Project for Montalcino Jannis Kounellis, 2001

Jannis Kounellis was invited by Pier Luigi Tazzi to participate in the 6th edition of Arte all'Arte. For the occasion, he created a work in Montalcino.

"Perched on its hill, Montalcino gazes out over the dazzling expanse of the Crete Senesi in every season. To this horizontal extension, Jannis Kounellis contrasts, in open dialectic, his own vertical descent. To penetrate the surface, to cross the layers of geological time, to touch the bottom, that bottom of nigredo that the medieval alchemist considered the initial stage of every alchemical and salvific process.

From there, then, to emerge to the surface, to bring up from that depth, crossing the layers of history, this time not only geological, but also political, ideological, and cultural, the material of human hope in knowledge and action, like magma flowing from the opening of an active volcano. As with other works by Kounellis, this is about giving voice to silence, which is, first and foremost, the silence of history, and the voice then has an excessive tone. Once imposed silence is turned into voice, it causes an excess.

Kounellis chose for this project the well, an essential component of the ancient city, an emblem of an archaic sociality on which every principle of civilization rests. From the well emerges an enormous mass of glasses, the tools for seeing, which modern civilization has equipped itself with in order to see better, to know more in detail, to measure the world and things, and in turn an emblem of a knowledge equally sophisticated and, in any case, capable of distinguishing itself from any other form of naive and primitive knowledge.

But at the same time, a fragile tool, a sign of vulnerability in contrast to any state or feral attitude. Up to this point, the construction, the poetic elaboration of the phrase. But the work is not exhausted in the act of its construction and opens up to questions that it itself raises and leaves unanswered. To which of the numerous, sometimes tragic, narratives that mark the time of our history could we associate this image? What form of judgment does the work imply? What outcome does it indicate? We lean over the well to see the tools for seeing, a mass that sinks and rises."

Pier Luigi Tazzi, “Arte all’Arte VI”, 2001

Interview by Pier Luigi Tazzi

What is the meaning of this work, which is completely unique both within the scope of your work and in the context of this year's Arte all'Arte project?

I started with those works from the end of 1967 and 1968 in which I had used masses of coal. It was a tragic, collective idea. Here, I continue that line of tradition. Here, there is depth. The relationship between the work and the observer has become much more evident, perhaps because the condition of the artist has changed. The well highlights a new condition that imposes verticality.

Thus, verticality against horizontality. The well is a vertical descent and also an elevation on the surface.

It is a particular vision from top to bottom. It is like a scene. There is this hole: it is the deepest maternity, but it is also infernal.

Within the Tuscan landscape, which presents itself as a mythical paradise and simultaneously the original cradle of Western culture, you wound the surface and go to the depths.

The well is typical of the Tuscan landscape. What I bring is the idea of depth, not that of the surface, along with the idea of half-light, of the inevitable force of chiaroscuro.

And the glasses?

The glasses are linked to the eyes, to seeing.

In this work of yours, strength and weakness find their point of convergence: depth, verticality, and the powerful structure of the well indicate strength, while the material that fills it indicates, in some way, weakness, or at least fragility.

Both of these conditions make one. And in this new condition, the material is not separate from the well. And there is a disturbing situation. First of all, the relationship between the various compositional elements is disrupted; everything unfolds on the surface, as far as I am concerned as a painter, but it is a deep surface. It’s like seeing Pollock’s canvases from Pollock’s perspective: from above. It was this that allowed me to occupy the well. It marks an unfolding. I understood the end of tonal civilization and that bourgeoisie which guaranteed it. After two world wars, it is ridiculous to think about tonality. There is no critical relationship between the easel icon and the artist. The artist is a disturbing dancer who moves across a vast territory. What I experienced was post-war Europe, and I lived it as a dancer moving here and there, driven by motives I was attracted to. I understood that the world before was over and had no possibility of returning. The compositional centrality was over, and so it was about living a painting, to say the least, completely new.

Today, the urgency of art reappears, this art that for many years I’m not saying was lowered to the pure and simple level of production for the market, but was dominated by the market. The spread of art was in function of the market’s expansion, and in particular, that specific type of market, which is the Western one. Even though artists were not directly subjugated to this principle, in the dominant culture, the combination of art and market was immediate. Today, we are witnessing an expansion that leads to dialogue between different cultures, which was impossible just ten years ago. Cloaked in exoticism, art, as understood by the tradition of the West, had little to dialogue with those cultures. The events of the last decade, including those directly carried out by artists, even of different cultures and backgrounds, have established a whole series of constant relationships on a global scale in which art has assumed a central role, not for itself, but in relation to human culture in this phase of its civilization.

We must not forget that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon were born within a deep consideration of what Picasso called "Negro art." The problem is knowing who is speaking. If everything is mixed together, there is a risk of favoring the market. True interlocutors must arise everywhere, who in turn constitute cultural centers. The shapeless traffic of people does not tend to freedom; on the contrary, it tends to hybridization, which in turn serves to bring forth a colonial literature that gathers all these people but does not give them form, let alone individuality. The painters of past Europe, starting with Giotto, were cultural centers. So much so that Raphael, even in death, finds himself in the Pantheon alongside the kings of Italy. Even though Raphael is, of course, superior to them, this is an indication of the centrality of the artist’s figure. One must follow this indication, which is blessed. For anyone who is an artist, it is extremely convenient. It is so, and it is useless to hide from it. I cannot be cynical about this, which is also my tradition. It is a necessary indication: it is pointless to think of art as something that never pays. Art must pay. This is not moralism: art has its own weight, and it must pay.

Thus, one must know the position of the speaker, removing them from any abstraction.

One must know who and what has been done, because otherwise it favors transformation. I am an artist, I come from there, I did what I did, all present in a retrospective manner. I am truly born, and I want to keep in mind that one is naturally born for certain reasons, for certain encounters, visible encounters and reasons. It is useless to be there mystifying. Whether there was a formalization or not, anyone can see: it is public knowledge. An artist is a transparent man, more than others, because everything about him is visible, even the mistakes, which exist. They are visible, and they exist. One must not be afraid to present oneself as one is.

This assumption of an awareness of one's human, individual, and intellectual responsibility is one of the great acquisitions of European culture.

Acting without losing awareness. Always act for precise reasons: then you deserve survival. Because you may not deserve it. One must justify survival with their own clarity. If this is lacking, what does strength or lack of strength matter? We are part of the great family of craftsmen, people with a clear vision. The painter sees the wall and wants others to see it for what he has done to it, not in a literary way.

Art is today the only human practice and discipline that deals with happiness in a positive sense. All other practices, even if positive, focus on alleviating pain, healing contradictions, eliminating evil and injustices, and distancing or mitigating inevitable losses, but they always operate in the presence of this negative.

The hero is of Dionysian origin: he is not Apollonian, as it may seem. Joy as a driving force, as an impulse. The painter has always had this mad attraction to happiness. An attraction all the more mad because it is without reason. The entire production of images is a mad race for happiness.

“Arte all’Arte VI”, 2001