SUMMARY. THE CARRARA DIMENSION. HISTORY AND CONTEMPORANEITY.

As the title suggests, the present work aims to shed light on some of the important experiences of the history of sculpture, examined from the perspective of the way in which they were produced in Carrara. Thus, our intent has been to radiograph the way sculpture has been done in the zone of the Apuan Alps, chronologically recording both the historic and social variations of such experience, and those belonging to the cultural and esthetic systems characteristic of the place. We aimed to demonstrate that all of these are interfering and are thus determining, in some contexts, a complex of changes and of innovations that can explain the specificity of contemporary sculpture. As a history of arts study, the investigation had in mind the finding that the processuality is intrinsic to the cultural production and that change has to be the main objective of the process of observing. We thus followed the trends that have appeared through the centuries within the dynamic process of sculptural creativity in a certain social environment. We basically tried to give a contextual meaning to a series of considerations dedicated to sculpture, closely related to the wider area of art sociology. We also appealed to fields which give other pieces of information necessary to the investigation, such as history of arts and esthetics, not forgetting the ones that can establish a contextual frame of work to the matter taken into account: history, geography, anthropology, ethnology, the history of mentalities. We have confined ourselves, due to strategic reasons, to the research of the conditions of creating the sculptural object, and less to its reception, thus trying to highlight the dynamic of social and cultural processes that are characteristic to this place where sculpture is made. Our work method has been one in which diachrony is based on synchrony, a perspective that we considered suited because history becomes contemporary only when the concept of contemporaneity receives a historic undertone. Reviewing the artistic events of the Apuan zone, starting from the Ancient times to the present, can be a way to penetrate into the hidden dimension of the cultural life of this particular space. Carrara can thus disclose itself as being animated by two lives: One belongs to those who are 1

extracting and processing marble for architectonic and sculptural work spread out around the world. The other one consummates itself on a subjective field, in search of the new from an artistic point of view- in the workshops that drum up consecrated sculptors, or sculptors that are on the point of being consecrated, a feature that makes the city a true cosmopolite one, a capital of marble and of sculpture. After more than a decade of activity in the workshops of Carrara we took the chance of evaluating its realities both from a historic point of view and from a personal perspective. That is why, in a brief first chapter, we tried to explain the choice of this specific matter by assuming, in a subjective way, the Carrara Dimension. It is about the text entitled The Carrara Dimension as a way of subjective assumption. We tried to motivate the approach of the matter in question in the chapter Theoretical Demarcations and Methodological Exigencies, a chapter which is structured in a few subchapters. In order to prove that sculpture, as well as other products of artistic creativity, is made in order to communicate, we have highlighted the idea that image, from the point of view of the word, is a complete reality, the word acting as a convention structured through the lexical conferring of meaning of the individual cognitive horizon. Image is primordial and direct, while word appeals to a convention of a derivate type, thus oscillating on the subjectivity scale. We have not insisted upon the relation between the visual and the verbal expression as ways of human communication as we did not want to drift away from the matter in question. Still, we considered necessary to briefly motivate the emergence of the artistic representation elaborated in a tridimensional key, starting from what we have called the analytical freshness of the primitive human being. In regard to this reality we have also highlighted the specific circumstances in which the tridimensionality of an universe has led to the emergence of the first figurative representations. We considered important to ascertain that the sculptures avant la lettre of the primitives have been remembered as such by the eye of the prehistoric human being due to the fact that they were carrying religious significance, and the intervention of the hand upon them as objects might not have been even necessary in order for them to become significant. The preexistence of some manuport forms has catalyzed the context in which the humanoids have created the first artifacts with a ritual functionality. The closeness of

the symbol and the ulterior intervention upon the landform which had been invested with a representative value have guided the timid steps of the primordial artist towards becoming conscious of his capacity to create forms of a coherent imaginary from an expressive point of view. Due to the fact that up to the industrial revolution the excavation of rocks have only known some changes related to the use of metals from which more resistant tools have been manufactured, we had to proceed considerably in time in order to be able to examine the processing technology of hard rocks, understanding how the blocks can be detached from the ground, then transported and processed. Reviewing the way in which the ancients managed to excavate the materials, the tools they used (with special reference to the Egyptians) has led to the research of the Carrara Dimension, starting from the premise that the city of the white gold and its workshops have kept the ancient techniques and the tools of sculpture, even though the implementation of modern ones such as scanner and the anthropomorphic robot, destroys the myth of the traditional artist, a fact that seems to confirm Arturo Martinis prophecy contained in the famous statement of the end of the last century: sculpture lingua morta. The next chapter, entitled The White Gold of the Apuan Alps, as a source of the Carrara Dimension, contains two sections. The first one, Geographic specificities, presents the structure of the marble quarry of the Apuan Alps, the location in these mountains of the big exploitation sites, the basic qualities of the main extracted varieties. In all cases their internal structure and their expressive resources, the structural anomalies, the density and, most of all, the fiability of the material in the executive processes of the sculpture are pointed out. We considered these aspects useful to our goal as closely related to the technique of the utilization of marble in general, the same as the tools necessary to the sculpture in order to carve it and to polish it. We have analyzed the varieties of marble, starting with the most famous one, named statuario, the favorite material of the sculptors that have made supplies from the Carrara quarries. The second section, entitled The historic perspective, presents the development of this little place, Carrara, whose history is not examined exhaustively, only in what concerns the evolution of the exploitation of the marble deposits. We have mentioned the crucial times of the extracting process from the Apuan Alps, which drew to the emergence of the first sculpture workshops, a phenomenon that has led to a tradition that has survived until the

present days. It all seems to have started with the roman conquest and colonization, following the wild fights with the Apuan Ligurians, when marble has been discovered and the Luni colony has been founded, its development along the centuries being marked by the emergence of quarries, of the first locative rudiments (Vezzala), the historic testimonies talking about the development of the excavation and transport techniques, the first local sculptures, realized within the quarries perimeter, dating from the same period. The destiny of the exploitation of marble is being tracked down in the epoch following the fall of the Roman Empire, in those seicento anni di tenebre that Emanuelle Repetti mentions, which have led to the abandonment of the quarries and of the marble sculpture. The moment of the rediscovery of the precious mineral will coincide with the transformation of the colony of Vezzala in the cortem de Carraria, in the year 963, an epoch in which the first pieces of information regarding the sporadic reopening of some excavating activities come to light. Frederic the II, the famous emperor, brings Nicola de Apulia (Nicola Pisano) on the sites of Pisa, a moment that will mark the concrete reopening of the extracting activities in many places of the marble quarry. In the times of the late Romanic, Nicola and Giovanni Pisanos activity at the sculpture workshop, only a couple of miles away from the quarries, will actually restore to the local marble some of its lost fame during the period of stagnation from the Middle Ages. The big sites from Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia, Genova, Siena or Florence will consolidate the interest for the small Apuan settlement which will become the target of numerous attempts to be joined to the different surrounding towns willing to gain control of this natural resource. A brief presentation of these conflicts, conquests, regaining lost territories, as well as the sale and purchase of this zone points out the importance that the quarries will gain over time, along with the forming of the different local groups of interest which have disputed the right to exploit marble. Beginning with the year 1473 and with the entrance of Carrara under the domination of the Malaspina family, we are getting close to that historic moment in which the prestige of marble will reach a level similar to the one from the Greco-Latin Antiquity. Two years following the affix, in the year 1475, Michelangelo Buonarotti is born. In the year 1497 his first visit to the quarries takes place and he identifies the first block of marble destined to a sculpture. The same Michelangelo, at Popes Leon the Xth

request, opens the quarries from the Altissimo peak, at Pietrasanta. The baroque will not have a decisive influence upon the development of the local economy, even though another sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, will straighten significantly the fame of the Carrara marble and he will use specialists formed at Carrara who will end up working in Rome and Naples. In the year 1796 the Academy of Fine Arts (Accademia di Belle Arti) of Carrara is founded, an institution that will come to know a prestigious flourish after Napoleons conquest of Italy, more precisely in the times of Elisa Bonaparte. Thus, the local production is being favored by increasing taxes upon the unprocessed blocks and by abolition of taxes when the production of the Carrara workshops is concerned, whose activity will be encouraged also by imperial orders. This is the moment of the final crystallization of the Carrara Dimension, both form a historic point of view, as well as from a technical one, due to the fact that the evolution of the ways to approach marble gains, thanks to Canova, its highest point. From this moment on, sculptors from around the world will come to Carrara both for marble as for working together with the local sculptors and craftsmen, in the workshops created specially to answer to their needs, such as the one belonging to Carlo Nicoli. Closer to the present times, we have mentioned Benito Mussolinis cultural politics with his ambition to create the second Rome. Further on, the study focuses upon the recent history when, along with the development of the educational institutions and the appliance of its own cultural politics, Carrara will impose itself not only by the technology of the marble sculpture, but also through the craftsmanship of processing other materials. In the end we have mentioned the implementation of digital technologies and their appliance to sculpture, fact that contravenes, in a way, the spirit of the region based on the traditional methods. The chapter entitled Michelangelo and the Carrara Dimension, divided in several subchapters, begins by radiographing the relationships that the great Italian Renaissance genius has had with the processing technology of marble developed in the Apuan Alps and with its inhabitants. As Vasari and Condivi state, Michelangelo Buonarroti was formed in the environment of the craftsmen from Settignano. We have dedicated much space to the forming of this great artist whose relationships with the town of marble and with the quarries owners have been analyzed by appealing to the broad bibliography generated by his work. We have tried to underline the difficulties of the

sculptor who has spent over two years there. The conflicts of the artist with the quarries owners are well known, often generated by the quality of economical mediator he had assumed between them and the papacy. It is also common knowledge Michelangelo needed to obtain the best quality marble and that is why he often would participate to its extraction. Michelangelo was one of the first Italian sculptors who came to know the marble deposits from the region, being known for his knowledge to choose the blocks. The numerous conflicts he had with the ones employed in the extraction of marble illustrate the difficult aspect of his relation to this place. In time, a strong bond has grown between Michelangelo and the Carrara marble, a bond which is unveiled by the masters letters, the remembrances of his contemporaries but also by his works made with this material. Engaged in the extraction and transportation of marble, Michelangelo was about to lose his life. The event took place in the famous lizzatura when, due to the break of a cable, the load has shifted uncontrollably leading to the death of a worker. Despite the appearances, Michelangelo has appreciated the local folks, especially for their hard work and their loyalty towards marble. A certain type of creativity thus - came to light, a type that we named modus operandi of a subjective type through which the expressive voice was being searched in the interior of the block. Michelangelo did not use for this activity the means for scale enhancement and he liked working alone. The few individuals he collaborated with, had been imposed generally by the papacy, and the master did not have too much faith in them. By studying the way in which the master would conceive his models and further on, his sculptures, from the first carve out of the blocks, which took place in the quarry, until the completion, we were able to acknowledge the rigour with which the master would create his sculptures even though he would not appeal to mathematical estimations but to the acuity of the eye. As he did not appreciate collaborating with other sculptors, the sculptor would not use the methods of putting into scale of the enhancement points (objectively - mathematical), but he would create his figures by appealing to the eye, which did not allow him a good collaboration with his craft colleagues following the traditions consolidated in the system of the workshops from the period of the Romanic and Renaissance. We have outlined these characteristics of his way of being and of working in order to go on with circumstances in which the master accepted still, forced by the

papacy, to work with Rafaello da Montelupo and Fra Montorsoli, after the failure of a first collaboration with Pietro Urbano. We also pointed out his reluctance to appeal to foreign workers and his personalized, unique way of carve out and complete the sculpted surfaces. The search for the expressive form is the more obvious at the end of the artists life when he would no longer pay attention to details, and expressivity was born on dimension of the non-finite of many of his works. Thus, Piet Rondanini is a good example Michelangelo being maybe the first great artist who has developed a sui-generis vision of the expressive forms which modern art will develop and exploit. Michelangelos tools were not different from those of other sculptors, their use being imposed by the specificity of his works and by the material in which he worked, even though, most of all, he used the claw chisel and his famous dente da cane (kind of claw chisel, stronger and with only two points). As we have already mentioned, the Carrara marble was for Michelangelo a material towards which he felt a strong attraction but the one that isolated him from the others was the uniqueness of his personality through stature and expressivity. With Michelangelo the Carrara marble regains the glory of the Antiquity when the place named Carrara did not even exist, but the marble from these places was already being used for creating grand monuments. The next chapter, entitled From Bernini to Max Bill in Consolidating the Carrara Dimension, divided in more sections, aims for a synthetic approach of the historic experiences related to the artistic use of the richness of the Apuan Alps, starting with Gian Lorenzo Bernini and ending with the deadlock of the contemporary period. Emerging in a cultural environment different from that of the Renaissance, Gian Lorenzo Bernini is a new type of creator, different from Michelangelos type. It is also true that the historic circumstances of Berninis life were other than those of the Renaissance, a movement sheltered by the Humanism which flourished in the Italian towns following the rediscovery of the Greco-Latin culture. The Italy of the Counter-Reformation is no longer the Michelangelos Italy. The Spanish oppression, the Jesuit activity and the doctrines of the Council of Trent are contemporary with the more and more obvious emaciation of the lower classes, with living in a fearful environment that could be surpassed only by the prestige of the papacy given by the pomp that surrounded it. In order to illustrate the way in which working together is being done in sculpture, a fact that we hope to have made

clear represents one of the components of the highest interest of the process of constituting the Carrara Dimension, we appealed to a comparison between Michelangelo and another great user of the Carrara marble, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The comparison between the two sculptors may seem in some way exaggerated as they do not belong to the same century nor to the same artistic trend, but putting them face to face can help one understand more clearly two different methods of creating situated in a historical succession. We are dealing with a subjective modus operandi (Michelangelo) and with an objective modus operandi (Bernini), being easier to compare from this point of view. If Buonarroti would not prefer to collaborate with others, for Bernini it was a need and a necessity. We do not have at our disposal pieces of information to confirm the fact that Bernini had ever looked for marble blocks directly in the quarries, as it was common knowledge that the Baroque masters demeanor towards the material he worked with was opposed to that of the Renaissance master. Bernini did not treat marble as a monolith and he did not hesitate to use different varieties of marble in the same complex, as he did not hesitate to work with other artists in the way he had seen in his fathers workshop where he was formed, in a working atmosphere similar to the one Michelangelo was formed in. Both sculptors have come to know the chisel and the hammer from a young age. But only Bernini will impose in history a sculpting behavior which will create a tradition that will perpetuate itself to the contemporary workshops of Carrara. With a workshop in which, in its glorious times, there were 39 assistants, Bernini used the sculptors he worked with in an almost discretionary way. In light of some recent studies such as those signed by Jeniffer Montagu or Peter Rockwel, it became obvious the fact that in the creation of some of Berninis works some assistants have been involved the technical education of which surpassed the one of the master. The most famous case concerns the creation of the statuary group Apollo and Daphne in which the Carrara Dimension is directly involved. As Jeniffer Montagu points out in her study Bernini Sculptures not by Bernini, Giuliano Finelli, an inhabitant of Carrara, may be considered, with extremely credible arguments, the co-author of one of the most famous sculptures entirely attributed not until long ago to the great representative of the Baroque. Their working together took place as the above authors mention, in Berninis first period of creation until the year 1628, year

in which, after a collaboration that seems to have started around the year 1622, the two sculptors give up working together. We have not insisted upon this recent discovery as we did not want to fade, in any way, the prestige of the great sculptor Bernini, but to shed light in what concerns the evolution of a traditional way of conceiving and executing the works, by appealing to foreign workers, a fact that, as mentioned above, puts the sculptor-authors personality in a light similar to the one of an orchestra composer-conductor. But if, in the music of the orchestra we can give him credit for the interpretation, reason for which the first violinists hand is shaken, none gave Giuliano Finelli credit for that specific work, even though he used a famous instrument, il violino, in order to create the amazing image of the hand of the nymph Daphne, which are being transformed into leaves. Apollo and Daphne is a work in front of which, even today, the viewer is speechless due to the charm of a creation which is out of the ordinary, maybe even shivered by the risk of the performance achieved in the end. What remains to be explained is the nature of the conflict between Bernini and Finelli, similar to the one between Bernini and Franceso Borromini, even though todays viewer is far from the hatred and the jealousy of bygone times. Our opinion regarding to what we have named an objective modus operandi in Berninis sculpture unfortunately is not in harmony with those of specialists such as Peter Rokwel or Anna Coliva who think that Bernini carved marble directly as Michelangelo did. We are convinced, within and due to the Carrara dimension, that creating such a large amount of works with the help of many assistants means that the working together technique would have been impossible without the appeal to mathematical conventions of putting the information to scale, starting from the model, given the fact that Berninis way of working has been a rigorous one. Even though no tangible pieces of information have reached the present times related to his working technique, we believe that the master and the assistant-sculptors have used an enlargement technique of the exempeda and definitor , which had been theorized long before by Leon Battista Alberti. Berninis artistic production was immense, and the type of creativity which is based on involves, as mentioned, a modus operandi of an objective type specific to the big workshops founded in the Baroque. The discipline that Bernini was able to impose is associated to a more and

more efficient knowledge of the means of scale enlargement, the skill of his employees being prodigious. The case of Giuliano Finelli, considered more and more insistently at the end of the last century, as a great sculptor, is thus eloquent. Due to the historic circumstances, the craftsmanship of the sculptors formed in Carrara really came to fruition only when Bernini started working with Giuliano Finelli, in order to create the Apollo and Daphne group. Because of obvious reasons, the sculptors from Carrara had migrated away from the Apuan Alps, in the second part of the XVII-th century, going wherever there would have been orders, the first city to go to being Rome. Only that at the end of the same period a part of them will come back, revitalizing the artistic life of the local workshops. Still Berninis specific way of objectively working prevails. The skill of the sculptors from Carrrara of which Bernini had been aware will become more and more famous. Thus, around the middle of the XVIII-th century, the idea of opening an Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara becomes more and more popular. The circumstances of this opening, illustrated in the second part of the chapter, are relatively well known. It is important to underline the finding that, along with the first generations of sculptors formed in the academy, a true school of sculpture will affirm itself in Carrara, developed in the period of the Enlightenment and of the Neoclassicism, which will triumph towards the end of the XVIII-th century. The work method of big workshops like Gian Lorenzo Berninis had been was consolidated and the Neoclassicism of the Carrara school, represented by Bertel Thorvaldsen and Pietro Tenerani, was perpetuated. This happened not only through their personal works but also by the exemplary way in which they worked together. We cant forget Antonio Canova who, following the rode opened by Michelangelo, will pass through Carrara in search of marble, leaving some precious plaster casts to the newly founded academy. Thus the epoch of the famous workshops from Carrara begins, proud of the professionalism of their employees whose works created there spread all over Europe, some of them having been ordered by the royal houses of countries such as England, Russia, France or Holland. The growing fame of the Carrara marble in Europe has often used such artistic messengers, a reality that can be seen in the early XIX-th century. At a certain moment in time everything was known and could have been done in sculpture, obviously in Carrara. This fact explains a certain decrease of the rhythm of

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progress of the area which will lead to a more and more obvious crisis when the new artistic experiences, specific to the XX-th century, will emerge. The series of the artistic trends that revolutionized the European artistic scenery at the beginning of the last century will find in Carrara a favorable environment of affirming itself, the case of the Nicoli workshops being relevant in this concern. The fame of the local processing of marble had been consolidated starting with the times of Michelangelo and Bernini who, even though he never came to Carrara, was informed of the artistic qualities of this material, reason for which he appealed to it so many times. Still, the phenomenon that we are talking about now has different characteristics. The professionalism of the local craftsmen was used, within the Nicoli workshops, in creating some distinct artistic experiences. The case of Max Bill and Dominique Stroobants working together in the S.G.F. workshops is equally eloquent. The new artistic experiences of the new century did not involved only marble, of course, as one might think. Such a work as Continuity is, belonging to Max Bill, has been transposed into granite due the collaboration with Dominique Stroobant in Carrara, their working together underlining the new artistic techniques that are starting to emerge. Towards the end we had the chance of introducing in this chapter an interview with Dominique Stroobant, with the intent of pointing out the forms that the collaboration of the two of them had assumed. The review of the entire historic period has not forgotten Brncu i, his relation to the Carrara Dimension pointing out analogies and differences in respect to the ones from the past. Similar to Bernini, Brncu i has never been to Carrara but Michelangelos way of work, from the second part of his life, influenced his personality as long as Michelangelos non-finite and Brncu is finite can be correlated. Looking at things in perspective we can say that the artistic experiences housed in Carrara during the centuries point out at least two ways of structuring the expressive forms. One belongs to Michelangelo being subjective and individual, looking directly towards modernity. The other is of an objective type, based on mathematical principles and methods, thus the idea of school, workshop, different collaborations that echoed in a more and more strict contemporaneity but in which working together has proved to be as rigorous as ever. We obviously have in mind collaborations such as Max Bill and Dominique Stroobants.

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The following chapter, Personal Approach, the only one where I have abandoned the plural of politeness, represents an inroad to the universe of forms in which I have evolved, the series of experiences resulted from my stay in Carrara being the consequence of the spiritual contact with the historical dimension of the creativity of these places. The degree of fruitfulness is for the reader to establish, by reading, accepting it as a way to get in contact with the plastic universe that I have tried to imagine in a wide time interval. The contact with the artistic atmosphere in the Apuan Alps, discovered when I left the workshops of the University of Arts and Design of ClujNapoca, led me to an analysis which, I believe, is unbiased and lucid of my own knowledge and skills, which I had to validate in an international context. Directly, I have reached the situation where I used to work as assistant to sculptors of different nationalities and of various techniques, personalities who, in their turn, have chosen Carrara to execute certain orders. Therefore, I was able to accumulate a certain technological experience which, further on, allowed me to approach personal compositional structures, acquiring, first of all, much more freedom of expression, a think that has also been mediated by the technological emulation of the adoption environment. Furthermore, I have also had the opportunity of gathering information on other academia or universities of arts throughout the world, which has facilitated an objective analysis of my own resources. My participation in numerous international sculpture exhibitions and symposia also gave me the opportunity of working as author, therefore succeeding in positioning myself on both sides of the barricade of creativity, a thing that, I am absolutely convinced, has allowed me to form an objective vision on the relationship between the assistant and the sculptor, a reality which, as it has already been noticed probably, represents one of the main topics of this work. The following chapter, Conclusions, is an attempt to synthetically reconstruct a variety of experiences that Ive directly seen and lived in the Carrara Dimension, to which I have referred so often. After more than a decade of constant activity in the workshops of Carrara, I have assumed, as one may see, the risk of evaluating its realities both from a historic point of view and from the perspective given by my own experiences. If I were to sum up my research in only one phrase, I may say paraphrasing Howard Saul Becker that it investigates the world of sculpture made in

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marble in Carrara, since the Roman age until present days. As it was natural, I concentrated my attention upon certain personalities, representative for the main artistic currents, who left their mark on the great historical eras, after the period of imperial sculpture, since Antiquity, such as Michelangelo for the Renaissance, Bernini and Finelli for the Baroque, Canova and his disciples for Neoclassicism. The common denominator for those creations was the preponderant use of the Carrara marble, as well as of the specialised workforce, offered by the Apuan Alps. I have even attempted to demonstrate the fact that the sculptures made in the Carrara marble would not have been carried out, if it had not been for the work of the Carrara inhabitants who remained anonymous and who carved the unseen part of the chef doeuvres that we admire in the great museums of the world. All those efforts were made by a community formed of cavatori (diggers), lizzatori (stone-boat operators), bottegai (shopkeepers), scalpellini (stonecutters), artigiani (artisans) etc. This is a world worth knowing because, even if, let us say, the lonely, taciturn and stubborn Michelangelo had managed without it probably (i.e. the marble), the prideful Bernini would not have been able for sure to give life to the baroque Rome, which marvels us today as well, without the craftsmen in his workshops. To carry out certain sculptures, the material to carve in represents a fist-class importance component. That is why I insisted on the concern with which Michelangelo used to choose the material for his works, not only by purchasing it alone, but even by extracting it from the mines. Therefore, I hope I managed to show that, to fully understand a work of art, it is necessary to contextualise it in its original space and time dimension, a reality that is usually neglected in the specialised studies. In the same purpose, I provided information on the financial aspect for the materialisation of certain sculptures. In what concerns the unseen part of the completion of the works of art, I also dealt with the issue of patrons and silent partners. If Michelangelos silent partners had great plans, but often proved to hesitate in their actions and decisions, Bernini enjoyed the full support of the Popes and of the nobility of that time, who allowed him to pay several skilled craftsmen, many of whom were from Carrara, a fact that contributed to the finalisation of many projects and orders taken. The fact of calling for help to carry out a sculptural project does not involve the contesting of the role of creator of the sculptor,

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to whom it belonged, as a man endowed with sensitivity and creating force. I only tried to overcome the perspective questioning his position in this context, often neglecting the environment in which he activated and the circumstances under which he carried out his works. On the other hand, I cannot line up with the excessive opinions, according to which the existence of a famous artists signature on a certain object transforms it into a work of art, based on certain conventions established by the personalities carrying out their activities in the art industry. Similarly, the role of the artist may not be transferred to the supporting staff and neither can he be reduced to what a robot can accomplish. This paper is accompanied by a bibliography made up of books that served to the establishing of a historical, social and geographic frame of Carrara; the great majority of the works read or quoted are specialised and they helped me argue my own opinions or some specialists opinions, which I share as well. I have also attached the adequate appendices referring to the reception of my works for certain exhibitions. Due to the fact that the exhibition accompanying the public defence of my thesis comprises a limited number of works, I used an appendix of reproductions, which I considered representative for my personal evolution.

CONTENTS
I. ARGUMENT......................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

II. THE CARRARA DIMENSION AS A WAY OF SUBJECTIVE ASSUMPTIONError! Bookmark not

III. THEORETICAL DEMARCATIONS AND METHODOLOGICAL EXIGENCIESError! Bookmark no 1. In the beginning there was the word? ............................... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2. The fresh eye of the prehistory. ........................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. 14

2.1. Natura naturans. .................................................................................................................... 19 2.2. Forms of the naturality. Erosion and sculpture avant la lettre.Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.3. Primitive arts and the infantile representations....................... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.4. From manuport to sculpture.................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

3. Expressions of the three-dimensional. .............................. Error! Bookmark not defined.

3.1. Spatial dimension. ................................................................................................................. 27 3.2. Forming of workshops............................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. 3.3. Knowledge conveyance from one generation to another........ Error! Bookmark not defined.

4. Sculpture lingua morta. ................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.

IV. THE WHITE GOLD OF THE APUAN ALPS AS A SOURCE OF THE CARRARA DIMENSION ...................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. A. GEOGRAPHIC SPECIFICITIES. ................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
1. From statuario to bianco P. ....................................................................................................... 44 2. The internal structure of the Carrara marble and its expressive resources.Error! Bookmark not defined.

B. THE HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE. ................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

1. From Portus Lunae to lunensium lapicidinis ....................................................................... 55 2. Vezzala versus Carara from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.Error! Bookmark not defined. 3. The Carrara marble in the modern world............................. Error! Bookmark not defined. 4. The contemporary robotization postmodernism.................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

V. MICHELANGELO AND THE CARRARA DIMENSIONError! Bookmark not defined. 1. The radiograph of a great love: the Carrara marble......... Error! Bookmark not defined. 2. La lizzatura. ...................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. 3. The structure of a type of creativity. ................................. Error! Bookmark not defined. 4. Spiritus loci in constituting the Carrara dimension. ...... Error! Bookmark not defined. 5. The master and his help. ................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. 6. Non-finite.......................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. 7. The Carrara dimension and Michelangelos tools......... Error! Bookmark not defined.

VI. FROM BERNINI TO MAX BILL IN CONSOLIDATING THE CARRARA DIMENSION ........................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

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1. Gian Lorenzo Bernini. ...................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

2. Giuliano Finelli and the paternity of the statuary group Apollo i Daphne.Error! Bookmark not define 3. The Carrara Academy and the world of the workshops. .. Error! Bookmark not defined. 4. From Antonio Canova to the modern Carrara. ................. Error! Bookmark not defined. 5. Max Bill and Dominique Stroobant.................................. Error! Bookmark not defined. 6. Why Brncui did not come to Carrara?........................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

VII. PERSONAL APPROACH ................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.

VIII. CONCLUSIONS........................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.231

IX. BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................236

X. APPENDICES ...................................................................................................................258

XI. CRITICAL TEXTS AND INTERVIEWS .......................................................................302

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KEYWORDS

The Carrara Dimension, exogenous, endogenous, context, sculpture avant la lettre, statuario, tridimensional, sculpture- lingua morta, aids, marble, robot,

lunensium lapicidinis, workshop, asistents, la lizzatura, sketch, model, maquette,

Michelangelo,

unfinished,

subjective modus operandi, Bernini, Finelli,

collaboration, objective

modus operandi, paternity, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Tenerani, The School of Carrrara, Nicoli workshop, S.G.F. workshop, Max Bill, Dominique Stroobant, unfinished and infinit, Brncu i, personal approach,

visual event, technic, innovation, freedom of expression.

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