MEN ABOUT ROME
ENZO CUCCHI
INTERVIEW BY LUCA LO PINTO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PIOTR NIEPSUJ
OUT NOW
ISSUE 43 FW23
KALEIDOSCOPE's Fall/Winter 2023 issue launches with a set of six covers. Featuring Sampha, Alex Katz, Harmony Korine, a report into the metamorphosis of denim, a photo reportage by Dexter Navy, and a limited-edition cover by Isa Genzken.
Also featured in this issue: London-based band Bar Italia (photography by Jessica Madavo and interview by Conor McTernan), the archives of Hysteric Glamour (photography by Lorenzo Dalbosco and interview by Akio Kunisawa), Japanese underground illustrator Yoshitaka Amano (words by Alex Shulan), Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (photography by Nicolas Poillot and interview by Daria Miricola), a survey about Japan’s new hip-hop scene starring Tohji (photography by Taito Itateyama and words by Ashley Ogawa Clarke), Richard Prince’s new book “The Entertainers” (words by Brad Phillips), “New Art: London” (featuring Adam Farah-Saad, Lenard Giller, Charlie Osborne, R.I.P. Germain, and Olukemi Ljiadu photographed by Bolade Banjo and interviewed by Ben Broome).
FROM THE CURRENT ISSUE
ESCAPE TO MIAMI
The most southernly city in the US, Miami exists in the tropical recesses of the American imagination: land of celebrity, thunderstorms, Tony Montana, and Art Deco architecture. Here, we meet the latest generation of Miamians—committed radicals in the fields of art, fashion, and music, who are dreaming up new narratives for the city they call home.
NEW ART: LONDON
The art world’s compulsion to categorize by the yardstick of “hot or not” has historically been the driving force behind the market and the gallery system. Commerce is intertwined with this metric, spurred on by the insatiable appetite to find talented young things to build up. This system is uninteresting: what’s in vogue rarely reflects those operating at the cutting edge. Who are those young emerging artists making work against all odds—work that is difficult and costly to make, store, exhibit, move, and sell? These five individuals typify this path. Working across video, sound, installation, and sculpture, they march onwards, carving out their own niche—exhibiting in empty shop spaces one day and major institutions the next. For them, making is guided by urgency, and persistence is motivated by blind faith.
SARA SADIK
KALEIDOSCOPE hosted a solo exhibition by Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (b. 1994, Bordeaux), in November 2023 at Spazio Maiocchi in Milan, with the support of Slam Jam. Inspired by videogames, anime, science fiction, and French rap, Sara Sadik’s work explores the reality and fantasies of France’s Maghrebi youth, addressing issues of adolescence, masculinity, and social mythologies. Her work across video, performance, and installation often centers on male characters, using computer-generated scenarios to transform their condition of marginalization into something optimistic and poetic.
FROM THE SHOP
FROM THE ARCHIVE
MANIFESTO
In 2023, from June 22 to June 24 during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, KALEIDOSCOPE and GOAT presented the new edition of our annual arts and culture festival, MANIFESTO. Against the unique setting of the French Communist Party building, a modern architectural landmark designed by legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the festival will bring together visionary creators from different areas of culture across three days of art, fashion and sound. The 2024 edition will run from June 21 to June 23.
CAPSULE PLAZA
In April 2023, a year after the launch of the magazine, Capsule introduced Capsule Plaza, a new initiative that infuses new energy into Milan Design Week by redefining the design showcase format. A hybrid between a fair and a collective exhibition, Capsule Plaza brings together designers and companies from various creative fields, bridging industry and culture with a bold curation that spans interiors and architecture, beauty and technology, ecology and craft. The 2024 edition will run from April 15 to April 21.
Certain types of painting evade distinct categorization: the moment you try to pin them down, you notice something in the corner of the canvas that makes you delete your previously held notions. That applies to Italian painter Enzo Cucchi. After a life spent at the center of the Roman artist community, having built a pathway between American neo-expressionism and the Renaissance, where does the septuagenariansee himself, his work, and his city?
Luca Lo Pinto:
Rome has always welcomed foreign artists, as in your case. The artists born and raised in Rome are few, like Tano Festa or Franco Angeli for instance.
Enzo Cucchi:
Tano’s mother was from Emilia. At the beginning he lived with his mother in her house with only one room and a kitchen. It was both tragic and beautiful to see this physically challenged man staying at this old woman’s house. He had an incredible exhibition at Luciano Pistoi’s Galleria dell’Oca. Initially, Luciano actually really supported me and Sandro [Chia] as well. Transavantgarde didn’t exist yet.
I arrived in Rome in 1977. I didn’t know anybody. Sandro and I always spent day and night together. At that time, thanks to Pistoi, I was lucky enough to meet Cesare Brandi, who was a legend for me. We went to a trattoria in Via del Babuino. Cesare asked me, “Where are you from, boy?” “I'm from the Marche,” I answered, and he replied “Mm, a young Raffaellino.” I looked at him and said, “I hate him.” He walked over to the table and patted me: “Because you are still a child! I hated him at your age, too, but now I love him." I think that this is the greatest lesson in art history.
LLP:
When did you move to Rome on a permanent basis?
EC:
I moved when my son was born and his mother was here. When she was still in the Marche, I was part of Nuova Foglio Editrice and I was mostly hanging out with poets. I had been kicked out of all the schools in Italy, but that was my passion. I had produced a couple of books. One was called Il veleno è stato sollevato e trasportato (The poison was extracted and transported). That was how they came to know me in Rome. It wasn’t easy to make an exhibition, because, at first, I didn’t want to do anything. The only thing I did was at the Incontri Internazionali.
LLP:
What did you do?
EC:
I exhibited two huge wall canvases. There I met Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gino de Dominicis, and Emilio Prini.
LLP:
What were their reactions?
EC:
Gino said, “Ah, but you draw?,” as if to say, “Are you a fool? Do you make drawings?”
LLP:
It was a phase in which conceptual art was waning.
EC:
I don’t know about that. For me, it never even emerged. Our Arte Povera friends were very aggressive towards me, Sandro, and Francesco [Clemente].
LLP:
You were a guy who came from the provinces….
EC:
Yes, exactly! And I’m not ashamed of it. Rome is a city of a thousand provinces put together. Yet many artists came to Rome because they were ashamed of being provincial, probably because they weren’t good artists. There’s nothing wrong with that—it's a blessing not to be a good artist. At least you don’t give everyone else a hard time.
LLP:
What was the art scene like when you arrived in Rome? On the one hand there were the Arte Povera artists, but also Schifano, Festa, and Angeli. Was there a dialogue?
EC:
They were snubbing the Arte Povera artists. Sandro and I used to hang out with Tano. Angeli was very boring. Mario [Schifano] was a person that liked to have everything under control for a thousand reasons—a decent person, very inquisitive and interesting.
LLP:
I wonder if these worlds intersected with those of the poets.
EC:
There was Sandro Penna, an exceptional being who lived with the help of Angeli, Festa, and Schifano. The real problem in the 1980s was the incredible jealousy and resentment that manifested towards us when we started exhibiting in Germany, in America.
LLP:
When was your first time in New York?
EC:
I think it was for a group show at the Guggenheim in the early 1980s.
LLP:
What relationship did you have with the painters of the New York scene? Salle, Fischl, Bleckner, and Schnabel were slightly younger than you.
EC:
They were dazzled. I remember at the beginning there was a misunderstanding between Julian Schnabel and I after I told him, “Look at Italian painting as if you are seeing the Madonna for the first time.”
They were enthralled by us because we provided a pathway back to Titian or the Renaissance. An American artist who looks at Titian’s Resurrezione (The Resurrection) is arrested. We can continue that path because we are used to the idea that everything resurrects. Our psychology is built that way because of time and the good fortune of being near a source of selection, which does not necessarily mean we are better at it. Painting is generous because it has the ability to incorporate even things that come from afar.
LLP:
Was there a dialogue with the New York artists?
EC:
It was difficult for me, because I didn’t speak the language but I sensed being supported. You would have an exhibition and find these people with an enthusiasm and pleasure that doesn’t exist today. You could feel the emotion. They sensed that we had something else.
LLP:
Compared to the American neo-expressionist painters, the language of your and Chia’s painting was strongly tied to the object. You came up with an iconography without a mimetic relationship with reality.
EC:
That’s very true. We weren’t thinking about anything. There was something in the air. It was a matter of taking it and putting it down.
LLP:
I am curious to know what your perception is of the differences between the two cities. Compared to Rome, New York was a big metropolis.
EC:
New York is the only city where it still makes sense to go one day even if several friends tell me it has lost a lot. Just as one cannot explain the ignorance in a sacred city like Rome. It’s almost unimaginable that someone could pass by the Pantheon and not look up and read “M. AGRIPPA.” It’s like not looking at the stars or the moon. Most people walk with their heads down looking at their cell phones. If you keep doing this in a sacred place, you don’t understand a fucking thing anymore, you get bored to death. I want to remain curious and understand what you can still do at the level of emotion.
LLP:
It is a city that is perhaps frightening because of its cynicism that comes from having seen everything pass before its eyes.
EC:
All roads lead to Rome. That means everyone comes here. We all go where it makes sense for us, where the sky and the stars are so vast that we too have the possibility of evolving and or being seen. Rome cannot be told or described. It’s a lesson.
LLP:
However, in telling the story, we often fall into the rhetoric of ruins and decadence.
EC:
Decadence, within this sacred territory, is a privilege. Perhaps the only city that has managed to rebuild its identity is New York. They have managed to build, through a decadence, a national identity. In Rome we are already in our seventh or eighth decadence. Only a sacred place can do that. How, I don’t know. It’s the height of privilege. It’s like poetry: it’s there in the moment that it’s needed, it has the capacity to be an image, and it transforms it. Decadence has that energy: the quality of transforming.
LLP:
The community that lives in Rome today is very different from the one when you arrived here.
EC:
Yes and no. Compared to those of the past, I have to admit that today’s artists are more delicate, more fragile. For me, fragility has a value. The artists from Arte Povera are much worse than artists of today. Young artists don’t give a damn—why should a young artist care about these things? Simply because they are young, you can spite them only by wasting their time.
LLP:
It’s even more difficult today, because there’s the burden of technological interaction.
EC:
I’m disconnected. Over the last few days, I have been in total solitude, with the privilege of looking at a tree, a stretch of countryside, and the sea. It would be incredible to be able to see myself looking this way; it goes on like a dream that leads nowhere but is full of wonder and mystery. I wish I could be myself watching myself.
LLP:
Taking a step backwards, I wanted to ask you how the collaboration with Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons for the legendary Six magazine came about?
EC:
It came about because I saw the first issue and informed her that she was 100 times better than any art editor. It was the only magazine that evolved with respect to Interview. I was full of admiration for her, which she reciprocated. When she asked me to participate in the issue, I told her, “Okay, but art has to authorize fashion.” It’s not the fashion and lifestyle magazine that has to authorize art but the other way around. Kawakubo is an exceptional woman, the smartest of that whole generation.
LLP:
Did you meet her?
EC:
Yes, she was living in Paris. There was a critical attitude towards me for collaborating with fashion. At the 1996 Biennale Arte/Moda in Florence curated by Germano Celant, artists collaborated with designers on the pavilions. She asked me if I could be in charge of the set design, but I refused because I am not a set designer. It makes me smile to think that Celant himself was critical of me when I contributed to Six.
“All roads lead to Rome. That means everyone comes here. We all go where the sky and the stars are so vast that we have the possibility of evolving. Rome cannot be told or described. It’s a lesson.”
LLP:
The issue of Six to which you contributed is from 1990. Although fashion had already been cleared through customs for years within the art world (think of Ingrid Sischy's enlightening direction at Artforum), there was such an aversion to these contaminations. It makes me chuckle, especially when thinking of the current situation where fashion has subdued art, and two of the greatest contemporary fashion designers, Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela, are acting as artists.
Speaking of forays into other worlds, tell me about your collaboration and friendship with Ettore Sottsass
EC:
It’s both embarrassing and impressive to think how much the whole world loves Ettore but Italy didn’t allow him to make anything public, except for Malpensa Airport, which his studio did. The only public work is the Chiostro della Pace that we did together with the University of Salerno. They had invited me to make a site-specific work, and I decided to involve him. With Hector, we also made a sui generis magazine called I Disuguali.
LLP:
Going back to the sacredness of the image, today we’re surrounded by this hyper-production of photographs, bordering on pornography. Growing up in a place like Rome, which is a continuous layering of images and stories, is like a giant filter. For image-makers, it makes you feel doubly empowered.
EC:
It’s a salvation.
LLP:
I’ve always imagined Rome as a great jellyfish capable of hypnotizing you even if you try to look away.
EC:
There’s a video of a dialogue between Alberto Moravia and Amelia Rosselli where they discuss a painting by Scipio called La Cortigiana Romana (The Roman Courtesan). For Moravia, that woman there is really Rome.
It’s a privilege to live in this city, but an adult sees only the toil and problems of the city. Rome has something fragile, something exciting, something eager—all those cravings that a young artist can have—that’s why I spend more time with young artists.
LLP:
You also work with a lot of artisans.
EC:
It’s a fabric that’s dissolving. You still find things that are dirty, that have a quality of emotion, because they are not well-defined and precise yet.
LLP:
The Rome you have described so far, however, refers to a small portion of the city. Much of Rome is the opposite: the great ring road, the suburbs….
EC:
I now walk more happily by the Mediterranean pines on Palmiro Togliatti than on Via Condotti. There are so many things you could reimagine. For example, if Rome were to go to Anticoli Corrado and get the most modern sculpture from the last 100 years—namely, Arturo Martini’s l’Arca di Noè (Noah’s Ark). In the square of this old village is this dizzying fountain. That fountain is to be taken, carried in the air like the Madonna of Loreto, and relocated in Rome.
LLP:
Do you have any permanent public works in Rome?
EC:
For the Jubilee I made a giant ceramic work for the Mazzoniana wing of Termini station that was donated to the city. Today, they put the “UPIM” logo on it.
LLP:
I think the theme of time also plays an important role in this city.
EC:
Things can very well stay as they are. Woe betide us if we stop finding at least one thing that reignites us, otherwise everything will fall apart. If we go and waste time at the various documentas, biennials, and museums, it is very risky, because the stuff is gone. There is a serious cultural problem. How do we re-address this situation? Today I see loneliness degenerating into things that turn into images that the media fetishizes in the wrong way. Art can authorize images, the rest cannot. Anyone who wants to deal with art must undergo electroshock at least once a week.
LLP:
If you had to explain your idea of painting to a three-year-old, what would you tell him?
EC:
I wouldn’t waste his time. The worst damage you can do to a child is waste their time. It's the same with painting. You must never create something that does not have the quality of the sign; otherwise, it becomes something that has to do with decoration.
LLP:
You come to painting from poetry. How would you describe your work to those who read you?
EC:
I’d hope they could see my works in real life—painting cannot be told. And I understand poetry as something that has a lot to do with images—you need to know how to organize it.
LLP:
Is there an image that made you want to become an artist?
EC:
When I was a kid I remember the shame of telling my peers that I went into a church to see a painting. In those years, it was already considered obsolete.
LLP:
Is there a particular image that you remember?
EC:
The Madonna del Parto. I went to see it for no reason and without understanding it.
I went three or four times, because it pleased me. Only later did I make other considerations.
LLP:
Do you consider painting today an avant-garde language?
EC:
I think that painting is the most obsolete thing that exists and consequently the maximum of privilege. Precisely because it is so out of touch, it is the most sophisticated thing we have. Does it seem little to you to work with something you don't need? It means that it is necessary!
INTERVIEW: LUCA LO PINTO
PHOTOGRAPHY: PIOTR NIEPSUJ
STYLING: FRANCESCA IZZI
CREATIVE DIRECTION: ALESSIO ASCARI
PRODUCTION: CAROLINA DE NICOLÒ
