La Professione dell'Artista / The Artist's Profession

“The Artist’s Profession” addresses the complex issue of artist’s craft and the ambivalence that involves artworks, considered by some as the ultimate expression of the human spirit, and by others as a commodity. In the first case art is assumed as an activity that leads to create aesthetic forms able to express, enrich and nobilities the human spirit, feeding into an almost mystical condition. In the second case art is retained an asset, the circulation of which is intended to produce profit. Considering a work of art as a commodity leads to many contradictory behavior, reaching the paradox of perceiving an art work’s value mostly for its quotations, rather than for its aesthetic quality or cultural merit.
Inspired by the physical location of Incontri Internazionali d’Arte, in Rome –archive and library- the intervention uses as material some statements uttered by famous artists over the centuries, gathered on the library’s books. These statements express artists’s thoughts about art and life with particular intensity. Two performers read those sentences standing on the library’s table, while a third voice, diffuse on the background,reads quotations assigned to various artworks during Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction.