What we learned from the case of the Leghist deputy mayor who wanted to censor Marina Abramović's poster

The Trieste I have in mind is the one that welcomes a barely 22-year-old James Joyce, who among the streets of the Julian city, which he called his “second homeland,” would know poverty and success, joys and disappointments, find inspiration for his works, and see his children born. The Trieste I like is the cultured and Central European one of Italo Svevo who spends his free time within the walls of the Biblioteca Civica, or sipping a drink at the Caffè Ferrari, or even going with his wife Livia to the opera house. It is the one open to the world that at the Caffè degli Specchi sees intellectuals from everywhere pass by, it is the one of the tormented love of Maximilian and Carlotta, it is the city that gave birth to Gillo Dorfles, it is the multicultural and cosmopolitan city where, between duels, the great Arturo Rietti was formed, where Pasquale Revoltella made his fortune and then reciprocated by donating his great art collection to Trieste (and it is, of course, the city that, for long decades, honored Revoltella’s gift by always maintaining it with enormous scruples), it is the city that helped Carlo Schmidl set up his important theater museum. It is that place full of charm and of that “surly grace” that Umberto Saba narrated in his lyrics, it is that city that, when you arrive, seems cold and reserved, perhaps a little wary, but then reveals itself by degrees in all its warmth from which to be warmed a little at a time.

Certainly, the Trieste I like is not the one of the leghist deputy mayor who imposes the withdrawal from the city of the Barcolana poster, which features one of the most important contemporary artists, Marina AbramoviÄ?, moreover, limiting her censorious work to the city limits (humiliating it): as if in 2018, in the midst of the digital era, a Triestine has no other way to see the work except in the streets of his city. The Trieste I like is not the one where a politician tries, rather clumsily (and with him so many others who think that our own bickering represents a concern for the world), to provide his own interpretation of the message contained in the poster (“We’re all in the same boat”), attributing to it a political connotation related to the affairs of our home: as if the concern of an artist accustomed to flying from New York to London, from China to Kassel, was to intervene instrumentally in the context of a vacuous and limited debate, and not tosend a universal message (which is precisely what the manifesto attempts to convey, as the organizers of the Barcolana explained, speaking of ecology and care for the planet). We are all living in the same world, and we should all be working to make sure that the world that is graciously hosting us is an ever-better place-an undeniable assumption, whatever a local administrator who, for some reason, decided to wear the shoes of the exegete might say. “We’re all in the same boat” is a timeless phrase with unlimited scope. Cicero used it in the first century B.C., Bernardo Davanzati in the 16th century, Dickens in the 19th century. Each with different motives, some referring to particular situations, some to general situations.

However, if you will, the affair has somehow served to give us an understanding of some aspects of the centuries-old relationship between art and censorship.

A detail of the poster for the 2018 edition of the Barcolana, at the center of the censorship case

First, there is often no need for too many turns of phrase. The phrase “that poster has to go,” uttered by the Leghist deputy mayor in his interview with Repubblica, quietly lets one configure an attempt at censorship. Censorship is defined, by the Treccani dictionary, as the “examination, by the public authority (political c[ensura]) or ecclesiastical authority (ecclesiastical c[ensura]), of writings or newspapers to be printed, posters or notices to be affixed in public, plays or films to be performed and sim[ili], which has the purpose of permitting or prohibiting their publication, broadcasting, representation, etc., according to whether or not they respond to laws or other prescriptions.”

Second, censorship may guarantee the censor a small immediate success, because his rants succeed in getting a work withdrawn in the context of a contingent situation. But in the long run, his censorious vague boasts backfire on him: because censorship almost always becomes a formidable tool of promotion, because it can be read as showing that the artist has succeeded in hitting the mark, because in some cases it magnifies the work’s circulation out of all proportion. All of us who have opened a newspaper these days will long remember the poster designed for the 2018 edition of the Barcolana. And perhaps Marina AbramoviÄ?’s work will also be exhibited in some collection, as it has happened to so many posters (we certainly do not discover today that the relationship between artists and advertising has been, is and will be much more fruitful, fruitful and vast than we commonly imagine). The memory of a deputy mayor, unless he leaves indelible marks on his territory, is set aside with far greater ease.

Third, censoring a work does not repair the alleged injustice inherent in the message, as Rosario Assunto already noted in 1963 in an important essay. So censorship is also a totally unnecessary measure.

Fourth, Marina AbramoviÄ?’s poster may be the ugliest work in the world, but that is no reason to restrict its dissemination. And this is even more serious if those making judgments on the merits are people who have no expertise on the subject or, a far worse situation, try to pass off their own reading of a work as unambiguous and universally acceptable.

Fifth, censorship is always a demonstration of fear. Certain politics, the kind that seeks easy and immediate consensus, must of necessity flatten the level, trivialize the messages, eliminate the content, erase any possibility of reflection, because otherwise it would run the risk of manifesting that its strength actually rests on a shaky house of cards. The politics of consensus, and especially the politics of populist consensus, thus harbors a deep fear of art: because art, even with extremely simple messages, as in the case of the poster featuring Marina AbramoviÄ?, conveys complex messages that require us to think, to delve deeper, to understand, to insinuate doubts. And that is precisely what consensus politics does not want.

Finally, it is good to remember that art has almost always had political significance as well, despite the recent trivialization of certain exhibitions and publications leading us to think otherwise. Deeply political was the work of van Gogh, an avid reader of Beecher Stowe, Michelet and other authors concerned with the plight of the humble; deeply political were the works of Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Fra’ Bartolomeo, Tiepolo, Hayez, Previati, Nomellini, and so on and so forth in the history of art. Even certain views by Monet were deeply political in nature. To argue that art and politics should remain on two distant spheres incapable of communication, or to assert that art should only be a matter of pure emotion, is to take sides on a position totally divorced from history and reality.

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