Carnegie Museum of Art

Here I am, back again. I'm in Pittsburgh now and today I visited the Carnegie Museum of Art. I wanted to see the Maya Lin exhibit, but in the end I obviously visited all the Art Museum, and it was definitely great. What a space! So many things, different each other, but not for this creating confusion. There is plenty of space for all the art guested by the Museum. You can see the best examples of art of any age, from the African one, until the Minimalism. All well organized in clean rooms, big, large, wide... with the pieces dialoguing from age to age. It's a pleasure for the eyes and for the mind. I've never seen such a mass of art all put together. Gorgeous museum with pieces from both Europe and America, all deserving a place there. High quality, for real!

It's about figurative art, decorative art, furniture and design... al the possible imaginable all put together according to a smart contrast of the opposite that can even add value to each single piece. You don't have to study to visit this museum: culture is all around you.

The piece above is a great murales by Sol Lewitt. According to his view, he decided the rules to follow, and the others painted that. 

 The main courtyard.

 The Grand Stairs, with a worderful decoration celebrating Pittsburgh industries.

 The Carnegie Hall foyer, with the statue of the patron.

Italians do it bitter: considerations on "light art"

( I write this post after reading an article on Vargas Llosa and seeing a free exhibition at Palazzo Reale, in Milan. 

The article was on the Corriere della Sera (April, 12) and the exhibition will be open until June, 24th 2012. )

The 2010  Nobel prize Vargas Llosa wrote a book, accusing the "entertainment civilization" of killing high culture and literature. In 2009 he expressed his disappointment for Damien Hirst shark, at the Biennale di Venezia. According to him the "light art" (nowadays winning and well payed) is more tolerable by the public, easier to be created, but definitely without beauty. 

He said that the naive idea of transmitting as much culture as possible through schooling, is now destroying high culture. In his opinion, in fact,  the only way to widely extend the knowledge is by lowing the general level. Light art for light hearts... 

These thoughts have not encountered particularly oppositions, not even on the local newspapers. Quite strange, considering the issues and the strong stances.

The article ends with a quotation of the author that, after crying for the global bad condition of  "high culture", ensures his audience that his book has been thought not for an elite, but for everybody; he tried to avoid the obscurantism typical of philosophy essays...

Leave aside the fact that, in the end, it seems he published a book with features similar to the ones he criticizes in others work  -if it's not for the elite, then is for everybody, consequently resulting "not high culture". I think that the democratization of the knowledge could have even lowered the global level of the culture, but if we look at the best Italian art of the Medieval era, for example, that was made for the illiterates. The iconography was very simple, the subjects almost always the same... But the purpose was -in some way- noble, but it wasn't considered high culture.  

Now we recognize extreme value to those painters that, at their times, were only working for the mass. This happens because we are casting on those art and painters OUR  idea of high art, so linked with history and dramatically European.

What's wrong now, then? It is very difficult to say what's art and what's not.  With the present spread of culture, particularly in the richest countries, art has lost the need to explain something. From the Nineteenth century, the artists started to express subjectiveness, anxieties about the world or just give their opinion on our society. 

Comparing the art of the past (the one recognized as high) and the current one, accused to be light, I think that the difference is in the spasmodic present research of expressing ourselves.  Even the more committed artists, trying to educate the visitors -we still have them- can results too difficult to understand, or just weird.

Then you always have the impostors, but this is another story.

Seeing the exhibit "Gli artisti Italiani della collezione Acacia" at Palazzo Reale in Milan leaves you a sense of "little". Little done, nothing special, plus a sense of bitterness. In this hard times, we desperately need a meaning in what we do and see. People are looking for quality, nobody can waste money nor time. We need beauty, but it's so difficult to find!

Among the presented works, the only pleasant one was by Mario Airo': "la' ci darem la mano", title that quotes Lorenzo  Da Ponte's song for the Don Giovanni by Mozart. It's composed by two big glazed vases, containing one lily each. The flowers are encountering in the middle of the composition, guested in a little room where the music is the original one by Mozart/Da Ponte. In the whole, it's really a pleasure to see that, but one thing left me quite disappointed. That piece was specially made for this private institution and, as the curator explains in the video presentation, represents the happy union of the public institutions and the private ones, for a better fruition of art. Well, nothing wrong with that, but I think art deserves something more now. It seems quite a weak motivation, for a piece of beauty.

  

This exhibit left me unsatisfied. There is something nice, something funny, something strange, something concerned about the society (but which one? The one working hard and suffering, or the rich one that squanders?)...

 But who's really the target of all this? 

I've no answers to this, but I must look with favor to a thing: if we only stop at the aesthetics, at the surface of the things, the dialogue between the weird contemporary art here presented and the original baroque environment of the ten rooms is fantastic. 

Bitter consolation!

THE "STARCK" TRUTH

second attempt of post, I hope this could be more clear.

I was quite surprised to see the deep face of Philippe Starck on the cover of "IO donna" (easily translated: "I woman" - a STRONG stance nowadays…) last Saturday. This magazine usually talks about fashion and lifestyle, but the Milan Design Week is very close. It's like everybody suddenly MUST talk about it...

The first peculiar thing was that Mr Starck is standing on a evident Karim Rashid pink background, a color that can be compared to the more famous "Blue Klein". And he was carrying a baby. His fourth baby, a girl called Justice. 

Rewind button: I want to explain you FIRST why I'm "studying" this man.

He his a famous designer and I've always looked at his production with curiosity but respecting a kind of safe zone. He is very controversial and not always approvable. This always prevented me from going crazy for his stuff, personally selecting my (few) favorites Starck creations, still not being convinced by the utility/coolness of a gun shape lamp.

Then I discovered a BBC serie called "Design for life", transmitted in Italy from January 2012 (but originally registered in 2009) that seemed to be very interesting.

< Design For Life follows the fortunes of 12 British design students as they battle it out to impress the enfant terrible of product design, Philippe Starck.> They moved to Paris and tried a lot to impress him, but in the end it was quite a failure and I really saw little creativity (from the youngsters side) and a lot of hysteria (from Starks' one). 

And finally I read the article, on "IO donna", where I was given the opportunity to analyze him again. 

The journalist tried to talk about Starck latest creations for the Design Week in Milan, but he suddenly stopped the journalist talking about more interesting things. You can find here the Italian interview. 

<The only possible future for the Design world is in heading for dematerialization.> A strong thought, I thought.  <More with less: this is what we must work for. Like the computers; they were first big as a building, but now they are smaller and smaller, as technology allows that> And then my favorite part:

<The destiny of the designers is producing services, not objects. We need actions, no more products>. The Western Economy is slowing down and Starck says: <no surprise for this, we already knew!>. <I would like to take distance from the materiality and to focus on action.> 

In the previous post I was too concentrated on my own ideas and forgot to go deepen in the research. Then "Anonymous" reproached me, and he/she was right. I'll try to explain myself better, again. 

1) I recognize the necessity to reduce the massive production typical of the Postmodernism. There is plenty of books talking about the proliferation of Images and of fake needs.

2) I appreciate Starck's idea of focusing on the design of actions, that means: organize the processes and find a way to manage people and resources already existing. I don't expect that a traditional designer should find solutions for a better humanity. It's evident that you cannot design a "process" in the same way you design a chair. This is not the kind of design to be presented in Milan.

3) I don't want to play the role of the designer, since I'm not. I'm keen on a lot of things, design is one of those, but it's not my primary interest nor competence.

4) I think that it could be useful to start thinking of a "design of the awareness", even if this should be a personal (and interior) design, to be done first on ourselves. As Anonimous said: <awareness may also mean that architects simply stop acting like designers> and I completely agree with him/her. The world is full of people doing others job (and others business).

5) I don't think I present myself as an auctoritas. If you read my blog you will find only advice on how to spend a good Sunday, not how to manage your life. 

Finally, the most important thing. I was interested by the interview, but did not went to check what Starck is going to present in Milan.
In the past, he contributed to augment the above-mentioned massive production of objects and stuff not always useful. We could say, he was really in the system. He even acted like an archi-star, that's true.
After reading the interview I thought that maybe something was changing. On "IO Donna" you  can read that the fourth child completely changed him, so... let's give him a try - I thought.

Anonimous was scandalized by the fact that he's going to present the new Kartell collection with Lenny Kravitz: "Yeah, that Lenny Kravitz".
Well, I didn't know there are others Lenny Kravitz, but I was more impressed by the kind of chair he's going to present...

Conclusion: it's always the same bla-bla, take big names... add some fur... that's all folks!
Epic failure Mr Starck...

ps. I know he's also presenting a eco-veicle and a bicycle, but this chair is sufficiently shameful, in my opinion.


In the previous post, Anonimous said:

awareness may also mean that architects simply stop acting like designers. please, stop. it's confusing. you're not designers, we're not architects. if you are keen on design, that's ok, but don't speak like an auctoritas. you are an architect. 

oh, sorry. to design services is a completely different matter from designing products. and, Starck has no right to speak about the need of awareness, since he is the guy who screwed it all up, acting like an archi-star. if you don't know, he's presenting a collection for Kartell with Lenny Kravitz. 

Yeah, that Lenny Kravitz. 

Laura Fiume: a lesson of Design

Milan is preparing for the most important 7 days in the year: the Design Week. It doesn't matter if you are the boss of an important art gallery or of a bakery, or if you work in a museum or a butcher's: just fasten your seat belts and be ready to the design invasion! Milan needs space. Every little piece of wall ad all the shops, street, house, rooms will contain something creative and new. The newest design will fill every empty space in the city (usually even being pitiless with the already jammed ones - in the best Milanese tradition...).  

But there is a little space, now, filled with something different. On the street level floor of the "Spazio Oberdan" (metro 1 Porta Venezia) there is an exhibit about design very different from the next coming. Spazio Oberdan is guesting the work of Laura Fiume, an italian designer daughter of a famous painter (Salvatore Fiume) previously guested there last year. This exhibition will end on the last day of the Design Week, April 22nd 2012. 

I first discovered Salvatore Fiume last year, visiting his solo exhibit, and when I saw the poster about Laura Fiume presentation I immediately went to check it. 

It is very intelligent to present Laura Fiume in this moment of the year, in Milan, because this let you make some consideration about what is -and what was- going on in the design world. 

Laura Fiume was born in 1953 and she studied at the "Scuola Politecnica di design" where she could learn from Bruno Munari and Max Huber.

Then she completed her artistic training in Canzo (CO) working with her father and getting competence in serigraphy, ceramics and paintings.

During her life she experienced craft techniques applied to every aspect of the production, making artistic creations for tissues brands or design companies. She can be considered half designer and half painter. This mix has allowed her to create interesting objects as well as pleasant decors that remind, in some ways, the best Italian production of the 70's and 80's. Her work always gives you a sense of completeness, because you can never renounce to the base material, nor to the forms of the decoration. Shapes and body always go on together, you couldn't add anything more to both. 

Even if the richest creative period was during the 80's and 90's, looking at her present production gives you a pleasant sense of art and crafts with no nostalgia. The shapes of her ceramics (I love the plates and the coffee cups) can result quite "old style" compared with the nowadays diffused design, but it is always updated with our time.

        

I loved the images about her paintings inspired by Philippe Stark furniture, but also the more recent paintings on thick velvet, so meteoric and physical. If you get closer, you see the handmade work, if you get closer, you get the entire composition, charming for colors and layout.

 

And I've not even talked about the fish, which is maybe her most famous feature. Her graphics is full of stylized fishes, like modern (and Western) ideograms. Laura Fiume went in Japan in 1978 and she was fascinated by this experience. Then, she could event present her work there (Tokyo, 2002) and her appreciation for the graphic strokes was confirmed. 

The space of the Spazio Oberdan is little, the objects are few but very intense, the paintings are very nice… and the entrance is free! I think she could fully deserve a biggest space and a more complete exhibition. 

Maybe even a very big stand at the "Fiera del Mobile" (April 17th-22nd) just to let the visitors understand what design is and how it could be. 

A big lesson of design!

MIA Milan Image Art

I'll probably won't be in Milan, but I can warmly suggest you this great fair.
Take the time to visit that, if you are interested in photography and art.
I'm sure you'll be very happy with that, I went last year (it was the first) and I found it very useful, interesting and definitely worth seeing.

save the date!!

BYE BYE WEIWEI

The first time I saw Ai Weiwei's work I was in Japan, at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.

I was quite fascinated by his work, because at a first sight it was a blend of pop culture, foolishness, expensive ideas alternated with very poor art. 

Among all these qualities, then, his art is even so deeply involved with politics and culture (both Chinese) that it sounds really amazing. It is almost the same logic of the Circus: the artist makes a titanic effort, but still keeps the smile. He has to, even if he represents something tragically sad, even if there is nothing to laugh at.

In some way, there is something of the clown in Ai Weiwei. His funny face hides a strong character and very clear ideas. Always taking care of the Chinese culture, (trying to preserve its value even through the materia distruction) he forces the visitors to think about the problems (in particular: of China). 

(Han-dinasty urn "damaged" by an advert)

His art is 50% physical, 50% psychological, all to be discovered like a book, page after page. You first see the colors, the materials, than the shapes, arriving to the meaning and to the core of the idea little by little.

(a screenshot of his web site, section: CONCEPTS)

His political need of transparency and of freedom is usually against the Chinese government and for this reason he was arrested one year ago (April 2011) and remained prisoner for 81 days. 

<< Despite being based in a country that is experiencing one of the most rapid periods of economic and social changes ever seen, Ai Weiwei manages in his works to link the past with the present and the individual with the world >> 

This description was taken by the Mori Art Museum website about his past exhibit, the one I saw, but it's quite limitative. Weiwei is more than this and during the last year he has experienced prison, bail, but has continued to fight. And to denounce abuses. On the internet you'll find hundreds of articles telling his story.

After the release and a heavy fine, he has been watched for 24 hours a day by the Police.

From this exhausting experience, he thought he wanted more openness even from the government. He was so controlled that he pretended to have the same level of accountability even by the politics. For this reason he installed 4 cameras in his house, to watch him all the day. It is an invitation to do the same for those who are hiding what's happening in China. 

The cameras were visible on the page http://weiweicam.com but after less than a week, they were shut down. Even the website of the author seems not to work properly. In particular, the links to the texts, links and discussion are not visible.

(above: the quite ominous notice about being...in the wrong place...)

Weiwei is appreciated all around the world, in particular for this mission he's bringing on for a better China. 

I suppose these are not easy moments for him. But he has always shown a strong character and, as the little fly on his website main page seems to promise, he will insist again, on expressing himself. Annoying (for someone) like a fly, intense as the best clowns (for others). 

Bye Bye Weiwei, see you next time...

Italian article about this here.

English article here.

An Art Gallery here.

(this selection is based only on a quick research. If you want to be more informed, go on with that!)

Next Mission: Triennale

What's going on in Triennale? 

Look at this...

I must see it. My passion for Japan is seeking for more and more Japan, every day!

(March, 17th - April, 15th)