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<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nOur mirror-images lure us into the table. Also reflected there are other art works in the show, punctuated at regular intervals by the museum\u2019s enormous, colonial window shutters. They are dark green, but glow that evening with tropical midnight blue. Pistoletto\u2019s work seems to capture what is preoccupying my mind: our exhibition, its success or failure, and the audience of my welcome speech. They materialise like cinematic vignettes. To my mind\u2019s eye their reflections step in and out of the artist\u2019s looking-glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As part of our show, Pistoletto further proposed that we host what he called an \u2018Opera Demopratica\u2019. But, the outbreak of Covid-19 forced us to terminate this aspect of our work together. The event would have been a forum to discuss and set concrete task plans aimed at implementing the UN\u2019s sustainable development goals. What underlies this proposition is the artist\u2019s quest for a better world through art. He dubs his project the Terzo Paradiso<\/em> [Third Paradise]. Its name alone shows the scale of his ambition. But, with the world entering into lockdown, the artist\u2019s search for utopia would remain something of an enigma to me for some time yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite our collaboration, I only met him in person in July 2021, well into the second year of the pandemic. Born on June 23, 1933, Michelangelo Pistoletto has been a living national treasure in Italy for many decades. By the time we met, he had caught and fought off Covid successfully. All the while, I had found myself \u2013 quite by accident \u2013 transplanted and living very happily in Italy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our meeting took place in Biella, the artist\u2019s native town of 45,000 inhabitants. Located in the northern region of Piedmont, the city is one of the principal engines of Italy\u2019s textile industry. In the 1990s, an economic crisis ravaged many of its textile mills. To survive, many had to refocus on luxury production in order to remain competitive in the fast-globalising market. The majority had to close down. Pistoletto acquired one such derelict mill in 1996. The vast, 20,000 square-metre compound now houses his foundation, Cittadellarte<\/em> [City of Art]. In a corner is the private house of the artist himself and his wife, Maria, who serves us tea as we sit down for a chat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pistoletto focuses much of his time and energy today on the multi-faceted activities of Cittadellarte. These are guided by his vision of the Third Paradise, launched in 2003. For him, this utopia would be a fusion between the natural state, or \u2018the [First Paradise]\u2026 in which humans were fully integrated into nature,\u2019 and \u2018the [Second Paradise]\u2026 developed by human intelligence\u2026 through science and technology.\u2019 For him, this latter phase has now reached \u2018a level of saturation that is causing a global crisis for human society.\u2019 He entreats: \u2018We must enter the Third Paradise, the dimension in which nature and artifice can successfully coexist.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n To this end, Pistoletto coordinates an in-gathering of artists, scientists, activists and others at Cittadellarte. A veritable city within a city, it is home to exhibition spaces, a theatre, a university, a preschool, a library, a restaurant, offices and guest lodgings. Around 200 Embassies have been established all around the globe to promote the artist\u2019s vision and coordinate projects. Our abortive discussion forum in Jakarta would have been the beginnings of one such embassy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The interdisciplinary character and international spirit of Cittadellarte is evident. For the idea of the Third Paradise necessitates such an approach. Art, nonetheless, is to play a central role in this process \u2018as the engine for global change.\u2019 Pistoletto\u2019s objective is \u2018to take the idea of art into every area of civil society, in order to contribute to the profound, epoch-making changes that are happening now.\u2019 Indeed, he points out that \u2018the material for making art is not just canvas, wood or marble \u2013 but society itself.\u2019 His efforts in collaborative social activism form part of his expanded conception of art. It is fully grounded in an unshakable belief in art\u2019s transformative power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, Pistoletto sees the activities of Cittadellarte as an integral part of his artistic practice. It is obvious that his life and oeuvre provide the necessary context in which to understand the artist\u2019s quest for the Third Paradise. For there are clear, conceptual commonalities that run all through his artistic career and present mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The artist\u2019s early encounter with art owed much to his father, Ettore Pistoletto (1898 \u2013 1981), who worked as a painter and art restorer. \u2018I was born in Biella,\u2019 recounts Michelangelo, \u2018because my father was working here on a big fresco at the factory of Ermenegildo Zegna. He met my mother, Livia Fila (1896 \u2013 1971), who was from Biella, because she wanted to have painting lessons. After my father finished his work, we returned to Turin, where he came from.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was at his mother\u2019s prompting that Pistoletto, at the age of eighteen, decided to enrol at an advertising school. He came under the influence of his teacher, the iconic graphic designer Armando Testa (1917 \u2013 1992). The latter told him that \u2018to make good advertising, it was necessary to know modern art well\u2026 Modern art was the springboard for all generation of ideas.\u2019 Pistoletto adds: \u2018So, in six months, I became very familiar with modern art\u2026 In the mid-1950s, I started my artistic research on the possibilities of expression.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the course of this research, he experimented with different materials through self-portraiture. This related to his study of the artistic avant-garde of the 1950s, such as abstract expressionism and gestural painting. Practitioners of these movements highlighted art as materials and as an extension of the artist\u2019s self-expression. Pistoletto echoed this approach with deep introspection: \u2018I wanted to recognise and understand myself\u2026 Not only why I became a painter. I became a painter in order to become aware of my existence.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n His moment of insight arrived when he saw his reflection on the thickly varnished, almost lacquer-like, black background of one of his self-portraits. At that moment, to borrow the words of gallerist Dominique Levy, the viewer \u2018[becomes] part of the work\u2026 pushed, physically and conceptually, over thresholds \u2013 thresholds that conjure the complex depths of life.\u2019 By 1961, Pistoletto has begun applying photographic images unto a background of polished stainless steel. He elaborates: \u2018It offer me the possibility to see myself, everybody and everything very clearly inside the mirror\u2026 It becomes an artwork that opens itself up to participation by other people\u2026 So, self-portrait and material together brought me to the Quadri<\/em> specchianti<\/em> [Mirror Paintings].\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n While his journey towards the Mirror Paintings was an inward-looking process, the artist\u2019s output could not be more outward-facing. This, as elucidated by art historian Anthony George White, is unlike \u2018gestural abstract painting that treats art as an expression of the artist\u2019s soul and disavows its immediate physical and historical surroundings.\u2019 White emphasises that \u2018[by] focusing attention on the world outside the picture plane\u2026 [the Mirror Paintings] refused a centuries-old form of aesthetic idealism that viewed art as separate from the temporal and spatial flow of everyday existence.\u2019 Indeed, points out art critic Andrea Bellini, \u2018[without] an audience, these works do not truly exist\u2026 they only come into being in relation to the people who are looking at them.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018The true protagonist,\u2019 proposes Pistoletto, \u2018was the relationship of instantaneousness that was created between the spectator, his own reflection, and the painted figure, in an ever-present movement that concentrated the past and the future\u2026 [It] was the dimension of time itself.\u2019 The artist\u2019s Mirror Paintings, as such, reach out beyond the present and the constrictions of their format and society. We find the same participatory element animating the activities of Cittadellarte. Like his Mirror Paintings, Pistoletto\u2019s quest for paradise is possible only through the involvement of others. He envisions a moment when, stepping over the thresholds of time and societal limitations, we enter unto the Third Paradise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The idealism and participatory nature of the Third Paradise also mirrors Pistoletto\u2019s pioneering role in Arte Povera [Poor Art]. This artistic movement gripped the world\u2019s imagination in the late 1960s and 1970s. The artist\u2019s involvement followed the acclaim that greeted his Mirror Paintings. His success was propelled in part by his collaboration, starting in 1963, with the renowned New York gallerists, Ileana Sonnabend and her Italian-born husband Leo Castelli. Thanks to the couple\u2019s links to the New York art scene, Pistoletto\u2019s Mirror Paintings came to be associated with Pop Art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the brink of stardom, the artist was, nonetheless, troubled: \u2018Despite\u2026 the sense of participation I felt towards Pop Art\u2026 they identified with the American consumerist system, which had taken hold of art\u2026 [That] system\u2026 considered [my work]\u2026 as a brand\u2026 destined for consumption.\u2019 After the Venice Biennale of 1964, a fateful exchange took place that led Pistoletto to consider a decisive break. He recalls: \u2018At that moment, Leo Castelli \u2013 and we were talking in Italian \u2013 told me, \u201cMichelangelo\u2026 you have to move to New York. You have to forget that you are European. If you don\u2019t do that, it will be the end of your career.\u201d This was the power of empire!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pistoletto decided instead to return to Turin. He reasons: \u2018In order to have distance, I had to destroy my personal label. I did a series of works for many months that were different from each other. I call them Oggetti in meno<\/em> [Minus Objects, 1965 \u2013 1966]. Being different from each other, they destroyed my signature style. Sonnabend and Castelli asked me, \u201cyou want to kill yourself professionally?\u201d This is exactly what I want: I want to kill my brand, I want to be independent. Freedom, autonomy, responsibility, l\u2019arte personale<\/em>!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unveiled at his studio in 1966, Pistoletto\u2019s Minus Objects are an idiosyncratic ensemble of around thirty works. The seminal art critic Germano Celant personally participated in their production. He offers a survey of the assemblage: \u2018a Christmas manger, a cardboard well with torn canvas at its center, a showcase for clothing, a structure for conversing standing up and a structure for conversing sitting down, a table made of picture frames and paintings\u2026.\u2019 Their diversity of form, appearance and material led many to mistake these works for a group show. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Minus Objects were fundamental to the birth of Arte Povera. As expounded by gallerist Lisa Varghese, they \u2018radically upended the prevailing art trends of the time.\u2019 Celant gave this incipient movement its name. He describes Pistoletto \u2013 through his new works \u2013 as speaking \u2018a freedom language no longer connected to the system or to any kind of visual consistency; he\u2019s concerned, instead, with \u2018interior\u2019 consistency\u2026[This] presupposes the rejection of any and all systems and of all codified expectations.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the Minus Objects are further activated through group action. This presages the participatory nature of Pistoletto\u2019s Third Paradise. It also reflects the communal revival and counter-cultural activism of the 1960s. Indeed, the art critic Tommaso Trini calls the Minus Objects \u2018accumulations of energy\u2019, set in motion via creative and narrative processes. An example in point is the Sfera di giornali<\/em> [Newspaper Sphere, 1966]. A one-metre ball, it is covered in Italian newspapers that reported the social unrest of that period. In 1967, the artist took the ball out of his studio and rolled it out into the streets of Turin. Aided by friends, art colleagues and passers-by, this performance stresses the interconnectivities between the news cycle and group action, between the community at large and the practice of art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Spontaneity, participation and experimentation, then, characterise Arte Povera. Those aligned with it seek a liberated and radical art, free from institutional strictures and market demands. They seek a return to simple, everyday meanings and materials. In his Arte Povera manifesto of November 1967, Appunti per una guerriglia<\/em> [Notes on A Guerrilla War], Celant sketches out the two options open to artists: \u2018either a kleptomaniac reliance on the system and the use of codified and artificial languages in comfortable dialogue with existing structures\u2019 or \u2018entirely at the other extreme, an option for free and individual self-development\u2026 Over there a complex art, over here a poor art, committed to contingency, to events, to the non-historical, to the present\u2026 to the hope\u2026 of being able to shake entirely free of every visual discourse that presents itself univocal and consistent.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, in the single-minded idealism towards a vision, in the unwillingness to be pigeon-holed and in the eagerness to transgress conceptual boundaries, we see a common thread connecting Pistoletto\u2019s pioneering role in Arte Povera to the Third Paradise. Admittedly, the oracular-sounding assertions emanating from Cittadellarte have occasioned some bewilderment. For instance, the board of our Jakarta museum foundation struggled to grasp the relevance of the Third Paradise to our museum exhibition in 2020. A similar incident happened on my way to Biella in 2021, when I met one of Pistoletto\u2019s gallerists. Upon being queried about the Third Paradise, he just laughed and exclaimed: \u2018It\u2019s all crazy. Michelangelo has gone mad!\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pistoletto is, certainly, not the first artist to be thus accused. What underlies this supposed \u201cmadness\u201d, however, is a certain \u2018interior consistency\u2019. The artist\u2019s Third Paradise forms part of an oeuvre defined by openness to the outside world. It builds on a practice committed to freedom from institutional bounds; a practice that continues to expand the idea and boundaries of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Third Paradise sits in with what art academic B. Stephen Carpenter II has identified as \u2018a movement away from the more modernist notion of art as material-based to art as\u2026 engagement with the world.\u2019 This repositioning lends itself to disruptive practice and transformation. Echoing Pistoletto\u2019s long-held beliefs, Carpenter argues that \u2018the world becomes an art-making medium\u2026 not only reflected and depicted\u2026; Art practice can have some sort of an engaged and intentional effect within that [context].\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pistoletto likens the participatory element in the Third Paradise to \u2018the rapport between two people.\u2019 His template is that of \u2018a continuous performance open to anyone who wants to participate in the meaning of the Third Paradise, whether in big ways or small.\u2019 For this reason, he further emphasises the role of Embassies in his project. He argues that each Embassy\u2019s role \u2018is\u2026 to develop local experience\u2026 You cannot start from the top. You start [by identifying]\u2026 a real, basic need locally\u2026 You discuss and find solutions with other people\u2026 We have needs here [in Biella], but similar needs exist in other places, like energy, transportation and food.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although my involvement with the Third Paradise in Jakarta ended prematurely due to Covid, I witnessed its earlier iteration on the Indonesian island of Bali. This Embassy centred on a forum that took place in 2018 in the Balinese town of Ubud. Its principal host was Kayu<\/em>, an art platform founded by Bali-based Italian artist Marco Cassani, as part of Lucie Fontaine, an international art collective. \u2018I founded Kayu,\u2019 he explains, \u2018as an extension of my\u2026 practice to create social sculptures in the form of exhibitions and performances,\u2026 providing my artworks the\u2026 opportunity to interface with those of\u2026 fellow artists from across the world.\u2019 In Pistoletto\u2019s Third Paradise, Cassani sees an affinity with his practice, especially in \u2018the interest in interacting with society\u2026 in the social aspects that embrace the economy and work.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n One need identified by the Ubud forum was to help engender a deeper engagement in Indonesia with \u2018[the] international discourse on contemporary art\u2026 through experimental and conceptual projects.\u2019 This must be conveyed in local terms. Cassani elaborates: \u2018I tried to adapt the\u2026 format of Cittadellarte to the Balinese context\u2026 Bali is an example of how art, through religious practice, is integrated into all aspects of social life\u2026 [The] relationship between tradition and contemporaneity, a concept dear to Michelangelo Pistoletto, is\u2026 the basis of\u2026 [our work] in Bali.\u2019 The Bali Embassy resulted in a now-defunct art space, Batu; and in an ongoing search for a replacement, where this dialogue could continue. It also led to a collaboration between Kayu and Yayasan Mitra Museum Jakarta [Friends of Jakarta Museums] in the Indonesian capital, where we organised our museum exhibition in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier in Biella in 2014, another initiative of the Third Paradise was instigated by identifying local needs: Let Eat Bi<\/em>. This unfolds within the larger context of Slow Food, a global movement that began in the Piedmont region as a reaction against global fast-food chains. Their credo is to valorise traditions of local food and cooking. Let Eat Bi brings different stakeholders in Biella to the table. It maintains a register, inaugurated in 2017, listing uncultivated land in the locality on one hand, and people wishing to farm on the other. Farmers and would-be farmers receive their training at the Green Academy, an educational and research arm of the initiative. Local produce, meanwhile, is brought to the community at a weekly farmer\u2019s market on the grounds of Cittadellarte. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The activities of Let Eat Bi have a particular resonance for Shayma Hamad, a Palestinian artist-in-residence at Cittadellarte. The objective of her artistic practice is to bring \u2018together audiences to experience and index knowledge through food.\u2019 It was while on a farm visit under the aegis of Let Eat Bi that she rediscovered the Jerusalem artichoke. Despite its name, the plant is not native to Palestine. Hamad explains: \u2018I started doing some research on this plant as I had never heard of it in Palestine under\u2026 [that name]\u2026 In an almost magical way, this plant took me to faraway and very different places around the world. The origin of this plant can be found in Latin America; passing through France, Italy, Palestine and finally arriving in England, the Jerusalem artichoke brings together a stratification of stories that relate to history itself: colonisation, identity and my own direct personal experience.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n This plant became the inspiration and basis of Hamad\u2019s Bread Without Borders<\/em>, unveiled at Cittadellarte in 2023. Through her work, she raises questions on notions of indigeneity, identity and belonging. She does so by presenting her historical reconstruction of the origin of the Jerusalem artichoke, then by conducting an art performance involving a new dish. She created a tramezzino<\/em>, a Piedmontese bread-based recipe, but using Palestinian ingredients that incorporated the Jerusalem artichoke. \u2018When you prepare food,\u2019 explains Hamad, \u2018you often combine several traditions, creating new flavours that can change what you felt and knew until a moment before.\u2019 Her work focuses on \u2018the [constructed] symbolism of the religious city of Jerusalem and its impact on the traditional knowledge of indigenous people.\u2019 For me, Hamad’s work calls for a more nuanced understanding of the situation in the Holy Land \u2013 surely a necessary, if wistful, precondition of the Third Paradise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Amidst world conflicts and environmental crises, Pistoletto\u2019s Third Paradise sounds a note of hope and defiance. He observes: \u2018We have a multiplication of good and bad because modernity brought incredible benefits\u2026 but at the same time with extremely high costs\u2026 The more creative you are, the more you are responsible for finding solutions. The solutions have to be an act of creation. Art is creation\u2026. As an artist I have to take responsibility for creating a possibility of looking farther than the present.\u2019 He adds: \u2018Disaster brings with it a possible renewal.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, the urgency of the situation was brought home to Pistoletto in a dramatic fashion. In July 2023, his latest installation of Venere degli stracci<\/em> [Venus of the Rags, first iterated in 1967] in Naples was assailed and torched. The arson attack occurred amidst societal malaise during one of the hottest summers on record. It was ironic that the ruined piece juxtaposed Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty and love, against the ragged detritus of today\u2019s consumer goods. Undaunted, Pistoletto reflects: \u2018It is a work that calls for regeneration, on the necessity to find a balance and harmony between two minds that are represented on the one hand by beauty, and on the other by consummate consumerism.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Third Paradise is an inseparable part of Pistoletto\u2019s practice. From his Mirror Paintings to his pioneering role in Arte Povera, his life embodies a clear \u2018interior consistency\u2019. With an openness to the world, even in old age, he continues to challenge the constraints of time and society. Some, such as Cassani, go as far as to pronounce the Third Paradise the artist\u2019s masterpiece as \u2018a self-generating artwork that has a life of its own.\u2019 Pistoletto himself, however, observes that the Third Paradise is \u2018a paradise we enter collectively through individual engagement.\u2019 As such, the success or otherwise of his vision depends ultimately on the engagement of others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The artist\u2019s quest for the Third Paradise is like that of a missionary\u2019s labour of faith. Weeks after Pistoletto\u2019s Venus was set on fire, I walked past its charred remnants. In my mind, I see the act of arson itself like a macabre art performance. I recall visions of the burning of heretics, of people who believed differently. Imagine the conflagration in the scorching heat: flames consume beauty and detritus alike; all the fruits of human civilisation; both good and evil. It is once said that as gold is purified by fire, so is faith. With the furnace lit, the world ablaze and \u2018darkness visible\u2019, do we see a burning bush? In chaos and in war; in this bonfire of the vanities; and in the flames that will consume us; answer me this: do you believe in the paradise to come? In the dead of night, before we turn into ashes \u2013 answer me this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Postcript<\/strong> by Adi Hong-Tan Under the chandeliers, t … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2024\/03\/zh-hant\/Unknown-1.jpeg\")
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Photo: courtesy Walker Art Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2024\/03\/zh-hant\/1967_scultura_da_passeggio-16-f-1024x395.jpg\")
Walking Sculpture, 1967
Action with the Sphere of Newspaper (1966) in the streets of Turin
Frames from the film by Ugo Nespolo Buongiorno Michelangelo (1968)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2024\/04\/en\/WhatsApp-Image-2024-04-10-at-15.03.00-768x1024.jpeg\")
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Minus Objects, 1965-1966
Pistoletto\u2019s Studio, Torino 1966
Photo: Paolo Bressano<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2024\/03\/zh-hant\/1997_documenta_oggetti_in_meno-1024x799.jpg\")
Minus Objects, 1965-1966
Documenta Kassel, 1997
Photo: Monika Nikolic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2024\/04\/en\/RGS_9191-682x1024.jpg\")
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Pistoletto\u2019s burnt Venus of the Rags was replaced on March 6, 2024. The new artwork incorporates surviving elements of its earlier iteration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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