Page 47 - Studio International - April 1972

the good and the bad, the handsome and the safe capital investment. The middle-class has not really progressed beyond the perversely
ugly, the kitsch and the avant garde, and Milan's market is in this way self-perpetuating, and erotic, emblematic nudes that accompanied the
speciality, avant-garde kitsch. cannot allow the boom to slacken, cannot risk House of Savoy to the throne of a united Italy,
It comes easy to sneer at this prosperity and money or prestige. while it dragged the country through some sixty
growth; and easy, too, to fall into a facile What sort of art does this situation encourage years into the hands of fascism.
denunciation of the purely commercial and support ? It remakes reputations when there The scene is bewildering in its multitudinous
exploitation in which, as was said at the many is sufficient of a past to make it feasible, or and rapid changes. Anything that ever has been
assemblies of the occupied Triennale, the artist where the revaluation is already under way called art, anything that ever can be called art,
becomes a kind of expensive whore. It must not elsewhere. Man Ray, for example, an artist at anything that can be bought and sold by
be forgotten that in all this a lot of good things times much neglected, is enjoying a personal someone, somewhere, somehow: the wake of a
get produced that perhaps otherwise would find Milanese boom, and had the distinction of speedboat; a fake Klee that's admitted to be a
no possibilities. Then also, the artists who might simultaneous showing in more than one gallery forgery but, it is whispered, by this or that well-
be said most to 'benefit' from it are among though, one must add, for artists of international know name; a 1910 poster for liquor; a modern
those most disturbed by it and most ready to execution of a futurist's project; a canvas
denounce the situation and to propose extreme carelessly thrown away and 'rescued' by who
measures to deal with an extreme position. knows whom so long as it bears a signature; and
Enzo Mari, for example, in some ways a typical some of the liveliest art being produced
Milanese phenomenon, artist and designer, anywhere in the world—a not insignificant
dissatisfied with his previous work and with the proportion of which is produced within the
role assigned to him in society, proposed a three sides of Milan's marches.
`clearance sale' at the Galleria Milano. Arnaldo English art, too, has found a ready market,
Pomodoro, with a reputation made prints everywhere, particularly at the Galleria
independently of recognition in Milan, angrily Milano, Galleria Ariete, and Studio Marconi.
replied to criticism of his political actions, 'When Some of the local print-publishers and multiple
I hear the words addressed to me, "You who producers, like Sergio Tosi, have included
have had so much from capitalism and from Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, Richard Smith
society, how can you protest ?" I am seized by a and Joe Tilson in their lists, all of whom have
tremor of rage. Perhaps only the mediocre and been shown at the Ariete and at Marconi. In
the unsuccessful are wanted to protest, so that addition, Tucker, King, Paolozzi, Flanagan,
they can be ridiculed. Boshier, Caulfield, Allen Jones and others have
`And then they say, "The publicity is useful". been shown at these two galleries or at the
I answer that it is the very publicity, television Galleria Milano.
and the press, that has thrown everything that Although already mentioned, a word or two
was alive and new to the dogs, from action more should be added about the Galleria
painting to the beat movement, rendering it Schwarz, run by Arturo Schwarz, the greatest
piquant and picturesque for the public, and Duchamp expert, and, as this would indicate,
obliging artists and writers to undertake the tending to specialize in Dada, Surrealism and a
continual, tiring and exhausting task of defence modern avant garde that can be accommodated
and explanation. or even of local fame this is fast becoming with these; and, though not hitherto cited, about
`This is the way to turn creative work into something of a Milanese device. The Studio the Galleria Naviglio, founded by the late Carlo
something merely aesthetic and decorative, a Marconi, the Salone Annunciata, the Galleria Cardazzo who helped many an Italian artist to
function of the system—as we so often said in our Schwarz, the Galleria Ariete, all galleries for success of some sort or another, launching
motions during the assemblies; whereas it is which one can only have respect, have at various Fontana and Capogrossi internationally; about
profoundly charged with rupture, a radical times participated in such enterprises; and it is the Galleria Milione, once the centre for abstract
dream for the transformation of human reality.' not to be seen in itself as just a sharp art in the thirties when there was a healthy and
(From the paper ll Giorno in reply to the critic merchandising gimmick, though at the hands of interesting Milanese group, but now somewhat
Mario Valsecchi, June 1968). some of the newer art-mongers it could well more conventional; about the Galleria Blu of
The paradoxical situation is that the very become so. Peppin Palazzoli, where the concept of a
activity of the scurrying door-to-door art The reputations of artists too young yet for gallery seems to be less the showing of individual
salesmen, alongside that of the more serious revival, are confirmed, while dealer and client artists, though there have been some superb
galleries, is opening up the market, and not just latch on to those who have made a name abroad, one-man shows there, than a more meaningful
to the bandwaggoners. There have always been often, in the past, unaided by Milan. Italy's own intervention into culture with theme exhibitions
a handful of collectors, great and small, in and recent past is ransacked. Schools are unearthed, such as 'Arte e Deculture, una teoria sul Kitsch'
around Milan, and some of them courageous in schools of minor import then and of less today, of last summer, and this January the show 'II
their day. Twenty years ago, they were few, schools are invented, discovered and categorized, Mito della Macchina ; esaltazione —ironia—crisi' ;
today their numbers have increased sometimes happening upon real trouvailles, upon and about the Galleria Apollinaire, a consciously
geometrically as the mass middle-class market artists who deserve a kinder fate than oblivion. avant-garde gallery for many years which, now,
develops, young, for the most part Over the top of all this lies a with-it-ness, brash after a period devoted mainly to concrete poetry
professionals, lawyers, doctors, dentists, and and terrifyingly ignorant, tied up in a and the sparser type of conceptual art, has
small industrialists, managers and executives in terminology of largely foreign origin that many become a centre for 'researchers, operators of
the big corporations — national, private and state- cannot even pronounce, let alone understand; the cultural revolution, industrial technological
controlled—banks and finance houses. Alongside but this parallels much of the Triangle's art, game art, art as spectacle, urban aesthetic
this are the corporations, the banks, the big language problems, where the words linked with art, the art of the open work dedicated to mass
a cultural first-aid post'.
industrial companies and their advertising management techniques, computers and culture, in
agents, who all see art as an expression of advertising are nearly all borrowed. 'Camp' and This intense activity has not found much of a
prestige, to decorate offices and reception `kitsch' are bandied about in a desperate effort reflection in organized groups of specific
areas, as gifts and inducements, and also as a to lend an air of contemporary chic to a taste that tendencies, though occasionally the artists of a

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