6. “You Can’t Stand on a Movement”: Michelangelo Pistoletto Interviews Benton Interviewing Pistoletto

By Christopher Joshua Benton

^{Published on January 29, 2024}

David Adjaye’s Abrahamic Family House on Saadiyat Island is a deft sleight-of-hand: it’s architecture as extrastatecraft; the country’s normalization efforts rendered in stunning white stone and starchitect sheen. The site stars a mosque, a church, and the country’s first synagogue—all rendered in neat, nearly identical cubes. On a recent tour of the site, the docent spoke beautifully about the project’s themes of universality, tolerance, and mutual understanding—but I couldn’t stop thinking about power, too.

Visiting Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Judgement Time” at GALLERIA CONTINUA Dubai, I was immediately transported back to that windy Friday in Abu Dhabi a week earlier: me looking up in awe between those three houses of worship. In my favorite moment in his small but masterful show, the installation Il Tempo del Giudizio (The Time of Judgment) uses the mirror as a repeated element aimed at creating the form of a temple in which Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism unite and create a dialogue with each other. There’s a buddha, a pulpit, and a prayer mat, all sourced from markets in Dubai. If you stand at the center of the room, you can see your image in each one.

That you can find these objects here at all, and place them in a public exhibition, is a reminder of the country’s religious tolerance—and of course, that even at ninety-years-old, the Italian iconoclast can still pull off a little magic and prophecy, too. In the second half of the gallery space, Pistoletto stations three of his Mirror Paintings (a technique he’s explored since the 1960s), inspired by the Louvre Abu Dhabi and representing both images of the museum’s visitors and those of ancient sculptures.

As it happens, Michelangelo Pistoletto is in town. And to my surprise, as we sit for coffee in perhaps the world’s most famous hotel, he’s just as eager to interview me as I am to sit at the lap of the master.

1. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Louvre Abu Dhabi – persone e opere, 2023, silkscreen on supermirror stainless steel. 250 x 450 cm, unique work. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA. Photography: Musthafa Aboobacker.
2. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Il Tempo del Giudizio / The Time of Judgement, 2017, mirror, carpet, Buddha sculpture, kneeling-stool, 3 mirrors 250 x 200 cm each, 2 mirrors 210 x 100 cm each, carpet 130 x 196 cm, sculpture 212 x 65 x 43 cm, kneeling-stool 86 x 77 x 77 cm, unique work. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA. Photography: Musthafa Aboobacker.

The following interview has been condensed for clarity.

Christopher Joshua Benton: My name is Christopher, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m an artist, so I’m very excited to meet you.

Michelangelo Pistoletto: When did you decide to be an artist?

C.B.: I think 5 years ago.

M.P.: Five?

C.B.: Yeah, five years ago.

M.P.: So you’re very young.

C.B.: I’m 35.

M.P.: So you were 30?

C.B.: Yes, so I was young-ish. I was an advertiser before.

M.P.: Advertiser, so, what does that mean? You were working in advertising.

C.B.: Yeah, I was working in advertising, as a creative director here in Dubai. In parallel to that, I started to make art, and explore making.

M.P.: It's funny because I started working with publicity, with advertising myself when I was very young. Before becoming an artist.

I studied under Armando Testa – he was teaching advertising in school and my mother enrolled me in that school. He said, we must study modern art very well, as advertising is based on emotion, imagination, technology, technique, and all that. I am speaking about the 1950s.

That is why I started learning about modern art. This is my story.

C.B.: I’m interested in how you learned about modern art through advertising. I think of advertising in my work as very practical, if I just think about the process of delivering and doing a project, it can sometimes be very similar. Working in an ad agency can be similar.

M.P.: Were you working in analysis?

C.B.: I was a copywriter. Writing the TV commercials and, writing ad copy, booklets, coming up with the voice of the brand.

M.P.: So only words? Not visual.

C.B.: Yes, writing. Oftentimes, I pitched an idea to have like a vision of what I wanted to do and I tried to convince the client to spend, I don't know, like millions of dollars. Somehow that process was similar to having a creative vision for an artwork, especially when working with an institution.

M.P.: Yes, but when you speak about a vision for an artwork, you speak about something visual.

C.B.: Yes.

M.P.: But you come from word to visual.

C.B.: Right. But in my art practice and before my old job, it was completely collaborative. So, you know, you pair a copywriter with an art director and a graphic designer. I come up with the idea and the art director visualizes it. Now, oftentimes as an artist, I work with collaborators: fabricators, filmmakers, editors. Together we create the vision.

M.P.: So practically speaking, what is your art? How is it? How do you present to us, what does it consist of?

C.B.: I can show you. [Proceeds explaining past projects.] It means a lot to be showing you my work. Arte Povera is a very important philosophy for me, it really inspired my mode of making, and my thinking about using materials and telling stories. Can you define Arte Povera in your own words?

M.A.: I cannot give any judgment on your work because – I don’t know enough. You know, the title of this exhibition is The Judgment Time.

About Arte Povera – what it means to me? It means radical. Essential. Phenomenologically radical. Thinking about the elements of nature: the sea, the birds, the water, the sun, the earth, the tree. It all starts with the interconnection of nature. Art is not nature, but it offers the same possibility, like in nature, to be creative.

Arte Povera is probably a basic need of finding something radical, which also gives you the sense of understanding something.

C.B.: When I learned about Arte Povera in school, it was framed as an institutional critique.

M.P: Is that what they teach you in the States?

C.B.: This is what they teach us, yes.

M.P.: You come from the States?

C.B.: I'm American, yeah.

M.P.: But you still live in the States?

C.B.: I live here.

M.P.: Why did you decide to live here?

C.B.: The lifestyle, the comfort, and the opportunities.

M.P.: You think it's better here or in the States?

C.B.: Here. It’s much better. There's this myth of the American dream of social mobility, right? Here, it's significantly better.

M.P.: This is a place where all the different influences of the world start to connect. People from all over – I very much like what the emigrate is. I always make a mistake actually – between the words emigrate and emirate. United Arab Emigrants. That's it actually, it’s a good combination.

C.B.: Yes, makes perfect sense. 90 percent of the people here are expatriates.

M.P.: Yes, this is fantastic. I love the difference. My basic work is to love difference.

C.B.: Love difference?

M.P.: Love difference. Aimer la difference. Amar la difference. Love difference. The difference is the base. Everything grows because of differences. The difference between radical and artificial for example, produces something new that didn’t exist before.

3. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Louvre Abu Dhabi – uomo che indica, 2023, silkscreen on supermirror stainless steel. 250 x 150 cm, unique work. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA. Photography: author’s own.
4. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Louvre Abu Dhabi – bambina nel museo, 2023, silkscreen on supermirror stainless steel. 250 x 150 cm, unique work. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA. Photography: author’s own.

C.B.: That’s a great reference too. The way you think of Arte Povera is mostly as radicality, such as a radical gesture in society, or–

M.P.: You know, I'm so far away now from Arte Povera.

C.B.: Yes, but it’s a movement that has become attached to you, though.

M.P.: It's something that has a base, but I don't sit on a movement, stand on a movement, or stop in a movement that has already been created.

It's a passion, and I'm sure of it.

You know, if you accept the movement, if you accept the moment, if you are sure something has a reason to exist, then it has social recognition. If you are sure about the now, it works.

But once you become it, once you become the movement, that’s when you stop. You don't move anymore. This is a problem. You cannot stand on the moon. It's a movement. The word movement means to move. Once you stop, it's not a movement anymore.

You know, the movement becomes something static – once there is no more movement, that’s when it stops.

It's a movement. The word movement means to move. Once you stop, it's not a movement anymore.

C.B.: It’s an oxymoron in a way. Makes total sense.

M.P.: I think we can’t speak about movement anymore, right? Today, we have freedom all over. We have a dynamism. We have a new dynamic.

C.B.: Probably Arte Povera is the last of the movements. It's the last. I don't see any more groups of people that organize a new idea together and bring this idea forward as a movement. It doesn't exist anymore.

M.P.: Maybe their art comes from something very autonomous, and independent. But it’s also not easy to be autonomous and independent.

5. Installation view of Michelangelo Pistoletto, Judgement Time at GALLERIA CONTINUA Dubai, Burj Al Arab. November 2023. Photo: author’s own.

C.B.: How do you arrange yourself to be part of life and the economy?

M.P.: I work in the sense of being responsible in that society. That’s what is important for me. Responsibility for the freedom I have. The more freedom I have, the more responsible I become.

What can I do with my freedom, if I don't take responsibility for what that freedom offers me? My work is based on taking responsibility for the freedom of the art. When I started to teach in Vienna in 1991, I told all my students, attention: here we are. There are so many students throughout all the universities and art academies in the world. But there is no place for all of you in the museums. There's no place for you in the history of art. Not in the books or in the collections of the museums. There is only a place for the few. If you really want to go to the museum, go do it. Try, you know – you have to create your way there. But attention, as someone who wants to be creative: the entire society needs you.

Society is waiting for your vision. For your capacity to give illuminations, to bring light to society. There is work for everybody. Everybody can teach autonomy and creation. But the idea is not to just to be autonomous and creative in a passive way. You have to be creative in an active way for society.

C.B.: What do you think about the UAE?

M.P.: Here, it's very interesting. What is good about this place is the fact that they opened up the Emirates to people of different countries. There is a togetherness. This is what's interesting here. There's a togetherness of people. Different entities decided to act together, instead of being against one another. This country offers hope that people can cohabit peacefully, and that it is possible to connect rather than fight.

The base of this place is in connection. The Emirates is an example of political, economic, and social connection.

This is what's interesting [in the UAE]. There's a togetherness of people.

C.B.: You should go to the Abrahamic House, in Abu Dhabi. It’s an interfaith complex, housing a mosque, synagogue, and church. It’s so beautiful.

M.P.: Yes, very similar concept to what I did with the works here in this show. You see, there is an altar, then there is a Buddha. There is also Atheism represented in a different alteration. The idea is to show the connections between all the major religions in the world.

6. Installation view of Michelangelo Pistoletto, Judgement Time at GALLERIA CONTINUA Dubai, Burj Al Arab. November 2023. Image courtesy of GALLERIA CONTINUA. Photography: Musthafa Aboobacker.

C.B.: Can I ask you a last question? I’m selfishly thinking about my work. You use a lot of found material and found objects, in your work. When you think about sculpture and making, can you tell me a bit about your intention and how you collect these objects? How do you choose these shapes and objects, and why?

M.P.: In 1965, I decided to make work that was different from my past works – in order to forgo any possible signature of myself as a trademark.

I conceived my mirror paintings in the United States. And I was conceived as a trademark artist with my mirror paintings. But mirror paintings were not a trademark for me. They were just a conception of mirroring – mirror as a concept, not only the visual style. I wanted to forgo this style. In order to do that, I did many, many works, one different from the other, but I didn’t decide on one set direction.

Any idea that came to my mind, I accepted. There is already a good reason that I choose this work over that one, or this idea over that one, or this solution more than another – because it is and it feels more acceptable for me. From my point of view, I don’t need any other justification – this is my idea.

I did around 30 works during the time of a few months, one different from the next. My gallerist from New York couldn’t take it. I could be 30 different artists. Not 30 Pistolettos, 30 different artists, one different from the next. It might have been crazy, but it was part of the possibility. My work became the passage from possibility to existence.

The universe is a large possibility in that every moment becomes reality. This is the world. Everything works in this way – all the possibilities come from this combination. This is the possibility, happening right now in the mirror.

In this moment, just look in the mirror. Something that was not there now exists. It was not there, but it was possible. That’s why it exists. It becomes part of a mirror of possibility that can produce other possibilities.

C.B.: Can I take a picture with you?

8. Christopher Joshua Benton and Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Burj Al Arab, 2023. Photo: author’s own.

^{Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Judgment Time is on view at GALLERIA CONTINUA Dubai, Burj Al Arab, until February 20, 2024.}
Christopher Joshua Benton is a multimedia artist based in the United Arab Emirates. He often contributes to Global Art Daily.

Many thanks to GALLERIA CONTINUA Dubai and Aleksei Afanasiev.

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6. “You Can’t Stand on a Movement”: Michelangelo Pistoletto Interviews Benton Interviewing Pistoletto

It's a movement. The word movement means to move. Once you stop, it's not a movement anymore.

This is what's interesting [in the UAE]. There's a togetherness of people.

︎︎︎Previous Next︎

E-Issue 07 –– AUHWinter 2023-24

E-07++ Winter/Spring 2024

About ––

Interviews ––

Open Call ––

Newsletter ––

Chronological Archive ––

E-Issue 01 –– AUH/DXB Summer 2020

E-01++ Fall/Winter 2020-21

🎙️GAD Talk Series –– Season 1 2020

E-Issue 02 –– NYC Spring 2021

E-02++ Spring/Summer 2021

E-Issue 03 ––TYO Fall 2021

E-03++ Fall/Winter 2021-22

E-Issue 04 –– IST Spring 2022

E-04++ Spring/Summer 2022

E-Issue 05 –– VCE Fall 2022

E-05++ Fall/Winter 2022-23

E-Issue 06 –– DXB/SHJSpring 2023

🔍 Legal

6. “You Can’t Stand on a Movement”: Michelangelo Pistoletto Interviews Benton Interviewing Pistoletto

It's a movement. The word movement means to move. Once you stop, it's not a movement anymore.

This is what's interesting [in the UAE]. There's a togetherness of people.

︎︎︎Previous Next︎

E-Issue 07 –– AUH
Winter 2023-24

E-07++
Winter/Spring 2024

E-Issue 01 –– AUH/DXB
Summer 2020

E-01++
Fall/Winter 2020-21

E-Issue 02 –– NYC
Spring 2021

E-02++
Spring/Summer 2021

E-Issue 03 ––TYO
Fall 2021

E-03++
Fall/Winter 2021-22

E-Issue 04 –– IST
Spring 2022

E-04++
Spring/Summer 2022

E-Issue 05 –– VCE
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Fall/Winter 2022-23

E-Issue 06 –– DXB/SHJ
Spring 2023