Back in 2007, the water in Rome’s Trevi Fountain turned a bright red after Graziano Cecchini turned the fountain into a blood-red pool, calling this “futurist” in reference to the art movement founded in 1909 which Italian dictator Benito Mussolini embraced as the official art of fascism.
He also left leaflets urging the public to embrace colour after staging the stunt at the fountain, which was coloured a blood-red hue for several hours. The leaflets said the red paint was a protest for expenses incurred in organizing the Rome Film Festival and symbolically referred to the event’s red carpet
Anita Ekberg, the actress who frolicked in waters of the 18th century monument in La Dolce Vita, said that the incident was “a deplorable act of vandalism, and an offence against Rome”.
Fast forward now to another fountain, this time a good deal smaller and situated not in Rome but in this area at Bagni di Lucca.
A week ago the fountain outside the Circolo dei Forestieri di Bagni di Lucca turned a bright blue. Nobody is sure who or what was responsible for the cobalt colouring of the water … was it symbolically referring to something else happening in this area?
Who knows.
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Bagni di Lucca: La fontana con l’acqua color blu puffo ! Errore umano ? Vandalismo ? Installazione futurista ?
One day a vandal, the next an artist. That is the story of the baseball-capped culprit who dumped a bottle of dye into Rome’s famed Trevi Fountain on Friday, turning the waters blood red.
No sooner was it determined that the 17th-century Baroque fountain had not been damaged than intellectuals and art critics began reevaluating the gesture as something approaching genius.
“Once the indignation had died down, we rediscovered the Fountain of Trevi thanks to that liquid,” said Roberto D’Agostino, a blogger who is the Italian Matt Drudge. “It’s a resurrection of Andy Warhol, the act of highlighting an object of mass consumption.”
Others made the connection between the red of the fountain and the red carpet at the Rome Film Fest, which had just begun.
It’s a lackluster festival, said media critic Gianluca Nicoletti, having “no depth, no color. The real splash was the one made at a fountain.”
Describing the gesture as a “dramatic representation of the decline of the country,” Nicoletti said that photos of the red-water fountain had made a global sensation.
“It was a marvelous event” that put Rome in the spotlight -- and “at practically zero cost.”
Fliers found at the Trevi Fountain on Friday afternoon, signed by an unknown group that identified itself as “Ftm Futurist Action 2007,” claimed responsibility for the deed. Futurism was an early 20th-century art movement that advocated a violent break with the past. -- source