On the Road

St. Francis of Assisi constitutes the starting point for the research into contemporary art included in this publication. A central figure of European culture, he challenged the world he lived in. On the one hand, he represents a radical criticism of the dominant forces of his time and, on the other, an energetic response to the demands of the situation. His clashes with the hierarchy of his day render him an inevitable benchmark in many subsequent socio-cultural movements.

This book’s structure is intrinsically bound to the ideas that drove the attitude of St. Francis of Assisi, which remain enormously relevant even today. It extols human dignity in the face of poverty, the increased value of sensitive knowledge as opposed to the supremacy of a purely instrumental reason, entropy as a means of knowledge (the appreciation of nomadic life in a world rooted in a sedentary lifestyle), and landscape as part of the human quality (appreciating reality as a vast, complex and unstable link in which nothing can be external).