A conversation with Enzo Cucchi for Apartamento magazine issue #37

There wasn’t anything. There were holes underground, a bottomless pit. There was a crumbling woodworking shop. The structure that you see now is exactly the same from 40 years ago. It hasn’t been touched.

You call this design? I didn’t do anything on a structural level. When you take a formal element here—for example, this raised platform—I did it because I wanted to go up there and sleep. There’s simply a bed so I can rest.

Design has become delirious over the past few years. It’s made everything worse, unfortunately. I mean, design clings to fashion, fashion clings to design. Art doesn’t know what to do—it just sits there for a moment considering the challenges. It goes, ‘Huh’, thinks for a minute, and then it starts to get involved in these systems from 30 years ago, stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with art.

References aren’t necessary for certain things. You need a sofa to sit. I gave the woodworker a cutout of a shoebox—you know the kind from the past, the white ones that were very strong and rigid? I cut one of those boxes, gave him the dimensions, and the sofa was done.

I appreciate your association, but I don’t think of them as mysterious things. If anything, they are playful, but they aren’t hiding places. They contain stuff so you can take out what you need when you need it, and you know where they are even if you don’t see them. A piece of furniture becomes a place of necessity, of protection. It’s just like putting something under the shade; you put it there because, if you don’t, it’ll get destroyed under the sun.

I make books to forget about them. I like the idea that they are objects to donate, not gifts for Easter or Christmas—I don’t like that approach. Books need to have some kind of heart, a heartbeat.

I am deeply passionate about poetry. But there’s a huge difference between being passionate and being a poet. I never thought of myself as a poet; it’s too difficult to be one. You have to be really good at it. And they’ll tell you if you are one—you can’t just call yourself a poet.

That’s true. My poet friends were generous, in that they sometimes allowed these things. Maybe a friend published a book with some writings, as you say, but it was their decision. I feel the need to say this. It wasn’t my decision. Actually, I always recommended against it.

When Ida Gianelli collected all of my writings for the Castello di Rivoli and made a little book called Cucchi—that was her decision. She said to me, ‘Enzo, do I have your permission to do this?’ Well, sure, you’re free to do what you want.

A drawing is an idea of the day. It’s just a natural thing for me. You do it as a kid, whether you’re aware of it or not, and then keep going with it. As an adult, drawing is a type of responsibility. It’s a way of knowing something, because otherwise it’s just illustration work. 

For me, drawing is the origin of everything, even painting. Drawing reveals a person’s character; you can tell by the way someone brings pencil to paper if they have authority or not. The drawing bears the signs. That can’t be manipulated, but as such, it corresponds to the most difficult action imaginable. Drawing as an autonomous form of art requires a lot of character.

The rooster brings good luck, and it’s a symbol that the entire world knows—it’s everyone’s origin. The rooster’s role is to protect the house. In houses in the countryside, there’s always a ceramic tile with a rooster painted on it attached to the wall. It’s an archaic thing that we still carry.

If you’re asking me for a memory from those years, my friendship with Sandro Chia is one of the most sincere, brightest highlights. We worked together side by side. We were like a tribe. The rest you can find published everywhere.

No, it’s exactly the opposite. The house adapts to the body and to your habits. I created this space out of necessity. I prefer to spend the least amount of time here possible. I prefer to live outside, brushing past the walls before I go out for a walk. If anything, I want to make it so that those who visit from the outside feel at ease. If they come, even for a moment, I want them to feel comfortable.

This area used to be full of artisans, including the courtyard here in front of my door. It used to be full of artist studios and shops, but now there’s nothing. All of these different buildings have become homes and hotels for tourists. A few scattered gems still exist across the city, artisans I always work with to create parts of my pieces. Before, there were artisans in every small town or city in the province. They worked together because it was necessary; it was fundamental to give everyone a hand because of extreme poverty. All of this disappeared, it isn’t here anymore. But in reality, Rome is a city with many layers of provinces put together, like the biggest, grandest sandwich in the world. What are those American sandwiches called? 

We make hamburgers out of the real world, like a sandwich of seven layers. What does a sandwich with seven layers even mean? It means that underneath it all, there are seven Romes. There isn’t another city in the world with this quality. It’s a sacred thing. We walk in a sacred place.

I don’t think it’s possible to change Rome. Keep in mind that whoever comes to Rome dies. Take that into consideration. They die in a good sense: To die means to live, and as you live, you pay your dues to death. Here, you can properly die because you are truly living.

Rome doesn’t owe anybody anything. Rome should only be courted. And there’s no such thing as Roman artists. There are only artists, period. What does ‘Roman artist’ even mean? Is that a way to salute Rome? It’s like a noise, an echo, ‘Oooo, aaaa, eee’. You are using artists to receive something in return. 

Of course I was invited—do you know how many exhibits I did dedicated to Rome? The first exhibit I did on Rome was called Giulio Cesare Roma at the Stedelijk Museum. Then another was in New York at the Sperone Westwater. I must’ve done, I don’t know, three or four exhibits just about Rome, but always outside of the city.

Keep in mind that what we know of the so-called Piero della Francesca isn’t even a third of a third of what he did, because many of his paintings have been destroyed. There are so many things we don’t know about him or his work. How is that even possible? For 200, 300 years, historians called him a minor painter because they don’t understand shit. 

But he’s the most secular of them all! He’s the most secular creature that we know of. Even the biggest and most infinite artists, like Masaccio—a monster of greatness—clearly know how to pull from nature, from the sky. Masaccio knows how to get inspiration from feelings. He knows how to pull from things of the earth, from emotion. Instead, Piero is cold, without emotion, which makes you think, but where does he come from? After you look at his art, you wonder, what is artificial intelligence in comparison? It’s impossible to imagine something more artificial than Piero’s secularism. 

The Lenin portrait by Warhol is famous! It all started with this gorgeous photo of Lenin that I saw at Casa del Popolo in Largo Preneste, where I would go regularly to work with Claudio di Giambattista, the art conservationist. One day, I went to the Casa del Popolo and saw a photo in black and white, a photo of a group with Lenin in the centre. You have to imagine that this was a small printed card, like a prayer card that you put in your pocket and take with you.

One day, Andy Warhol and Bruno Bischofberger came to Rome. They saw the little picture of Lenin in my studio. After a bit of time, Andy asked if he could take it because he wanted to use it for his own work, similar to what he did with Mao. Shortly after, Andy died, and the painting arrived to me for free. It was a kind gesture from him. This other piece, Knives, was done by Warhol with Bruno Bischofberger. Andy wanted one of my paintings and got it from Bruno, and he left Bruno this artwork for me. Then this artwork became the cover of one of the first editions of the book Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. This piece has been here for 40 years.

Ettore Sottsass gave me that table. He said, ‘This is the table to put your suitcases on’.

With Ettore, we didn’t really think of our work as a project. We accepted whatever came out of our time together as a necessary thing. The tables for I Disuguali started like this, not as pages but as something to touch. We chose words that are never still: ozio, lire, coda, figa. Not to be provocative, but because they are words that have been around a long time, predating judgement and artistic style. 

Ettore knew how to shape words without domesticating them. I just dirtied them up. I let them go. We never corrected each other. The small wooden boards didn’t have to explain anything. They were a little magazine made of earth—an unequal thing, that’s it.

For me, an outfit is like a surface, like a wall. It’s a place where imagery can happen. With Rei Kawakubo and with SIX, there was an immediate understanding. I brought the vision, they brought the bodies and the structure. When you put everything together, something was born that didn’t exclusively belong to anyone. I was interested in playing around with a sign inside a system that wasn’t a painting. Fashion has a different velocity than art, but also a similar fragility. I’m not thinking about it in terms of form. I think of images that are looking for a place to stay. Sometimes that place is a cloth, or a page, or an outfit.

You see these huge canvases? They seem as if they’re unfinished because you can see part of the canvas, when in reality they’re done. The signifier of the blank canvas will be there, the same way a trail of light is like a heat wave that arrives silently. The work revolves around a thing or a concept I’ve obsessed over. Look at these new pieces here, the wood mounted on the canvas. I made these while I waited for some pieces of iron that never arrived. These works here are canvas inserted into ceramics. And you see these violet blocks here? They are like gems, but you can’t fully discern the material. All of this stuff was born to clear out my head.

You need to empty your mind, clean out the brain. You can’t arrive to the studio with problems. Every day is the same: I start alone in the early afternoon, I sit here, and then move forward. This is process. But in reality, I work a lot during the night, in bed. I do most of the work when I’m half asleep. The execution is the final step.

Typically, I work for myself. Everything I do is for myself, not for exhibitions. I have always only done what I felt was urgent and necessary. A work of art should exist only if it’s necessary.

In March, I will have an exhibition at the Nuhad Es-Said Pavilion for Culture in Beirut. There is a beautiful room in the museum, and the curator, Muriel Asmar, has a completely different temperament compared to the typical Western mindset, a truer approach. In Rome, we put together an old project from 15 years ago, a bronze fountain in Piazza della Moretta, for a new restoration project. It’s going to be the ideal fountain.

I think I was very fortunate. It was an exhibit with many small drawings, but that’s very normal for me. Fairly enough, they massacred me, but that’s a different world. All they wanted were massive paintings. They were trying to push me to do that. At the time, the curator told me to display all the collector paintings—those of the trustees, those that fund the museum. But I don’t care about any of that. I didn’t know about these dynamics. I was young, and I wanted to participate in an exhibit, like I had always done. The exhibition director protected me. He said, ‘Keep your head up, and don’t worry about it’. By accident, I made the largest museum in the world go into crisis—this is a small, laughable thing.

Exhibits need to be done by artists, otherwise they become instruments for other things. Things have changed since artists have no longer been at the centre of this process; galleries and museums have levelled everything. We’ve lost the ritual of doing exhibitions on our own. Making art is a huge responsibility—it’s not a game.

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