There is such a thing as magnificent obsession, in which passion and endless work, free from the restrictions of time, can create incredible expressions that are unlike anything known.
The Museo Ettore Guatelli is a perfect expression of magnificent obsession. Just a few kilometres from Parma, in the heart of the Italian food valley, surrounded by a bucolic landscape, is the museum house of Ettore Guatelli, a rural teacher who built his encyclopedia on the walls of his farmhouse, spending years collecting all kinds of objects whose common value is the stories they tell of the lives of the people who used them. Guatelli collected tangible objects of social life in order to save a fast disappearing civilization from oblivion, at a point in the 20th century that saw interest in material culture spreading in Italy, to create an archive that is completely unlike any other folklore, rural or ethnographic museum.
Born in 1921 into a family of farmers, Guatelli developed a trans-disciplinary attitude, which was, in part, thanks to the poet Attilio Bertolucci, father of film director Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris, The Dreamers), who, in exchange for having Ettore type his manuscripts, helped him to become a primary school teacher. It was after this that Ettore began to spend time with intellectuals and
take part in political and cultural life, devoting himself to reflections on the museology of the farming world and the construction of the museum itself. Now the museum is a machine of reiteration and memory, having passed from the hands of Ettore Guatelli himself to Piero Clemente, an expert in Italian cultural anthropology, who legitimised the museum and thanks to whose interest its value has been brought to light, and now to Mario Turci who, since Guatelli’s death in 2000, has been keeping alive an existence which was spent saving signs of lives and cultures from oblivion; through to Ettore’s friends who guide visitors around the rooms of the house to discover the thousands of
stories that they hold.
Dapper Dan interviewed Mario Turci, anthropologist and lecturer at the University of Perugia, who is the director of the Fondazione Guatelli.
MARCO CENDRON: How would you define the Ettore Guatelli Museum?
MARIO TURCI: It is a memorial based on the biographies of simple life told by objects. It is a great installation, a brainchild, which plays between writing and anthropology. Ettore wanted to write about the dignity of people’s existence through the objects that tell the tales of everyday life.
MC: What relationship does the museum have with history and time?
MT: It can be read on two levels. The first level is connected to Ettore’s intention which he would express as a wish to collect objects hailing from the depths of yesterday right through to the furthest boundaries of tomorrow. A second level is linked to microhistories. Time is the page on which it is possible to leave the marks of individuality: history, therefore, made by the effort of individuals–not, however, a broad notion of the individual, not the generic farmer, but rather of Luigi because this, that or the other object tells the story of a human being who had a name and a surname, whether it’s Luigi, Giuseppe or Caterina. As well as the objects, Ettore left a considerable archive which we have collected in 60 boxfuls of manuscripts, notes, diaries–ethnographic datasheets which are about the objects but always in connection to the story of an individual or how that particular person used that tool, how it changed their life, the sacrifices they made to buy it and how they adjusted to it and so on.
MC: What remains of an object for which there is no longer any use, an object that is socially dead?
MT: We can view the museum as a place in which objects tell us about their evolution, of reuse, recycling and the practical know-how of the farming world. They are objects that tell us about a way of life, a relationship with time, a bond with nature and the fundamental necessity for a dialogue between man and nature; they speak to us of a very concrete idea of biodiversity–all issues which I consider to be highly topical. But I am convinced that the Museo Guatelli goes well beyond that. This is not a museum dedicated to objects, even if that must seem an absurd thing to claim. Ettore’s interest is not in the surface of things: the object has to disappear, to the extent that the walls of the Museo Guatelli are chock-full of things, so packed that one is not struck by the memory of each individual thing observed, because there are so many and because their real content lies in what is invisible, and the invisible of the museum is human beings and the humanity of their lives. Ettore’s museum is a museum in which the value of everyday dignity is narrated by objects. In our case the objects are the keys or, if you prefer, footprints, regardless of their physical nature. The object is not important: the objects are there to speak of the biographies; they are called upon to tell us of the humanity behind them. This is a museum whose aim is not to celebrate, but to tell the story of human beings, and of the dignity of each existence.
MC: The museum reminds me of the Collyer brothers’ house. What was the obsession driving Ettore?
MT: The desire to save: not to let a time in which human existence had a meaning and could teach just slip away–a world which was undergoing rapid change. I think of Ettore as a castaway going into the sea and trying to collect everything floating in order to preserve the memory of the life and journey of that ship, at which point everything becomes meaningful, right up to the last button, so that not even one passage of human memory is lost. Just think that, in addition to the objects on display, we found storerooms filled to the brim with things. When we started to tidy up the things which are not exhibited it took us several cargo containers to collect everything.
MC: I consider the museum exhibits to be an expression of Padanian Surrealism equal to Fellini and Ligabue. Would you agree?
MT: Ettore also treated objects as a form of writing the fantastic, developing wall writings, tapestries, pictures, compositions made of objects, even if his aim was not to create tales of the fantastic, but to amaze, because in the moment of amazement, Ettore used to say, comes that silence, that emptiness which gives the chance to create a bond.
MC: Why are there no descriptions of any kind in the museum?
MT: Tours are guided by Ettore’s friends: different people with different points of view, who love certain objects but not others. Therefore it is possible for each visit to the museum to be different to the last. The aim is not to create a tour of the objects, but to introduce the visitor to the human nature of the things and the best solution is to tell it, but in verbal narration there is scope for the negotiation between visions of the world and reality. We can call them interactive narrations, conceived to stimulate the visitors who are often called on, as Ettore loved to do, so as to learn from them and get to know their point of view.
MC: Why is it defined as the Museum of the Obvious?
MT: It’s an intuition of Ettore’s which can be traced back to the idea of nouvelle histoire, the historiographical movement tied to the journal Annales founded by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre based on the idea that history lies in the obvious, it is never in important events, but in the life of a baker, a carpenter, a soldier going off to war.
Originally published in Dapper Dan 10, 2014. Interview by Marco Cendron.