Take Away Walter Benjamin (Pizza is so Moorish) 2010 mixed media.

Top Image Acrylic and varnish on cardboard pizza box

Detail

Middle Image Oil and Varnish on board

Bottom Image Semi skinned pizza box with varnish

For Contents May Vary’s show at the Red Gallery in January 2010 Take Away Walter Benjamin. takes its title from the Author of Art in The Age Mechanical Reproduction. The works on display are the outcome of an investigation into the origin of a composite image found on the front of a pizza box from Mama Mia’s Pizza Parlour in Manchester’s Student infested Fallofield area. The Essay, first published in 1936 discusses the availability of Artists images after the introduction of the mechanical printing press. Despite losing the original work of Arts integrity in time and space the process of reproduction revolutionised the potential for the production of and study of Art without the financial backing often required to journey across Europe’s Art collections.

I have been looking for the origin of the image on the front a certain pizza box since 2008. After trawling through the Internet and Library books on Venetian painting among other less fruitful avenues, the answers came in abundance alongside tourist j-pegs of nearly the exact scene. The scene is host to a number of buildings and structures all famous in their own right along side being immortalised in the paintings of Canaletto, Guardi, Turner and the writings of Lord Byron and John Ruskin.

The architecture, despite being synonymous with Italian culture, is largely of Moorish origin as is Abi the proprietor of Mama Mia. The image features The Doges Palace which is connected to The Ponte Del Sospri otherwise known as The Bridge of Sighs, so named by Byron due to it providing the last view of freedom for the prisoners crossing from the Palace into the old prison chambers. In the foreground is The Ponte Della Paglia originally built in 1360 for the boats made of straw (Paglia) docking off the Rio Di Palazzo, the river also featured in the scene on the pizza box.

Referencing the styles of the aforementioned painters and the varied sources of found images, the details missing from the original print were filled in to create the top piece. The laborious time consuming techniques of oil painting and varnishing have been contrasted with the cheap printing and digital compositing for the piece in the middle and the investigation into what lies beneath the image and into the production of the object is revealed in the piece on the bottom.

All images copyright Richard Shields .