Conversing with Simona Weller

B.L. - As a born and bred Roman artist, how do you explain the fact that most of Italian critical writing is centred on Rome?

S.W. - That is a question I have often been asked in Milan, and with malice aforethought I think. The people who ask the question may know the answer already and they may be looking for confirmation of their love-hate feelings about Rome. The idea that needs confirmation is that we are all dissatisfied with the behaviour of the critical establishment, and we are all dissatisfied whit the political establishment. And since the political and the critical establishments both live and work in the same city, there must be some connection between the two. Of course there is, it is obvious, but some people may like to hear it again. A well-known politician remarked that "power wears down those who don't have it", and that might serve as the motto of the Roman critics. Everything Milan thinks about Rome is true. It is true that Rome is corrupt, that culture is run by under-secretaries, that there is greed and historical short-sightedness. It is true that the critics are bureaucrats, careerists, and paranoids. Lea Vergine said that "in Rome gossip becomes scandal", and I think she is right.

B.L. - How do you explain the "love" that this "whorish" city evokes?

S.W. - I think it is latent in everyone who lives "outside" Rome, and it may have ancient roots in a collective unconscious that includes both the Roman Empire and the caricature of that empire created by Fascism. And then, this damned city is damned beautiful, full of colour, imagination, joie de vivre, people of every race... you see... every sort of thing happens here, every day, it's as if we were always in a state of shock. But those vivid green Mediterranean pines outlined against a fine cloudless sky... they're not just "what I see from my studio window"; they're a consoling image of a visual culture that I am part of... After Balla, after Severini, after Boccioni, after Mafai and Raphaël, after Caporossi, Dorazio and Accardi… Why don't you ask me why even De Chirico came back to Rome to die?

B.L. - If this city is so seductive after all, why are you Roman artists so worried about the success of the younger generation of painters? Can they "lay on the paint" better than you do?

S.W. - If they knew how to "lay on the paint" better, as you put it, then I think we would clench our teeth and humbly watch them take their places in the arena… But to go back to the short-sightedness of the critics in Rome, which is where it all starts, they take over the media as if they were launching a new brand of soap; there hasn't been anything like it in the past twenty years. The trouble is that they are inflating personalities that don't have enough breath to climb the stairs home… Do you remember the fashion for being "political"? The same that happened in public schools in 1968, (with prizes going for mediocrity, crudeness, and lack of ability) is now happening to the art world too… But there is a substantial difference. While indiscriminate acculturation was "political", the recruiting of mediocre artists to create a "new situation" seems like a plague. Once again it is the "monsters" that make the news.

B.L. - If the atmosphere in Rome is degraded, if there is no market for art, and if intelligent and attentive criticism is lacking, how can artists live there, and how can they work?

S.W. - Sometimes I think we're either giants or masochists. Even though the Rome National Gallery of Modern Art does not have any important De Chirico or any important Futurist paintings, there are many in New York and many people go to look at them. And I think that these midgets who are trying to pass off their grotesque impotence (like vaudeville comics) as serious, creative artistic work will get their just deserts from history (although museums teach us that no trace of them will remain). They will get what they deserve, like all the nameless "turds" who have always pretended they never knew who was living just upstairs… and it might have been Balla.

B.L. - And you?

S.W. - You may laugh, but I reserve the right to paint well, to be free to explore beauty as much as I like, without accusing fingers pointed at me, the way they do in Italy.

Milan, March 1981