Fabiola Giancotti interviews Alessandro Taglioni    it • en
(May, 2000)

Has painting a special place in your family?

No, not as far as I know… In my father's family there were musicians, but no painters.

How did you start?

I started drawing when I was small. I just started, and so it went on, without any influence from outside, but also without any upheavals or traumas.

But you went to Art school, so you obviously thought this was your path in life.

I can't remember who took this decision at the end of my secondary school. I think it was me, but both my parents approved.

Had you already produced anything at the time?

The only means I had at the time to communicate was painting and drawing, because I didn't write, I didn't read, I didn't talk. It was the only instrument I used to do things.

Did you go to Art school at Macerata?

No, I was already in Padua.

Did you find it useful?

I went to schools up to a certain point, then I left off. I studied painting at Salzburg, in 1974-5, with Jozé Ciuha, then with Vedova, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. I carried on with my art but in different times, different modes, even leaving off altogether, in the sense that for years I would perhaps not touch it at all. I did other things, especially in the 80s.

Did you produce anything? Did you put on any exhibitions?

Yes, first, up to 1979, and then, from 1990.

What you were doing before — were those in your view academic things, or were they things that you would include in your curriculum?

I carried out various kinds of research, I painted works of various kinds.

What do you mean by research?

I used to paint series of works. Especially figurative works. Works that I do even now.

Figurative? What kind?

I once said that painting goes as far as the 19th century, the end of the 19th century, and then stops. Today we are still waiting for it to start up again. I paint abstract things, which are however situated in the period in between. If I had my way, if I could have full liberty as to what I do, what I have to do, I would be a 19th century-style painter. If I buy a painting, I don't buy one of the 20th century — I buy a 19th century one. I mean, with the knowledge that I now have of painting, I've realised that my reading of painting takes me as far as that period, up to the end of the 19th century, let's say a little bit of the 20th century, and there I stop. I can't go on because I haven't managed to understand yet what happened afterwards. Even though I have drawn up several hypotheses. If I have to do something I do portraits, I do classical drawings with classical paintings, landscapes or portraits, and that's it. That's what I would do.

So where does the urge to do other things come from?

It would be anachronistic to be a 19th century painter and so I choose a kind of compromise: I make use of the structures of the 20th century to organise something. It may happen that stylistically you find some element even doing abstract things, but I have to make a great effort before I manage to find the generosity or the style that I find in classical works and the 19th century. Maybe that's how I found myself having to work this kind of transposition to be able to produce abstract works: creating a language that would permit me to produce abstract works in the guise of portraits and classical works. But I always see a notable difference between the solemnity that I notice in the reading of an ancient work and the writing of a work today.

Situating for the moment the so-called figurative in the 19th century and the so-called abstract in the 20th century, are there linguistic or stylistic comparisons between the figurative and abstract, or are they different things?

They're different things. The abstract is not an element or a limited language per se in principle, but that is how it presented itself in the 20th century, according to me. It presented itself as something absolutely not read for the moment, not read and not readable, however ultra-commented upon it might be.

You are referring to the form, to what has been called abstractism, but the abstract, abstraction…

Yes, I am referring to form, to the philosophy that there is in doing art, to the policy that invests art in all its aspects. Art is not only a question of aesthetics…

At first glance your works in these last years could be called abstract — do you retain that they are situated in your experience and that in some way they determine it?

It's only one aspect, and as an aspect, yes, certainly, it can constitute an experience. It happens that my "abstract" works have to respond to this classical instance. I must absolutely read you the lessons that I have gradually learnt from classical works. If I find this reference, even in an abstract work, mine or someone else's, then yes.

So more than a compromise it's an opening, an element with which the experience proceeds.

In fact there's also a question of quality. But in the meantime there's the quantity. Let us grant that I do a hundred drawings and among these there is one, or there are two or three, and this in itself is proof. For me both when I read works by other authors, and when I am involved, it always works like that. In among a hundred, two hundred works, I choose two: I "choose" between inverted commas. But I must admit that those two are really two.

Two works?

Two works. But, if you like, this is an even more selective approach. The reading perhaps is yet another…

Each of the works that you are doing now is anyhow in the text.

Yes, definitely.

Those two works could be here, or in another series…

Art is not sectional, it regards above all the canvas, the frame… but it's not the exclusive of the painter.

Let's come back to your studies. When did you realise that this was the way of viewing the 19th century?

I didn't do one thing and then another, or vice versa. I just found myself doing them. When I was in secondary school — it was the seventies — hyper-realism suddenly appeared, which for those who happened to be studying at the time was anyway a curiosity, but also a kind of exercise, trying yourself out for the real job of being a painter. A bit at a time you discover classical painters (those who start very early studying painting don't know the classical painters yet, haven't seen the works of the Renaissance properly, indeed don't know anything except what they have there in front of them and what the teacher shows them). But I discovered them very late.

Do you think the project was already there?

In respect to the project there are various lines of approach: one is that of comprehending, understanding the issue of production at both an artistic and cultural level. How do you arrive at production, how do you reach quality and what are the things that intervene a little at a time, where are they situated, where can they be looked for, how do they have to be looked for and with who, understanding what the essential references are and who we set up as precursors, or as masters of thought and art. And so you follow these lines which do not refer exclusively to painting.

But these are linguistic elements that take place in a typography with which you then do writing, art, painting… What is your typography?

There are types that regard production, the actual product. What is type? We find it in the steadiness and firmness of this gesture, this sign and not this other one, not out of choice, not via semiotics, but through typography, the writing of type. Then there are types that regard the path and others that regard culture, the cultural and scientific aspect, and also invention. There are various things. You have to arrive at a whole constellation of things. Then, as regards a work, a drawing, an oil painting, a water-colour, you have to find a way of showing it, even by putting on an exhibition… it's all part of typography. All this I consider extremely distant from the age, as this age in which we find ourselves treats art and culture: that is, with barbarity.

In respect to the artist, understanding his typography is a way of reading his work. But how does the artist acquire his typography?

The artist can be both director and protagonist, but usually artists are not like that, not the artists that are hanging about the planet today. The figure of the post-modern or New age artist is what's fashionable today, that is, the figure of the technician, and nothing more. It means that there are these young or not so young painters, super-specialised, that rarely become type. There is an emphasis on the technical and there is no machine. Technical without the machine, as happens in most industrialised countries, there's the production of technology, but it is tiring or impossible to find even the smallest curiosity in these works. The problem is this: how do we combine technique with the machine? In other words, the Pacific and Atlantic with the Mediterranean. In America, in Japan and Europe we are really clever with technology but there is no machine. None of us knows what art is, in the Mediterranean, in Italy, perhaps, I say perhaps, we have a slight advantage and can contribute to the understanding of a problem which today is becoming much more interesting, global, above all with the contribution of Oriental art, which is becoming more and more interesting.
There is no facing, acceptance or refusal of the ideological, metaphysical or bureaucratic apparatus. The various apparatuses, the various systems simply no longer exist and so we can start to write something.

How did thus come about?

At a certain point, there's a decision, so you find you have to do something, that is, you do something, a decision that takes place independently of what you want or don't want, and which tells you that this is the thing now. You can be wrong or not be wrong, it's not the fact that there is this decision that assures you that you are not wrong. There may be a time in which you do not seem to find this decision, in which case you are as if dead.

And when you produce a work bearing in mind the decision and the urgency, does that work come to a conclusion.

The conclusion comes with the fabula. If I say that this work is completed, if I set about describing it, it's all a question of anecdotes and novellas, which are ways of trying to tell oneself how things happen.

Can you say that you have had masters?

Not particularly, except for gymnastics at the level of stylistic education, education in style can take place with everyone, that is, everyone can have something that requires a reading, just as every text requires to be read. If there is a text, even if it doesn't belong to a master, I read it.

Master, or writer, or just an interlocutor.

I may appreciate or not appreciate the text, but that doesn't mean that I can't read it… There's a kind of automatic reaction that makes me read it.

Is the reading situated in the research?

The research is constant. But, at a certain point, there is something that I think belongs to the sacred and then there is a kind of outlet there, a mooring point. To remain in the sphere of painting, it's like testimony. But that's not enough, you must give back the quality of that testimony. It's not enough for you to perceive that there is something absolute there, something important, you must manage to, I don't say re-write but, say that it is there. Recount it in short, even though it is not really very simple to recount. There is also a question of disposition, I believe, a disposal to listen, even if I don't know how to explain it. If you have this disposition you are able to listen to a conference or to enter an art gallery. To visit a museum, or carry out any act in life: either you are disposed to listen or you walk past things. When you meet a master it is not a question of illumination; if you are disposed to listen you can't not be able to understand that there is an intellectual need. If you are already reading a book you can't not read this one too or that one, if you have the chance to read them.

How does the name Alessandro Taglioni function?

The name functions by doing. It's already there in the decision. You find yourself doing. So it's you that's the avant garde, and the same is true for whoever works with you. It's not that you are the avant garde and then there is someone else that's the rearguard.

And solitude? When you find yourself working, when you find yourself thinking, when you have to say something and transmit a message, do you feel solitude in any way?

Yes, because I find myself with new things, new for me too. When you find yourself doing, and in this doing there's something that wasn't there before, then you have no company, that is, there's nobody with you that has already done this thing and can share it, because it has no precedent.

How does one write solitude?

Solitude is a condition of risking, risking doing. Where there is doing there is risk, but already there is solitude, anxiety… and despair. And then, whoever finds himself reading must find pleasure, and this implies that there is pleasure in writing too, but the struggle comes before writing. This does not mean that the battle is avoided but that writing, and reading, must be as much as possible without complacency. From these works I try to remove the formal aspect, formalisation not in the sense of writing but of composition, the compositional aspect, with the express purpose of removing the complacency… These works are not formal or formalised, they are stratified drawings that are written layer upon layer, and each new layer cancels the preceding one. In this canvas, entitled In flight, there are ten layers, but I could have stopped at the fifth whereas I went on: I made the sixth, the seventh… up to ten layers.

Is there a design for these works?

No, sometimes I do a sketch.

But then do you follow it?

Not always.

When you do a work do you ever go back to it?

No, once it's finished, that's it.

Do you ever add or take anything away?

Take away, no. And neither do I add. Sometimes I can still look at some works, or I can't.

What do you mean?

That I may approve or not approve.

Is there any special element in this approval?

It's just a question of considering the work successful, or not.

And do you sign all your works?

No, not all: of the signed ones, many have the signature on the back.

And do you always give titles?

No. Sometimes the titles come after. Or there's the theme of a series. For example, this series has as a pretext the theme of the wave and water, but other elements may get added in the series.

The theme of water is not new.

No. There's also the cross now. In many of these canvases, the cross has been added to the waves and water.

Is a reading of your works possible through the titles?

No.

Chronologically?

For me who paint them. As I paint them I base myself on an approach, a line of reasoning. Whoever on the other hand reads them, whoever finds himself in front of them, follows a different kind of reasoning, I suppose.

If you had to suggest an order for your works, what work would you start from?

I can't say. I think a reading must bear the passage of time in mind. Works of thirty year ago have characteristics that are of the present, there may be things that have improved, but you note the experience, not the development. There is no development. Painting is a sign, starting from a sign, then there is the drawing, then the ideogram… perhaps there's an alphabet. Painting, to become writing, certainly requires another time. It is anyhow a hieroglyphic — the Egyptian hieroglyphics were elaborated, sculpted, written, drawn, painted. Three thousand years ago there were good reasons for their being used, then reading was lost, and to re-find it there was need for more time. The same happens with the kind of writing that is called painting. For example, Capogrossi used to make simple drawings, elementary, we don't know what the idea was, but in his work there's an ideogram, there's a letter, a symbol: in respect to these elements the establishment of another time allows the reading, but this does not necessarily happen immediately, when you find yourself in front of the work for the first time.

So what you are saying is that the sequence is not chronological?

You need time for reading, but time is not chronological in the sense that time is not a contemporaneous thing. Another example is an old painting like Titian's Concerto campestro which seems to be easy: it's a beautiful work, extremely classical. We however are led to read it according to our present canon and so we attribute things to it that are different from those that were attributed to it in the age in which it was painted. There were definitely other symbols, other allegories, that we are ignorant of now. And yet the work is still the same…

You were saying something about composition. Regarding a work of the 16th century it might seem easier to find the elements of composition, but in the 20th century it's different. Composition, ordering and order — what are these in your works?

Composition is a test in respect to the layer. There are layers that you don't see, that look as if they have been cancelled, and it seems possible that something can be cancellable or that it can be forgotten. There's one drawing and there's another drawing written over the first one: it can be something that combines with the preceding drawing, something that counters it or tries to remove it. And it's like that time and time again. This is how my work proceeds. It's something strange, which doesn't however mean anything complicated.

Every layer, even if it has been cancelled, is there. It makes up the work.

Yes, definitely.

Are the biography of the artist, the details and elements of his experience, useful for a reading of that artist?

The work above all. The work doesn't have any need for a biography, even though the life of the person who did it counts a lot, without doubt.

Unless the life, the biography itself, are not a work of art? Or unless the work is just one element in the writing of the life?

If it's part of the text, if there's the life of the author in the text, if there's the author's work, in this sense yes; in another sense the biography may even be unnecessary because anyway there's the work.

And vice versa. If you had to give a reading of the terms that have appeared in the 20th century to indicate certain artistic movements, what could you say?

First of all, what is interesting about painting is that it is a kind of writing, in the sense that we find ourselves in front of something that requires an effort, an intellectual involvement. In the 20th century there has been a kind of cultural overturning. There are definitely great distinctions to be made: there has been a category of painting and movements that have operated with the express purpose of creating propaganda, ideology, anti-intellectualism, and then there are people who despite the age in which they have worked have tried to do something interesting. No doubt that here in Italy we had an advantage, we had many privileges at a historical level, let's say going back a bit, more than France, or America.
There have been many mystifications, for example impressionism is one, and so is dadaism. Perhaps cubism produced something interesting. Metaphysics, I would say, is in many aspects a load of bad taste. Magritte and surrealism have some curious things in them… The 20th century has been lived with the deadly idea that art is the triumph of subjectivism and so the artist has been free to do and undo. At this point all aesthetics has gelled round automatism, the freedom to do anything, write anything. We should try to read the 20th century and make sure that the patrimony and classical heredity that the 20th century took from is not cancelled out.
Today it's all technology of communication, digital systems, the Internet, but perhaps the essential thing is to make sure that everything is not forgotten.

How can we do that?

The way is cultural, above all. The digital, and everything it involves, is a utensil and can be useful for writing, art and memory. With digital and virtual it looks as if the object is removed, but it's not. The image is thrown into relief, an image that may constitute not only a reference, but the work itself. I am convinced that the digital and the Internet were invented to exalt the question of memory.