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| Art and design Zane Oborenko, Visual Art Theorist A conversation with Roberto Semprini | |
 Roberto Semprini. Armchair 'Flip'. Produced by Bosal. 2010. Photo: Mathieu Goradsky | |
| Roberto Semprini is an internationally recognised Italian designer whose works are closely linked with the world of art. They have attracted attention with their harmonious form and interaction with both specific works of art and the conceptual ideas behind these works. After this year’s Milan design fair we had a conversation with Semprini to find out more about him and his sources of inspiration. Roberto Semprini was born in 1959 in Rimini and studied architecture in Florence. Soon after completing his studies in 1989 he moved to Milan, where, in addition to his interior design work, he regularly contributes to the design magazine MODO and collaborates with similar publications in other countries, including L’Atelier (Paris) and ARDI (Barcelona). In 1989, Semprini created a sofa called the ‘Tatlin’, dedicated to the Russian constructivist Vladimir Tatlin. It won numerous design awards and has already become a style icon. This was followed by a series of other creative and innovative products, of which the most outstanding examples have now become included in the permanent collections of museums such as London’s New Museum of Design and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Since 2000 Semprini has been living back in Rimini, where, in an early 20th century cinema, he has established his interior design and architecture studio ‘RM12’. Since 2006 this also functions as an art gallery. The connection with art and the art world are very important and fundamental in all of Semprini’s activities. He has been greatly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, who as early as 1917 declared his desire to combine art with architecture, and to make the home a true work of art. In Semprini’s interior design too, functional objects become sculptures. Semprini’s main sources of inspiration and teachers include Mies van der Rohe, Piet Mondrian, Matisse, and Mario Merz. What they all have in common is that they share Semprini’s current favourite source of inspiration: nature and its forms. | |
 Roberto Semprini. Sofa 'Paolina'. Produced by Partner & Co. 2000. Photo: Mathieu Goradsky | |
| Zane Oborenko: In recent times we have noticed two opposing tendencies in art and design: an increasing movement for these two disciplines to merge and interact, and attempts to define and set clear boundaries between them. How does this affect your work? Roberto Semprini: Like two unruly cousins, art and design have always influenced one other. If in earlier times art influenced design (remember the design objects in minimalist, surrealist or pop-art style), then today perhaps it is more like art creates installations that are born from observing design objects... I have always been fascinated by the emotions provoked by artworks. Positive emotions, because design must be therapeutic and must harmonise with the living environment. In other words, it must be closer to the works of Henri Matisse rather than Munch’s scream. Z.O.: Despite the fact that this question tends to box a creative personality within a definition, I will ask it nevertheless – do you feel more like an artist or a designer? R.S.: Without a doubt, a designer, because the objects I draw must be functional, they must be manufactured (mass-produced or limited edition) and distributed. I am a designer, because my point of reference is industry, whereas for an artist it is the gallery director... I wouldn’t know who is better off! Artists might seem to be more free, but in reality they must also adapt to the rules of the market and the public. Z.O.: Have you ever thought that it would have been better to be an artist? R.S.: At the beginning of my career I did, but later I discovered that design has a powerful creative component, creativity which in order to reach its true potential can and must work on the technological and realisation opportunities presented by industry. Z.O.: In order to transform an artwork into an object with a practical use, you need a special ability to see and absorb what is around us. Tell us, how have you developed this ability? R.S.: I think that this is a thoroughly Italian skill – the art of compromise, dating back to Machiavelli. Perhaps it is rooted in our Catholic culture of forgiveness which resolves everything, or in our climate, landscapes, food. It is the art of being a mediator, avoiding tension and direct confrontation. Italy is a country with 60 million skilled crafts people making beautiful shoes, clothes and objects, using unprocessed raw materials, whether it be a sculpture, a rough canvas, a potato sack, a foothill to plant vines on etc. etc. ... everything that is around us and is given by Mother Nature, so generous to our country. Z.O.: In your work there is an interesting and often fun play on the perception and changes in the context of the ‘original’. Are you concerned about where the things you have created will end up? Are you concerned about the new context and relationship that will develop between your work and its new environment/owner? R.S.: Honestly, I never think about that, I’m happy not to know and to find out occasionally, purely by chance. One evening in a Milan restaurant I met Riccardo Schicchi, who is the manager for Cicciolina, Eva Henger and other porn stars, and he asked me what I do. I told him I was an architect, but added, so that he would understand my work better, that I had designed the Tatlin sofa. “Really?” he replied. “Do you know that I have a red one like that in my lounge room? Perhaps you can help me reupholster it, because Cicciolina (Jeff Koons’s ex wife) has put holes in it with her stilettos?” Or once, when chatting with Mark Kostabi, I learned that he has a black Tatlin sofa in the middle of his studio and he had used it as a source of inspiration for a number of his works. I know that Madonna has three of them, Ringo Starr and Pedro Almo-dovar have one each and so on... | |
 Roberto Semprini. Sofa 'Tatlin'. Produced by Edra. 1989. Photo: Mathieu Goradesky | |
| Z.O.: The 1992 ‘Very Valentino’ advertising campaign with a Tatlin sofa (1989) definitely had an impact on how your creation was perceived, and would Fellini have ever imagined that his drawing would one day be interpreted as a sofa, and become one (the ‘Gradisca’ sofa)? R.S.: Way back in 1989 the Tatlin sofa was presented covered in red velvet, against a background of red drapes with a big gold star. The caption for the ad was “A revolution in your lounge room”. Then followed the Valentino advertising campaign, in which they used Valentino red instead of communist red... We are all children of consumerism, as the noted Italian intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini said in the 1970s. In the late 1980s I spent a lot of time painting, working with revolutionary symbols and removing them from their political and ideological context. At that time I was creating large-format portraits of Che Guevara from a fashion viewpoint, with velvet and sequins, a red velvet star, Swarovski crystals etc. against a gold background, like a Russian icon. I depicted all this with a slight tinge of nostalgia, as befits European intellectuals at the end of an era which they have not directly experienced (and just as well). Z.O.: In transforming two-dimensional painted works, you have to think in three-dimensional and practical terms. What challenges do you encounter in this process? R.S.: In the transition from two-dimensional to the three-dimensional, and with the functional requirements of the object also added, the main thing is not to lose along the way the strength of the initial sign, that is the only difficulty. Historically, the best example of this has been demonstrated by the De Stijl group, where a Mondrian painting turned into a three-dimensional Doesburg stage design or a Rietveld piece of furniture. Z.O.: How do you cope with the endless fluctuations in people’s tastes and what’s in fashion? Perhaps it is an advantage that in contrast to art, design does not have to worry about being too commercial? R.S.: I understand design to be a humanities discipline which interprets social changes and therefore human evolution. Le Corbusier stated that “design objects are prostheses of the human body”. A designer, like any creative person, be it a sculptor, musician or writer, upon enjoying their first success must not submit to the Money God and become a slave to the market. But I think it is normal if in the course of one’s career some works are more commercial than others, and very few are true masterpieces. Perhaps Picasso was the only artist who produced only masterpieces: so many achievements, so much money, so many women, and for these reasons every artist wants to be like Picasso. When speaking of creativity I want to make clear that I put everyone – artists, designers, writers, musicians etc. – on an equal footing, because the ‘idea for the work’ is the same for everybody. Z.O.: Is the reason why you chose the classics as a source of inspiration an attempt to fight the unremitting changes in fashion with proven values? R.S.: Of course! They are my “secular dogmas”, safe havens where I find refuge and support when a storm is raging at sea. Z.O.: What feelings do you try to express in your designs? R.S.: As Matisse titled his 1904 painting: Luxe, calme et volupté – ‘Luxury, calm and sensual pleasure’. Z.O.: One of the things I remember most vividly from this year’s Milan furniture fair is the coarse salt covered with resin used as a floor covering in the kitchen project Natural Mondrian which you presented. The thing that was surprising was the use of everyday things and materials in an unexpected context. The element of surprise is a fundamental part of entertainment, are you trying to entertain the people who will live in the space you have created? R.S.: You have understood the essence of my search for “new materials” perfectly. It is nothing more than the reuse of humble, well-known materials (in art this is called ready-made). All you need to do is to add just a touch of technological material to a humble, traditional material which changes the context, like the transparent resin covering with the salt, and see – the invention is complete! In reality, I wanted to amuse myself watching how a radicalchic viewer in high heels directly from Via Montenapoleone manages to walk across a sea of salt. Z.O.: In your Rimini studio-gallery RM 12, you and your design are directly confronted with works of art. Did the idea of having an art gallery in the studio arise from the need for such a confrontation in everyday life? R.S.: Of course, RM 12 art & design is a laboratory where art and design are constantly in confrontation, but if you really think about it – doesn’t exactly the same thing happen every day in the homes of art collectors? Z.O.: How do you see contemporary art? Could it become an inspiration for your future works? R.S.: It has always been a source of inspiration, but while earlier it was the only one, now I am inspired by everything – the small things of everyday life, the economy, a tree in front of my house, my two children’s drawings, football etc. etc. Z.O.: What do you like and, conversely, what disappoints you in contemporary art and design? R.S.: In design, designers who think they are rock stars and the companies who invite them to work for them, in the same way that rock stars get booked to sing at private parties... The products are shoddy, their lifespan is as short as confetti flung into the air and they just pollute the ground unnecessarily! It’s the same story with art. In a nutshell, we should try to create fewer works and endeavour to make them higher quality. Let’s fight consumerism with calm, luxury and sensual pleasure! /Translator into English: Filips Birzulis/ | |
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