Let’s not deny it
Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
Let’s not deny it, in contemporaneousness it’s always difficult to bond art with a technique because, according to some, there’s always a trace of “incompleteness”. Can you imagine linking it to a material! I mean that there is a line of thought, inherited from Greek Platonic philosophy, that making a distinction between technique and thought, and thus between “philosophers and machines” – to quote an expression and the title of a successful book from the Seventies by the science philosopher Paolo Rossi – establishes a hierarchy of values that sets theory above practice. Naturally, this division was much more distinct in the past, but it cannot be denied that with the advent of conceptual art, it has made a certain comeback. However, technique and material are fundamental factors for creating art, to give body to that “life of forms” described by the great French art historian Henry Focillon.
So, it’s natural that even exhibitions like the Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art, whose intentions and fortune are linked to a material, run the previously mentioned risks, even if this may turn out to be an advantage in a world in which there are hundreds of generic biennials of art, that all end up being rather similar to each other.
I mean that what might appear, at first glance, to be a handicap ends up as an incentive for a different type of creativity, as demonstrated in the 1930s by Lucio Fontana, who said: “I liked that gentle material and I wanted to try difficult experiments. And I was attracted by that enamelled, incorruptible colour that no other coloured material would have been able to give me”, thus shifting ceramics away from a craftsman-oriented environment.
This proves that the value of techniques and materials is decided by artists and not only because they are interested in it, but because of the results they can achieve. Proof is the Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art where artists come to Albisola from around the world with projects designed specially for works to be created with this material, thus enhancing the dialogue between modernity and tradition.
And then, let’s not deny it, ceramic is really a beautiful material of ancient traditions, invented as usual by the Chinese with the incredibly pure clay from the area of Kaol, that for centuries underwent many different interpretations and uses. In fact, ceramic is a material that, like very few, inserted itself or was inserted, between art and life; a condition in plain sight that certainly doesn’t need any examples.
Text published in the catalogue of the 3rd Biennial of Ceramics in Contemporary Art “Undisciplined” , Attese, Albisola (Italy), 2006.
