Art meets rock
Curated by Beatrice and Marco Bazzini



From May 21st to September 16th, 2011, Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci di Prato presents LIVE! Art meets rock. The exhibition, curated by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini, adopts a suggestive perspective to show how the history of contemporary art and of rock music have followed parallel paths to contribute to the construction of the cultural universe of the last forty years.
Music and the visual arts have crossed and overlapped, over time, engendering a unified and consistent landscape; what draws them together is the performative dimension, articulated according to the specific occasion within an exhibition or a concert. LIVE! offers a parallel and original reading of historic events by exhibiting paintings, sculptures, installations, video clips, artworks, LPs, graphic works, photographs, magazines and films.

The exhibition path starts from 1969, when the Beatles gave their last historic live exhibition “Welcome to the Show!” from Apple records’ rooftop. It is the year of Woodstock, of Flower Power, of the rise and fall of utopias – as symbolized by the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert, tragically ended with the death of four young fans.
In that same year, Harald Szeeman curated When Attitudes Become Form, the first important exhibition to cross the threshold of new contemporary art. Artists are called, along the age’s spirit, to express themselves and their sensibility by putting forth ideas rather than artworks: just as in concerts which no longer consist of the mere performance of a set of songs, but rather have become unique showcases for the musicians’ eccentricities.

In 1972, Pink Floyd chose a Roman amphitheater in Pompeii to hold a closed-door concert, betraying a desire to re-conquer nature and peacefully invade it with their creativity – just as Robert Smithson did two years earlier with Spiral Jetty, a milestone of Land Art become famous through the photographs of Gianfranco Gorgoni.
The 70s, however, also witnessed the birth and death of Ziggy Stardust, the emblem of all rock stars, a “plastic rock singer” in the words of its actor/creator David Bowie: a metaphor of present-day mankind, with all of its frailties and insecurities. In 1973, Achille Bonito Oliva curated the Contemporanea exhibition, the final refutation of all notion of genre, inviting, among others, Urs Lüthi, whose work on his own body shows uncanny similarities to David Bowie’s practice, halfway between artistic performance and theatrical representation.

The same years also witnessed the electronic experimentations of artists such as Nam June Paik, featured in a video playing alongside Joseph Beuys, in a contamination of different genres: rock is no longer the sole protagonist.

Around the late 70s, the Sex Pistols’ punk music proves how musical training is no longer needed to become a star: kids from all over the world are captured by the “dirty madness” of Malcom McLaren’s product: technical proficiency matters very little, just as in Jamie Reid’s “cut-and-paste” aesthetics. Similarly, painting is no longer supposed to be the research and study of beauty, but can very well be “Bad Painting”. This show, held in 1978 at New York’s New Museum, included work by artists such as William Wegman, who refused the laws of perspective, using violent colors and amateurish techniques.

In the 80s the widespread new desire for lightness and hedonism finds in figurative painting a natural vessel. Italy enters the center stage.
With Aperto ’80 , a section of the Venice Biennale solely devoted to young artists, comes the crowning of the Transavanguardia movement, among whose protagonists are Sandro Chia and Nicola De Maria, both featured in “Live!”.
These are the years of architectural postmodernism, of Renato Zero’s circus tent; international “big” rock stars once again play on Italian soil, first and foremost Patti Smith: in 1979, she breaks the shroud of silence imposed by the fear of terrorism with two historic concerts in Bologna and Florence. Bob Marley, too, will play in Italy, at the San Siro Stadium, in one of his last exhibitions.
A new optimism makes its way, consolidating the expansion of the “Made in Italy” concept to disparate fields: from the opening of Milan’s historic Fiorucci store to Alessandro Mendini’s design.
New York, in the same years, is witnessing the rise to rock-stardom of artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.
A perfect symbol of the art-music relation is the relationship between Basquiat and Madonna, whose concerts brought her in a world tour largely through the impact of MTV, which started broadcasting in 1981 introducing a “video clip aesthetics” which will transform the fruition of music as a product.
Around the late 80s the “Western” world opens up to cultural diversity, such as African culture – with Paul Simon’s Zimbabwe concert on the musical side, and the Les Magiciens de la Terre (1989) exhibition – organized at the Georges Pompidou Center and including paintings by Chéri Samba – on the artistic side.
Breaking news, too, reach the center of attention: the fall of the Berlin wall is captured by Pink Floyd’s The Wall as well as by Russian artist Leonid Sokov’s works

The 90s are opened by Vasco Rossi, whose Milan Stadium concert heralds a new intimacy aimed at shutting “the whole world outside” – a statement betraying a new mood, interpreted by the “minimalist” forms investigated by artists such as Stefano Arienti, as seen in the Una scena emergente exhibition held at Centro Pecci in 1991.
This is also the age of unplugged concerts – the most important of which is undoubtedly Nirvana’s 1993 gig -, of Björk’s intellectual music, which will lead to a cooperation with artist Matthew Barney, of Brit Pop’s revival of club, paralleled by the Young British Artists scene championed by Damien Hirst, brought to fame by the 1996 Sensation exhibition.

The exhibition path ends with a question: does the notion of rock star make sense in the 2000s? And, if it doesn’t, does this apply also to concerts as events?
If the question owes its first formulation to Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, a band made up of four cartoon characters drawn by Jamie Hewlett, its answer could be seen as Michael Jackson’s legacy. In 2009, after his death, the Pop king left us, as a suggestion, an unfinished act: This is It, his last concert, a show that never took place and never will, the symbol of the end of our hypothetical path through our culture’s history.

The exhibition will be accompanied by Live! , a book published by Rizzoli with contributions by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini.

The exhibition has been possible through the generous support of di Ceres, Fender – M. Casale Bauer and through a partnership with MTV Classic (SKY channel 705) .


Art:
Alighiero Boetti, Marco Lodola,Yoko Ono, Pattie Boyd, Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Ira Schneider, Gianfranco Gorgoni, Matteo Guarnaccia, Paolo Icaro, Franco Vaccari, Giulio Turcato, Marcello Jori, Dennis Oppenheim, Joan Jonas, Luciano Giaccari-MUel Videoteca Giaccari Varese, Urs Lüthi, Luigi Ontani, Victor Vasarely, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Peter Christopherson,William English, Jamie Reid, Linder, Martin Kippenberger, William Wegman, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sandro Chia, Nicola De Maria, Alessandro Mendini, Massimo Iosa Ghini, Nam June Paik, Joseph Beyus, Edo Bertoglio, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente Robert Longo, Mark Kostabi, Paul Tschinkel-Innertube, Paul Tschinkel, Anton Corbijn, Malick Sidibé, Cheri Samba, Lonid Sokov, Thomas Billhardt, Nan Goldin, Massimo Kaufmann, Gilbert&George, Fischli&Weiss, Efrem Raimondi, Stefano Arienti, Marco Cingolani, Daniele Galliano, Massimo Barzagli, Raymond Pettibon, Karen Kilimnic, Pruitt-Early, Daniel Johnston, Richard Kern, Cindy Sherman, Christian Marclay, Macelo Gutman, Richard Billingham, Marc Quinn, Sam Taylor-Wood, Damien Hirst, Stanley Donwood, Aernout Mik, Tony Oursler, Nico Vascellari, Emanuele Becheri, Fausto Gilberti, David LaChapelle, Kon Trubkovich, Gianni Molaro

Music:
The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Sex Pistols, Grace Jones, Bob Marley, Renato Zero, U2, Vasco Rossi, Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, Nirvana, Blur, Oasis, Gorillaz, Bjork, Radiohead, Michael Jackson
Music:
The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Sex Pistols, Grace Jones, Bob Marley, Renato Zero, U2, Vasco Rossi, Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, Nick Cave, Nirvana, Blur, Oasis, Gorillaz, Bjork, Radiohead, Michael Jackson

download the invitation (pdf 144Kb)

TECHNICAL SHEET
Title LIVE! Art meets rock.

Curated by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini

Dates May 21st – September 16th, 2011

Venue Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci
Viale della Repubblica 277, Prato

Opening Saturday, May 21st , 6 pm



Supported by








Partner



Catalogue Live!
Texts by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini
Rizzoli Editore

Opening hours Every day, 4 pm to 11 pm; closed on Tuesdays and August 15th


Entry Free

Info Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci
Viale della Repubblica 277, Prato
Ph. +39 0574 5317

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Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci
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