Johan & Levi

Known primarily as a visual artist, Mike Kelley was in actual fact an irrepressible, multifaceted figure. In addition to using the most varied means of expression, from drawing to video, performance and installation, he often went beyond the traditional boundaries of the work by incorporating writing in the creative process and producing statements and texts of various kinds. Above all, he broke down the barrier that traditionally exists between the roles of the critic and the artist. It is by focusing on these parallel pathways of action and word and highlighting their powers of reciprocal cross-fertilization that the author addresses questions such as Kelley’s collaboration in the artistic and musical fields, e.g. with Paul McCarthy and as a member of the Destroy All Monsters noise band, his interest in the aesthetic of ufology, his obsession with rag toys, the importance of authority and memory in his art, and what can be regarded as a key turning point in his work and thought, namely the uncanny, Freud’s Unheimliche, to which he devoted an important show. An artist, curator, writer, interviewer, critic, musician active on the alternative scene and many other things, Mike Kelley was one of the most original artists of our time.

I think that the solution to the possible conflict between Busci as architect and as painter lies in this original dialectic, a kind of obstacle course: the redemption, sublimation and evanescence of the pictorial sign as against the harshness of reality.The delicate strokes of a deft calligrapher delineating dark gleams, nocturnal lights, hypnotic monochrome landscapes of obscure foreboding. A dark vision of the urban drama of the world. A sort of de Pisis in reverse, where the gracefully choreographic movements of the entranced artist's brush give way to scenarios of metropolitan apocalypse with monochrome lyrical and theatrical overtones.

In his works Adrian Paci creates stories in pictures that blend the uniqueness of everyday experience with the history of painting, film and literature. He reflects on issues like loss and migration: people abandoning their homelands and embarking on a quest for a personal and geographical alternative. Paci works with photography, sculpture and video, using different techniques and materials which enable him to achieve considerable freedom of expression and style.Against the backdrop of these narratives he often inserts or simply evokes the presence of one or more female figures that do not appear to play a distinct role but rather embody a mystery that the artist chooses not to reveal. But what is the role of the female figure in this fascinating visual era?She sprang a desire to explore this aspect of Paci's work by analysing a selection of works on the theme. The book, which features a new piece by the artist, is the result of a dialogue between Paci and Paola Nicolin: an opportunity to reflect on the visible or invisible presence of a female figure that adds a human element to the narrative. In Paci's art women are often entrusted with the task of preserving memories and traditions, and being the focal point for the interwoven stories that contribute to constructing our constantly shifting identity: the alternation of crisis, alienation, abandonment and return that characterises human existence.

Marco Petrus's work is a dizzying chromatic and compositional swirl soon transmuted into a journey through the buildings of countless cities, to which the trained eye will be able to assign names and precise paternity from one painting to the next. An opportunity for recognition but also surprise, for an unusual view of something known that the artist's mimetic ability is able to recreate on canvas. A walk through Helsinki, Milan, Marseilles and Naples but above all through the nuances and geometrics of an authentic ideal atlas of 20th-century and contemporary architecture.

It was in the 1970s that the Argentinean video maker David Lamelas began producing specific works based on long periods of residence in various European cities. This book is devoted to the “People of Milan” project undertaken in 1970 specifically for a solo show at the Galleria Françoise Lambert in Milan. The continuous flow of a four-minute film minutely documenting the passersby and events on the busy high street of Via Orefici is juxtaposed with eleven photographs, taken at regular intervals over the same period of time. The publication, of a markedly artistic character, presents the famous artist’s “Milanese period” through a combination of images from the video and observations by Lamelas on his Italian experience.

What is an image and why have images become so important in our daily lives? And what does the gaze mean? Federico Ferrari reflects on our society of images and the cadenced relationship between words and pictures, a relationship that forges our horizon. He focuses on the use made of images and the world they create, and how the gaze refracts: a single vision of the world, a single measure is impossible. The contemporary image calls for a new definition of the gaze, which springs from the unique nature of each vision and is also capable of embracing its plurality. As the number of possible visions is by definition infinite, what really counts is what underpins them and is therefore common to them all. To borrow the terms of set theory, it is an empty set that appears null but also contains something: our gaze. The force that precedes us and is remains open, capable of going beyond all possible visions, all given images. The empty set of the gaze and the power of vision.

This book is in the first in a series produced in partnership with Miart, the Milan art fair that in 2013 launched a new international outlook, opening up to design and architecture. The book brings together the internationally renowned architect and designer Andrea Branzi, and Alessandro Rabottini, art critic and head curator of the Bergamo Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, who has long been interested in Branzi’s work. The close dialogue between the two has led to the creation of this artist’s book for Miart 2013, which focuses on the designer in particular.

Andy Warhol superstar traces the artist’s activities “on screen”, from his films and adverts to television appearances.This side of his career was what definitively confirmed his superstar status and led to him being both revered and hated to the point of assassination attempts. The book explores his experiences in this sphere and the figures who accompanied him and came to represent an integral part of the Warhol milieu, first and foremost his muse Edie Sedgwick. Theatre expert Luca Scarlini investigates Warhol’s multiple identities: his phobias, contradictions and aspirations regarding his image and the production of works for the small screen and the big screen, against a backdrop of pop culture and camp, the kitsch-dominated scenario of the 60s and 70s.

Fifty years after the first Arte Programmata (Programmed Art) exhibition in Milan, 1962, the author offers a reflection on what remains of a Neo-avant-garde experiment that sought to combine theory of perception with industrial production. Initiated by Bruno Munari, presented by Umberto Eco, and sponsored by Olivetti, Arte Programmata was not only an Italian movement traceable to the broader world of kinetic art. It was also a real attempt to define the field of art in an industrial and urban society, on the basis of the then brand new concept of “programming”. A concept pivotal to the debate among intellectuals linked to Olivetti, then a forerunner in the field of small electronic processors. After a long period of oblivion and silence, Arte Programmata has now found new favour and aroused renewed critical, historical and market interest. Why is this happening? What makes that school still relevant today? What kind of nostalgic movement or revival is it currently triggering? The author’s adroit analysis passes seamlessly from the 1960s to the present, seeking to establish the reasons for this lasting success. At the same time, it investigates  the possibilities of a utopia linked to the concept of “industrial art”, while considering that definition of “art”:  the real reason for the movement’s transcending the half-century that has passed since its birth.

For at least a decade now, the Western art system has found itself faced in the international arena with new players who appear to want to play according to rules of their own making. The first inklings of change came in the 1980s, when art became a financial opportunity of global potential. Thanks to the use of more accessible languages, postmodern art appealed to increasingly vast audiences, prospering as it expanded onto new terrain: the soaring art market paved the way for the artwork becoming a status symbol, and a broadening of horizons to include countries like China, Russia and India, in search of recognition on the Western stage. The euphoria of that period, however, was soon dampened by the current climate of uncertainty, caused by the break-up of the old system and the declassing of its constituent parts – the intellectual component (the critics, who lent legitimacy to artistic practices) and the institutional component (the museums, which conserved the works for posterity). The current measure of success is the speculative spirit – in all senses – of the new players, who, with the ease of those used to wielding hefty amounts of capital, lay down the law in the closed circuit of gallery-collector-auction house-museum. Even artists, previously the system’s driving force, risk being reduced to the status of mere cogs in the machine. Well aware of the setting they operate in, they have acquiesced to the impoverishment brought about by globalisation: while in the past they sought to innovate, now they stick firmly to linguistic standards that are instantly recognisable in all corners of the globe. In this short work of global scope, which surveys the past in order to have insight into the complex transformations under way in the present, Marco Meneguzzo identifies the dividing line between before and after, namely between art as exclusive and elitist and art as a popular, globalised phenomenon, envisaging a future that wavers between a soft process of change in the art system and the conception of art itself, and a more apocalyptic scenario.

Begun in 2006 and closed down by the authorities three years later, the blog of the artist and architect Ai Weiwei came to attention at the international level as one of the most courageous cultural and political acts in contemporary China. An implacable critic of the ruling class in the tradition of the “public intellectuals” of the 20th century, Ai took up in his writings the demands for pluralism stifled in bloodshed in Tiananmen Square in 1989, using the Internet to protest against the material and moral consequences – concealed by the regime’s propaganda – of the Chinese model of development: the lack of political rights, the savage exploitation of labour, the destruction of the environment and historical memory, the violent repression of minorities, the arrogance and impunity of the rich and powerful, and the rigid control over public opinion. Defying censorship, Ai Weiwei created an unprecedented form of civil and cultural resistance. His posts alternate criticism and protest, discuss the latest artistic developments, mercilessly expose official hypocrisy and use humour and polemical verve to lay bare the lies, cynicism and resignation inculcated by an establishment that combines paternalism and harsh repression to keep its citizens in a state of eternal infancy in which the rituals of consumerism have replaced the permanent mobilization of Mao’s era. Now translated into Italian, Ai Weiwei’s blog also constitutes proof of the power of art as a tool of resistance and regeneration. Renewing the impulse of the modern avant-garde, his digital diary becomes a means of collective mobilization, a “social sculpture” that transcends the boundaries of traditional creativity to raise urgent questions about the role and responsibility of the artist, the spectator and indeed all of us. A living sculpture, an agent of transformation of the world thanks to which the dimension of the multitude that characterizes our social field can acquire self-awareness and discover its strength, finding the essential value of truth once again and with it the possibility of a different time and space in keeping with the needs of more complete and freer human beings.

Island: the word conjures up isolated places we nonetheless seek to reach, touching the realm of the real and the imaginary, the concrete and the abstract. It inspires a myriad of artistic, cultural, linguistic, philosophical and musical reflections, a flow of sensations and stimuli that spring and spread from an idea and a place. Remo Salvadori is our guide to this infinite world, drawing on a project he carried out on Isola Comacina, an island that the King of Belgium gifted to Italy in 1920, and which was then entrusted to the Brera Academy to create a place for artistic and cultural events. The Academy’s project for developing Isola Comacina was guided by the atmospheric photographs of the island taken by Paola di Bello. Remo Salvadori, artist and lecturer, worked for two consecutive years with Academy students on the concept of island, as a destination and meeting place, gathering the works of 80 young artists. He then set about involving more than 50 writers, asking them to contribute a piece of writing about the idea of island. The result is a unique publication that alternates text and images, combining an educational programme with artistic projects, and bringing together poetry and conceptual developments, reflections and visual pleasure. The contributors include Alfredo Albiani, Flavio Ambrosini, Stefano Andi, Haim Baharier, Susanna Janina Baumgartner, Marco Biraghi, Sofia Boffardi, Roberto Borghi, Enric Bou, Giovanni Bruno e Francesca Varalli, Angelo Capasso, Letizia Cariello, Alessandro Carrera, Laura Cherubini, Antonella Commellato, Francesco Correggia, Bettina Della Casa, Paola Di Bello, Alessandro Di Pietro, Roberto Favaro, Rachele Ferrario, Massimo Venturi Ferriolo, Giuliano Fuortes, Romano Gasparotti, Daniele Geminiani, Giovanni Iovane, Gérard-Georges Lemarie, Sandro Levi, Elisabetta Longari, Giorgio Magni, Marco Magni, Olivia Mair Cacciari, Daniele Nani, Giovanni Ozzola, Loredana Parmesani, Gianluca Poldi, Isabella Puliafito, Elena Quarestani, Roberto Rossi Roberti, Carla Sanguineti, Monica Scaccabarozzi, Cesare Serratto, Tetsuro Shimizu, Pier Luigi Tazzi, Ida Terracciano, Roberto Tresoldi, Francesca Valli and Luca Vitone.