Marco Silombria
Eros e Mito, Achilles e Cirone #4 (Stampatp a torino da Intergraph), 2006
Lithograph
12 x 12"
Collection LLGAF
Marco Silombria
Eros e Mito, Achilles e Cirone #5 (Stampatp a torino da Intergraph), 2006
Lithograph
12 x 12"
Collection LLGAF
Marco Silombria
Untitled, 1985
Oil & pencil on canvas
42.75 x 58.5"
Gift of the artist
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The question “Does gay art exist?” can be such a puerile and daft one that is worth taking a closer look at it. So, does gay art really exist? Does being gay influence the character of your work? If the answer is “yes,” to what extent? There are those limp-wristed, wild-eyed guys who scream, with their drooping “r”s, rather piqued: “How dare he? I am an artist and that’s that. What has the fact that I fuck a man got to do with what I put on paper, on canvas, or on film?’ These are the same people that tell you they “love people, ” and surprise, surprise, the people they love are always male. Thank heavens there are others who are more open-minded about things, who have learned to deal with their anxieties and fears, and who can have a good laugh and reply like sweet, gentle little boys: “Of course gay art exists; of course being gay has influenced my work, my photos, my films and books; of course my restless yearning to look at, admire, and fuck men has led me to think of them and portray them with the clear conviction and feeling that I would not have had if I looked at, admired, and fucked ladies.” This is more or less how Marco Silombria, onetime ad-man, member of Fuori (the first Italian pro-gay movement), illustrator of the group’s magazine, and now a renowned and positive-thinking artist, puts it. Many examples of Silombria’s work have now been brought together in Dionysus in Love (Tutti i Santi), edited by Peter Wiermair, the former director of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna. Wiermair has no fewer than four hundred exhibitions to his name, and his work as a writer, critic, essayist, and a host of other important things leaves us in no doubt that he is a genuine connoisseur. Here he has taken Silombria’s work, spread it out, sifted through it, and dissected it before carefully and poetically piecing it back together to produce this book. This is no simple celebratory, trumpet-blowing monograph. Rather than providing us with a picture, this is a tale about a tiny wood where lots of little naked and semi-naked boys meet, some secretive, others more explicit, with their cocks adorned with lush vegetation, protected with grape leaves, popping out of fruit, interwoven with sausages, or smeared with saucy spaghetti al dente. Here there are also portraits of friends (Enzo Cucco and Enzo Francone, Gianni Farinetti and Angelo Pezzana, and Aldo Busi among others). A tasteful and at once joyful series of “after” versions are also included, which imitate, mock, and pay tribute to Manet, Goya, and Michelangelo. Then there are can-can dancing angels and a wonderful series of fantastic condoms topped with Napoleon’s hat or Mickey Mouse ears, together with Dionysian and Orphic whimsies, vases, cocci, photographs, and digital prints on banners—and who has got it, if he can, flaunts it. Marco Silombria works from his studio in Via Garibaldi, a pedestrian street in the heart of Turin. This is the heart that beats and then stops, a heart that is forgotten and then suddenly surfaces again, either in the local news stories (cocaine doing the rounds) or headlining (Winter Olympic Games). He has a large space full of a series of cataloged work. Silombria is a plumpish man, always cheerful and never whining. He’s fun and optimistic—not one of the underdogs. I don’t think he ever has been. He is always game for a bit of fun, of which he’s proud, but never plays the fool.
Daniele Scalise (DS): So, Silombria, Does gay art exist or not?
Marco Silombria (MS): This is a million dollar question. Quite frankly I’d leave the question mark because this issue has been discussed and disputed for ages. As far as my work is concerned, I’d say that gay art certainly exists—in a big way. I sometimes wonder what roads I’d have taken if I hadn’t been gay. And I’m sure that my approach to work would have been different.
DS: You’re referring to your artwork, I imagine.
MS: Not only. I worked in advertising until 1985, and fed my work then with the same artistic spirit, so much so that I was often censured because my ideas were too risqué.
DS: Can you explain to me what distinguishes a gay artist from a heterosexual one?
MS: Sometimes it’s the irony.
DS: Exactly, sometimes. Because you and I know that there are loads of queer artists who haven’t got a clue what irony is, even when it’s at home; they are all so serious and solemn, about as much fun as a wet weekend.
MS: It’s a special way of considering sexuality.
DS: Let’s take the work of Mapplethorpe, whose photographs are now on show in Turin. The work has rather ridiculously been labeled as “scandalous”; then there’s that little room you can only reach through a black curtain, like a sex shop—isn’t it ludicrous? Well, don’t try to tell me that Mapplethorpe is ironic.
MS: Oh, no. Mapplethorpe certainly isn’t ironic. He tackles sexuality aggressively, achieving very powerful effects.
DS: You see? Don’t you think that it is because you are who you are, and that’s got nothing to do with the fact that you are gay?
MS: It could be because I’m Italian from the Mediterranean, or maybe because of my character that I look at things with a smile on my lips.
DS: I don’t want to press you on this point, but what about Francis Bacon? Do you think that someone who depicts a distorted and bleeding member, and decomposing faces staring out from moribund eyes is ironic? Come on, Bacon is another gay who isn’t at all ironic.
MS: Okay. Bacon is another artist who doesn’t know what irony is, but think of someone like David Hockney. He knows perfectly well how to be ironic.
DS: What do you like about Hockney?
MS: I like his easygoing approach, and admire him immensely. I feel a great affinity with him. But that doesn’t mean I don’t also like Bacon. Bacon is a tormented and lacerated figure.
DS: You have produced a lot of propaganda, both radical and gay propaganda.
MS: It was the best way of helping to achieve the acceptance that was missing in the early days. I still produce propaganda today. But even when I was working on propaganda, I always tried to keep that spirit alive in my work.
DS: Together with some other pioneers, you took part in the Fuori group, the movement founded and inspired by Angelo Pezzana. He was at the helm of various Arcigay [Italian gay association] groups, and the Mario Meli organization and the Di’ Gay Project that both came afterwards. Fuori was the mother of all the gay battles. How did you meet the Fuori group?
MS: Really by chance. At the beginning of the 70s, I was strolling around Turin when I came across some graffiti two meters high and twenty meters across on one of the bridges over the Po. The writing said, “Gay is beautiful. ” I was stunned. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. Then one day Angelo Pezzana stopped me in the entrance to his shop and asked me to work on the graphics of the Fuori group’s newspaper. I was already involved with the Partito Radicale political party whom I designed the poster in favor of abortion for: a black silhouette of a pregnant woman in chains on a white background. My studio was at the time also the party’s headquarters.
DS: So, you’re an organic artist. Now, tell me the truth. Has being a self-proclaimed gay ever caused you any problems? I’m asking you this because I often meet homosexuals—especially young ones—who ask me what it’s like to come out. Have you ever had problems at work? Were you ever persecuted by your colleagues? Did your bosses ever mob you? I always have to explain that the opposite is true in my case: coming out not only means keeping my life as clean as possible, it also means having a stronger hand in some professional situations. Anyway, I certainly haven’t felt discriminated against. In the end no one has ever persecuted me, or mobbed me. Maybe this is because I am just who I am. I would never share my house or desk with a homophobe or silly moralistic bigot. What about you? Have you ever experienced any problems?
MS: Yes, I had some. In the 80s I founded an advertising company with two other partners, one from the right and the other from the left, and I was there in the middle. Well, you have to remember that you need to be open-minded to work in advertising, otherwise things just don’t work. The fact that we used to speak about homosexuality openly never raised an eyebrow. Our agency had, for example, done work for Alfred Cohen’s shows. Anyway, it was very trendy to work with radicals. So it was easy for me. Then at a certain point things went wrong.
DS: When did that happen?
MS: When the AIDS epidemic broke out. At the beginning of the 80s I went to Washington with Angelo Pezzana and Enzo Cucco. We did the usual rounds of the bars, saunas, and discos; and people were already getting ill and dying of AIDS over there. When I came back to Italy, the media began writing about the problem. One day I openly declared and underlined the fact that I was homosexual. That was it! My partners were, let’s say, alarmed. They told me that I was damaging the company and that they didn’t want to have problems with our clients. At the time, I was terrified that I’d contracted AIDS, and I couldn’t have cared less about anything else. I decided that if I had it, in a year it’d all be over for me and so I might as well live life to the full—without pretending without lying. I became even tougher. Anyway, I had already decided to leave the agency and those inner tensions just helped speed up things. Although my two partners had been doing everything to keep me, I had made up my mind to go.
DS: Have you ever had problems with the art market?
MS: I have always worked with the male body, but it’s better to avoid certain themes in Italy.
DS: What! Advertisements and newspapers are full of male bodies vying for your attention.
MS: You’re wrong. The book about me curated by Wiermair has sold more copies in the USA and in Europe than here in Italy. Art dealers, who are really just shopkeepers, want a good quality product, but it has to be easy to sell.
DS: What’s more sellable than sex?
MS: You’re still wrong. When there is sex in your paintings, or a homosexual view of the world, everyone says how nice the work is but that there is no market for it. Even gay customers don’t buy gay stuff.
DS: How do you explain this?
MS: It’s easy. A gay person often thinks twice before hanging a painting with a male nude in the living room or bedroom; he doesn’t want the cleaning woman to understand that he is queer.
DS: Coming from you I believe it. Maybe I’m a little out of touch. So, what happened in the end?
MS: In the end, I compromised and began looking for more sellable solutions. My work contains a lot of references to popular culture and gay icons: Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, and Marlon Brando. But I don’t work with them in a vulgar way. To put it simply, I censored myself. You can see this in my porno photo of two men as they fuck, while covered by a sheet of crumpled paper; I called this piece autocensura (self-censorship).
DS: Come on! You’re talking about a market where Cattelan roams freely, and he hangs children from trees!
MS: Cattelan’s Pope struck by a meteorite, the horse suspended from the ceiling and those children hanging by their necks all have shock value. He’s clever. He knows how to shock very well. People say that he is a great communicator rather than an artist. If you provoke using subjects that don’t concern sex, then good luck to you. Otherwise you have to decide to die because, as we all know, death can make you into a star.
DS: Like Mapplethorpe.
MS: Exactly, like Mapplethorpe. When he was alive, he was a star only in the underground scene. He became an artistic phenomenon post mortem. Keith Haring is another example. The subjects in his graffiti work are so polished that he can show two people fucking, or someone masturbating, without upsetting anyone—he diffused his bombs.
DS: Can you explain why someone like Oliviero Toscani, who produced a billboard image of two men touching each other’s tackle, has had so much success? He’s not gay or dead. How does he do it?
MS: Toscani is sitting pretty. I’ve met him and we’ve worked together. One day he turned up at a shoot where there were some guys waiting to be photographed by him. You see, lots of models are gay and others seem to be even if they’re not. He said, straights this side and gays there. He took advantage of the over-the-top awareness of the gay issue and thought, now it’s time to strike. He was clever, very clever. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He does things before the others.
DS: He’s got guts.
MS: That’s right, he’s a gutsy character. You should know that his advertising campaign with the two men touching each other’s privates had been planned to run from the 1st to the 15th of October, just enough time to shock the public. In the end they were taken down, but that would have happened anyway.
DS: Let’s come back to the question we began with. Does being gay condition art?
MS: I am convinced, absolutely convinced that being gay influences writing, painting, and filmmaking—any artistic activity. If Almodóvar were a pussy-eater, he wouldn’t make the films he does. If Tchaikovsky hadn’t been so tormented, he wouldn’t have written certain musical passages. I believe that there is a special relationship between an artist and his most intimate self. I would just like to add something obvious here, but something that has to be repeated so as not to be misunderstood: the untrue won’t fool anyone. Being gay doesn’t mean you’ll be a good artist. Oh no, my dears. It’s not enough.
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Daniele Scalise, renowned Italian journalist, has written for major Italian newspapers and magazines, including the notorious “Gaywatch” in L'Espresso, and “Froci” (Queers) Il Foglio. He edited the anthology Men on Men (Mondadori) now in its third edition. He is an editor of the monthly magazine Prima Comunicazione. Divorced, he has a 29 year old daughter, and lives with his partner of 17 years. |
