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Giacinto di Pietrantonio, director of Gamec in Bergamo, discusses the Italian identity in today’s art world within the context of new emergencies. |
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Giacinto di Pietrantonio, director of Gamec in Bergamo, discusses the Italian identity in today’s art world within the context of new emergencies.
Emilio Corti: You’ve been exhibiting new Italian art for 15 years—from Cattelan, Beecroft, Pivi to Gabellone, Perrone and Cuoghi—art that represents today’s cultural identity, one that is known internationally and that is recognizable for its view on domestic ambience and tradition but also for its typical Italian attitude towards travel and xenomania. Do you think there is an art community recognized as such? What are the values of Italian art today?
Giacinto di Pietrantonia: I don’t think a common identity is being recognized as such. Unlike during the Arte Povera or the Transavanguardia period, we are living in a moment in which artists are individual identities, there are no groups. The artists you are mentioning, even if some of them have the same age, belong to different artistic generations. Time goes faster today, things change in a few years: Cattelan and Beecroft belong to one artistic generation, Gabellone and Perrone belong to another one. Pivi is even younger. The fact is that Paola Pivi alone is not a group. Gabellone and Perrone are two individuals, and even two is not a group. They are singular characters who act independently.
EM: Let’s not talk about groups but about identity: don’t you think all of these characters contribute in forming an identity as the Arte Povera or the Transavanguardia did? We’ve been learning recently that even those group’s identities were not as consistent as art history wants to suggest.
GP: No, I don’t think there is a common identity because there is not a shared sensibility. Also, because one of the features of this historical moment is that, on one side, artists keep a special sensibility and identity related to the ambience where they live, but, on the other side, there are many influences, matters and international problems that constitute a global background. The only common feature of some of them, as for example in the case of Pivi, Gabellone, Perrone and Cuoghi, is that they come from the Accademia di Brera, in Milan, and precisely from the school of Alberto Garutti.
EM: In this global situation of increasing homogeneity, are icons such as the pope, the giant pizza, the old men with horns an ironic nostalgia or a local value, vital and prolific?
GP: Well, the pope…of course you are speaking of Cattelan. He works with communication, in this sense he is more “American” than “European.”
EM: I saw the reactions of the American public at the auction sale where this work was sold for millions; they perceived Cattelan as a representative of the Italian intrigues and corruption.
GP: Well, he is not representing the Italian corruption, even if the American public read it this way, when he is dealing with the pope he is working with an icon—an icon that belongs to everyone and an icon that generates discussions and trouble because of the way it is worked out.
The same happens with Hitler. Hitler is German, but making a baby Hitler generates a chain reaction that makes it a provocative work for everybody. It is true that Cattelan used Italian icons at the beginning of his career—his work is all about people’s expectations, and what do people expect from Italy? Spaghetti, Mafia and so on. As soon as he became more popular he started to use more general icons: the pope, Hitler or, in the Marian Goodman show, two American cops upside down.
Vanessa Beecroft is more European; her performances are like paintings; she refers to the history of art, she is a painter who is painting a canvas, she sets the models in postures and gives them performing instructions that bear an image. The point of reference is the Italian painting. On the other side, Gabellone and Perrone look at the Arte Povera.
EM: The big cities of the world are being restyled and signed by famous architects, the art leaves the galleries and faces ever-changing situations creating a language at the edges of cinema, fashion and architecture. You have just organized an exhibition in the subway of Milan. May we dare to affirm that the “work of art” is surpassed and that we are entering a new, diffused aesthetic?
GP: Yes, we have finally reached this point, quite a long time ago in fact…
EM: Now it is happening in a different way, with no more ideological oppositions and no more borders…
GP: There is much more freedom now. The “société du spectacle” is much more accepted, we have developed new antibodies and the positive features, besides the negatives of turning everything into a show, are perceived. Living in a postmodernist society, the aestheticization of life is a central fact of all social dynamics.
EM: Positive…has dialectic been abandoned or is it the scenario that changed?
GP: The artists today are no longer nostalgic of the times when television did not exist because they are born in the age of the television and the computer, and therefore can’t avoid things that belong to their landscape, to their reality. There are different approaches, positive or critical, but it depends on the single artist, not on a diffused ideology.
EM: Why are Italian fashion, architecture and art successful all around the world? Once you talked about an attitude derived from the saints and Madonna’s iconography…
GP: Right in the moment of the highest diffusion of aesthetics, Italy is a country that’s always worked a lot with aesthetics, form, design—making it the central point of its own reality, and this is probably what the others are interested in. The diffused aesthetics is the point. It can become an oleographic postcard: the fact that we used to dress with taste, to eat well…
EM: But it is true!
GP: Yes, but it is a reality that has some problems: it was much more evidence in the 80s, when the term “Made in Italy” was coined referring to design, to Italian fashion, etc. It’s still going on, but the greatest time was then. We’ve entered a new chapter.
EM: You’re working in a context that is particularly difficult—in Italy and under swinging political and economic trends. Are you optimistic about Italy’s future or do you think we are banished in a situation of decline?
GP: I’m always optimistic! There is no reason not to be! Just because there is a crisis we must be still optimistic, and try to get over it. Moreover, it is not only an Italian situation, but also a general crisis. It is evident that Italy is losing ground, but it’s the same with the other Western countries. Eastern countries are emerging in the global context, so we are losing ground in every direction, but there are Italian artists that have a wide international notoriety. We must learn to react to prevent us from being cut off and also to have a constructive attitude. By now there is not a collective reaction, the artists we have been talking about do not act in the name of a community, but following an individual journey—the target of an individual success. The point is to elaborate on how we can turn individual values in a consciousness for the community.
