{"id":945,"date":"2017-05-01T20:16:08","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T20:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/?p=945"},"modified":"2022-11-04T20:16:47","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T20:16:47","slug":"mai-2017-specularity-media-art-as-generative-tool-pistoletto-in-havana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/mai-2017-specularity-media-art-as-generative-tool-pistoletto-in-havana\/","title":{"rendered":"Mai 2017 – Specularity, Media Art as Generative Tool: Pistoletto in Havana"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Michelangelo Pistoletto\u2019s\u00a0solo exhibition\u00a0held at the\u00a0Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana\u00a0between November 2016 and March 2017, was a celebration of his political, social, and artistic involvement in the Cuban capital, as well as his spatio-temporal aesthetic experimentations with mirroring. The exhibit that closed on March 13 was an ode to Pistoletto\u2019s lifetime\u00a0oeuvre<\/em>. Two floors of the Arte Universal pavilion were populated by his art. The first, which welcomes visitors, was dedicated to his solo exhibition, and highlighted his Havana-based new work; while on the second floor past works fused and intermingled with the Bellas Arte\u2019s permanent collection, a signature-exhibiting scheme of this prominent figure of the\u00a0Arte Povera<\/em>\u00a0movement, who likes to put his art in dialogue with museums\u2019 collections and spaces. The wide range of selections included his experimentations of the 1960s and 1970s with objects, materials, and photography: from\u00a0Oggetti in Meno<\/em>\u00a0(Minus Objects<\/em>, 1965-1966), to his photographic series\u00a0La Conferenza<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Raggi di persone<\/em>\u00a0(The conference\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0People\u2019s rays<\/em>, 1975). On the way to the museum\u2019s Ancient Art section stood the more emblematic Arte Povera-inspired\u00a0Venere degli stracci<\/em>(Venus of the Rags<\/em>, 1967-1974), a marmoreal white neo-classical status of Venus looking down at an immense pile of colorful rags, that dwarfs her monumentality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thirteen less one<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Specularity, Time, and Techniques<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pistoletto\u2019s experimentation with specularity, multiplicity, and fragmentarity, and his new Cuban everyday life-based series were the most exquisite, delicate, and political elements of the exhibit. The artist\u2019s interest in mirrors dates back to 1970, coming out of his research into time and memory, division and multiplication. The solo exhibit offered a retrospective of his experimentations in specularity, from\u00a0Mirror Cage – Double Square<\/em>(1975-2007),\u00a0Two Less One<\/em>\u00a0(2009-2011),\u00a0Buco Nero<\/em>\u00a0(Black Hole,<\/em>\u00a02010) and\u00a0Vortice<\/em>\u00a0(Vortex<\/em>\u00a02010-2013).\u00a0Thirteen less one<\/em>\u00a0is the first mirror series conceived in Havana. It is the result of Pistoletto\u2019s performance\u00a0The breaking of the mirror\u00a0<\/em>at the 12th Havana Biennale in 2015 where the artist, in front of an astonished crowd, smashed the mirrors into a myriad of fragments with a big hammer. The 13 broken mirrors form part of the Museum\u2019s permanent collection today. The act of breaking a mirror for Pistoletto is related to the multiplication of its pieces and reflections, rather than its material destruction, and is deeply linked to his research into \u201cthe fourth dimension; seen here through the relationship between the present and memory,\u201d as he explains in the text accompanying the artwork. Forms, shapes, cracks, and holes created by the act of breaking are frozen in the now-exhibited broken mirrors as a memory of the past, the reflecting surfaces incessantly revealing the ever-changing moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time is one of the major topics Pistoletto explores in his work, particularly in his mirror series. And, it was over a lengthy period of time, that the artist developed a specific technique of silk-screening images onto highly reflective stainless steel. In the 1960s\u2019, his first experiments would include a photographic image trimmed and superimposed onto a mirror surface. As Pistoletto writes in his own description of the development of his technique: this first practice would still produce a dichotomy between the materiality of the photographic image on the mirror surface and the immateriality of the reflected images. Conversely, Pistoletto\u2019s main objective was to create an immersive \u201cmoment\u201d where the still image from the past fuses and interacts with the moving image of the present and its environment. In 1971, after several experimentations, including tracing real-size photographs with a brush through vellum paper onto stainless steel surfaces, he perfected his own technique of using silk-screen printing, a procedure made famous in the same period by Pop Art artist\u00a0Andy Warhol. Unlike Pop Art, however, Pistoletto\u2019s artworks are always unique. Using reproducible techniques such as photography and silk-screen printing (also known as serigraphy), the artist creates a unique visual and virtual work of art, which is not reproduced in series and that lives in the present moment through reflection and participation. As\u00a0Walter Benjamin\u00a0writes in his well known essay \u201cThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction\u201d:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn principle a work of art has always been reproducible. [\u2026] Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence.\u201d (Benjamin, 1969)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pistoletto\u2019s Mirror paintings are unique exactly because of their \u201cpresence in time and space,\u201d which is made possible by the artist\u2019s life-long research into the temporal dimension and participation through the combination of techniques and media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cuban mirror paintings<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Havana Street-life\u00a0: 18 Mirror Paintings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Following this research into the relationship between present and past, the 18<\/em> Mirror Paintings<\/em> explicitly conceived for this exhibit brought Havana\u2019s street-life scenes into the Bellas Artes. These silkscreened, life-size photographic images of Habaneras and Habaneros printed on top of mirroring surfaces bring the viewer to the role of participant into an everyday life scene. A typical Havana three-wheel coco-taxi<\/em> drives through the streets of the city, mother and daughter play on a swing, a street-vendor sells peanuts and rositas de mais<\/em>, men play chess, a family gets ready to take a ride on a sidecar, women buy colorful fruits at a kiosk. These are some of the eighteen scenes you can participate in \u2013 for you will find yourself included in the picture, your image playing and reflecting on its surface. The eighteen mirrors return still images of Cuban society at given moments in the past, through the silkscreened technique \u2013 moments that are constantly made anew by its reflective properties as the changing reflections are viewed and experienced in the present moment. They bring you back into the crowded, lively and busy streets that you have strolled through to enter the museum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Pistoletto states, one of the themes he aims at exploring with his mirror paintings, other than time, is \u201cinclusion\u201d \u2013 not only of the viewer, but also of the surrounding environment, making his artwork a \u201cself-portrait of the world [\u2026]in a [constant] interaction between the photographic image and what happens in the virtual space generated by the mirroring surface.\u201d (translation from\u00a0Quadri specchianti)\u00a0Oliver Grau\u2019s essay on\u00a0Virtual Art<\/em>reflects upon the impossibility of the uniqueness of a work of art described by Walter Benjamin in relation to virtual reality techniques and digital art. He writes:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCompared with traditional images and their fixed materiality, digital or virtual images are categorically different. [\u2026] For an artwork of virtual reality, which knows no original, connotations of the cult of uniqueness, in the sense used by Walter Benjamin, do not obtain.\u201d (Grau, 2003, p. 249)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cuban mirror paintings<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yet, even if different from digital artwork, we can consider Pistoletto\u2019s mirror paintings as media art which is able to create a virtual environment through reproducible techniques and digital tools playing with materials\u2019 properties and encouraging inclusion and participation. The environment is created by the still past of the photographic image and the reflected surroundings of the artwork. Following again Grau\u2019s writings, \u201cmany virtual environments reduce the observer to a disembodied state within a Cartesian space that is clear for miles around and often quite empty.\u201d (Grau, 2003, p. 193)\u00a0Such a conception of a Cartesian empty space can be also found in architecture and design, as architect\u00a0Greg Lynn\u00a0underlines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201ctraditionally, in architecture, the abstract space of design is conceived as an ideal neutral space of Cartesian coordinates. In other design fields, however, design space is conceived as an environment of force and motion rather than as a neutral vacuum.\u201d (Lynn, 1999, p. 10)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 18 Mirror Paintings<\/em>, Pistoletto draws on interplaying forces to create inclusion: not only does the observer maintains her bodily presence by way of her reflection on the surface of the work of art, but she does so in an ecological relationship to time and space. She is immersed and reflected within her ever-changing environment, while interacting with the stillness and past of the photographic image. The silk-screen techniques and digital tools used to enlarge and print life-size photographic images onto the mirror surface provide a bodily and textured presence of the image itself, which becomes part of the environment reflected into the mirror, and is made anew by every single interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Moto Sidecar<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Performance and Participation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Together with time and inclusion, participation is another key feature in Pistoletto\u2019s work. His artistic involvement in Cuban everyday life is socially and politically oriented. Since 2014, he has been working with local artists to create collaborative performances, and to create a base for his\u00a0Galleria Continua<\/em>, in an ancient 1950\u2019s movie theatre in Centro Habana\u2019s Chinatown. In 2014, Pistoletto organized the first Rebirth Forum \u201cGeographies of Change\u201d in collaboration with the United Nations and local artists and institutions, establishing the Cuban Rebirth Embassy. Along with his \u201cdiplomatic-artistic\u201d work, a performance inspired by Pistoletto\u2019s symbol of \u201cRebirth\u201d (a three-circle symbol created by the artist, that combines an infinity symbol of continuity between the natural and artificial, with a third circle of transformation) was staged, in collaboration with Cuban artist Alexis Leiva Kcho, with fishermen\u2019s boats floating in three circles in the sea in front of Havana. This took place on 16 December 2014, the day before former-President Obama and Raul Castro announced the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The impact of the performance was not only timely and political, but also spatial and social. The sea, for Cubans, represents hope and despair, life and death. Source of life and sustainment that is limited by strict sailing regulation, but also hope for building relationships, and death and despair for those who tried to escape the isolation the island has witnessed through the years and never came back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, Pistoletto organized the\u00a0Third Re-birth Forum<\/em>\u00a0in Havana, opening his solo exhibition on November 25. A\u00a0Walking sculpture<\/em>, inspired by his 1967\u00a0Sfera di giornali<\/em>, rolled through the streets of Havana to reach the exhibition at the museum, intended to bring luck and transformative power to everyone and everything it touched on its way. The sphere, made out of magazines and journals\u2019 pages, relates to the media aspect of Pistoletto\u2019s artwork. Not only is it made with the classic quintessential form of medium, the newspaper, but it is a medium itself circulating through the streets and interacting with the city\u2019s material and bodily elements, prompting an understanding of media, and in this case of media art, as \u201cmobile forms circulating within social space.\u201d (Straw, 2010, p. 23)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Pistoletto, art is a generative tool for social and political change, and the artist is an ambassador of civic engagement and transformation. Moreover, Cuba represents for him a mirror holding the past of a binomial power structure between the two poles of Communism and Capitalism, and reflects the changing moment of transition in the country and the world, offering glimpses of a possible better future. In the aftermath of his performance, Pistoletto wrote a letter to Barack Obama and Raul Castro, published on the page of his\u00a0Galleria continua<\/em>, where he makes clear his vision of art as a powerful socio-political generative tool:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn November 23, 2015, I was received by Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution? Along with the artist\u00a0Kcho. During a long conversation, the president declared himself to be fully in agreement with the import of the Rebirth-Third Paradise symbol, expressing the conviction that it could serve as a guide to the establishment of a new political balance, both locally and globally. A balance indispensable to overcoming the conflicts that divided the world with the Cold War and that are now reemerging in a new form all over the planet. Personally I believe that Cuba is symbolically and practically the place from which to start over. From the following day until November 26, the 1st Rebirth Forum\u2014 Geographies of Transformation was held in Havana. On that occasion we showed that it is possible to set practices of responsible change in motion through art, reconciling the different and opposing positions that condition society and politics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliographie<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Benjamin, Walter, \u00abThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction\u00bb, dans Hannah Arendt, Illuminations<\/em>, New York, Schocken Books, 1969, en ligne, ,https:\/\/web.mit.edu\/allanmc\/www\/benjamin.pdf>, consult\u00e9 le 6 avril 2017. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Grau, Oliver, Virtual art: from illusion to immersion<\/em>, Cambridge, MIT Press,2003, 430 p. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Lynn, Greg, Animate Forms<\/em>. New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1999, 128 p. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Straw, Will, \u00abThe Circulatory Turn\u00bb, dans Barbara Crow, Michael Longford, et Kim Sawchuk,\u00a0The Wireless Spectrum: The Politics, Practices and Poetics of Mobile Media<\/em>, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, p. 17-28. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelangelo Pistoletto\u2019s\u00a0solo exhibition\u00a0held at the\u00a0Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana\u00a0between November 2016 and March 2017, was a celebration of his political, social, and artistic involvement in the Cuban capital, as well as his spatio-temporal aesthetic experimentations with mirroring. The exhibit that closed on March 13 was an ode to Pistoletto\u2019s lifetime\u00a0oeuvre. Two floors … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions\/951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}