Page 9 - The Venice Biennale 2001 issue of World of Art Magazine

signs. nevertheless, if the artists’ desire is to reach an almost absolute
ethical beauty, they will have to conceive a highly ‘opener” art, and
also maintain a boundless faith in the public’s fruition. in fact, even
if the artwork is autonomous and definite, it will still give rise to the
inevitable, personal interpretation that renders it existent to one of its
possible aspects. therefore, it is possible to configure the faculty of
andRea Pagnez is A interpretative freedom with the creative participation of the viewer,
FreelAnce critic BAsed in veneZiA who is capable of establishing a sort of creative dialogue of the artwork
he is viewing: sometimes this dialogue is determined by the viewer
himself, at other tunes it is determined by the inner intensity of the
artwork itself. consequently, it appears that only “simplicity” (intended
BeloW: niKKi
A younG doBerMAn livinG in FinlAnd as a lack of affectation) is the value to be pursued; but how can this
2001 diGitAl MAniPulAted PhotoGrAPh simplicity be possible, if nowadays art is surrounded by scenery of an
By Petru russu
extremely complex and differentiated reality, where eclecticism of
the contemporary thought is dominant? Art cannot avoid observing and
referring to its own time, because to evoke other possible or imaginary
worlds is a form of mystification. therefore, at this point, the six
memoranda for the third millennium on which calvino wrote about
in his “American lessons” just few years ago - luminosity, quickness,
exactitude, visibility, Multiplicity, consistency - must be duly kept in
mind. if we want to improve and develop our culture, perhaps we
should pursue this way. however, it is also logical that artists mustn’t
deliberately look back on history: they should be conscious that
the most important thing to do is to go over once again history’s
space-temporal contest. conflicts, contradictions, dystonias, in one
word the continuos failures of contemporary art, follow the fact that
today art seems to have the chance of realizing “possible utopias”,
while, to the contrary, all it does is put mankind in front of its ordinary
condition, continuously covering it with the fictitious veil of fiction.
enticed in this factious process, art not only mystifies reality, but
also itself as it belongs to reality. inevitably, both authors and
public become participants, protagonists who have lost all trace of
innocent behavior because they are entrapped inside cultural habitats
continuously mutable and discordant.

oday human behaviors are induced, as needs are artificial. this
is the historical condition of today’s mankind. this is the new
tmechanism of its cultural production. if we ask for conditions
(and concepts!) of such lost freedoms, we stray from the point (and
at that same point we will arrive) of not accepting reality, that reality
that man compromises with, and corrupts day by day. inside this
reality, human potentialities are strongly reduced, while values are only
dictated by the individualistic, particular deformities of taste, and the
unrefined uniformity of fashions. it is a reality that our comprehension
has difficulties of holding: a reality often indecipherable, most of all
rt is changing its own identity: it is becoming a way of a because man obtusely continues to be an accomplice, a slave, a
conceptual communication that just produces effect however, victim of his own greed: he doesn’t research what he should be
Arequesting and soliciting an effort of acknowledgment that is searching for. if it is true that mankind moves towards a culture of
the exact contrary to the deceitful appearance of its supposed “truths”. “becoming” and not of “being”, we have to understand that “becoming”
this, at the same time, creates difficulties for the artists as well as for doesn’t coincide with “having”.
the creative management, and definitely creates difficulties for the
fruition of shown art works in galleries, museums or alternative spaces. n the culture of “having” we would look like just temporal dwarves,
the public should be totally free to choose “how” to view, in accordance deprived from each sense of “existing”; if, instead, we were to
to its real effective needs and desires. ichoose the culture of “being”, we would still have some hope in
simply confirming ourselves as Men and Women. to be objective,
ontemporary art is truly art when viewed and recognized in all honest, sincere, it doesn’t cost so much...
its passed meanings. it ought to have qualities such as continuity however, a part from this personal consideration, i believe that art,
cand openness, though now unfortunately, it only seems to nowadays, must look for continuity, progressive shifting, gradual
survive because it has been dequalified to an inferior range, as if it were transformation, and active integration, adopting languages capable
simply one of the many ordinary commodities. of sintomatica]ly and semantically re-conducing mankind toward the
present experience of “today”. if the artificious and artificial needs of
he congestion of signs and images that characterize our society contemporary man will cause artists to be more open and reflect on how
and culture is subdued by a constant, progressive impoverishment serious the problem of the “artificiuos” is, only then can art be considered
tof the messages’ inner meanings, which the artists wish to once again as an “anticipation” of what will be tomorrow, giving us new
profuse in their works. today, messages only exist as mnemonic notable and logical answers to our questions.
stipulations, weakly reactive: they are mere graphic or decorative (to be continued in the next number)

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