Specularity, Media Art as Generative Tool :
Pistoletto in Havana
Eleonora Diamanti
Iudex optimus speculum
“The mirror will be a good judge”
Michelangelo Pistoletto’s solo exhibition held at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana between 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’s lifetime oeuvre. 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’s permanent collection, a signature-exhibiting scheme of this prominent figure of the Arte Povera movement, who likes to put his art in dialogue with museums’ collections and spaces. The wide range of selections included his experimentations of the 1960s and 1970s with objects, materials, and photography: from Oggetti in Meno (Minus Objects, 1965-1966), to his photographic series La Conferenza and Raggi di persone (The conference and People’s rays, 1975). On the way to the museum’s Ancient Art section stood the more emblematic Arte Povera-inspired Venere degli stracci (Venus of the Rags, 1967-1974), a marmoreal white neo-classical status of Venus looking down at an immense pile of colorful rags, that dwarfs her monumentality.
Specularity, Time, and
Techniques
Pistoletto’s 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’s 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
Mirror Cage - Double Square (1975-2007), Two Less One
(2009-2011), Buco Nero (Black Hole, 2010) and Vortice (Vortex
2010-2013). Thirteen less one
is the first mirror series conceived in Havana. It is the result of
Pistoletto’s performance The breaking of the mirror 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’s 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 “the fourth dimension; seen here through the
relationship between the present and memory,” 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.
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’,
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’s main objective was to create an
immersive “moment” 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
Andy Warhol. Unlike
Pop Art, however, Pistoletto’s 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
Walter Benjamin
writes in his well known essay “The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”:
“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. […] 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.” 2
Pistoletto’s Mirror paintings are unique exactly
because of their “presence in time and space,” which is made possible by the
artist’s life-long research into the temporal dimension and participation
through the combination of techniques and media.
Havana Street-life : 18
Mirror Paintings
Following this research into the relationship between
present and past, the 18 Mirror Paintings explicitly conceived
for this exhibit brought Havana’s 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 drives through the streets of the city, mother and daughter
play on a swing, a street-vendor sells peanuts and rositas de mais,
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 – 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 – 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.
As Pistoletto states, one of the themes he aims at
exploring with his mirror paintings, other than time, is “inclusion” – not
only of the viewer, but also of the surrounding environment, making his
artwork a “self-portrait of the world […]in a [constant] interaction between
the photographic image and what happens in the virtual space generated by
the mirroring surface.” (translation from
Quadri specchianti)
Oliver Grau’s essay
on Virtual Art
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:
“Compared with traditional images and their fixed materiality, digital or virtual images are categorically different. […] 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.” 3
Yet, even if different from digital artwork, we can
consider Pistoletto’s mirror paintings as media art which is able to create
a virtual environment through reproducible techniques and digital tools
playing with materials’ 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’s writings, “many virtual environments reduce the observer to a
disembodied state within a Cartesian space that is clear for miles around
and often quite empty.” 4
Such a conception of a Cartesian empty space can be also found in
architecture and design, as architect Greg Lynn
underlines:
“traditionally, 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.” 5
In 18 Mirror Paintings, 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.
Performance and Participation
Together with time and inclusion, participation is
another key feature in Pistoletto’s 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 Galleria
Continua, in an ancient 1950’s movie theatre in Centro Habana’s
Chinatown. In 2014, Pistoletto organized the first Rebirth Forum
“Geographies of Change” in collaboration with the United Nations and local
artists and institutions, establishing the Cuban Rebirth Embassy. Along with
his “diplomatic-artistic” work, a performance inspired by Pistoletto’s
symbol of “Rebirth” (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’s 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.
In 2016, Pistoletto organized the Third Re-birth Forum in Havana, opening his solo exhibition on November 25. A Walking sculpture, inspired by his 1967 Sfera di giornali, 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’ pages, relates to the media aspect of Pistoletto’s 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’s material and bodily elements, prompting an understanding of media, and in this case of media art, as “mobile forms circulating within social space.” 6
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
Galleria continua, where he makes clear his vision of art as a
powerful socio-political generative tool:
“On November 23, 2015,
I was received by Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution? Along with
the artist Kcho. 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—
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.”
Notes
1.
Leon Battista Alberti De
Pictura II, 46-47, cited in: Stoichiță, Victor Ieronim.
1999. A short history of the shadow. London: Reaktion Books, p. 61. My
translation.
2.
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” In:
Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry
Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. (Accessed April 6,
2017).
3.
Grau, Oliver. 2003. Virtual art: from illusion to immersion.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, p. 249.
6.
Straw, Will. 2010. “The Circulatory Turn.” In The Wireless
Spectrum: The Politics, Practices and Poetics of Mobile Media, edited by
Crow Barbara, Longford Michael, and Kim Sawchuk. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, p. 23.
Biography
Eleonora Diamanti is Limited Term Assistant
Professor and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the
Department of
Anthropology, University of Victoria. She was Post-doctoral Fellow in
Urban Humanities at McGill University’s
School of
Architecture from 2014 to 2016. Eleonora holds a doctorate in Semiotics
from the Université du Québec à Montréal
(UQAM). Her PhD thesis won the 2015 Jean-Pierre Collin Award for the
best dissertation in Urban Studies from the National Institute for
Scientific Research/Center for Urbanization, Culture and Society (INRS-UCS,
Montreal). Her research interests focus on urban culture, the
festivalization and aestheticization of contemporary cities, media, night
studies and research-creation.