Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind

Art in the Present Tense

This Illy coffee cup that is following me thru my numerous changes of homes and cities was specially made for the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, bearing the theme Pensa con i sensi, senti con la mente — Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind. The curator that year was Robert Storr, the first American ever to hold that role — and the edition was considered one of the more intellectually ambitious Biennales of its era.

Illy became a formal partner of the Venice Biennale starting in 2003, participating in every edition since, with increasingly thought-provoking exhibitions and a dedicated illymind space created in collaboration with artists and designers — conceived as a place to relax and reflect, not unlike a coffee moment itself.

What I like about my cup is the graphic design: the crisp color-block layout in lime green and red with the winged lion logo is quite restrained and institutional compared to the more painterly editions in other cups exhibited at Procuratie Nuove new installation — it has the feel of official Biennale identity design rather than a single artist’s commission, making it more of a documentary object, a souvenir of an edition, than a pure art piece.

These cups were originally offered to the wholesale trade for the restaurant and café industry at the Biennale — never as a retail item — which makes mine something of a found object, picked up outside its intended circuit. Nearly 20 years old now.

Origins

The story of the cup begins in 1990 with architect Matteo Thun, who designed a white espresso cup to the precise specifications of the Illy family — volume, diameter, rim, and a heat-retaining bowl at the base were all scientifically defined. The result was so elegant it almost immediately became a design classic. Inspired by the Greek philosophical concept of kalokagathia — the union of the beautiful and the good — Illy began inviting contemporary artists to use the cup as a canvas for original works of art.

The collection today

All told, illy has commissioned roughly 165 art collection sets since 1992. Each year, illy releases between two and four collections featuring contemporary artists. Artists have included Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramović, Louise Bourgeois, Julian Schnabel, Robert Rauschenberg, Jeff Koons, Joseph Kosuth — and beyond the visual arts, filmmakers Federico Fellini and Francis Ford Coppola, and musician David Byrne.

Collector’s vs. bar editions

The art series cups are signed and numbered. Bar sets — made for cafés and restaurants — are distinguished by having “illy espresso” printed near the inner rim, usually without matching saucers, and at a lower quality standard.

Venice connection

2022 was an unusual year: illy released cup designs by seven different artists, six of them in a single collection created for the Venice Biennale Arte event.