Alexandre Melo is curator of the Private Bank collection
and Elypse Foundation. The collection of Private Bank was a collection started
more than half a dozen years and was originally a collection of contemporary
Portuguese art only and that was to be gathered under the protocol between the
Private Bank and the Serralves Foundation, according to which works from the
collection of the Private Bank be deposited in Serralves, which made the
acquisition criteria and acquisitions were decided in collaboration with me as
responsible for the collection of the Private Bank and the artistic director of
Serralves, Vicente Tolodi at the time, even at that time with the collaboration
of João Fernandes, and later with João Fernandes as director.
After 3 or 4 years of work became an exhibition of the
collection of the Bank in Serralves, which occupied the entire space of the museum,
only Portuguese art. Later Dr. João Rendeiro, President of the Bank, has
decided to make an international art collection, continuing the collaboration
with Serralves. With the evolution of the collection has an international
dimension with Dr. João Rendeiro had the idea to create the Elypse Foundation,
headed by him, with the assistance of other people from Portugal, Brazil and
Spain, is an international foundation based in the Netherlands, though the
center array is in Portugal, with the most ambitious goal of building a
collection of international contemporary art that will become a reference
collection for the period from the turn of the century, the end of the XX
century, beginning of XXI century. There are 3 curators and then there is a
panel of consultants with whom we formally met once or twice a year.
The collection has three components, have the artists
that we consider historical, with works from the late ‘70s, first half of the 80s,
then there are some artists who are at the core of the collection that had a
stronger claim, most unique in the panorama world in the last 10, 15 years, and
then we have emerging artists, who began to hear the last 5, 6 years.
That idea of the criterion of art as the pope who
builds and destroys a reputation with a text, I think no longer exists. Today
most of the texts which are published on the plastic arts are not critical texts,
texts are news, reports, interviews, news stories and appreciation of works
depends on a discourse that is more journalistic than properly critical in the
artistic sense.
The whole situation of collecting along the XX century
is miserable. Portugal reached the end of the XX century without having
anything at all, it is a scandal, is the demonstration of absolute cultural
underdevelopment of Portugal throughout the XX century.
The Berardo Collection is a collection that comes to
modify significantly the reference of collecting and of the art in Portugal and
the lending contract (loan to the State) for 10 years is balanced. The Berardo
Collection was created by historical chronological criteria encompassing the
likeness of a compendium or a history of art blocks, values didactic and
pedagogical perspective.
I'm currently cultural adviser of José Sócrates
without power of decision or budget.
The art market today essentially passes through London
and New York although Germany and France still have some weight, but there are
art centers emerging everywhere.
There is often international exhibitions in which there
are so many Portuguese artists such as Spanish, in the younger generations of artists.
