33 Artists in 3 Acts by Sarah Thornton

Author:Sarah Thornton [Thornton, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, Art
ISBN: 9780393240979
Google: HqOqBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0393240975
Barnesnoble: 0393240975
Goodreads: 25011525
Publisher: Granta Books
Published: 2014-10-01T23:00:00+00:00

Maurizio Cattelan

Mother

1999

SCENE 19

Francesco Bonami, Maurizio Cattelan, Carroll Dunham, Elmgreen & Dragset, Massimiliano Gioni, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons

It’s the last Tuesday in May 2013, a cool, sunny morning with a forecast of rain. My teenage daughter, Cora, and I are attending the “artists’ opening” of the Venice Biennale, which takes place the day before the VIP preview. We walk into the giardini just after 10 A.M., swing by the Danish and Nordic pavilions where Elmgreen & Dragset staged their dysfunctional domestic scenes four years ago, past the American pavilion, which already flaunts a queue of people keen to see the work of Sarah Sze, then head for the Palazzo dell’Esposizione. Massimiliano Gioni, the curator of the biennale, is standing on the steps of the white building like the father of the bride outside a church, kissing people on the cheek, shaking hands, and patting backs. Titled “The Encyclopedic Palace,” his exhibition is displayed here as well as in the Arsenale, a long, sprawling space that was once a naval shipyard ten minutes’ walk away. The double-venue show contains works by 160 people, not all of whom are professional artists. Many are the untrained, insane, or inmate image-makers that go by the label “outsider artists.”

Gioni receives us warmly and signs Cora’s notebook. She is collecting artists’ autographs but makes an exception for him as the show’s curator. He writes a perfect mirror image of his name in capital letters, an allusion to the artist Alighiero e Boetti. Boetti’s alter ego loomed so large in his life that the artist inserted an “and” (e in Italian) between his first and last names. He wrote forward and backward with his left and right hands and made many works that involved mirroring. We leave Gioni as he greets Tino Sehgal, an artist who has contributed a performance, or “constructed situation” (as he brands it), to the show.

The first room of the exhibition features an illuminated manuscript of spiritual fantasies by Carl Jung. The psychoanalyst worked on his Red Book in secret between 1914 and 1930. On a reverential podium under a glass dome, the book is open to a page where the tongue of a snake in hell branches out into a slender tree in heaven. As art, it is conservative—what you might call surreal–medieval—but it has fervor. The inclusion of Jung complicates the definition of outsiders. Outsider artists are seen to make art as a form of catharsis or therapy, so they are invariably positioned as patients—not doctors. Also, outsiders are usually “illustrious nobodies,” as Gioni has put it, rather than famous intellectuals who make art on the side.

I receive a text message from Maurizio Cattelan telling me that he has entered the giardini, so we head back to the entrance, finding Gioni where we left him, encircled by two cameramen and a dozen journalists with notepads. “Our media understanding of an artist as a successful professional who makes entertaining objects that sell for a lot of money is very restrictive,” he says, his hands waving imploringly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.