Michelangelo used to say that whoever had the skill to draw held a great treasure. One needs only to look up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to fully appreciate the extent of this seemingly elemental statement, even though the skill of the legendary Italian artist went well beyond drawing: he painted, sculpted, designed buildings, composed poetry and even engineered the removal and transportation of huge marble blocks from the quarry to his studio. He embodied the perfect blending of imagination and creativity with the rigorous material demands of making. After the Renaissance, and particularly since the advent of the industrial revolution, such blending has become more and more rare, and has been replaced with specialisation and fragmentation. The loss of the ideal unity between art and craft, between creating and making, has caused the “intelligence of the hand” to come under threat: the arrival of serial production, the progressive devaluation of the métiers d’art, have caused many high-level artisanal activities to suffer a deep crisis and, in many cases, extinction. Over the last half century, the once highly valued role of the master craftsman has been threatened by globalisation, the digital revolution and technological advancements. And the bias against what we do with our hands has created a gap between those who imagine things and those who make them.
South African business luminary Johann Rupert and Italian entrepreneur, author and cultural authority Franco Cologni (who share a long-standing friendship) have joined forces to tackle this serious and delicate situation. Together they have created the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship, the aim of which is to bridge this gap by attracting new talent to the crafts, re-establishing the true value of artisanal expertise, and promoting the creation of new objects that reflect contemporary taste and demands.