The Art Cafe in Piazza Angelio which opened up to the public just a couple of days ago has had to close down due to “bureaucratic difficulties”. What was a corner of the piazza open to the public to sit and talk about art and enjoy the company of others with a coffee or a glass of wine as they exchanged views and opinions while looking at a gallery whose exhibits changed daily is no more. Gone but not forget because as soon as the necessary “bureaucratic difficulties” are surmounted it will be back on show and open once again. So who is that has organised this Cafe ? The answer is members of the art group Artists at Work .
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The group “Artists at Work” have been working in this area since 1992. One of their main guiding concepts was their aim and willingness to take art out of the gallery and into places where people could view it in a more natural environment and away from the white walls and bright lights of an art gallery. This also gives the opportunity for art to be seen by a much different audience that the usual gallery circuit. They were the first to put artists in schools in this area as artists in residence – Artesquola in Gallicano and also the first group in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce to use the whole commercial structure of the same town, Gallicano as the gallery for their paintings when they put paintings in all of the shops and public buildings – to see the complete exhibition meant walking to and entering all of the shops.
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15 years ago they changed geographical positions and base and started to become more visible in and around Barga but always with the eye of getting their work in front of a wider audience as possible.
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A decade ago at the start of the monthly markets in Barga Vecchia they would occupy the space outside Aristo’s bar and even open air exhibitions of work hung on the walls surrounding the Barga car park.
Two years ago they moved up in to the mountains for another artist in residence project – this time prepared with the Associazione Gestori Rifugi Alpi Apuane e Appennini – the project known as “Margini” – videos and images can be seen here
A modest observation regarding the diligence of Italian bureaucracy:
In 2008, state-owned cars were assigned to 72,000 civil servants in the United States, 63,000 in France, 56,000 in the UK, 55,000 in Germany and 30,000 in Japan. The figure for Italy? A mind-boggling 624,330 bureaucrats drive state-owned “service cars” provided with free petrol, insurance and registration — more than twice the combined total for all other G-8 nations combined. In the past six months alone, the state boondoggle fleet here has risen by 25,000, just under the total number of public cars in private use in Japan, which has twice the population of Italy.
In 1991, a special law was passed supposedly limiting such cars to “ministri, sottosegretari e ad alcuni direttori generali.” In short, big shots. The law has never been enforced — unlike the inane rules pertaining to harmless, cost-free and pleasurable outdoor caffes for ordinary citizens.