The imagination finally goes to power. No fear, the healthy fantasy will be left to the artists who will interpret energy transmission as a contemporary metaphor. We were firm on our basis for having structured a new Italian award for visual arts. The imagination I am speaking of embodies the old dream of a formula that brings Italian artists closer in an open and constructive way, without the partialness that is of no benefit to the growth of a homogeneous cultural context. We started by considering what has been proposed up to now by other national awards, in particular by focusing on the more successful ones. An historical memory and sense have therefore shifted the much loved imagination to a more innovative formula for this award. Three categories were created, a “triple circuit” that aims at creating a network formed by the highest creative expression of our art world.

The Terna Award was created by an enlightened company (also literally due to its mission in the electricity field) that opens a cultural path along the social aspects of the country. It is no coincidence that the award will create a close dialogue between the Italian cultural elements. The Award is interested in reopening a debate, a comparative scenario without ideology or moralism, following present day communication channels, the logic where emerging and established talents can challenge each other in the name of certain principles: aesthetic quality, ethical rigour, conceptual tension. In addition to its typical aspects, the project will be divided into a series of informative, didactic and exhibition sessions: with the purpose of informing about the artistic world and bringing contemporary art closer to the population. Notice that I did not refer generally to “people” (everyone and no one) but to “population” (that touches on the individual and collective identity), a lazy and timid entity, yet curious, available and ready for new discoveries.

What are the reasons why many people have not been drawn closer to the artworks of our times? With the due exception, it was the snobbish approach that was wrong, a language and form of expression reserved only for an elite system, being closed in a stale and vicious circle. Something is now changing in the social models, we perceive it around us and we are beginning to reap the benefits. A lot more, however, still needs to be done, aware of the fact that Italy has lagged considerably behind compared to global acceleration. We are doing something about this by having created this competition which is not intended only as an award. Having carried out activity and research together with Mannheimer is the signal that underlines a new approach towards the community. The other significant novelty of the award is represented by devolving part of the prizes to a social initiative in the cultural field, sign of a common wish to strengthen the artist’s ethical involvement in the civil context. The Jury, selected among the highest representatives of the Italian intelligentsia (art, film, design, fashion, economy and finance), proposes a less partial approach to judgment and evaluation, searching for a balance that gives the present the multi-faceted taste of innovation. The distance from innovative processes has made people unfamiliar with any type of impact with what is new. Since the existence of humanity, innovation borders with the elastic perimeters of Culture.

Succeeding in involving and intriguing someone’s curiosity before an artwork depends on educational models, on how the story is told, from the tones and ways that are used to draw attention. We are not trying to create a society of implacable art collectors, that would be a foolish dream where only the imagination would win (as well as boredom).

What we aim for is a broadened public of careful readers, a public that is aware and curious, a public that is not restrained by censorship, a public that has a passion and love for research and original ideas. Many should be reminded that Caravaggio and Michelangelo changed the world because someone at the right moment gave them the time and space to do so. The masters that we boast of today lived their times with great courage and innovative ideas, ready to overturn the expressive language, to wipe out the common morality, to shift the center of the vision. This was and will always be the task of the artist. Everything else is purely decorative.

We could call it motion on emotions. It is the attempt made by a present-day company to share with its country and the world a long term vision of great value. It is combining art and technology, visual culture and network culture, a model of our present times and a model of corporate image, it is essentially combining man’s ancestral values of all times. The Terna Award was created based on a company’s sense of responsibility to wanting to contribute to the cultural development of the territory in which it operates and attempting to take on the responsibility of expanding and spreading the visibility of contemporary art as both a cultural and professional phenomenon in our country. A country that has the ancient merit of having invented the combination of values in the 1550’s in Florence and which later forgot this allowing other development scenarios to take over that looked towards Italian patronage of the arts and succeeded in keeping it in step with the times, also by reinventing and reshaping it.

Even though Italian society fully recognizes entrepreneurial models, it exactly perceives how know-how and high quality products should be managed and how high profile management and professional networks should be created to defend and distribute the “made in Italy”, the art world still has a lot of room for improvement. Neither the public nor the private sectors have succeeded in taking advantage of the enormous flow of investments for the contemporary art world from 2004 to the present.

Considering that Italy is the third country in the world for investments on quality contemporary arts, but that this capital goes abroad, where the system works at an outstanding level, we felt the need to create a complex and original project to try and jointly respond to a significant issue. Professional systems and creative systems must collaborate. But above all they must know how to do so.

In a well organized ethical market, emotions are not compromised; a static management of the artwork is not functional to the collector’s needs who wants to benefit not only from the artwork in itself, but also from its appreciation potential, or at least be protected from any loss in value. The only way for this to occur is by knowing how to distinguish between quality and decoration, between visual culture and amateur art, between art systems and art commerce, which are two distinct and separate aspects. The only way is to implement an entrepreneurial model also in art, also in Italy; a system that in these years has been succeeding in other countries in a visible and incontrovertible way, starting from cooperation between the State and private sectors that not only creates fertile cultural grounds that are both select and reach out to the masses, but that also favors the enterprises that invest in art and create opportunities for qualified operators in producing valuable work lasting in time.

The Terna Award establishes a net distinction between junior artists and senior artists, calling selected and competent juries, involving the civil society and asking the Italian society to support the work of our artists and of our operators. In a country where the art system was created, one cannot insist on art as being limited for only a few. Today, quality artworks can be purchased with only a thousand euros, participating in this way towards the use of artistic value and actively contributing to the rebirth and strengthening of the management system. Any loss in quality is a definite loss in the value of art’s future. Any distraction towards an evolved and contemporary phenomenon is the destruction of …the State of the art.

Francesco Cascino
July 1, 2008