Artists – and most people involved with culture – are the participants and the critical voices that can generate democratic processes. I do not have much faith in institutions per se, but in people. If more museums would exist without walls resources really could go to projects rather than public relations and keeping a massive stage running.
Artists should be responsible to commissions by enlightened patrons, and the tyranny of obscurantism and the specious use of theory should be abolished. I would rather buy a nice deck chair from Damien Hirst than one of his splatter paintings. I’d rather use Cindy Sherman’s tea service than look at one of her images of rotting vaginas. I’d certainly buy a park bench by Tobias Putrih but not a sculpture by him. Artists should become more humble by being forced to do all kinds of work, including work that involves the hands. Opening up the kind of work that is considered terrain for art will automatically create new forms of funding for art. There can’t be an alternative until artists are engaged by those who craft political representation. What if Luigi Ontani or Mario Merz had been asked to craft the image of Italy, how much more interesting would that be? As a means of propaganda, art can’t be beat. The real museums of Rome are far from sites like the MAXXI or the Macro. They are the shops and artisans’ studios and private palazzi. I’d rather spend an afternoon in the dark shop of a woodworker than in the morgue-like atmosphere of a contemporary art museum. Funds should be spent on supporting such institutions rather than contemporary versions of the Temple of Segesta in Sicily (a large undertaking meant to impress, and never finished…). Zaha Hadid seems like an odious person from all I have ever heard – better to build a small shed by Sol LeWitt in Rome and support the many small living museums housing the traditions and contemporary culture of this city. Art beats even the diamond business, the other unregulated business, in its potential for gain. Every hurly burly, “crazy” artist I ever met was an excellent businessman or woman, no matter how much they groveled around on the floor hypnotized, pranced naked through the fields, spat on paintings, or whatever. Artists are commercially minded and there is no difference between commerce and art. As for non-profit, I do not think this term exists. Every non-profit spends a good deal of time balancing its books, and trying to make ends meet. Artists have to start taking on different kind of commissions. Does François Pinault dare to put a Paul McCarthy headless mannequin splattered with shit in one of his store windows, or just in the serene and spotless rooms of the Punta della Dogana? Artists should get off their own pedestals. It’s boring up there and solipsistic. The Roman artists are hardly big, beefy, egomaniacs for the most part. Look at The Bean Eater by Annibale Carracci. That’s the Roman artist: happy with a plate of pasta e fagioli! A certain humility and humanity characterizes the Roman artist. This is all contrary to the aura purposefully exuded by the Macro or the MAXXI.
CORNELIA LAUF
Art historian, editor and curator. After concluding a doctorate in Art History at the Columbia University, she worked at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. She is a co-founder of twostarbooks and teaches at Faculty of Art and Design at the IUAV/University of Venice.