Page 19 - Studio International - November 1972

critical discussion at a certain point in these which Carlo Giulio Argan was to give his the negative sides of these particularly fecund
researches. The artists responded to the critical support in this period: a rational art and years, and this absence still continues.
challenge other aesthetic experiences gave to a systematic experimentation that was later to It all took place in 1966 and 1967.
art, and concluded that their proper terrain develop into the group aesthetic of groups like We can see it in two shows that were of great
was aesthetic experience and not art. This is a Gruppo Uno. But Lo Savio's work still lay, importance at the time here. In the summer of
rather fuzzy point that is now being cleared up. perhaps somewhat indecisively, between pure 1966, the 'Inhabitable Art' show at the
aesthetic activity and the authentic social Sperone Gallery in Turin dealt with a new
2 vocation that pushed him towards applied art. space that began with the object and not with
Manzoni's contribution, which was unique in What distinguishes him and makes him still up the environment — an anthropological and no
those years in Italy, was not a question of to date is his consciousness of participating in a longer linguistic space. This show (with the
evolution but of strategy. By means of a series of super-individual evolution of the arts — an participation of Pistoletto, Gilardi, Piacentino
upsetting, savage operations, he redefined the evolution not so much of language as of and Anselmo, among others) drew together the
immediate nature of art rather than its social situations, not so much a matter of form initial nucleus of what was later to be called the
possible horizons. In Manzoni, as of concept. School of Turin. At the same time Pistoletto
as in the artists of a few years later who used his studio for an exhibition of those
were to follow in his footsteps, we find an 3 `missing objects' that formed an alternative to
augmentation of the principle question that art In the second half of the 6os in Italy the artist his mirror paintings. In Rome as well, things
can pose. How is it possible to challenge all of was to recover his own subjective attitudes were moving ever more rapidly because of the
the art of history ? and to resume the route of his own psychic important promotional activities of the
In this sense, Francesco Lo Savio's and social individuation. The making of art Tartaruga Gallery. At the Attico Gallery, the
contribution is a different one. Whereas assumed priority with respect to thinking about 1967 show 'Fire, image, water, and earth' (with
Manzoni was attempting to ask questions, the idea of art. Art gave privilege to process, the participation of Kounellis, Pascali,
Lo Savio attempted to offer a few answers to behaviour, to aesthetic experience in terms of Pistoletto and others) pulled together the
certain specific and precise problems of art. joy and in terms of play — in short, to liberation panorama of new tendencies under the
Starting in 1959, his systematic activity from individual psychological mechanisms. banner of 'primary elements'. Even if it's only a
experimented with the possible relations The climate was a question of a breaking question of formal elements and not of methods,
between aesthetic surface and real space. The with the past and naturally it was critical, we are dealing with an anticipation of land art.
instrument of this relationship was light; its generous, and confused. The keynote was `The space of the image' — which was held in the
purpose was to arrive at an integration of the nomadism, and this holds true for criticism summer at Foligno and which surveyed
aesthetic object with the surrounding as well. Many critics went through a period of Italian environmental art — was an official
environment. At first, a series of crisis after having attempted to follow the affirmation of these new experiments. There
canvases used different chromatic values many and opposing tendencies, and after having was only one important event that was in
to explore a pure spatial concept in which accepted the pluralism of styles and the discord with this new climate of convergence,
only the light structured the surface and coexistence of values. Some of them gave up the the show 'Towards a cold poetic image'
determined an optical flux directed towards the practice of the usual forms of criticism in terms held in 1967 at Milan's Schwarz Gallery. It was
environment. With the 'filters' that followed, of a double refutation — the refutation of international in tone and it showed the
more surfaces (in transparent paper on black mystifying history and the refutation of the scope of those artists (from Baruchello to
opaque cardboard) were added and the result cultural power that criticism represents. And Fahlstrom to Adami to Arakawa, etc.) who were
was the absorption of light and the elimination thus there is no critical or theoretical account using painterly means to elaborate new
of optical flux. This was an attempt to use the of the importance of this climate and the and highly intellectual languages.
increase of environmental energy to render realizations that came out of it. This is one of In this two-year period, both Kounellis and
contact with external space more real. But
Lo Savio himself was to write that 'Only in
metals does action explicate itself in terms of a
possible specific meeting with three-dimensional
fact'. The 'metals' on a monochrome black
surface define chromatic quality as capacity for
light absorption; their surface is later articulated
in three dimensions in such a way as better to
reflect the external dynamism of the
environment. Lo Savio theorized his optical and
spatial experiments, always keeping his eye on
declared social finalities :
`In these latest experiments with metals and
total articulations, I believe that I have
realized my possibilities of direct participation
in the problems of the evolution of industrial
design and architecture, by deciphering a
possible social attitude on the part of the work
that remains a work of art, while concretizing
that contact that now more than ever must exist
between the artist and society.'
Lo Savio was himself a designer and he
traced his development through
Gropius at the Bauhaus and contemporary
architecture in general, and it was Lo Savio
Jannis Kounellis Untitled 1972 (Performance at Documenta 5, Kassel)
in Rome who opened that chapter of art to Galleria L'Attico, Rome
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