Maddalena D'Angelo: First of all let us introduce ourselves, your first five artists and first five composers. Also your first five writers?
Renato Meneghetti: Grünewald, Bernini, Goya, Munch and Matisse, because they created light, and then Warhol, if I am allowed a sixth?
Admitted.
? because he really decomposed it. Then, Bach, Sibelius, Berlioz? Schönberg and Nono, with whom I would have liked to make a recording . And the Beatles? and if you like Rino Gaetano!
I beg your pardon, from Berlioz to Schönberg and no Wagner?
Not Wagner, no, too noisy. And I find Beethoven too heavy, at times. But I'll try to be serious, because we had fun with the Nomads too, Amalia Rodriguez, the Byrds and Paolo Conte - especially with "La ragazza fisarmonica", - and Chuck Berry, the Platters or Aphrodite's Child? do you remember "Rain and tears"?
No!
Papathanassiou and Bergman, I think. And in any case Bergman, the other one I mean, we'll put him with the artists? while Miss Bergman was - at the time - really an angel! but there is more besides wings? (whistling a recent tune)
I don't quite understand you.
And finally Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche? what do you think?
I think we should go on, Three thing you can't stand please, in yourself and in others?
Cunning, servility and acne. In me and in others. Especially in others?
?and three that you love?
? I could add nuisances such as gastritis, from which I have suffered a great deal ? If others have these problems they cause me a lot less trouble.
I was saying things that you love?
A face of someone who calmly contemplates the void in its most extreme dimension; the absence and excess of sentiment, which are the same thing? the complete dominance of light impairs sight.
Adorno?
Also. Knowledge and seeing are nothing but an infinite game of light and shadow… on the other hand I love subtleties.
Now, yet half way through your career… the sixties and the seventies… cleanly divides the image, playing on violently opposed fields, almost as if it needs to offend?
It's a side of my character?
In other words?
I said, it's a side of my character.
Can you define it?
"None who offend me go unpunished"? or something of the sort. It was written on the pound note?
Well then, at this point is there a historical figure that fits you particularly well?
My grandfather, they say that everyone was afraid of him. He used to go around town on a horse, swinging a large golden watch. He had become rich dealing in pigs… you know the sort of thing that happened at the end of the eighteen hundreds.
I don't find that particularly poetic, and he's not even a historical figure.
We are history…. (and he whistles De Gregori). He was a hard, melancholy man… tough, but not indifferent to the pleasures of life. I don’t know however, how much interest he had in being poetic. On the other hand, it is somewhat ridiculous to make an issue of being poetic… a point in your favour, miss! But remember that each one of us writes history as it pleases us and that, even if it had been Thomas Browne who said it – the Englishman who came up with the idea, in his Religio Medici, that he found a circle of 360 degrees insufficient for his purposes – it would have been the same. And even if it was said by, let’s say, Orazio Gentileschi, who was a real rogue, of course, but more famous than Caravaggio at the time… yes! he would fit too, better still would be Francesco Redi, the naturalist from Arezzo…
The one who decerebrized tortoises with a tea spoon during the seventeenth century, cutting a hole in their skull to see how long they would live without a nervous centre?
Precisely. And he tells us about a great number of similar things in his observations about vipers and in another volume about the generation of insects!
You admire a lesser Menghele!
Now, let’s not exaggerate. He was also a neat writer, perhaps better than Galileo… Have you ever read his Bacco in Toscana? Menghele was a squalid pederast!
Are you a compassionate man?
Pity is a gift that not everyone is capable of giving, and not everyone is capable of receiving.
What are pain and death for you?
The entire progress and final horizon of the human existence.
For you and for others, please.
Death is always our own personal death. Even when it is others who die, we simply feel our own death in them, or their death in us… which is in any case the same thing. Of all the things that are presented to our senses nothing is lasting. And in the end nothing returns, with all my respect for Nietzsche. This was also a comforting illusion, a veil so as not to see…. moreover like most or all of our actions… a voluntary intoxication… and of noteworthy effect.
You don’t seem to be a religious person?
I am in the sense Soldati gave to it.
Explain?
"The man who has never thought about God – he said – is simply an idiot".
What has art got to do with all of this?
Art gets involved in recent issues, for ontological reasons. It tells you to look honestly inside yourself once again… and it offers you the perfume, the mirage of a harmony, which perhaps exists… and perhaps it exists for us too, when our eye stops being simply our eye.
To become?
An eye that is filled with life… an eye that becomes pure perception… because while you paint you do not know what you are doing, and the moments of judgement, when you create your paintings in your mind are moments that have nothing to do with painting… painting, you know, like knowledge is this game of light and shadow. Painting, in this sense, is a means of knowledge, it is extreme opening and acceptance of the future, taken directly from the structure of things… which then returns to the cosmos, a hip and the estuary of a great river are incredibly similar.
Like in your paintings?
Like in the works of a Roman artist, it’s incredible but I don’t remember his name, left aside during his best years because he didn’t have the right connections - you know, that disgusting practice… as in this artist’s work, I was saying, who spread sand out across a canvass and frame with his fingers, without any intention of creating any form, and yet it would appear after endless attempts over hours, all of a sudden: faces, seas, calm or stormy, earthly or lunar landscapes, visions of paradise and the heavenly hosts… and if you look closely, within the image, other images appear, lesser but equally definite.
But it is simply a matter of probabilities… the mind leads this conglomeration of strokes and colours to a well-known form or to that which is most coherent with its ideas. Like in Langton’s mathematical game, where an ant runs across a chessboard, changing the colour of the square through which it passes and turning left when it finds black and right when it is white… or vice versa according to what has been decided at the first move. The ant follows an apparently casual path which finally takes the form of a perfect parallelepiped?
I know this game. I know others too. For example her is a sequence that clears up everything: 16. 12. 6. 20. 18. 8. 5. 13. 17. 5. 12. 22. 24. 14. 6. 20. 8. 12. 5. 13. 7. 20. 8. 13. 11. 12. 20. 13. 7. 22. 8. 16. 10. 7. 6. 19. 8. 24. 12. 22. 16. 7. 22. 5. 7. 8. 20.4. 20. 14. 12. 5. 13. 13. 24. 8. 16. 5. 7?
?please. The problem is that the nebula within which the first million or so moves take place is no less orderly or “regular” than the parallelepiped: they represent the same mathematical function. It is only that our mind sees a known form in the parallelepiped, it “recognises? therefore there is no intention or form of a face in the grains of sand for this artist nor is there a river in the pancreas of a man?
Gödel and others have raised many doubts regarding such issues, it is substantially the difference between recurring number and a non-recurring number. When does a period appear and disappear? After a million numbers? After a billion numbers? Any time before that unreachable threshold, the limitless, the sequence can change rhythm? In other words, the pattern that the ant composes takes on a different sense according to the distance of the observer? And for an observer at a zenith distance, on the surface of that sphere the circumference of which is a complete curve – to use a term of Cusano – with a view that can take in the entire extension, the way in which things are laid out is both free and necessary at the same time. There is no sense of speaking about order or chance…
Of order and chance?
And art offers us this much-more-than-immense distance. Every work of art – a work of art is only a masterpiece – is this point of union between finite and infinite, or better an expression of the infinite in the finite, which is also the Mystery of the Incarnation of Christ, or, if you like, the divine name or the determination of God’s will in Biblical or Coranic teachings. This is also the mystery of how we have the possibility of stating something true, without being able to verify it: a matter of intuition… All matters over which Celso would have had a hearty laugh, but which are also issues of personal conscience: if it exists or not and how it can handle, being distinct and perceptive, the uninterrupted continuum of the future. Conscience is justified by freedom, but it has no sense outside the concept that reality is an absolutely full, complete mechanism. In this case art is also a case of conscience! Are you with me?
There was an idea in Spinoza, or Hobbes, perhaps in the “Leviathan”, regarding freedom and the need that the river has to flow in its bed? Hobbes, I think it was.
In any case this was to say that there is a face in grains of sand and a river in a human pancreas, and moreover mountains in a spine and a galaxy in an eye…. And these are all statements that , Posidonio or also Plotino would be very much in agreement with, and that Celso had not understood, just as, on the other hand Sesto Empirico did not understand anything about astrology: a curious case, both were doctors if I remember well. Do you see how it works? They have the x-rays in their hands for a hundred years and all the can see are fractures… often those who look do not see, and those who “see” do not look… and the other one would be a poet, if you want to believe the old story about Homer, the blind man who lived in rocky Chio?
The old story?
Yes, these days they come across it in a hymn to Apollo Delio, sixth century BC but it is a much older story than that, a few thousand years old, in Scilly, in Afganistan, in Iran in the land of the Arii: it has to do with the shaman. Which then became the Rig Veda, the third eye, Wotan and also tribal rites? that is to say, Homer was from Chio, or Smirne, which perhaps is better, but I am speaking about the blindness of the seer ?
Do you think that you are a seer? The Prime Minister is also said to have extraordinary powers, and he too, in a certain way, considers himself an artist… but I don’t think that it is doing him much good?
I used to see him from time to time… We met, if I remember, through a Grundig campaign and then there were other things… but since he has got into politics I rarely see him. Yet I still think he is an exceptional man. And in some way an artist, if an artist is someone who seeks the extraordinary…
Don’t you think you are exaggerating a bit?
It would be simply stupid not to recognise genius. Perhaps he is too full of himself, like the ant that Shouted to the mountain “where are you, coward, where are you?”. Though, when I look at things from a bit of distance we are all only sand on the shore…
You can put it any way you like, all I said was that I did not think Berlusconi was an artist, at least not in the usual meaning of the word. But since, on top of it all, your job is to convince people to bring something home that is useless…
First, I know nothing on this earth that is really useful and perhaps even living is not useful. Second, a good advertiser only accepts to work with good products. Thirdly, it is many years now that I do not do advertising. Fourthly, bringing out the worst argument is the specific objective of rhetoric, which I make no use of because I have no interest in competing with you. Is that sufficient?
Sufficient to explain that you have dealt with other things for a long time, you started to paint forty years ago yet it is only now that we begin to know you…
That’s your problem!
? and we wonder if you are not taking us for a ride?
Me?
? with all those billions that you keep on the move, with your Palladian villas, with your almost strategic exploitation of critics from opposing sides, Goldin and Dorfles, Sgarbi and ABO, Clair and Szeemann and so on, like a gambler who needs to cover as much as he can of the table.
But explain, please, "we wonder" who? Who wonders?
Angela Vettese, for one, who recently raised some doubts in Milan regarding your biography?
I’m told she’s a beautiful woman, I’ve never seen her, only her photo on the sleeve of her book?
Angela Vettese was among the speakers at a debate organised at the San Fedele centre?
I beg your pardon, of course I know that?
?and she began her intervention stating that it seemed a contradiction that you should state in your biography ?
Look, I know about it and I’m most grateful to Professor Vettese?
I’m sorry to insist, but I would like to quote. Here, it starts more or less here: “I am somewhat bewildered because, in his biography Meneghetti writes that Meneghetti speaks exclusively through his works. Therefore – substantially – his works should not be in need of any critical commentary. Moreover he repeats in his biography that Meneghetti has broken off all relations with the art system for some time now. The art system is that thing made up of critics, dealers etc. etc. .. Now I am surprised because I read that the works of Meneghetti have been presented by eminent critics such as Gillo Dorfles, Vittorio Sgarbi or Achille Bonito Oliva. Therefore either his works speak for themselves and are distant from the art system, or they speak through a critic and they are involved in the art system?
That phrase taken for those few lines that make up my biography – which, by the way, I did not write – mean simply that I do not like giving interviews, nor do I like writing about what I think and finally that I am not even sure that what I think is important, when said in words, because my way of thinking and expressing myself is in painting; it is in this way that Meneghetti only speaks through his works. All the rest, also what we are saying here, is without any foundation and does not provide any “interpretative keys” to my work if we want to use that formula? Answering a request from John Russel for some biographic notes for an exhibition at the Tate, Balthus sent a telegraph: “No biography, begin: Nothing is known about the life of Balthus. Now let us look at his paintings”. This is also my position, but I do not see why it should stop the critics from dealing with my work if they should see fit to do so. It must be said that art criticism is only a contingency of the objects about which it is written… unless it becomes literature it is a mere descriptive aspect, or if you prefer decorative…
In substance therefore it is useless?
In substance? it is as useful as a floral garland for a beautiful woman: if she wears it, it is better, so that you can see it from far, because everyone can see it… but the expert eye prefers to investigate alone and close up, uncover more than cover.
A matter of advertising therefore.
Now you are the one who is twisting the words around!
Alright, lets be more to the point. According to you are there any hired critics?
There are men who do their job, they have qualifications to do it and therefore they get paid. Would you consider it immoral for a doctor to be paid for an examination?
No, but I consider it immoral for a critic to be convinced to write about someone.
Indeed, I try to keep away from that type of person, moreover, there are critics who do not like my work and would never write about me.
But I do not understand how so many different critics with such different opinions have written about you.
Because in the end they will have found something interesting, as you have, on the other hand, I presume, I hope you didn’t come here to conduct and reorder this interview for the cheque that your editor is giving you! It is because a serious person is not so interested that you are here or there, abstract or informal or figurative… on the other hand I have never worried much about being something particular, or better something that fits into certain canons, that you are noting down on a piece of paper, hard avant-garde soft avant-garde… maybe this has made things easier for me? you know, talking about those three characteristics that I like, before, we should add stubbornness, and ability to resist. The first is more yours, the second all mine!
Indeed, and I would like to understand better. Barilli, Celant, Bossaglia, Calvesi, Cameron? Who do you "admire" the most? I would like to understand your next move.
My next move will be to show you the door if you insist on this tone. I cannot understand why you have taken such a dislike to me… Are you in love with me?
Let’s see: do you feel that any one of the critics mentioned are particularly congenial to your work?
The problem is not if I feel them, it is if they feel me. I have cordial relations with them. With others, frankly, I have never tried to. I’m not interested in making such choices.
Why didn’t you play chess instead of painting?
Because I prefer to paint.
You’re not a liar by any chance?
Federico Fellini was a great liar. I remember that Giulietta Masina said that for Fellini lies where just another way of reaching the truth.
Yes, let us stick with reality. In your biography you sustain, for example, that you do not lend your works to private galleries. Now I have recently seen several of your exhibitions in private galleries, moreover sometimes in less than first class galleries?
Recently. As a favour to a friend, I lent some works in Sicily and also for two exhibitions in the States and Canada, I think… but they were not for sale. There are about fifty of my works still in circulation, and I would like to buy them back.
It is written in your biography that you have bought back almost all your works. On the other hand several collector friends of mine have explained that you are very happy to sell your paintings, but for astronomical prices, completely out of the market.
Me?
You or the Arts from Science Foundation. By the way what relationship is there between the Arts from Science Foundation and Meneghetti? I have noticed that you have been dealing with all their recent activities.
It is a corporate body that safeguards my image… and it takes care of all those things that I do not handle, books, exhibitions and so on. Since the initial capital was founded also on a donation of some of my paintings, it is selling off some paintings. Without difficulty, I might add; this shows that the prices are not being questioned by serious collectors.
I looked up your name on the international auction indexes. Christie's, Sotheby's, Ketterer, Bonhams & Brooks, Finarte, Tajan, Dorotheum: here too your paintings are on public sale, and with just a few exceptions, almost at the same time and they have reached noteworthy results, higher for example tan Merz, or Paolini or Baj… It is a use of several dealers, sometimes even without the agreement of the auctioneers, to push up prices
Some years ago a relation of mine sold some of my paintings by auction, mostly outside of Italy. He didn’t want me to know about it. They are part of those fifty paintings I have been speaking about. On top of this, Christie's, for example, I think, has an annual turnover of about 4,000 million Euro and I would like to have the strength to influence this figure! Really though the explanation is more banal. There are few of my paintings in circulation and some important collections, public and private, feel justified in spending what they are worth… Having said this I do not see why, if they reach certain prices at an auction, I should let them go for less. If anything it should be the contrary, no?
Can you give some names?
RASbank, Unipol, Banca Antonveneta, for example. But also Ammon or the Friars of St. Anthony?
So why are you not being looked after by a gallery?
If you like, I go on my own to negotiate with Claudia Gian Ferrari or Christian Stein. I make agreements, but on my own terms. Otherwise you risk ending up married.
And do you think that it is credible that all this should by done at five kilometres form Rosà di Vicenza, in the almost domestic environment of which you boast?
I have never boasted of anything of the kind. After my years in Milan with Fontana and my tour de forces with Lara Saint Paul – who in many ways was better than Fontana! – as a young man, I spent two thirds of my life abroad and it must have been for something, I hope it was. But now I am so much better off in my own home… I don’t think you feel so well here… Anyhow, my studio is at a stone’s throw and there is nothing domestic about it: it is a workshop where everyone has their place and where I keep over a thousand paintings, 50 year’s work. Hell if it isn’t true that I keep them all! You couldn’t even imagine the difficulty of conserving all those works…
Warhol’s Factory in the outskirts? you said so in Fotostorica, I think.
In the sixties and early seventies; then I got over it. Everyone was mad about America then, even the dissenters… then there was ‘68 and Woodstock… it was like getting the measles!
Let’s get back to my earlier question. I am always more convinced that you are treating your career like a big publicity campaign. Your fellow citizens are rather poisonous. It is said that you have speculation in your blood… when you donated paintings for the children of the Izmit earthquake, you made sure that the press knew all about it…
And let’s get back to my previous answer. What else did my fellow citizens tell you… these people made some mistakes from which I gained when I was dealing in historical homes. You know the way it is, you can touch anything but don’t touch their pockets. But, in any case, you should ask these people how many of them gave something for Izmit, or a donation to the National Gallery of Bologna for example.
Is it true that your mother said: "Renato, painters die of starvation"? Perhaps this is why you have never been exclusively a painter?
The question is true. But Hokusai, I think it was, when he was eighty was afraid to call himself a painter.
In your cycle Fagocitatrici et similia you take the side of the victim. But you have done rather well from the consumer society… to what extent are you a victim and to what extent are you the executioner? Of yourself and others, please…
I do not clearly perceive the difference between myself and others when I paint. When drawing up a contract the matter is totally different.
It is said that you feel little emotional attachment. There are many self-portraits among your paintings, but none or very few of your family. Why?
Did you come to this conclusion because you did not find their names in the lists? Almost all my paintings are of my family.
Whose are the x-rays you use for your paintings?
Mine or, in fact, members of my family for the human x-rays. Some very old ones, to tell the truth, I bought on the antique market. I am negotiating at the moment for Mussolini’s skull, I won’t be misunderstood I hope! others – wood, objects and similar things – were done on purpose.
The x-ray does not, I imagine, leave much room for movement, since the drawing is already done.
From the same x-ray I have obtained series of eight completely different paintings… the work is done with colour. The x-ray plate is not line it is light.
What do you mean?
I mean I am not interested in the line I could get that from a photocopy.
Are you really so sure about the quality of your works?
Why do you ask?
Because, if you are certain about your talents, what is the point in looking for public approval, what is the point of taking part in exhibitions, accepting – I’ll concede you this one – to have essays written about you? How interested are you in success and what would you (or wouldn’t you) do to have it?
When Vissani cooks braised beef he is totally satisfied while he chooses his meat, blends the flavours, checks the cooking, presents the dish complete with a suitable gattinara… The work is finished before it is enjoyed, but so that others can enjoy means sitting them down at a marvellous banquet – all this is Gombrich – but also knowing that the consumer will have a different form of enjoyment than the chef. In any case the creator and the art-work are two distinct things, the second is better because the creator has given his best and perhaps not only his own… And moreover there is the hope that the creator will continue to live in his creation. And in this sense I have one up on Vissani.
Gino De Dominicis was certainly convinced of the distinction between the exceptional, the work of art, and the ordinary, the author’s existence. D'Annunzio aimed at making his life into a work of art?
And I have taken something from both.
Do you perceive a difference in the quality of your different works, your different “periods”, your activity as an artist or a lady killer as you have been defined, or again your business as an estate agent?
I like beautiful things, what can I do about it? And then, excuse me, estate agent? I have restored nine Palladian villas! The Stronghold of Ezzelino da Romano, the home of the da Ponte family? have you any idea? By the way, shall we have dinner?
You’re not joking. More to the point, tell me who is Meneghetti really. Why film-maker, actor, painter, architect, designer, advertiser, musician? What is it you really know how to do?
Who knows if Meneghetti really exists!
Do you believe in anything? And in what?
In the difference between red and white wine at this time of the evening.
Which do you prefer, white or red?
Red, but smoke is better suited to your eyes.
Just two more questions and to finish. First, what does painting mean to you: beautiful forms, harmonic harmonious juxtaposition of colours, highly coloured reasoning. In short, an intellectual or sensual process?
The sensation or a strong intellectual process, and not only.
Have you ever played with your cards on the table?
In any card game if you play with your cards on the table you will lose.
But for a painter it can sometimes be more important to reveal than to cover, both to others and to yourself?
And for a painter it is sometimes more important to go to dinner.
Does Meneghetti speak with Meneghetti? What do they say?
I refer them both to "Divergenze parallele".
Other example of monologue, thank you.
"Insania", your welcome.
Men prefer darkness to light? do you get so worked up to know or not to know?
That the final horizon is death? No more death nor the end of death, my dear young woman. It is simply the end of the interview.

Maddalena D'Angelo