Old art and new stuff. Young artists could use a more visionary mindset

Unlike in the 1960s/70s, there are not many internationally known and recognized Italian artists. This is not only a phenomenon in the visual arts, but, for example, also in cinema. In fact, Italian cinematography of that same period was considered the second largest on the planet. Now only a small group of directors enjoys international consideration while the rest of Italian production fails to take advantage of even the explosion of streaming platforms. It is therefore not a deficit of contemporary art but of the entire national cultural system.

In the interview in the BBS Lombard report (March 2022) Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev said, “Unfortunately, in Italy, there are many localist curators who do not favor the internationalization of Italian art, because they support Italian art characterized by a very conservative taste. They support ’old’ artists. Contemporary art, on the other hand, is not that traditionalist. There is a contradiction at the root of the problem. A kind of psychoanalytic knot to be solved.” This is a bold and true statement, however unpopular. In other words, there are curators who support old art because they have an “old” conception of art which unfortunately in our country is still the hegemonic one. The same happens in cinema where in many cases projects that would like to be inspired by topical issues but are already “old” before they are even put into production continue to be funded. Even before funding, the national problem is thus that of an inadequate and in many ways still 19th-century “theory” of art: art as a commentary on and interpretation of ordinary reality. According to this perspective, a work or film is “beautiful” if it seems “real” even if it then sounds rhetorical, repetitive and boring. It is as if the withered epigones of French realism had crossed the Alps to establish a colony destined to stand the test of time. Thus the visionary creativity, a historical characteristic of many Italian artists, is annihilated. I invite you to watch a comparison of students from different European academies, as we did in Catania, to see how Italian traditionalism immediately jumps out at you. When a young Austrian artist claims to be “translating contemporary philosophical concepts into works,” many Italians hunt doubtfully, forgetting that this is precisely what Raphael, among others, did with the School of Athens.

The best Italian artists have not forgotten the lesson. The quote from Louis-Ferdinand Céline put at the foot of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza (Oscar 2014) reads, “the journey we are given is completely imaginary. That is its strength.” It is no coincidence that internationally recognized Italian artists share a very strong visionary charge. They work in a present that lies between the past and the future and feeds on both. They are not afraid to practice important and difficult themes, such as death, because they do so without rhetoric. Maurizio Cattelan has repeatedly enacted his own funeral, as well as that of the pope hit by a meteorite or even that of stuffed animals “upside down” or even of hanging children. Lara Favretto’s cenotaphs speak for themselves, as does The Imitation of Christ that Roberto Cuoghi made for that 2017 Italian Pavilion, curated by Cecilia Alemani, which was rightly called The Magic World. And the same could be said of Paola Pivi, rather than of Francesco Vezzoli and (unfortunately) a few others.

Therefore, little use is served by new competitions and new opportunities to support art if people in the field are pervaded by the aforementioned social neorealism: funds and structures will be used to perpetuate a backward, provincial art. Thus, the Italian problem is one of mentality before even vile money. The traditionalism referred to by Christov-Bakargiev is not that of addressing a past that must always be kept in mind, but that of interpreting it through nineteenth-century rhetoric. The very figure of the “artist” imagined in Italy is not that of the researcher, but of the instinctive genius, ideally self-taught, who creates with his belly rather than with his head and all that. This is also why research is mortified in educational institutions as well as in exhibition institutions. Artists, on the other hand, need to confront themselves, to experiment, at the limit even to make mistakes, without having the nagging of having to develop a production that fits into the “system” or the limited view one has of it. In this vein, it is not even true that there is a lack of collectors in the Peninsula, on the contrary, there are a lot of them, only that in many, too many cases, they have their dust wet by an idealized and anachronistic conception of art. They are still attached to a product, “outdated” to boot, and are not comfortable in the realm of contemporary artistic ideas, in the truly innovative planning that an artist can develop.

Many curators, to return to Christov-Bakargiev’s words, align themselves with this mentality, when they are not even the favored fruit of it. Rather than dilating the imagination, they turn to following the public’s tastes, exchanging sales successes, often ephemeral, for the artists’ intrinsic artistic value. However, they should be addressed in the first place. A renewed artistic mentality could lead to a redefinition of values, perhaps even to the rediscovery of “forgotten” artists or rather artists who are strangers to the hegemonic nineteenth-century mentality and therefore excluded or self-excluded from the games. In any case, a different mentality, more visionary and contemporary, can only do good for the growth of young Italian artists and their affirmation even beyond national borders (but do they still exist?!).

This contribution was originally published in No. 16 of our print magazine Windows on Art Magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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