Miuccia's Artists@Art

From left: The artists John Baldessari, Carsten Holler, Nathalie Djurberg and Thomas Demand; Prada’s Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada; the curator Germano Celant; the artist Francesco Vezzoli.

Photo: Matthias Vriens

JOHN BALDESSARI

‘‘For Miuccia Prada.’’ The Los Angeles-based artist has been a friend of Germano Celant, the curator of the Prada Foundation, since the early ’70s. ‘‘I was showing a lot in Europe, and he would stay with me out in Santa Monica,’’ Baldessari recalls. ‘‘He was a well-known critic even then.’’ And having recently visited the Prada space in Milan, he is now working on a potential project for the foundation. ‘‘I’m interested in the gradual fusion of high and low culture, and fashion and art,’’ Baldessari says. ‘‘The project I have in mind will address that.’’

FRANCESCO VEZZOLI

‘‘The Kinsey International,’’ a conceptual remake of the Kinsey Reports on human sexual behavior, produced by the Prada Foundation. The prototype for a cabinet designed for this project by Ettore Sottsass is installed in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, a museum in Northern Italy recognized for its collection of Italian paintings. According to Vezzoli’s plan, additional cabinets will be installed in similar museums around the world, and visitors will be invited to enter and take a sex test. Vezzoli has been granted a residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles to further research this aspect of the project at U.C.L.A. ‘‘My hope,’’ says the artist, who is known throughout the art world for the stellar casting of his video performances, ‘‘is to get Gloria Steinem on board.’’

Photo: Matthias Vriens

CARSTEN HOLLER

‘‘One Night in Paris’’ was part of the research done in preparation for ‘‘Prada Congo Club,’’ an installation by Holler, a Stockholm-based artist, scheduled to open in fall 2008 in London.

Photo: Photographs by Bellou Luvuadio Bengo, Carsten Holler, Josué, Miriam Backstrom, Edouard Merino and Patrik Stromdahl

NATHALIE DJURBERG

Still image with crayon from ‘‘Johnny’’ (2008), a claymation film for the Prada Foundation.

REM KOOLHAAS

Concept for Prada Epicenter Shanghai Store. Rather than designing a new building, or moving into a fashionable east-side colonial, the idea is to invade a found space, in this case a parking structure and pedestrian boardwalk near the Huang Pu River. Shallow miniboutiques, connected by a back corridor, will be embedded within the existing strip of shops, not only providing the brand with ample display frontage but also creating what the architect calls a ‘‘populist’’ Prada model, where even those who are not inside the store are invited to participate in its retail and cultural programming.

QUENTIN TARANTINO

In 2004, with the sponsorship of the Prada Foundation, the Venice Film Festival set up a retrospective of Italian genre films of the ’60s and ’70s that the director Quentin Tarantino was asked to help curate. ‘‘It was called ’The Italian King of the B’s,’ ’’ Tarantino says. ‘‘It gave respect and long-overdue recognition to many Italian genre film maestros — Sergio Martino, Umberto Lenzi and Ruggero Deodato among them. However, if the retrospective had one goal above all others, it was to give the writer and director Fernando Di Leo his proper place as the king of Italian crime films. In this regard, the festival was a huge success. The Prada Foundation followed this up with the beautiful DVD releases of his pictures. But I wasn’t aware just how successful Prada, Marco Mueller, the Venice Film Festival and I had been in promoting Maestro Di Leo’s career until last year, when on a trip to Japan I found this gorgeous Japanese DVD box set of Fernando Di Leo’s films. It made my heart swell with pride.’’

Photo: Jens Mortensen

THOMAS DEMAND

‘‘Redo’’ of the backstage scene at a Prada fashion show. In 2007, the Prada Foundation presented two Demand installations, ‘‘Yellowcake’’ and ‘‘Processo Grottesco,’’ on the Isola S.G. Maggiore during the Venice Biennale.

@Source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/03/23/magazine/0323-PRADA_index.html