On Sunday, December 7, Michelangelo Pistoletto was a guest on Che Tempo Che Fa, hosted by Fabio Fazio on Canale 9. This eagerly awaited event brought the master back to the center of a public dialogue that touched on the deepest core of his artistic research: identity, mirroring, transcendence, and the responsibility of art in contemporary society. Backstage, before the live broadcast, Pistoletto exchanged a few words with Alessandro Preziosi and treated Fazio to a selfie in the mirror, in a sort of meta-artistic game perfectly consistent with his poetics.

The interview found a central focus in the UR-RA – Unity of Religions, Responsibility of Art project, the exhibition inaugurated on November 1st at the Royal Palace of Monza, promoted by the Consorzio Villa Reale Parco di Monza and Cittadellarte. Not an anthology, as the artist himself immediately clarified, but a journey dedicated to the works that best illustrate the relationship between art, spirituality, and social responsibility: elements intertwined in the trinamic vision of the Third Paradise, today recognized and endorsed by representatives of the major world religions.

“Understanding Why I Exist”: The Self-Portrait as Origin

Fazio opens with a seemingly simple question: is there a common thread running through Pistoletto's entire artistic life? The master's answer is immediate: "For me, it has always been important to try to understand why I exist."

The search for identity becomes, from his formative years, the original motivation for self-portraiture, as a primary attempt to verify one's presence in the world. The reflected image is, for Pistoletto, the first instrument of knowledge: a way to "fix" a self in constant motion.

It is precisely from this existential need that the process that will lead him, through experiments with gold backgrounds and the transition to glossy black backgrounds, to discover the potential of the mirror, stems. The crystallizing varnish, the black that absorbs and reflects at the same time: these elements lead to the definition of the mirror painting, one of the central inventions of twentieth-century art.

Thus, the technical narrative intertwines with the symbolic. If the gold of ancient icons represented unlimited transcendence, the mirror introduces a new, dynamic transcendence: not an eternal backdrop, but a universe that enters the work through the reflection of the world.

Mirror, Virtuality, and Identity: From the Cave to Digital Images

One of the richest passages of the interview is perhaps the comparison between ancient representation and contemporary imagery. Pistoletto begins with the imprint of the hand on the cave ("the first work of art," he calls it) to arrive at a surprisingly timely reflection: "Today we live in a world where images are becoming our constant double, even with artificial intelligence."

Virtuality is therefore not an invention of the present, but a constitutive trait of the human being: the first hand imprinted on the rock is already a double, already a separation between body and image. The mirror, in this genealogy, is the pivotal point: a practical object that the artist transforms into a conceptual tool for connecting individual identity and collective reality.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Piero della Francesca, and Picasso: Perspective as a Story

Among the most vivid anecdotes from the interview is the one from London, on the occasion of the solo exhibition opening on October 14th at the Nahmad Projects gallery. In front of the master's works, Mick Jagger and Leonardo DiCaprio met. With the latter, Pistoletto explains, the conversation began almost as a joke: "Leonardo said to me: 'Your name is Michelangelo, and my name is Leonardo. We have something to do with our past.'"

From this remark, the discussion opens to Piero della Francesca, perspective, and finally Picasso. And it is precisely the relationship between these three figures, an ideal triangle between the Renaissance, the birth of modernity, and the reinvention of perspective with the mirror painting, that emerges as the key to interpreting Pistoletto's entire career.

Indeed, if for Picasso the urgent need was to break the realistic representation made superfluous by photography, for Pistoletto the challenge becomes to reintroduce figuration into the heart of contemporary art, but making it incorporate reality itself: not a represented image, but a living, moving image.

UR-RA: Art, Religions, and Social Responsibility

Much of the discussion is dedicated to UR-RA – Unity of Religions, Responsibility of Art, curated by Francesco Monico. The exhibition, open until October 31, 2026, explores the relationship between art and spirituality not as a return to the past, but as a possibility to mend a bond broken since the late 19th century, when art, aided by photography and then the avant-garde, distanced itself from shared narratives to take refuge in the so-called "white cube."

Pistoletto, on the other hand, explains how the mirror painting becomes a new form of inclusive perspective: "The entire society enters the mirror: space, time, movement. I am the key to access." With his own reflected image, the artist reopens a path that connects art, religions, and civil life. Central to the exhibition is the Monza Charter for Interreligious Diversity, signed by leaders of the world's major religions: an ethical rather than spiritual manifesto, which identifies the Trinamic sign as a common structure for diverse traditions. A concrete proposal for shared responsibility, therefore: for art, for religions, for society.

"Peace is not static": art and war, yesterday and today

Toward the end of the interview, the atmosphere changes. Fazio brings up the theme of war, asking the master, who lived through the Second World War, whether the contemporary situation has changed his faith in the role of art. The answer is clear: "Humanity has not yet been able to structure a system of harmonious coexistence. Peace is not static: it is a dynamic of confrontation without the need to kill."

The reference to the symbols of power (eagle, lion, wolf) highlights the "predatory" roots that still dominate many geopolitical dynamics. For Pistoletto, art can act as a counter-narrative: a space for exercising responsibility and vision, rather than force.

A 92-year-old artist speaking in the present tense

The interview ends with a smile: Fazio recalls the master's age: 92. Pistoletto responds by saying he is "younger than ever." It's a phrase that may seem rhetorical, but in this context it takes on a precise meaning: youth not as a condition of age, but as the ability to live in the present with curiosity and openness. And indeed, the conversation at Che Tempo Che Fa confirms this: his work continues to question not only art, but our way of being in the world.

Below is the video of the full interview.