ENRICO MAGNANI

INTERVIEW

ARSCIENCIA

MARILENA STREIT-BIANCHI INTERVIEWs ENRICO MAGNANI

MARCH 2021

CREATIVITy, INTUItion and beauty

M.S.B. How would you define creativity?

E.M. Creativity, for me, means bringing something new into the world, creating something that doesn’t exist. There are many types of creations: you can create a work of art, a scientific theory, a song, but also a new type of bread, a dress, a car… you can even create new life… I like the saying: “We were created, therefore we must create”; I believe it’s our duty as human beings. When you create, you do something for yourself, but also for others; you add something to the world. Whether a creation is good and worthy or bad and useless is not for me to say, not for us… Only time will tell—maybe—but that shouldn’t stop us from creating. Otherwise, everything comes to a halt.

M.S.B. As a child, were you given the freedom to learn by doing?

E.M. I’d say yes. Before I started school, I had set up a little lab in my room using small fruit juice bottles filled with water and colored syrups. They were beautiful when the sun shone through them, but as they evaporated, they left behind a sweet, cloying smell of fruit and sugar that I’ll never forget. Later, as I grew older, I built my “real” science lab while also having fun with paints and brushes. I’d say no one ever stopped me, even when the things I did were borderline unsafe.

M.S.B. Who or what contributed to the development of your creativity?

E.M. I believe the drive toward creativity is innate—it’s a “movement of the soul,” to use more philosophical language. If you feel like creating, you do it with whatever you have at hand. Before I even knew about chemistry sets, I invented my own chemistry using Fabbri syrups. That’s proof enough. Of course, sooner or later, you need fertile ground to bring that creativity into reality, but the spark doesn’t depend on what’s around you—it comes from within.

M.S.B. What role does technique play in your creations?

E.M. Technique is the tool you use to bring your ideas into the world. Sometimes, without the right technique, you can’t make them real, so it’s essential. Without technique, at best, you can describe your ideas, write them down. Sometimes you don’t even know a certain technique exists, and your idea stays in a drawer. Then, one day, you discover that what you imagined is “technically” possible, and voilà! The idea becomes reality. It’s wonderful!

M.S.B. What role do knowledge and study play in your creations?

E.M. Knowing and studying enrich our being, our person… but simply living also enriches us, maybe even more. It’s hard to draw the line between what we do because we read it in books and what we learned through experience. Art, science—they’re in the air like an “esprit du temps,” like “archetypal ideas”… sometimes we grasp them unconsciously. I like to think of ourselves as a cake made of many ingredients—it’s good as it is. I don’t search for the origin of each ingredient; I don’t care. But I’m always looking for new ones.

M.S.B. How much is due to intuition?

E.M. In the past, I would’ve said, “I don’t know.” Now I say, “Everything.” I’m increasingly convinced—and I speak from experience—that everything new that arrives on this planet comes through intuition. Then, if you will, the tools of intellect and body allow us to realize that intuition, but at its core is a spark that doesn’t belong to this world and, thanks to intuition, enters it. When I started looking at intuition this way, reading about it, I discovered that artists, scientists, writers, musicians—creatives, in short—almost all speak of intuition in these terms: Einstein, Mozart, Tesla, Picasso… Sometimes with different words, but the concept is always the same: perceiving, through sensitivity, something that isn’t yet part of this world, via something other than logical-rational thought. So I can’t even say I was influenced beforehand by others’ ideas. My “feeling” found confirmation in others’ “feeling,” and that comforts me greatly—I’m in good company.

M.S.B. When did you realize you were embarking on a new path?

E.M. Without a doubt, the day I quit my job as a researcher. My life has always been a mix of paths and interests, especially when I was a student. I always dedicated part of my time to science, art, and spirit, but then I had an official job in scientific research with responsibilities, and that ended up taking over. I identified with that role, even though I was many other things and my life was full of other things. I kept going for a while, but I couldn’t keep suppressing everything else forever. When I officially left, I was sure I’d never go back and that a new life would begin without regrets. I wasn’t wrong.

M.S.B. How do you know when your work is finished?

E.M. That’s a great question. Honestly, I don’t know—at most, I believe it is. There’s definitely a moment when I set down my tools and say, “That’s enough.” But then time passes… sometimes five minutes, sometimes a day, sometimes a month, and then I look back at the work and change something. I feel there’s too much or too little… or the colors don’t satisfy me, or I made a mistake, or I created something flashy that I liked in the moment but then tired of, or it’s not what I really had in mind… that it could be better… in short, a thousand reasons to revisit the work. Sometimes this happens years later, when the work has already been photographed, archived, and even exhibited. In that case, it’s a bit harder to revise. Often, I don’t, but sometimes I have. That’s why I can never say a work is truly finished.

M.S.B. Do you need order or disorder to create?

E.M. I need a lot of order. I like to surround myself with order and cleanliness. It clears my mind. Maybe because there’s already enough chaos in my head. Of course, during the actual creative phase in the studio, there’s a lot of mess—after all, I’m a painter—but between one work and the next, the studio has to be impeccable. I like this idea of always starting from zero. A blank canvas and an orderly studio. I’ve never liked the myth of the artist as all genius and recklessness. Most professional artists I know are precise and orderly in both their work and relationships. After all, this is also a job, and you can’t just do whatever you want. You always need a minimum of discipline and organization.

M.S.B. Some artists and scientists talk about a sense of aesthetics and harmony once a work is finished or a solution is found.

E.M. I’d say I’m part of that group. Aesthetics and harmony play a fundamental role in my creative process. That doesn’t mean I can or want to say my works are beautiful—beauty isn’t something you can define unambiguously—but at least I try to create with that intention. Even an equation, for those who can read it, can be beautiful. I always think of Euler’s Identity, which brings together some of the most important scientific constants. Many consider it the most beautiful formula in mathematics. Is it really beautiful? Is it ugly? Who can say? What’s undeniable is that it connects different realms of human knowledge, nature, and life. So perhaps, rather than beauty, we should speak of harmony: when a work communicates that you’re part of a whole, that it makes you feel in harmony with creation, that it’s telling you there’s something greater beyond us, of which we’re a part. Communicating things like that, with the certainty of succeeding, would be a great satisfaction!

M.S.B. What role does imagery play—or rather, when you produce something new, does everything clarify itself through images?

E.M. I think so. When I close my eyes and let myself be flooded by what I previously called “intuition,” it undoubtedly manifests as images. If I were a musician, they might be sounds, but my language is imagery, and I believe everything that comes to me does so through images. They’re flashes behind closed eyelids. I see objects, materials, shapes, colors… shifting like in a kaleidoscope of possibilities, and at some point, something convinces me and makes me say: “I want to make this, this is worth spending time on…” or: “This aligns with my message, my language, my path…” Sometimes it’s not easy to discern the images I receive—to understand whether they come from memory or intuition, whether they’re part of my old self or truly something new.

M.S.B. What role do words play?

E.M. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think sometimes words are needed to satisfy the mind. I don’t see them as useless—they’re complementary. That’s why I like talking about my works, though sometimes it’s a mistake because people should be free to feel what they need to feel. So I prefer to discuss my works only after people have looked at them alone, in silence, without my interference. After that, a dialogue and exchange can begin.

M.S.B. How important is interaction and disagreement with colleagues for your creative process?

E.M. I’ve partly answered this already: interaction is important afterward, not before someone engages with a work of art. But if we’re not facing the artwork and are simply sharing and comparing our views on art or life in general, that’s perfectly fine. They say, “C’est du discours que jaillit la lumière!” (“Light springs from discourse!”), and I deeply believe that.

M.S.B. Would you be interested in interdisciplinary encounters to better understand the creative process?

E.M. Absolutely. I never say no to interesting proposals. After all, my recent work balances art and science. And for me, art translates into visual arts, but let’s not forget music, dance, poetry… all forms of creative expression. So bring on a new Renaissance where everyone talks to everyone else, enriching each other, understanding more and more that everything is in everything, and from this perspective, we can only benefit. With collaborative work, human evolution will surely be faster and more complete.

M.S.B. You speak of harmony rather than beauty in reference to your work. In art—whether painting, literature, film, or music—sometimes dissonance, the expression of anguish and fears, not necessarily harmonious, takes on aesthetic value and embodies a kind of beauty mixed with repulsion. How would you define these fundamental expressions of being that don’t belong to your description of the inner world?

E.M. I had a teacher who said, “To make a world, you need a bit of everything.” Without evil, we wouldn’t recognize good; without shadow, we wouldn’t recognize light, and so on… We live in a dual world to grasp aspects of existence that would otherwise remain inaccessible. So negative impressions, the ones that make us feel bad, are probably necessary for some people at certain stages of their journey. I understand that. Even I, in the ’90s, during my figurative period, created “monsters.” I wanted to amplify the world’s ugliness to shock and draw attention to what was wrong. Then something changed—a kind of catharsis that led me to completely revise my art, moving toward a more harmonious direction.

M.S.B. You talk about realizing images that cross your mind, representations of archetypes. How does this align with your newer works, where technique seems to dictate execution and imagination defines the endpoint? I’m thinking of Supernova-Dark Matter and your works from Christmas 2020, where the results are largely dictated by technique—I wouldn’t say chance (color intensity, pattern, spatial dispersion). Is it the aesthetics of the result that tell you when to stop, when the work is finished?

E.M. Archetypes are always present in my works, sometimes silently, sometimes more explicitly. Colors are archetypes; shapes like the circle and square are archetypes. A work created with spin-painting—I’m thinking of the Prosperity series—exploits centrifugal force, which is also an archetype: the Yang principle of expansion in Eastern cultures. This expansion is also found in all my Supernova and Supernova Dark Matter works—it’s the archetype governing the expansion of the universe and celestial bodies, alternating with contraction, the Yin. These are the archetypes I work with now, the ones that “inhabit” me, so everything I do naturally feeds on these principles. The work is finished when the image I’m creating aligns, more or less, with the one I received through intuition.

M.S.B. Are your most recent works expressions of feelings, sensitivity, or essentially a conceptual visualization and realization?

E.M. Maybe none of the three. I often think an artist should be an ambassador of principles greater than themselves and should avoid putting too much ego, too many personal emotions and thoughts, into their work. I feel more and more like a homo faber, an executor of things that sometimes surprise even me—and that sense of wonder satisfies me. Bringing the images I see into reality, introducing things that didn’t exist before—that’s what excites me, but these emotions come afterward, not before creation. Of course, things are never just black or white… Clearly, during creation, the brain keeps talking and the heart keeps feeling… It’s hard to clearly separate what’s mine and what isn’t.