White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 14situation. With very few exceptions, theleading players on the Italian art scenestruggle to reach the top auctionrooms, never mind fetch significantprices.And this is clearly a repercussion ofgeopolitics. Today Italy counts for littlein the world of international collectingbecause the country not only gives theimpression of not being forwardlooking,but seems to be closed off in akind of self-referential delirium. To theeyes of the world, we have a greatfuture behind us rather than in front ofus. We are a country in which most ofthe population does not speak a foreignlanguage and, more importantly, has nointention of learning one. It is notsurprising that even our collectors,when they wish to appear sophisticatedand cosmopolitan, prefer to invest inyoung foreign talent rather thanhomebred artists (not to mention theattitude of Italian curators invited toselect works and make suggestions forlarge international events).Collecting, therefore, is also abarometer of what is happeningoutside the cultural arenas. But it is alsoa way of accumulating wealth. Acollection is basically capital in theeconomic sense of the term. It is aninvestment whose value will graduallyemerge as the choices made are sharedor not by the market. The short termand long term can express verydifferent verdicts. Not surprisingly, thebanking and financial world are wellaware of what happens in the no longerclosed-off world of art and there hasbeen a proliferation of products andinitiatives: from consulting services forprivate banking clients, to the creationof art funds and expansion plans forcorporate collecting programmes. Thisinterest in art is also shared bycorporations whose core business haslittle or nothing to do with art.14.6 The corporate view ofcontemporary artSo why do Italian companies investrelatively little in contemporary art?While private Italian collecting is livelyand dynamic, unlike their German orUK counterparts, Italian companies aremuch more reluctant to invest in art.Even when entrepreneurs becomecollectors, they are more inclined tobuy for themselves than for theircompany. The classic argument putforward to explain this lack of interestshown by Italian companies is theabsence of tax incentives. If artpurchases were tax free, thencompanies would buy much moreoften. But there are good reasons fordoubting the validity of this argument,at least in part. When talking toentrepreneurs who have decided toinvest in art at corporate level or evento build up a corporate collection, theyhardly ever argue that tax incentiveswould have played out crucial role intheir decision to collect art works.What counts is a passionate interestand a belief in the importance of thiskind of initiative. There are far moreentrepreneurs, on the other hand, whodo not invest and point to the lack oftax incentives as a justification, whichoften sounds like an easy way to dodgethe subject. If we go further into theissue, we find much more crucialWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 331