allegato scansionato - Archivio Crispolti Arte Contemporanea

00A_Saggio CrispoltiOKk2:02_Saggio Campiglio 12-03-2009 14:57 Pagina 23
Vittoria al chiaro di luna:
l’amante di Federico II, 1966
Collezione Marraccini,
Giulianova
Victory in the Moonlight: the
Mistress of Frederick II, 1966
Marraccini Collection,
Giulianova
identity—which is in actual fact always called into question
so as to avoid any sclerosis of the imagination, and
hence constitutes a moving target—that artists develop
their independence and originality. This does not mean
historical detachment but historicity that is not conditioned
or subordinate, and instead substantially a matter
of autonomous “protagonistic” intention or at least
effort. In the case of Guttuso, for example, this regards
historicity that is socially committed and demonstrably
reflected in terms of representation. In the case of Vacchi,
the historicity is instead wholly and exemplarily
“introjected” and therefore “discordant” through its explicitly
critical nature. To continue with the examples,
a sort of futuristic meta-historicity could be suggested
in the case of the highly personal and inexhaustible creativity
of a painter like Fontana, who is so naturally impervious
to the influence of historical contingencies
such as events, movements and so on. At the same time,
however, by aiming at the construction of an existentially
engaged cultural and ethical identity through dialogue
with the artists with whose work they deeply
identify, critics also define the perspectives of their own
independence and historicity of unconditional participation.
Indeed, just like artists, critics shape the perspectives
of their own engaged historicity.
In this sense, among all the critics that have been points
of reference in a dialogue of problematic evolution and
exchange of views with an artist, in the case of Vacchi
I have had the rare privilege of involvement that is not
confined to one problematic phase of his artistic evolution.
This was instead what happened with Arcangeli,
who in fact remained critically, ideologically and indeed
emotively linked solely to the artist’s problematic
transition from neo-naturalism to Art Informel, important
and fundamental though this phase certainly
was. The Bolognese critic’s view of the Informel period
was, however, still unduly vitiated by involvement in nature
in an emotive dimension and there was just one instance
of positive attention paid to Vacchi’s very first
works of new expressionistic and visionary figuration immediately
following the ‘Concilio’ cycle (which in any
case led to nothing substantial). 10
2. “Something like a message in a bottle thrown into
the sea” (the price paid for a “discordant” path)
The meeting between Pierre Restany and the work of
Sergio Vacchi, which I myself brought about in connection
with the major anthological exhibition in Macerata
for the Fifth Scipione Prize in 2002, was certainly
not a matter of reciprocal or indeed rediscovered acceptance,
nor could it in fact have been so. 11 An im-
Enrico Crispolti
probable and in any case not envisaged instance of mutual
approval would in any case have been very belated,
if for no other reason that the fact that interest in
the visionary dimension of the Bolognese-Roman
painter’s work had instead been promptly manifested
within Francophone critical circles both by Édouard
Jaguer in the second half of the 1960s and by Gérald
Gassiot-Talabot and Pierre Gaudibert in the 1970s, all
the way up to François Fossier in the 1990s. The meeting
was in fact imagined and sought above all as a challenge,
a wide-open and to a certain degree extreme confrontation
between two figures firmly in control of their
respective destinies, differing greatly at the personal level,
and unquestionably playing a key role in the explorations
of European art throughout the second half of
the twentieth century, Vacchi having been born in 1925
and Restany in 1930. They had, moreover, never sought
one another out or met in person in the course of their
respective careers as painter and critic, even though they
had actually both been involved in Art Informel during
the 1950s as a crucial experience of their youth, albeit
on different sides as regards methods and motivations.
While Vacchi opted for a kind of factual, organic,
corporeal, material realism (and probably had greater
affinity with Dubuffet’s anomalous and “apictorial” approach
to material), the “lyrical abstraction” that enjoyed
Restany’s critical support was characterized by lightness
in terms of gesture and sign, the textural-material factor
being only subordinate (the primary models being
Fautrier and Hartung). 12 Indeed, the meeting was conceivable
only as a challenge and a confrontation of opposing
assumptions, and it was in these terms that I had
therefore suggested and devised it. And at the same
time, it was also designed as an opportunity to rekindle
international interest in Vacchi’s work at the beginning
of the new millennium and with the highest possible
degree of problematic engagement (by which I
mean something more than the customary review
marked by acclaim if not indeed glib flattery produced
23