Di Giorgio Di Marzo
Gabriele Magnani, Italian journalist and London correspondent for the monthly magazine AD, is the art expert with whom we have discussed sipping a tea.
Dear Gabriele, what is Art, with the capital letter, for you?
This is a very important question. Before answering I tell you something: imagine waking up tomorrow morning and there are no monuments, no sculptures; there are only buildings, streets, cars, maybe coffee shops, but there is no longer any monument and anybody talking about Art… how would you feel? Let’s imagine that there is a revolution that completely wipes out museums like Henry VIII did by burning all the catholic churches.
I believe that Art, with the capital “a” indeed, is an enormous heritage of every country and religion; Art is the first graffiti of the cavemen, Art is the Egyptian sarcophaguses. Little by little Art becomes a language: is a communication form that starts from the individual and tells us to abandon or contest something.
Currently, the artist has the possibility to scream his own message and his own dolour without the bonds that politics, instead, has; and an artist, to be so, should try to give a token that could be seen by others. The aesthetic element can always be involved in art, as it has been in the past, but I think that the contemporary works should have as primary values politics and communication, so that the work can attract and make the public understand and reflect.
What is not art, instead?
Provocation when is an end in itself and does not lead to anywhere, if there is no quality, if there is not an intellectual concept behind. An example of “true” art is Francis Bacon, with The Human Body: the very strong characteristic is the acknowledgment of his own homosexuality, of his own body; he openly, almost screaming, says to be homosexual but blending with the aesthetic factor: 80% of his paintings have a chromatic research background of great intelligence.
Also Damien Hirst, with his screaming eviscerated sheep, shouts the disintegration of our age, the wars of this world, the weapons market. With time he “went bad”, in the meaning that he used to be able to communicate different sentiments, like with the butterflies of I Feel Love in 1991, whilst now he is not able any longer to express those moods because he is not serene. The artist must then communicate, must give us something strong – also because he has such an opportunity – and not to do things that resemble and copy in a stupid manner the art of the past. Some, for example, are still painting horses; with all the respect for these artists, who probably have their own audience that like that kind of things, this form of art does not have anything to do with contemporary art, art that has to give signals tied to its own age.
Another example: Guttuso, especially famous in Italy for La Vucciria [a painting portraying one of the most famous and colourful markets in Palermo, Editor’s Note] has become famous in England because he was the protagonist of the “social realism”, reason why the Tate bought, in 1961, La Discussione (The Discussion).
Tell us a bit about you, about your life and your career.
My brother and I have broken the family tradition: I am a journalist and art critic and my brother is a psychiatrist. I graduated in 1979 in Law and became a journalist in 1988; during those years I used to work as a managing director for my father’s companies – famous at that time in the Parmese for the prosciutto – but I was always coming to London to be cured, and was noticing some differences in the architectural obstacles for the disabled: London was very accessible even with a wheelchair while the big Italian cities were unbearable, full of stairs.
I was talking about being cured and architectural obstacles because on 5th July 1973 I had a serious car accident: I was at the wheel, was with my father and driving at a speed of 50 km p/h; to avoid a lorry spinning along at full speed I was forced off the road and the gear lever entered the lumbar region and twisted me the twelfth vertebra. Thanks to my father, very influential at that time, I came to London for the surgical operation at the Spinal Injury Centre and in December I was already at home with crutches.
My love for London started from there; it was marvellous to see that here there were practically no architectural obstacles: it was very easy to go to the museums, while Italy was a totally inaccessible country to those on a wheelchair, so that many were forced to stay at home. It is a fight that lasted since the time I wrote for La Gazzetta di Parma, but I have to say that many things have changed also thanks to the youths, to fantastic guys on a wheelchair, that have much intelligence.
I have written a book on my English experience, Voglia di Vivere [Will to Live, Editor’s Note], together with a dearest friend of mines that has unfortunately passed away, Gabriele Adami, founder of the Antoniano in Bologna [a famous Italian chorus, Editor’s Note]. The book has obtained an extraordinary success and has also been proposed on TV in different ways.
Another important book I have written, based on a series of everyday tales, mainly set in London, is called Il Diavolo e la Regina [Devil and the Queen, Editor’s Note] and has been defined by La Repubblica [one of the most important Italian newspapers, Editor’s Note] one of the best books of the Nineties.
I have also worked for Il Mattino di Napoli, then with Mondadori to finally dock at Condé Nast, for which I am correspondent of AD – Architectural Digest.
Let’s go back to art: which Italian artists would you point out?
I would say Giuseppe Gabellone, Pierpaolo Campanili, Daniele Puppi, Carla Colonneo… after the trans-avant-garde it seems there has been some bewilderment in the Italian art. There used to arrive to London just the figurative, good for every season, but now it seems that Italian art is waking up again. And I would also point out Monica Buonvicini and Daniela Gullotta.
I would like to add that many of them do not define themselves as Italian but international artists…
We have also talked about something else, but having been more a meeting among friends rather than a proper interview, I hope you will not mind if I keep for ourselves some little secrets about the art world… at least until next time!
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