Conversations with the scientific direction of the festival for the first anticipations and reflections towards Forms of collecting/Forme della committenza: Angela Vettese.
Italy used to be the country of big collectors. Unfortunately, key figures such as Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, Claudia Gian Ferrari e Paolo Consolandi have recently passed away. How is it possible to create a young collecting system in our country? How will it be different?
I think it will be, necessarily, a less innovative collecting system and perhaps less focused on the Italian scene, because the movement of art is more and more international.
What kind of relationships are there between artists and collectors? Could you please tell us some anecdotes?
There are some collectors who prefer not to have any direct contact with the artist. For example, Panza told me that he didn’t like visiting studios before buying, because he felt oppressed by the idea of pleasing the artist. Sometimes a relationship of deep friendship is generated, such as the one between Giuliano Gori and Robert Morris, who lived together for several months while Morris was creating the labyrinth at Villa Celle. I think that Panza himself regretted the fact he didn’t see the Roden Crater, by James Turrell, completed. With regard to Consolandi, I remember the pleasant way he used to host artists in his house, for dinner or whatever. Not to mention, the relationship between a collector such as Giuliana Setari and artists such as Ettore Spalletti or Vettor Pisani. She even bought a marble quarry for Pisani. Big patrons such as Maria Gloria Bicocchi had forgotten the boundaries between private life and life with artists, having lunch or dinner with them even at Christmas.
More and more artists feel the need to get together and set up non profit spaces, both physical and virtual. Is it a sign that their relationship with patronage has changed?
It has always happened since the Salon des refusés. Artists’ houses in the Village area of New York were almost non profit centres. In our Italian experience, between the ’80s and the ‘90s, spaces in Milan, such as Via Lazzaro Palazzi or the Casa degli Artisti aimed to be spaces of action which were not influenced by the market, in the very moment that the market was demonstrating its aggressiveness and its capacity for changing styles, artistic ways of action and system of communication. I think that today the need is different: the market is beginning to live on the web as well, in an underground and radical way compared to the system of galleries and auctions. Artists know that the gallery is no longer the only way of guaranteeing their success and they use it as a brand, even if not in an exclusive way.
The fourth edition of the festival of Contemporary art will be entitled Forms of collecting/Forme della committenza. In a tour that will involve different forms of patronage, what are the issues to focus on?
Some questions: to what extent does commercial success or the aim of obtaining it change the work of art? How much does the work of an artist come from a vocation compared to the desire to make money? At what point does selling become the main focus for an artist and his/her work? Are there collectors who can make artists feel comfortable again and take them back to their original dreams? To what extent is visibility connected to the price of artworks?
(tag
Angela Vettese,
Claudia Gian Ferrari,
Giuliana Setari,
Ettore Spalletti,
Forms of collecting/Forme della committenza,
Giuseppe Panza di Biumo,
Paolo Consolandi,
Giuliano Gori,
Robert Morris,
James Turrell,
Vettor Pisani,
Maria Gloria Bicocchi,
Via Lazzaro Palazzi,
Casa degli Artisti)
