Francesco Vezzoli

Photo by Matthias Vriens

Francesco Vezzoli

Tamara de Lempicka Jeff Koons Leonor Fini Marcel Duchamp Eva Hesse Frida Kahlo Francesco Vezzoli Dasha, Gaga, and Gago Party for MOCA

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Well, they were celebrities too, but we like to deny that. I think Pasolini and Gore Vidal have always used the media for their best interests and to make their best work. Pasolini was a movie director who worked with the celebrity actors of his day, sometimes for commercial purposes; and he was a celebrity himself. Some of his best writings were the editorials he wrote for the Corriere della Sera on the front page, which would be as if Gore Vidal — God would wish that on us — were writing editorials for the front page of the New York Times. I think that whatever great artist or thinker we look at, they’ve all used whatever weapon they might have to attract interest to their thoughts.

I don’t see anything wrong with using celebrities to make clearer, more understandable statements or, in my case, simply to reflect a reality that has a huge power on our lives. I insist that the taboo surrounding my work comes from the fact that people get stuck on the presence of Gore Vidal or Cate Blanchett. I’m kind of stuck and surprised, too: I’m so surprised Polanski accepted. I thought this time maybe I was not going to be able to pull it off. I thought an actress might accept for vanity, although the ones I work with have way better job proposals than the ones I offered. But I thought: Polanski, why would he give a fuck about me? But he said yes.

What was it like to work with him?

A dream. He came to one of our meetings in this fake crocodile Ralph Lauren jewel box perfume promotional thing; he just got the ironic and critical aspect of the entire operation, and I think that’s why he accepted. It was the easiest professional relationship ever. My job was to commission him to make the commercial, and his was to direct it in his eponymous and unmistakable style. The last thing I wanted to do was put my finger in it and try to make it more Vezzoli than Polanski.

What is the role of humor in your work?

It’s the only strategy that I have. There are many contemporary artists who do so many great things, but there are very few who can really make you laugh. If you speak to movie producers they can tell you that you can make people cry with a couple of tricks, but to make people laugh is so hard. If I make them laugh, I win.

What are you working on now?

We’re in the process of potentially remaking the Kinsey Report with the Prada Foundation. The trick would be to come up with a project that through artistic channels raises enough media curiosity so that the poll has a real scientific value. In the same way that the perfume commercial that Polanski did could easily be a real perfume commercial, even if it is a very wild and twisted and intellectual one, my dream with this Kinsey thing is that some serious scientists see real scientific evidence that they’ll be surprised with. To achieve that is very complicated, but I think that would be the point of an art project like that. I believe that doing pale, low-tech imitations of high standards belongs to the past in terms of artistic practice.

How concerned were you with the example of Duchamp as you conceived of Greed?

It was very important. His perfume bottle is such a genius piece. And then it ends up in the hands of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge — you can’t imagine a more appropriate metaphor for the past century, you know, Eau de Voilette by Duchamp ends up in the hands of the two most sophisticated, gay, creative brains in France since the War; it’s such a great story. The Duchamp perfume for me is unlike some of his objects — I know that this is dangerous to say, and people will think Vezzoli is taking some weird drugs — but compared to the urinal or other famous pieces, this has a kind of dandyish touch, a play with the vocabulary of fashion with Man Ray shooting him dressed like Rrose Selavy. I love that. There’s no real intellectual agenda. Just to say how much I loved that part of his work.

I gather there is an actual Greed bottle.

There is, right at the center of the gallery, and it looks like a very desirable sculpture, made in crystal.