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 THE RADICALS' LEGACY
 Interview with Lara-Vinca Masini


I recently read some reports of travels in Italy by Fernanda Pivano who, with Ettore Sottsass, left from Milan to Florence to meet you... what you can tell me about that time?

In the 60's our meetings were quite frequent, I remember in particular the time of flood. Here in Florence it was difficult to go out to find water and they arrived from Milan with many water cans... It was a wonderful thing. Usually, we would go out for dinner to a Chinese restaurant out down-town. It was beautiful and they had great food, so that after it closed Fernanda and Ettore did not want to go to other Chinese restaurants.

So, it was a gastronomic meeting above all.
But there were also business meetings for Sottsass in Montelupo Fiorentino. At that time he realized some of its best ceramics for Bitossi Ceramiche. It was indeed a very creative and productive period also because the art director of Bitossi Ceramiche, Aldo Londi – a wonderful person who lives in the memory of this period – showed a great interest for the personality and the work of Ettore. Londi was indeed full of enthusiasm for this collaboration – which led later to an exhibition – and I remember that everybody was working with joy, also the labours, and Sottsass, as soon as he could, would come here.

In that time in Florence there were also some new groups like Archizoom and Superstudio that you have followed step by step.
Perhaps I, was closer to Natalini and Superstudio, rather than to Archizoom, also because the Archizoom settled down in Milan soon. In 1968, however radical architecture was Florence. In that moment all the boys of Radical met. Sottsass was really the guru of the Radicals, he was the only one who welcame them since the beginning. Branzi and the others use to reach us in the restaurant, staying there and talking to Ettore for hours. He was considered like a father because he had welcome them and paid attention and he had followed them. There was a very interesting relationship between Sottsass and Radicals: they use to go to visit him in Milan and, when he came to Florence they were often together.
For the Superstudio – particularly for Natalini – a personality that had a memory relationship was above all Walter Pichler. Pichler had worked with Hollein, but while Hollein continued to realize architecture works, Pichler provocatively dedicated his work to sculpture, with works that always kept a tight link with architecture, but that Pichler, instead, denied. I met him few years ago in Vienna and I saw one of his wonderful exhibitions. I asked him if he was an architect and he defenetly denied "No, no. I am not an architect" while, instead, with Hollein, in 1962 has wrote The Manifesto of the absolute architecture.


A negation that in the years of the radical experience probably was, also a necessity...
I think so, it was a great time Florence... strangely, of great vitality, the only time of great vitality for the city, in fact right then Ketty la Rocca came and the radical architecture was born. Probably it was born here also because, owing to the lack of purchases the architects could completely work on the utopy. Other cities, like Milan for example, followed consequently just because there were purchsers. Therefore after to the rebellion against the architecture of the International Style, very committed with politics, institutions etc, Florence did not offer other chances, and also this pushed strongly an ideological education on behalf of young architects. An enough strong choice for who refused to make architecture works, working on what they called the antidesign: design against, against-architecture.
And today, paradoxicalally, in order to understand the atmosphere of that period, a splendid occasion is the beautiful exhibiton Architecture Radicale, until 27 May, near the institute of Art Contemporaine in Villeurbanne in France. The French, on contrary of Italians, think in fact that it is opportune to show these works because they think that this exhibition can stimulate also French architecture. It's truly an exhibition that it is worth to see and to follow, because it has never been realized in such an exaustive way before.


The Radicals seems to have more acknowledgments abroad than in Italy...
Yes, the antidesign idea had just started when the extension in New York Italy: New Domestic Landscape in 72 took place, where Italian institutional design was consecrated, from Magistretti to Castiglioni till the first radical works. It was the big boom of Italy and Italian antidesign, with which the new design came out, from Sottass to the radicals. And between them Gaetano Pesce that I think it is still one of the greatest personalities of the movement: his antidesign is one of the most interesting. Perhaps the only one, with Starck, and few others, who kept unchanged, in the time, his own project strength.

You defined the end of 60's as an extraordinarily alive period for design in Florence what else was going on?
Very little. Potronova for example – if we can talk about design in that case – but after that only something about furnitures. Purchasers were, for what I know, almost nonexistent. Not only the antiarchitecture has shown in design, but with the birth of Alchimia, Memphis and later, in '72-'75, with Global Tools – when the movement reached really an international level – the center, through Archizoom, became Milan.
La Pietra, Mendini and all the others began to work in Milan. And, I must say that much radical design, unfortunately became "fashionable", because Memphis and Alchimia – behind which there were Sottsass and Mendini – conquered a large international market that led the way to a trendy phenomenon, that above all impressed the cultured bourgeoisie that wanted to feel "à la page". Many people bought up these new objects that very soon, in my opinion, became fashionable objects and nothing more.
Today I do not follow a lot the design of Branzi and of who works in Milan, but I think that it became part of an innovative design and certainly not only fashonable... But there also is who, after the radical experience has instead worked in a totally free way: for example Riccardo Dalisi, who has always realized an alternative design of great quality and poetry. Poetry linked also to shapes, designs, expressions, mental qualifications taken from his relationship with children. Dalisi found the happiness to create that just belongs to children.


On the example of Dalisi I would like to ask if you don't think that in his works it can be red chracteristic dimension that "marks" good part of the current Italian plan of quality. An aesthetic "introvert": very refined, deep, existential.
This private way to the plan, is not recent. It goes back to the moment in which, after the 70's, all the activities left ideology just because this ideology did not resist more as conceptual reference fulcrum... However, this subject would be too complicated... and it is not today that design and architecture have set foundations that invest the private existential. But nowadays, particularly, this process of introversion exploded inside a kind of world-wide general emptyness. An emptyness we have seen in the last two biennial of Art and of Architecture. It's not a negative emptyness, but just a kind of waiting that it is a lot more interesting and that led to what I call a "total contamination of arts". And I must say that this contamination is an inheritance that the Radicals – perhaps without realazing it – has left us for first. They were in fact first ones lead visual and plastic arts to collaborate directly with architecture.
Moreover at the end of the 60' in a moment in which all the artists realized short movies, in Florence, movies were often produced by architects and artists together. This hasn't taken place elsewhere and that I consider a lot more interesting for it witnesses an opening, a tension, exactly, to contaminate different things, means and different strategies. Uptill that time the collaboration between architecture and art wasn't equal. When, for example, Savioli called the artists, the relation between architect and artist was however similar to that one betwen actor and director. Certainly Savioli did not have a bossy attitude, I'm saying that till that time art was assumed by the architect, in management way, as a chief, a coordinator. Today this relationship is so to speak, melted, and when I propose artists and architects to work together, everyone plays just the role of architect and artist in a creative intersection that, I think, is the hope of this moment.


Well-known critic of contemporary arts, Lara-Vinca Masini has wrote many essaies and monographies. She organize shows and national and international exhibitions, she is member of AICA (International Association of Art's Critic) since 1967. She coordinate the Museo Progressivo d'Arte Contemporanea of Livorno. Member of Italian Commission for Visual Arts and member of Biennale of Venice 1978 (Architecture Section). Award "Accademia dei Lincei" for Critic in 1986. Most important works: Arte Contemporanea. La linea dell'unicità (Florence, 1989), Arte Contemporanea. La linea del modello (Florence, 1996), Art nouveau (Florence, 1975) e il Dizionario del fare arte contemporaneo (Florence, 1992).
Text by:
Umberto Rovelli

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in cooperation with:
Sonia Morini




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