FRANCESCO VEZZOLI
How can we tranform the instincts that threaten European unity into its cure? As the artist Francesco Vezzoli storyboards it, what can sometimes appear our greatest weaknesses are also our greatest strengths – if only we have the courage to face up to them and bend them to our will.
Francesco Vezzoli begins with a preamble:“I grew up with the American mythos, from pop culture to the great civil rights struggles, and in all these American mythologies that captivated and convinced me back then, I can no longer recognise the America of today. At this moment in history – as other more serious academics than I have noted, but fortunately I’m not an academic so it’s not my job to provide explanations – America no longer seems able to produce a cultural vision without an accompanying sense of guilt. Gripped by a fit of nerves, like in an Almodóvar film, distraught for allowing Donald Trump to lead the nation, and busy soul-searching, America finds itself lost, confused, perhaps even left behind by its own presumed modernity.”
For Vezzoli, Europe is instead “a non-America”. Despite its contradictions and landslides, the old continent is unafraid of earthquakes not because of a great future, but because of its solid past: “Unlike Americans, we Europeans manage to rise again by digging deep into ourselves, clinging onto a Pirandello, Colette or D’Annunzio to find some truth, even through political incorrectness.” He pauses before continuing: “The image of The Rape of Europa that I chose to feature in this issue of L’Uomo Vogue is clearly a provocation. With Jupiter transformed into a bull, I place incorrectness as the primary antidote needed to fight the conformism of our time. After all, it would be unwise to burn the Odyssey at the stake, and the solution proposed by Columbia University doesn’t strike me as the most enlightened approach. At the university, they held a sort of Kafkaesque trial or parliamentary inquiry into a passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The Roman poet stood accused as an impious author, to be erased from the history of literature as soon as possible due to his disrespect for today’s neo-puritanism in language.”
In the match between these two worlds – between ye-olde Europe and “the youngest nation on earth” – Vezzoli doesn’t see the result as a foregone conclusion. He suggests that concerns over the state of the arts may be excessive: “In my opinion, Europe is a place where we can rethink ethnic and racial issues in a more sensible way, by finding common cultural roots that actually exist in terms of academia, culture, literature and music. And we can do this without fear, preconceptions or the dread of a new fascism.” There is always a price to pay, but only immobility does not demand one, says Vezzoli: “Europe is a restless place, but restlessness is healthy. Comparing the yellow vests to 1968 may sound like blasphemy, but they share that healthy restlessness. This kind of cultural glue – including fashion – can turn into political glue. I’m rooting for both sides to acknowledge each other, exchange ideas and, hopefully, not come to blows.”
People come and go, but institutions remain: “Do you know what Pierre Cardin said when Sarkozy took office? They asked him what he thought of the new president, and the designer – whose boutiques were right across from the Élysée – replied: ‘I’ve been here for 40 years. Sarkozy has just arrived. Let’s see how long he lasts’.” Everything changes, yet some things remain. “How much has Europe changed since 1957 and later with Maastricht? Not so much, in the end. What has changed is people’s state of mind. Political leaders are like empty vessels of thin glass that fill up with whatever emotional maelstrom happens to be animating the people. In 1957 – a decade after the war that had torn the world apart – everyone was motivated in a certain direction.Today, in times of peace, the only mantra is narcissism. To explain contemporary times, instead of squawking about the Salvini of the moment, our talk show twits should poke their noses where they refuse to do so, for example around Kylie Jenner, the world’s youngest billionaire who has achieved the same economic status as Jeff Bezos by working with lipstick and her image. Appearance and the obsession with appearing say more about us than a boatload of refugees on the Italian coast. As Gore Vidal said: ‘Every moment in history is dark.’ There’s always blood, always a population in exile, always something horrible happening that defies our imagination. But in front of the mirror, all of that disappears. We find ourselves alone with ourselves, the only human being who r eally interests us. In Europe as in America.”