Luca Rossi is an art collective and critic who has been lashing out at the contemporary art world, live and online, since 2009, with targeted actions, artworks that have often focused on highly topical issues (e.g., infodemics, the constant flow of images to which we are subjected and the consequent saturation, artists’ political engagement) as well as often polemical critical writings, many of which have also been hosted by Finestre sull’Arte. On the occasion of the Quadriennale di Roma 2025, which will open on October 11, and the next edition of Artissima, which will begin in Turin on October 31, Luca Rossi will propose an action he calls “immersive,” aimed at highlighting the mechanism of speculation that is killing contemporary art and what could be the antidote: the critical sense that everyone can develop to make a difference and understand the values of the work of art. We caught up with him to get some insights. The interview is by Federico Giannini.
FG. You will soon hold two particularly interesting actions in Rome, for the opening of the Quadriennale, and in Turin, during the days of Artissima. Can you anticipate something for our readers? What are you preparing?
LR. All the problems of the world up to and including our private lives today have a cultural root, and so in Rome and Turin I will demonstrate how true cultural value should be sought in manners, attitudes, visions and attitudes and not in “art objects” and “entertainment” that should only be the eventual consequences of what I have called “M.A.V.A. CLOUD” (manners, attitudes, visions and attitudes). How does the system of speculation work in the art market? What antidote to it? How to “train new eyes” and see the value of artwork in our lives? This will not be a lecture but an experience that will change the way we “see.” If the work of art has no value to our life we can bury it.
Your actions have always aimed, precisely, at bringing out what the value of the work of art should be. “Value,” however, is at least a twofold expression: on the one hand the material value, the economic value, the market value. And on the other the symbolic value, the value of the work of art to our lives. Your actions lead the audience to focus on both. Let’s talk, meanwhile, about material value. You have often railed against the quotations of so much contemporary art, and not infrequently you have spoken out about how much you think works should really cost, and you have also come down pretty hard on them, with five-figure prices of well-known artists that you say would be inflated by as much as 80-90 percent. And that’s to stay on the mid- to high-end, so without going to the artists with higher prices. Would you like to explain why you think artists should revise the value of their works, also taking into account the fact that the price also includes everything we don’t see (the brokerage, transportation, catalogs, exhibitions, marketing and so on)?
If there are different prices in the market evidently there are different artistic values. The famous dean of Italian gallerists, Massimo Minini, once told me that the market makes the price...I say that the system inflates the value of works arbitrarily and this influences the price. What I am arguing is that in the last two decades the total absence of critical confrontation has killed our ability to make differences and thus has dried up the education and popularization that are respectively ways to create quality and to recognize this quality. A few years ago in a provocative way I created the “Michelin-o Guide” referring to the Michelin Guide of restaurants but also to one of the historical releases of Arte Fiera, namely the Michelino release. In this guide, made 100 the value of a work, I theorized that 80 percent should come from the artistic value and 20 percent from the public relations and historicity of the artist. On this percentage of artistic value, which in my opinion cannot be objective but is arguable, depended the price of a 50 x 50 cm work by the artist in question. Today in the modern and contemporary art world, the price is determined 80% by the artist’s public relations and resume and only 20%, maybe even less, by the artistic value of the work. In 2018 I was taking a guided tour of the Artissima Fair and the assistant to the then director stopped me and said, “You can’t talk here.” It was from this sentence that the immersive action I will do in Rome in front of the Quadriennale on October 10-11 and from October 30 to November 2 in Turin in front of the modern and contemporary art fair Artissima was born. They are afraid that Luca Rossi might talk because this might challenge the negotiation, that is, the sale, while they do not understand that talking and arguing can be a way to support the value and thus the sale itself. “Talking” does not mean explaining the work, that would be a huge mistake, but arguing the value in relation to art history and our present life.
Let’s focus instead on symbolic value. I think we all agree that the visual arts, and especially contemporary art, seems far from the horizon of many people. The visual arts are no longer the dominant art of our time, it seems to me an indisputable point: people today perceive more closeness to other forms of expression (cinema first of all, and then music, partly architecture, perhaps even dance today is closer to people than the visual arts). Meanwhile: has contemporary art condemned itself to irrelevance? What do you think is the value that art has for people today, and what value should it have?
In my opinion during the last century and then more prominently during the 1990s, contemporary art came out of museums and lives among us. If we sniff the most successful projects that have emerged in the world in the last 24 years, we see that they all have artistic and creative germs. Therefore, if we don’t take care of contemporary art, the worst contemporary art will take over our lives and that’s trouble--exactly as it is happening. Contemporary art today is in everything, in film, dance, music but also in politics all the way to our private lives. Already in the 1950s artists like Yves Klein were saying “life itself is absolute art.” In the actions I will do in Rome and Turin we will see concretely what it means that life itself is absolute art and how to find, concretely, in our lives the value of modern and contemporary art. It is doomed to irrelevance certain contemporary art that we find more and more where we think it is there while we do not see it when it is before our eyes where we think it is not there.
We live in a substantial absence of criticism. This, too, is incontrovertible. I am not asking if criticism serves any purpose, because I think we all agree on that point (otherwise I would not do criticism either). I do ask you, however, if you think there can still be a space for criticism, or are we doomed to succumb to the logic of marketing, art in reel format, cutesy popularization that stifles critical thinking, press release rinsing...?
We need new ways of doing criticism that are persistent over time and incidental. We need to create different levels of reading, all of them of quality, to engage a community of reference. And above all, we need to collaborate among people who think and see the same way because the others, those of just marketing and reel storytelling, do collaborate... !
You say that in contemporary today there is never sowing and there is always reaping. What sowing should be done then?
It is artists who should create spaces and times of sowing, first of all by recovering the means of production i.e. “places” and “public relations.” Biennials, Quadrennials and exhibitions, not to mention fairs, are all places that harvest or wink at harvesting. After so many years, this situation is unsustainable because you cannot expect the harvest without working well on “sowing.” hence the crisis of the contemporary market is explained while the modern by being able to rely on dozens and dozens of years tends to do better. The projects I have done in recent years have dealt with sowing and harvesting, and even the one I will make in Turin (“You can’t talk here ”) will have a moment of sowing and a moment of harvesting, but outside the logic and tired liturgies of the art world.
A few weeks ago I interviewed Giordano Raffaelli, according to him Italian art today lacks a great champion. It lacks, to say, a Jannik Sinner of art. But the same argument could be made for music, for cinema, for all creative fields: what is happening in your opinion? And where might a Sinner of art arise from?
As Sergio Romano said, we have a big problem in Italy: we prefer the success of a Frenchman, an Englishman or an American to the success of one of our compatriots. In the sphere of art, where apparently there are no objective criteria, this situation (after many years) keeps everyone at a mediocre level precisely because any energy that tries to emerge is immediately repositioned at an average level that can never challenge the supposed mediocrity of everyone else. Maurizio Cattelan himself made it abroad and then returned to Italy, same thing of all the most appreciated contemporary Italian artists, from Francesco Vezzoli and Monica Bonvicini. If Jannik Sinner had not had “the score” he would never have emerged internationally and become number one in the world. The score was the objective criterion for making differences, what critical sense should do in Italy with respect to modern and contemporary. Quality should be developed but then it should also be recognized and valued. In Italy, and perhaps not only in Italy, there remains a certain illiteracy with respect to the contemporary: this facilitates young derivative artists who can never become the Sinner of art and disincentivizes the brightest minds who prefer to deal with areas where merit and value are more recognizable. In addition, we have the presumption of a great artistic past, and this penalizes the energy and resources we put on modern and contemporary art, even though it would be crucial to also see the ancient in updated contemporary ways. Paradoxically, in the last 30 years, this situation of suffering has stimulated a lot of interesting contemporary energies that many countries have never had, and that is why I have been saying for a long time that Italy, on the contemporary, could act as “late comers,” that is, have valuable aptitudes without an overly structured system that could somehow limit them.
You have long been trying to shake up the system. However, there is also to be said that today the public seems anesthetized. There is a lack of desire to discuss. There is a lack of desire to question. We are slaves to the prepackaged, the precooked, the storytelling. And there don’t seem to be any great signs of awakening, of novelty. Are there glimmers in the dark, however, in your opinion?
I see a glow in the complex and difficult path that I have developed in these sixteen years. I am a great believer in the need to bring out of the laboratory some solutions that I have only developed in these years at the laboratory level. I am referring to the need for a new “hand-to-hand” with the audience, which is exactly what I will do in Rome and Turin. But perfecting these ways took years in a system that still ostracizes me, slows me down, hinders me and takes away any resources. Sometimes I imagine what I could have done if I had the millions of euros that have been spent on so many projects by contemporary Italian artists in recent years. I think, for example, of the 2.6 million euros that the Italy 2022 Pavilion cost and left no mark.
You, however, continue undaunted in spite of it all: there is something noble, something kindly nineteenth-century in this contestation of yours that has been going on, as you mentioned, for sixteen years now. Your colleague Giovanni Fattori, a hundred and forty years before you, roughly, wrote to Diego Martelli that the artist and the critic must “break the balls of this rot that is society,” the artist with his works, the critic with his pen. You are a bit of both. You use both the work and the pen. And I can’t think of anyone who more than you has, as Fattori said, broken my balls all these years. Besides, I’m sure you won’t get tired of it. But society has changed: do you think criticism can really bother you?
Beautiful this reference of yours, really strong and moving. Yes, I will never stop and I see that every difficulty and every year, they bring new energy and new opportunities. It is as if I am slowly approaching the wall of “one two three star,” when the person facing the wall suddenly turns around and can eliminate the competitors. Here I am advancing a few steps each year, and sooner or later I will get to the wall. “Luca Rossi” is a sclerotic role that has had to wear all the roles in the system, so much so that if they stop one of these roles there is immediately another role that can continue. Anyone can be “Luca Rossi” because anyone can make their own and develop critical sense. In my opinion it is just a matter of finding ways that are up to date with our time and the resources to take these projects out of the laboratory in which they still find themselves.
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