Luca Del Baldo
Luca Del Baldo is an Italian-born painter. He currently lives and works in Como. His latest project, on which he worked for 10 years and published by the German publisher De Gruyter in 2020, is “The Visionary Academy of Ocular Mentality / Atlas of the Iconic Turn,” a series of 96 portraits with texts written by the people portrayed, some of the most important contemporary scholars, art critics, and philosophers.
Iconophobia or idolatry
By Luca Del BaldoFor me the most important thing is not the destruction of an image by religious fanatics but, on the contrary: how much this “disfigurement” and violent cancellation of a historical monument or a symbol actually strengthens the relationship with it, with its ghost or trace that remains … Iconoclasm rather than destroying (even if physically it does) makes the vandalized object even more powerful … I think that my project on iconoclasm is deeply linked to the power of images/pictures and their fruition … It is not a critique of idolatry or ancient and ancestral worship for an idol (whatever it is), but how its representation affects us…
