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A close and also mysterious relationship exists between the name and the person which is so much more evident when dealing with a pseudonym. The names our artist has chosen are consequently the revealers of his own nature and disclose a secret being that comes to light by the association of his three names, irrespective of the clear intentions which have motivated his choice. Suffice to write Max in lower-case and we have the graphic abbreviation of maximum - that is, of the adjective with which some artists (and not only of the past) qualify their art. One thinks of De Chirico who signed his self-portraits as pictor maximus. To recall De Chirico is not casual. In his works Max Hamlet aspires to the recreation of the enigmatic and arcane atmosphere of the works belonging to the metaphysical period of the great Italian precursor of Surrealism. In the painting of 1990 entitled La fuga (Omaggio a G. De Chirico) - The Flight (Homage to G. De Chirico) - we in fact see the De Chirico of the period in which he signed his self-portraits pictor maximus (1959), anachronistically coupled with a reproposal of the famous painting of 1913 entitled I piaceri del poeta (The Pleasures of the Poet), here enriched both with details of other metaphysical pieces as with elements typical of Hamlet's own works: characters with flower or animal heads,
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theriomorphic airplanes, motorcars of the 1960's, etc. With hardly concealed irony, in L'eroico Supermax (The Heroic Supermax) he depicts himself as Superman on the background of a landscape which is no longer metaphysical but very modern, almost as if alluding that today the painter must possess superhuman gifts in order to nurture the hope of affirming himself. The self-laudatory meaning of max is upturnedwhen it becomes the superlative which precedes Hamlet. In fact, the indecision on the part of the Danish prince is exasperated to the "maximum" degree by the qualifying adjective. Is it not perhaps true that the authentic artist lives the state of perennial uncertainty of managing to completely express his own emotions, ideas and aspirations? When Hamlet recognizes himself in the Shakesperian hero he also shares the nature of the rebel towards an unjust order. Our "sauvage" refuses to let himself be tamed either by ethical or aesthetic conventions and does not tolerate the convenient habits of social conformism. On the other hand, it is equally certain that the person who says artist is saying anarchist given that also the former rejects the principle of authority, in the same way that the anarchist rejects every hierarchical imposition (and one must not forget that the name derives from an-arkhos). The etymology of artist confirms this affinity. continue
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