THEn that evening in June 1983 the air in Bologna was particularly electric. It all seemed very far away: the years of youth protests and opposing antagonisms, the epic scenes like that of the tanks in via Zamboni, those uncertain and restless times in which social conflict also became internal and utopia and anguish coexisted in hearts. The cultural ferment enlivened by places such as the Neon gallery contributed to making everything new and exciting, and to making the city an international meeting and transit point. But at the opening of the exhibition Now!, which certified the beginning of a “Now Wave” and the birth of the Emfatisti, the most admired and sought-after work of art was the muse and singer of that young artistic movement. Francesca Alinovi is already a legend among Dams students for her lessons that are never static, unpredictable, bordering on performance (she knows that learning takes place through fascination, as Plato taught) but here she is in her ideal guise: magnetic icon, wise visionary, priestess of every avant-garde. She was born in Parma in 1948, she graduated in Modern Literature in Bologna and specialized in Art History with Renato Barilli, who recognized her talent and immediately wanted her as her assistant.
Dams professor Francesca Alinovi in a portrait from the early 1980s. COURTESY Lucio Angeletti
In the unexplored territories of art
It is the moment in which the International Weeks of Performance come to life, which in 1977 host very interesting names such as Laurie Anderson, Bob Kushner, Hermann Nitsch who, to stage a black mass, asks to search the city’s butcher shops for 50 liters of blood, or Marina Abramović and Ulay who force visitors to pass between their naked bodies on both sides of a very narrow door: for the public who wanted to experience art enthusiastically, finally an attractive and stimulating language after the scarce appeal of conceptual art. But Francesca immediately begins to walk alone, because she knows that her path is in unexplored territories, and goes to present the Nuovinuovi at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York: where minimalism dominates, she claims the taste for kitsch, for what would be tacky to the art establishment.
Francesca Alinovi with a group of artists: second from left, Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Looking towards the new
Create a bridge between Italy and America and become an international queen of art, which she always needs to look at with a new eye. One of his precious contributions to this world has undoubtedly been to erode the separation between elite art and escapist art. Furthermore, she was able to bring the world of institutions into dialogue with the artists: today it is a consolidated practice, back then they were very distant planets and unable to understand each other’s languages. A genius of contaminations: between worlds, between disciplines, between high and low, between the street and the art galleries. A mental openness that allows her to discover the germs of cultures that are spreading in America, clandestine enough to remain authentic and raw, in the underground.
It is border art, which often coincides with the suburbs: it is in these middle lands that the innovators to be highlighted lurk. Hungry and foolish ante litteram, Francesca ventures into the South Bronx and intercepts the artists who will make the revolution: it is she who brings for the first time to Italy, to Europe, names destined to become famous such as Keith HaringKenny Scharf, Rammellzee. Exalted by this counterculture, she combines the American metropolitan language with its Italian equivalent which she recognizes in comics, in contrast with the habit of considering it a minor art like all consumer art. It is by overcoming the usual frontiers that the new frontier of art is identified. When in 1982, the exhibition she curated was inaugurated at the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna Frequency registration, the first of five sections is dedicated to comics; among the exhibited works those by Andrea Pazienza stand out, who is already raging and causing crowds of fans to rush to newsstands and exhibitions. It is she who brings names destined to become famous such as Keith Haring to Italy and Europe.
The punk aesthetic
In the years in which the dress makes the monk and says a lot about who you are, but above all who you would like to be and even more about who you would like to look like, Francesca proves to be an unmistakable character also in her look: she wears black with fluorescent flashes, colorful accessories, cigarette trousers and red décolleté, striped shirts and leggings. And then she wears her black hair with a high backcomb inspired by the post-punk group Siouxsie and the Banshees, a sign of recognition more than a hairstyle. She was dressed like this, the evening she received those who went to discover the exhibition dedicated to Emphasis, the creature to which she reserved the greatest transport. THEThe artistic milieu was still exalted by that inauguration, when it had to learn shocking news: Francesca Alinovi had been murdered with 47 stab wounds in her home in via del Riccio. «The shock was incredible» recalls the director Renato De Maria, a friend of Francesca. «In Bologna there were many deaths from overdoses, but they hadn’t interrupted the creative flow. That assassination marked the end of a period: accustomed to being on the threshold of what was about to happen, we understood that the eighties were over».
Francesca Alinovi (1948-1983) in a 1983 image taken by Miro Zagnoli.
Eros and Thanatos
The crime is attributed to a young painter to whom the victim is linked by a complicated, fluctuating relationship, and the case tickles the morbidity of the television audience. The story is perfect: love and death intertwine against an artistic background with a sprinkling of drugs. Yellow phone, forerunner of so much TV today, is passionate about the case. In the news services one hears moralistic judgments: «Professionally esteemed and admired, Francesca Alinovi is also an eccentric woman with multiple and disorderly acquaintances». That crime, which took place when it was not dramatically frequent to talk about feminicide, killed the beautiful and extravagant art critic, but also her projects, and all forms of respect for her. Everything becomes public, from the travails of her love story to conversations with girlfriends. Not even her diary is an exception, and the page of 20 December 1981 takes on the contours of a dark omen: «I didn’t want to die. If you read to me now, and I’m dead, remember that I didn’t want to die.”
The art critic Francesca Alinovi in a frame of the documentary “I Am Not Alone Anyway” by Veronica Santi.
A protagonist to be rediscovered
A tombstone is also placed on his work, the muse of that now unrepeatable Bologna seems forgotten. She managed to tell Veronica Santi with grace and authentic interest with the documentary I Am Not Alone Anyway of 2017. The same author has republished writings by art critics, forgotten for over thirty-five years, in the volume Francesca Alinovi (2019, Postmedia Books) edited together with Matteo Bergamini. Just on January 28, the day Francesca would have turned 75, the director will publish the short Off-Identikit visible for free on YouTube to counter the abundance of videos that deliver Alinovi’s story only as a crime story. The short film collects Francesca Alinovi’s interviews with Keith Haring and the testimonies of artists who knew Francesca, to whom they acknowledge they owe a lot, on a professional level: Robert Kushner, Kenny Scharf, Ann Magnuson, Stefan Eins, Crash & Daze. A militant critic with a fascinating and still very current thought emerges from the past, a determined and brilliant woman, perhaps more aware and strong in the professional sphere than in the private sphere. In a repertoire film Francesca speaks staring at the lens: her gaze seems to be directed towards the listener but, in reality, it is beyond. She is looking for an elsewhere, as far away as possible, in which to discover new beauty.
iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED