Maurizio Cattelan: If you were one of your works, you would be…
Francesco Vezzoli: If I were one of my works, I would be the next one.
I hardly remember the titles of my art works. And it is even difficult for me to remember the date, to which collections, public or private, they belong, and even the price for which they had been sold. I am very detached from “the works” out there; and I kind of blame myself for being as such. For me there is only “one work,” which is not necessarily a work of art, and it is my life. Therefore I can only project myself into the future, into the next project — the one that will ease all the pain and make my life lighter.
MC: If you were an old movie you would be…
FV: I would be any Italian movie that has had a troubled life on the American market. Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) had 40 minutes chopped out and obviously ended up being a terrible flop. Visconti’s Ludwig (1973) shares much the same doom… And I won’t mention how complicated it was for Sergio Leone to finalize Once Upon a Time in America (1984); or the struggles between Bernardo Bertolucci and Barry Diller regarding the director’s cut of Novecento (1976) for American audiences.
Any time an Italian director has tried to make a truly epic movie about the history of his own country, for some mysterious reason it has ended up a terrible failure. I myself feel like an epic failure.
MC: If you were a pair of shoes, you would be…
FV: Nike of Samothrace — comfortable and quite glamorous.
MC: If you were a Rossini opera, you would be…
FV: I would be Maria Callas singing the aria “Una voce poco fa” from Il barbiere di Siviglia (1782), from the concert in Hamburg in 1959:
Una voce poco fa
Qui nel cor mi risuonò
Il mio cor ferito è già
MC: If you were a nightclub, you would be…
FV: I was a hardcore clubber when I was a student in London, and I would spend every single night out, dancing until the wee hours of the morning. Club culture was very different back then: the total absence of social media made clubbing a necessary scenario in order to get some sex, and this was equally valid for gay or straight men. Clubs were dirty, emotional, intense, aspirational…
I am still able to trace all these qualities in only one club in the world: Plastic, in Milan. The most important attribute for a nightclub is the music, and Plastic’s playlist is just perfect for me: a crossover between the newest records and the most nostalgic and romantic pop songs from the ’70s and the ’80s — it is like a symphony of love, and that gets me going and makes me feel less lonely.
MC: If you were your mother, you would be…
FV: If I were my mother I would be very loved by my son.
I love my mother extensively and extremely. I feel incredibly protective towards her and I wish I could ease any pain she may feel and buy for her any thing she may desire. Unfortunately sometimes she feels pain that, however hard I try, I cannot ease; and her range of desires is quite modest: most of the things I give to her as a gift she either deems too extravagant or unnecessary. Somehow deep down, I hope she enjoys my vacuity. She, alongside my two grandmothers, has given me a substantial amount of love and comprehension. I can never thank her enough for this, but I will never forgive her either: she has got me used to an emotional standard of attention that I struggle to find in all the human beings with whom I end up falling in love.
I guess she should be blamed for my egocentrism, as I am only trying to make up for all the love I was used to getting from her when I was a child.
MC: If you were blind, you would be…
FV: Recently, on a social network, I started chatting with a blind person. It was a social network that people use to meet up and mostly to find sex. His picture was fairly attractive, and while I was chatting with him I started inevitably fantasizing about all the most obvious things. But when he revealed his handicap I all of sudden found myself blocked. I started speaking and chatting in a more polite manner; I betrayed my slight embarrassment. Obviously he felt it, and so I had to very quickly decide if his handicap could be a detriment to the honesty of my desire. I decided it was not, and so I kept chatting with him and saying dirty things to him as naturally as I would to any other user of that network. And I enjoyed it. As happens ninety-nine percent of the time, the chat did not lead to a real encounter. But that has nothing to do with his handicap, but with the nature of these random and very immaterial encounters.
So my answer to the question is the following: If I were blind I would be just as horny as I am right now with my glasses on typing this surreal interview.
MC: If you were a fetish, you would be…
FV: When, some years ago, I was trying to create a contemporary version of the Kinsey Report for the Fondazione Prada, I went to meet some very respected experts on the topics of sexuality and fetishism. And, just as I suspected, they validated my feeling that the blossoming of social networking has radically changed our approach to sexuality.
In the past, a man or a woman, straight or gay or lesbian or transgender, could very rarely find a real match to their most precise sexual fantasies. Primarily because these issues were considered rather embarrassing ones, even within the boundaries of a pretty established relationship.
Nowadays, whatever your fetish, however structured the sequence of acts you need to endure in order to achieve a fully satisfying orgasm, whatever, wherever, it does not matter: you can be assured that there is a website where people that share the same fantasies can meet and bring them into reality. All this has made monogamy a much more complex business and online pornography a much more lucrative one.
Personally I do not have a very specific fetish. I believe that excessive fetishism can bring unhappiness: the broader your sexuality, the broader your chances of getting lucky. As Karl Kraus once said: “There is no more unhappy being under the sun than a fetishist who pines for a boot and has to content himself with an entire woman.”
MC: If you were a politician, you would be…
FV: If I were a politician I would never be Dominique Strauss-Kahn. I have lived such a large part of my life in hotels that I would never be disrespectful to any of the people who work in such places, which for me are like temporary homes. As a matter of fact, I have never laid with either a waiter or a concierge of any of the hotels I have ever stayed at — and trust me, some of them were pretty hot.
I would never be Bill Clinton, either. There is nothing more depressing than taking advantage of your sheer power to land a blow job. In one way or another, sex is sexy if the person in front of you has some kind of power over you. I don’t find it sexy to take sexual advantage of people that work for me, or are in awe of me or in love with me. (As far as I know, nobody belongs to the latter categories anyway.) I would never be François Hollande either: he’s too messy.
I am afraid that, despite my political beliefs, if I were a politician I would either be Nicolas Sarkozy or Silvio Berlusconi: I would both marry the most acclaimed and handsome guy on earth at the peak of his beauty, and surround myself with whores ever ready to please all my desires at any time of any given day. That is why I’ll never be a politician.
MC: If you were a love, you would be…
FV: I would be the “love that dares not speak its name.”
MC: If you were a criminal, you would be…
FV: A jewel thief: I am too embarrassed to go out and buy them and I’m not wealthy enough anyway.
MC: If you were a David Bowie song, you would be…
FV: I would be the only time a major international rock star like Bowie agreed to sing in the language of my own country. To be precise: he recorded the Italian version of his song “Space Oddity” (1969) and had an Italian songwriter rewrite the lyrics. The song’s title is “Ragazzo solo, ragazza sola.” It is truly heartbreaking to listen to Bowie’s voice struggling with the words… And it is even more heartbreaking that this only happened once in the history of postwar Italian pop music.
MC: If you were a year, you would be…
FV:Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais, featuring Giorgio Albertazzi.
MC: If you were a form of mental torture, you would be…
FV: Documenta.
MC: If you were a porn magazine, you would be…
FV: Men’s Health — that’s sheer porn!
MC: If you were a smell, you would be…
FV: I would be the perfume I over abundantly wear all the time: Portrait of a Lady by Frédéric Malle.
MC: If you were a crazy thing to do, you would be…
FV: I think I really would be me: I have done so many crazy and unnecessary things in my private life, but I don’t regret any of them at all.
MC: If you were in Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), you would be…
FV: Madonna.
MC: If you were a sin, you would be…
FV: Gluttony, as I do not consider lust a sin at all.
MC: If you were a piece of advice, you would be…
FV: Please never agree to an interview with Maurizio Cattelan: it is brain draining.
MC: If you were me, you would be…
FV: If I were Maurizio Cattelan I would be more famous than Francesco Vezzoli.
