The contentism it is the disease of this era: the disease of works of art.
The literary critic explained it very well Filippo La Porta in a recent article dedicated to the dozen finalist authors for the Strega award: “In the 12 of the Strega the presence of a ‘style’, of an expressive as well as communicative language, of a personal voice – that is, the real difference between literature and what is not (newspaper articles, screenplays, diaries, investigations…) – to me it seems rather rare and ultimately no longer in demand. (…) I don’t want to seem ungenerous. I am only speaking of a general trend, of a (relative) devaluation of the medium of writing within contemporary literature”, citing the only exceptions Dario Voltolini, Tommaso Giartosio and, at least in part, Donatella Di Pietrantonio (“L’Unità”, 14 April 2024, p. 11).
Contentism in art
You said nothing. If the ‘medium of writing’ is being devalued within literature, I would say we have a problem – and a rather serious one, at that. Now, as usual, we can also extend the same discussion to other cultural territories: and, obviously, also to visual art. The issue of content is there for all to see (once upon a time, not long ago, it would have been said to be “hotly topical”). A lot of art of these years and days relies on the ‘message’, on the content – even better if conveyed by artists with an interesting, captivating personal story, capable of automatically giving validity to the work (and it is no coincidence that also for recent writers, Italian and otherwise, the same type of attitude and of projection to the outside world).
After all, who visited Foreigners Everywhere / Foreigners everywherethe central exhibition curated by Adriano Pedrosa and just inaugurated at the Giardini and Arsenale of the Venice Biennale, has had the opportunity to experience this trend firsthand, now with its own history already quite full-bodied and articulated.
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Content vs Style
Contentism, I was saying: even in the case of works that focus on what-they-are-saying, on the themes they talk about (and the fact that a work of art is prepared to “talk about themes” should already raise suspicion and warn…), style definitely takes a back seat. And so, it veers towards a sort of revised and sterilized craftsmanship, or towards an archivism devoid of the conceptual-critical impetus of the sixties, seventies and nineties, and which has become fashionable for over twenty years. The style (here too, once upon a time, not long ago, one would have said “shape” …) disappears: it disappears because there is no longer any need for it, because it is seen as an obstacle or a useless frill. Like one rudeness.
These works therefore represent the exact equivalent of those novels written in a flat, anonymous language, without any ripples, ready to be transferred into the TV series or film, as if the writer limited himself “to have a powerful narrative line” to be eventually developed by editors, as La Porta states: which is exactly what happens today, in many cases, in national and international literature.
Form as an obstacle
The style, the form, are actually an obstacle if the objective is to say what you have to say in the most flat, flat and clear way possible, if you have to enunciate a slogan or the equivalent of a post, of a story on social media: It’s a shame that the work doesn’t work in this way at all. The work of art does not say, enunciate or communicate anything at all: only bad works do that.
Furthermore, contentism is linked in an only apparently paradoxical way to the categorical refusal to deal with one’s own time, and in general with time: it is a singular form of escapism. In fact, if the work decides that it must ‘speak about a theme’, it is usually not doing the thing that would come most naturally to it: being that theme, that is, letting its time pass through it. Jackson Pollock not spokein his atomic bomb paintings, as well as Francis Bacon Not he said the anguish of existence e Judy Chicago or Carla Accardi Not they negotiated feminism. To say. But we will have the opportunity to talk about this in more detail later.
Tackling a topical issue in a didactic and rhetorical way is usually the best and most effective way to prudently stay away from it. There are no works less political than those that openly declare themselves political; there are no less courageous artists than those who flaunt their courage from the rooftops.
And on the other hand, someone has already pointed out how the same “foreigners everywhere” is not too subtly discriminatory, or at least paternalistic: foreigners, in fact, compared to whom? And to what? And why not maybe, I don’t know, “feel at home everywhere”? He even says it Ghali in the moral winning song of the last Sanremo: “I don’t feel so good, though / I’m already better if you show me / The world as you see it / I don’t need a spaceship, I know / My house or your house / What’s the difference? There isn’t / But what is my home? / But which is your home? / But which is my home? / From heaven it’s the same, I swear”.
Exactly: my house or your house, what’s the difference? There is not.
Christian Caliandro
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