Stefano (Eva di), Who owns outsider art? (2013)

In 2013 the annual General Assembly of the European Outsider Art Association (Heidelberg, end may) had Ethical Questions as its main topic of discussion.

Eva di Stefano, professor in the history of contemporary art at the University of Palermo gave an introduction, illustrating the issue with some examples from Sicily.

.Eva di Stefano, Who owns outsider art?

Illegal monuments: ownership and difficult protection

“But there are still situations in which

the issue of ownership is not easy to establish,

such as in illegally built, spacious environments.”

The topic I want to cover and propose for discussion is particularly complex and concerns the fate of those special works that are difficult to classify, that is to say environments: outsider environmental works that Southern Europe defines as ‘babelish’ (Italy) or margivagantes (Spain) while Northern Europe emphasizes the fantastic component or folk matrix. This is a broad phenomenology with peaks of excellence, where there seems to be expressed - still today at the highest level - the free individual creativity of the common man and the poetic paradigm of Dubuffet.

These are rarely architectural creations, and generally decorative sets or sculpture and assembly parks, often made with recycled materials. The variety of terminology that is encountered in the literature, reflects the cultural orientation of the specific writer (e.g. French scholars who have a link with surrealism will use the concepts of the imaginary and the ‘wonderful’, or highlight the anarchic side), but this variety of names and adjectives mainly reflects a variety of situations and types involving practical and theoretical problems that are always different. All this is already known to those dealing with Outsider Art, and I will not dwell on this aspect.

Mural graffiti, sculpture parks, encyclopedic palaces and cathedrals are often realized illegally at sites not owned by their creators, on public land too, or are constructed outside any housing and urban rules or regulations. Therefore the situation of the property is very diversified and complex. On the other hand it is not ‘movable property’ that can be shifted elsewhere, but - by their very nature extrovert and invasive in space - these works belong inextricably to the landscape or urban environment that shaped them to their measure and by which they have been shaped: in the case of environments we go far beyond the issue of personal property or the issue of copyright, and we are within the sphere of the public good and the common good.

The answer to the question can only be multiple: environmental works also belong to the place where they have been created, the landscape, the city, the community, to all of us.

If we believe in the need for protection and conservation, it is indeed necessary that they become Common Heritage: this means that, safeguarding the intellectual property of the creator, the material ownership of the work must be taken over by the community, and our ethical responsibility is to accompany and ensure this ‘transfer of ownership’, which also involves the paradox of the possible legalization of the ‘outlaw monument’ by virtue of its value as an artistic and anthropological testimony.

This is a complex process that begins with the recognition and spontaneous adoption by a group with influence or a community, and which only becomes truly effective when the spontaneous recognition becomes official recognition by the bodies responsible for the protection of works of art and by local governments. It is a difficult transition that involves many legal and bureaucratic problems, for which there are no unique solutions or models, also because there is no European legislation on the cultural heritage. Currently we can only refer to some of the conventions of the Council of Europe, such as the Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage (Granada 1985) and the Convention on the Social Value of the Cultural Heritage (Faro 2005).

To the now widely shared concept of Cultural Heritage there does not necessarily correspond, in the legislation of individual countries, the legal possibility of protection of unconventional works. In Italy, for example, the law explicitly states that the works of living artists or ones whose execution does not go back more than fifty years cannot be declared ‘cultural property’. Locating within the regulations in force the possibility of protecting spontaneous environments therefore requires flexibility of interpretation and sensitivity on the part of the institutions that is rare.

Among other things, in the case of living artists, sometimes without legal status because they are deemed to be mentally ill or for other reasons are entrusted to the social services, one cannot ethically disregard protection of and respect for the will of the person, who must also have guarantees that they can continue to work and dispose of their work: an environment is generally work in progress, which coincides with the creator’s life.

It is therefore necessary that the institutions responsible for the protection of works of art and the cultural and environmental heritage, but also public authorities and local governments, develop both an ethical conscience towards irregular creators and creations and awareness of their cultural value: EOA could have an important function of stimulus in this direction, developing an international campaign of sensitization and intervening in individual cases at the local level as an opinion group.

There is also another problem which is by no means secondary: when a spontaneous environment officially becomes part of the collective heritage, this leads to distortion of the nature of the work, which from being illegal and anarchic changes to being recognized and institutionalized, made accessible to the public, transformed into a museum. It is an inevitable compromise: we can consider it a ‘second life’ of the work, but we should set the general parameters so that this alteration is limited as far as possible, applying the principle that any adjustment must be subordinated to the specificity of the work, which consists in both its material form and its immaterial artistic concept. If necessary, we have to sacrifice to this specificity, which is historical and aesthetic, all practical consideration of functionality and efficiency, including economic exploitation, which must in any case be in harmony with the vocation of the work.

To exemplify the broad outlines of the different cases I propose a brief tour of some environments in Sicily. Sicily is an Italian region which is very rich in these creations for several anthropological and cultural reasons that could be the subject of another conference. It is also my subject of study, and hence the territory in which I am confronted daily with these issues.

1) Unfaithful restoration

Sciacca: The enchanted castle of Filippo Bentivegna

A garden of sculptures known internationally: Filippo Bentivegna was a semi-illiterate farm labourer, who emigrated to America for a few years, and after his return carved thousands of stone heads from the ’20s to the ’60s, creating a monumental whole. After his death some small sculptures were acquired for the Dubuffet collection and today are in Lausanne.

This is the only case in Italy of an outsider environment that has become public property and is regularly open to visitors. The story is straightforward: Bentivegna made heads in a field he owned, so it was possible for the Sicilian Region to buy it from his heirs in 1973. In the purchase a role was played by the influence of some politicians who as children were fascinated by the eccentric sculptor. But, after the purchase, the garden underwent renovation work and adaptation without taking its specific nature into account.

Look at these photos: before restoration the garden was wild, and the heads stuck directly out from the earth as if they were fruits, or were set against each other.

With restoration, as you can see in these other photos, paths and walls were created, the heads were set in cement, around the carved olive trees flower beds were done. A wild field, fabulous and disturbing, was reorganized with bricks and cement according to a petty-bourgeois garden aesthetic. There is no doubt that the work was deprived of its true nature and domesticated.

Although public property, the work is not yet officially registered as a good of historic and artistic interest, but the problem is solvable because in this case the conditions contemplated under Italian law exist: the creator is not alive and the work is more than 50 years old.

2) Failure to adopt

Castellammare del Golfo: Street Art by Giovanni Bosco

The case of Bentivegna is quite simple. By contrast, the case of Giovanni Bosco and the wall paintings done in the streets of his village, which thus became a true open air museum of colourful shapes, is not easy to solve.

The reason is obvious: the paintings that mark the townscape are on buildings that are privately owned. Today the murals risk disappearing, damaged by the climate or cleaned off by the owners of the walls. In this connection, the restoration project has to obtain the consent of many people: the various owners of the walls and the local administration, because the work would take place on public land. But the action of sensitization carried out on the site and the echo of the international artistic recognition obtained by Bosco have not produced an attitude of adoption, and therefore consent.

On the contrary, they have provoked a reaction of distrust and fear that the presence of the “artistic” mural might restrict people’s right to freely dispose of their own property. The attitude of the owners of the walls has been reflected in the lack of real commitment by the local administration.

The community has proved to be little influenced from outside and the young local supporters do not have enough social weight to change the situation. Currently this difficulty has blocked any recovery project, which probably only an institutional intervention from above could set going.

3) Affection is not enough against the law and the economy

Messina, The house of Giovanni Cammarata

The affection of the common people and popularity are not sufficient to resolve situations that have their origin in the misappropriation of a space. One example is the fate of the ‘Palais Idéal’ of Giovanni Cammarata in Messina. It is an illegal construction, built after the war, when in Italy, as we see in many neorealist films, faced with the emergency of the homeless illegal building was legally tolerated as long as people managed to build their shacks in one night including the roof.

Cammarata, like others, built his shack in the industrial area of ​​the city, and then in the following decades began to decorate it with bas-reliefs, mosaics and sculptures. Industrial activity in the area never took off, and so the house, which partly occupied public land (the pavement) and partly a privately owned plot, was tolerated for a long time.

Cammarata had established a positive relationship with the socio-environmental context, and for many inhabitants of Messina the house represented a fantastic reference point, a popular place for evening strolls; it was reproduced in magazines and in the Taschen volume on the fantastic architecture of Deidi von Schaewen.

But its popularity was not enough to protect it faced with the financial aims of the owner, intending to use the land as the car park of a shopping centre. The house was destroyed in 2007, maintaining only the part of the facade built on the pavement and hence on public land.

Enclosed by the city as in a cage, it is in a state of neglect, entrusted only to periodic cleanups by volunteers.

4) The outlaw monument

Palermo, The sanctuary of the hermit Israele

This Gesamtkunstwerk, a building entirely decorated inside with mosaics, is on top of a mountain and extends outside with a series of signals in the landscape. Israele, whose real name is unknown, is a man of 50 who lives alone on the mountain and has been working on this project for 15 years.

He illegally occupied and without authorization altered a military observatory, abandoned in the nineteenth century, which is in a nature reserve owned by the public, protected as an environment good since 2001, which means any work there is prohibited, even a signal on a stone.

Clandestinity due to the secluded position, which is difficult to reach, has so far protected and favoured Israele’s work. But at any time a diligent functionary could set going a bureaucratic machine to drive out the hermit and destroy his illegitimate work.

The ethical problem in this case is whether to disclose the existence of the work or remain silent without raising the attention of the bureaucracy. But if the work is not known and artistically recognised, how is it possible to set going a process for its preservation?

On the other hand is it really possible to remain in hiding in our age where anyone can publish photos and news through the Internet and Facebook? That is the reason why I finally decided to write and talk about it, to build up a reference bibliography and seek legal advice.

But, assuming that there are usable legal instruments, that Israele has no confidence in society and has chosen isolation, that in the past he had problems with the law, will he agree to undertake a legal process to normalize the situation? Even if his intention is clearly to make a gift of art for the soul of the city, it is not certain that he will be willing to accept the rules necessary for the community to welcome and protect this gift.

The common element in all these works is the symbolic organization of space to make it habitable. The creators in their own way have activated an ancient faculty of man, the internal compass that allows him to imagine space according to his own measure, and have given rise to a particular genius loci.

This is a strong anthropological indication today, when, however, the interaction between us and our environment is often only reduced to the last resource: consumption. And it is moreover delegated to the ‘space experts’: architects, politicians and administrators.

In addition, all these works are a model of synergy of hand, heart, mind and reason, in individual conflict with the devaluation of manual skill in the contemporary age: i.e. they are exemplary adventures of Homo Faber. In this anthropological model today the American sociologist Richard Sennett (The Craftsman, Yale University Press 2008) identifies a fundamental strategy of salvation from the cognitive dissonance that characterizes our society.

The exemplarity of these anthropological experiences in itself, in my opinion, constitutes a powerful reason for their conservation and protection. Besides, if we recognize these works to have not only an anthropological value but also an artistic one, there inevitably follows a desire for their conservation.

It is not in fact possible to separate these two aspects – art and protection – in our cultural awareness based on the need for memory. Some people might argue with romantic extremism that it is in the very nature of these works not to outlive the daily care of their creators, of whose existence they are offshoots.

I believe, instead, that precisely the incessant and often ‘heroic’ work of these creators demand an answer: these works should more simply be considered as an unexpected gift to be protected. Wherever possible. And finally, it’s up to us to imagine the proper tools.

added to OEE texts june 2013