THE JOURNAL
“My love is like a dark cloud full of rain (that’s always there right up above you)”, 2007 by Ms Anya Gallaccio. Photograph courtesy of Thomas Dane, London
A new exhibition celebrates the Arte Povera movement.
It’s a commonplace notion, these days, that expensive art doesn’t necessarily need to be made of expensive things. British conceptual art of the past 50 or so years has particularly benefitted from this idea – think of Ms Tracey Emin with her headline grabbing artwork “My Bed”, or Ms Sarah Lucas, with her sculptures made from chairs and stuffed pairs of cheap nylon pantyhose. But this elevated use of everyday materials arguably comes from Italy, specifically the Arte Povera (literally “Poor Art”) movement of the late 1960s.
Left: “Small Gold Senza Titolo”, 2012 by Mr Gavin Turk. Photograph courtesy the artist and Ben Brown Fine Arts, London. Right: “Io”, 1968 by Mr Mario Ceroli. Photograph courtesy of Tornabuoni Art
Arte Povera, as with many such designations, actually describes a wide range of artists who responded to the financial instability of Italy in the years after its mid-century boom by engaging with cheap, ephemeral materials and focusing on a personal and subjective experience of art. The term was coined by the critic and curator Mr Germano Celant, who mounted Arte Povera Im-Spazio, the definitive exhibition of these artists – including Mr Alighiero Boetti, Mr Giulio Paolini and Mr Pino Pascali – at the Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa in 1967.
Left: Rockets, 1981 by Mr Tony Cragg. Photograph courtesy the artist. Right: “Cone”, c.1967 by Mr Mario Merz. Photograph courtesy of Tate. Copyright Fondazione Merz, Turin, Italy
Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of this landmark event in the history of art, this September London’s Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is hosting its own exhibition focused on Arte Povera and, more specifically, how these Italian artists influenced their contemporaries in the UK. The exhibition, entitled Arte Povera: Italian Influences, British Responses, brings together the likes of Messrs Boetti and Paolini with with a raft of British artists – such as Messrs Richard Long, Tony Cragg and Gavin Turk – whose work was inspired by and expanded upon Arte Povera’s radical reassessment of substance and form in art. Of course, given the amount of time we at MR PORTER spend rhapsodising about Italian menswear brands, we probably didn’t need another reminder of Italy’s sizeable contributions to art and culture in the past hundred years. But there it is. We encourage you to pay it a visit.
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