Not just a luxury cruise, the Silver Muse is a master class in Italian fine arts, reports Forbes.
Silver Muse
Nestled cosily on deck 8 is the all-new Arts Café. Hosting varied and exciting exhibitions, the Arts Café will showcase paintings and sculptures from a broad range of talent.
The distinctive design of the venue is a relaxing getaway and offers daytime cuisine in the form of a café and deli-bar.
Resting on pedestals, several hand-luggage-sized cubes with various colorful forms embedded, or melted, into them are real head turners.
Silversea small luxury cruise line
Of late, the high-end hotel and luxury ship worlds have been going through a boom in art acquisitions for their public venues and rooms.
The twenty-plus-year-old Silversea small luxury cruise line is pushing particularly strong in its art program, with the earlier Silver Shadow vessel already having displayed pieces by artists that include Picasso and Chagall.
Works by Italian artists
Built in Genoa’s Fincantieri shipyards, the 596-passenger Silver Muse is Silversea’s ninth ship.
Especially for the predominately English-speaking passengers who are likely not yet too familiar with contemporary Italian art, a Silver Muse cruise offers art lovers a primer on some important artists from the ship line’s home country.
A relaxing getaway
A drawing room-size space, the Arts Café serves all manner of coffees and a wicked selection of gourmet sandwiches, parfaits, canapés and pastries. By evening it turns into a cocktail lounge.
The café also displays book cases of high-end art volumes provided by London’s Heywood Hill booksellers which can be perused in high-back chairs and on leather sofas or take out on the aft deck.
Exciting works of art
Art curator Monica Cembrola has brought together some 600 works of art collected under the theme of “The Lightness of Travel.” In a promotional book for the ship, Cembrola writes that “the exhibition evokes the questions each of us has about life, death, anguish and solitude through the idea of the journey.”
“It also faces a dialogue among generations,” she continues. Indeed, artists of many generations have produced works that range from Neo-Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism to conceptual and figurative arts, in media from canvas to sculpture to tapestry.
Curator Cembrola writes further that the collection “focuses on the fundamental role of Italy as a center of history, culture and art since antiquity. Our museums, collections and archaeological sites reveal countless symbols of the past and the many civilizations that have passed through this country, evidence of which is still inextricably woven into the present day landscape.”
Gianpaolo Berto
To wit, artist Gianpaolo Berto who has been active since the mid-fifties in many media pays homage to his Veneto roots. His pieces hang in many ship locations and after several passes around the decks, guests will begin to recognize his brushstrokes.
His L’arrivo di Pollock a Venezia is a 2014 oil on wood whose vaguely Pollock drips seem to melt over a whimsically unrecognizable Pollock figure at bottom. The splashes of red, yellow and blue in the oil on canvas Astratto (2014) are Pollock-esque, while his sun in Venezia, (2007) blazes intensely over the abstract city.
In another vein, several of his acrylic pieces depict cats that have a slight Keith Haring outline to them.
Frida
As further to the collection’s travel element, younger artist Valentina Maragnani in one of her paintings quotes Omar Khayyam: “Life is a journey…who travels, lives twice.”
Passing another of her arresting pieces multiple times daily, passengers might think they see a stern or angry Frida Kahlo. It’s not a representational portrait, but the 2014 acrylic on paper is indeed titled Frida.
Some of Maragnani’s pieces have a very pop art feel, and North Americans of a certain age in particular might be reminded somewhat of Peter Max works of their youth. Dynamic pieces of Viaggio a Colori, a 2011 acrylic on canvas, coming often to the Arts Café as its small collection reveals more each time.
Italian themes
The Silver Muse exhibits many of its art works in the port and starboard stairwells, including some gorgeous tapestries with historical Italian themes.
Many of the landings to the main center stairwell have niches on each side for some lovely vases and funky sculptors based on hair dryers.
The Venetian Lounge
The ship’s cabaret theater on Deck 5, the Venetian Lounge, holds theatrical productions, film screenings and lectures. There’s so much art on the Silver Muse that even by the Deck 11 outdoor pizza outlet Spaccanapoli holds fine art.
Founded by architect Giacomo Erasmo Mortola who previously worked on the Silver Spirit, the Genoa-based Gem firm designed the Silver Muse.
Silver Muse boasts of king beds and Pratesi linens, walk-in closets and Bulgari products for the tub in the marble bathroom.
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Source: Forbes
