Dear Shaded Viewers,
in the 21st century Art is becoming a business more "business" than fashion. And fashion knows it. Rich people and rich fashion companies are the new Maecenas of the arts. Olafur Eliasson, in one week, got pages on the best magazines (like the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine), BECAUSE he’s working for Vuitton. The poor independent bohemian artist (an original character of the last two centuries) is completely extinguished.
Traditional (and NOT innovative) fashion brands use art.
Not for their design but for their communication. Not all of them, of course. I wish every non-innovative fashion company in Italy had its own art foundation… Milan would be more interesting than New York or Basel. Only Prada and Trussardi, here, are doing something in this direction.
Beatrice Trussardi (heir and chief of Trussardi company, with her mother Maria Luisa) understood the trend many years ago and, instead of buying a building for art exhibitions, she choosed – every six months – a different location in the city. The last one was a big fascist building just beside the Duomo. Now, the old warehouses of a small train station in Porta Genova area. I think it’s a nice way of being a patron of the arts, for the city you live in.
Massimiliano Gioni, the young curator (I think he’s less than 30), has always done well. Now the focus is on Paola Pivi, milanese, 35 years old. She does "sensational" art. Like Maurizio Cattelan or Martin Creed. It works. It’s like a joke, you know… Putting in an ancient train station dozens of living animals, all white. Or an airplane upside down. She did a photograph of a donkey on a boat in the middle of the ocean. She puts things in places they’re not supposed to be. It works.
There’s – thank God – some irony. It’s not like designing little smiling eyes on a purse every bourgeois woman will want the next day. And the crowd lining up last night was not the typical crowd of a fashion happening, not even an art audience. I saw many cool people, just curious. It was more or less like a concert. It’s a strange mix: Trussardi and "these" people. It was more "off" than a Fondazione Prada audience. What is going on here?
I wont feel ashamed of the Trussardi sailing bag my mother just got me for my 30th birthday now!
It works! 🙂
Later,
BM
