Fellini's And The Ship Sails On Serigraph
Serigraphic poster inspired by the 1983 film E La Nave Va (And The Ship Sails On) by Federico Fellini. Numbered, dry-stamped, and hand-signed by the artist. Unlined and in excellent condition.
"And the Ship Sails On has a great deal to do with opera, a subject I would have avoided in my earlier pictures. It was only in later life that I came to appreciate our Italian operatic tradition. I suppose the reason I said and wrote so much about not liking opera is because every Italian is supposed to love opera, especially every Italian man. My brother, Riccardo, went around the house singing. Love of opera isn’t restricted to Italy, of course, but it’s more widespread here than in America. All my life I’ve had a natural resistance to whatever everyone likes, or wants, or is “supposed” to do. I never was interested in soccer, either to play or to watch, and for a man to admit that in Italy is almost like admitting that you aren’t a man at all. I do not like to belong to political parties or to clubs. Partly this is probably in my black-sheep nature, but I think another very real reason is I remember the Black Shirts. I was a child in a time when we wore the outfits of our school, or we wore the black shirts of fascism, and we were supposed to question nothing. That has made me question everything. I was always suspicious, not wanting to be one of the sheep going to slaughter. So sometimes I may have missed out on a pleasure the sheep enjoyed which I could have had without becoming a lamb chop. Now I have developed a late interest in opera, but it’s difficult to admit you have interest in a subject in which you have vehemently denied having any interest for so long. I have not seen the film since it was finished, but I wonder how it would seem now in light of what has been happening in Yugoslavia. Would it seem too light, too dated? Or would it speak to audiences more clearly? The rhinoceros is a distant cousin of the sick zebra I helped to wash when I was a boy and the circus came to Rimini. My theory about why the zebra was sick is that he didn’t have any sex in his life. How could he feel well? There was, after all, only one zebra in that circus. The rhinoceros is lovesick. Only one rhinoceros is the same as only one zebra.
An excerpt from I, Fellini (1995) by Charlotte Chandler.
Details
Artist: Claudio Sotolongo.
Serigraph on paper.
Edition of 50 (2019).
Size: 50 x 70 cm (19.5" x 27.5").