FlashArt International NewsLetter

Wed Jul 21 20:43:10 CEST 2004

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FLASH ART NEWSLETTER 

Midsummer Chronicle 

Manifesta - an overly aggressive formula 

The 'Monumentum' to Dakis Joannou 

Basel is Basel - the unique, the beautiful, the superb, the inimitable 

June was a cruel month, after an already terrible May, foretelling a July stifled by the heat and fatigued from following all the events on the art map (local, national, and international). I say a cruel June, as it's always intense and always more stressful for passionate followers and slaves to art, such as us, obliged to keep track of the serpentine events and venues that weave their sinuous paths through Italy and the world. 

It would be easy to let it drop (as my daughter Gea does, preferring to a certain degree London or the Côte d'Azur). Work is work, and then there's always the subtle masochism that leads you to play with life by measuring, by running risks, fragility, limitations, and the insufferable. 

Villa Manin and the exhibition by Francesco Bonami; Bilbao and San Sebastian for Manifesta; and Basel for its fair, which is quite simply THE fair - always an absolute indication of unequivocal global supremacy - an unblemished and unmissable date. But this year, as if interrupting a midnight dream at the high point of Basel, was Athens, which owes its "Monument to Now" to the curiosity, generosity, and personality of Dakis Joannou, who organized a charter flight from Basel to Athens, with sumptuous hospitality at the Intercontinental Hotel and return tickets to various destinations for many people. Great Dakis - always generous, epic, and perfect in his low profile. 

Immaturity in the Basque Region?

Manifesta 5 in the Basque region, however, again demonstrated its immaturity by not knowing how to organize an international event, drowning in a glass of water, citing postal charges as the reason its catalogue was, embarrassingly, not ready in time. And yet it spent, without saying on what, a 2,500,000 euro budget that should have rendered it more professional and efficient. I believe this was the first time Manifesta was inaugurated without a catalogue, and this is a very serious symptom of cultural dilettantism and organizational inability for which, without recourse to appeal, responsibility rests with the organizers. Not to have the catalogue ready for the opening of a show that is already known for being voluntarily hermetic, already halfway towards a debacle, for events that were conceived to be experienced during the opening, with people coming from all over, who then, swallowed up by the summer, disperse again. 

You can't spend, with impunity, $3 million to display fewer than a hundred works, without having completed a catalogue to assist the exhibition visitors, closed in on itself, blocked by the rigid (and pathetic) political correctness that at times prevents you from knowing from which country an artist comes (and for me the date a work was made is also of importance), where they live, when they were born, and if they are male or female. My reading of the works is still linked to the context, not able to ignore the biographies that for me open up the culture of the country from which an artist originates or is based. Instead, Manifesta offers just an aseptic label with the artist's name. And that's it. You have to fish around for the rest, drifting in an enigmatic exhibition, becoming increasingly detached. 

Art people are tired

So enough, enough please, dear curators and organizers, of pursuing exhibitions in diverse, inaccessible, far-away spaces, reachable only on foot in the burning sun or the pouring rain. Why should visiting an art exhibition necessarily involve suffering and pain? Perhaps it stems from a desire for the exhibition to be like the tired, worn out, depressed and prematurely aged art-worlders? It is an art world from which the joy, the gaiety, the pleasure, and (why not?) the happiness and youthful enjoyment of the participants are disappearing, to be replaced with ugliness (for men, women, and even children), discomfort, tiredness, and boredom. 
This serious and suffering audience of 1000 people - this Barnum circus that seems as much like Lourdes as an art exhibition - whom one meets at Manifesta, at Documenta, at the Venice Biennale, makes you sad, and makes you look forward to the moments of separation and pause. 

Colonial Blitz

And then this fleeting formula of Manifesta, possibly without leaving either trace or record, reminds us a little of the colonial blitz, of bourgeois arrogance. Here's a country and a city with 2,500,000 euro ($3 million) at your disposal, and you, Manifesta, arrive, organize your show without taking into account the context, and depart without leaving any memory? At least the artists were invited to work for a few days or weeks in situ, possibly in contact with artists from the area and with the place itself. A formula for Manifesta more in tune with the times, but above all more ethical, would be one that combines a local curatorial team with the international curators in a way that creates at the least a dialectical base. As such Manifesta isn't working. You can't appropriate, for a real abstract project and for the good of all, one model and adapt it to Ljubljana, San Sebastian, Helsinki, and tomorrow Cyprus, Trento, and so on. Dear friends on the board of trustees of Manifesta, wake up, and don't fall asleep from the feasting and excellent wines offered on the generous budget that each region puts at your disposal. Look into new formulae: more incisive, less arrogant. The territory in which (and thanks to which) it operates should not be considered a land to conquer, but rather an anthropological and cultural partner. 

At Basel? Only the best

Better, much better, on this account was Art 35 Basel, where nothing was conceded to rhetoric and the demagogue of elite culture. Quite simply it presents the best, through 360°, of the art world's ouput, according to a Western lens. And Art Basel itself demonstrates that the network of dealers and gallerists are almost always more spot on than those often exhibitionistic, paradoxical, and at other times aggressive critics and curators. 

It's a thousand times better, therefore, to have a well-organized Art Basel than chaotic and disorganized international exhibitions. 
And then in Basel there's also Liste, the most pleasant and agreeable alternative fair, reserved for young and proactive galleries. It has been becoming a sort of breeding-ground for the big Art Basel.  In fact Art Basel has been pursuing the (intelligent) practice of inviting galleries from Liste, after three years of participation, to join its own elite and strong selection of galleries. Meanwhile the young Liste gives young, aspiring, emerging artists the opportunity to get closer to it, in an informal and casual way (sometimes with notable rewards for those with a good eye). 

Catalogues

One reproach for Dakis Joannou concerns the catalogue, which is in an enormous format, coffee table-style, with dimensions so large you can't keep it on a bookshelf. And today, with the volume of printed matter around, this is no small problem. A pretentious layout, with rampant graphic design that misunderstands and disregards art. A catalogue for an exhibition and a collection must contribute towards understanding the spirit of both. A catalogue must be a sort of register - a dictionary, with all available information - that respects the artist and his/her work and does not try in every way to overdo it. 

Better, much better, dear Dakis, were the catalogues of your previous exhibitions! 

Giancarlo Politi 

Giancarlo Politi 
FLASH ART 
Via Carlo Farini, 68 
20159 Milan Italy 
Tel. ++39 02 688 73 41 
Fax  ++39 02 66 80 12 90 
email: giancarlo.politi at tin.it 

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