Blog
What does it mean to archive a work of art?
You may have already heard of archives, foundations, and artist associations. These constantly growing bodies were created to protect the intellectual legacy of the greatest artists of our time. While for ancient art, it is essential to seek the opinion of experts specialized in a specific geographical and temporal context, for painters of the twentieth century and beyond, specific institutes have been established to collect information on artists. This means we are dealing with a group of experts, sometimes even family members, who possess almost all of an artist's documentary material (diaries, letters, papers, receipts) and bibliographical material and have dedicated their lives to studying their work in all its phases. Archiving is a legal requirement for anyone intending to sell a work by an artist with a reference archive, but it is also much more. It is an act of cataloging, protection, and valorization. It's not a wasted investment, but the opportunity to officially return a work to its creator. Cataloging, in the art world, is indispensable because it allows us to reconstruct the entirety of a painter's artistic expressions, study even the lesser-known phases, and determine a series of elements intrinsic to the evolution of a figurative language. However, it is also a form of protection. If a painting were forged, the authentication (which must always accompany the work) would provide further proof of the original. If a work were stolen, the Archives have the documentation to certify that it belongs to a specific museum or private individual (since transfers of ownership are usually also traced) and help provide the documents needed for its identification and recovery. If a work were destroyed, the Archives preserve photographs that can restore its image to the scholarly community, even in the absence of the original. Archiving is also a way to enhance the value of the painting. What informed collector would ever buy a work at a high price without a document certifying its authenticity? The established collector is someone who has built up a solid understanding and market awareness and will not make the mistake of purchasing and investing large sums of money without adequate certainty: he or she will always do his or her due diligence. Because, until a work is accompanied by its certificate, it is worth nothing. It may have ethical value, but it will have no market value because it is not marketable. And this is where we also come to the legal issue. There are three main laws that regulate the art market: Article 64 of the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape and Articles 648 and 712 of the Criminal Code. What do these laws tell us? The art market has specific rules to protect transparency and legality. Article 64 of the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape Article 64 of the Cultural Heritage Code requires art sellers to provide buyers with documentation certifying their authenticity, attribution, and provenance, or a declaration with all available information. On the criminal front, Article 648 of the Criminal Code punishes receiving stolen goods, that is, the purchase or concealment of goods originating from crime for profit; those acting in the exercise of their professional activity risk more severe penalties. Finally, Article 712 of the Criminal Code concerns reckless purchasing: anyone who purchases suspect goods without verifying their legitimate provenance is punishable. In short, those operating in the sector must always guarantee traceability, accuracy, and verification of the origin of the works. In other words, if a work, whether original or not, that has a reference archive, is not accompanied by an authentication, it is not recognized by the market. It is not handled by professionals in the sector, because they would be acting in violation of the law: this poses a risk for the intermediary, seller, and buyer due to possible charges of receiving stolen goods and reckless purchasing. An unarchived painting remains a wall painting: it shouldn't leave the home; it remains anonymous and unknown. Of course, some perceive archiving as a risk, but what are the alternatives? The alternative is to expose oneself to the law and take risks, as we find confirmation online. In Ravenna, for example, a private individual attempted to sell a Schifano, which was declared a fake by the Mario Schifano Archive. The result? The work was seized by the Carabinieri of the Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and a lawsuit was initiated, at the end of which the owner risks five years in prison and a €10,000 fine. Of course, submitting the work for archiving carries a certain risk: it involves an "authenticity check," and the outcome is not guaranteed. But the only alternative is to enjoy the work privately, forgotten by the broader art scene, and deny potentially authentic works the recognition they deserve. Art. 64.1: Anyone who engages in the business of selling to the public, exhibiting for commercial purposes, or acting as an intermediary for the sale of paintings, sculptures, graphic works, or objects of antiquity or historical or archaeological interest, or who habitually sells such works or objects, is required to provide the purchaser with documentation certifying their authenticity, or at least their probable attribution, and provenance; or, failing that, to issue, in the manner established by the laws and regulations governing administrative documentation, a declaration containing all available information regarding their authenticity, or probable attribution, and provenance. This declaration, where possible given the nature of the work or object, is attached to a photographic copy. Art. 648: Outside the cases of complicity in the crime, whoever, in order to procure a profit for himself or others(2), purchases, receives or conceals money or things deriving from any crime, or in any case interferes in having them purchased, received or concealed(3), is punished with imprisonment from two to eight years and with a fine from 516 to 10,329 euros [709, 712]. The penalty is increased when the act concerns money or things deriving from the crime of aggravated robbery pursuant to article 628, third paragraph, aggravated extortion pursuant to article 629, second paragraph, or aggravated theft pursuant to article 625, first paragraph, n. 7 bis. The penalty is imprisonment from one to four years and a fine from 300 to 6,000 Euro when the act concerns money or things originating from a contravention punishable by arrest of a maximum of one year or a minimum of six months(4). The penalty is increased if the act is committed in the exercise of a professional activity(4). If the act is of particular triviality, the penalty is imprisonment of up to six years and a fine of up to 1,000 Euro in the case of money or things originating from a crime and the penalty is imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of up to 800 Euro in the case of money or things originating from a contravention(5). The provisions of this article also apply when the perpetrator of the crime from which the money or things originate is not imputable [85] or is not punishable [379, 649, 712] or when a condition of prosecution relating to such crime is missing. Art. 712: Anyone who, without having first ascertained their legitimate origin, purchases or receives for any reason whatsoever things which, due to their quality or the condition of the person offering them or the amount of the price(1), there is reason to suspect that they come from a crime(2), shall be punished with imprisonment of up to six months or with a fine of not less than 10 Euro. Anyone who arranges for the purchase or receipt for any reason whatsoever of the above-mentioned things, without having first ascertained their legitimate origin, shall be subject to the same penalty.
Van Gogh and the construction of genius: narration as the final brushstroke of the work.
Van Gogh's genius was already on the canvas, but the world didn't see it. Only thanks to those who told and shared his work, the genius became visible. When talent and storytelling meet, a legend is born.
Marisa Merz
A powerful yet delicate constructor, Marisa Merz continues to create, even today, intimate and visionary works that manifest a poetic time through the use of natural materials such as wax, water, salt, and clay. These primary elements place the artist in the spirit of Arte Povera, from which she later distanced herself in the 1970s, developing a personal language that combines the craftsmanship of materials like copper with the gestures of the feminine universe, such as knitting. Small, meticulously woven objects capture, in their poetry and grace, a precise balance between art and life, gestures and symbols, materials and signs. The artist's messages are delicately whispered. from works that take on a symbolic force and at the same time receive international recognition (1992, Documenta IX. Kassel; 1994, Centre Pompidou, Paris: 2001, 49th Venice Biennale). The small lead basin, Fontana (2007), isolated on a portion of the floor, is like a generator of life, an evocation of the life cycle, a phenomenological unfolding of life and forms. The water gushes forth, then changes shape to transform into ice and finally vanish with evaporation. It is the sense of natural time that is perceived and which also recalls the time of memory and the most private sensitivity, so much so that seeing in front of his work becomes more like listening.
Getulio Alviani
A multifaceted artist, art critic, and institutional director, Getulio Alviani emerged in the 1960s as one of the leading exponents of programmed art. Also known as kinetic art or op art, this movement is characterized by the use of industrial materials and the importance placed on design and modes of experience, which are programmed almost scientifically. After studying architecture, Alviani devoted himself to an artistic production that lies at the intersection of architecture, industrial design, and graphic design, with A predilection for cold materials and geometries that nevertheless require the active participation of the public. Alviani's rigorous research often focuses on the theme of movement, real or illusory, achieved through light and optical effects. His early works (Superfici a testura vibratile) are regular modules of aluminum sheets whose surfaces are milled, polished, or chromed. Alviani creates Also environmental works, such as Interrelazione cromospeculare (1969), a space in which mirrors and colors move and merge with the intervention of the public. Close to the collectives of Gruppo T and Gruppo N, Alviani exhibited at the 1964 Venice Biennale, in a room with Enzo Mari and Enrico Castellani. In 1965 he was invited to the fundamental exhibition of kinetic art "The Responsive Eye" at MoMA, while in 1968 he took part in Documenta 4, which was followed by important commissions around the world and participation in exhibitions in prestigious institutions in Italy. and abroad.
Carla Accardi
A leading figure in Italian abstract art and the post-World War II art scene, in 1947 Carla Accardi co-signed the Forma 1 group manifesto in Rome, calling for a language based on color and the drawing of abstract forms, in line with contemporary research developing in Europe. In the following years, the artist participated in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad; in 1964, a solo room was dedicated to her work in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where she would exhibit again in 1976, 1978, and 1988. Carla Accardi's painting, rejecting any figurative or realist image, is a weave of rigorous geometric motifs that appear to be free creations dictated by the unconscious. Initially characterized by linear white marks on black backgrounds, in the 1960s the compositions adopted color, expressed in complex and vibrant two-tone designs with an intense emotional tone. During the 1970s, at the height of the economic boom, the artist replaced the traditional canvas support with sheets of sicofoil, a transparent plastic. Mounted in layers on the visible frame or even rolled up and placed directly on the floor, the sicofoil painted with characteristic geometric marks becomes a diaphragm in which the transparency of the support regulates the passage of beams of light, in a continuous overlapping of planes interacting with the surrounding environment, as in Rosso scuro (1974) and Punto con raggi (1972).
Enrico Castellani
Enrico Castellani's artistic research is the result of a profound and careful reflection on painting and the traditional meaning of painting. After attending courses in painting and sculpture at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and architecture lessons at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in 1956 he returned to Milan where, in 1959, together with Piero Manzoni and Vincenzo Agnetti, he founded the magazine "Azimuth", which promoted an experiment aimed at overcoming the concept traditional understanding of the work of art and its limitations. A protagonist at a time of great artistic ferment in Italy, in 1964 he was present at the Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition in the Italian Pavilion. In 1968 he participated in Documenta 4 in Kassel, and in the same year he was at the forefront of the protests at the Milan Triennale and the Venice Biennale. Black Surface is from 1959, his first monochrome painting obtained by shaping the surface in introflexions and extroflexions of the canvas, through a rear structure of nails fixed on a particular frame prepared by the artist according to a rigorous geometric design. The arrangement of the reliefs is determined from time to time in relation to the size of the canvas and the chosen color - always monochrome - and is functional to the movement of light that is desired; on what is no longer considered a two-dimensional surface, light, time and space come into play. Superficie bianca (1968) is in line with artistic research that considers the work as a single whole, the canvas and the frame, in which the environment and the surrounding light create ever-changing space-time rhythms.
Maurizio Cattelan
An artist of undisputed fame, who has sparked worldwide conversation about himself and his disconcerting, irritating, ironic, and unsettling works of art, Maurizio Cattelan, faced with this inestimable success, has repeatedly stated that he chose to be an artist because it's a profession where there's no need to work. The very theme of work, understood as the terror of personal failure in contemporary society and as a consequence of unemployment, is one of the topics the artist deals with in his works, for example when he represents the figure of the homeless man. Cattelan, therefore, alongside his playful, impertinent and irreverent streak towards the icons of art (he dismantles Joseph Beuys's credo on art as social regeneration; he mocks the readymade of Duchamp (destroys the artistic approach of Lucio Fontana) and the symbols of political power (his depictions of Kennedy, John Paul II, Hitler), Cattelan openly declares his reflection on the suffering, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction of the contemporary era, and on the condition of submission to the dogmas that oppress man today. It is Cattelan's melancholic side that emerges and is evident in Bidibidobidiboo (1995), a surreal self-portrait of the artist as a suicidal squirrel inside a miniaturized kitchen, a reproduction of the one he lived in as a child. The reference to childhood is also suggested by the fairy-tale title, which grotesquely connects the violence of the act of suicide with the power of magic formula, redeeming man from the condition of submission, towards an escape. In the second work presented in the exhibition (All, 2008), Cattelan addresses the theme of death in an even more overtly tragic way. Nine bodies lined up as in a grave are covered by a light sheet placed over the limbs perfectly outlined by the almost baroque workmanship of the Carrara marble. It is a reflection of the artist on various themes that have always recurred in the history of humanity, such as massacres, persecutions, unjustified deaths, the martyrs, who, like Cattelan's art, disorientate and disconcert the collective unconscious.
Selling paintings Highlights - Gustav Klimt - Hope II
A pregnant woman bows her head and closes her eyes as if praying for the safety of her child. A skull peeks out from behind her stomach, symbolizing the danger she faces. At her feet, three women with bowed heads raise their hands, presumably in prayer, though with such solemnity as to suggest mourning, as if foretelling the child's fate. Why then is the painting titled that? Klimt originally titled this work Vision, and another earlier depiction of a pregnant woman Hope; so by association with the previous one, this painting is known as Hope II. However, there is a richness here that compensates for the woman's gravity. Klimt's artistic inspiration, like that of other artists of his time, originated not only in Europe but also far beyond its borders. He lived in Vienna, a crossroads of East and West, and drew inspiration from Byzantine art, Mycenaean metalwork, Persian carpets and miniatures, Ravenna mosaics, and Japanese screens. In this painting, the woman's gold-patterned dress—drawn flat, like the garments of Russian icons, while her skin is expressed with roundness and three-dimensionality—is of extraordinary decorative beauty. Birth, death, and the sensuality of life are here suspended in balance.
Why are art exhibitions held?
Exhibitions are held because artists are there. This could easily be a response, albeit directly and somewhat bluntly. There are producers of artefacts (belonging to a very particular species of artefacts) who need to identify a place (which may be suitable to host them, but not necessarily) where they can display them. Why on earth do they want to show these particular artifacts? At best, because they are thought to captivate the imagination of an observer; in the vast majority, to sell. It is an "exchange value", commonly a commodity, albeit of a particular type, which, as happens with every commodity, has a value if it allows its producer to obtain a compensation that satisfies him. But this artifact also has, under certain conditions, historical and cultural value. And who defines this value, which cannot be measured simply in the hours of labor required to transform material components into an artistic artifact? Where, that is, does the performer's creativity, his instinct or his "gift," that is, his talent combined with his skill, acquire that unique, ineradicable, and inimitable aura that transforms him into a work of art? Here, we are quite close to the core problem underlying the initial question. Marcel Duchamp , questioned by Pierre Cabanne about the duration of a work of art, responded in a curious way: "A work of art lasts roughly as long as an artist's creative life—30, 40 years. Afterward, it either fades away, dies, disappears from view, or enters the history of art." In the latter case, it undergoes a kind of transmutation; if "the work of art is created by the one who looks at it," now that gaze is mediated by other historical subjects, critics, curators, who to some extent decree its centrality: a centrality that is attested by the texts and, in the case in which "technical reproducibility" is not a sufficient vehicle, by the display through exhibitions. As early as the seventeenth century, the Bolognese nobles began to display the masterpieces of their collections under the city's porticoes on the occasion of the decennial anniversaries of the parishes, against the backdrop of richly draped panels; the Romans did the same (living artists came to organize exhibitions in the Pantheon), especially on the annual celebrations of San Salvatore in Lauro, and the Neapolitans did the same on the occasion of particular religious festivals. The first Salon burst into Paris in 1667 , when for the first time a real exhibition of "modern" works opened its doors, accepted by a jury under the patronage of the King. The people of spectators were born, bourgeois collectors, the feared family of critics, the hostility between official and "rejected", the interest of travellers. England values these immense exhibitions even more highly for the part they play in educating the public and forming taste, not to mention their remarkable sales, as the enormous success of the London exhibitions of Reynolds, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Rembrandt, and Italian and Spanish artists testifies. Exhibitions, from the very beginning, create problems, both because those singular historical ready-mades temporarily deprive a collection of the cultural hinges that attest to the quality of a historically established path, and because moving works of art can be very dangerous. In 1930, a group of absolute masterpieces of Italian art, en route to London, nearly sank in the Bay of Biscay due to a storm. In 1936, when Alfred Barr was preparing to organize one of the first major exhibitions at the recently inaugurated MoMA, "Cubism and Abstract Art", customs seized a series of works from Europe (Arp, Boccioni, Picasso, Delaunay, Mondrian), which for some time remained unattended and without any protection in a warehouse. We thus enter the twentieth century where , right from the start, the exhibition takes on a different character, which paradoxically is still a legacy of the previous century. One of the first scandals to accompany an art exhibition is Gustave Courbet's "Pavillon du Realisme" (1855): a silent protest against judges who rejected the two vast canvases of The Painter's Studio and Burial at Ornans. Inside an old shack the author sets up an exhibition, prints a small catalogue, adds forty paintings "for sale" and the dissident exhibition is open. And it is from here that an art exhibition, as will be seen for decades, also acquires a political value. In the immediate post-war period, the theme of art exhibitions was the order of the day. If Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti is convinced of the need to activate a relationship that allows for the comparison of the most relevant results of international artistic studies, and at the same time also bring this action abroad, influencing an active exchange, and also contributing to the knowledge of Italian culture and art there", Roberto Longhi is annoyed to say the least: "The exhibitions" , he wrote in 1949, "had clearly reached their saturation point; the paintings that were requested (from museums, of course) were almost always the same ones". But the foreign ministries and embassies put pressure on the education ministries, who immediately gave in, in homage to the motto 'politique d'abord. Exhibitions and Museums, published in "Paragone" , adds: "Italy has become, willingly or unwillingly, the most 'showy' nation in Europe, and perhaps in the world [...]" After the great upheaval of the war, with empty pockets and the material impossibility of quickly getting the museums back on their feet, it was only natural that the most unfortunate nations, the most deprived of means, would try to obtain some hard currency through some exhibition abroad". Italy had immediately opened grandiose exhibitions, which had no other meaning than to reaffirm the intact supremacy, at least artistic, of the nation: the Tuscans in 1922, the Ferrarese in 1933, the Rimini people in 1935, and then Correggio, Titian, Giotto, the Romagna. Catalogue introductions often clearly express the intent to bring attention back to the "old masters," as Francis Haskell says, just as the greatest initiatives of modern Italy, the Biennale and the Quadriennale, were beginning to flourish. Of course, all this happens if you're dealing with works that "have entered the history of art"; but between the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called "art system" was defined in completely unpredictable terms, and became more complicated with impressive vehemence. The subjects keep the same names, or almost: artist, critic, gallery owner, collector, museum. But the functions change, they twist, they integrate. How then to answer the initial question? Why is art "displayed"? Why do we organize its exhibition? Let's say there are some rules that justify exhibitions, and they start from a seemingly very limiting assumption: they are held because they are inevitable, because they are necessary—that is, because they produce knowledge, are tools that enable the advancement of research, both historical and contemporary, and cannot be replaced by a magazine article or a book. The exhibitions are therefore the result of prior research, not improvisation ; they reconstruct the complexity of a historical period or explore the intricacies of contemporary "feelings," highlighting its suggestions and critical issues. An exhibition's authority is only as great as that of its curators, provided they are able to avoid the influence of the works' owners (be they artists, museums, or collectors) and the organizations that sponsor it. [caption id="attachment_65803" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Palazzo dei Capitani Exhibition - Selling Paintings[/caption] Once these conditions are met, then an exposition is welcome and can avoid the risk of falling back into the aphorism that hovers in the Treatise of Human Knowledge , published by the philosopher and theologian George Berkeley in 1710: "Esse est percipi." This means that extended matter, objects (in our case, art), appear real to us because we perceive them through the senses; but perceptions do not certify the existence of anything; they are the worldly reflection of divine ideas. The inevitable, necessary exhibitions, those that "shock the world," are those that challenge the radical nominalism of the Irish theologian.