Contemporary art cannot be "democratic." And it is not true that everything has already been done

There is this purported “democraticness” whereby the contemporary artwork must reach “right away,” to everyone. No words and explanations are needed because if the work “works” it must be clear, obvious and immediate. If we look at strictly contemporary works, that is, made by artists who have emerged in the last fifteen years, having this belief is a very serious mistake. In fact, if a work by a contemporary artist immediately convinces us there is something wrong with it, because most likely that artist has used codes, formal and conceptual, that somehow we already have in our eyes and have already digested.

It is not about innovating and being original at any cost, but about using “quotation” as a bridge to deal with our present. Quality contemporary artwork, has to make us do some effort, a form of fitness that is comparable to the effort we make when we train our bodies, to improve our physical fitness. If we want to “train our eyes” and improve the sensitivity with which we face the world, we must necessarily do some fatigue. If we are not struggling we are seeing derivative works that precipitate from attitudes that were intuited sixty, seventy years ago. The value of contemporary artwork lies precisely in the M.A.V.A. cloud (modes, attitudes, visions, attitudes), from which works then precipitate as weathering and witnessing those attitudes.

It is those attitudes that we can apply in our everyday lives. Would you have your doctor treat you with modalities from sixty, seventy years ago? It is certain that those modalities might work today as well, but you are giving up the opportunity to be treated with the best care. Jannis Kounellis, Lucio Fontana or Alberto Burri, remain great artists but of course they are tied to their historical period and to modalities that, while still interesting today, will never be completely relevant to our present. Here is the task of contemporary art: to identify attitudes relevant to our present in order to deal with our reality. And it is not true that “everything has already been done,” because today we live in a present made up of unprecedented technologies, and completely new themes and issues are on the agenda compared to the last century. It is simply that younger artists are confronted with an extremely precarious educational and work system, and therefore lack the right courage and training to dissect and trace more contemporary attitudes.

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