MATADOR – A MAN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
Credits
Interview by Luca Lo PintoImages courtesy of APALAZZOGALLERY ( photo by Matteo Rapuzzi )
Images courtesy of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
An epistolary exchange with Francesco Vezzoli by Luca Lo Pinto
“I believe that a piece of art is always in some way a social or political act, and so if I install it in a museum, in a gallery, in a fair, in a biennial, in an airport, or in my home, every time, every single time, this piece takes on a different meaning.”
“[The Berlusconi] collection is, for me, an unintentional masterpiece, a moral and commercial testament, a social insight, and also a final mockery of the exponents of an official culture that has not always been able to do its duty.”
Francesco Vezzoli needs no introduction, or rather, he would need too many for the space available. He is one of the few contemporary visual artists who has managed to work with desire and seduction, making them both the subject and the tool of his own work. Having done hundreds of interviews on all sorts of subjects, when I was asked to interview him, I thought I would only ask him honest questions that would effectively reveal as much about the artist as the person.
Anyone who dislikes Vezzoli may change their mind after reading this conversation. Those who love him, on the other hand, will surely remain convinced.
LLP: You are 53 years old. To paraphrase Arbasino, do you still feel like the usual asshole or a revered master?
FV: To still paraphrase Arbasino, I would say that I feel like a revered asshole.
LLP: It seems like you’re less interested in working on a single piece these days. You’re more interested in large formats or systems. It is no coincidence that in recent years you have found yourself more in the position of a curator or editor than simply artist. The art world is becoming more conventional and rhetorical. It’s like a club that claims to be a place of free expression, but it’s been co-opted by capitalism. As Mark Fisher said, we’ve come to realize that if we can’t defeat capitalism, we might as well live productively with it.…
FV: You are absolutely right to perceive a slight disinterest on my part in working on the individual piece, but my disinterest is not generated by a lack of respect for the piece itself, it is really the art system that has no respect for the pieces of art. There are too many of them, there are too many contexts in which they are shown, and the same pieces are often moved within a year or two into such different contexts that the pieces themselves become incomprehensible. As old as these words may sound, I believe that a piece of art is always in some way a social or political act, and so if I install it in a museum, in a gallery, in a fair, in a biennial, in an airport, or in my home, every time, every single time, this piece takes on a different meaning.
It’s more of a fear than a disinterest—I’m afraid that the piece will be misunderstood, so I try to regain control of the situation even through my position as a curator. I don’t always succeed, but it’s still an honest attempt to counter a system in which I don’t really recognize myself.
In my nature, you can live with capitalism, but you have to do it with great ambition and precision: To be greedy and sloppy at the same time is really unacceptable.
LLP: A few years back, you published a small book called Contro Vezzoli, which I still think is pretty brilliant. You published a whole series of texts and rants from critics and curators who “attacked” your work. We’re all used to celebrating the best of what we do, but rarely the failures. If, instead of publishing your own “greatest hits,” you were to publish your own “worst flops,” what would you include?
FV: Thank you for the fond memory of Contro Vezzoli. I also keep a few copies around all the time, and it always makes me smile whenever I come across it.
In general, I think my most blatant failure is the project I did at the Guggenheim in New York, where I staged Pirandello’s Right You Are (if you think so). I also warned critics and audiences about what to expect. In the press release for the project, I had quoted Pirandello himself, who, speaking of the first performance of Right You Are (if you think so) in Milan, had hoped for very lively—or even negative—reactions from the audience. And that’s exactly what happened.
Over time, I’ve learned to consider projects that don’t leave a lasting impression or are forgotten as failures. But those that still create some kind of excitement are perhaps the most successful projects, even if they weren’t intended to. That said, I’m going to take the Pirandello project off the top of this list. I’m going to put in there, as a provocation, a project like Amália Traïda with Lauren Bacall and Sônia Braga, or maybe even the exhibition dedicated to Olga Picasso: projects that I think are formally successful, but that the public has not taken up at all. And since I believe in the dictatorship of the audience, I’ve decided to put at the top of this list the projects that are less appreciated by others than those that are less appreciated by me.
LLP: In the last two decades, we have seen the roles of the various actors in the art system twisted: artists have become curators, curators have become artists, collectors have become curators, and artists have become gallery owners. Now that we’ve seen artists curate biennials, all we need is to see artists run a museum. If you were running a museum, what would you do? Would you want to work in a historic space or in a new building? Would you relate to the museum more in the dimension of formats or in a more classical way?
FV: I must admit that I would love running a museum. Of course, it would be relatively easy to run a historical museum—I’ve experienced the dialectic between the present and the past many times, so perhaps it wouldn’t be a very tough challenge. It would be much more courageous if I decided to run a museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art, because at that point, I would be forced to take a stated and public position on what I think about much of the art being produced at this moment in history
If I were to become a museum director, I think the first thing I would do would be to partner with the most important and credible polling agency to analyze and explore the public’s needs, knowledge, and tastes. I think that would be my first project—a kind of academic study, either in the form of a book or an exhibition, that would tell exactly what the public wants. A kind of manifesto, but written by the public, not by me. Using this manifesto as a point of reference, I would set up a program that, from time to time, would radically challenge said tastes, while stating it blatantly. In short, I would turn professional strategy into a kind of public performance.
LLP: Would you agree that Silvio Berlusconi’s collection of artworks purchased on late-night television shopping channels is perhaps the most brilliant and representative work of contemporary art of the last decade? It would be nice to make an exhibition of it, treating it as a readymade.
FV: I am going to tell you an anecdote that I hope no one will mind. I was walking outside a restaurant in Milan one evening, and some friends insisted that I come in and join them, and I sat down at their table. Barbara Berlusconi was there. I respected what I always assume is a need for privacy, and so she and I, not knowing each other, barely spoke. Later, I returned to the same restaurant, the table of friends was still there, and Barbara, I must admit, was really nice. She had words of appreciation for my work and suggested that we meet to talk about her father’s collection and how we could recontextualize it.
Barbara never sought me out again, and I must honestly admit that I never sought her out either. But I must also be honest and admit that the temptation was very strong, very strong indeed. This collection is, for me, an unintentional masterpiece, a moral and commercial testament, a social insight, and also a final mockery of the exponents of an official culture that has not always been able to do its duty.
Despite everything, I didn’t really feel up to it, didn’t feel strong enough, didn’t feel my shoulders were broad enough to face a legacy that is still so vividly ambiguous to this day.
LLP: From the first times I heard you speak or do interviews, I always found your thinking to be non-trivial and sophisticated, but I almost never read about your writing. I was curious about your relationship to writing.
FV: This answer will be short and to the point: My relationship with writing is simply disastrous. I just can’t write, and whenever I figuratively pick up the pen, something overly melodramatic, melancholic, fundamentally wrong, comes out. It’s really a field I’d rather stay away from, leaving it to all the others who are much better at it than I am.
LLP: During the pandemic, in the face of obligatory collective seclusion, an American artist decided to release a new video on PornHub rather than on one of the many digital art spaces.
Would you like to imagine one of your videos, for example, Caligula, on such platforms, as if it were some kind of strange intruder?
FV: My mind has been playing with the idea of making a movie for a few months now, and I thought it would be really fun to make a pornographic movie or videos, even if it is completely in line with the idea and state of pornography today. At this point in history, I think it’s an industry that’s suffering from strong competition from platforms like OnlyFans and similar.
Maybe I could discover hypothetical new stars for OnlyFans and produce their platforms instead of directing boring 90-minute movies full of coitus and short, boring dialogues. I mean, I would never want to be accused of being a porn boomer.
However, just as I did for Caligula, for Democrazy or for Non-Love Meetings, I want to make an absolutely commercially expendable product, in short, a credible porn. More than one, in fact. In contrast, I find the idea of putting one of my videos, one of many, or even a new one, on a platform like PornHub to be an idea that doesn’t particularly excite me. As I have already said, I suffer from the dictatorship of the audience and I fear that all the users of said platform would skip my video to go and look for what they really care about, and so I would experience those low numbers as an intellectual and artistic defeat.
LLP: As you may know, in the late 1960s, Andy Warhol wanted to make a 24-hour portrait film of Marcel Duchamp, but the French artist died before he could start. At the time, Warhol was in his 40s and Duchamp was in his late 80s. You, who have made so many tributes, portraits and acts of love to a multitude of figures, to whom would you dedicate such a project today?
FV: If I had to think of a figure to whom I could dedicate a work as long, as complex, and as full of love as a 24-hour documentary, the only artist to whom I feel I could dedicate all of myself would be Pedro Almodóvar. I realize that my answer may not be very original, but for me, Pedro is truly one of the greatest independent visionary filmmakers left in the world. I can safely say that I have seen all, absolutely all, of his films, and some in particular I have seen at least twenty times. My obsession with him is genuine and shows no signs of diminishing over time.
All phases of his creative and artistic journey are equally incredible to me: the first phase, revolutionary and identity-driven; the second phase, dedicated to a ruthless analysis of sentimental mechanisms; the third phase, more intimate and with a strong shift towards politics. In short, there is nothing about Almodóvar that I would not like to see again and that does not give me immense pleasure every time I have the opportunity to do so.
But, honestly, I have to admit that when I had a public conference with him in Milan, I had the impression that the fact that I knew his work so obsessively bothered him a little bit, and I can fully understand that. So I think he would never agree to spend 24 days or 24 hours with me.
LLP: Have you ever lived in a “house of life” that could serve as your extended portrait?
FV: As for the house of life, as Professor Praz would say, let’s say I never really had a home until I had to live in a rented apartment in Milan because of Covid. I lived all the time in total isolation and since I have no stable relationship and my family does not live in Milan, the feeling of loneliness was very strong and as a result a very strange thing happened: I started to spend the time that never passed almost obsessively buying vases and furniture to decorate this house in which I never thought I would spend so much time.
LP: Are you a collector?
FV: To continue what I was saying earlier, against my will—and almost against my ethics—I became a kind of pathetic and provincial maniac collector who talks about his vases from the 1940s and 1950s as if they were Bauhaus relics. Even Almodóvar would make fun of me, or maybe not, he is also an obsessive collector of my favorite designer, Ettore Sottsass.
LLP: I have tried to bring together in the most comprehensive way the various personalities in culture and entertainment with whom you have worked. A generational divide seems obvious to me. One half belongs to a world you have read, watched, admired, and been shaped by; the other half are more or less your peers, whom you have used as signs and portraits of the present. If a 20-year-old were to read this list, I think he would hardly recognize some of these names. If, for your generation, the past and history were a constant source of inspiration, for today’s teenagers, the concept of time is distorted. One lives exclusively in its making. History has ceased to exist. What do you think about this?
FV: This is a question that really hits me in the heart. A few months ago, I inaugurated an academic year at a university that teaches art and art history to young people just out of high school. The protocol necessarily included a conversation with the students, and as the conversation progressed, I realized that, as you say, an infinitesimally small percentage of the group was aware not so much of my work as of the references that my work implied. For most of these students, I was the one who had designed the album cover for Fedez, Orietta Berti and Achille Lauro.
I have never suffered from negative criticism, and I can assure you that I don’t even suffer when my work is not known or recognized in any context—I really don’t think I have these problems of self-esteem. But during this conference, the problem was not my self-esteem or my possible weaknesses, the problem for me was really the lack of historical references that permeated the culture of these students. I did not feel inadequate to answer them, I simply realized that I had filled all my answers with names and characters that meant absolutely nothing to them. History ceased to exist.
Then, as an extreme provocation, I quote, all too predictably, Winston Churchill, who said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I can only paraphrase him and say that he who thinks he is doing his own research without taking into account the discoveries made by others before him is doomed to discover nothing, and perhaps also doomed to live an uninspiring life. The very thought of an existence that does not confront the past, either ethically or creatively, is, for me, something aberrant. So far, I have managed to conduct this interview with some balance and hopefully with comprehensive answers, but taking note of the state of things through this timely question of yours makes me feel an immense anger, a feeling I hardly know.
LLP: You mentioned Ettore Sottsass as one of your passions. Although it sounds a bit like a back cover quote, Sottsass once said:
“For me, design is not about making a more or less stupid product for a more or less sophisticated industry. For me, design is a way of discussing life, society, eroticism, politics, food, and even design.”
If we were to apply that to art, would you share that definition?
FV: Hector was not only an absolute idol for me, but also a good friend. I couldn’t imagine a better definition of the way I approach art than the one you suggest. Ettore turned the history of architecture and design upside down, he was a pivotal and a radical figure, radical in the most absolute sense of the word, and yet he, too, always felt the need to face history. I have been studying his work for years, and the presence of classical references in his work is profound.
This is not the place to discuss it, of course, but to quote Ettore just to show that even the greatest rock star of 20th century Italian design was thinking and looking at history when he imagined his dreams seemed inevitable. Medea, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, The Arabian Nights, Salò. This quote is even more predictable than Winston Churchill’s… Pier Paolo Pasolini revolutionized the history of Italian cinema with films that had a strictly historical framework.
I’ll stop here.
LLP: How has your approach to making art changed from your early days?
FV: Compared to my beginnings, I don’t think my way of making art has changed much. I think only my state of mind has changed, I will try to explain myself better. When I began to make art, all those quotations and all those historical references that you spoke of seemed to me to be inescapable references, inescapable both for me and for those who looked at my work. Today, I am convinced, even by you, that they are no longer so inescapable, but, for this very reason, I am ready to fight with even more energy, even more joy, and even more strength, so that these references become central again in the debate, I have no intention of giving up.
Luca Lo Pinto (born 1981) is an Italian editor and curator. He is the Artistic Director of MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. He is co-founder of the magazine and publishing house NERO. From 2014 until 2019 he worked as curator of Kunsthalle Wien where he organized solo exhibitions of Nathalie Du Pasquier, Camille Henrot, Olaf Nicolai, Pierre Bismuth, Babette Mangolte, Charlemagne Palestine and the group exhibitions Time is Thirsty; Publishing as an artistic toolbox: 1989-2017; More than just words; One, No One and One Hundred Thousand; Individual Stories and Function Follows Vision, Vision Follows Reality. Other curatorial projects include Io, Luca Vitone (PAC); 16th Art Quadriennale (Palazzo delle Esposizioni); Le Regole del Gioco (Achille Castiglioni Studio-Museum); Trapped in the closet (Carnegie Library/FRAC Champagne Ardenne); Antigrazioso (Palais de Tokyo); Luigi Ontani (H.C. Andersen Museum); D’après Giorgio (Giorgio de Chirico Foundation, Rome); Conversation Pieces (Mario Praz Museum). He has written for many catalogues and international magazines.