ART, WHATEVER IT TAKES
Since the early pandemic in 2020, Rome Art Program has conducted a series of interviews, “Art, Whatever It Takes.”
Artists, Art Critics, and Art Historians living in Italy, the U.S., and U.K., share their insights during these powerful times.
Interview with Santiago Ydanez
Santiago Ydáñez (Jaén, 1967), lives and works between Berlin and Jaén. He is one of the painters of his generation with the greatest international projection. His figurative painting makes him an unmistakable artist on the contemporary art scene. He has been awarded the 33rd BMW Painting Prize (2018), the ABC Prize in 2002 and the scholarship of the College of Spain in Rome (2016), among others. His imagery is loaded with memories of his childhood around nature and the customs of rural life, along with references to the history of art and the history of humanity. His work often hides ethical and political messages.
RAP: What is your definition of “art” today?
Santiago Ydáñez: For me art is a kind of materialized energy, in the case of painting it is something that nobody can do for me. In a way it is an expression of my vital feeling.
RAP: Art is dynamic and regenerates itself… how does it change, and how did it change us?
Santiago: Art is a reflection of humanity, and humanity grows by drawing inspiration from itself and building on the achievements of others. Art, as a reflection of humanity, takes one small step at a time with small flashes that make the wheel turn and bring about these changes that change everything again.
RAP: When (and how) did you understand that art was becoming very important in your life?
Santiago: I understood that art was important in my life from the moment I started painting, which was quite late, at the age of 20. When I painted, I got so involved in the process that it became a kind of hypnosis, an almost ritual dance. I have always painted with a lot of passion, it is a relationship with your own feelings that is difficult to explain, but that was the moment when I understood the importance of the art of art in my life and that clearly I could not live without painting.
RAP: What role does art play today? What are the “great figures” who have recently changed it? Do you feel close to any of these figures?
Santiago: There have always been some artists who have made the wheel turn faster, creating new paths, but it has almost never been from nothing, they have done it by relying on other artists, as in the case of Marcel Duchamp, or Picasso, who knew how to bring together primitive tribal art with contemporary art.
RAP: Are there still traditional figures such as collectors, muses, mecenate and patrons, in today’s art and society interaction model?
Santiago: It is true that these figures are still in force, muses, collectors, patrons, who are interested in the work of others. They are figures who, although relatively recent in the history of humanity, continue to have as much, or even more power, than when they first appeared.
RAP: How have the new technologies and media culture changed art today, improving or worsening it…? What do you feel are your biggest challenges?
Santiago: The new technologies are a new “toy” that contributes and helps, in my opinion it is dangerous to feed only on them, it is one more tool to work with. As for the media culture, it has accelerated everything a lot, the danger is to fall into the standardization of this information that tends to happen. Among my most important challenges, the work I did on Villa di Livia in Rome is a painting of 3.15 x 30 meters, it is a room based on a Roman painting and recently I have painted a mural in Madrid, which for me is a large format painting rather than a mural in itself, it measures more than 25 x 25 meters, it is an idyllic garden based on a painting from the past.
RAP: Art as a mirror of man, in this moment of emergency seems to be shattered …what do these fragments reflect now?… Shadow or light of the moment?
Santiago: Art, in my case, can be nourished by both light and shadow, sometimes one wins, sometimes the other wins. It is true that in tragic moments such as the periods between the wars, or the wars themselves, art is necessarily tragic, as it tends to speak of what is happening, we see it in the case of Otto Dix, Beckmann, Gros, all those painters who suffered the war and rejected it so harshly and who suffered exile among other things.
RAP: Understanding, interpreting, and then possibly judging the work of art; which is the right path when we are in front of a piece of art?
Santiago: Each person confronts a work of art with their own experiences, their own intellectual and cultural baggage, so the way of confronting it is very varied. In my opinion, the spectator has to let himself fall into the hands of his own feelings and see how he connects with the artwork.
RAP: Which is the real role of Academies and Art schools today? What can artists learn from these institutions today?
Santiago: Art Academies and Art Schools are another tool to get to know art and to practice it, or at least the tools with which an artist can work in today’s society, a good starting point, but they are not indispensable, many artists are nourished by other disciplines, they are self-taught and have learnt in other ways. In my case I was trained in one of them, a virtue of going to them is having the luck to have a great artist teaching you and nourishing you spiritually, then you can learn in a very enriching way, at the same time the danger would be to have as a teacher a bad artist who leads you to the repetition of echoes of what already exists.
RAP: Art too has undergone a complex process of globalization; can having an authentic and genuine style be an advantage or a drag for an artist?
Santiago: This is a very interesting question, there has been a lot of discussion about whether having a personal stamp is important or not. I see it as important, it is a personality trait and a trait that supports your work. It’s something that can’t do for you, or can’t do in the same way. There are different types of art and in some it’s not totally necessary, although in any art there are ultimately certain traits or a certain personality that translates into the work of any artist, so in a way that stamp is inherent.
RAP: How do Art Galleries and Museums position themselves today, and, in your opinion, how should they?
Santiago: Ideally, a gallery should follow a criterion, some artists with a line that unifies the project. I don’t mean that it should be a gallery focused on a single discipline, but that it should follow a conceptual line where there is a philosophical root, for example existentialism, or other types of variants, this would be the ideal, that not only the commercial part takes precedence. Often you come across galleries that have a group of artists who go in very different directions and it is only the commercial line that unites them.
RAP: “Figuration” vs “Abstraction”. Which of the two is better descriptive of the period we live in? Which one will have a better future?
Santiago: Figuration as well as abstraction are two sister paths, equally legitimate. Often a figurative painting has an abstract background. Figurative has always been understood as something that reflects something that already exists and is recognisable, but it is not by physically recognising a figure that you can recognise its meaning, there is figurative painting whose handwriting is full of abstraction, they are complementary elements. There are not many artists who have done both, we have the example of Gerhard Richter who has separated them in a drastic way, and rightly so in my point of view.
RAP: Today we often speak of “emerging artists”; what advice based on your experience do you feel you can give to young artists?
Santiago: I don’t consider myself the person to give advice, but if I had to tell them something it would be to do things with heart and passion, because that will make them enjoy their work.
RAP: Art as a lens for reading the present, can it modify the space and time we pass through? …will art save us?
Santiago: Millennia go by, and art is the reflection of every historical epoch of humanity, it is a great lever for what is to come, of course art is the place to hold on to, and it will save us.
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