In 2017, I enjoyed a ten-day residency there, lying horizontally on the big sofa under the motto: “Help art(ists) to imagine (sic, in Italian) and breathe”. “Air, oh l’air!” the boxer and poet Arthur Cravan had exclaimed in the early 1910s, also on a sofa while having an imaginary conversation with his uncle, Oscar Wilde. It would go on to influence Marcel Duchamp who described himself as a “respirateur” – ‘I am a breather, isn’t that enough?’ And in 2004 it became the philosophy of the Fondazione Arthur Cravan. Read on to find out what Helga Franza, one of the founders of the Fondazione and an artist, says about the fascinating figure of Arthur Cravan.
Season 2, Episode 2: A Conversation with Helga Franza
An: This bar is a nice location to talk about the Fondazione Arthur Cravan. It feels appropriate, doesn’t it?
Helga: Arthur Cravan loved to drink and so, yes, we are drinking too (laughs).
How did you first discover Arthur Cravan? He’s not a well known figure, even in the arts.
It was at the Academy of Arts in Milan. We learned about the history of art and the period of Dadaism that suited us best. It was open, experimental,l and also political, related to the society of that moment, to the war. When my friends and I discovered Cravan – because this project of the Fondazione Arthur Cravan is not just me, there are a lot of people involved – we loved the idea that Cravan had multiple identities. He was the opposite of what our society demanded from us: this idea that we become someone. When I was doing work at the academy, my art teacher would ask me what I was doing and who I wanted to be. My work had to reflect this. At that time, Cravan showed us a different path.
How did the Fondazione Arthur Cravan start?
It was in 2004 while preparing for an exhibition. We wanted to invite an artist to give a talk but there was no budget to do so. We decided that we needed to activate something that can help us, like a foundation. But this foundation had to represent our point of view. So we put our money together – we were about five to six people – and we bought the ticket for this artist. We said that our action is our own responsibility and that this could be the Fondazione Arthur Cravan. It allows us to do things that don’t require an identity, so that someone from the outside can recognise you and give you money because you are this or that. The Fondazione Arthur Cravan was born as a project of self-financing.
The Fondazione is not a real thing. It’s an art project?
It’s a project and it’s more than real. It’s a real foundation but it depends on what your idea of a foundation is.
What does it do?
It doesn’t do anything (laughs). No, there’s a lot of things it does. The Fondazione Arthur Cravan helps to produce and sustain projects, ideas, and attitudes that are dedicated to a way of imagining art unrelated to business, or being a great artist, or to rules, because art and artists decide the rules, not the market or galleries. Sometimes art is where you don’t think it is. The Fondazione Arthur Cravan helps that kind of scene or situation to grow. It’s like a humus for art. Humus refers to the basic things. You don’t think you need this excrement, this shit, but shit helps too! The Fondazione activates in a financial way, or with other means, by opening up spaces, bringing people together or by publishing in a different way where it needs to.
What kind of situation does the Fondazione prefer to support?
It depends, but it always has something to do with art and the essence of being human. It involves a new vision of the world, or something that nobody wants to point at…
Does the Fondazione get a lot of requests for support?
Ideas come quite naturally: they show up and the Fondazione is there. It‘s like a black hole, where all things arrive and become part of it. It helps them to grow into another dimension, with a tunnel (laughs). It’s not the same process as a foundation or an association with people who decide what they want to support.
The Fondazione Arthur Cravan has been working with the collective Cose Cosmiche, (cosmic things), and, since 2022, the Volcanic Attitude Festival in Sicily, bringing together earth and universe.
Yes, the foundation is related to simple things. It is not about results but about the process. It is very Fluxus, in a way. There are the elements of earth, air, fire, and water, which are the cardinal points of a human being. You have to relate to the stars to understand who you are, because you are not just related to this time. You are related to a bigger time frame and also down to the earth, down-ground (laughs).
Are you a “Cravaniste”, that is, intrigued by the figure of Arthur Cravan?
Yes. I was into that, but I was more into the work that he did, or rather how he was doing things, how he conceived the work of art that he did. At that moment, at the beginning of the 20th century, it was really impossible to say that it was a work of art. But we can recognise it now, after hundred years.
But Cravan didn’t make things, right? He didn’t make any art works.
Not so much, but now we understand how art can not only be related to the physical things but also to an action. He was acting outside the rules, or rather jumping over the heads of the rules and this was an interesting way to go. Perhaps we are in a historical moment that we need this. There’s a self-censorship on how we live life because we want to be recognised, we want to have an identity and success. So it might be good to have someone who said the opposite, who changed the rules. You can be invited somewhere and say ‘No! I will arrive drunk and go to jail!’ (laughs) Cravan is related to spectacle, in a way – also self-destructive but it is an interesting point of view. It opens up another reality.
How do you see the future of the Fondazione?
When you try to see the future of something, you destroy that thing (laughs). The Fondazione Arthur Cravan is changing and adapting organically, and so its future is to grow into something unknown. It is about being not too sure of what it will become. It will always be an open project. But essentially, the Fondazione is about going back to the roots of what it is: a foundation. A foundation constitutes the base of a building and it has to be solid. It is something that helps one to grow.
Fondazione Arthur Cravan – www.instagram.com/fondazione-arthur-cravan/
Helga Franza – http://www.helgafranza.org
About the Series: Curating, writing, and teaching takes An Paenhuysen to many places across the art world, but lately she has been working towards living and working between Berlin and Italy. In November 2024 she became the director of The Boxing Gallery in Milan, an art space under the auspices of the Fondazione Arthur Cravan, dedicated to happenings in the spirit of the dadaist, boxer, and poet Arthur Cravan. In this second season of interviews, An invites you to experience conversations with some of the interesting people and initiatives she encounters on her journeys through the Italian art scene, like young Italians or an art foundation that is more than real.
