Article courtesy of Il Giornale dell’Arte
The new status of Palazzo Grassi, that is to say the Pinault age, which started last April 30th with the exhibition “Where are we going?”, gives visibile signs beginning from the outside of the building: there is the joyful steel dog by Jeff Koons that welcomes visitors. Also the front has been reinterpreted by the net of threads by Olafur Eliassion, shining in the night. And then there are the two robots by the Japanese newborn star Takashi Murakami, which seem to act as guardians of the access to the water. The inside of the entrance-hall is dominated by a deep-red hanging heart, estreme exaggeration of a pop-art icon, another work by Koons, the true protagonist of this exhibition. The installation on the floor by Carol Andre, one of the most significant representatives of minimal art, the conceptual anthitesis of pop art, on the contrary, is completely camouflaged: it is composed of 36 squares of six different materials, added to the surface that makes the “37th work, as the title says, an installation which dates back to the 70’s, bought last autumn by Pinault for 7 million dollars, with the aim to show it at Palazzo Grassi. The entrance hall is illuminated by a diffuse lighting, kept tight by the velarium on the ceiling; this is one of the minimalist changes proposed by the architect Tadao Ando, to whom Pinault entrusted the restauration works of Palazzo Grassi.
The scenography of the beginning goes on with the orange drops rain by the joung Swiss artist Urs Fischer and ends with a coup de teatre, the portrait or X-ray of the skull of François Pinault, by the young Polish Piotr Uklanski.
At this stage one can even ask “Where Are We Going”? Paul Gauguin asked this to himself at the beginning of the Impressionist revolution; Damien Hirst asked this again in 2000, giving this title to a quite complex work of art of his, exhibited in the hall at the first floor.
The answer to the question is and means to be problematic, a wanted equidistance between the figurative component and the abstract one. The first as estreme derivation of pop art and thus estreme or, if you prefer, opulent in its results: after a homage to Keith Haring, master of graffiti artists, you clash with the sculture by Maurizio Cattelan: “He”, that is to say Hitler, depicted in the humble clothes of a child on his knees. The show continues with the comics by Raymond Pettibon; the metaphore on war by Jeff Wall; the shaded oil paintings by Luc Tuymans, the equivocal sphinx by Gerhard Richter and the urban scenes by Pierre Huyghe.
Then the route climbs to the second floor, where the second component, the abstract one, is exhibited, with an outstanding historic part, which revisits the “Spatial concepts” by Lucio Fontana, the essential “Acromi” by Piero Manzoni, the strict geometrical lesson by Francesco Lo Savio. It is almost a foreword to the chapter on Arte Povera, well exemplified in protagonists and works: the igloo by Mario Merz; the golden Italy upside down by Luciano Fabro; the mirrors by Michelangelo Pistoletto; the tree by Giuseppe Penone; the quotations from the classicity by Giulio Paolini, up to the last follower, the French Bernard Frize.
The adjoining section, similar at least in the discourse on materials, is the well documented one of minimalism: Mark Rothko and Brice Marden with their monochrome background paintings; the refined whites by Robert Ryman; the musical scores by Agnes Martin; the steel multiples by Donald Judd; the touching graffiti by Cy Twombly, the neon lights by Bruce Nauman, the cellotex room by Rudolf Stingel (of the Alto Adige region) where the visitor is invited to leave his tracks.
Then we climb down to the first floor to go back to the figurative chapter: as foreword there is a portrait of Mao by Andy Warhol,in contrast with the atomic bomb of the young Piotr Uklansky, then follows the funny baroque (see the basket) David Hammons; the provocations by Damien Hirst, the sexually disordered pictures by Cindy Sherman; and also a monography of Jeff Koons with a Canova-style bust in which he is portraied together with his ex-wife Cicciolina; the throbbing sow by Paul McCarthy and the final leave entrusted to the steel girl by Charles Ray.
This exhibition is open until 1 October, but a second appointment is announced for the beginning of November, an exhibition dedicated to Picasso “Joie de vivre: 1945-48”. During the spring of 2007 there will be “Europe 1967” that is to say the state of art in a prerevolutionary moment; then, in autumn, it is the time of a show about Arte Povera, one of the strenghts of the Pinault collection;finally, in the spring of 2008, there will be the first archeological show “Rome and the Barbarians”.
Lidia Panzeri
