By Giorgio Di Marzo
We have met Prof. Renato Miracco on the occasion of the inauguration of the exhibition Italian Abstraction, of which he is the curator, at the Estorick Collection.
Dear Renato, do you think that art and artists join people more than governments do?
Politics is a cerebral fact, art and artists are more emotional and can therefore unite more, but it is needed to be very good at doing this, and this is what I try to do; I mean, when I bring the exhibition of Morandi or Balla to South America, or Forma Uno to North America, I try to understand if the art of the artist that I am introducing produced some personal exchange. For example, when I held a 7-day conference/seminar at the University of Chile, I went to see not only what I was supposed to talk about, as if it was and exportation of art or sort of art colonisation: you also have to understand what is the interest from the opposite side, so I looked for artists who devoted themselves to the still life painting in those same years to see if there was an interconnection. In the end, with the astonishment and happiness of the students, together we found some currents of visual arts re-examination which were comparatively correct.
When I brought the Farnesina Collection to India, on the occasion of the official visit of the former President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, I went there one week beforehand to find the artists inspired by Burri and Fontana, and this was the real scoop; the other important thing was when they realised that Plessi with his work on the Dhobi Ghaut of Mumbay – the wash-houses in Bombay – had drawn his own inspiration from a contemporary Italian work. Ontani had looked at Gamesh, a Hindu God. Indians henceforth felt compared and appreciated: this is the real cultural policy, and this is what I try to do every time. You cannot export art colonising, otherwise it turns into something nationalist almost as a territory occupation.
Do cultural policies still exist in Italy?
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has a Culture Promotion and Cooperation with Foreign Countries department with a fantastic managing director [since 1st of March 2006 – Editor’s Note], Gherardo La Francesca. Promotion is confrontation, not exportation. And it is also important do apportion operations, that is for example 10 Italian artists and 10 from another country; make them take part in a discussion and confrontation on a project in common.
Is art still national?
Less and less. It is more and more valid the reciprocal exchange, even though sometimes art is still sullenly national, in the meaning that it is tied to the territory trying to advocate the local painter where the artist belongs to a territorial identity. Furthermore there is the problem of sponsorship and the economic matter: the artist supported by an institution. If we are Italians, we say that our artists are supported by nobody but themselves, which could be either a damage or an advantage… however I believe that the inter-exchange and internationality are fundamental, even though nowadays the artist, because of a kind of fragility, tries not to risk and locks himself up in a shell that makes him produce less. I detest the artists who, having found their own identification, perpetrate it again and again in order to keep on selling. I always make an example to my students: Balla was born poor, became a pointillist painter and made lots of money thanks to his landscapes, but afterwards Boccioni converted him into Futurism and he sold on auction all of his pointillist paintings, which his wife secretly bought with the money of Mayor Natan to whom she would eventually return the money to keep the works. When later the Futurism became fashionable, he went back to pointillism: every time he had the chance to become rich and established, he started everything from the beginning! This is the pureness of the artist, pureness that has to be much respected. When an artist tries to perpetrate always his image, his kind of “icon”, it is exactly then that he loses the fruits of his work.
Renato Miracco is an Art Historian, curator of several exhibitions both in Italy and abroad, and author of a number of publications; he works for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Copyright 2006 GIORGIOSTUDIO – All rights reserved
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