Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan

Associated media

Rosalind McKever visited the Tate show of Boetti's work earlier this year. Here she reviews two books about this influential artist

In the middle of Tate Modern’s exhibition space sits a small black plinth. Its top is glass, and a light bulb is visible inside. Beneath this bulb, and hidden from view is complex gadgetry which makes the bulb illuminate for 11 seconds once a year. No-one knows when this will be; it might happen when no one is looking. The sleek black box, its shiny metal interior and the vintage light bulb are undeniably attractive, but this is not the reason why you cannot take your eyes off this work, nor is it why you are still thinking about it days, weeks, months later. Boetti’s works are as conceptually rich as they are visually seductive.

A cursory stroll through the exhibition held earlier this year at Tate Modern or a flick through the images in either the catalogue or a recent monograph on Boetti would be sufficient to tell you that Boetti has a strong aesthetic sense. Some works could be enjoyed purely on a visual level, as evident in the sumptuous details reproduced in the catalogue’s endpapers. Many feature the phrase ‘i vedenti’ (the sighted), used by the blind to describe everyone else.

When you read about Boetti’s concepts behind his works the first reaction is often laughter, his works are childish and playful. Fundamentally, however, and despite the fact that the visual and playful elements are often more overt, Boetti’s work is profoundly thoughtful, as evident in the interview with the artist reproduced in the catalogue. The title of the exhibition and catalogue, ‘Game Plan’, perfectly sums up this combination of the playful and the conceptual, and his often returned to theme of order and disorder.

The sheer volume of works produced by Boetti (120 were on display in Tate Modern, many made up of multiple parts), and the breadth of media he used (including embroidery, calligraphy, postal art and photocopying), make it nigh on impossible to summarize his oeuvre. Mark Godfrey’s lucidity in organizing and explaining Boetti’s work in the exhibition and publications is impressive. The short and readable essays by leading Boetti scholars which make up the richly illustrated catalogue develop themes posed by the exhibition in greater depth, addressing the Boetti’s position in his artistic and political context. While the monograph has the more authorial voice, the essays of the catalogue give the multiple perspectives that an artist such as Boetti necessitates.

The monograph is arranged along a chronological-thematic course, and some key works can illustrate some of the themes touched on, which include the role of the artist, time-wasting, classification and putting the world into the world, as well as the overarching themes of order and disorder. A key phrase in Boetti’s production was mettere il mondo nel mondo, ‘put the world in the world’, and this is evident in the scale and variety of his works, and often their mundaneness, Boetti played with the plan and planned the game.

Boetti’s time associated with arte povera led him to question what it was to be an artist. A possible answer comes in the form of his self-portrait Me sunbathing in Turin 19 January 1969 (1969). The work takes the form of 111 pieces of concrete moulded by hand and laid out in the shape of a human figure. The portrait both crudely outlines the form of what Boetti looked like, but at the same time has the palm of his hand imprinted on it 111 times. The artist is a man who sunbathes (in January) while the rest of Turin is working. The artist may be made of concrete, but there is a cabbage butterfly placed on the left hand side of his chest, above his heart. Another important work in this theme is a postcard that shows Boetti repeated, appearing to hold hands with himself. Boetti began to call himself Alighiero e (and) Boetti (hence the title of the book), splitting his persona, so he could perform publicly and work privately, both travel and work in his studio, be a shaman and a showman.

Boetti’s travels led to him to have a particularly close relationship with Afghanistan, the subject of an essay in the exhibition catalogue. He set up the One Hotel in Kabul, and correspondence relating to the hotel forms some of his postal artworks. Afghani weavers, however, produced Boetti’s most famous series of work, his‘Maps’, created intermittently between 1971 and his death in 1994. These works are one of the most literal, yet highly developed examples of Boetti’s favourite phrase ‘mettere al mondo il mondo’, which means putting or showing the world to the world or, idiomatically, giving birth to the world. Boetti only used things that already exist, maps and flags, and left many things to chance, such as the colour of the sea and the Farsi texts in the borders, chosen by the weavers.

There is, of course, a political aspect to these works. Boetti chose a projection of the world that best represented the spread of populations, updated his map each time and deliberately left blank countries without a set flag. The question of whether these workers were exploited is often raised, but their representatives have assured critics that the weavers were generously paid by Boetti. The artist’s loyalty to these weavers is demonstrated by his following them to the border cities of Pakistan after 1979 during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. By bringing together 12 ‘Maps’ in the same room, the exhibition emphasizes their monumental simplicity and the changing face of the world over the two decades of their production.

Boetti’s interest in the world was combined with a stronger emphasis on classification in The Thousand Longest Rivers in the World (1976–8), cleverly hung in a room in Tate Modern from which the Thames (which does not make it onto the list) can be seen. The work is fairly self-explanatory, but raises questions about classification itself, its inherent flaws, and, when you have read through all the rivers you have heard of and find yourself somewhat lost, its ridiculousness.

Another theme for the artist who sunbathed while everybody else worked is time-wasting; in Contest of Harmony and Invention (1969) Boetti traced over grid paper, but did so it the roundabout fashion, sometimes writing a message through the gridlines before making it disappear. In his series of biro works from the mid-1970s Boetti spells out phrases using commas and an alphabet key, asking anonymous people to colour in around the commas with biro. The effect, a sumptuous sea of deep blue, is arrestingly beautiful, despite the simplicity of its methods. The individuals involved are clearly present in their differing styles and yet totally anonymous. One of these works is titled Mettere al mondo il mondo.

The exhibition wa impressive in the breadth of Boetti’s works brought together. Their display was sensitive to how Boetti originally exhibited his works, for example the groupings in the first room from his arte povera phase, and the lightbulbs dangling over his Alternating from one to one hundred and vice versa killims (a kind of carpet). To take in the quantity, quality and diversity of works surely requires repeat visits, as it can feel overwhelming. Boetti’s late Tutto (Everything) works, in which thousands of everyday objects were traced around and squeezed into a huge polychrome embroidery, were microcosms of the exhibition itself.

The final work in the exhibition, located outside on the balcony, was another self portrait, begun the year before the artist’s death and never previously seen in the UK. Boetti cast himself in bronze, he is dressed in shabby clothes and holding a hose pipe which pours water onto his head; a hidden heating component in his head makes the water turn to steam. The sculpture is, like so much of Boetti’s work, funny and yet poignant; the elderly artist humiliates himself, and yet reminds us how hot with ideas his head was. The steam floated off into the London air, spreading his art much as will visitors to this exhibition and readers of these two books.

Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan edited by Lynne Cooke, Mark Godfrey and Christian Rattemeyer is published by Tate 2012. 224pp., 180 colour illus, £30.00. ISBN 9781849760089

Alighiero e Boetti by Mark Godfrey is published by Yale University Press 2012. 288pp., 70 colour and 120 b/w illus, £35.00 ISBN 9780300148756