For Luciano
To those who knew him sporadic encounters during the exhibitions, concerts, the cinema or theater Luciano Botti seemed a nice man and well-informed about things, a person who cultivated his knowledge of topics and events, whatever the artistic field, in short, what once would have called a man of "culture". In fact, he continued to be updated constantly, the things we already knew deepened or expanded ones which began to be interested. In this attitude he is a prime example the decision a few years ago to follow the lectures on music and its history that the prof. Daniele Salvini held for the University of the Third Age in the classrooms of a middle school not far from Piazza della Repubblica. Although you know he followed with pleasure classes devoted to books (and that this specific work or on the concert of Beethoven, or Chopin) because the piece of music during the lesson was analyzed in all its technical component and with an approach from different angles and aspects. I was excited to learn the secrets of the work of the musician and the technique he used in the composition, details that were masterfully explained by the clear words of the esteemed teacher. Often returning from class stopped to see the exhibition in Gallery I and I enthusiastically re-explain what he had just learned.
But beyond all these passions had an irreplaceable quality: it was a "greedy" and a curious person who gets involved totally And deep from what I discovered. Thus was born his love for art books, those containing lithographs and engravings, to monographs on artists whose work followed, even more than buying a book or a monograph if an artist interested him. He told me often that they even stay awake, or your alarm clock at a certain time of night, to record, when he knew that the TV channels (in particular the night on TV3) were put on air services or documentaries on artists who had in its collection or he wanted to understand better the work. Or just wanted to see and own the old VHS movies that he loved very much. I have also taken advantage of these sleepless his research to ask register of old films or documentaries. Because of this passion had come to fill the whole library and the living room of VHS tapes and then DVDs.
addition to the above, as this exhibition demonstrates, he was also an avid collector of contemporary art. Sometimes compulsive in trying to acquire at least one work of an artist who impressed him even more than one, in some cases. His passions are painting passed through informal painting, from 50-60 years later than that of Italian Pop Art, to the current generations of the third millennium or more Concept of Trans-avant-garde. Luciano
Naturally, like many of Leghorn, he had to overcome the longstanding tradition of provincial "figurative" under, had passed through different stages and phases in the taste with consequences in his collection. In my opinion it was still too 'tied' to a constant: that of "representation". But better than many philological explanations or criticisms of his collection there are here in this catalog are organized by the heirs and edited by his friend Ivo Lombardi, the images of the paintings to speak and to demonstrate the quality of his choices el'oculatezza. When he began to attend my gallery, after the first half of the '70s, had a particular liking to artists of painting and graphic postwar neo-realist or the New Figuration, at that time "committed" and well regarded in both exhibitions on the market. During our conversations of those years often tried to get him to focus his eyes on the works of pre-war future of the abstract and concrete, which had exposed a couple of years ago, or on Conceptual and Minimalist that I was just stating so.
But his doubts often remain unchanged: these artists was too "cool" for its "Mediterranean" and so far from his taste. Although this did not fail to visit my exhibitions. And then continued to speak of his concerns about the strong and real, overpowering presence of a market that threatened to change the "values" both artistic and flights to many authors. Species of what he loved most. Often in our conversations we came to a standstill, with no way out: he is perched on their concerns, showing the reviews and assessments of the market at that time and claim that all this would eventually also resorted to the rediscovery of historical values and art of the past. And I, when pressed by its practical, clear arguments that I could not answer: "carefully, because poetry does not follow the stock prices." Sometimes I looked like our real and unnecessary conversations in the "sex of angels." Today I can say, in hindsight, that would be enough to wait few years to see all the surrounding art scene changed completely, with the result to account for both (sic).
But a collector, especially of contemporary works of art should be something more than the sum of the prices of works he owned. And finally it was Luciano Botti, went much further and farther ostentation of the "values" represented its economic frameworks.
Without the necessary differences in money, time and place (you can not ignore the fact that Luciano has always lived in Livorno) belonged with full rights and psychologically at that high level of behavior to which they belong all those collectors who have spent most of their lives to chase them and collect what is most passionate about art and artists. And consequently became captivated by the works is that the author, and regarded with pride every scanned object, reconstruct the reasons and motivations that have directed. Revived with the same enthusiasm or anxiety when the discovery of the work they imagined to be essential for the collection, subsiding only when we see (it would almost be said to "recognize") and allowing the economy, is finally able to "drop" in collection. And as if there were a lot of their unconscious imaginary "Library of Babel" Borges continues to to ask him to be filled, "completed" unleashing that vital energy, compulsive, difficult to control. Nothing to do with the other type of collector that is increasingly being described in articles in magazines and specialized "coated" in recent years, and therefore more topical today, one that is seeking to have the largest number of "masterpieces" to have the Top Ten charts compiled by the magazine as "in" the moment. Following such a view would be more appropriate to define those of the "investors" rather than collectors and the difference between these two positions described above, between many other, if any, lines of behavior is substantial. In one case you have the passion, obsession, to graze, maybe the "disease". In the other you have the bet (with the secret hope to cash in early), the calculation of the probability and the contemplation of their own "heritage", derived from the investment made.
In the first case the set of works is to build a collection that belongs to her own life and recalled the time when we tried and then discovered that this framework or that artist. Where, or with whom, or why and on what occasion that such work was then purchased. In short, even the moments and emotions dedicated belong to the collection is the personal sphere of life but mingle with the reasons for the existence of these works, we approach the personality that produced it and relive the historical time in which it was made. All this, taken together (intimacy) of the collection, is a "presence", a testimony of life, which becomes a "palpable", in unison with the works. Paying attention is to be found, "feel", looking at the empty space of the wall being between operations. So
a collection (like all libraries who have a right of recognition) is the same time a tool (either conscious or unconscious) of their world view, that the sympathy which we bring to other views, or at least share of search or closer to one or more world views related to us or which we let fascinate.
One of the most outstanding examples in this direction is the collection of environmental sculptures that Giuliano Gori has "built" together with the artists of his Villa Park in Celle in Pistoia.
Just visit it to understand it.
A significant detail of this attitude is when, in showing their collection, whatever the economic value or importance of history, of all the works, or what kind of "masterpiece" that hangs together with others, some collectors instead identify more readily and more as a beloved, that other work that we see beyond the apparent air discharged in a secluded corner. That work seems to have resigned to support the "masterpiece" and the "masterpiece" shares with it the era, the theme and maybe the quality. As in every story the facts are not all children seem insignificant at all, rather they are the ones that we often explain better the whole. Both are "constituted" is inseparable from the particular to the egregious facts.
Who does not feel like this essential point will then have difficulty understanding what the "story" and "culture" are two concepts whose very existence and memory has now become increasingly indispensable. Especially in a society like today that is basing all its existential values \u200b\u200bonly on the shaky foundations of money and appearances.
In concluding my paper in the dual role of promoter for some, few appearances in this collection and now in as a guest on the walls of my gallery that serves as a replacement on the walls of the house of his friend Luciano, I can only give an or at least wish to suggest the illusory assumption that such a collection rather than end up lost and forgotten, as happened with many other things in our city, may be accepted, held together and housed in a space open to the public and specialists. And maybe even further enhanced in time for a better understanding for future generations on successive cultural events in our area. Realizing this idea would not be a great waste of energy and economic, in a town that for many years and spends too much evil to preserve and protect awards, exhibitions and books, a culture that has become the ghost of itself and which, today, is not nothing left but the empty pride to declare a "product of the territory."
Collecting contemporary art is not, after all, that the art of collecting parts of memory staff included in a collective history in the making, and then lived or just passed. And, moreover, is the best way to indicate to each of us the duty to preserve the first final to be disclosed later. 29.05.2010
