One of the biggest problems of contemporary art is that it «is managed, integrated and its quality is reshaped by industrial culture». «È divenuta in amplissima misura un’impresa guidata dal profitto: un’impresa che prosegue finché rende». These are the words of Theodor Adorno but still nowadays, the situation has not improved.
Art is orchestrated and distorted based on the hard and devastating, fickle and contradictory needs of commercial “taste”. The “institutional” ratings of critics and historians are influenced by the commercial ratings of industry operators, galleries and collectors. The exact opposite should occur.
It is up to the local institutions and prominent members of the community, namely major business. To change the art market circle of art from vicious to virtuous.
Intellectual sponsorship must engage and invest in promoting the artist, the person “who creates art”. By guaranteeing him complete freedom, creativity. By giving precedence to his originality over the demands and pressures of trends and consumption. By not forcing him to legitimise himself in terms of saleability.
Promoting the introduction of young people on the art market also means teaching them to promote themselves.
This is exactly what some “enlightened” industries do – of which “Rosss” is part of the circle, a company in which an ethical approach and production impetus still succeed, despite the times, in going hand in hand, thanks to the example of its founder.
In the manufacturing sector there is the perfect combination of Art and Work
The quadrinomial of art-technology-industry-market is, therefore, becoming increasingly inseparable.
The sector of “Rosss”, manufacturing, is the most suitable of all the different types of industrial activities for helping those artists to comprehend, appreciate and exploit this quadrinomial.
This is because, although it makes use of cutting-edge technological instruments, it does so by considering them as a simple means, without elevating their use, and because it maintains the link with the “productive” concreteness of manufacturing, with the creation of tangible, long-lasting objects. Of non-superfluous, non-transient products that are not enforced by the tyranny of consumption by man in the sense of benefit and not waste.
The manufacturing sector is the perfect field in which to demonstrate the cross–over between art and work because both are exceptionally manual and formative.
