Today, remembering the work I did with Mario allows me to more calmly address the realization of one of his works, not the installation, but the production: making the igloo is not a question of installation, but is first of all a problem of the work’s construction. Obviously, you first need to look at the situation and the relationship with the space, because Mario’s way of thinking also entailed a study of spatiality, of knowing where to put things within the space and how to occupy this space.
Let’s start at the beginning.
I met Mario in the spring of 1984; I was an architect and at the time was working at the office of Carlo Viano, who was in charge of the Exhibitions Office and the Assessorato per la Cultura in Turin, preparing exhibitions at the Mole Antonelliana, which was then the municipality’s exhibition venue. This was the ‘80s and there weren’t any museums of contemporary art.
During that period, along with the rediscovery and reuse of certain spaces, such as the Mole, sites were identified where exhibitions could be created that could examine in depth a variety of subjects. Indeed, at the time it wasn’t the museum that presented new things, but rather the departments that were willing to make available resources necessary for creating series of exhibitions. I remember that at the Mole we held exhibitions of Ikat textiles, Russian costumes, 19th century photography and the work of French artists from the 1950s. 1984 saw the arrival of Art Povera, with the famous exhibition Coerenza in coerenza [Coherence in coherence], curated by Germano Celant.
The events of the ‘70s had only just ended and this was already an exhibition that historicized a situation and proposed an investigation of the works of twelve different artists.
These are artists joined by the historical moment, explaining the title of the exhibition, which had the goal of having each of the artists emerge, based on their own personalities.
After completing my architectural studies, I worked with the office for three years where I began learning how to “jump” from one subject to another, tasked with making the exhibitions look as good as possible. My job was to manage the job site, under the guidance of the architect, Viano, who was very professional, thought very quickly and was able to immediately identify an exhibition solution as soon as the subject for a new show
was proposed.
At the time, it was customary to do large projects to recreate new spaces, to design rooms and walls, erect fake walls; installing the exhibition space for a show meant redesigning its connotations so that the result would be in agreement with a specific theme, previously outside the scope of that site. This need led to extremely inventive projects, dividing up a space and environment like that of the Mole, particularly in the Aula del Tempio, which is now the principal space in the Museum of Cinema. You have to keep in mind that for the people of Turin, the first exhibition, Recostruzione futurista dell’universo [Futurist reconstruction of the universe], curated by Enrico Crispolti, represented something magical: the first time the Mole Antonelliana space could be entered!
In this sense the exhibitions held at the Mole during those early years garnered a great deal of attention because they were created within an unusual space that had remained closed to the city for a hundred years!
The Arte Povera exhibition curated by Germano took over the entire building and thus was also the first show that took into consideration height as a variable. This happened by virtue of the presence of Paolini, whose Caduta di Icaro [Fall of Icarus] departed from the large windows of the façade. Turning it into an actual fall! Anselmo was also there with his stones, Gilberto Zorio with his alchemical works, and Marisa and Mario, who put his numbers on the Mole.
It was truly a unique and very important experience, particularly for me, as the person in charge of the site, and for two weeks I found myself managing the requests of all these artists.
To tell the truth, I was clearly unprepared for the extemporaneous nature of the work of these artists; many of them were from Turin and were able to come to the site, look it over, think and rethink about ways to intervene according to Germano’s conception, namely not to modify the space, not to do any installations. In this regard, I clearly remember that during the first meeting, we architects were presented with an installation plan that called for the division of the spaces into twelve areas, twelve being the number of artists invited to participate. But their response was: “No way, the space stays open, as it is.” According to their way of thinking, the works would have to arrive and the artists would have to experience it and consider it and finally propose which works would be appropriate and where; this was a working methodology totally contrary to my own, which was based on the existence of a project.
And so, on that occasion, the first debate was about the fact that the project did not exist, there was only the work that had to find its place, its site, its relationship with the space and with other works, and for this it was Germano who coordinated the continual changes in the work area. I don’t know how it happened, but the exhibition did not encounter insurmountable technical problems; since the office was small and we had little experience in the world contemporary art, the show turned out exactly as they wanted, and not a single artist had to be turned down!
The only “No” was pronounced the day of the opening, by the safety committee, which prevented the fire for Kounellis’ work, Margherita di Fuoco, from being lit; it was a large installation composed, if memory serves me well, of five daisies mounted along the reinforced concrete piers. To create the work we had developed and made a system for stoking the daisies’ nozzles with gas tanks positioned outside the flower; however at that time the Safety Commission in Turin was very strict and thus would not allow the work to be lit, an action that would have filled the volume of the space with its noise.
This was the only problem, but nonetheless, the installation was prepared.
The exhibition was then reinstalled in Madrid, thanks to the interest of the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and I was fortunate to be chosen to be one of the office members engaged in this project; when the work was assembled in Madrid I was there only as a spectator, since there was another team of architects and workers present.
I believe this took place in February, and on that occasion, exiting the hotel the day after the opening, I met Mario, who told me he would soon get in touch with me by phone.
For me, the exhibition at the Mole was a new experience in many ways: because of the vastness and magical nature of the site, and because I was called in to deal with unexpected problems that I could solve because I knew all the building’s secrets. My knowledge of the Mole helped me to offer support, to find solutions to problems, to not immediately say no to things that might seem impossible (something that artists never want to hear!).
To this, I would add that I also had a personal passion for and curiosity about everything that is not mere physical fact, but also might contain some meaning or suggestion; with these artists, I appreciated both the tremendous manual work and the fact that it involved very refined mental speculation!
It was an encounter between homo faber and homo sapiens, man the thinker and man the creator. For me, it was truly an encounter with people who didn’t only say or do, but who did what they were thinking, and this union, in my eyes, elevated them, as points of reference, people to whom one should stay connected.
Regarding all this, Mario had another quality, which was his openness, sincerity, direct and immediate involvement; if, for example, I had to furtively observe the work of other artists, with Mario this was impossible, because being with him automatically meant being involved, chatting, it meant “hand me that stone.” With Mario, there was clearly an involvement of a more complex type.
On the occasion of the Turin show, my task was not yet to execute the work, and the same was true in Madrid; my job, instead, was to listen to the artists’ wishes and to coordinate the work of the team of helpers.
After the Mole and after Madrid, there was a large exhibition in Zürich. As he had promised, when we had returned from Madrid Mario called me and asked me to stop by his house; I went there and found Mario, Marisa and Harald Szeemann deep in discussion about the Kunsthaus show. As soon as I entered, Mario considered me his assistant for that show and I, who only knew the triple igloo he had assembled in Turin, and two or three images in the exhibition catalogue, found myself seated at a table with him, Maria and Szeemann. They were compiling the list of works for the Kunsthaus show, following the example of the San Marino exhibition catalogue, wondering where the various igloos could be placed, when out of the blue, Mario asked me: “Mariano where is this igloo located?!?”
At this point, I was involved and I had to give some sort of answer and so, I don’t know how, something came to mind.
Today, I can say that I didn’t immediately understand what all this meant, I thought it meant continuing to be the guy with the jacket who talks to the artists while others do the work, and instead, when I arrived in Zürich on Monday morning, I found myself in front of the Kunsthaus space with many crates and heaps of twigs and Szeemann, who said to me, “Get down to work...!” I responded: “Relax, Szeemann, I will organize the site well!” When the show was finished, he, laughing, repeated my line: “Did you see how well the site was organized?” In fact, on that occasion I assembled with my own hands about twenty-two igloos; the show was made up of almost all Mario’s igloos, it was a city of igloos.
Over the course of his career, Mario used various assistants, people who came and went, and I didn’t know them well. Mario was such an interesting character, and so engaging, he never had a problem finding someone, the idea of being able to stay close to someone like him was really captivating!
It worked to my advantage that at that show, the person who historically oversaw the crafted aspects of Mario’s work, the one who executed the neon writings and numbers and who also built the igloo structures, was present. He had even developed a system for assembling the numbers on the Mole by himself and from inside the building. He was someone who at that moment, with that tour de force, taught me and helped me a lot. He died several years ago. I have always had a good visual concentration and certain degree of manual skill, which allowed me to learn that this craft: watching someone execute a specific thing, I generally succeed in intuiting and imitating the method.
From now on, my role was to be an assistant, not an installer, and I oversaw the assembly. Let me explain myself better: I was coming from three years of working in an organization devoted to the development of exhibition installations. The installation process also has to take the space into account, it is the preparation of a room, and this word, installation, is one I don’t use and don’t like to use in the context of contemporary art! The term installation has something to do with a broader idea that is superimposed on the work, as if the work, without installation, where not complete, as if it were missing something. To tell the truth, there have been exhibitions whose success was due perhaps more to the staging than to the works, and seen in these terms the installation can obviate deficits, but it is an attitude that I don’t agree with.
And so in Zürich I learned to assemble the igloos, the neon, and more, and all this was constantly supported by the benevolent gaze of Mario who, with the third stage of the Arte Povera exhibition, at P.S.1 in New York, allowed me to understand how this could really become a profession, obviously thanks to the fact that Mario wanted my collaboration.
And while I didn’t feel like his son, it was still clear how, in me, he saw someone who was also available to listen.
In years past, in close contact with him, I always sought to derive some meaning from his words regarding the work, as I said before to succeed in connecting man the thinker with man the creator, in a single unit. I liked to observe him, listen to him and study what he was doing, precisely to locate the union of these two attitudes, theoretical and practical, and also to observe that Mario was, at the same time, extremely human. Something I later discovered.
Mario had great openness of spirit, I don’t know if he reserved this exclusively to those he was dealing with or if he acted the same way with everyone, but he had an enormous spirit, he was a sentimental man. There was always emotion in his relationships with people, he was not detached; I saw him as someone who, in addition to possessing intelligence and ability, was also endowed with great soul.
I can also understand that some might consider him a great troublesome soul, but no one can imply that he did not have a great and strong spiritual personality. He was a cultured man, capable of sustaining any conversation, but he was especially knowledgeable about himself.
For me, hearing him and observing him constituted a reason for personal growth, precisely because all this was associated with a very strong humanitas that was linked to a way of being and speaking that was poetic and basic, but complete. In any case, everyone had the feeling of being in the presence of a person with great wisdom.
For Mario, certain situations, such as the convivial gesture of sitting down at the table, constituted the foundation of existence: the idea of exchange, of man’s sociality around a table.
As I said earlier, after Zürich, Mario sent me to assemble his igloo at P.S.1 in New York, the third stage of the Arte Povera exhibition. He didn’t come to New York, but Mario was generally someone who was always very present in his work. One of his qualities was his professional seriousness; some panic might arise in the preceding months because there was no project and because, until it seemed urgent, Mario gave no indications whatesoever, but then, as soon as he arrived and got down to work, he was there. He always arrived in time, at the last minute, and did the work.
We were never late, we didn’t work through the night; he arrived in time, at just the right moment, everything came together in terms of time, site and means, and it was finished when there were no more materials.
To create the igloos, there was no plan that specified quantities of material to be used, but in the end, positioning the last piece of glass, we all knew perfectly well that this would be the last piece required, and that everything would be perfect! There were never any holes, or excess material, because Mario knew how to modulate the work.
Going back to the New York exhibition: Mario sent me there as his representative and upon my return he met with me and Marisa. I remember Marisa was all smiles and when I said it all went well she responded that they had no doubt about it because they put maximum faith in me. These are words that obviously leave a mark upon you.
Moreover, I should add that that trip confirmed for me the hypothesis that I could make this my work, working for artists instead of closing myself off in a studio as an architect. At the same time, there were political-administrative upheavals in the city and my precarious work in the municipality changed, and so all of a sudden I found myself being both a registered architect and a person who was collaborating with artists.
Thus, there began a dual activity, where Mario coopted me and I gave him my greatest support and availability, when he needed it.
I was never a studio assistant because there was no need, since from 1985 on he had a great many commitments around the world, and work in the studio was greatly reduced because we would meet at the exhibitions to which he was invited.
Fundamentally, what Mario really needed was for someone to write down in a notebook the things required to create the works, since he didn’t pay much attention to what he had to bring into the exhibition space in order to proceed with the installation. Observing his moves, I gradually learned to make decisions regarding quantities of materials. This job required me to periodically go to glassmakers and gather up broken pieces of glass (which sometimes were new, sometimes recycled), and also to gather up stones. I remember many walks with Mario in quarries or in the warehouses of wholesalers in the city, to look for the right stones; other times, instead, we found them on site and he always succeeded in using them in the right way.
This too was one of his great abilities: succeeding in going beyond the initial idea and modifying the work in order to encompass those new materials.
In this regard, I remember one occasion when the curator had assured us that the museum would take care of procuring the rough stones that were required, but then we found ourselves with, yes, a large quantity of stones, but all cut by machine into regular sheets. Mario initially looked at them, perplexed, but in the end he managed to bring the work to completion, even with that material!
Observing Mario meant growing and understanding his greatness, in the way he persevered regardless of things, the way he succeeded in overcoming the physical qualities of the work’s constituent elements, thus demonstrating that his task was not to put the stones on the igloo, but to convey their idea, the essence, and to do this he could use stone from a mountain or stone cut by a high-tech machine. This was possible because mountain stone did not add anything, it didn’t have particular esthetic and/or cultural qualities; the focus of the work was the concept of the igloo and Mario succeeded in building it with any sort of thing, he adapted the formal quality of the materials to the formal quality he required. This was his greatness.
Looking at the catalogue of Mario Merz’s igloos, we come across a great variety of coverings, each of which refers to a particular idea. For example, in order to fully understand the significance of the igloo made of bread and earth, shown in 1989 at the Guggenheim in New York, where, as in Zürich, the museum proposes an overview of Mario Merz’s work through the pieces he has already made, we must remember that this igloo is first executed in Israel, in Jerusalem, with unleavened bread mixed with slabs of raw earth from Jericho.
Not the bread or rolls we usually have at home, but unleavened; this refers to the Biblical tradition of bread, and reproposing all this in New York (it is only there that he redid this piece), a city where this same culture survives in some areas, was not a chance decision; moreover Mario paid a lot of attention to the context, to the culture and tradition of the places where he exhibited his works.
In this sense, he was extremely sensitive.
There are stories about Mario at the beginning of his career, and about some of his habits, such as remaining seated in a meadow and thinking about it and drawing it... I believe there was a relationship of very profound listening to what was around him, he had the ability to keep listening, not only with his ears, but also with the pores of his skin, with his eyes, with everything.
He had tremendous attention and availability; he was constantly listening, he had great intelligence in his understanding of things, and this allowed him, beyond the igloo, to propose a completely new formal universe, extremely complicated but quite appropriate. All his painting is complex and not at all extemporaneous; it is dense with ideas. In 1984, at the time of our encounter, he had already returned to painting with his large prehistoric animals. For me, knowing Mario was like turning a corner and running into another world; this view was also probably dictated by the fact that I was not from that environment, but it was like opening a door and completely changing all my cultural references!
After the American adventure turned out well, a way of working was established whereby Mario would call me every time he had to do a show or participate in an important group show.
Over the course of the ‘80s there were numerous compelling exhibitions to which he was invited, where there was no possibility of using an already-existing work but where he had to create a new one. This meant surveying the sites, organizing transportation and going to assemble the work; heaps of glass or stones on footboards would arrive, supporting structures for the igloos and I had to account for the works, not in a financial sense, but I had to be able to know where a structure, a work or part of a work ended up, and this became part of the work. This was the context for the famous question Mario posed to me at the beginning of our collaboration: “Mariano, where is this igloo?!” and this became the common thread, the leitmotif, of our relationship. It became almost a sort of rhetorical question!
It was a matter of immediately resolving a problem that might entail participation in an exhibition with an igloo of a specific dimension, the need to make it, knowing where to have the structure arrive. Mario was a vortex of continuous creation.
Participation in a group show also gave him cause for thought; it was not only a question of execution, to execute something he had already done; there was nothing routine about it. Sometimes I would end up being with him, confronting the materials for an igloo to be re-installed; I would have images of the first installation with me, but Mario would tell me to forget about the photos! The igloo would be made according to the circumstances, and it was a fantastic experience because it meant being constantly in touch with the creative moment, and this is something I believe few other assistants have been able to experience. At that moment, you are not only a collaborator who executes, you are the artist’s hand; you follow Mario’s instructions that guide you in real time! Usually it turned out that the speed of execution increased the satisfaction with the main idea.
I believe that this relationship of fidelity was established because working together also served his purposes, he would have a positive reply, to avoid any explosions of anger, since explaining to someone who doesn’t speak your language how to mount an igloo, usually at the last minute as Mario did, could generate tension!
Repeating these sorts of operations and moving ahead automatically resulted in these things turning out in extraordinary fashion; for the same reason, now that Mario is no longer with us, it is not easy to remake these igloos.
The large shows he was involved with in those years also included the one at the Guggenheim, a large project where Germano Celant understood how to transform an exhibition that risked being only a historical show into a living show. The path was historical (even if the walk along the museum’s spiral did not follow an actual chronological order), with works from all his periods; however, Mario was committed to including new igloos, he made a very large piece on the ground floor, which then remained in the museum’s collection, and another one built around a pillar, thus implementing the practice of invention, in this instance as well. It was a retrospective, but Mario, when he was there, could not keep from making and proposing new works.
On that occasion, one of the tasks the museum assigned to me was to keep an eye on the requirements of the various lenders, and I was also enthusiastically invited to return during the disassembly phase, in order to correctly return things to the lenders, being sure they received the works just as they had consigned them.
When an igloo was being assembled it was impossible to say to Mario, who would take one clamp rather than another, that perhaps he would like to choose a different one because it belonged to the igloo he was assembling, and would say, “No, use that one, since they are all the same!”
This was his way of working and it was completely detached from the particular physicality of those elements. The fact that one part of an igloo might end up in another one was irrelevant to him, and sometimes he even cut the glass of one igloo to adapt it to another! This is why there were works that would arrive followed by escorts; odd situations were created that fortunately Mario always had the intelligence to understand, but for me, as his assistant, it seemed ridiculous for two people to arrive from who knows where, to mount an igloo and whose job would be to prevent anyone, including the artist, from touching it!
In practice, my job was to do this so that changes were not too obvious or too traumatic. All this can be useful for understanding what Mario’s working methods were, and how his way of working reflects his personality.
Now that Mario is no longer alive, when an igloo is constructed, it is inevitably necessary to take certain freedoms, modifying the work compared to the previous time, to bring it closer to the idea of the igloo captured in the photo. If we were to line up photos of ten igloos, your eye would immediately register how each of these has a specific personality, so that everything done to help reveal this personality can be considered appropriate, even if it goes beyond the perfect execution of its last realization. In this sense, turning a clamp or shifting a piece of glass is fine, if you have a clear idea of the sense of the igloo was Mario conceived it. You have to succeed in supporting that idea, not through a magnifying glass, but rather by distancing yourself from the igloo, to understand if you are doing a good job. The correct attitude is not to get annoyed about one millimeter of a detail, but instead to be sure about the correctness of the final result.
Looking at the work from a distance, strengthened by a view of the whole, best conveys its personality, while a close up view runs the risk of annulling it. This is fundamental to the great debate between restorers and assemblers, which focuses substantially on the fact that the restorer develops techniques for preserving the slightest details rather than the idea of the whole.
In my opinion, Mario always had a detached relationship with his works, which, once finished, went around the world and were endowed with an inner power given by their perfect form, which rendered the work theoretically unassailable and ready to travel anywhere.
Then the fact that Mario would continually modify the works’ features was because he would not modify that specific igloo, but always turned it into a new one, a different igloo every time! It didn’t matter, even if, for practical reasons, he used materials belonging to an already existing igloo, because this was a new igloo. Like a painter who paints seascapes, it is always a different seascape; it’s not as if all seascapes by Carrà are a single work; there is a basic idea, but the formal variations are infinite, infinite variations on a theme.
His wanting to supervise as many shows as possible, both solo and group shows, was, I believe, an integral part of his personality. In my memories, I always see Mario holding a small bag, the smallest possible piece of luggage with the minimum requirements, ready to leave, always at the last minute obviously, it was always decided at the last moment. Perhaps the museum had sent him tickets three weeks in advance, but the idea to leave always came to him at the last minute, then they, he and Marisa, would stay for a long time; in fact, they were always inquisitive, always wanted to travel, to be somewhere else.
An important exhibition was held in ’87, at CAPC/Musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux. I believe that Mario wanted me there at all costs because he called me even though the museum did not agree, to the point where they didn’t even bother to reserve a hotel for me, and he called me there to assemble a work we had done together in Turin. Then I stayed on for two weeks, and on that occasion I really felt that my presence was desired; Mario generally was very generous in giving you these sorts of feelings and a sense of satisfaction.
What I mean is, Mario was someone who knew how to say “thank you.”
I worked uninterruptedly for him until 1991, and then Gilberto Zorio asked me to help him install a show in Spain and I accepted, without telling Mario, although he and Marisa saw me the evening of the opening. That was a turning point in our relationship; the next day I should have returned to Turin to continue working for him, but it was as if I had reached a new stage, as if I had become an adult, and Mario had taken note of this. Another wonderful thing happened in 1989, on the occasion of the bicentennial of the French Revolution, when I left my house to go see Mario and had to return there from Paris three days later. The occasion was an exhibition at Amelio Brachot’s Galleria Pièce Unique, where Mario exhibited one of his most wonderful works and some red neon writing spelling out Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen [Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen], mounted on a structure resting on some newspapers. It is a very wonderful work, now in a collection in Germany. It was made and assembled in Italy and then brought there, and we arrived two hours before the show opened; we assembled it, and in the morning I woke up in Paris, decorated for the bicentennial festivities; it was the 14th of July.
My wonderful history with Mario ended in the late ‘90s, in conjunction with the birth of my daughter. In some way, there was an inevitable change dictated by practical contingencies, although it would be excessive to call it an “interruption.” In fact, I continued to work for him with the sole change that the relationship became less frequent, there were fewer contacts, although we continued to collaborate professionally until 2003, the year of his death.