By Luisa Terzulli
Dear Prof. Coldwell, what is Art?
Art is what artists do. It is a big question, I do not know. I can say that art means the way to enquire about something, but art is different things for different people.
What is the leading country, at the moment, for art?
Art is very fluid at the moment. During the 1960s it was centred in New York, and before that in Paris. Now the sense is that there is an almost international scene that moves around, and maybe one of the things that get lost in that is the sense of national identity. I mean, an artist can become very quickly an international artist, and then he may be spending more time on airplanes than in his own place. The old model of the artist was of somebody rooted somewhere, and relating to Morandi, he is the quintessential example of an artist deeply grounded in his space [Morandi painted in his studio for all his life and had never travelled – Author’s Note].
Now, moving around the globe, making art in different places and in different conditions, someway broke the tie of the artist with a specific place. For example, at the moment it would be very difficult saying who amongst the contemporary British artists represents something British. There are themes that come from different countries. In Britain, and in one of the ideas of this show on Morandi, there is a sense of protest and ethic of restraint which affects a lot of art aspects. In Germany there has always been a serious undercurrent, a kind of dark side, and perhaps German artists are more concerned with dealing with something historical more than British artists.
When I went to the Bologna Art Fair in January, there was a very different feeling about art compared to London. I think that Italian art still has a kind of sense of referencing back, probably because of its history; if every time you pick up a pencil and think of Michelangelo, well it must be very difficult! And another problem with people going to Italy to see art is that they actually want to see that historical art, more than the contemporaries. I think that a problem in Italy is that the artists of the past become the centre of art, and then it becomes quite difficult to engage on a personal level part. In the case of Michelangelo, for example, I can look at his work thinking “Oh, he was a genius!” and just do not have to bother, because I am not a genius: it just lets me with no hope. But if I think about him as a man, living 7 days in a week, with 2 arms and 2 legs, then I could take it on board: “How was he able to achieve what he was able to achieve, and I cannot?” that is a challenge, and it is so exciting!
Is art changing itself or artists are changing art?
I think that, for example, the internet had a huge impact on the way we talk about art and use it: the access that we all have to images and research is much more concrete than in the past. And I think, as well, that the computer does bring in new ideas, it is not just translating in pixel system things. And art colleges have changed much, too. When I went to the college, we were much in a kind of studio situation, with less writing and reading but a lot of physical work, and we did not really have that much involvement with the outside world. Now, students have ambitions: they do not want to starve, the want to find an audience, to make an impact; they are probably spending more time networking and arranging events than actually making art. The old generation used to make art and then try to get an exhibition. In the contemporary generation model you can sell a proposition, an idea that will be developed at a later date. Art market has changed as well. UK market has changed dramatically: there was very little audience for buying contemporary art until 15-20 years ago, while now everybody gets excited and wants to deal with it.
You talked about the Internet in terms that we have access to all the information we need. This means that we do not really need to go abroad, then!
Well, I think that one of the problems with the internet is that actually everything is filtered through the same technology: a painting becomes of the same size of a photograph and so on. Artists work very much on the particular: in a painting you can actually distinguish the selection of the brush, the viscosity of the paint, and even the length of time it takes to get dry becomes an issue in making that work. And another thing is that all these works have a size: the internet takes everything into images without dimension, and I think that the way we physically react to pictures is very very important. Even though my work was made on computer, it was continuously re-proofed: I was thinking of the size that I wanted to print, how it will be made, it ends up to become something very precise and to affect the way the viewer views the work and the emotional response to it. In a very simple example, I spoke to somebody who knew Marilyn Monroe and said that the moment she walked into the room things were quite, she had a presence that was absolutely captivating. Even the best photograph of Marilyn Monroe does not give that.
Do you like Italian food?
I absolutely adore Italian food! We went to the Amalfi Coast for the summer, and my daughter said that it was a fantastic holiday because we ate all the time! I like pasta, and find pizza quite boring, but generally speaking I like the simple things. I have a very uneducated palate for wine, but as long as it is red or white I am very happy.
Today (18/06/06 – Author’s Note) is the last day of the exhibition. What has been the general public response?
From what everybody tells me, it has been fantastic. We had about 5,000 visitors when the show was in the north of England, and even more so here; so, we are probably talking about 12,000 people coming to see the show and the gallery. London is a very competitive place to get a show, and most of the newspapers rated it as one of the top 5 shows in the city. I had response from a lot of people, saying that this is a show that is about an idea, and this make think again about Morandi and about some of the British artists involved. This show is about a proposition, is about exploring looking. One of the wonderful things about visual art is that it does not exist in time. You have to listen to a piece of music or read a book from the beginning to the end; but you can either choose to look at a picture for 5 seconds or hang it on the top of your bed ant look at it every morning. Looking is an accumulative experience. So what I want to do here is that people can look at this works in a different way. In one sense, one of the problems with Morandi is that he is too successful: it is very easy to like him; and what I want to do is make people look under the surface, at something very complex of him. This is for me a dream that comes true: getting exactly the pieces I wanted, and putting them one next to the other: space between things is very important. In a way, one of the things that I think is very very important in this collection is picking up the things that you think are important, and also as an artist I feel the responsibility to speak up for the artists that are really important to me. So, one of the aspects of this show is paying my respect to Morandi: artists never really die, they are like friends that you always carry in your head, and Morandi is very important to my thinking. We do not come to a world that is fully developed, we pick up from different things and add a little bit of something else, and then it becomes something new; but I do not subscribe the idea that all the thoughts I have are something new: I am recycling. One of the responsibilities in this show is to make sure that people see art and the artist as still being alive.
The artists in this show you would not normally group together, but seeing them with Morandi as a common thread running through them makes you realise that he is a branch that so many people have of picked up on. There are very few artists you could think of as having such a wide influence: most artists have influence within a specifically narrow circle, and this is one of the things I hope to bring across in this show.
The Flowers is one of my favourite paintings, and I really begged the Morandi Museum for having it here! It is so held in, is so much about restraint and emotions sort of tightly kept. The flowers are bunched together as if waiting to explode, and the vase becomes like a body. I think it is strongly erotically charged: the colouring and the flowers become very devoted, and I can feel as if it is something he has not experienced.
In a way, I feel that when presented with an inanimate object he is able to project human feelings and emotions onto them, in a way that he cannot when he faces the real things; and it also brings a certain erotic charge because it is as if he cannot cope with it face to face.
When you look at a painting like this, do you think of still life or natura morta?
This is interesting, because in England we have this phrase still life that means nothing! In my work I have always been drawn to the concept of natura morta, it expresses the idea of time passing, it is a moment frozen and then it will pass and will go on, to something inevitable. And at the same time, trying to prevent that to happen reinforces the idea of death as well. If you see somebody that is having extensive plastic surgery in the attempt of delaying the effects of what is inevitable, it is actually even more tragic, because it is still going to happen. So, this face is untouched by surgery!
Prof. Paul Coldwell is a Postgraduate Programme Director / Project Leader FADE at the Camberwell College of Arts.
Copyright 2006 GIORGIOSTUDIO – All rights reserved |
