The best and worst of contemporary art 2024 according to Luca Rossi

For several years there has been little point in doing the classic “best of” referring to contemporary art. This is because we have been going through, for at least fifteen to twenty years, a neo-mannerist and transitional phase. Lists, with the best of the year just past, may serve to reinvigorate institutions and public relations in anticipation of new collaborations for the year to come, but they cannot really serve to give us much insight into contemporary art and the crisis that this vast, overused and slippery field is going through.

Over the past fifteen years it has become apparent that the younger the artists, the more they take refuge in derivative languages of the last century. Mannerism has always been there but, in 2024, after the 2001 shift from postmodern to altermodern, this mannerism goes completely to defuse the work, making it a kind of pretentious complement of ’furniture, what I called in 2009 “IKEA Evolved.” It is even more serious when the younger generation suffers from the “Young Indiana Jones Syndrome,” that is, they take up rigid and nostalgic postures in an even more obvious and pronounced way, with artworks that refer to archaeological imagery, 1950s informal, didactic reworking of arte povera, ancient Romans or the antiques market under the house. The citation falls fetishistically back on itself without becoming a bridge to address our present, that is, what is the fundamental task of contemporary art. These are ploys, more or less unconscious, to grab attention in the few seconds granted at fairs and biennials, and to load the work with seemingly “safe” values, as is the case today for everything antique and vintage.

Paradoxically, Italian and international contemporary art is saved only by the recovery of the revered masters, i.e., the modern, from Van Gogh to the 1970s, which, in addition to making us appreciate the old jewelry rediscovered in grandma’s chest, also allows the art market to survive. The contractions in the contemporary market that have occurred in 2024 are only the consequences of a speculative market that we have seen in recent years, and which has completely lost that critical capacity that is fundamental to stimulating the quality of art that we call “contemporary,” not only because it is contemporary with us, but because it is made and conceived by artists who emerged after 2000. We are at the paradox whereby the “best” “contemporary” artists are those who emerged in the 1990s, such as our own Mautizio Cattelan, who, however, are now over sixty years old. After 2001 everything freezes, even internationally, and the overproduction of derivative and homologated artists is not matched by any really relevant artistic path. As if everything was frozen and suspended.

The value of the work lies in the attitudes from which it precipitates, lies in the “how” and not so much in the “what.” So if a young person uses an attitude from seventy years ago, it is as if we want to treat pneumonia with techniques from seventy years ago. They work in part: if we process Kounellis and Transavantgarde we kind of like it, because we already have them in our eyes. But we are losing huge opportunities. We sell works to millionaires and zillionaires, but then we hastily tack ethical and moral issues onto the works without them really addressing those issues. Example: to address feminism, it is not enough to draw a feminist parade.

With chaotic exhibitions and biennials where nothing emerges, we have a fair a week. Fairs characterize the art system and dangerously become the place to “sow” and “reap.” This situation forces contemporary artists into a squint that further deteriorates quality, mostly in super chaotic situations where we see thousands of works in a small space in a short time. In this competitive chaos, values are leveled, everything tends toward mediocrity, and contemporary artists, already homogenized and weak, become very weak and interchangeable. Here is where paradoxically the figure of the artist and the work further lose importance and centrality further condemning the whole system.

In recent years I have been dealing with certain galleries and collectors. In order to show in certain galleries, as a young or mid-career artist, you have to somehow process the derivative languages, you have to homologate. This message is evident to delude the gallerist in being able to sell something. And even if you can “sell something,” these artists, being mannerists, are doomed to blend in and get completely lost. So the end result is a defeat for everyone: the artist who sells three works and then gets lost, the collector who bought and then will completely lose sight of the artist, the gallerist who will not be able to sustain his gallery at all in the future. In other words, you have to lower the quality to try to sell something in a system that becomes a vicious circle.

It has been clear for many years that the problem is “formative,” as far as artists and curators are concerned, but also “popularizing,” understood as the ability to create a space of opportunity so that the public and the collector can become passionate. Contemporary art today could play a fundamental political and social role as a gymnasium and laboratory for training and experimenting with “new eyes,” that is, changing our view of the world and consequently our choices. Provided, however, that it does not become, as is happening, a motif of interior or street furniture, or something completely decorative and harmless, useful only to justify the salary of some curators and cheat confused collectors often enlightened only by their cell phones.

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