A conversation between Florian Matzner and Angela Vettese
Florian MatznerFew discussions in the field of art have been as controversial and animated as the one on the meaning and possibilities of so-called 'art in public space'. The euphoria of the 1950s and 1960s, during which 'art applied to architecture' also had a broad appeal, was followed at the beginning of the 1970s by disappointment with the results of past attempts, which were of little artistic interest, did not improve the merely discrete architecture, nor did they constitute a particular enjoyment for the public interested in contemporary art. Despite this, with Land-Art, Minimal-Art and part of Pop-Art, an art had been realised that had left the sacred temple of the museum with the declared aim of seeking dialogue with the surrounding world, with society, thus predestining itself to realise a fruitful intervention in Public Space. At the same time, museum directors and exhibition curators realised that if one wanted to propagate an understanding of contemporary art, traditional museum exhibitions, which by the way were only seen by an already interested select audience, were no longer enough, but that one had to come out into the open with the products of current art, to invade the public space.
Angela Vettese: One could also think that contemporary art has sought different paths of development, finding different 'specialisations' in the methods of design and display of works depending on the place for which they are conceived: the small, closed, often architecturally neutral space of the private gallery; the larger, sometimes a little more socially connoted space of the museum; the often unpredictable space of the large group exhibitions, impregnated by the critical approach of one or more curators; and finally, the external and often urban space, characterised by wild or desert landscapes, sometimes by the sometimes secular lines of urban development. It is as if different genres have sprung up in which artists practise, just as once the same artist could move from painting to architecture to sculpture. Certainly, artists have been trying to escape the suffocating air of the so-called white cube almost since it was invented in the late 1940s for the works of American abstract expressionism. Even from its inception, it was probably realised that this zone outside the lived world, in which avant-garde art claimed to be shown at its best, stood at the opposite pole to a recurring knot in the theory of the historical avant-gardes themselves, namely the circularity between art and life, the need to find a bridge between these two shores; After all, the ambiguity already lay in the Romantic culture of the 19th century, which had contributed to creating an elitist concept of art by dividing in practice that art-life binomial which it instead advocated in theory. This kind of short-circuit between an art that in practice divorces itself from the public, but yearns to be reunited with it, seems to me to be a characteristic of the last entire century. I think it is because of the difficulty of untangling this knot and the need to get around it that all the 'genres' I mentioned earlier have been developing.
FM: Of course, but I would briefly return to the question of the function of art in outer space - whether function means task or effectiveness. I think that art - from a historical point of view - has always been public from its beginnings. The architecture of the cathedral of San Gimignano is unthinkable without the programme of frescoes that adorn its interior. The nearby Piazza Cisterna would have no function without the mediaeval fountain which, as a symbol of municipal power and wealth and the place where justice was administered, can only tell its 'story' in the context resulting from the articulation of town planning, architecture and sculpture. The court and church patrons of the Renaissance also thought of the public when commissioning works of art for private use. The artistic principle of the Baroque is that of the overall work of art: architecture, sculpture, painting, decoration even the court feast are an integral part of a single work of art. The Baroque concept of the 'overall work of art' gave a new order to the world as much as the Renaissance discovery of perspective: every palace, church, sculpture, fresco or painting was part of an ideal ensemble. The idea of the autonomy of art with all the aspects you mentioned, from the presentation in the atelier, gallery and museum - in the white cube - is, as you rightly said, a bourgeois idea born in the 19th century and remained binding for the 20th. It is only in the last thirty years or so that contemporary art has returned to 'going' into urban space, daring to confront the 'ordinary citizen' and thus initiating a new discussion on the relationship between art and everyday life.
AVBut the problem remains and becomes visible especially in art conceived in urban spaces and for a different relationship with the public. A long history of failures tells how artists whose language comes out of years of experimentation, and is therefore innovative and difficult to share, still have to court 'the people' in order to win their approval. A few banal examples: Ricard Serra's Titled Arc created in 1979 had to be torn down; the arch-bench that Max Bill wanted to give to Zurich, his city, in 1987, was long fought over before it was accepted by the population; Hans Haacke's work conceived in 1994 in Graz as a reminder of Austria's annexation of Nazi Germany was burnt down shortly after its installation.
FMHowever, I would say that public bureaucracy is also responsible, capable as it is of preventing, for reasons that seem more like excuses, the realisation of works of art in urban space: Hans Haacke's contribution for Münster's Skulptur Projekte of 1987, the application of a message-writing on city buses, was prevented by the city authorities, because "political propaganda on city buses is forbidden". Another example: during the night before the opening of the exhibition Skulptur Projekte in Münster in 1977, the city authorities had Donald Judd's work surrounded by a fence on which it was written: 'It is forbidden to enter the area of the work in progress. Parents answer for their children". On the night that had followed the installation of Claes Oldenburg's Giant Pool Balls, a large group of people had attempted to roll the three pool balls into Lake Aa, as the police reports testify, partly as a joke and partly out of open contempt for contemporary art.
AV: In this context, the popular petition that in Antwerp a work by Gordon Matta Clark (later actually destroyed) tried to hold up appears to be an exception. Not at home have some artists come up with works that do not 'offend' public taste through different devices: on the one hand, I am reminded of the monument against fascism by Jochen and Ester Gerz, who in 1987 installed a 12-metre pillar intended to wedge itself into the ground and hide, reducing itself to a simple plaque; On the other hand, of course, Joseph Beuys' 7,000 oaks, which, despite being the most ambitious public monument ever conceived in my opinion (as it is destined not to die until the plants have the strength to regenerate and generate, like until the end of our ecosystem), has spread and expanded over time under the guise of 'nature', but, as 'art', it has hidden itself. It is as if artists were ready to confront the public square again, but had, in the course of this century spent within the confines of their own specific world, lost the know-how of extended communication and of the multi-layered work. Yet it is clear that in such a period of change they are bored with aseptic white walls and want to finally get their hands dirty with real environments, recovering their place as witnesses of the present, which, at least in mediaeval and Renaissance Italy, was their main boast. To think and beautiful, but I do not deny that I have often wondered to what extent it is possible to realise. Won't divorce be irretrievable?
FM: Before answering your question, I think it is very important to emphasise that when we talk about sculpture for the public area, we are not talking about so-called "drop sculptures" that seem to have fallen from the sky and have no relation to their exhibition context, but of works of art that concretely refer to the urban, architectural, historical and even psychological context of the place where they are located, the place chosen by the artist is decisive in the first place, then his aesthetic intervention, the watchword of the 1980s was 'Site-Specificity'. The first question to ask would then be who does art in public space serve: city dwellers, patrons or perhaps just artists and the art market, public space as a kind of huge free exhibition area and as a great market opportunity?
AV: Certainly the art market finds some benefit from the visibility that authors acquire with their public works, but I would also insist more on this prosaic side: the golden moment of "site specificity" coincided with the unprecedented development of the figure of the curator. We also build our small or big careers through these events, which are more 'creative' than museum exhibitions whose grammar is already very defined. However, I believe that art in public spaces is a considerable stimulus for artists: it serves them as a source of new challenges compared to the atelier work. Urban space dictates rules, sets limits, as does an unprepared and often tendentially distrustful public. I also think that every country, but Italy in particular, is a sort of blackboard where every era has left its mark. It is from the superimposition over time of these traces that the identity of places is born. Why should the present we live in not leave any? If we cease to create public art, in the name of preserving the past, we would actually betray the very mechanism through which this cherished past has been translated into habitable forms. The cult of restoration, after all, appears to me as one of the most symbolic expressions of the way in which our age (like no other before it) detests itself. We live between telephones and televisions, without being able to do without them, but we are not proud of them, we are rather afraid of them. Public art can also serve as a signal to welcome our present with less suspicion. Although it is clear that once upon a time, for example in the baroque era you mention, artists were the undisputed directors of the world of forms and images. Cinema, television, advertising and the Internet have today taken this primacy away from them. In a way, the real art in the public space, the one in which collective identity is most projected and which manages to change the behaviour of crowds, is that which comes from the media. I would like to believe that visual art in the sense in which we deal with it is still a strong sign, even if not immediately attractive, because it is not transient, it is solid in a physical, cultural and metaphorical sense. What do you think?
FMI agree with you, and my opinion is probably even more idealistic. The reasons behind it are as follows: if it is true that the western world at the end of this century, indeed of this millennium, is characterised by the transition from the industrial to the information society - a change comparable only to that which led from courtly to bourgeois-democratic society more than two hundred years ago - then in the future it will no longer be the trade with hardware - cars, washing machines, condoms - but that with software - electronic superhighways, the Internet, e-mail, Virtual Sex - that will determine the western world in an economic, political and social sense. And although the electronic media seem to have reduced the world to a village square, even the city, with its urban and social structure, still has validity for its enduring character as a reference system for man's everyday life. Electronic media have not (yet) replaced public space, at most they have expanded it. So public space, and with it automatically the art that acts in it, continues to have a central social function for the community. For this reason, even if - as you rightly said - today's world of images is dominated by television, the internet and advertising, I believe that contemporary art is capable of constructing a counter-world, a counter-world that could represent a modern concept of freedom. If the baroque artist was an integral part of the system, and even influenced its rules in his function as 'director of images', the artist's chance today consists precisely in his moving outside a system based on insurance for the car, life, retirement, health, unemployment, and in his attempt to create a counter-system in which he could represent that central aspect of human life that is freedom. In the words of the young Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig, the most important function of art 'is not to function'. And Ayse Erkmen emphasises that the function of contemporary art is 'not to know answers, nor to ask questions that can be answered'. The creative, imaginative and aesthetic aspect of artistic production that lies outside the given course of human life is also emphasised by Ilya Kabakov when he says that 'art must pose enigmas. The purpose in posing this enigma is twofold: art should indeed provide the solution to the enigma, but in it there must be a fragment that cannot be dissolved, capable of provoking our capacity for supposition and imagination'. At first sight, if what has been said so far is true, then it seems very strange that artists today use forms taken from the phenomena of everyday culture, or even make their works usable. Yet when Walter Grasskamp, in his article on art in the public space, speaks in a negative sense of a 'festivalisation' of art, I cannot agree with him, and on the contrary would like to emphasise here the positive aspect of 'art as a public service'.
AVI agree, although I think that the notion of service linked to that of art raises quite a few theoretical and practical problems. But certainly, if it is true that the economy of our age is no longer based on the production of "solid" goods but above all, precisely, on intangible goods such as services, from organised travel to telephony, it seems to me entirely coherent that this aspect is also accentuated in artistic production. Even an artist like Andrea Fraeser has often pointed this out in her essays. Let us not forget that the era of the great Occocentric monuments was also that of the first industrial revolution, of a revolution that concerned matter, and that we are now in the midst of a productive revolution that concerns above all non-material goods.
FMOlaf Metzel places in the middle of the angular and strong architecture of the medieval fortress of Montalcino the elegant and rounded form of a velodrome, which gained even more popularity after Pantani's victory in the Tour de France. Bert Theis, too, offers in the public gardens of Volterra - the only place in the city that is not one hundred per cent occupied by tourists - for families picnicking there, or for couples, or for children on the Plateau acome of palm tree beds, an archipelago of paradisiacal islets, a place for rest and relaxation, but also for meditation and concentration. This aspect of the active use of the work of art, and thus of the artist's invitation to the visitor-user-passer to enter into a relationship with his aesthetic system, to live in it for a while, is extended by Ayse Erkmen who, entering into direct confrontation with medieval sacred architecture, sets up models, also in stone and thus also a monument, of chairs by famous post-war Italian designers, eliminating the caesura between past and present. In an almost ironic way, contemporary art subtly becomes the representative and changing agent of that identity of places you mentioned. I am therefore of the opinion that contemporary art still represents a strong sign, and that precisely in a historically connoted space, by making a fruitful connection between past and present, it also manages to develop perspectives, not only aesthetically, but also socially for the future. This latter aspect is particularly clear in Ilya Kabakov's three-part installation in Colle Val d'Elsa. The first part of the story that the artist tells us takes place in antiquity, physically located in a 'no place' outside the city walls; the second part recounts the period in which those Tuscan municipalities were formed that still today, intact, determine the image of this cultural landscape. The last chapter of the story takes place in a bar, on the inside wall of which hundreds of flies compose the inscription 'We are free!'. Kabakov dedicated an entire solo exhibition to the motif of the flies - 'The Life of Flies', 1992 at the Kunstverein in Cologne - and he himself wrote in his project description for Arte all'Arte: "The third project 'We are free!' is associated for the author with the current situation today", for - as Boris Groys said - "the fly by its nature has no precise place in any system. It constantly flies in circles, buzzes, settles and immediately flies away again. The circles it draws in the air are always chaotic. The place where it settles on the surface of objects is always random."
The fly is the metaphor for the propensity and the right (of art) to freedom.
AV: Descartes is also said to have invented his system of axes on a sudden intuition, an insight he had while being annoyed by the flight of a fly right above his nose. Unable to predict or stop it, he at least invented a mathematical language to grasp it within an equation. Kabakov, too, imprisons his flies as he sings of their freedom, highlighting the love-hatred and paradox that this word arouses in all of us. A paradox that, moreover, has also been much frequented by science, for example in the debate on the relationship between chance and necessity. More than a pure expression of freedom, art seems to me to be a way of highlighting our contradictory feelings towards it. And art publica in particular, as evidenced by all the fasces and all the Stalin heads that were first erected, later chiselled away with clang as the rigours from which they came rose and fell. In Siena, the thousands of transformations undergone by the fresco known as the Buongoverno fresco attest to how this specific vocation of art in public places is certainly not something of today. However, I would like to emphasise an aspect that, on the other hand, is strictly related to today's way of experiencing and conceiving art. I am convinced that the wider Arte all'Arte audience will love all six interventions, but will only be willing to consider Paladino's sculptures and those of Louise Bourgeois as 'art'; perhaps this is not important, but we have to ask ourselves why this happens so often. After all, the most popular works of public art of our time, for example the Viet Nam Memorial and the huge expanse of the Aids Quilts, hardly have an author and somehow do not bear, in the eyes of the public, the label 'ate'. Art in public spaces is often loved even if, or precisely because, it is not perceived as such, i.e. as being linked to a specific tradition that also implies a certain concept of 'author'. Let me explain myself better. It is clear that when Bert Theis uses the proportions of the Golden Ratio to construct his islets; when Kabakovv sets up angels; when Paladino takes up the panels painted in a sacristy by Memmo di Filippuccio; when Ayse Erkmen combines in a single work two practices born for repeatability, i.e. the alabaster craft technique and the design project; when Louise Bourgeois uses Carrara marble, so rich in artistic history behind it, to recall the ghosts of her childhood... They all refer to a tradition and a history of art also dominated by a self-referential thread; they all, each in their own way, 'respond' to their predecessors' artists. And as I mentioned above, Italy is precisely the ideal place to do this, full as it is of the spirits of the painters who fly over the cities and, unbeknownst to us, meet in the piazza. But this continuity and these responses are not easily seen by the public. If people knew that the Metzel velodrome intended to be part of the artistic tradition, they would scoff. Ayse's chairs will be loved without perplexity until it is thought that they are an expression of the personality of an 'author': where, indeed, is the invention, one might ask, where is the poetry and so on? You will tell me that this contrast between what the public considers to be 'art' and 'author' versus what they really are is not important. The interventions of the six artists in the Elsa valley will live on no matter how they are defined. But I felt it was necessary to emphasise this aspect as well, so as not to be completely unaware of it.
FM: Certainly the public at a hasty first glance will 'recognise' and consider only the works of Mimmo Paladino and Louise Bourgeoise as works of art, but this is not because they have understood their meaning, but only because in an associative way they will link material and form to the field of figurative arts. But this is not the problem, for how many contemporaries have appreciated Marcel Duchamp's ready mades or Picasso's blue period can be said to have only once in the sacred context of the museum-temple and after their glorification by critics and art historians been able to climb onto the pedestal where they have found their place as incunabula of modern art. Whether it is art or not, whether it has significance for art history or not, that is for the future to decide. I make my own the definition given by international European law, which defines the concept of a work of art simply and clearly: 'Art is what an artist produces. Whether it is good or bad art - 'high art or low art' - that is for the future to decide. But if, as you say, the public will play with or even enjoy the works of Ayse Erkmen, Olaf Metzel and Bert Theis, then the most important prerogatives for the definition and reception of art will already have been fulfilled: the active engagement with it - playful or serious, superficial or devoted -, the entering, however briefly, into another world, into a fantasy, into an imagination that, by founding itself in the real reality of objects, offers a virtual reality to the subject. And in the end, the audience will perhaps be more inclined to reflection and devotion than they were before when looking at Bourgeois and Paladino's works. And so I agree with you when you say that art works best when, at least at first glance, it is not recognised as such. This is also why artists, since the beginning of our century, have made use of media forms and apparitions taken from everyday culture: the pissoir, the designer's chair, as well as the velodrome, can serve to transform a visible and banal object into a visionary story, as in Ilya Kabakov's three-part work, where the banality of the everyday is interwoven with poetic vision; to put it more generally: art does not exist, art is created. Artists working in the public space feel this responsibility for the creation and development of a work of art from the objective form to the subjective statement, even more so: they, artist and work, must in fact not only show that they are there in everyday culture, but that they actually have something to say and a contribution to make to the development of this culture. Precisely for this reason, an artist always walks the line between reality and virtuality, between autonomy and contextuality.
AVI really like the fact that you consider it important and I would say fundamental that the works retain a margin of vision. It is a kind of consideration that I have not found in much literature on art in public space: it would seem that the contribution to works of the imagination is considered politically uncorrect. If Grasskamp, in his essay for our catalogue, rails so vigorously for the autonomy of the work and against the excesses of contextualising it, perhaps it is also in response to this kind of attitude. In addition, a certain type of operation that is purely social runs the risk of degenerating into facile academicism, which we also experienced in the context of Documenta X, an exhibition that was as 'committed' as it was contradictory, because it was ultimately functional to the system it criticised. But I would also like to say that the work of art has never been 'autonomous' except in the last century and the beginning of this one. Autonomy can be an achievement, but it is also a great loss: loss of contact with place, patronage, audience. The relationship of contemporary art with the natural and artistic territory of Tuscany, which is the raison d'être of Arte all'Arte, is particularly apt to show how art has always been 'at the service' of something, whether it be an altarpiece, a palace or a fountain.
What we are promoting, the return of contemporary art to public space, is but a continuation of the particles of the past after a pause for reflection. A pause that I would call rather short, if you see it in perspective and if you think about how quickly things have changed over the last two centuries around us as well as around art.
Now that the exhibition has opened (and I hope you had at least as much fun as I did during the days of the exhibition: the human, as well as professional, experience is one to remember) we can also take a closer look at what we helped to bring into being. Things went as we expected, with great success for Paladino and Bourgeois. But I can't say that Theis's platforms, so beautifully white on the green lawn, so welcoming with their palm tree behind, received any less attention; there is already a rumour that visitors to the archaeological park of Volterra will oppose the uprooting of the palm trees when the work is dismantled. On the velodrome we saw the bravest of visitors racing like mad and waiting for next week's performance with the real bicycles; behind Kabakov's telescope was a queue so long that I have only seen it in the Soviet Union in 1987, the same year I climbed into the Moscow attic where Ilya had his studio. Ayse's chairs seem to me to have been 'touched' less, perhaps because the painted alabaster in which they were made is so sacred that they easily arouse awe that becomes awe. The overall impression is that these works, in their own small way, can really help to change certain behaviours. I truly believe that art has two purposes: to interpret the present and to change future behaviour, albeit in a subterranean and often almost invisible way. So invisible, but also so irritating (like the torpedo Socrates identified with) that the success of the exhibition will also be measured by the amount of negative criticism we manage to collect. Irritation is a good sign of effectiveness, as anyone who uses creams for hair growth or the disappearance of wrinkles knows. Irritation gives hope, and I hope.
FM: Returning briefly to the topic you mentioned, i.e. the difference between autonomy and contextuality in a work of art, I am of course of the opinion that every work of art - whether in a museum or in an urban or in any case architecturally defined context, or even as a contextual intervention in the public place - has in itself an autonomy and independence that isolates it from the surrounding space, and it is good that this is the case. Nevertheless, I believe in the contextuality of contemporary art in particular because it presents and defines itself today as a possible visual and aesthetic relationship to the society in which we live, to put it another way: the dream of artistic genius and uniqueness no longer exists. The young German artist Tobias Rehberger ua volat told me that he feels like a tie salesman: he takes the same planes, sleeps in the same hotels and spends his evenings in the same bars - only we curators don't want to buy ties, and Rehberger decries himself as an 'aesthetic service provider'. Last year's Documenta X in Kassel once again popularized the work of art as an intellectual Overkill: an academic retreat for insiders only, or at any rate for 'people of culture'; other exhibitions, however, such as Münster's Skulptur Projecte of 1997 or this year's Subway project in Milan, or even Tony Cragg's exhibition in Siena, have shown how art today is not just something for the brain, but how on the contrary it also has something to offer the heart. The role of the curators in all this is rather modest; they invite artists by giving, through their choice, a precise conceptual framework. After that, all they should do is provide the artists with as much financial and administrative freedom as possible. The curator of the 1990s should be no more than a kind of 'artist's advocate', as the only person responsible for the end result - the work of art - is the artist.
Now that the exhibition has been opened, I think I can say that our planning has proved its worth. Although at first glance the works by Louise Bourgeois and Mimmo Paladino were the most 'popular' with the public, it also seems to me that they only gain legitimacy in the context of the exhibition today if seen together with works such as those by Olaf Metzel or Bert Theis. In fact, only if all six works presented are taken together is it possible to understand what the possibilities and capabilities of art in public space are today, and what the relevant artistic 'styles' are today. It would still be worth noting that Bourgeois and Paladino were the only artists to work without relating themselves completely to the site, but rather 'withdrew' into a semi-private space. Ayse Erkmen, on the other hand, with his homage to post-war Italian design, told a story by foregrounding an important period of Italian art history, something that Ilya Kabakov also does, weaving into it the tale of a mysterious and very personal encounter.
The scope of the works by Erkmen, Kabakov, Metzel and Theis is even better understood if we clarify for a moment, in conclusion, the function of art in the public space: the Arte all'Arte exhibition was made first and foremost 'for the place', i.e. for the local public, for the inhabitants of the individual towns where the works are located and then, but only then, for a possible national or international public. This is why I am not concerned about the hundreds of kilometres the visitor has to travel by car or bus to see all the works. The aesthetic interventions of the six artists from six different countries in six different towns in Tuscany are to be understood as an 'offer' made to the local inhabitants to live for a period - the period of the duration of the exhibition - with these works of art. The locals will thus have a new artistic experience, they will get to know an art not yet so well known, and at the same time, perhaps, through the new works, they will make a new acquaintance with places that are certainly not unknown to them. In fact, from a psychological and aesthetic point of view, there is a big difference if one goes to the archaeological park in Volterra to relax a little after work, or if one goes there to stretch out on an island of paradise in Bert Theis to watch the palm tree foliage move in the wind and perhaps listen to the distant sound of the waves of the sea. And is there a difference if the inhabitants of Montalcino who did not go to 'their' fortress, now seen hundreds of times and always full of American or German or Japanese tourists, perhaps now return there, despite the mass of foreign tourists, to see the Metzel velodrome and perhaps to take their children there to play. And it makes a difference whether the inhabitants of Mensano go to their wonderful Romanesque church with its alabaster candle windows just for mass, or whether they now perhaps also go there to see a strange chair in shape and colour called 'Donna' and wonder what such a chair by a 20th century designer has to do with the medieval architecture of 'their' church. All of these aspects are in my opinion at the basis of the task and the great possibility of contemporary art in public space, and the Arte all'Arte exhibition demonstrated this once again: art after the Second World War went into the streets to take a stand against its increasing musealisation, and again in this sense, art in public space today has above all the task of opposing the ever-increasing tendency to musealise European cities - Berlin like Montalcino, Milan like Colle di Val d'Elsa - to hinder their extinction in order to declare cities once again the centre of human activity.
From the catalogue Arte all'Arte III, 1998
From the 2005 Arte all'Arte X catalogue
My Art to Art began many years ago when Luciano Pistoi asked me to curate an event for the Florence Fair with some young gallery owners. Then I knew nothing more about it until a 'come to the exhibition' on the day of the inauguration. What? I was convinced that the whole project had gone up in smoke... I have a more verbose way of communicating and I have worked many times on things that have not seen the light of day, so by now I do not start projects unless they are confirmed several times. With Continua it was never like that. They do more than you expect, sometimes too much, like Pistoi did. They do everything.
The incredible potential of the project was clear to me from 1996, when that marble work by Kapoor occupied the space like a sacred statue. I wrote an article. They called me. I met Florian, the magnificent, irascible Florian. This is the private, anecdotal side of the story, about which much could be said: all together for dinner; all in the car with Emilia Kabakov; all hot in the various cities; all together at three o'clock in the morning pushing Louise Bourgeois's marble work, which almost crushed us; all anxious about press conferences to which no one came; all busy creating a new graphic design for the exhibition and writing captions explaining the works to passers-by, residents, visitors; all on the bus, with me strutting around explaining the works. All angry, all happy, all tired, all taking the end-of-exhibition photos in Piazza della Cisterna. A great group. A lot of fun. I would do it again.
At first I was very worried. But I have to say that these experiences, which start out exciting and then mature, making you mature in turn, generate an almost unbearable amount of nostalgia. Arte all'Arte lasted two years for me, for Arte Continua it is now ten... I realise that they have to stop. Moreover, at the beginning, proposing public art and the interaction between art, nature and landscape was something new. Over the years, Tuscany has been inundated with similar initiatives, and whether they were copied or originated independently of the same needs is irrelevant.
The very idea of public art, the famous notion of interaction with the public, has over time become somewhat academic and somewhat dubious. Or rather, I would say, inadequate: given that (ten years of Arte all'Arte proves this) works can get back in touch with the community, one wishes that artists would give more, that local governments would believe in it more, that a curator could work on a large scale: a hospital, a street, a public building...
Our dream has not come true. We had a lot of fun, but Arte all'Arte is also ending because the barrier between contemporary art and public administration is still intact and irritatingly present. You make artists produce three or four toys, you organise a big party, but it doesn't bring votes, so it's not really worth investing in.
Some permanent works remain - Paladino, Kosuth, Kabakov and others. The gallery in San Gimignano also remains; like a coconut, you enter through a hole and find yourself immersed in milky white, in an Italian place that has managed to become European. It is important for all of us, for the whole large community of art lovers in Italy.
Bravo, and even when Art to Art ends, keep going, keep going.
Angela Vettese
From the 2005 Arte all'Arte X catalogue
My working relationship and friendship with Arte Continua began in the summer of 1997 in a rather casual way. With my family and some friends we came to San Gimignano and, driven by curiosity, we entered the gallery. A beautiful girl - Silvia - approached us and asked where we were from. When we answered that we were all from Münster, she asked if we had by chance seen the contemporary art exhibition Sculptur-Projekte. I said that we knew it well, because I had been one of the three curators.
Thus began my friendship with Lorenzo, Mario and Maurizio, the 'Chaospiloten', as Olafur Eliasson affectionately and jokingly called them. As we walked around the gallery, one of our sons, Maritz, who was four years old at the time, was walking around with his toy camera and filming everything he saw. When asked curiously by Silvia what he was doing, Maritz replied seriously: 'I am Cattelan', referring to Maurizio Cattelan, who always carried a camera with him wherever he went when he was in Münster.
Friendships that were destined to become deep and working collaborations that would produce some of the most beautiful and meaningful memories from a human point of view can be born in a completely banal way. It was also thanks to Arte Continua that I met Angela Vettese, with whom I curated Arte all'Arte in 1998 and 1999.
Florian Matzner
