Le Radeau de la Méduse (digital painting)
Ila Pop (Ilaria Novelli) is an Italian multi-disciplinary artist, she uses different media from oil painting to digital techniques to recreate her dollesque and disturbing personal universe – a cruel world inhabited by willowy and doe-eyed figures who exchange roles from victim to perpetrator in a constant play that depicts classical and modern art compositions, song lyrics and characters from underground literature and cinema. A private mythology and language that becomes universal and forces the viewer to a critical analysis of the cultural and social values that the modern human condition is offering to the new and old generations. She has exhibited solo and in group shows in New York, Rome, Los Angeles, Milan, Chicago and Zürich. Her works are featured in underground art zines in Chile, Italy, New Zealand and Japan.
Steve Finbow: What is your first memory of experiencing art?
Ila Pop: As far as I can remember I’ve always experienced an overwhelming awe and extreme reverence in front of any artwork, I could also sense the artist’s commitment and personal take on reality in an instinctive yet Stendhalesque way (“Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”) and since I was in kindergarten, drawing and painting were my favourite activities.
SF: I wish I could find all my sketchbooks from school – I still have one painting from when I was sixteen – some kind of Picasso-Miró mash-up with a very bad poem in the bottom right-hand corner. Do you still have artwork from when you were at school?
IP: I’ve recently got from my parents a stash of childhood drawings and I kept many old works from school as well, I used to write everyday too, but I’m not stuck in the past. Memory is a burden and even if I’m concerned about my future I seldom look back, I’m one of those artists whose works, once are finished, don’t belong to them anymore. It happens to me even when I paint something that takes time to be created, the execution is mourning for the original idea.
SF: Who were your first favourite artists?
IP: I used to enjoy all the art I see on display, from its earliest and primitive forms to its abstract and conceptual expressions, I’ve always been too hectic to prefer one artist or one art movement over others.
SF: I like that approach. I distrust people who still like the same things at forty years of age as they did when they were sixteen. I like discovering artists/writers/musicians – is there any art or artist you were surprised you liked?
IP: I like to discover new artists/writers/musicians as well but I’m not surprised or ashamed about my past, especially in figurative art, even if my references are constantly evolving. I’ve always hated mainstream culture.
SF: How has your artistic methodology changed from when you first started?
IP: I haven’t developed a real method: inspiration and action manifest themselves in many different ways. When I started my artistic path, I used to be more impulsive/compulsive: it’s the “novice effect” you experience in any field. The main difference is in the process: I study the idea with various sketches instead of drawing directly on canvas to improve the final form of my paintings, I leave room for freedom and improvisation with colours because I want to feel them in an instinctive manner and understand their theory and potential through practice, but I’ll always be aware of the abysmal gap between the idea and its execution.
SF: Yes, I have that problem, which usually results in numerous beginnings and inevitable failures but that is all part of the process. Do you know when something is finished or when to leave it alone?
IP: As Leonardo Da Vinci said: a painting is never finished until you abandon it, you know when it’s time to leave it, it’s just like going to a party and when things start to get hazy or grotesque you decide to call a taxi.
SF: What is your favourite medium?
IP: I prefer traditional art mediums, it’s a more immediate and sincere form but I constantly change my mind and my tools depending on my mood or ideas. I’ve recently started to enjoy more than ever my coloured pencils, they allow me to play with chromatic hues without waiting for the colours to dry.
SF: Do you consider yourself a painter, multimedia artist, conceptual artist or a combination of these?
IP: I consider myself an outsider but I’d like to be an obscure artist.
SF: Do you like outsider art? I enjoy some of it – Henry Darger, Rosemarie Koczÿ, Norton Bartlett – but I am wary of any spiritual associations critics align to it.
IP: I love Henry Darger but I prefer underground or conceptual art.
SF: How much do you use digital media in your working processes?
IP: I use digital media as an additional tool, I’m exploring and trying to develop its function and potential in my own vision. I started using Photoshop in art school, but just as any other technique it needed practice, devotion and experiential learning. My first digital works were handmade ink drawings coloured and edited with computer programs, then I learned how to create collages but it’s been only a year since I have a graphic tablet and I finally start to paint directly on my screen. Even if I’m not using digital media to generate new works, I often use it to make rough sketches, I edit in a second phase with traditional media and it’s fundamental for press publications or social media which need better colours and image definition.
SF: If you could travel in time, which artistic period would you like to visit?
IP: I’d love to visit and meet a lot of artists or historical characters but the poor hygienic conditions and the low opinion of us women in the past ward me off.
SF: Ha! Yes, I have always thought that – my visit to Renaissance Florence would probably have me puking my guts up in some alley because of the stench. I never really considered the second point but, yes, time travel would be very problematic. Some of your work draws from Japanese sources – which artist – or cultural events – first inspired your interest in Japan?
IP: I guess it’s something I’ve clearly absorbed from my personal cultural path, everything started when I was a child with anime and manga, I was hooked on the unusual and incredibly detailed graphics and the futuristic narrative. A few years later, in high school, I discovered Japanese literature and in my tumultuous years I found solace in the obsessive yet inspiring nature of some authors and their books. I especially loved Yasunari Kawabata, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and above all Yukio Mishima. I have to confess that I’ve studied Japanese language and literature at university for two years before giving up to follow an artistic career. I’m not stuck in my past, what I read now could be completely different and I got less information on contemporary Japan, Korea seems to have gained increasing attention and almost the total monopolization of eastern representation in social media and pop culture.
SF: I lived in Japan for five years and totally failed to master the language. It is interesting that Japanese literature influenced you as much as anime and manga and I guess these more contemporary forms and the work of the writers you mention go back to shunga and on to shokushu goukan. The erotic in your work is very strong, apart from the Japanese sources, are there any other major influences?
IP: I consider eroticism allegorical and symbolic, it leads to our nature both in a human and in an eternal/ethereal form, my take on the erotic element is always innocent and spontaneous rather than sexualized and uninhibited. Eroticism and obsession in art are always metaphors, they are part of an intimate and private mythology. I should write an excruciatingly long list of my major influences: I took inspiration mostly from writers and film directors.
SF: How much of your work is spontaneous and how much of it is planned?
IP: My ideas are always spontaneous, the final work is a balanced process made of instinct and dedication.
SF: You are based in Italy, where do you think the centre of the art world is now located or do you think art is truly global?
IP: The centre of the art world is internet.
SF: What outside of art is the greatest influence on your work?
IP: The end of civilization, post traumatic syndrome, science, death, eroticism, Tumblr, natural and man-made catastrophes, cinema, literature, music and philosophy.
SF: Do you have a five-year plan?
IP: As Don De Lillo wrote: “May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.” I tend to be in the midst of a ‘let’s end this shit tomorrow’ plan and a ‘let’s do this forever’ plan, of course the financial aspect is a big turn off and I always challenge myself to do more or better to gain more attention and economic growth, but I read somewhere that also Mark Rothko used to prefer when his art was a lonely thing far from the consumption of galleries, collectors and money: artists need those ‘pockets of silence where we can root and grow’.
SF: Agree – it is a fine balance between the aesthetic and the ascetic, between promotion and contemplation. I hope you get many opportunities for those pockets of silence to continue creating your amazing artwork.
IP: Thank you Steve.
About the Author:
Steve Finbow’s edited version of Stefano Pinnarco’s sixteenth-century The Life of the Artist Niccolò di Mescolano will be published this year, as will Polaroid Haiku – a collaboration with Jukka Siikala. An updated and illustrated edition of Grave Desire – Necrophilia and Its Discontents – is coming soon from Infinity Land Press.
