Costantino D'Orazio
An Italian in America:
Maurizio Pellegrin Recalls the Italy short-Sighted Seen from across the Ocean
 
in “Artel” , Rome,
No. 33, November 16/13, 1995
 

Maurizio Pellegrin, Venetian artist transplanted in America, has lived a career that must raise certain questions about the activities of Italian art. At the end of the Eighties, Pellegrin became well known among American curators and was invited to work across the ocean. As of now, he has been living in New York for five years, a city that serves as stimulus for Pellegrin’s artistic and anthropological research. In the following conversation, the artist recalls the world of Italian art from the viewpoint of one who has lived it, has been a victim of it and has been able to emerge abroad despite the difficulty he has encountered in his homeland. After an avaricious experience in Rome, the artist can now boast about solo shows at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.
From November 23rd, in Rome, he will exhibit works present in some of the most important American collections.

Before arriving in America, how would you describe your history?
I began working in Venice, where I still return every summer, and suddenly I felt the need to go to Rome in 1985. I remained until 1990: for me Rome meant the joy of leaving Venice, an open and dynamic city in character, in order to reach a city sorted by the stratification of energies and culture. However, I must confess that Rome also represented the weight of the city’s resistance to my work. I didn’t raise any interest there. I am talking about the Eighties, when interest was concentrated on certain artists, on certain methods, and my work didn’t have any possible outlets. Paradoxically, living in Rome I earned a space in the 1988 Venice Biennial.

…and everything began from there…
The director of that year’s edition, Giovanni Carandente, noticed my work and called me to participate in the Aperto section. It was the start of my international career thanks to the director of Documenta and especially to some American museums, who bought my pieces for various foundations and organized a large exhibition of my work.

Little interest in Italy, great success in America: can we speak of the myopia of the Italian art system?
I would agree with the myopia of the system, but unfortunately I’m not even sure that there exists a real art system in Italy. In reality, it’s a kind of organism composed of vagabond structures, which generate movements but have a hard time uniting themselves and in turn often neutralizing themselves. In America, for an Italian artist, it is almost impossible to work if you don’t arrive there with a strong Italian background, which is amplified by European development. The attention placed on the Italians in the Eighties was an anomaly due to a particular circumstance – it was not a question of quality. Thereafter out this situation, all of the gaps in the system emerged. Today it is impossible to arrive in America through Italian galleries and penetrate the American cultural fabric.

What is the problem in Italy?
The fundamental problem is that in Italy there isn’t any interest on the concept
of the contemporary from society, especially in the visual arts. Contemporary art in Italy isn’t considered an asset and isn’t dealt with as such. If there is interest, it is limited in art or rather there isn’t any at all. In the U.S. contemporary art is an asset and it is followed with a lot of attention.
We here in Italy don’t have structures of communication that creates a real need in contemporary art: the gallerists, artists, museums are outstanding elements, but today there are stronger instruments of communication, for good or for bad. Television is extremely powerful, even though I don’t love it. If from there, people don’t realize the concept that contemporary art is important, they absolutely don’t consider it. Instead, by bombarding people every day, fashion and music become a reality.
Lastly, the problem falls on the structure. In the U.S., galleries work with artists.
The artists are distributed in more or less important collections. From the galleries, one enters small museums, then later, the bigger ones. The public and the artist himself discover the exact work in galleries and museums. In conclusion, it is a broad cycle, but closed and there is always control. An Italian collector who buys a work can never have any control after bringing the piece home. He doesn’t have the satisfaction of re-viewing it in a big exhibition and to feel apart of the development of a situation.

What interest is there in America for Italian art?
Very little. I would describe it with roughly twenty artists from this century.
Each decade has about two or three. From the second half of the Eighties up until today, I would like to say that there are a lot of Italians in America, instead after the Transavanguardia, there aren’t any Italian artists. They decided that I represent Italy. But I would like there to be more. I have a mentality opposite to the Italian one. It isn’t true that a lower number is a better thing, because the more we represent Italian culture, the more advantages there are for everyone. This is a fact that a large part of Italian artists, for competition, for a psychological and biological structure, which then wagers elimination, can’t conceive.
There isn’t sufficient enough distribution and there isn’t a sufficient enough level of contemporary Italian art. It develops itself in a formulation of the world that rotates around its own geographic limitation. Today it is impossible to work on communication without establishing relationships with other cultures. I would like to go to China or India. I feel this need for my own growth.

How did your move to the U.S. influence your work?
With energy. New York lives this great tragedy of poverty: social misfortune but great benefits for creativity. Poverty generates tension and in it, there is movement and desire to search. This false, generalized Italian well being, for example, doesn’t create any tension or stimulus. The new races that stabilize themselves in Los Angeles have the desire to emerge, to create. There is a disposition towards outlets. In the face of “making”, there aren’t any obstacles.
For me it has been absolutely fundamental to meet different races, which is something that I would never have the occasion to do in Italy. New York is the world thanks to this microcosm. The city removes certain agitations on creativity from you. In Italy, this small country, everything is conditioned by a deadline, and there isn’t coexistence with creativity. Today we finish a work because tomorrow they will ask you for another one.