A DAYDREAM IN CONTEMPORARY ART

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A DAYDREAM IN CONTEMPORARY ART

WINTER 2018

2018 n .1 w i n t e r i s su e

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A D AY D R E A M IN CONTEMPORARY ART

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INDEX 7am.................................................................pag.15 A breakfast with Cristiana Perrella Discover the longest-running contemporary art center in Italy, as well as one of the most groundbreaking. The Centro Pecci in Prato, according to the vision of its Director.

8am.................................................................pag.25 Wake up time! Art for Kids Take a playful cultural break with Mixerpiece, Giuseppe Ragazzini’s award-winning app allowing you to re-imagine fantastic new masterpieces combining – just as you would on a magnetic board – more than 200 elements and shapes.

9am.................................................................pag.33 A cappuccino in Berlin with Daniel Gustav Cramer The German artist’s inner universe is a limitless memory archive, where stories and experiences, individual and collective, interweave in one single body; a world wherein every detail demands consideration.

10am.............................................................pag.41 Shopping time at Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Take the plunge into the Beat Generation’s literary meeting point, active in San Francisco since 1953. The legendary bookstore, keeping the passion for poetry alive and dreamers’ souls intact.

11am.............................................................pag.47 Into the heart of a contemporary city: Cape Town

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A journey inside the new art capital, still grappling with social and political unrest and marked inequality. An author’s itinerary, tracing art’s potential as a language and path towards freedom.

12pm............................................................pag.69 Joe la Placa, contemporary art hero, takes us to his gallery An intimate portrait of today’s director for Cardi Gallery in London, from his artistic childhood to the graffiti of 80s New York up to groundbreaking technologies in the art market.

1pm................................................................pag.83 Lunchtime with Elodie Fulton and Irene Abujatum, Chilean art market pioneers A reflection on the state of the art market in Chile in light of the first decade of Ch.ACO (Chile Arte Contemporáneo), Santiago’s Contemporary Art Fair.

2pm................................................................pag.97 A coffee with Vadim Fishkin, the art cosmonaut An incursion in the artist’s shape-shifting studio in Ljubjana, a space capable of turning from hi-tech unit filled with buttons, computers and screens into a quiet retreat for sipping coffee and getting lost in contemplation.

3pm..............................................................pag.105 In Milan with Alfredo Jaar: walking a thin line When art emerges from a real context and the work has the power to make the audience uncomfortable. Walking the balance between ethics and aesthetic, information and spectacle.

4pm..............................................................pag.119 The place of art: Sedona Where are you, Max Ernst?

A fantastic voyage in the far West, through the rocky, monumental peaks towering over the Arizona desert and the blue and orange tones echoing the dreamscapes in the Surrealist master’s paintings.

5pm..............................................................p.135

11pm...........................................................p.201

It’s teatime: an impossible and farcical conversation with Joseph Beuys

Music-Time with the Silence Academy.

In his will, signed in 1989, Mr. Joseph Beuys revealed that, should his soul be brought back to life, it could very well be interviewed by a TV fashion journalist during some film industry award ceremony.

6pm..............................................................p.143 Studio – Visiting artist Faig Ahmed in Azerbaijan A meeting place where digital design incorporates ancient rug artistry, transforming its language with a contemporary twist.

7pm..............................................................p.157 An aperitivo with Juan Yarur, Santiago’s youngest philanthropist A contemporary art collector and initiator of a foundation promoting Chilean art worldwide. Great charisma and strong feelings, the drive behind his every choice.

8pm..............................................................p.165 A dinner in Paris with André Magnin, harbinger of Sub-Saharan art An intense portrait of famed Parisian curator, collector and African art dealer. The story of a tireless search for the brightest talents in the continent of the future.

9pm..............................................................p.175 Video-time in Berlin with Enrique Ramírez A journey suspended over oceans, time and impossible images. A work on memory, sailing from the coasts of the Pacific to the French shores up to the islands of the Arctic Circle.

A welcome break at the end of a long day.

12am............................................................p.209 A room at the Singapore St. Regis Tracing back the century-old tradition of one of the leading luxury hotel chains, where art has always played a major role, making every space as unique as each moment spent in the Group’s facilities.

Columns Art and Blockchain..........................p.65 A new moment for art, moving value from the individual to the community.

In the collector’s own words........p.127 Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo speaks.

Tales from the history of Art............... .................................p.64, 126, 150, 184, 218 What are stories behind Art’s most beloved masterpieces?

Art Market........................................p.151 The work of art in the age of digital reproduction.

Art and the city................................p.185 Copenhagen in color: between architecture, urban development and Street Art.

J’accuse..............................................p.219 Art is a world like the others.

10pm...........................................................p.195 The film, by Swedish director Ruben Östlund, is revealed as the perfect representation of how art and film can combine to form a powerful blend of biting wit and sophisticated spirit.

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Cinema-time with The Square

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Marta Silvi (MS): The last few years have brought big changes in the top management of museums and national institutions, from the nominations of the twenty directors of Mibact in 2015 to the ones of last year. Your appointment highlights an idea of renewal and quality pursued today in Italy. How did you take this nomination?

Cristiana Perrella (CP): With great enthusiasm, but also with the awareness of how complex and challenging it is today, to manage an institution of Contemporary Art in Italy, especially a big and articulated structure such as Centro Pecci. The goal is to reach many different audiences, offering a wide-ranging program and cultural production wherein everyone can find stimuli and occasions to reflect on our time and its main themes, leaving the doors open to students in an effort to create opportunities to connect with the academic world.

MS: Only in 1993-94, with Ida Panicelli, and again in 1994-95 with the temporary regency of Antonella Soldaini did the Centro Pecci benefit from a female presence in the directorial chair. You have pointed out yourself the low number of female artists featured in the museum. How important is it for you the female (not necessarily feminist) gaze in the art world?

CP: I believe that in the current historic and political contingencies, where simplification reigns supreme and the discourse is reduced to narrow categories, it is crucial to embrace a plurality of views, invite more voices to the debate, and weigh in on the differences.

The female point of view, not only at Centro Pecci and not just in art, has until now enjoyed fewer opportunities to be represented, having been often ignored and neutralized.

But gender difference is all but one facet of otherness, something that needs to be nurtured and preserved today more than ever.

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Coming out of a severe financial and social crisis, Prato has become a laboratory city, open to innovation and change.

A city of many energies and tensions, willing to find ideas and experimental development models in order to funnel the former and overcome the latter.

The museum is an integral part of this process of transformation, which makes managing it even more complex and engaging.

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▪ Mario Merz, La Spirale appare, 1990, mixed media installation. Photo courtesy Carlo Gianni.

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MS: The Education Department opened in June 1988 with Bruno Munari’s experimental courses. Have you already imagined a way to reformulate and enhance such a worthy legacy?

CP: When I first got here, one of my first acts was re-starting restoration work on the Education wing, which was shut down when the expansion begun. We are trying to reclaim Munari’s legacy: in a joint effort with his estate, we would like to resume some of the laboratories he had devised. Education has always been the jewel in the crown of Centro Pecci, and today we’re trying to take it in new directions, for instance by organizing workshops with dialogues between artists and scientists, like the one between Loris Cecchini and Luca Bindi, award-winning geologists and discoverer of quasicrystals.

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Chiara Rizzolo (CR) an App for children: what are your responsibilities as an artist?

Giuseppe Ragazzini (GR):

I strongly believe that children are the most incredible artists. The freshness and vitality arising from everything they create seems like an “urge” we struggle to keep as adults.

A child’s drawing is somehow still connected to ancient cave art: hereby, shape and sign are passed on to the next generation, as pure as water.

That’s why it’s so important to give children brand new instruments to improve their creative skills and keep their vision clear. I truly believe they are our teachers. We must protect their freshness and do our best not to undermine their beauty. As a father of two, Leo (5 years old) and Vincenzo (7 months old), I’m also trying my best to help them build a strong emotional connection to nature, like my father taught me.

▪ Mixerpiece App. Courtesy Giuseppe Ragazzini.

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I somehow feel this is the only way I can help my children find an antidote to everyday chaos and aberration.

(I hope I don’t sound too nihilist.)

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Shopping time at Ferlinghetti’s City Lights

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Take the plunge into the Beat Generation’s literary meeting point, active in San Francisco since 1953.

The legendary bookstore, keeping the passion for poetry alive and dreamers’ souls intact.

A literary meeting place since 1953

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LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI’S CITY LIGHTS

Words / Nicola Mafessoni

10am

rolling along the streets of the dangerous area of Gugulethu, with four other girls on board, friends whom she had offered a ride. The flow of traffic gradually slows down, until almost stopping. A bunch of guys gather around the car, and Amy’s friends start feeling nervous. The guys notice that she is white, but her four friends are black. Still, she is white, and many local black associations had decided to forcefully stop each and every white passing through the area. Their rage is through the roof: “One settler, one bullet”, they repeat. Amy’s friends scream at her to just accelerate, but a storm of stones breaks her car’s windows. The guys drag Amy out of the car, beat her violently and stab her. Her friends, after finding shelter inside a garage, scream that she is not South African, that

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job every time they see the two social classes fraternizing and socializing in a friendly way, possibly realizing they have much more in common than expected. At the same time, they get kind of upset when they see that someone has taken part in the tour just to post a “shocking” picture on Facebook, to boost their profile page with an intense story. “In the suburbs live people just like us, not monsters, but people undergoing serious economic and social issues”. This is the message that needs to be conveyed in all possible ways.

More than twenty years have passed, but many people still vividly remember Amy Biehl. It was 1993, and her car was

▪ Cape Town, interior.

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Words / Brooke Einbender

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ART & BLOCKCHAIN A new moment for art, moving value from the individual to the community

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What's wrong with this picture?

The time has come for the shared creation of value of fine art

the blockchain is an immutable digital ledger of transactions that can record anything of value. The key underlying

principles to blockchain are: storage of information that can’t be tampered with; peer-to-peer transactions without central institutions; and the integration of smart contracts. the art world has started to adopt this technology to solve its most difficult problems including: the lack of transparency, access, and liquidity in the art market.

In fact, visual artists just might be the leaders of this technological revolution.

Artists are at the nucleus of the art world, but, often times, they do not receive resale rights when their artwork is sold on the secondary market. This predicament is due to the fragmented global application of artist resale royalties — roughly 70 countries - including France, Australia, and the United Kingdom - enforce resale royalties; however, key players in the art world, such as the United States and China, do not. globalization

has

circulation

artworks,

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increased so

the resale

rights should be granted to all artists from around the world. blockchain technology

enables

resale

royalties

technology makes the art world more equitable for artists as their work appreciates and is sold on the secondary market.

On October 18th, 1973, demonstrators gathered outside of Sotheby’s Parke Bernet in New York City in protest of a highly anticipated, yet controversial, auction of prized American painting and sculptures. Robert C. Scull, a New York City taxicab mogul and renowned collector of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, stirred controversy over his decision to put 50 of his best contemporary American paintings and sculptures at auction.

Inside the crowded auction house, artworks sold at record-breaking prices, exposing the price discrepancies between the primary and secondary art market sales: In 1965, Scull bought the painting Double White Map (1965) by Jasper Johns for $10,200, which sold for $240,000. Scull initially purchased a Cy Twombly painting for $750, which went for $40,000. In 1959, Robert Rauschenberg’s Double Feature (1959) was purchased by Scull for $2,500, and sold for $90,000. Many of the artists were in attendance and witnessed their works selling at astonishing prices, including Rauschenberg.

As the auction came to a close, Rauschenberg confronted Scull, shoving him saying, “I’ve been working my ass off for you to make that profit.”

Scull refuted the fervent accusation reminding Rauschenberg,

to be streamlined and executed on a

agreements that self-execute only under certain conditions, thus, eliminating the need for intermediaries and speeding up transactions - which are uniquely embedded in an artwork’s D.N.A. This

“I’ve been working for you too.

We work for each other.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, Robert and his wife Ethel Scull collected works, sometimes in large quantities, by then-emerg-

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global scale through smart contracts -

Column ing artists, such as: Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and James Rosenquist, at little cost on the primary market. Was Scull toying with the commercialization of fine art, as he profited on living artist’s labor, ultimately to his advantage?

However, Scull firmly believed “he [was] liberating these works for the world at large” now that the art had “reached maturity through his attention.” He further explained the contemporary American artists “[would] benefit through recognition and higher prices.” On the contrary, art historian and critic Barbara Rose sided with the skeptics. In her scathing New York Magazine review “Profit Without Honor,” Rose describes the auction as an event concerned with “profit-taking,” thus, exposing the “corporate mentality that now dominates the art world.”

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Rauschenberg’s argument remains valid - Scull’s results netted $2.2 million, a record for contemporary American art sales. Traditionally, when a work is resold on the secondary market, the artist does not receive any portion of its value appreciation. According to the records of art dealer Leo Castelli, Scull purchased Rauschenberg’s painting Thaw (1958) for $900; Rauschenberg received fifty-percent of the original sale, which totaled to a mere $450. Fifteen years later, Thaw Citations: ↘ Glueck, Grace. “Robert Scull, Prominent Collector of Pop Art .” The New York Times, 3 Jan. 1986. ↘ Kirschenbaum, Baruch D. “The Scull Auction and the Scull Film.” Art Journal, vol. 39, no. 1, 1979, pp.

50–54. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/776328. ↘ “New Research Models How Artists Can Benefit from Retaining Equity in Work.” NYU Steinhardt News, 2018, steinhardt.nyu.edu/site/ ataglance/2018/03/new-research-models-how-artists-can-benefit-from-retaining-equity-in-work.html ↘ Rose, Barbara. “Profit Without Honor.” The New York Magazine, 5 Nov. 1973, p. 80. ↘ Whitaker, Amy and Kraeussl, Roman, Democratizing Art Markets: Fractional Ownership and the Securitization of Art (January 11, 2018).

sold at auction for $85,000, without a penny attributed to Rauschenberg, who was an emerging artist at the time.

This confrontation begs the question, should artists receive resale royalties on their work? The 2018 case study, “Blockchain, Fractional Ownership, and the Future of Creative Work” explores a novel investment framework to reflect if artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg, became an early stage investor in their own work and retained 10% equity from their primary art sales. It turns out, Rauschenberg’s return on works sold at secondary market “would have generated returns 2.8 to 140.8 times greater than an equivalent investment in the S&P 500.”

If Rauschenberg had retained 10% equity in Thaw (1958), he would have earned $8,500 in 1973 when the work sold for $85,000. Imagine the returns Rauschenberg would have received if he retained equity in works such as Forge (1959), which sold in 1959 for $1,000; in 1973 at auction for $60,563; and lastly, in 2007 for $6.2 million.

Contemporary artists have the ability to solve the discrepancy of value in the art market: by linking art to the blockchain, artists can establish smart contracts to retain equity in their work. The democratization of art is about the “shared creation of value” as Amy Whitaker the author of the 2018 case study explains: “the fractional equity model represents a necessary structural correction to how we view artists. Art is currently priced and not valued; the market doesn’t account for initial economic risk or investment by the artist. Artists, like any early investor, should have exposure to the upside they helped to create.”

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A resounding of the authentic word can spring forth only from silence. Martin Heidegger www.accademiasilenzio.lua.it

are first and foremost of an aesthetic, historic and political nature.

I’ve been an art enthusiast since 1976, but my interest in African contemporary art really began in 1986, when I started working on the preparations for Magiciens de la Terre, the first truly international art fair held in 1989 at the Centre

Pompidou and at the Grande Halle de la Villette, in Paris. Only 25 years have passed, yet at the time the adjective “international” referred to exhibitions focusing on Western Europe and the U.S. It was incredibly limiting. My experience and knowledge in this field were borne out of research on African art, 360 degrees, and have been encouraged by meeting with Jean Pigozzi, with whom I went on to build a collection, demanding, free and open to all forms of art, unique in its ambition and scope.

These thirty years of travels deep in the heart of Africa, searching for the most original artists, inventors of worlds and languages unknown, with their powerful work, have offered us new visions. Personally, I never wanted to be labeled as a “specialist” of African art; I don’t trust labels, they’re always reductive. It’s the art I’m interested in.

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André Magnin (AM): I conducted extensive research at a time when structures devoted to contemporary African art were virtually non-existent. When approaching works whose history we don’t know, we should keep a clear and open mind. You need to unlearn what you know and call your certainties into question. The majority of the shows I organized were presented as an invitation to travel, to embark on a journey that will disclose to the viewer something unknown. In that sense, my goal is way beyond the mere activity of a collector, a curator and a dealer; my ambitions

▪ Jean Depara, Danseuse et tissus de Goulle, 2015, silver bromide print, © Depara. Courtesy Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris.

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Column

Copenhagen is orange. For the summer of 2018, CC-Copenhagen Contemporary, the Danish capital’s center for contemporary art, opened in 2016, has put forward an exhibition that somehow typifies the course the city has been following for the last few years.

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▪ SUPERFLEX. One Two Three Swing!

Installation shot, Copenhagen, Contemporary 2018.

Photo courtesy Anders Sune Berg.

Three words: social inclusion, design and environment. Main actor in the exhibition is the Superflex collective, founded by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen in 1993, presenting the installation One Two Three Swing. The idea is to illustrate, through a couple of

installations that take up two full rooms in the museum, how people can interact and communicate with each other even in circumstances or places that are normally experienced in solitude: wide open spaces and a swing.

Superflex tells us that cooperation is possible. And the city says so, too, having re-discovered, just like so many other big cities have in recent years, its collective soul, made up of different districts, and also, why not, its artistic one.

Words / Nicolò Barretta

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CINEMA TIME

We prefer not to reveal further plot points so as not to take away from the viewer all the pleasure of appreciating the many brilliant inventions of such a daring work, striving to place itself as a colorful art installation that explores the boundaries separating provocation from conceptual art.

Within the narrative, the grotesque comes crashing into the world of contemporary art.

With its installations and provocations: gorillas entering apartments, a man with Tourette’s syndrome who keeps interrupting an interview with the artist, the primitive man’s show during the dinner party. Outside, a world of homeless people and garbage bags.

Infused with an intermittently moralistic gaze, paired with an ostensibly relentless pursuit of the absurd, Östlund’s

cinema paradoxically becomes the mirror image of the very thing it sets out to expose. Its eventual critique and sardonic mockery feels as if it were actually aimed at the whole of a society wherein the value placed on personal interest exceeds and belittles the value of the cultural and artistic goods surrounding us. A film that dispenses with the logic of storytelling and vision to build a story that feeds on cinema, most of all, but also on narrative art and its reflection: as a way to create through new perspectives, or different uses of the camera; or, still, by way of actions that are meant to startle and shock the audience.

Directed by the Swedish filmmaker who, 2 years ago, had won in the “Un certain regard” section at Cannes with Force Majeure, The Square attacks the illu-

sion of individualism as a complete narrative of human events, because

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At the heart of the story is Christian (Claes Bang), the extremely narcissistic director of a contemporary art museum and divorced father of two young girls. After being robbed in the street, driven by a hunger to identify the offender, he’ll end up getting involved in a surreal sequence of events, which seem to gradually make him lose control of his life.

▪ The Square, movie frame. Photo courtesy of Teodora Film.

The Square, by Swedish director Ruben Östlund, is the perfect representation of how cinema and art, in its purest form, can combine and meld together in a powerful blend of biting cleverness and sophisticated wit.

▪ The Square, movie frame. Photo courtesy of Teodora Film.

The Square: when art and cinema blend together