Clavel Gilbert – Wikipedia
Gilbert Clavel (Born May 29, 1883 in Kleinhüningen, † September 6, 1927 in Basel) was active in the early futuristic movement. He devoted himself to the visual and performing art as well as the writer. From 1919 in Positano in Southern Italy, he had a wastewurm, which was several centuries -old, and the subsequent rocks converted into a total work of art, which Siegfried Kracauer in 1925 in the text Felsenwahn in Positano described.
Gilbert Clavel was the middle of the three sons of the silk dye Alexander Clavel-Merian and the Emilie Maria Clavel-Merian (the other were René Clavel and Alexander Clavel-Respinger) and belonged to a wealthy Basel industrial family. As a result of tuberculosis and an accident in childhood, he developed a severe spine curvature and suffered physically and mentally from his weak constitution throughout his life. After school, he attended lectures in art history, philosophy and Egyptology at the University of Basel and – also for medical reasons – went on extensive trips to south of Europe (Ticino, Italy) and North Africa (Algeria, Egypt). In 1907 he founded the Central European monthly script , designed by Carl Burckhardt. In 1910 he settled in Capri and Anacapri, where he led a withdrawn life and developed art and art and existence theories that were influenced by the outgoing Fin de Siècle.
From 1913 Clavel made guesswork about a “universal memoria”, that is, an all -encompassing memory that has nothing that has ever seen the human eye and was imagined. This idea shaped his novel published in 1917 An institution for suicides (“An institute for suicide”), in which the first-person narrator describes an institution in which three means are offered to kill themselves in the state of hallucination: drinking, lust and pantopon (an opium preparation). Death is not a taboo and is considered a “change in the center”. In the lyrical essay published in 1920 Expressions of Egypt The journey to Egypt and encountered ancient Egyptian art struck itself nine years earlier. In this text, Clavel celebrated human being and human creative power as the highest form of existence that is immortal and returned forever.
During the First World War, the clavure of breaking the clavel with the traditions and its aesthetic values radically modernized became the encounter with the Ballets Russes and the Italian futurists, of which he was mainly with the painter Fortunato in 1917 and 1918 Depero ENG.
Depero described Clavel as follows:
“A small gentleman, hunchback, with straight nose like a squad, with golden teeth and female shoes, with vitre and nasal laughter. A man of nerves and will, endowed with a superior culture. Professor of Egyptian history, investigator and observer with artist sensitivity, writer, lover of the people, verse, metaphysics […] composer of lyrics, he was also a joyful and a suffering. ”
“A little gentleman, humped, with a nose, just cut like an angle mass, with gold teeth and feminine low -shoes, a glass nasal laugh. A man full of strength and will, of superior cultivation. Professor of Egyptian history, researchers and observers with the sensitivity of an artist, writer, folk friend, lover of verses and metaphysics. This author of poetry was a lively and suffering at the same time. ” [first]
Depero illustrated An institution for suicides And portrayed clavel in several pictures. Both wanted to draw the “plastic theater” as a new art form from a clear form, color and light language, music and movement. On May 14, 1918, their fairytale game came in the Römer Teatro dei Piccoli Plastic dances for premiere. In a change between concrete narrative strands and abstract moments, wooden puppets in five acts move mimically to the music of Alfredo Casella, Gerald Tyrwhitt, Béla Bartók and Francesco Malipiero. Clavel, who as an idea provider and sponsor of the Plastic dances Mind that were enthusiastic in Rome tried in vain to show the work in Paris, Naples and Switzerland. He saw himself as part of the futuristic art and company renewal and wrote art-theoretical essays.
The contact with Depero ended after the intensive collaboration in 1918. From now on, Clavel devoted himself entirely to the renovation and expansion of a former watchtower in Positano. Clavel had already acquired the tower in 1909, but it was only the ownership rounds on the rock on which the tower was located in 1917 allowed the redesign according to its ideas. Clavel, who, in addition to Depero, also got to know Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Enrico Prampolini and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, died of breastfell in 1927 during a stay in Basel.
The former watch tower in Positano, which Gilbert Clavel expanded, is known under different names: Torre Clavel, Castel Clavel, Torre di Fornillo, Torre di Positano . It is also called “Saracenenturm”, but is not, as is believed, of medieval origin, but goes back to the term of office of the Spanish vice king of Naples Pedro Álvarez de Toledo in the 16th century. It is one of dozens along the amalfi coast and, like his counterparts, served to protect against attacks from sea before losing its purpose and was revealed. The tower was a ruin, and Clavel was only able to move in permanently in 1920, after deep renovation measures. Working on the tower, which is easy to understand with the brother René thanks to the rain, employed him until his death. All rooms, including their furniture, were individually designed by him to detail and received their own names such as “Malterahaus”, “Sirenzimmer”, “Diamantzimmer”, “Lietzhaus”. Clavels’ structural activity also included the rocks, into which he drove underground caverns and corridors of over 100 meters in length. A grotto discovered during the construction work was connected to the sea via a 35 -meter long, spiral -shaped walk and only made accessible from there. Equipped with an organ, it should serve as a concert hall, but collapsed.
The evaluation of the Tower of Positano goes beyond the aspect of a purely architectural performance towards a total work of art. Gilbert Clavel, who used dinghy rod and compass instead of planning drawings to determine the design, and explosives to roar the rock, saw in his work a metaphysical dynamic of working: “When I curve, I always have the feeling that air spaces with their To capture energies in which a spiritual one comes to explosion. ” [2] Siegfried Kracauer, deeply impressed by a visit, wrote in his text Felsenwahn in Positano (1925): “Magic sweeps across the place. It is the enclave of lost powers that have gained a refuge in the anti -landscape and now appear in person. ” [2] The frail body where clavel suffered, and the examination of this contradiction of his self -image (“I am often a bit strange, that is to be attributed to the struggle inside: body against mind. If I were healthy, I would be a giant.” [3] ) found an equivalent in the rock and in its violent – and thus strongly based on futuristic guiding principles – formation by explosive. The grotto served as a symbol of the gender and the gender order in general: “The floor plan should later represent a testicle seen in the section. In this basic form, I steer – without anyone realizing – what nature has taken from me from the most lively. ” [3] In a letter to Carl Albrecht Bernoulli (1927), Clavel spoke of his “Bachofenian Ei-room”. [3]
According to Gilbert Clavel’s death, the tower passed into the possession of René Clavel, who sold him in 1955. Today it is rented out as a holiday residence.
- Gilbert Clavel, with illustrations by Fortunato Depero, translated from the German of Italo Tavolato: An institution for suicides . Bernardo Lux, Rom 1917.
- Gilbert Clavel, with the help of Ruth Waldstetter, edited by Helene Boeringer, Vignetten by Emil Lüthy: My space . Schwabe, Basel 1930.
- ↑ Quote after Noveporte.it ( Memento of the Originals from November 19, 2007 in Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been used automatically and not yet checked. Please check original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note.
- ↑ a b Quote after Engeler.de
- ↑ a b c Quote after G26.Ch ( Memento of the Originals from November 5, 2007 in Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been used automatically and not yet checked. Please check original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note.
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