Original subtitles

- Excuse me, who's sitting here? - The Sicilians.

The chairman of the Biennale is sitting on the right.

The mayor is behind the chairman of the Biennale.

Then comes the chairman of the province.

The 33rd International Art Biennale of Venice was opened on 18 June.

It was excellent again.

Good morning. You look so lovely. I saw you from over there.

On 17 June the result was already known and the papers coult print the winners.

That was normal for Venice.

A tie between the sculptors Etienne Martin, France...

The prize of 2,000,000 lire, offered by the city of Venice

to an italian artist, goes to Lucio Fontana.

The prize of 2,000,000 lire, offered by the city of Venice

and the province of Venice

to an italian artist, goes to Alberto Viani.

Een programma van

Le arti. A special edition.

Il Gazzettino. Il Gazzettino.

Il Gazzettino. Read all the news.

Four days before the official opening of the Biennale you can,

if you're from the press or pay a large amount, visit the national pavilions

Malicious gossip has it that everything is decided then,

the prizes, etc. But that's just malicious gossip...

But the circus carries on. The sho must go on.

This gentleman is first, and the next...

You shouldn't talk to Gian Ferrari

but to the head of the press office.

No, I had to come here.

We've already done another one.

It's still in my office. Or... you have to have another one.

- Why? - For madam.

OK, OK, OK.

I think Fontana definitely deserves the prize.

But I thnk that, because he deserves it,

he won't get it. At the Biennale you know as well as I do,

unfortunately, it's...

compromise, political and otherwise,

that determines who is awarded a prize.

I regret to say that the Biennale,

with its current structure, cannot...

play a very effective role. And I'll tell you why.

The Biennale is always late.

It never shows works that are really avant-garde.

when they actually are.

All the bodies in charge of the Biennale

are bureaucratic bodies.

But I think the Biennale is too enjoyable a festival

when it comes to, like I said, meeting fashionable society, etc.,

for it to die.

Everyone is aware of the situation but plays along.

There is something else here today that I thnk is quite important.

Some painters are taking part with, let's say, manifestos.

Like Lucio Fontana.

Art isn't something functional, physical.

Like love, sleeping, eating. It's a creation by man.

- When is the White Manifesto from? - The White Manifesto is from 1946.

- Where was it created? - In Buenos Aires.

What was the concept of the...?

Simply... we call them the waves of chance,

we say that art's former social function has come to an end.

So we are searching for other forms of art.

Maybe art will be finished.

And it will have to be done in space with new machines.

I think all that is great.

I think that, and I can't predicte the future,

but I think that art is finished. It's going to change into something else.

The first is a white canvas with holes.

It's the dimension beyond the painting, ideally.

These holes aren't made with brushes and colours,

but are cut. It's the liberation of a dimension.

Like the Swede Fallstr�m.

Like the Argentinian Le Parc, eh?

It's not so much in order to show what they have done

but to establish a position today.

It's funny.

- Have you seen this? - Look.

Fantastic, isnt'it? What a face, fantastic!

After the very geometric and pure period that you went through,

I notice that your latest works are a bit more baroque again.

You could almost say there are two sides to my character.

One that is quite... that can't...

control its imagination, that is quite constructive,

but that has to develop, that's the adventuter in me.

This tension is necessary, because I can't adopt a method.

Art isn't a method, life isn't a method.

You have to do what you want to do.

Or you don't become a happy man, you become a complex man.

What does an American in Paris think about this Biennale?

Well, I think this Biennale is quite a clean Biennale,

in the sense that it seems more structural,

more dynamic in an architectonic sense,

rather than in a romantic and anguished sense.

I have a feeling that...

the... for instance, the Italians,

who are a pretty god indication, since you have so many of them,

that they are more... now given towards...

structure, or structuralism, if you like,

in the old sense of a tradition.

It's like a sculputure from Ancient Greece.

It's not a Renaissance sculpture.

The Italian Renaissance

isn't part of my vision of sculpture.

It' a very modern world.

The myths, the poetic shapes of ancient sculpture

are behind the thinking.

I noticed also that there are more structures of totality,

like in the Japanese, that people work on a whole room.

- Put your hand in. - I'm not going to. What happens?

I'm afraid to.

What's this?

- All the way down. - Oh, I can't.

Yes, you can.

Oh, darling, how strange! It's absolutely...

Try this one here.

That's a good one.

This one is... strange.

I would say that all of them have that sense of total structure of the world.

And the structuralism is, that I was thinking of,

from a more industrial dynamic rhythm,

I would say is in pop art of Lichtenstein.

You could say that in my work as a painter, comic strips

are the equivalent of what models used to be.

The difference is that in my case the model is only two-dimensional.

This stips... What's the meaning, exactly the meaning of it?

You take one of a strip... one element of a strip,

and you reproduce it much bigger than it is in reality.

What's the meaning exactly?

I think it's always difficult to say what the meaning really is,

because they can be looked at from so many points of view, but let me...

One meaning, of course, is...

to organise something and...

First of all, the selection of it is done... because of the...

certain power both of the situation

and the actual design of the original thing that's taken.

Of course it's taken out of context, they're really done in a series.

And in a sense, they're closer to movies, in a funny way.

But I pick a particular instance

which just seems to be powerful to me somehow,

or at least have the possibility of being made into something.

Also the fact that it has a kind of simile...

It's similar in a way to classicism, it isn't classical, of course,

but it's what is modern day classical.

It's a deform developed by a series of commercial artists,

generation after generation. Each one adds something to this cofiguration

until you get the ideal girl's face,

which is taken for reality on one hand,

and yet, if you look at it closely, it's really a very abstract thing.

The first impression is that it's not a Biennale that shocks.

It'a Biennale that exalts.

A very moderate, pleasant Biennale, in good taste,

where the people that shocks are exalted much, much too late, unfortunately.

Cocooned in his tiny spacecraft,

John Glenn belongs now to another world.

Below him, another world slides unchangingly in its cycle.

To me, the Biennale is always a great deal of fun,

some good pictures, a lot of intrigue and lovely Venice.

But I think the British pavilion is terrific this year.

I speak from such a prejudiced point of view.

I have most of the pavilion and half the American pavilion.

I don't see...

I'm not really tempted to wish I had somebody that I don't have already.

Sounds arrogant, but I really think I represent

some of the best people in the show. Caro as a sculptor.

- Gabrielli. - Right, I will remember.

I can phone around 9 in the morning. Ok?

Alright.

No, no. I'm having... Excuse me. Sorry. I'm having this sculpture.

But the fact that you can enter your dwellings...

- And... - It's important.

That's a very important point.

You couldn't go into the others but...

You couldn't go in easily.

You could enter in thought, maybe.

Now you can enter physically.

Our life is always made up of fragmentary ideas.

You have a memory of someone, you remember a mouth, a face,

or a moment in your life, and I've tried to convey that.

I've always tried to convey an idea of space in my paintings,

beyond the context I've expressed.

Finding a new definition of space is interesting.

My paintings try to almost take over the wall,

depicting life in a way that it unfolds around us.

Our life is typified by the phenomenon of ready-made, interchangeable products.

A painting shouldn't be limited

to a strict organisation of the surface.

It should include developments,

like an airplane with variable geometry.

So I've done a new series of paintings,

of sculptures with variable geometry.

Interchangeable elements, but with a fixed structure

that any sensitive individual will find.

I'm from a generation that lived through the war.

I saw its horrors and think it's too easy to express human misery.

In this Biennale there are a number of painters or sculptors

with projects that go beyond painting and sculpture, as it were.

That's proved not only by the fact

that separate spaces are sometimes built

but also in the way things are made.

For example, when I look at Soto's space...

the wall that Soto made,

which I really like,

when you look to see how he made it,

it turns out that it is a very simple process.

It's also painted quite simply.

It is, as it were, more the idea

that is behind a particular visual effect that counts

rather than the material itself that it is made from.

You can also see that to a certain extent in the Dutch pavilion,

where there is an excellent exhibition of Constant's work.

But there it is more the idea that counts,

in my opinion, rather than each individual work.

So it is more the total impression of the space that it is important

rather than the choice of works.

It's the commedia dell'arte. It's true.

It's the opera. The chair. Damn. We only had one.

That's it. Thieves.

It'd be better to go on holyday.

Jet planes are more interesting than painting.

Much more interesting than painting.

Move a bit more... One step to the left. There. Yes, like that.

- If I move... - No, stay where you are.

Another step.

Turn in this direction.

No, the other way.

One second.

But the Biennale is more than that.

There are two important retrospectives

about two important artists from the first half of this century,

Boccioni and Morandi.

Another important retrospective

is about the rediscovery of the avant-garde movement,

that was neglected or unknown up till now,

that of the artists from Lombardy from the thirties.

It's the triumph of youth.

We wanted youth to be Martial Raysse.

Or perhaps Lichtenstein.

Us Europeans were against Lichtenstein.

That was also youth.

And finally, youth was Julio Le Parc, the Argentinian.

It's a... How do I put it? It's more than a prize.

It's also more than an exhibition. It's somethng else.

It's truly youth in art,

that is now accepted, gets itself accepted and gets itself understood.

What do you think are the qualities the jury wanted to honour by choosing you?

I don't know but I hope it is the aim of getting people to participate,

make a more direct contribution.

Le Parc? I thought it was fantastic.

- Absolutely exciting. - Why?

Well, because I put on the glasses and I saw worlds that I'd never seen before.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a series of proposals.

To those who are seeking simpler participation,

seeking more active, direct participation.

The prize awarded to Le Parc is obviously disputed.

It's very complicated because up till now

Le Parc's oeuvre was also the oeuvre of a group.

And now a collective oeuvre becomes an individual oeuvre.

I don't know if it will affect Le Parc himself.

Is your participation in the Venice Biennale

an individual participation or is it the result of a collective search?

I think in all searches

there is collective participation and individual participation.

The award is an award for the whole group, if I understand correctly?

I hope so. Not only a group

but a series of people, a generation seeking an opening one way or another.

I think what he did

is a creation full of atmosphere and originality.

You don't think that Soto, who did it before him, deserves the prize?

Of course. But it seems he couldn't have the prize

cos he had another prize. I don't know when, I think someone told me.

Because Soto is still... it's art.

Here is Le Parc's funfair, Venice Biennale's Painting Prize.

Advies

All open until October.

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