Deactivating the Banana Hanging on the Wall: Towards a New Grammar of Contemporary Art

EDITORIAL | ABEL GROPIUS

Contemporary art exists in a paradox. On the one hand, it proclaims freedom, experimentation, and breaking with norms; on the other, it operates within a rigidly codified system, where the value of a work stems not from its intrinsic strength, but from the journey it takes through exhibitions, critiques, collections, and retrospectives. It's a system that rewards conformity and punishes dissonance, that certifies with a "blue stamp" what's worth seeing and buying, and leaves those who don't fit into the mix. 

An ancient, but still current problem

It hasn't always been this way, but it's almost been this way. In ancient times, religious and political patrons decided what constituted art. In the Renaissance, it was patrons. In the nineteenth century, it was the Academies and Salons. In the twentieth century, the avant-garde attempted to undermine the system, but were quickly absorbed and canonized. Today, legitimacy comes through a web of institutions, markets, media, and social networks. The masses play a role, but a marginal one. The gap between art and the community remains wide.

Why are intermediaries still needed?

The most common justification is the "uniqueness" of art: a complex language, not immediately legible, which requires translators. But this explanation is not enough. Conceptual language : contemporary visual art works with philosophical and theoretical codes that require mediation. Economic dimension : unique works or limited editions require guarantees of authenticity and value. Social prestige : collecting art is also status, and experts maintain an aura of exclusivity. Audience fragmentation : without intermediaries, art would risk being dispersed into micro-niches incapable of generating consensus.

The false revolutions

Politics today has little real power: it can influence exhibitions and shows, but often abdicates propaganda. NFTs promised disintermediation, but they turned out to be more speculation than revitalization. Online galleries have lowered prices but have retained that aura of self-referentiality. The system, in short, cannot be dismantled: it metabolizes every attempt at disruption and transforms it into convention.

The real crux

The collector, ultimately, seeks positive reinforcement: the certainty that his choice will be recognized, validated, and rewarded. It's only human. But this dynamic keeps art dependent on intermediaries. The distance between art and the community arises not from the uniqueness of the work, but from the need for assurance and consensus.

Towards a new grammar of art

If we want to close this gap, we need concrete solutions. It's not enough to denounce, we need to propose.

1. Independent and transparent criticism

Creating platforms for criticism that are not tied to the market or institutions, capable of offering diverse and accessible readings. A criticism that is not complicit, but a tool for understanding.

2. Responsible collecting

Promote a collecting culture that transcends economic value, recognizing the cultural and social value of the work. Encourage direct purchases from emerging artists, with ethical and digital certification tools that guarantee authenticity without requiring a blue stamp.

3. Widespread aesthetic education

Integrate contemporary art into educational curricula, not as an elitist discipline, but as a common language. Provide the public with tools to read and interpret art without the need for intermediaries.

4. Accessible experimentation spaces

Creating spaces—physical and digital—where artists and audiences can meet without filters. Workshops, residencies, and collaborative platforms that foster direct contact and participation.

5. Recognition of plurality

Accept that there is no single canon. Worthy art is not only that certified by institutions, but also that which arises in the peripheries, on the margins, in non-canonical contexts. Giving space to this plurality means bridging the gap.

So what do we do?

The art system today is an organism that metabolizes every attempt at revolution. But it's not invincible. The real challenge isn't inventing a new urinal, but building a language that eludes capture, that can't be easily translated into a blue stamp.

We need a new grammar of art: independent criticism, responsible collecting, widespread aesthetic education, accessible spaces for experimentation, and a recognition of plurality. Only in this way can art return to what it should be: risk, language, resistance, true experimentation and research. Not a consensus algorithm, but a living voice. Not a blue stamp, but a gesture that speaks to the world.

There are books that don't just describe contemporary art , but question it, disturb it, and unmask it . They are neither neutral nor accommodating. They are written by authors who have lived within the system, traversed it, and recognized its contradictions: self-referentiality, codification, and dependence on market logic and legitimation devices.

One of the most emblematic is Brian O'Doherty's Inside the White Cube , which analyzes the role of the exhibition space as an ideological device. The " white cube " is not just a container, but a filter that neutralizes dissent and transforms each work into an object to be contemplated, isolated from the world. It is a text that marked a turning point, because it shows how context can empty content.

Francesco Bonami, with Art in the Toilet. From Duchamp to Cattelan, the Rise and Fall of Contemporary Art , adopts a biting, ironic tone to describe the rampant conformism in the art world. Bonami spares no one: artists, curators, collectors, all caught up in a dance of complacency and visibility. His perspective is that of someone who knows the system from the inside, but is not its prisoner.

" Why do people continue to humiliate themselves by painting hideous pictures and writing unreadable novels? Because each of us wants to hear a story, stories, not today, not tomorrow, but throughout our lives. When there's no one to tell them to us, we try to invent these stories ourselves by painting a picture or writing a book. It doesn't matter if the story we've invented is beautiful, interesting, or compelling; the important thing is that it's a story. As long as we need a story, we'll continue to paint pictures, write books, like this one perhaps, which isn't a true history of the painting but the story of the painting as I would have liked to hear it told, which I hope someone, indeed many, will find, reading it, enjoyable and entertaining ." from Bello, Sembra un Pittura. Counter-History of Art, Francesco Bonami

So let's laugh about it, but with clarity. Because if contemporary art has stopped seeking beauty, well-crafted work, thought embodied in form, it's not through evolution, but through abdication. If it has renounced communication, the transcendent, the responsibility of gesture, it's not through freedom, but through complicity. The system has constructed its own sacrament, canonized the sgunz, and shielded the ritual. And anyone who dares object is excommunicated with sarcasm, with commiseration, with silence.

But time, as Crespi writes, is a good judge. And perhaps, in a few decades, the Turbo Cloaca will be displayed alongside the stuffed horns of the Wunderkammer , as a testimony to an era that confused noise with thought, provocation with vision, the market with meaning.

Resistance isn't moralism. It's a desire for meaning. It's the will to rebuild a perimeter, not to exclude, but to recognize. Because art, if it still wants to be art, must speak again. Not just to surprise. It must return to showing the world, not just to mimic it. It must return to being gesture, form, thought. And if this means laughing behind its back, then let it be a laughter that opens, not one that closes. A laughter that defuses dogma and restores art's voice and its denunciation.

With his trademark disarming clarity, Francesco Bonami leads us to the edge of contemporary art's precipice , where the final gesture is no , but a catalogue pose . He reminds us that, no matter how hard we strive to pursue the boldest idea, the most unsettling concept, the most unrealizable project, what remains is often a sterile echo, a stylistic exercise that has lost its pulse.

And so, after a century of provocations, of upside-down urinals and golden toilets, after the conceptual orgy and curatorial bulimia, Francesco Bonami and many others invite us to return to the simple, yet not banal, gesture. To that child by Charles Ray who, motionless on the floor, makes the world travel in a toy car. Because art, if it still wants to have meaning, must no longer amaze: it must enter us into a story. It must make us embark on a journey. Without moving. Without shouting. Without stamps.

This is the task of the art of the future: not to add noise, but to restore voice and denunciation.