Christian Caliandro Critiques Display Culture and the Humiliation of Artworks

In a critical essay on Artribune, Christian Caliandro argues that contemporary curatorial practice, obsessed with display, systematically humiliates artworks by reducing them to decorative commodities. He traces the concept of display to shop windows and merchandising, asserting that it strips art of its transformative potential. Caliandro references Gian Enzo Sperone's 2017 critique of the 'Deposito d'Arte Italiana Presente' exhibition at Artissima, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Vittoria Martini, which Sperone publicly disavowed as a distortion of his original 1967-68 model. Caliandro contends that the display-driven approach relegates artists to the bottom of the hierarchy, turning curators into functionaries. He advocates for anti-display strategies—concealment, refusal to exhibit—and ultimately rejecting the exhibition format itself as a sterile, white-cube mechanism that weakens art. The essay, published in 2017, reflects ongoing debates about curatorial power and the commodification of contemporary art.