1a. Informational map on a portion of the Villa Bitricci. 1986. All pieces are comprised of concrete, paint, flotage and mixed media.

Oh Time! The beautifier of the dead,

Adorner of the ruin, comforter

And only healer when the heart hath bled;

…Time, the avenger!

— LORD BYRON, 1788–1824

The Villa Bitricci

e D AV I D F . G I E S E

In the early 1980s, while traveling through the Piedmont region of northern Italy, I discovered the remains of the Villa Bitricci, a fabulous estate in the foothills of the Italian Alps. Located 30 kilometers from Vercelli on the border between Lombardy and Piedmont, the villa was named after Dante’s mis-tress, who, after being declared a witch and a harlot by a religious zealot, fled Florence and sought sanctu-ary at the estate. She spent her remaining years at the villa and is thought to be buried on the grounds.

I have conducted extensive excavations at the site and have made some startling discoveries. Based on archeological, epigraphic and literary evidence, the villa appears to be the longest continuously inhabited private residence in Europe, dating back to the 3rd century AD. Virtually every major European artist and intellectual has visited the estate over the past ten centuries, and its impact on western art and thought has been incalculable.

The gate temples of the Villa Bitricci were enlarged during the reign of Diocletian (284–385 AD) and were used as a military fort to defend against the onslaught of barbarian invaders from the north. After the disposition of the Emperor Romulus Augustus by Odovacar in 476 AD, the villa was maintained as an outpost by the emperor’s brother and marks the beginning of its occupation as a private residence.

Among the first objects I discovered during my initial season at the site were wall fragments, which were removed from two cortiles (interior courtyards surrounded by arcades). Personifying the seasons Spring and Fall, they were originally the peristilio (colonnade) of gate temples begun in 216 AD by the Emperor Caracalla as a last attempt to show the power and splendor of Rome. The Spring cortile was in very bad condition, and very little remained salvageable. However, while removing parts of the cortiles, workmen discovered rooms off of the cortiles. These rooms were badly damaged, but we were fortunate to save six niches. They were removed from various rooms and have no relationship to each other. The original purpose of the niches has long since been lost. However, X-rays have revealed frescos of the most obscene and pornographic nature. Public taste and decorum dictates that they will never be exposed.

Construction and renovation on the estate continued into the 20th century, finally being stopped by the Fascists and the outbreak of World War II. Virtually every major political and business leader in Italy has owned the villa at one time or another, and each has attempted to surpass the others in terms of building and decoration. Construction reached its zenith during the 13th through the 18th centuries, when many of the foremost painters, sculptors, and architects in Europe were commissioned for projects at the estate.

Among the great Italian artists who worked at the villa were Giotto (1266–1377), Filipe Brunelleschi (1377–1446), Donatello (1386–1466), Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), Giovanni Canaletto (1697–1768), Giovanni Piranesi (1720–1778), and Antonio Canova

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(1757–1822). The moldings, color schemes and decorative motifs were, for the most part, executed by their assistants, using three techniques—sgraffito (drawing scratched on a plastered and painted wall), relievo (sculpture in which the forms stand out on the surface), and fresco (painting on a wall in which pigments are applied to wet plaster). Although the wall fragments here have little artistic merit in and of themselves, they represent, through their various layers, the physical embodiment of the rise and fall of taste.

The villa has countless stories to tell. While standing in front of the wall, for example, the young Thomas Jefferson conceived the idea of the United States. After he returned to America, he was able to persuade the impressionable George Washington to abandon the grid system of surveying and to lay out the borders of the original thirteen colonies as picturesque shapes based on fragments of a greater whole. Whether Washington was inspired or just lazy is hard to tell, but the shapes of the first states can be found in the fragments of the wall.

Similarly, in 1911 or 1912, a group of German scholars traveling in northern Italy stopped at the villa and picnicked in the Spring cortile. Included in the group were the Czech psychologist Max Wertheimer and his two German colleagues, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler. After gazing at the wall for several hours, they left the estate and eventually returned home. Back at their respective universities in Germany, their impressions of the wall would be used as a source of inspiration in formulating the first experiments and treatise that would lead to the development of Gestalt psychology.

The vertical gaps between the wall fragments once held engaged columns and pilasters. The original Ro-man marble columns were quarried out in the 11th century for the Duomo di Turino (Turin Cathedral). Eventually, they were replaced by Brunelleschi in the popular style and stone of his time, pietra serena (a type of decorative stonework). These were ultimately removed by Mussolini in the 1930s and are now part of the train station in Milan.

After removal of the Spring and Fall cortiles was completed in 1986, I turned my attention to the excava-tion of various buildings in the vast gardens of the estate. These structures included the chapel complex, architectural follies (garden pavilions), astrological observatory, and grotto gates, among others. Although many of the buildings date from the 3rd century AD, most of fragments reflect the decorative and archi-tectural styles of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Scholars are still researching the mythology and iconography of the works discovered in the villa, al-though most agree that their influence on a number of artists and writers was significant and profound. As a young art student traveling in Italy, for example, Walt Disney is thought to have done caricatures of sculptural animals in the gardens that would eventually form the basis of the creation of Mickey Mouse, one of the greatest American icons of the 20th century. Although the actual meaning of many of these pieces is often shrouded in mystery, they can nevertheless be enjoyed for their decorative innovation and architectural splendor.

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78. From the Rise and Fall of Taste. Small Decorative Concealing Niche. 1986.

6. The Rise and Fall of Taste. 1986. Exhibition at the Prichard Gallery, 1991.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

— PA b l o P i c A s s o

Excavations from the Villa Bitriccie

M i c h A e l Z A k i A n

The Villa Bitricci never existed. It is a fictitious place. The site and all the artifacts supposedly found there arose from the studio and imagination of artist David Giese.

While Giese’s on-going project Excavations from the Villa Bitricci is a lie, it is a lie with a distinguished pur-pose. As Picasso noted about art in general, these fabricated ruins do reveal a certain truth. They provide insight into that perplexing series of styles, monuments and personalities known collectively as western civilization.

Giese’s work belongs to that current style known as postmodernism. Arising first in architecture in the 1970s as a response to reductive, formalist trends in modern art and design, postmodernism broadened art’s scope of reference by using historical paraphrase, irony and parody. One key strategy of postmodern-ism is appropriation, the conscious borrowing of pre-existing images. Giese appropriates the grand tradi-tion of classical art to reflect on its relevance for our time.

It is fitting that the Villa Bitricci is named for Dante’s great love. Giese’s work argues for an art based not just on intellect but on emotions and passion. His imagery is visual, visceral and sensuous. These interi-ors combine the crude and the refined, the tawdry and the sublime, the sacred and the profane, all for the purpose of giving visual pleasure. To Giese, aesthetic experience is foremost a celebration of the senses.

Nostalgia is vital to this project. The villa stands as a paradigm for cultural memory. Part of its allure is based on the fact that it was continually inhabited. In our transient culture, where people move constant-ly, the idea of a home that endured for centuries is a romantic dream, a comforting image of stability.

At the same time, Giese reveals this nostalgic attitude to be a desire for something that may never have existed. The villa represents not just one ideal past, but a series of discrete and contradictory moments. The art of one generation was readily covered over and replaced by the favored images of later inhabit-ants. The dense, impacted and conflicting imagery captured on the walls reveals the rise and fall of both taste and political power.

Giese’s choice of an Italian villa was far from arbitrary. The structure reflects two eras—Ancient Rome and the Renaissance—that are remote in time, but are similar in many ways to our own. One may even argue that our contemporary society was founded upon these cultures.

Ancient Rome built an empire that influenced almost all of the Old World. As one writer noted, Rome stood before the world as an enlightened and magnificent civilization: technical, practical, just, severe, wise in its accumulated experience. Yet its whole achievement was edged with violence, internal as well as

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external, and underlain by uneasy awareness of its own artifice, its precarious authority. The situation of Rome has many parallels to that of the United States at the end of the 20th century.

The Italian Renaissance revived the art of Ancient Rome under the new ideal of humanism. This age broke with Medieval Europe by creating a culture that was secular, material and commercial. In the pro-cess it established the modern world.

Americans are considered the consummate consumers, but Giese reveals that this tendency has earlier roots. The grandeur of the Villa Bitricci is a testament to the human desire for material gain. Succeed-ing generations were all obsessed with displaying their wealth. The vast accumulation of art at the villa reflects the desire to show one’s status and to better one’s neighbors.

The detailed stories that Giese has concocted about the building are as colorful and elaborate as the artifacts themselves. By adopting the dispassionate, analytic tone of the historian, he puns the supposed objectivity of academic inquiry. While his fabricated narrative contains enough facts to seem credible, it is outlandish enough to make an observer wonder if these stories are true. His history is a tall tale, a series of fables that rely on rumor, conjecture and innuendo. Although it purports to recount the great achievements of European culture, it more often than not reveals the follies of human nature.

Giese uses the forms of classical European art to address a perplexing phenomenon in our own late industrial society: the loss of contact with the real. Postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard has argued that in contemporary culture, media has become so powerful and pervasive that people no longer experience reality directly; we are conditioned to see everything as a manipulated image, as a simulation. Giese’s simulated archaeology turns the classical past into a grand theatrical display.

David Giese is a professor of art and chairman of the Department of Art at the University of Idaho. He received his BS and BA degrees from Mankato State University in Minnesota and his MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson. He has taught at the University of Arizona and Alverno College in Wisconsin, and is the artist-in-residence at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

Postscript—Reflections on an Exhibition

I wrote the above essay to accompany an exhibition of Excavations from the Villa Bitricci at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art in 1996. Since that time, David Giese’s art has continued to explore a productive theme. It seems that with each passing year, his work has grown even more relevant to our society at large. In a curious way, all of American culture has been gradually moving towards a Giesian view of the world. With the success of films like The Matrix and the rise of reality TV, people have grown accustomed to seeing the line between reality and illusion dissolving into a fluid interchange of fact and fiction. It is this sense of cultural and temporal flexibility that lies at the heart of his work.

Giese is a postmodernist with a sense of humor; a serious artist who does not take himself too seriously. His sculptural ensembles are constructions that invert and undermine the doctrinaire rigidity of early 20th century modernism, particularly the utopian movement known as Constructivism. While the historic Constructivists used flat planes of pure geometric shapes to emulate the precision of a machine, Giese creates constructions based on the free play of a historical imagination. His mind and hand travel freely into the past, gathering bits of cultural memories that are combined with fragments of historic recollections. What he produces are temporal paradoxes—objects that are new and old at the same time, blending our fascination with novelty with our love for the familiar.

His art engages in a complex dialogue between the real and the fictional. Giese’s faux antiquities are not based on real antique objects. He begins with items taken from popular culture—often made of plastic—that emulate ancient artifacts. He would then cast them and assemble various casts into larger construc-tions. Each finished sculpture operates on multiple levels of allusion and reference. The real work of art consists of copies of fake antiquities, inviting us to ponder whether there is an ultimate reality at all. In prehistoric times, artists were shamans and were believed to have magical powers. In a similar way, Giese is an artist, a philosopher and a trickster. He is a master of illusions and a grand wizard who creates enter-taining deceptions that continue to baffle and amaze.

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1b. Informational map on a portion of the Villa Bitricci. 1986. Detail.

Faux frescoes of Italian villa have vrai charmby Mary Abbe

As artist David Giese tells the tale, everyone who was ever anyone from Dante’s mistress to Thomas Jefferson to Benito Mussolini hung out at the Villa Bitricci, a fabulous estate he claims to have discovered in the Pied-mont hills of northern Italy. An artist, art historian and would-be archaeologist, Giese has installed fragments of the now-ruined villa in a must-see exhibition on view at the Caroline Ruff Gallery in the Wyman building, 400 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis, through June 22.

In originality, wit and professional polish, Giese’s ambi-tious show far outshines the work currently featured in more than a dozen exhibitions in Minneapolis’ warehouse district art galleries. It consists of 13 wall sculptures that appear to be fresco sections and niches cut from the walls of a villa erected roughly between the 15th and 19th centuries. Evidently stained with the grime of centuries, the grayish slabs are decorated with overlapping layers of design—colorful medieval patterns, rumpled baroque draperies, broken neoclassical pedi-ments, Victorian garlands and clusters of fluttering cherubs.

Although the fragments appear to be ancient stone carvings, they are in fact assemblages of painted plaster, cement, perlite and fiberglass fabric on wooden frames. Giese confects these fabulous fictions during long winters in Moscow, Idaho, where he teaches art at the University of Idaho. He spends summers roaming Europe, especially northern Italy, gathering inspiration and material for the villa, which is a figment of his imagination.

Giese has a particularly nice touch with grime. Each fragment has the mellowed patina of advanced age complete with water stains, flaking colors and crumbling corners. Noses are broken, heads are smashed, and fingers and wings are missing. Surprisingly, the abuse improves the frescos, giving them the worn and battered look that suggests authenticity. And yet as his niche from the villa’s chapel makes clear, Giese is not a coun-terfeiter. His work is a delicious pastiche of 19th-century pseudo-Gothic painted walls and ornamental draperies of various periods. One focus is on a little stone head of a woman, presumably the Virgin Mary, whose eyes roll upward in religious ecstasy. Bernini’s famous St. Theresa in Ecstasy (1645-52) from the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome comes immediately to mind, but only fleetingly. All thoughts of Bernini are quickly driven out by the kitschy accoutrements to Giese’s Madonna—a pair of hands holding a golden heart, knots

of clenched drapery, flashy colors and tacky gilding. In place of Bernini’s sublime Theresa for whom the mystic union with Christ became an orgasm in marble, Giese has substituted the sort of sentimental figurines com-monly found in 20th century devotional gift shops. No wonder he called a recent show of these fragments, The Rise and Fall of Taste.

Giese’s genius is theatricality. He fakes with panache and cheerfully invites us to discover him faking in flagrante delicto. He has even spun an elaborate pseudo-history of the villa complete with architectural site plans, archeologists’ stamps and an introductory brochure published on the occasion of a recent exhibition at The University of Idaho.*

According to this official tongue-in-cheek history, the fragments have little artistic merit in and of themselves but are a record of changing taste in ornament. Read-ing like a Michelin Guide run through a simultaneous translation machine, the brochure gathers the toenail clippings of history. Like all archaeological ruins, Villa Bitricci has its secrets. Pornographic frescoes were revealed via X-rays. Mussolini pillaged its pillars for the Milan train station—a perfectly credible explanation for the station’s Mussolini-Mayan design. The villa’s Ameri-can connection was Thomas Jefferson who, studying the walls, convinced George Washington to survey the original 13 states in the shape of villa fragments—and so now from Giotto through Canaletto, Donatello through Canova, Brunelleschi through Piranesi.

Although Giese modestly disclaims the significance of his art, the Villa Bitricci stands as wry tribute to the persistence of intellect and craft, even in this century when they have fallen out of favor with so many artists.

* The brochure was actually published for a nationally traveling exhibition of David Giese’s work.

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75a. From the Chapel Complex at the Villa Bitricci. 1988. 54 × 36 × 8 inches.

75b. From the Chapel Complex at the Villa Bitricci. 1988. Detail.

63. A 10 Year Retrospective, John Olbrantz, Director of the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington.

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7. Camera el Monte Bianco. 1988–1989. 86 × 47 × 18.75 inches.

64. Diana of the Hunt. 1989. 66 × 42 × 10 inches.

70. The Personification of Spring. 1989. 72 × 54 × 9 inches.

68. Neoclassicism Revisited. 1989. Boise Art Museum. 72 × 48 × 13 inches.

46. The Music Lesson. 1992. 36 × 48 inches.

67. Putti Opening the Portal to Arcadia. 1996. 66 × 60 × 14 inches. Sidney Besthoff collection.

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48. Camera el Antiquities. 1997. 60 × 48 × 15.5 inches. 55. An Allegory in Flowers Depicting Unrequited Love. 1992. 83 × 78 × 10.5 inches.

47. Enlightenment Lighting the Torch of Knowledge. 1995. 72 × 60 inches. 66. Masters of Flowers. 1996. 72 × 48 × 13 inches.

49. Venus and Adonis. 1992. 42 × 57 × 15.5 inches.

51. The Celebration of the Amazons. 1992. 42 × 57 × 15 inches.

50. The Presentation of the Delphine to Catherine di Medici and Charles II. 1996. 66 × 48 × 10 inches.

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52. The Triumph of Flora. 1994. 47 × 58 × 18 inches. 54. The Seduction of Paris. 1994. 52 × 58 × 18 inches. Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University.

Ivan Rules OK Harrisby J. bowyer bell

…David Giese steals on a grand scale. He snatches the style and content of mannerists work—the gods and god-desses, angels and seraphim, courtiers and powers and dominations, the bright colors and gilt and contrast. To the amalgamation he adds stuff, most especially gilt frames, broken and transformed to use. This is no rerun of a classical style by a contemporary, no art history exercise sold as a new direction, this is a glut of rococo,

bursts of too much, too soon, the overdone over done and done over. The result hangs on the wall, out from the wall, angels and cherubs, bits of paintings, magic realism by a wild wizard…

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69a. In Celebration of Bounty. 1997. 48 × 48 × 23 inches.

69b. In Celebration of Bounty. 1997. 48 × 48 × 23 inches. Detail.

53. Jupiter’s Conquest of Danae. 1994. 56 × 60 × 13 inches.

5. The Betrayal of Cupid. 1995. 60 × 36 × 9 inches.

9. The Abduction of Persephone. 1998. 72 × 48 × 12 inches.

37. Landscape with Parrot, Attributed to the Master of Flanders. 2005. 58 × 70 × 11 inches.

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44. Attributed to Jan Gossaert Called Mabuse. 2004. 44 × 52 × 8.5 inches.

45. Cellini Moon Dial. 2004. 63 × 51 × 15 inches. 43. Young Enchanted Scholar, Possibly Rabelais, Shows Northern Gothic Influences. 2004. 65 × 44 × 14 inches.

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36. Shrine for Lucrezia Borgia’s Cats. 2007. 36 × 54 × 11 inches.

41. Shrine for a Muse. 2005. 36 × 38 × 10 inches.

40. The Commemoration of the God Mars. 2005. 48 × 48 × 13 inches.

39. Celebration of Adonis. 2005. 48 × 36 × 19 inches.

38. In Commemoration of the First Coy brought from China with Cellini Moondial. 2007. 40 × 41 × 15 inches.

42. Zeus Entertaining His Harem. 2005. 48 × 42 × 10 inches.

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65. Trophy for Falconing Attended by Venus. 2005. 66 × 60 × 14 inches.

71. The Triumph of Neptune. 2005. 36 × 37 × 11 inches.

72. The Temple of Mars. 1992. 96 × 60 × 14 inches.

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Fragments of architecture (bits of walls, of rooms, of streets, of ideas) are

all one actually sees. These fragments are like beginnings without ends.

There is always a split between fragments that are real and fragments that

are virtual, between memory and fantasy. These splits have no existence

other than being the passage from one fragment to another. They are relays

rather than signs. They are traces. They are in-between.

— b e r n A r d T s c h u M i , 1 9 4 4

Wall of Iconse

d A r r Y l F u r T k A M P

The works in this exhibition, Recent Excavations From The Villa Bitricci, Wall of Icons: 500 Years of Celebrat-ing Events and Family Histories, allude to the rich, inner world of artist David Giese. Giese’s villa, named for Dante’s mistress, is a fictitious place—at least where it would exist on a map, as Giese describes it, in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. For the artist, however, these excavations from the illusory world of his imagination (an ongoing series of works begun over a quarter century ago) reflect a deeply held, revisited and reworked landscape.

Giese is an artist of the postmodern era. If there is no singular grand narrative or artistic continuum, as postmodern theory holds, then Giese’s fictitious narrative of 500 Years of Celebrating Events and Family Histories is an alchemic effort to share with his audience the rich array of visual experience that he has assembled throughout a life-time of travel, collection and appropriation. In these artifacts, he re-contextu-alizes and re-chronologizes art historical images with replica statuary and new materials (casting concrete, expandable foam, latex molds, flotage) to create wall fragments and shrines often more sensuous than the classical works they recall. These multi-layered assemblages combine elements of painting, sculpture and collage and reference a diverse array of stylistic periods and influences. The artist so convincingly balances these elements so as to, at first glance, persuade his viewing audience of the authenticity of these fabricated excavations. Closer inspection reveals a juxtaposing of styles that playfully contradicts their sequential historical order.

The initial exhibition of works from this series occurred in the late 1980’s and was aptly subtitled, The Rise and Fall of Taste, alluding to changes in aesthetic preference over time—in this case, the centuries long, continuously inhabited Villa. This might also be said of the evolution of Giese’s work over the past 25 years, having evolved from primarily large, two-dimensional wall fragments to the smaller, more three-dimensional, sculptural shrines that make up the current exhibition. The pleasure in reflecting on this ongoing body of Giese’s work lies in having witnessed an artist so completely immersed in his subject and process that the experience for the viewer has always been as rich and fulfilling as one assumes it must be for the artist. Throughout the years of excavation of his Villa Bitricci, the selected influences in-cluded in the production of these works offer a view of the artist’s own changing tastes and preferences, running the gamut from sacred to profane and in many ways paralleling the invented history of their subject. One can be confident that whatever new discoveries are to be unearthed in Giese’s artistic quest, the experience for his audience will be visually rewarding.

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20. Commemoration of Noble Brotherhood. 2009. 27 × 22 × 8 inches. 4. Fragment from the Piano Nobile of the Palazzo Medici. 2008. 48 × 35 × 16 inches.

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22. Puti Installing Garland that Personifies Summer. 2009. 24 × 19 × 11 inches.

27. Muse Guarded by a Sirin. 2010. 30 × 28 × 11 inches.

24. Tribute to Adonis. 2009. 28 × 24 × 12 inches.

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12. Shrine for the Whippet of Ottavio Farnese. 2007. 28 × 28 × 10 inches.

26. The Personification of the River Po. 2010. 26 × 20 × 10 inches.

13. Shrine for the First Chinese Pekingese to Arrive in Europe, belonging to Clara Serena. 2007. 33 × 19 × 9 inches.

17. Tribute to Venus de Milo Accompanied by Unknown Master of Flowers. 2008. 35 × 22 × 9 inches. 23. Tribute to Francesco Borromini. 2009. 31 × 14 × 8 inches.

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18. Tribute to Hebe the Goddess of Youth. 2008. 33 × 22 × 7 inches.

19. The Power of Zeus. A Ménage à Trois of the Deities. 2009. Private Collection of Ron Walters & Randall Dickson. 28 × 18 × 12 inches.

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11. Shrine of Unknown Purpose. 2007. 33 × 24 × 16 inches.

14. Marc Antony in the Temple of Venus. 2010. 40 × 24 × 8 inches.

21. The Sisters of Vestal Virgins. 2009. 24 × 19 × 7 inches.

15. Tribute to Bacchus. 2010. 28 × 36 × 10 inches.

25. Caesar Augustus Attended by His Mistresses. 2009. 30 × 27 × 8 inches.

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16. Triumph of Summer Attended by Spring and Fall from the Piano Nobile of Palazzo Rucellai. 2008. 71 × 61 × 18 inches. 10. The Adulation of Flowers, Attended by Spring and Summer from the Piano Nobile of The Palazzo Zuccari. 2008. 85 × 68 × 12 inches.

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The ruin is not in front of us; it is neither a spectacle nor a love object. It

is experience itself: neither the abandoned yet still monumental fragment

of a totality, nor, as Benjamin thought, simply a theme of baroque culture.

It is precisely not a theme, for it ruins the theme, the position, the presen-

tation or representation of anything and everything. Ruin is, rather, this

memory open like an eye, or like the hole in a bone socket that lets you see

without showing you anything at all, anything of the all. This, for showing

you nothing at all, nothing of the all. ‘For’ means here both because the

ruin shows nothing at all and with a view to showing nothing of the all.

— J A c q u e s d e r r i d A , 1 9 3 0 – 2 0 0 4

David Giese’s Palimpsestse

i v á n c A s T A ñ e d A

The term postmodern or postmodernity is as difficult a concept to define as any in contemporary discourse. The plurality of definitions reflects the numerous artistic and cultural fields that claim to have examples of postmodernism. Still, one notion that seems the most fitting for illustrating the acute relationship between postmodernity and history is the palimpsest.

Originally, a palimpsest was a text or manuscript on which an earlier text has been effaced and the vel-lum or parchment reused for another. Following Freud, Jacques Derrida appropriated the palimpsest as a metaphor for the manifold of memory and consciousness: The human mind records experiences which become memory traces through and upon which consciousness is always already filtered through. Consciousness thus is constantly tracing, erasing, and re-inscribing experiences. Although memory is erased its trace remains, underneath the surface so to speak. For Derrida, we never apprehend the world directly, but only retrospectively, through the palimpsest of memory and history. We can transpose this notion to history itself: The past is always apprehended through the palimpsest of history, whose layers are a kind of archaeology of time through which we perceive, and ultimately interpret history. In this sense the work of David Giese can be described as an artistic example of the postmodern palimpsest.

As a good postmodernist, Giese ironically gives the lie to the very idea of fiction as the ultimate creativ-ity. The works are products of the excavations of the fictive Villa Bitricci, whose own history is a virtual palimpsest of Italian art history from antiquity to Piranesi. Here begins Giese’s postmodern de-construc-tions. The fiction (from Latin facere, to make) is a making. The artist as maker, creator, is an idea that is as old as humanity itself. Giese plays God (Plato’s Demiurgos, world-artisan; the medieval Creator, divine architect) in fashioning a world, a narrative, for his creations.

We cannot speak of this work in terms of traditional iconography given that the work is literally a palimp-sest of images, relief, sculpture, architecture, ornament, ruins, memory. The seamlessness between these elements in Giese’s work is not simply a technical, and ultimately, a creative feat, but a feat of historical reconstruction, or what might be called aesthetic archaeology; iconography as memorial stratigraphy, as aesthetic detritus. Giese’s work thus echoes terms within postmodern discourse on time and history: archaeology, assemblage, genealogy, trace, index.

The fountainhead of the art historical appropriation that Giese’s work embodies is of course antiquity itself. In Giese’s work we see not just ancient Greek and Roman motifs but the evolution and accretion

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of antiquity, its appropriation, reconciliation and reinvention from Attica to Sicily, from the Etrusci to Rome; from Renaissance Florence to the French maniera; from Baroque to Rococo; from neoclassicism to the romantic grand tour. Hence Giese’s work might be called a kind of artistic Baedeker.

In these terms, Giese’s articulation of ornatus, which in antiquity functioned not simply as superfluous ornament or decoration but was considered the necessary completion and perfection of the work, is particularly eloquent. Woven throughout these pieces are the various manifestations of grotteschi, the fan-tastic ornamental arrangements famously rediscovered in the late Cinquecento in Nero’s Domus Aurea, as well as numerous instances of various genii, eroti, and putti. Along with these Giese often incorporates various instances of quadratura and/or quadri riportati: fictive frames for fresco images. All these ornati are not simply quotations but elegantly incorporated, aesthetically convincing, historical re-creations. We should not forget that behind this orgy of ornament lies an acute historical sensibility. Pace the postmod-ern notion of the death of author, Giese’s work is not just an aesthetic but a historical creation tout court.

But in the end these works are of course most engaging as evocation of ruins. At least since the Renais-sance and certainly after the unearthing of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the mid Eighteenth Century, from Winckelmann through Goethe and beyond, romantics and proto-romantics have described ruins not just as historical sites but as living evocations, breathing monuments of not just the past but of the historical present through which we see the past. As such, ruins embodied a kind of semi-evolutionary, vegetative growth as a living testament to the passing of time. Whether the ruin was symbolic of rediscov-ery and rebirth, as it was for the Renaissance and Winckelmann, or if it was evocative of decay, death, and loss, as it was for the romantics, it signified a living distance from the past. The cult of ruins has always been a reaching to the past through the present, an attempt to de-distance the past.

The ruin is of course literally a historical palimpsest. Derrida says a palimpsest both hides and reveals. David Giese’s works are, in the end, fragmented ruins of the past that simultaneously hide and reveal. They are of course in the end nostalgic, which we need to remember means a sentimental recollection of the past (its Greek root meant literally homesickness). The ruin by definition is incomplete, a fragment. Perhaps is it us, the viewers, while musing at these palimpsests, that complete the work of David Giese.

73. Commission for private residence of David Kimzey. Cassandra’s Lament. 1990. 48 × 60 inches.

{ L I I } D AV I D G I E S E David Giese’s Palimpsests { L I I I }

74. Commission for private residence. Arcadia Revisited. 1990. 144 × 72 × 23 inches.

{ L I V } D AV I D G I E S E

79. Fireplace commission for private residence of Susan Fine, 1994.

30. Commission for private residence of Robin and Danny Greenspun. 1995–1996. 33. Commission for private residence of Robin and Danny Greenspun. 1995–1996. Detail.

{ LV I } D AV I D G I E S E Commissions { LV I I }

About the Artist

David Giese has been living and working in Moscow Idaho since 1977 as a professor of art and design at the University of Idaho. He served as department chairperson from 1992 to 1996, when he stepped down to devote more time to his research and increasingly demanding exhibition schedule.

Giese has been exhibiting his work since 1966, logging more than 235 group shows and 24 one-person exhibitions. His work is in numerous private and some public collections in North America and Europe.

Giese has developed the mythical Villa Bitricci, work in massive concrete laminated and mold-formed depictions of the ruins excavated from the villa. These ruins combine various periods of architectural detailing in humorous ways to represent the rise and fall of taste in design history.

In 1993, John Olbrantz, Director of the Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington, developed a major retrospective of Giese’s work. In 1996, working with Dr. Michael Zakian, Giese had another major retrospective at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Califor-nia. In 1998 Giese exhibited at the Tacoma Art Museum. In 2001 he had another major retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, Oregon, again working with John Olbrantz. That exhibition involved over 83 pieces and took over three years to assemble. In the last five years he has been working on five private commissions in the Las Vegas area.

Giese was Artist in Residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 1991, and also in that year, received the prestigious Award for Research Excellence from the University of Idaho, given to one out-standing faculty member a year.

In October 2010, Giese will have his 10th one-person exhibition at the OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art in New York City, celebrating 20 years with Ivan Karp and the gallery. He credits a University of Idaho Research Office Seed Grant opportunity, along with the Boise Art Museum, with help in launching his work on the national stage.

In September 2010, Giese will become the recipient of the 2010 Governor’s Award in the Arts in Idaho. He has been nominated for the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters’ Museum Purchase Program and twice nominated for the Awards in the Visual Arts.

www.dgiesevillabitricci.com

An artist once to Moscow went

to teach the young and pay his rent.

And then he let his talent vent,

which made his art look heaven-sent.

— i vA n c . k A r P, 1 9 J u n e 2 0 1 0

{ LV I I I } D AV I D G I E S E About the Artist { L I X }

G A L L E R Y R E P R E S E N T A T I O N

OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art, New York, New York

Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, Idaho

E D U C A T I O N

Post Graduate Study, Photography and Photo-related Studies, 1971–72, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

MFA, Ceramics, Photography, Design, 1968–71, University of Arizona

BS, Elementary and Secondary Teaching Certification, 1966, Mankato State University, Mankato, MN

BA, Ceramics and Painting, 1966, Mankato State College

AA, Natural Sciences, 1964, Austin Junior College, Austin, MN

E X H I B I T I O N S

one Person exhibitions

2010 OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art, New York, NY

New England College, Henniker, NH

2007 OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

2005 OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

2002 OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

2001 Excavations at the Villa Bitricci, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR

Herrett Center of Arts and Science, Twin Falls, ID

1999 OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

1998 Chase Gallery at City Hall, Spokane Arts Commission, Spokane, WA

1998–99 Steamboat Springs Arts Council Gallery, Steamboat Springs, CO

1996 OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

Excavations From The Villa Bitricci, F.R. Weisman Museum of Art, Malibu, CA, Michael Zakian, Director

1993 Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA

1992 OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

1991 Hastings/Ruff Gallery, Minneapolis, MN

1990 OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

The Rise and Fall of Taste, Museum of Art, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV

1989 The Rise and Fall of Taste, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME

The Rise and Fall of Taste, Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon State College, Ashland, OR

1988 The Rise and Fall of Taste, Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

The Rise and Fall of Taste, Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX

The Rise and Fall of Taste, Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Evanston, IL

1987 The Rise and Fall of Taste, Prichard Art Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID

1986 The Rise and Fall of Taste, Boise Gallery of Art, Boise, ID

invitational & Group exhibitions

2004 From the Back Room, Guest Curator, OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

2003 Eight New Artists, OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

2001 Six Point Perspective, Holter Museum of Art, Helena, MT

1999 Artist Revisited, OK Harris Gallery of Fine Art

1997 5 Easy Pieces, Curated by Jerry Schefcik, Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Las Vegas

1996 Pushing the Envelope, Curated by Jerry Schefcik, Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Las Vegas

1996 Gallery Camino Real, Gallery Center, Boca Raton, FL

1995–96 Garden of Delights, Barbara Johns, Chief Curator, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

1995 Post-Archaeology, Curated by George Haas, The Polo Gallery, Edgewater, NJ

1994 Art After Art, Curated by Constance Schwartz, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY

Las Vegas, Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Las Vegas

1993 Art—In, On & Out of the Bag, Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Las Vegas

1992 Reality and Elusion, Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, OR

1991 Sculptural Visionaries, Anne Reed Gallery, Sun Valley, ID

1990 At the Light’s Edge, Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

1986 Nine by Three, Washington State University Art Museum, Washington State University, Pullman, WA

1985 University of Arizona Alumni Show, Featured Artist, University of Arizona Museum, Tucson

X-Change, Traveling exhibition organized by Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA

1984 Contemporary Art from Idaho, Boise Gallery of Art, Boise

1983 Sawtooths and Other Ranges of Imagination, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,

Washington, DC

1977–present University of Idaho Faculty Art Exhibition, Prichard Art Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow

Juried shows

1988 Art of the Madonna, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL

1995 Idaho Triennial, Boise Art Museum, Boise

C O L L E C T I O N S

Equity Investment, Los Angeles

Front Runner Films, Toronto

Mucci Architects, Seattle

Museum of Fine Art, University of Arizona, Tucson

Billy Wilder Collection, Los Angeles

Julie Kemper Collection, Santa Monica

Roger P. Thomas, Las Vegas

Richard De Grosso, Long Island

Jeffrey Anderson, Reinhardt & Anderson, St. Paul

West One Bank

Boise Art Museum, Boise

Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR

Sydney Besthoff collection, New Orleans, LA (Listed by Art in America as one of the top 50 private contemporary collections in the United States)

C O N S U LT I N G

1993 Juror for Artist Grants, Seattle Arts Commission, Seattle

1989 Consultant for NBBJ Design Group, Orange County Hospital, Orange County

1986 University of Idaho, Research Office, Seed Grant Project, The Use of Concrete as a Removable

Interchangeable Environment

1981–86 Graphic and Interior Design Consultant

A B O U T T H E A R T I S T A N D H I S W O R K

Television

2007 HGTV, Look What I Did, Episode 509

Print

2005 Idaho Arts Quarterly, Cover Artist Profile, Art Excavation: The Singular Geography of Artist David Giese, Bingo Barnes

1996 David Giese: Excavations From The Villa Bitricci, F.R. Weisman Museum of Art, Malibu, California,

Michael Zakian, Director

1994 Art After Art, Edited by Abigail Demers, Nassau County Museum of Art, Library of Congress

Catalog No. 94-68071

Las Vegas, Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Las Vegas, Nevada

1993 Art—In, On & Out of the Bag, Nevada Institute of Contemporary Art, Las Vegas, Nevada

1988 Oh! Idaho, Diana Armstrong, feature article, Peak Media, Inc., Sun Valley, Idaho

1984 Spokesman Review, January, Is there a Renaissance on the Palouse?

{ L X } D AV I D G I E S E About the Artist { L X I }

1983 Sawtooths and Other Ranges of Imagination, Contemporary Arts in Idaho, Barbara Shissler Nosanow,

National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, Library of

Congress Catalog No. N6530.12N67

reviews

1996 Reviews and previews of current exhibitions in New York, Ivan Rules OK Harris, by J. Bowyer Bell

1993 Artweek, In the Midst of History, David Giese: Excavations at the Villa Bittricci 1986–1992 at the

Whatcom Museum of History & Art, by Ron Glowen

1991 Minneapolis Star Tribune, Faux frescoes of Italian villa have vrai charm, by Mary Abbe, Copyright 1991, Star Tribune;

Republished with permission

1989 Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine, At PMA: views of Italy past, Italy imagined by Pat Davidson Reef

1988 New Art Examiner, Art of the Madonna, Richard Gage, (Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago; exhibit review)

1986 Artweek, Inventing the Past, by Jeannette Ross

P R E S S

Television

1985–present 15 Interviews dealing with national travailing exhibitions of The Rise and Fall of Taste

1983 Grass Roots Journal, KWSU, Pullman, WA

newspaper

1979–present Numerous interviews with local and national papers regarding the national tour of The Rise and Fall of Taste

H O N O R S A N D AWA R D S

1998 Inducted into University of Idaho Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi

1992 Nominated for American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters’ Museum Purchase Program

1991 Annual Award for Research Excellence, University of Idaho

1990 Artist in Residency, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV

Nominated for Awards in the Visual Arts, funded by BMW of North America, Inc. and

The Rockefeller Foundation

1986 Nominated for Awards in the Visual Arts, funded by BMW of North America, Inc. and

The Rockefeller Foundation

1983 Man of the Year Award, Moscow Downtown Association

1979–83 Seven-time recipient of Excellence in Design Award, National Printers Association

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude goes to Ivan Karp and the staff of OK Harris Works of Art, for 20 years of continu-ous support.

Thank you to Darryl Furtkamp, David Babb, Val Carter, and most recently Noah Kroese, upon whose talents I have relied in aiding me in excavating the Villa Bitricci.

I am grateful to Jill Dacey for her diligent effort on this project.

Much appreciation goes to the Boise Art Museum, especially curator Sandy Harthorn, and past director Dennis O’Leary for launching my national profile in 1986.

Thank you to the New England College Department of Art and Art History, for sponsoring this catalog and exhibition.

Thank you to David Smith of Smith Kramer, a traveling exhibitions company based in Kansas City, for putting together my national tours of The Rise and Fall of Taste.

Thank you to Ron Walters and Randall Dickson, Eugene Rosa, Donna and Michael Meehan for their support in financing this catalog.

Finally, thank you to Capital Offset Company Inc., for supporting the publishing of this catalog, with in-kind sponsorship and support.

c A T A l o G d e s i G n

Delphine Keim-Campbell

P h o T o G r A P h Y & i M A G e P r e PA r A T i o n

University of Idaho Photographic Services, Digital Imaging and Copier Services, Nathan Myatt, Noah Kroese, and Diane Pink. Back cover image by Peter Vincent, photographer.

A r T i c l e s & c r i T i q u e s

Mary Abbe, Reporter, Visual Arts and Architecture, Star Tribune, Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

Dr. Michael Zakian, Director, Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA

Dr. Iván Castañeda, Assistant Professor, Humanities, Art History, and Visual Culture, Art Institute of Washington, Arlington, VA

J. Bowyer Bell, Art Critic, New York, NY

q u o T A T i o n s s e l e c T e d b Y

II, XXXVI, L: Dr. Iván Castañeda

VIII, Inside Back Cover: Dr. Michael Zakian

{ L X I I } D AV I D G I E S E Acknowledgments { L X I I I }

David Giese and Noah Kroese in the studio.