Florence, why is Giannelli no good and Price is?

Problem: Given the indignant shrieks with which insiders have been accompanying the installation of Emanuele Giannelli’s sculptures in front of the headquarters of the Region of Tuscany in Florence for days, the candidate should explain, possibly convincingly, why Emanuele Giannelli at Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati is no good, and Thomas J. Price in Piazza della Signoria is.

That, at least, one would think given the fowl that has been raised over Giannelli’s paintbrushes, and given that no one has made a plissé about the big girl on Price’s cell phone who landed a few days ago in front of Palazzo Vecchio. Because if no convincing reasons can be found, then the public is likely to be bewildered, and one cannot complain if contemporary art ultimately gives a damn about anyone outside the circles more or less connected to our world, just as one cannot brand those who are rightly asking the same question in these hours with ignorance, narrowness or philistinism: why Giannelli no and Price yes?

If the reason is that Giannelli’s works are ugly, then Price’s are ugly just the same (the only difference is that at least Price spares the Florentines the dreadful bases with names and logos). There is no beauty in the gigantism of an ordinary subject who, moreover, wants to be free but appears, if anything, to be a slave to his phone. Which, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. Even Baccio Bandinelli’sHercules and Cacus certainly does not stand as a manifesto of beauty, of balance, of proportion. Ugliness is not the enemy of art: indifference, if anything, is.

If the reason is that Giannelli’s works are banal, then Price’s are equally banal. There is nothing more didactic than elevating a girl busy looking at her smartphone to a monument of the ordinary. There is nothing more trivial than making criticism of power with an ordinary girl turning her back on the places of power: we are at the school assembly slogans, the student rally poster, the spelling book of protest.

If the reason is that Giannelli’s works show no particular finesse of execution, then the same can be said for Price’s: a Price, to say, is no better than a Giannelli, a Tongiani, a Sepe. At most he will go to a different foundry if he wants to sample a different quality.

If the reason is that Giannelli’s works are not original, then Price’s are equally tired and derivative. Price is yet another epigone of an anti-monumentalism that is forty years old (if we want to forget for a moment that we are the country of Vincenzo Gemito and Achille D’Orsi). Basil Watson proposed bronze sculptures of ordinary subjects when Price was still licking walls to get noticed. The families of Gillian Wearing, who was among the leading names of the Young British Artists, precede Price’s ordinary men by quite some time. Indeed, in Italy we were even pioneers, since one of the first anti-monuments of Wearing, from 2007, is located here in our country: those who think Price’s girl is innovative should mark in their diaries a trip to Trento, where for almost twenty years there has been a monument to Gillian Wearing, inaugurated in the context of an exhibition curated by Fabio Cavallucci and Cristina Natalicchio. Of course, the names of Italian sculptors who draw inspiration from daily life are not counted either (I mention only Giuseppe Bergomi for the simple fact that an exhibition at the Museum of Santa Giulia in Brescia that traced his production closed a few weeks ago). We also already have a Giovanni da Monreale, to say, who for years has been liberating the streets of our cities with his little boys and girls absent-mindedly flipping through their smartphones. Price, in short, comes among the last in this sequence.

If the reason is that Giannelli’s works do not hold a candle to Giotto, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, then, for the above reasons, can we say that Price can hold his own with Michelangelo, albeit in copy, with Giambologna, with Cellini, with Baccio Bandinelli or even with a Pio Fedi? Let us be serious. Finally, if the reason is that Giannelli’s works are not supported by an equally effective or equally à la page explanation than that of a Price who speaks, I quote from the communiqué, of “subversion of hierarchical structures,” of “questioning our ideological certainties foundations of our absolute thoughts at the basis of hierarchies and moral certainties,” or, to quote from an interview with Repubblica, bringing to Piazza della Signoria “the first free black woman,” then it will be necessary to agree that the only difference is exquisitely ideological, but in fact that is not even the point, regardless of what those who already squawk about kowtowing to woke ideology, demonstrating that they have a memory stopped the day before yesterday, because in Piazza della Signoria have also arrived works that have nothing to do with woke culture , on the contrary. A few years ago even theMan Who Measures Clouds arrived (and who, where he was placed, looked, if anything, like a surveyor measuring the ashlars of the Palazzo Vecchio), a work by Jan Fabre, an artist on whom, if anything, the activists of the woke cause have enjoyed playing target practice in recent years. So that’s not even the point.

What is it then that makes the difference, the audience will ask? There is being transparent. It is, meanwhile, a matter of curriculum. In recent years Price has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. And we are only talking about solo exhibitions. Giannelli has not. It’s bad to say that, because it seems that artists are evaluated with the same criteria by which candidates in provincial competitions are hired, but that’s what it is: titles are considered. And it is a rather normal fact that even a very overrated artist accumulates so many that he deserves a place in the spotlight. Then, subordinately, it also depends on who it is that is backing the operation: Price is one of the artists at Hauser&Wirth, which is one of the most important galleries in the world. It is like saying the Real Madrid of contemporary art. And exactly like Real Madrid, one of the best contemporary art galleries in the world can have a team of phenomena but it can also have someone on the team who cannot hold a candle to the others. The fundamental difference is that if in the national team the technical commissioner calls up a Real Madrid player who later does not prove up to the game, in soccer one does not have the slightest problem: one criticizes the coach’s choice. In the art world, on the other hand, one is horrified if the ct summons to the national team a player from Pistoiese who has the bulk of his career behind him and who has never had any experience, I don’t know, in the Uefa Cup or on similar stages, but if the Real Madrid player in the national team does not prove up to the task, then one tends to avoid criticizing him. On the contrary, the art world tends to exalt him just because he plays for Real Madrid and has played a few Champions Cup matches in the past.

It must be admitted, then, that the problem is not an aesthetic one, nor is it an ideological one, since around Florence one sees anything and everything, but when the “more” has a resume and has an important gallery behind him, then there is no insider to proffer the slightest doubt. So, the problem is simply one of bureaucracy. The insider who wants to subvert hierarchical structures eventually thinks like an administrative official. The insider who wants to tongue-in-cheek with power eventually balks if supporting the subversive work that so excites him is one of the richest galleries on earth. That’s more than fine, just be aware of it and report it with the utmost candor to those who read us.

Is there, then, a solution to make the suburban veteran of Pistoiese and the uninteresting youngster of Real Madrid play the same game? Luca Rossi had proposed it on these pages: delegate it to a super-committee of museum directors who would decide from time to time who should play. Which has a downside: the field will get away for the Pistoiese players, but there will be no shelter from seeing Real Madrid’s reserves in the game. Or from seeing old glories there, as has happened in the past: in Piazza della Signoria it is not that they have excelled in innovativeness of the proposal, in recent years. Because then, let’s be clear: the way the contemporary art world is today, it is difficult to imagine anything original or innovative emerging from such a structured institutional venue. All the more so if you want to add bureaucracy to bureaucracy, if you imagine that public art should end up in the shackles of calls for proposals, scientific committees and so on. Which, of course, is perfectly fine: it’s just that something new is unlikely to emerge from such a structured selection. At the Salon of 1874 the public saw works by excellent artists, artists of depth, artists provided with impeccable resumes, paraded, but the exhibition where a radiant dawn could be seen, the exhibition where the new dawned, was the one organized by Nadar in the Boulevard des Capucines. Then, of course, some of the Impressionists would also come to the Salon, but when they had already built up their impeccable resume. Today, the new is usually intercepted first by the galleries than by the big institutions.

What prospects, then? First, leave the current situation unchanged. And there would be nothing wrong with that: the only side effect would be the cries of the outraged in the presence of the Giannelli on duty. Also because, let’s be serious: in the end, both Giannelli’s and Price’s works will stay a few weeks and then leave. They will no longer break our breath. They will no longer disturb our nights. They will not make us scream with indignation. Between a Giannelli and a Price staying and, let’s say, the Trevi Fountain’s transennation that arrived some time ago to allow the basin’s contingency (and which therefore one imagines is not so temporary), give us indeed a thousand Giannellis and a thousand Prices who stay a few weeks and then go back where they came from. Second, the much coveted commissions. With the risks mentioned above: impeccable selections, sure, elegant, maybe even, who knows, in harmony with the context (which probably, at least in recent years, has never happened), but hardly innovative. Third, the two opposite extremes, the two most courageous situations. Namely, leaving Piazza della Signoria as it is. Avoid initiating impractical dialogues. Realize that it is an already accomplished and defined whole. Understand that bringing something new to Piazza della Signoria every year is like bringing Apocalypse Now to the cinema every year by adding five more minutes to the finale, always different. Or, brave solution two, do the exact opposite: change the ending of Apocalypse Now, if anyone feels like it. And that is to add something permanent, as has been done elsewhere, because it is not certain that one addition is good enough and universal enough to dialogue well, and on a permanent basis, with the rest of the square. However, I dare not think of what would be unleashed. Because then in the end, thinking about it, maybe the status quo is not so bad. At most we will be outraged with the next Giannelli or the next Price. Some movement in the boring world of contemporary art.

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