From the 2005 Arte all'Arte X catalogue
The charm of Tuscany is discreet, measured, and refined. The high and the low have always influenced each other, at least since the end of the Middle Ages. It is no coincidence that the idea of humanism took shape right here: the world can be explained by starting from human potential and capabilities, in competition with nature and with every metaphysical dimension. The human being thus becomes the necessary link between what is below and what, presumably, rises upwards.
L’orto…
la finestra di fronte…
l’angolo necessario…
or its transparent light – once, a well of light was a fire.
Reason, despite its modest size, encompasses very different spheres, for which a unifying element needs to be found, which then gives rise to the mythology of the place. Can we call it the harmonious relationship between nature and culture?
Modern art, in its specificity, is one of the most elevated products of Western civilisation, a model for perception and for relating to the world and to life. At the same time, it is an eminently urban and civil art, perhaps already from Giotto onwards, up to our modern art heroes. However, it is the rural dimension that characterises the history of the Tuscan landscape, from the Grand Dukes up to the 1960s. This tradition continues today with significant economic developments, such as agriturismo and wine production, true contemporary successes.
The rural environment therefore appears alien to modern art, especially in its contemporary form. Furthermore, the evolution of Renaissance art up to recent times has always been an internal phenomenon. Only when artists perceived the symptoms of the crisis in Western culture – to which they felt they belonged – did they realise that their practice was no longer adequate for interpreting and representing the world. It was then that they sought to reclaim concrete space, in contrast to the imaginary space that dominant culture had historically assigned to them, and they ventured outwards.
The Arte all'Arte project fits into this context, and rural, mythical Tuscany is the ideal setting for this undertaking. In the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio has his narrators – the artists, in other words – flee the plague-ravaged city to take refuge in a villa, where they entertain themselves by telling the infinite stories of the world.
Since its inception in 1997, Arte all’Arte has developed within the mythology of the territory, starting – not by chance – from San Gimignano, its emblem for better or worse. Then, in September 2001, Jérôme and I introduced external voices, but starting from internal ones, beginning with Kounellis: the well, filled with glasses, seeing machines, plunging into a bottomless pit.
And then there was Marina:
in the pavilion named after Charcot in the former psychiatric hospital of Volterra; mice attracted by Italian mambo on a platform, slowed down by a treadmill.
Finally, the real external opinions:
Nari Ward's sanctuary next to the incinerator; Cai's wall; Tayou's fresco in the wind; Surasi Kusolwong's thousand-lire phantasmagoria, destined to disperse into people's homes and disappear, consumed in everyone's daily life.
So Jérôme and I left things as they were, and from then on, another story began, with other voices, other walls, other songs.
Music, maestro!
Pier Luigi Tazzi
