Breakfast with Aldo Spoldi

Aldo Spoldi is a visual artist, an academic professor, a banker, an anchorite of language, a writer, and an involuntary philosopher. Above all, he is an individual who pokes fun at every predefined dogma and all solid systems—not to mention himself—through projects that he has developed over forty-five years of artistic and cultural activity. That makes him difficult to define as an artist and impossible to contain within a conversation formed of questions and answers. Every sentence uttered, every concept expressed, is often a simulacrum or refraction of other thoughts and ideas. His sharp and surreal answers are sometimes incomprehensible or seemingly unrelated to the questions asked yet they contain deep meaning and value for anyone who dares to venture into his world and go beyond the surface of things. The text that follows is therefore to be considered one of the many jokes that Aldo Spoldi has played on life and the public, who are invited, through these pages, to rediscover a sense of irony and the absurd as valuable means to understanding reality. This collection of his statements—put together in an attempt to give the interview a linear structure—is to be read as you please, making free associations between one thought and another without following a didactic order and, above all, without taking oneself too seriously.

I’ll make a joke if you'll let me: if I write things down I realise I have nothing to say to anyone... hahaha. If you speak, you always speak in front of a person. It is very difficult to speak today because anything is punishable. Jokes are rarely allowed today because of the internet, which is basically a contract system. It is based on technical language. It is difficult for one to be a poet when technical language governs everything. I’ll give an example: if I go to the bank, I can't express myself through jokes. I make a deposit or sell shares, I come to withdraw cash or deposit... all through a precise, clear and common linguistic system that does not allow nuances or distractions, let alone mistakes. I have always been shy anyway. Talking has never been my strong suit. I like painting and writing. They are both languages too, but they presumably boast superior content. I don’t want to offend anyone, don’t get me wrong. But I have a need for other worlds and other views. Above all, I need nuances and mistakes, that’s all. If a painting from 1968 had the characteristics of 1968 and a painting from 1980 had the characteristics of 1980, to me the case was closed. What I mean is that it seemed to me that both paintings somehow resembled the eras in which they were completed. In a way, they are copies of reality. In one of my last exhibitions—nowadays I find it harder to plan new ones, I'm a bit worn out—I realised that I had taken a painting from 1968 and placed it next to one from 1980, merging them into a single piece. What does that mean? That ‘68 and the 80s had something in them that I didn’t see at the time and that now links them together compositionally and even culturally. They can be read together, instead of placing them in opposition as we are so used to doing. Because if they come together and stay together, there is something superior that binds them. Now I can talk about pieces from different eras that combine into a single work. Through a language of perspective, precisely as one does in philosophy, cinema and jokes hahaha. The world today is so sure of itself. I try to make people laugh, but I wonder how many people are able to embrace this attitude. Playing the fool, I might say that the term finance is very similar to the concept of finality in philosophy, but the term finance means the end of a contract; while finality, the purpose of philosophy, implies addition. There is something that attracts me to finance as a means to study people or understand things. When used for speculation it is annoying and boring, but it is a remarkable cognitive tool.

Once, in the early 90s, I bought some shares. I bought shares in drinking water. They were some of the first bonds ever issued. I found a person who was happy to issue them because I told them I wanted to buy a lake, to raise capital, and they were enthusiastic. Now the bank has bonds issued by the Accademia dello Scivolo, which I founded. They are 30-year bonds, and money was printed corresponding to the value of the water from the well; that’s because the first thing we did, through the Accademia dello Scivolo, was to build a well. If in thirty years, less by now, someone wanted to cash the bonds they would have two options: they either get some paper money designed by someone good and have it printed at the printer, or if they are penniless, they get a few glasses of water from the well. It is the only currency linked to a tangible value, not virtual, or even abstract. That’s it, it's not abstract. Would you like a glass of water? Hahahaha! But all jokes aside, many things can be done with water. I can drink it, but I can easily... not drink it; I can water this plant in front of us... there is substance to it, let's say. I would like to be like Dante: hold everything together with various worlds to explore. Bottom, middle, top. These days I have to go to hospital quite often. Hospitals have the worst lights. Speaking as a painter: they often have these neon lamps that distort colour a lot. It may not be much, but it used to be that if somebody went pale, you could generally assume that there was some sort of problem. Not anymore, now everybody has rosy cheeks hahaha... Not even doctors in hospitals have their observational faculties anymore. The point is that there is no way out, more or less everyone likes the world today. Especially if there is only one of them. The effort has always been for there to be just one. As a philosopher, I say there are at least two. However, both are wrong... I saw one of the first Arte Povera exhibitions in Milan, at the Galleria Apollinaire—it was historic, I was 14/15 years old—and there were many glasses with a fly in each glass. So, out of community spirit, when no one was there, I lifted a glass thinking I could at least release a fly. The fly didn't fly away, it kept buzzing around the glass, perhaps because it hit its head so many times against the glass hahaha! After a while, I put the glass back because I wasn't in my own home and I didn’t want to appear rude, but the fly wasn't quick to flee...This should make us think.

I know little about real theatre, I know the fantasies that someone who doesn't do theatre can have. However, it has been known to happen, within the art of painting, that the objects leave the canvas. Do you know what a Happening is? Fontana inviting you to exit the painting through a cut in the canvas or Rauschenberg, whose objects materialise beyond the boundaries of the frame. It has that kind of lineage. It is a painting coming to life. Later on, I saw something by Carmelo Bene that I liked, but I still don't go to the theatre. I actually find it a bit much whenever I go. That’s not to criticise anyone. Hahahahaha. Essentially, I grew tired of doing paintings in the 80s. Some images break out from what we go through. When faced with many things... I am against decisions. Do you understand Giuseppina? I have never been able to. The transcendental reasons… were work-related. There were those who helped me. Not that I’m exploitative, it was a chance to spend some time together. I have noticed, and it’s absurd, that we are essentially living on a blank sheet of paper. If you think about it, all the visual systems we have at our disposal are square or rectangular... the computer is a square too. Maybe because we get overwhelmed when things are messy. We prefer things that are neat and well-designed and square. I am a very messy person but it is possible to establish order where there is none. The opposite, unfortunately, is not as easy… Now it seems to me that being nice and funny goes nowhere, because obviously, when someone speaks, they must ultimately be forgiven. In a painting, it is the composition that endures. Like if you change clothes and put on a different shirt... the identity of a piece, of a language, is in the whole of what you do, not in the shirt you change. Time changes all shirts, but you essentially remain the same. I think I read somewhere that a typical Neanderthal man could beat today’s world boxing champion. Without a doubt he was smarter too…hahaha. Just imagine having to eat. It was such a struggle. You either had to fight with other animals or run the risk of being poisoned. That's why I say we used to be much smarter. Nowadays we expect our food to be portioned up for us. This is because, in a way, society guarantees safety. There are no lions, no crocodiles... imagine facing a crocodile! Today we fear mosquitoes. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe everyone should be looked after, especially the weak. We’ve always wanted to be safe, but now I think it’s a bit too much. If you eat meat, it’s bad for you. If you eat anything, it’s bad for you. And everyone is sick anyway. The proof that there is something wrong with our lifestyles is that everyone is sick. There are an awful lot of sick people around.

I started teaching out of duty, I'm not a great professor. I did what I thought was right. I think I did less damage than others because I said things that I could write down, things I wouldn't regret the next day, be they serious or ridiculous. I have always been quite attentive to current events. I was saying things that were officially acknowledged, not personal nonsense let's say. I never played the role of professor or mentor. I also don't believe in colleagues or what people call colleagues. I’m afraid I do a sort of mental assessment when I hear one of my colleagues mentioned. In my mind, everyone is being paid by the state and I’ve never felt the classroom was mine in Brera. The classroom, the locker... they wanted the keys to the latter as well. Everyone fighting over supplies... The state provided a bit of paint and when it started to run out it was like being in the Punic Wars hahahaha. But, let's face it, if you can't make a living as an artist, you become a professor. Talking to young people, however, is not like talking to faculty members. It’s more entertaining. Their world is still in the making, they are not certain of anything yet, it’s interesting. With the demise of the great narratives to guide you through personal journeys, today it is vital to recount new ones. You ultimately need stories that prove to be plausible. When they do, you have conceived a fairy tale. Three-quarters of all stories are exactly that: stories. You are even allowed to lie, because even a lie can become true when it is told properly and it won’t take you to hell immediately. Only later on… hahaha. I like writing because one of the books I liked regardless of the concepts—I don’t want to know if it agrees with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit— had a pictorial beauty to it. The characters were drawn masterfully. It conveyed images and points of view. It’s always a great gift when there are images. Especially if they are real because they become more palpable. A sticker album is more beautiful than a sunset. Transavantgarde occurs when art criticism is still standing but has one foot in the grave. When Jeff Koons stated that he was a stockbroker who preferred to be an artist because he earned more in the field of art—which remains to be seen—we had already founded the Bank of Oklahoma. We were printing the currency Brunello, designed by interesting people like Gerardi and Schifano. We were making cheques and silk-screening bank statements. Paradoxically, it was a useless company that revealed how useless and obnoxious the banks were or the excessive value of the market compared to the content of the works. We used to make fun of them a bit.