Lady Gaga and the Bolshoi?

Greed was shown at Gagosian Gallery Rome this February. The campaign included ads, seeming endorsements from women artists, and it is when you study these that you see Vezzoli is not just mining the celebrity culture for its visual immediacy, as many Warholesque artists—not Warhol himself—do, but that he has a more complex agenda. The Greed campaign, for instance, included images of Eva Hesse, whom Vezzoli admires for her “aura of integrity,” Leonor Fini, whom he has described as a “social hanger-on” and Tamara de Lempicka, whom he has called a “completely sold-out commercial figure.” There’s something political here. Moral, too.

Most of the celebrities Vezzoli chooses to incorporate are pretty serious—there is rarely any kitsch. “Yes,” he said, “and I guess I’ve been gifted that the people I work with are very serious. And they let go of their seriousness to play my crazy games. I don’t know what to say about it. But it’s fantastic that they all accept to play with me.

“For me the idea is always flirting with the edge and never really diving into it,” he continues. “I think in the end sincerity has to play a role, you know. I think the problem is not just with myself. Because if I would think that in the name of what I do I could go beyond this, I would.

“But I think my main problem is my roots. I come from Arte Povera. The only artwork that my parents had in the house was a little multiple of Joseph Beuys. So I think I could push myself to make a commercial for a perfume that doesn’t exist. But maybe I’m not courageous enough to make the real perfume. I don’t know. Or maybe I just think that I prefer to mirror the surreality of the world in this way. I think this is my way of mirroring what I feel I’m surrounded by.”

And yet, isn’t he an artist who lives in the gap between art and life?

“Absolutely! I do not want to substantiate my choice intellectually. I just say I like life too much! And I create for myself an artistic persona that is a mirror of who I am. So basically the art that I make enables me to see things and meet people and go to places where I dream to go. And so for me that is the proof that what I am doing is honest. My practice is exquisitely built on making myself happier or more stimulated or a more fulfilled person. So I only hope that I can keep doing this until the end of my life.”

Interestingly, the grim economic times have not diminished the joy of creation for Vezzoli. “I have been asked whether with the recession people would find my work less interesting. My work was around the cult for actors or famous people. Not exclusively that, but it’s a form of deconstruction or analysis of that. And I feel that, despite the recession, the topics that I am discussing in my work are still relevant. Luckily the Celebrity Cult does not seem to have diminished at all. Or probably it’s even stronger, I would say.”

And Vezzoli knows how to make it work for him.

“He has worked quite a bit here,” says Maria Bell. “And he is very, very savvy with the ways to make this happen. And he’s done extraordinary efforts here to get someone like Lady Gaga to perform, you know, gratis at the event.”

Vezzoli’s mini-opera, Lady Gaga, the dancers and all, is a one time only happening for upwards of 950 at the MOCA dinner. Naturally, there is discussion of making a video.

“Well, that’s what we’re working on it,” Maria Bell says. “And we really are hopeful. It is of course going on right up to the last minute. Our goal is that this becomes something that’s very populist. The plan is that it will be filmed. And that the piece will then be available for download on YouTube, on the MOCA website and on various other channels. So everyone can access the piece. So it’s really available for everybody.”

Ephemera that will last forever.

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Anthony Haden-Guest is the news editor of Charles Saatchi’s online magazine.

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