Massimo Bartolini by the seaside

I spend a quiet weekend in Pietrasanta and Forte dei Marme staring at the sea and on Monday set out for Cecina, a seaside town up the coast from Livorno.  I am supposed to meet the artist Massimo Bartolini in a bar called,  I hope symbolically,  La Dolce Vita and arrive in a larger town than I was expecting.  Many bars but none with that name and I am almost about to give up and phone Massimo when I spy a pregnant woman waiting  by the side of the road.  She says in Italian and sign language that  she can’t give me directions but as it is near the hospital where she is going for her check up- and can she get in?- and before I know it she is in the car and leading the way through tortuous roundabouts . 

I had met Massimo in London and then fell in love with a work by him in Basel last May.  It was called organ and was a work which had a formal structure, a large construction of building scaffolding, the twist was that it was being played, like an old fashioned music box.  The lugubrious notes filled the large hall of art statements – permeating the mood of the happy art buyers.

When I phone Massimo to tell him I have arrived bang on time and in the right place - he has the grace to be surprised and grateful.  He says he chooses to live here as few people venture to find him and we travel up a road to an industrial estate where he has had his studio for nine years. 

That is another fact of life- studios are no longer glam turret rooms or usually not- there are a few of those but often in the least glam parts of town.  Often they are metal sheds close to manufacturing works and with few amenities near by.

There is little art to see her as Massimo gets his work fabricated elsewhere but there are a recent series of paintings he has been working on which are as many Italian works obsessed with materiality- in this case a special paint that changes colours as you walk around and are opalescent and seemingly effortless.  He then coats them with oil which spots up like dew.   It all sounds prosaic – you have to see it to get the full effect.

We settle down to talk and within minutes are tussling about the definition of originality and coming out of other artists.   I quote my favorite John Baldessari line – ‘all art comes from art’ and Massimo agrees but says he personally prefers to find out that his work owes something to other people after he has made the art not before.

We share many likes, in particular Francis Alys,  Cildo Merieles and Felix Gonzales Torres as well as Gordon Matta Clark but he admits that often they are badly presented.  He points out to me how Joseph Beuys is often shown on huge plinths that destroy the works intent. 

We talk about the Felix Gonzalez Torres sculpture in front of the pavilion in Venice- and how wrong it was.  Felix would never have done that piece in white marble – it was not his material – it would have been shiny turquoise plastic surely.  We are turning him into a different artist.

We have a really good laugh about various artists before homing into an intense conversation about John Cage.

Recently I have come to believe that Cage is the most important artist – if you define important by how influential an artist is on other artist. Massimo pulls out a CD of Cage’s compositions to prove this is certainly true in his case. He tells me that the sound I heard in Basel was a Cage composition and related the story of the work he did at the beginning of his career to was also set to another  Cage work, Music for Marcel Duchamp.  It was about an angel who takes her wings off to take a bath and the devil removes them and holds them as ransom saying she will have to dance to get them back.  Just the idea of this piece makes me ache to see it.

Off to the most  delicious lunch in a bar like osteria near his studio. Riso de mare- yum yum yum yum yum yum and squid but I wish I had chosen cake and all too soon it is time to go whizzing back up the motorway to Pietrasanta to see and go to the airport and and and and and .