6 After decades in the shadow ofitaly its own past, Italian postwar and contemporary art —conceptual, witty, visually striking— is a hot commodity. And foreigners, it seems, areREBOOTED especially drawn to the country’s cultural offerings. By Amy SerAfin Luciano Fabro’s L’Italia d’oro, 1971, installed in the Palazzo Grassi. Opposite: Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, attese, our years ago, the French billionaire and art collector François Pinault scandalized his countrymen when he abandoned plans for an art foundation outside Paris and instead acquired a controlling finterest in Venice’s Palazzo Grassi. Subsequently, he gained a 30-year concession to the Punta della Dogana and its 17th-century customs house at the edge of the Grand Canal, where he will show exclusively from his collection—which includes many Italian works. For complete access to one of the most spectacular historic sites in Venice, Pinault beat out neither the nation’s government nor a Milanese tycoon but the New York–based Guggenheim Foundation. Some Italians have regarded Pinault with particular skepticism, but he is not the only foreigner to express interest in the southern European country and its art in recent years. The trend was obvious last October in London. At the Christie’s 20th-century Italian-art sale, bidding for one of Piero Manzoni’s Achromes pushed the painting’s price above £1.6 million ($3.2 million), and several other artists beat their high estimates, including Jannis Kounellis and Lucio Fontana. Altogether, the sale pulled in more than £11 million ($22 mil- lion). The Sotheby’s sale the same night produced even better numbers, earning a total of more than £13.5 million ($27.5 million). “Italian art used to be viewed as a bargain, but this auction has taken it to profile were also attractions. “Larry thought it would be appealing a much higher level,” says Mariolina Bassetti, seated in the Christie’s offices at for several of the artists we work with who receive invitations to one end of Rome’s Piazza Navona. As international director of the modern- and exhibit in London or New York all the time.” 8 contemporary-art department of Christie’s Italy, she is the cohead of the annual Gagosian’s Rome branch opened in December 2007 in a Italian sale in London and works on the twice-yearly auctions of modern and former bank building located minutes from the Spanish Steps. contemporary art in Milan. She notes that the London auction brought in It has Corinthian columns and a stunning oval exhibition space £6 million ($12 million) in 2000, its debut year, but by 2007 the number had floored not with concrete—too Chelsea—butpietra serena, the skyrocketed to £15 million ($30 million). “The big change is that foreigners sandstone Michelangelo favored. The dealer’s move seems to be have discovered and are supporting Italian art,” she says. “They see enormous vindicated. The inaugural show, of Twombly, sold out three days potential, both from a cultural and a market-oriented point of view.” after it opened. The gallery has on its roster four contemporary Like any good businessman, Pinault recognized a good deal before the Italian artists, including the media darling Vezzoli, who mixes market did and has been acquiring Italian artworks for years. “All the immedi- Hollywood glitz and needlepoint and whose most recent project, ate postwar and Arte Povera artists were already there,” says Alison Gingeras, “Greed,” a video and embroidered-portrait launch of an imagi- the curator of Pinault’s collection since 2006, “although he has built upon nary perfume of the same name, is on view through March 21. those holdings. He has lived with amazing Alberto Burri paintings in his house Another non-Italian, the Irishman Lorcan O’Neill, has run a since—well, forever. He has an incredible early Michelangelo Pistoletto, a fan- contemporary gallery in Rome for the past six years, selling foreign tastic Pino Pascali piece. And he was already collecting younger artists like artists alongside domestic ones. He asserts that if prices for Italian Maurizio Cattelan, Alessandro Pessoli and Francesco Vezzoli before he met artists in recent decades have lagged behind those for their peers me.” Gingeras introduced Pinault to other emerging artists, such as Roberto in other countries, it’s not for lack of talent. For some viewers, “it’s Cuoghi, whose work has ranged from transforming himself into his deceased hard to look at Italian artists and not have a sense of the layering of father to re-creating the fall of an ancient Mesopotamian city through sound. culture behind them,” he explains. “Perhaps that’s intimidating, Shortly after Pinault and his French-speaking staff descended on Venice, but there’s a sense that one has to be more sensitive to the rest of Larry Gagosian decided to open a gallery in Rome. Packed with Berninis and culture than one’s ready to be.” For example, Luigi Ontani, whom Caravaggios, the capital had drifted so far out to the fringes of the current art O’Neill represents, has been on the scene for four decades, incor- scene that the New York art dealer’s motive was hard to fathom. The most plau- porating his own image into representations of iconic figures, from sible theory is that he was making an early bid for the estate of Cy Twombly, a Saint Sebastian to Dante Alighieri. But although he enjoys a cult longtime resident and an artist Gagosian has shown in New York since 1994. following among artists—including Julian Schnabel, who recently es “It doesn’t come from Twombly being here,” insists Pepi Marchetti acquired a work—wider acclaim has eluded him. ag m Franchi, the gallery’s glamorous Roman-born director, who met Gagosian while As for longtime Italian dealers, they don’t see the arrival i working at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. “Twombly was one of the of foreigners on their turf as a threat so much as a vote of con- fiercest opponents of the idea, because he loves his privacy.” She, too, tried to fidence. “I hope that Gagosian is going to be a colleague who dissuade the dealer from an action she considered “the craziest thing I had ever can contribute to increasing the knowledge and, consequently, heard,” but was eventually convinced by his reasoning: “It’s about seeing Rome the appreciation of Italian art abroad,” says Massimo Di Carlo as a powerful magnet for artists, collectors and people who are interested in (not to be confused with the Milan dealer Massimo de Carlo), the arts,” Marchetti Franchi explains, adding that its central location and low the director of the Galleria dello Scudo, in Verona, since 1972. Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Art+Auction february 2009 | WWW.ARTINFo.COM Clockwise from left: Piero Manzoni, Achrome, 1959, the top lot at Christie’s Italian sale last October; the Gagosian gallery in Rome; Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled (Zorro), 1997; Francesco Vezzoli, Greed: The New Fragrance by Francesco Vezzoli, 2008; Gagosian Rome’s director, Pepi Marchetti Franchi; a view of the Lorcan O’Neill gallery; and the Palazzo Grassi, in Venice, home to François Pinault’s collection. Opposite: Pinault, in front of the Dogana in June 2007. 9 n A uy orc G “The presence of foreign galleries confirms international inter- the former are Fontana, Burri and most of the big guns from the Arte Povera l A est in Italian art.” On the other hand, Di Carlo adds, “Pinault movement—Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone—who experimented lleri A represents the questionable figure of an owner of an auction with natural, often inexpensive materials, plus a smattering of painters from hristie’s; c n; G house—Christie’s—engaged in proposing and selling artists that the Neo-Expressionist Transavanguardia movement, such as Sandro Chia and A ome; osi r he usually presents in his own collection at the Palazzo Grassi, in Francesco Clemente, and recent stars like Cattelan, whose disturbing instal- ssi A gag Venice. It’s my opinion that he doesn’t support Italian art.” lation All, 2008—nine corpses laid under white sheets, sculpted from Carrara llery, A zzo Gr Currently on view at the Palazzo Grassi is “Italics: Italian marble—dominates the entrance of the palazzo. Younger artists represented A n G l A A Art Between Tradition and Revolution 1968–2008,” a survey of include Vezzoli and Cuoghi as well as the Genoa-born Vanessa Beecroft, with her ’, courtesy osi A u ag F 250-plus works—some belonging to Pinault—that opened last visual diary of eating disorders; Monica Bonvicini, whose 1997 video Hausfrau September and is on view through March 22. Coproduced by Swinging depicts a woman smacking her head, covered by a dollhouse, against uido G Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, where it will take up res- a wall; and Patrick Tuttofuoco, with a room-size neon skyscraper city. n; A hristie’s; G c osi idence this summer, “Italics” was organized by Francesco Bonami, The show has received much negative press. Controversy is as funda- t: no Arici, courtesy P F A gag zi le a well-known and provocative Italian-born curator who has lived mental to the Italian diet as pasta, but even Bonami appears taken aback by the A P in the United States for over two decades and he was recently harsh reaction. The critic and curator Germano Celant, the father of Italian rom to named a co-curator of the next Whitney Biennial of American postwar art who coined the term Arte Povera, wrote in L’Espresso magazine F ome; © Gr r ise art.