Cosmopolis, Crimes of the future, the visionary pioneer of body-horror). Difficult to tell what comes out of this unusual team: just know that Cronenberg visited the Specola for a long time (born in 1775, in full Enlightenment, in Florence, with the aim of educating people to scientific culture, the Specola it is the oldest science museum in Europe and is now closed for restoration) and drew from it a 4 minute short in which some of the most suggestive anatomical waxes (four female figures expanses that we find on the upper floor of the exhibition under the display cases that preserve its fragile structure) come to life and, almost in ecstasy, float in the water towards an undefined journey. The vision of the short film is “wow-effect” as it always happens in front of Cronenberg’s films, but we can say the same for the exposure – a event more unique than expensive – some anatomical wax figures, daughters of the great mastery of eighteenth-century wax modellers who made these figures for didactic purposes, almost as if they were three-dimensional anatomical atlases. An exhibition that tells us about an important piece of the history of medicine and that connects the scientific research of the past to the creativity of a great contemporary artist. Surprising (see the detail below).

Third and fourth stage: Royal Palace, full center. Pause-beauty with the large retrospective dedicated to Helmut Newton (1920-2004), master of photography, famous for having been able to enhance the power of the female body in his shots. In the rooms of Palazzo Reale, excellently set up, Helmut Newton-Legacy (until 25 June, a co-production by Palazzo Reale, Marsilio Arte e Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin) is truly extensive and retraces through 250 photographs (but also magazines, documents and videos) the career of one of the most admired photographers of all time, with a reputation as a great provocateur. Yes, there are the most famous shots, but also works like this one that we propose below which demonstrates that Newton was above all an unconventional artist, always ready to shoot “out of the box”.

Leaving the Newton exhibition, you can still stop at Palazzo Reale, in the Hall of the Caryatids (the evocative hall of large mirrors and chandeliers, semi-destroyed by bombing during the Second World War and maintained as such since then, as a warning against the horrors of war). Here, where in 1953 Pablo Picasso decided to exhibit GuernicaToday Michelangelo Pistoletto89 years old and the energy of a boy, a master of Arte Povera and a convinced supporter of the role of art as an activator of possible social change, presents preventive peace (until June 5), an installation composed of a cartoon maze that wind along the entire room, gradually crossing significant works by the artist: among mirrors, giant apples, a “Venus of rags” which makes us reflect on poverty and the importance of reuse and recycling, you come away with more questions than answers (and isn’t that what art is supposed to do?).

In the end, stage-bonus: here you have to go to the wide spaces (10 thousand square meters) of the new Superstudio Maxi of via Moncucco. It’s worth it if you’re a photography enthusiast because the twelfth edition of MIA Milan Image Art Fairconceived by Fabio Castelli, which this year presents a large number of exhibitors (100, many from abroad) and interesting projects on artistic photography. Among the great masters and emerging brands, there are many special projects, with a particular eye on female gazeto the female gaze in front of and behind the lens.