Here, Picture This Post (PTP) continues a conversation with Giulia Andreani (GA) about her process and why she dreads art veering into the realm of propaganda.
(PTP) Why do you feel an artist needs to have distance so as not to become a propagandist?
(GA) This distance is necessary first to avoid falling into pathos. Also, the artist can be an activist but distance is crucial to avoid that his work becomes a dogmatic banner for propaganda. The artist bears a great responsibility, in order to prevent the work from being used for other purposes.
… Brecht loved atlases (ABC of war). His work and his thought are very important to me. I think that his concept of Verfremdung (distancing) serves as a parallel with the distance I take when dealing with historical subjects, which therefore requires a thorough research phase. However, they are eventually used to reflect eminently topical questions.
How and why do you create catalogs and archives before you put brush to canvas?
This is the longest part of the work and I could write 500 pages to answer this question but let’s be synthetic.
For example, during my residency at Villa Medici in Rome I spent almost 6 months researching. I was hunting traces of the first women artists who were allowed to join this prestigious institution. It was created in 1666 and the first women artists working there only arrived in 1911.
Until my arrival in 2017, nearly no fellow had shown interest in these women artists. I focused particularly on Lucienne Heuvelmans, who was the very first woman to win the Prix de Rome.
For me, the year at the Villa Medici was also an occasion to define my relationship to archives: I like the idea of excavating precious and sometimes new sources and bringing them into my studio.
I like to say that in the elaboration phase "I give everything to painting". Differently from a researcher, a writer or even a journalist who would relay the sources in a long thesis, a novel or an article, I cannot grasp every single thing, and some of these things are paramount and can be called sensitive mystification or necessary trickery.
Let's say that I often focus on a single subject, over more or less long periods within the framework of a specific residency and/or for an exhibition.
But for some time now, archives have been gathered within my own studio. I call it my Atlas. It is made up of thousands of various documents that are not (yet?) arranged in Warburgian or Richterian boards but in archive boxes (some of them were even found by chance such as those that were going to end up in the garbage of the French Academy in Rome).
These days, for instance, I finished new pieces for the Consortium Museum. I used images that I collected ten years ago when I was an art history student working on the School of Leipzig and the relationship between European artists and the Cold War.
The piece that I am currently working on was also commissioned for the exhibition Chronorama that will take place in the Palazzo Grassi, Italy, next March. It is about interpreting one of the most important photographic collections in the world, that of Conde Nast. I also conducted researches from various archives (in particular from the Biblioteca Panizzi) about the workingclass struggle in post-war Italy. This is information provided by the documentalist of the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, where I will have a solo show in October 2023.
How does your work embody your interests in history and feminism?
I focused on a practice consisting of using photographs as a model for paintings.
This was common in the XXth century but started earlier with artists such as Delacroix. Degas also painted a princess from a postcard (and that’s maybe the first painting where the artist wasn’t « hiding » the photographic source). This historic practice has been conceptualized by one the most important contemporary painters: Gerhard Richter.
