Self-historicization

The work

“SELF-HISTORICIZATION” is a work created in 2013 by the Brescian curator and artist Lillo Marciano for Progetto Utopia, an artistic/critical format conducted by Piero Cavellini and Marciano himself which aims to translate the ideas of self-historicization and open communication into public events started by the artist and collector Guglielmo Achille Cavellini in 1971.

The work is made up of 19 self-supporting panels in galvanized steel (50 x 60 x 40 cm) on which the letters of the word “self-historicization” are written in PVC.

The installation was exhibited for the first time in 2014 on the occasion of the official celebrations of the centenary of GAC at the Galleria Spazio Contemporanea in Brescia and in the Sirmione interventions “Public Art Sirmione of 2014”, “Monuments” of 2017/18 and “La exhibition with the most beautiful panorama in the world” of 2021.
In 2022 the work was acquired by the municipal administration of Sirmione and now finds its definitive location in the space in front of the municipal offices in Via Alfieri.

In the language of Progetto Utopia, the installation is defined as a “remake”: a term that describes the artistic practice, typical of this format, of drawing on the theoretical and artistic vocabulary of Guglielmo Achille Cavellini and obtaining works that project his concepts and poetics .
The works thus created are used in public art interventions to stimulate reflection on the concept of the so-called “non-work”: artistic objects that lose their strictly “aesthetic” function and take on features and functions typical of relational art.

The meaning

Self-historicization is the name of a movement and a specific artistic practice introduced by the artist Guglielmo Achille Cavellini in 1971 in response to the exclusionary attitude of the artistic establishment of his time which continued to ignore his figure as an artist.

With the explosive force of self-irony and an intense artistic-advertising campaign, GAC (as Cavellini liked to sign himself) decided to celebrate himself by dismantling every hierarchy and inaugurating an international artistic communication operation aimed at exalting the figure of the artist through self-promotion . For Cavellini, self-historicizing meant “entering the Olympus of art without asking anyone’s permission”, bypassing any practice known until then in the history of art and replacing the system.

Following this programmatic manifesto, Cavellini positioned himself as a historical figure to be celebrated through an extensive communication campaign.
He created a series of posters of imaginary exhibitions that the most important museums in the world would dedicate to him on the centenary of his birth, he created self-celebratory stamps, frontispieces of imaginary books dedicated to him by famous writers, philosophers and poets, he created massive mail art operations and performances .
Through these tools, partly borrowed from historical Dadaism but renewed in their subversive force, GAC sent his already beautiful and ready-made story around the world, inaugurating an artistic current unique in the world, founded on the principle that he himself loved to repeat:

“By historicizing myself I become the critic and historian of myself”

it’s still,

“I don’t want to become famous when I’m dead, I want to become famous when I’m alive”.

Lillo Marciano and Progetto Utopia in Sirmione

Public art is the continuous and characterizing thread that links all the exhibitions that Lillo Marciano, together with Progetto Utopia, has curated in Sirmione.

From 2007 to 2012 the format, in collaboration with the Municipality and Pietra & Co., curated the annual Public Art Sirmione exhibition which saw the participation of numerous artists. The interventions involved various public areas and exhibition sites of the municipality, in particular the areas of the historic center and the beaches. In 2013 and 2014, this exhibition was joined by other public art interventions in as many areas with public access or owned by the municipality (among these, the Art no limits laboratory, and the 50/100 installations The magical base by Piero Manzoni and the empty frame of GAC in Callas Park). The 2017-2018 season saw the creation of the “Monuments” installations, again through collective contributions of artists in public areas of the municipality. This leads to the curatorship, in the summer of 2021, of “The exhibition with the most beautiful panorama in the world”.

All these artistic operations call on the public to intervene, cooperate, collaborate, so that the result is the fruit of a joint action between “artistic device” and people. Works such as Kiss please, 50/100 The magical base by Piero Manzoni and the empty frame by GAC, are artistic objects that carry more or less explicit instructions, suggestions for use, allusions, calls to action, of an art that descends from the pedestal and invites us to go up, in a circuit in which art itself finally returns, like a game we all play together.

Lillo Marciano’s poetics, in addition to the strictly “relational” component, speaks the language of the Cavellinian tradition, from which “Self-historicization” draws its roots. This term was introduced by Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, an artist and collector from Brescia, to give the name to the artistic practices he himself invented as a reaction to the indifference and exclusion that the art system of the time reserved for him.

From Lillo Marciano we learned that this operation of self-determination is more beautiful, however, if we all do it together, in a ritual of freedom and sociability, a pastime where time is finally given back to us. Rediscover art to live in the moment, feel alive here and now on planet earth. The affirmation of our creativity is not subjected to external dictates nor authorized by patents, nor conditioned by hegemonic technical infrastructures.
From Guglielmo Achille Cavellini we learn that artistic involvement could not be limited to collecting, but hesitated several times, and then definitively, in direct artistic action.

“Art will serve to educate sensitivity. As long as there is man, there will also be art, an expression of its time. I regret that it will not be possible for me to follow and know the evolution of my work, which has led to an autonomy of thought and a liberation from any conditioning. Art will be life and life will be art.” (G.A. Cavellini, Life of a genius, Centro studi cavelliniani, 1989, p. 155).

Self-historicization is an invitation to a creative intervention that can draw from everyone’s imagination and produce a liberated artistic action.