Two hundred or more contemporary art galleries have set up shop under the one roof for the biggest art fair in Italy. The organizers have chosen the slogan ART HAS A POINT the meaning of which eluded many of the Italian gallery owners I spoke to who asked me for a translation. They still wore the slogan buttons and it does seem strange to have adopted an English language slogan when there were so few overseas galleries represented at Bologna ArteFiera. That art really does have a point will be the topic of talks given at the fair by such luminaries as Jannis Kounellis, Arnulf Rainer and Giuseppe Chiari.

The meat of this enormous visual feast is made up Italian reliables, an elite team of artists mostly in the over fifty age group who are courted by all the galleries. Gianenzo Sperone of Rome and New  York, known as Italy's foremost galleryist showed the latest work from Aldo Mondino, a large alabaster sculpture of a severed wing inspired from the Nike of Samothrace. Mondino, a flamboyant artist regarded as a "grande personaggio" (a great character) by his peers is omnipresent throughout the Fiera and on opening night, the artist was able to saunter from stand to stand reassured of his fame by numerous works on the walls. His latest one man show  (on till 30th Jan.) was hosted by Santo Ficara of Florence, who was at Fiera displaying Mondino's chandelier made of bic pens.
 
 

Mondino is the classic example of a hard working artist who also knows how to "play" the artist down to his dandyish mode of dressing, his divine offspring and soignée, much younger companion. In Italy, playing the part is highly important. Nobody wants to know or show a boring artist. 
Sperone's stand was the first to be invaded as the huge crowd braved a freezing cold evening and poured through the doors at Fiera to see and be seen. The first area is set aside for art publishers and prints. However it is inside that the main action takes place on two floors. The individual stands are very large compared to other art fairs and really do give a gallery adequate space to recreate a gallery atmosphere. Everyone chose to keep their walls white except Silvano Lodi Junior of Milano who opted for an incredibly elegant matt black on which to hang his sedate, quality collection of moderns from Miro to Arman. 
There was not much on show that could be termed controversial. A young woman dressed up in a trashy, provocative manner walked around Fiera with a video camera attached to her and another person filming behind capturing people's reactions to the girl's wanton appearance. Back in the gallery stand, you could watch the reactions of the crowd who on the whole were middle aged and dressed in the epitome of standard Italian good taste (Armani, Ferragamo, Gucci, Prada). Thin blonde women of a certain age nudged their husbands in the ribs as they stared disapprovingly at the girl who looked like a cross between Bjork and Barbarella. 
Whilst this was amusing to watch for a while, it hardly made for ground breaking art.

Sperone tried to appear avant-garde with an ineffectual work smack in the middle of his space by two young Italian artists Bertozzi and Casoni.
A ceramic toy terrier dog (salute to Jeff Koons I suppose) sat by his kennel constructed of Brillo Pad cardboard cartons. Ceramic examples of his excretement lay round about in an effort to shock and disturb the viewer and just to borrow from Tracey Emin, they threw a pair of soiled underpants into the kennel. Not knowing what to call this mess, these two amateurs settled for "Untitled" only to give the work a title; "The reincarnation of Andy Warhol as a dog".

Sperone is no fool and whilst including works by upstarts such as Bertozzi and Casoni just to show he is no old pin-stripe suited fuddy duddy, he also is mindful not to disappoint his faithful affluent collectors and the works of brilliant colourist Peter Halley such as "Chain Reaction" 2000 in day glo colours applied with rolla tex satisfied the eyes of this group. They were just careful not to put their Gucci brogues into the ceramic doggie doings. 

Bologna Fiera remains one of the top 5 contemporary art fairs in Europe, although where one would place it in that top 5, is hard to say. More important than FIAC perhaps, but definitely nowhere near as exciting as Cologne. It remains by and large, an Italian affair and you really have to be familiar with names like Mondino, Turcato, Accardi, Gilardi, Salvo, Paladino and all the rest of this ilk before a foreigner could seriously start to wander around and appreciate what is on view.
Only a small percentage of galleries showed works by internationally reknowned artists such as Clemente and Sol le Witt with very little British work on show at all. Perhaps BritArt's graphic urban realism and miserabilism is lost on the happy Italians?