- University of California, Florence Study Centre, Art History, Faculty Memberadd
- Photography, Material Culture Studies, Art History, Urban Studies, History of Science, Media Studies, and 19 moreItalian Studies, Visual Anthropology, American Studies, XXth Century Italian Art, Conceptual Art, American art/ Art of the United States, History of photography, Photography Theory, Media History, Italian Cultural Studies, Visual Culture, Early Cinema, Victorian Studies, History of Medicine and the Body, History of Science and Technology, Media Archaeology, Visual Studies, Forensic Psychology, and Forensic Anthropologyedit
- I am a professor of Art History and Photographic History at Brera Academy of Fine Arts (Milan). I am currently comple... moreI am a professor of Art History and Photographic History at Brera Academy of Fine Arts (Milan). I am currently completing a monograph on photography, biological theories of crime, and popular culture in Italy in the second half of the 19th century. I am also working on a research project on photography and applied arts education in post-unification Italian art academies. My writings have been published in exhibition catalogues, peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. I am the author of Fotografia e materialità in Italia. Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi, Luigi Ghirri (Postmedia 2013) and Il paesaggio americano dell’Ottocento. Pittori, fotografi e pubblico (Donzelli 2003). I co-edited (with Simone Natale) Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century (Penn State University Press 2018). Before completing my PhD at UCL I was a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University.edit
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/photography-as-power?fbclid=IwAR3HGaNkJEABJHHSbb3v-tcBtS6BeC8zvGfwMAQ0Lu_1WN7Dl5CA6D9dwQg Enriched with an introduction by David Forgacs, this book explores the complex relationship between photography... more
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/photography-as-power?fbclid=IwAR3HGaNkJEABJHHSbb3v-tcBtS6BeC8zvGfwMAQ0Lu_1WN7Dl5CA6D9dwQg
Enriched with an introduction by David Forgacs, this book explores the complex relationship between photography and power in its various manifestations in Italian history throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How did the Italian state employ the medium of photography as an instrument of dominance? In which ways has photography been used as a critical medium to resist hegemonic discourses? Taking into account published and unpublished images from professional photographers such as Letizia Battaglia, Tano D’Amico and Mario Cresci and non-professional photographers, artists, photo-reporters, and war soldiers, as well as social scientists and criminologists, such as Cesare Lombroso, this book unfolds the operations of power that lay behind the apparent objectivity of the photographic frame. Some essays in this volume discuss the use of photography in national and colonial discourses, as well as its employment in constructing images of power from war propaganda and fascism to public personas like Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi. Other contributions examine the ways in which the medium has been employed to create counter-hegemonic discourses, from the Resistance and the years of lead up to the contemporary times. Among the contributors to this volume are major international scholars on Italian photography such as Gabriele D’Autilia, Nicoletta Leonardi and Pasquale Verdicchio.
Enriched with an introduction by David Forgacs, this book explores the complex relationship between photography and power in its various manifestations in Italian history throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How did the Italian state employ the medium of photography as an instrument of dominance? In which ways has photography been used as a critical medium to resist hegemonic discourses? Taking into account published and unpublished images from professional photographers such as Letizia Battaglia, Tano D’Amico and Mario Cresci and non-professional photographers, artists, photo-reporters, and war soldiers, as well as social scientists and criminologists, such as Cesare Lombroso, this book unfolds the operations of power that lay behind the apparent objectivity of the photographic frame. Some essays in this volume discuss the use of photography in national and colonial discourses, as well as its employment in constructing images of power from war propaganda and fascism to public personas like Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi. Other contributions examine the ways in which the medium has been employed to create counter-hegemonic discourses, from the Resistance and the years of lead up to the contemporary times. Among the contributors to this volume are major international scholars on Italian photography such as Gabriele D’Autilia, Nicoletta Leonardi and Pasquale Verdicchio.
In this volume, leading scholars of photography and media examine photography’s vital role in the evolution of media and communication in the nineteenth century. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the introduction of... more
In this volume, leading scholars of photography and media examine photography’s vital role in the evolution of media and communication in the nineteenth century.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the introduction of telegraphy, the development of a cheaper and more reliable postal service, the rise of the mass-circulation press, and the emergence of the railway dramatically changed the way people communicated and experienced time and space. Concurrently, photography developed as a medium that changed how images were produced and circulated. Yet, for the most part, photography of the era is studied outside the field of media history. The contributors to this volume challenge those established disciplinary boundaries as they programmatically explore the intersections of photography and “new media” during a period of fast-paced change. Their essays look at the emergence and early history of photography in the context of broader changes in the history of communications; the role of the nascent photographic press in photography’s infancy; and the development of photographic techniques as part of a broader media culture that included the mass-consumed novel, sound recording, and cinema.
Featuring essays by noteworthy historians in photography and media history, this discipline-shifting examination of the communication revolution of the nineteenth century is an essential addition to the field of media studies.
In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Geoffrey Batchen, Geoffrey Belknap, Lynn Berger, Jan von Brevern, Anthony Enns, André Gaudreault, Lisa Gitelman, David Henkin, Erkki Huhtamo, Philippe Marion, Peppino Ortoleva, Steffen Siegel, Richard Taws, and Kim Timby.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the introduction of telegraphy, the development of a cheaper and more reliable postal service, the rise of the mass-circulation press, and the emergence of the railway dramatically changed the way people communicated and experienced time and space. Concurrently, photography developed as a medium that changed how images were produced and circulated. Yet, for the most part, photography of the era is studied outside the field of media history. The contributors to this volume challenge those established disciplinary boundaries as they programmatically explore the intersections of photography and “new media” during a period of fast-paced change. Their essays look at the emergence and early history of photography in the context of broader changes in the history of communications; the role of the nascent photographic press in photography’s infancy; and the development of photographic techniques as part of a broader media culture that included the mass-consumed novel, sound recording, and cinema.
Featuring essays by noteworthy historians in photography and media history, this discipline-shifting examination of the communication revolution of the nineteenth century is an essential addition to the field of media studies.
In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Geoffrey Batchen, Geoffrey Belknap, Lynn Berger, Jan von Brevern, Anthony Enns, André Gaudreault, Lisa Gitelman, David Henkin, Erkki Huhtamo, Philippe Marion, Peppino Ortoleva, Steffen Siegel, Richard Taws, and Kim Timby.
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“This groundbreaking volume embodies a major shift in the historiography of photography. These first-rate contributions bring to bear the intellectual resources of the numerous disciplines that must inform the holistic study of... more
“This groundbreaking volume embodies a major shift in the historiography of photography. These first-rate contributions bring to bear the intellectual resources of the numerous disciplines that must inform the holistic study of photography in the future. Taken together, a new approach emerges, in which photography's status as a medium is not taken for granted, and in which its boundaries are defined dynamically by its interactions with other forms of representation and communication in the nineteenth century.”
—Jordan Bear, author of Disillusioned: Victorian Photography and the Discerning Subject
“This timely and refreshing book challenges the introspective ‘media exceptionalism’ that often accompanies photographic studies. Instead it places photography firmly within the broad field of cultures of communicative technology, from the telegraph to postal systems, enriching the understanding of all these entangled practices.”
—Elizabeth Edwards, author of The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918
—Jordan Bear, author of Disillusioned: Victorian Photography and the Discerning Subject
“This timely and refreshing book challenges the introspective ‘media exceptionalism’ that often accompanies photographic studies. Instead it places photography firmly within the broad field of cultures of communicative technology, from the telegraph to postal systems, enriching the understanding of all these entangled practices.”
—Elizabeth Edwards, author of The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918
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"Fotografia e materialità in Italia. Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi, Luigi Ghirri"
di Nicoletta Leonardi
-postmedia books 2013
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isbn 9788874901050
di Nicoletta Leonardi
-postmedia books 2013
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isbn 9788874901050
Research Interests:
Fotografia e materialità in Italia analizza il lavoro prodotto negli anni Sessanta e Settanta del secolo scorso da Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi e Luigi Ghirri. Sebbene con metodi differenti e risultati eterogenei questi... more
Fotografia e materialità in Italia analizza il lavoro prodotto negli anni Sessanta e Settanta del secolo scorso da Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi e Luigi Ghirri. Sebbene con metodi differenti e risultati eterogenei questi autori hanno sviluppato la loro ricerca a partire da un approccio multisensoriale alla fotografia, intesa non soltanto come rappresentazione, ma anche come oggetto materiale e agente sociale collocato all'interno delle complesse reti di relazioni materiali e semiotiche che costituiscono gli spazi che abitiamo.
Research Interests:
"Questo volume traccia lo sviluppo dell’opera di Franco Vaccari attraverso una selezione della letteratura critica sull’artista e tutti gli scritti dello stesso Vaccari a partire dagli anni Sessanta ad oggi, ad esclusione di quelli... more
"Questo volume traccia lo sviluppo dell’opera di Franco Vaccari attraverso una selezione della letteratura critica sull’artista e tutti gli scritti dello stesso Vaccari a partire dagli anni Sessanta ad oggi, ad esclusione di quelli pubblicati nel volume Fotografia e inconscio tecnologico (1979).
I contributi di Adriano Altamira, Renato Barilli, Pietro Bonfiglioli, Gillo Dorfles, Claudio Marra, Daniela Palazzoli, Adriano Spatola e Roberta Valtorta, tutti editi fra gli anni Sessanta e gli anni Ottanta, testimoniano il dibattito e le istanze culturali –legate soprattutto al concettualismo- di un periodo della storia dell’arte italiana a tutt’oggi conosciuto prevalentemente nei termini dell’arte povera e della transavanguardia.
Nei suoi scritti, Vaccari riflette sui temi fondamentali che percorrono, fin dagli esordi, il suo lavoro: la dissoluzione dell'oggetto estetico modernista; l'utilizzo degli strumenti mass mediatici quali la fotografia, il film, il video, al fine di impegnare lo spettatore in un processo di partecipazione critica; l'accento sulle specifiche condizioni contestuali, ovvero spaziali, temporali e corporee, dell'esperienza.
"
I contributi di Adriano Altamira, Renato Barilli, Pietro Bonfiglioli, Gillo Dorfles, Claudio Marra, Daniela Palazzoli, Adriano Spatola e Roberta Valtorta, tutti editi fra gli anni Sessanta e gli anni Ottanta, testimoniano il dibattito e le istanze culturali –legate soprattutto al concettualismo- di un periodo della storia dell’arte italiana a tutt’oggi conosciuto prevalentemente nei termini dell’arte povera e della transavanguardia.
Nei suoi scritti, Vaccari riflette sui temi fondamentali che percorrono, fin dagli esordi, il suo lavoro: la dissoluzione dell'oggetto estetico modernista; l'utilizzo degli strumenti mass mediatici quali la fotografia, il film, il video, al fine di impegnare lo spettatore in un processo di partecipazione critica; l'accento sulle specifiche condizioni contestuali, ovvero spaziali, temporali e corporee, dell'esperienza.
"
"Questo volume, insieme alla mostra che accompagna, conclude un'indagine fotografica commissionata dall’Azienda USL di Modena. L'occasione è stata il trasferimento dal settencentesco Ospedale Sant’Agostino ed Estense dal centro storico... more
"Questo volume, insieme alla mostra che accompagna, conclude un'indagine fotografica commissionata dall’Azienda USL di Modena. L'occasione è stata il trasferimento dal settencentesco Ospedale Sant’Agostino ed Estense dal centro storico della città alla nuova sede ad alta tecnologia di Baggiovara, un’area periferica distaccata dal tessuto urbano. Il trasferimento ha suggerito la realizzazione - per la prima volta in Italia - di una committenza pubblica in cui la fotografia compare quale strumento di gestione del delicato passaggio di un intera comunità di cittadini, utenti ed operatori sanitari dai vecchi ai nuovi luoghi della cura: da un passato familiare, connotato dalla buona qualità delle pratiche mediche e delle relazioni interpersonali, ad un futuro dai migliori risultati diagnostico terapeutici, e tuttavia dai tratti ancora incerti sotto il profilo delle relazioni umane.
L'indagine, avviata nella primavera 2004, è stata realizzata con la finalità di fissare una memoria condivisa dell’Ospedale vecchio, luogo caro agli operatori ed ai cittadini, affidando alla fotografia il compito di raccontare qualcosa delle donne e degli uomini, dei luoghi, dei servizi e degli strumenti che ne hanno caratterizzato la storia. I lavori realizzati costituiscono un'importante testimonianza documentaria della cultura medica, delle pratiche della cura e delle relazioni interpersonali all’interno delle strutture sanitarie. Esse illuminano aspetti trascurati della nostra storia, offrendo una consapevolezza nuova della vita sociale e dei territori.
"
L'indagine, avviata nella primavera 2004, è stata realizzata con la finalità di fissare una memoria condivisa dell’Ospedale vecchio, luogo caro agli operatori ed ai cittadini, affidando alla fotografia il compito di raccontare qualcosa delle donne e degli uomini, dei luoghi, dei servizi e degli strumenti che ne hanno caratterizzato la storia. I lavori realizzati costituiscono un'importante testimonianza documentaria della cultura medica, delle pratiche della cura e delle relazioni interpersonali all’interno delle strutture sanitarie. Esse illuminano aspetti trascurati della nostra storia, offrendo una consapevolezza nuova della vita sociale e dei territori.
"
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
"Sono noti i profondi mutamenti intervenuti negli ultimi decenni nella produzione industriale e nell’attività lavorativa. Il “modello fordista” della catena di montaggio, delle economie di scala, dell’operaio massa è stato indebolito non... more
"Sono noti i profondi mutamenti intervenuti negli ultimi decenni nella produzione industriale e nell’attività lavorativa. Il “modello fordista” della catena di montaggio, delle economie di scala, dell’operaio massa è stato indebolito non soltanto da fattori congiunturali, ma anche dalla sua rigidità e dai nuovi modelli di vita e di consumo dell’ultima “società globale”.
Sul tema del lavoro che cambia i fotografi Olivo Barbieri, William Guerrieri e Ciro Frank Schiappa sono stati invitati dalla Provincia di Modena, a realizzare tre progetti da allestire permanentemente presso il nuovo Centro per l’Impiego della città.
William Guerrieri ha messo insieme una piccola galleria di immagini sul tema del movimento operaio tratte dagli archivi della Camera del lavoro, depositati presso dell’Istituto Storico di Modena. Guerrieri ha elaborato le immagini, ingrandendole ed estrapolandone porzioni, costruendo brevi sequenze narrative. I volti, gli abiti, le acconciature, i messaggi di protesta affissi ad automobili, gli striscioni e i tamburi, la folla ai comizi e perfino i dettagli più minimali come le braccia conserte, compaiono quali elementi ripetuti di codici comportamentali e visivi ormai desueti. Utilizzando la stessa strategia operativa dei suoi precedenti lavori, Guerrieri ha sottratto all’oblio dell’archivio piccole fotografie generalmente considerate poco significative dal punto di vista del linguaggio visivo, trasformandole in inattesi oggetti estetici. Attraverso questa operazione di rovesciamento l’artista sorprende l’osservatore, costringendolo per un momento ad arrestare lo sguardo e a interrogarsi sulla propria identità sociale.
Ciro Frank Schiappa ha ritratto individui di sesso, razza età e classe sociale diversificata nel momento immediatamente successivo alla fine della giornata lavorativa, quando ci si prepara ad occupare il “tempo che rimane”. Le immagini, realizzate con grande schiettezza formale ripetendo sempre la stessa inquadratura frontale, rimandano alle espressioni volutamente meno autoriali e spettacolari della tradizione documentaria e sociale: quelle di Walker Evans, di Paul Strand e di August Sander. Nella cornice sempre uguale, e dunque omologante, delle fotografie si legge la specificità a la diversità di ogni singolo vissuto. Il lavoro di Schiappa affida alla fotografia la capacità di rappresentare la soggettività, confermando il valore espressivo del ritratto fotografico, da tempo messo in discussione dall’idea postmoderna del disancoraggio dell’individuo dalla realtà. Al profilo individuale del ritratto è tuttavia demandata solo una parte del racconto, esso stesso, come l’individuo, privo dei caratteri della compiutezza.
Barbieri propone immagini di un modello di produzione simbolo del made in Italy: la Ferrari. Nella grande veduta panoramica composita, realizzata da un punto di vista rialzato, lo spazio architettonico della catena di montaggio è presentato come una realtà sfuggente, discontinua e non interamente visibile. Al fine di creare delle zone poco leggibili sulla superficie visibile dell’immagine, il fotografo bascula la macchina applicando in modo improprio i sistemi per correggere la prospettiva. Ne risulta una rappresentazione caratterizzata dall’accostamento di porzioni ricche di dettagli nitidi ed altamente leggibili ad aree in cui gli oggetti e la luce sono sfaldati dalla sfocatura fino a diventare evanescenti. A ciò si aggiunge la non linearità della rappresentazione, dovuta al ripetersi quasi a singhiozzo di elementi identici all’interno di immagini fra loro soltanto leggermente diverse accostate le une alle altre. Si tratta di scarti talvolta minimi, che tuttavia bastano a dare un senso di vertigine allo spettatore. A partire da questi presupposti, Barbieri racconta le sue “realtà virtuali” fatte di un presente e di un futuro ancora, per molti versi, indecifrabili.
"
Sul tema del lavoro che cambia i fotografi Olivo Barbieri, William Guerrieri e Ciro Frank Schiappa sono stati invitati dalla Provincia di Modena, a realizzare tre progetti da allestire permanentemente presso il nuovo Centro per l’Impiego della città.
William Guerrieri ha messo insieme una piccola galleria di immagini sul tema del movimento operaio tratte dagli archivi della Camera del lavoro, depositati presso dell’Istituto Storico di Modena. Guerrieri ha elaborato le immagini, ingrandendole ed estrapolandone porzioni, costruendo brevi sequenze narrative. I volti, gli abiti, le acconciature, i messaggi di protesta affissi ad automobili, gli striscioni e i tamburi, la folla ai comizi e perfino i dettagli più minimali come le braccia conserte, compaiono quali elementi ripetuti di codici comportamentali e visivi ormai desueti. Utilizzando la stessa strategia operativa dei suoi precedenti lavori, Guerrieri ha sottratto all’oblio dell’archivio piccole fotografie generalmente considerate poco significative dal punto di vista del linguaggio visivo, trasformandole in inattesi oggetti estetici. Attraverso questa operazione di rovesciamento l’artista sorprende l’osservatore, costringendolo per un momento ad arrestare lo sguardo e a interrogarsi sulla propria identità sociale.
Ciro Frank Schiappa ha ritratto individui di sesso, razza età e classe sociale diversificata nel momento immediatamente successivo alla fine della giornata lavorativa, quando ci si prepara ad occupare il “tempo che rimane”. Le immagini, realizzate con grande schiettezza formale ripetendo sempre la stessa inquadratura frontale, rimandano alle espressioni volutamente meno autoriali e spettacolari della tradizione documentaria e sociale: quelle di Walker Evans, di Paul Strand e di August Sander. Nella cornice sempre uguale, e dunque omologante, delle fotografie si legge la specificità a la diversità di ogni singolo vissuto. Il lavoro di Schiappa affida alla fotografia la capacità di rappresentare la soggettività, confermando il valore espressivo del ritratto fotografico, da tempo messo in discussione dall’idea postmoderna del disancoraggio dell’individuo dalla realtà. Al profilo individuale del ritratto è tuttavia demandata solo una parte del racconto, esso stesso, come l’individuo, privo dei caratteri della compiutezza.
Barbieri propone immagini di un modello di produzione simbolo del made in Italy: la Ferrari. Nella grande veduta panoramica composita, realizzata da un punto di vista rialzato, lo spazio architettonico della catena di montaggio è presentato come una realtà sfuggente, discontinua e non interamente visibile. Al fine di creare delle zone poco leggibili sulla superficie visibile dell’immagine, il fotografo bascula la macchina applicando in modo improprio i sistemi per correggere la prospettiva. Ne risulta una rappresentazione caratterizzata dall’accostamento di porzioni ricche di dettagli nitidi ed altamente leggibili ad aree in cui gli oggetti e la luce sono sfaldati dalla sfocatura fino a diventare evanescenti. A ciò si aggiunge la non linearità della rappresentazione, dovuta al ripetersi quasi a singhiozzo di elementi identici all’interno di immagini fra loro soltanto leggermente diverse accostate le une alle altre. Si tratta di scarti talvolta minimi, che tuttavia bastano a dare un senso di vertigine allo spettatore. A partire da questi presupposti, Barbieri racconta le sue “realtà virtuali” fatte di un presente e di un futuro ancora, per molti versi, indecifrabili.
"
Research Interests:
Abstract del volume Il primo volume della collana «Mente e storia», promossa dal Centro ASPI — Archivio storico della psicologia italiana dell’Università degli Studi di Milano–Bicocca, è dedicato ai rapporti tra scienze della mente e... more
Abstract del volume
Il primo volume della collana «Mente e storia», promossa dal Centro ASPI — Archivio storico della psicologia italiana dell’Università degli Studi di Milano–Bicocca, è dedicato ai rapporti tra scienze della mente e fotografia, due ambiti apparentemente distanti ma in realtà molto più prossimi di quanto si possa immaginare. Tra Otto e Novecento neurologi, psichiatri e psicologi introducono la nuova tecnica di registrazione delle immagini nei manicomi, nelle cliniche e nei laboratori. Da Charcot a Lombroso, dalla contestazione al neuroimaging, la fotografia diviene uno strumento fondamentale per la ricerca, la sperimentazione e la cura, ma anche per la documentazione scientifica e la denuncia sociale.
Il primo volume della collana «Mente e storia», promossa dal Centro ASPI — Archivio storico della psicologia italiana dell’Università degli Studi di Milano–Bicocca, è dedicato ai rapporti tra scienze della mente e fotografia, due ambiti apparentemente distanti ma in realtà molto più prossimi di quanto si possa immaginare. Tra Otto e Novecento neurologi, psichiatri e psicologi introducono la nuova tecnica di registrazione delle immagini nei manicomi, nelle cliniche e nei laboratori. Da Charcot a Lombroso, dalla contestazione al neuroimaging, la fotografia diviene uno strumento fondamentale per la ricerca, la sperimentazione e la cura, ma anche per la documentazione scientifica e la denuncia sociale.
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This essay looks at the early work of Mario Cresci, from his first experiments with urban art activism to his experiences with participatory urban planning in Balisicata. It explores the ways in which Cresci engaged with the material... more
This essay looks at the early work of Mario Cresci, from his first experiments with urban art activism to his experiences with participatory urban planning in Balisicata. It explores the ways in which Cresci engaged with the material contexts we inhabit, focusing his research on a multi sensory approach to photographs conceived not just as representations, but as material objects and social agents that have an active role in social processes, and hold the potential to challenge and even reshape political circumstances. By looking on an artist who has so far received little scholarly attention, and who is practically unknown outside Italy, and by analysing his work from the perspective of the photographs’ ‘objectness,’ I offer a picture of Italy’s art scene in the 1960s and 1970 that goes beyond Arte Povera, shedding light on inter-medial and cross disciplinary practices operating on the wake of social and political activism both inside and outside the art realm, and resulting from the dialogue of different art and cultural forms, including photography, literature, film, theatre, graphic and industrial design, architecture, participatory urban planning and active citizenship. Distancing himself from the visual stereotypes of late Neorealism and the sentimentalist nostalgia of the Italian rural south typical of the work of Alberto Pinna, Cresci used his own photographs -as well as photographs and films shot by others- as means to trace models of sociability strongly related to the identity of places and people; as research tools for urban planning; as a way of stimulating historical awareness, building community identity, improving local economy, encouraging local craft.
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Postwar Italian Art History Today brings fresh critical consideration to the parameters and impact of Italian art and visual culture studies of the past several decades. Taking its cue from the thirty-year anniversary of curator Germano... more
Postwar Italian Art History Today brings fresh critical consideration to the parameters and impact of Italian art and visual culture studies of the past several decades. Taking its cue from the thirty-year anniversary of curator Germano Celant's landmark exhibition at PS1 in New York – The Knot – this volume presents innovative case studies and emphasizes new methodologies deployed in the study of postwar Italian art as a means to evaluate the current state of the field. Included are fifteen essays that each examine, from a different viewpoint, the issues, concerns, and questions driving postwar Italian art history. The editors and contributors call for a systematic reconsideration of the artistic origins of postwar Italian art, the terminology that is used to describe the work produced, and key personalities and institutions that promoted and supported the development and marketing of this art in Italy and abroad.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Sharon Hecker (Independent, USA) and Marin R. Sullivan (Keene State College, USA)
Section I – Reconsidering the Weight of Italy
1.“Yes, but are you Italian?:” Considering the Legacy of Italianità in Postwar and Contemporary Italian Art
Laura Petican (Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, USA)
2.Learning from Artists. Methodological Notes on Post-war Italian Art History
Denis Viva (University of Trento and University of Udine, Italy)
3.Gianni Pettena and Ugo La Pietra. Crossing the Boundaries between Theory and Practice
Silvia Bottinelli (School of the Museum of Fine Art-Tufts University, USA)
4.Our Lady of Warka: Gino De Dominicis and the Search for Immortality
Gabriele Guercio (Independent, Italy)
Section II – Re-Imagining Realism
5.Transatlantic Exchanges. Piero Dorazio: Non-Objective Art vs. Abstract Expressionism?
Davide Colombo (University of Parma, Italy)
6.Gleaning Italia Gleaning Italian Pop, 1960-66: the 1964 Venice Biennale, Renato Mambor's 'Thread', and Pop as a Global Phenomenon
Christopher Bennett (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA)
7.Photography, visual poetry and radical architecture in the early works of Franco Vaccari
Nicoletta Leonardi (Turin Academy of Fine Arts and University of California Florence Study Center, Italy)
Section III –Rethinking Modes of Patronage
8.Buying Marino Marini: The American Market for Italian Art after WWII
Antje Gamble (Murray State University, USA)
9.A House No Longer Divided: Patronage, Pluralism, and Creative Freedom in Italian Pre- and Postwar Art
Laura Moure Cecchini (Colgate University, USA)
10.Co-research and Art: Danilo Montaldi's Horizontal Production of Knowledge
Jacopo Galimberti (British Academy, University of Manchester, UK)
11.Shaping and Reshaping: Private and Institutional Patronage
Martina Tanga (Independent, USA)
Section IV – Reassessing Arte Povera
12.Isolated Fragments: Disentangling the Relationship Between Arte Povera and Medardo Rosso
Sharon Hecker (Independent, Italy)
13.Gilberto Zorio's Radical Fluidity
Elizabeth Mangini (California College of the Arts, USA)
14.Summer Solstice A.D. MCMLXIII. Luciano Fabro's Early Works
Giorgio Zanchetti (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy)
15.Transatlantic Arte Povera
Raffaele Bedarida (Cooper Union, USA)
Bibliography
Index
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Sharon Hecker (Independent, USA) and Marin R. Sullivan (Keene State College, USA)
Section I – Reconsidering the Weight of Italy
1.“Yes, but are you Italian?:” Considering the Legacy of Italianità in Postwar and Contemporary Italian Art
Laura Petican (Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, USA)
2.Learning from Artists. Methodological Notes on Post-war Italian Art History
Denis Viva (University of Trento and University of Udine, Italy)
3.Gianni Pettena and Ugo La Pietra. Crossing the Boundaries between Theory and Practice
Silvia Bottinelli (School of the Museum of Fine Art-Tufts University, USA)
4.Our Lady of Warka: Gino De Dominicis and the Search for Immortality
Gabriele Guercio (Independent, Italy)
Section II – Re-Imagining Realism
5.Transatlantic Exchanges. Piero Dorazio: Non-Objective Art vs. Abstract Expressionism?
Davide Colombo (University of Parma, Italy)
6.Gleaning Italia Gleaning Italian Pop, 1960-66: the 1964 Venice Biennale, Renato Mambor's 'Thread', and Pop as a Global Phenomenon
Christopher Bennett (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA)
7.Photography, visual poetry and radical architecture in the early works of Franco Vaccari
Nicoletta Leonardi (Turin Academy of Fine Arts and University of California Florence Study Center, Italy)
Section III –Rethinking Modes of Patronage
8.Buying Marino Marini: The American Market for Italian Art after WWII
Antje Gamble (Murray State University, USA)
9.A House No Longer Divided: Patronage, Pluralism, and Creative Freedom in Italian Pre- and Postwar Art
Laura Moure Cecchini (Colgate University, USA)
10.Co-research and Art: Danilo Montaldi's Horizontal Production of Knowledge
Jacopo Galimberti (British Academy, University of Manchester, UK)
11.Shaping and Reshaping: Private and Institutional Patronage
Martina Tanga (Independent, USA)
Section IV – Reassessing Arte Povera
12.Isolated Fragments: Disentangling the Relationship Between Arte Povera and Medardo Rosso
Sharon Hecker (Independent, Italy)
13.Gilberto Zorio's Radical Fluidity
Elizabeth Mangini (California College of the Arts, USA)
14.Summer Solstice A.D. MCMLXIII. Luciano Fabro's Early Works
Giorgio Zanchetti (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy)
15.Transatlantic Arte Povera
Raffaele Bedarida (Cooper Union, USA)
Bibliography
Index
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Luigi Ghirri’s photographic production from the 1970s has so far primarily been interpreted as an expression of the postmodern critique of representation. However, placing his work within this broad cultural trend is not enough to fully... more
Luigi Ghirri’s photographic production from the 1970s has so far primarily been interpreted as an expression of the postmodern critique of representation. However, placing his work within this broad cultural trend is not enough to fully understand his use of the déjà-vu. Ghirri subscribed to the notion of the inescapable condition of modernity’s reduction of the world to image, to cliché, to stereotype. Yet, he also maintained the idea of a possible surfacing of a ‘true’ and unmediated memory, of reality as the ‘authentic’ experience of an individual that looks at the world with childlike awe. Accordingly, he focused his research on the material contexts we inhabit, and filled his photographs with references to local history, to personal and collective stories and memories: his origins in a family of artisans and small traders (his father was a carpenter specialized in the installation of roller units); his childhood spent in rural Scandiano (Emilia) during the Reconstruction years; his life as a young surveyor living in the lower middle class townhouses newly built in the suburbs of Italian cities during the ‘economic miracle’. Ghirri expressed this longing for origin and reality, along with the irredeemable sense of loss inevitably associated to it, through nostalgia. For this reason, I argue, at the base of his early work is a specific type of object, situated at the threshold between the function of remembering and the invention of memory, between the desire of a narrative of origins and interiority on the one hand, and falsehood on the other: the souvenir. Ghirri chose the souvenir as his privileged modus operandi and used the trompe-l’œil, a Baroque aesthetic device based on the continuous oscillation between extreme referentiality and the illusory nature of representation, which perfectly embodies the logic of the souvenir. Ghirri repeatedly shot photographic trompe-l’œils of souvenirs to the point that his photographic archive can be interpreted as a collection of souvenirs.
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Il saggio di Nicoletta Leonardi analizza la fotografia amatoriale italiana del secondo dopoguerra attraverso il caso del Gruppo 66. Fondato a Milano nel 1965, il gruppo ha operato per dieci anni come collettivo con lo scopo di produrre,... more
Il saggio di Nicoletta Leonardi analizza la fotografia amatoriale italiana del secondo dopoguerra attraverso il caso del Gruppo 66. Fondato a Milano nel 1965, il gruppo ha operato per dieci anni come collettivo con lo scopo di produrre, oltre che ricevere da altri operatori non professionisti, fotografie documentarie storiche e contemporanee sulla città di Milano da conservare in un archivio aperto al pubblico. A lungo trascurate da una storia della fotografia che privilegia singole figure autoriali di artisti e professionisti e mostra scarso interesse nei confronti del lavoro collettivo, le fotografie del Gruppo 66 sono documenti straordinari della trasformazione del tessuto urbano di Milano e dei cambiamenti nelle abitudini sociali e nello stile di vita degli abitanti della città industriale più grande d’Italia a cavallo fra il boom economico e gli anni di piombo.
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This article illustrates how urban void and density have been represented through photography from the emergence of modern urban planning in mid 19th century to contemporary models of participatory urban planning based on collaboration... more
This article illustrates how urban void and density have been represented through photography from the emergence of modern urban planning in mid 19th century to contemporary models of participatory urban planning based on collaboration among different actors and strategies of active citizenship. The ways in which photography has either served as a rhetoric tool within a predetermined ideological agenda or as a cognitive and research tool for the architect and the city planner reflects the radical changes that the idea of the city and the theory and practice of urban planning have undergone from the 1850s to nowadays.
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Fotografia e materialità in Italia Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi, Luigi Ghirri (Postmedia Books, Milan, 2013) by Nicoletta Leonardi, UCEAP FLorence The author in conversation with David Forgacs (NYU). This book... more
Fotografia e materialità in Italia
Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi, Luigi Ghirri
(Postmedia Books, Milan, 2013)
by Nicoletta Leonardi, UCEAP FLorence
The author in conversation with David Forgacs (NYU).
This book addresses the relationship between photography and materiality in Italy during the 1960s and 70s. It explores the ways in which four key artists -Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi, and Luigi Ghirri - focused their research on a multisensory approach to photographs conceived not just as representations, but as material objects and social agents located within the complex networks of material and semiotic relations that constitute the spaces we inhabit. Looking at the work of these artists from the perspective of the photographs’ ‘objectness’, this book offers an innovative analysis of Italy’s art scene through a discussion of the following topics: photography, visual poetry and the Italian city in the early works of Franco Vaccari; Mario Cresci’s photographic practice between urban activism and participatory planning; Guido Guidi’s phenomenological photography and its relationship with urban planning from below; the souvenir function of Luigi Ghirri’s trompe l'œil photographs of objects.
Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi, Luigi Ghirri
(Postmedia Books, Milan, 2013)
by Nicoletta Leonardi, UCEAP FLorence
The author in conversation with David Forgacs (NYU).
This book addresses the relationship between photography and materiality in Italy during the 1960s and 70s. It explores the ways in which four key artists -Franco Vaccari, Mario Cresci, Guido Guidi, and Luigi Ghirri - focused their research on a multisensory approach to photographs conceived not just as representations, but as material objects and social agents located within the complex networks of material and semiotic relations that constitute the spaces we inhabit. Looking at the work of these artists from the perspective of the photographs’ ‘objectness’, this book offers an innovative analysis of Italy’s art scene through a discussion of the following topics: photography, visual poetry and the Italian city in the early works of Franco Vaccari; Mario Cresci’s photographic practice between urban activism and participatory planning; Guido Guidi’s phenomenological photography and its relationship with urban planning from below; the souvenir function of Luigi Ghirri’s trompe l'œil photographs of objects.
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7th De Bosis Colloquium in Italian Studies, Harvard University, Spring Semester, 2014.Organized by Giuliana Minghelli (Harvard University) - Sponsored by the Lauro De Bosis Lectureship in the History of Italian Civilization. A regularly... more
7th De Bosis Colloquium in Italian Studies, Harvard University, Spring Semester, 2014.Organized by Giuliana Minghelli (Harvard University) - Sponsored by the Lauro De Bosis Lectureship in the History of Italian Civilization. A regularly scheduled course (Ita 201r) & lecture series - INFO: DEBOSIS@FAS.HARVARD.EDU / Kathy Coviello, 617-496-3610. Open to the public
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The one-day workshop aims to analyse the themes of pellagra and the related mania, from an eclectic and multidisciplinary perspective. The different talks will indeed bring together quantitative and qualitative research methods, so as to... more
The one-day workshop aims to analyse the themes of pellagra and the related mania, from an eclectic and multidisciplinary perspective. The different talks will indeed bring together quantitative and qualitative research methods, so as to highlight both the local dimension (Venice and the neighbouring Regions) and the wider international debate about pellagra and alike diseases. Some topics which will be focused are: The iconography and the visual representations of pellagra The scientific debate amongst physicians in Italy and in Europe The spread and the circulation of the medical knowledge about pellagra in Europe during the nineteenth century Local detailed studies concerning pellagra in specific northern Italy areas, such as Polesine and Ferrara Province
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This paper looks at the role played by amateur photographers and photo clubs within post World War 2 Italian photography through the case of the Milanese Gruppo 66. Gruppo 66 was founded at the end of 1965 by amateur photographers with... more
This paper looks at the role played by amateur photographers and photo clubs within post World War 2 Italian photography through the case of the Milanese Gruppo 66.
Gruppo 66 was founded at the end of 1965 by amateur photographers with the aim of producing and receiving from other non professional practitioners documentary photographs about the city of Milan. The final goal of the group was that of creating a photo archive open to the public that would convey the city's banal, ordinary and everyday realities. In the by-laws of the association, the founders of Gruppo 66 clearly stated that they wanted to distance themselves from the aestheticizing formalism that characterized Italian photo clubs, the rhetorical pietism prevalent within late neorealist photography, the spectacularizing approach of photojournalism and the media.
Between 1965 and 1975 the members of Gruppo 66 produced 12.000 35mm negatives. Each roll of film was inventoried and kept in a metallic closed along with about 1.200 24X30 cm photographic prints and 130 larger format prints. The photographs depict public events (the British Week in 1965, the inauguration of Villaggio S. Ambrogio in 1966, commemorative marches and political protests), the new spaces of social aggregation (Upim and Rinacente department stores in 1967, rock concerts), religious and civil celebrations (the Corpus Domini procession and the opening of the Opera season at LA Scala). But the most conspicuous portion of the archive is dedicated to the ambitions and never completed project of a meticulous mapping of the city.
The photographs produced by Gruppo 66 are extraordinary documents of the transformation of Milan's urban spaces and of the changes in social habits and lifestyle of people living in Italy's largest industrial city during the economic boom and at the dawn of the '69 contestation movement. Long neglected by a dominant history of photography that privileges established single authorial figures, either in the form of the artis or the professional, to the collaborative work of amateurs, this material deserves more attention.
Gruppo 66 was founded at the end of 1965 by amateur photographers with the aim of producing and receiving from other non professional practitioners documentary photographs about the city of Milan. The final goal of the group was that of creating a photo archive open to the public that would convey the city's banal, ordinary and everyday realities. In the by-laws of the association, the founders of Gruppo 66 clearly stated that they wanted to distance themselves from the aestheticizing formalism that characterized Italian photo clubs, the rhetorical pietism prevalent within late neorealist photography, the spectacularizing approach of photojournalism and the media.
Between 1965 and 1975 the members of Gruppo 66 produced 12.000 35mm negatives. Each roll of film was inventoried and kept in a metallic closed along with about 1.200 24X30 cm photographic prints and 130 larger format prints. The photographs depict public events (the British Week in 1965, the inauguration of Villaggio S. Ambrogio in 1966, commemorative marches and political protests), the new spaces of social aggregation (Upim and Rinacente department stores in 1967, rock concerts), religious and civil celebrations (the Corpus Domini procession and the opening of the Opera season at LA Scala). But the most conspicuous portion of the archive is dedicated to the ambitions and never completed project of a meticulous mapping of the city.
The photographs produced by Gruppo 66 are extraordinary documents of the transformation of Milan's urban spaces and of the changes in social habits and lifestyle of people living in Italy's largest industrial city during the economic boom and at the dawn of the '69 contestation movement. Long neglected by a dominant history of photography that privileges established single authorial figures, either in the form of the artis or the professional, to the collaborative work of amateurs, this material deserves more attention.
Research Interests:
During the 1960s and 70s, on the wake of social and political activism, several Italian artists based their work upon a multi sensory approach to photographs conceived not just as representations, but as material objects and social... more
During the 1960s and 70s, on the wake of social and political activism, several Italian artists based their work upon a multi sensory approach to photographs conceived not just as representations, but as material objects and social agents. Mario Cresci was one of these artists, and the peculiarity of his contribution lies in the work he did as a member of the cross-disciplinary collective Il Politecnico. Composed of Cresci himself, along with architects and urbanists, a sociologist and a local historian, the collective was hired by local authorities in 1966 to draw the master plans of two cities in Basilicata, a rural area in southern Italy strongly hit by emigration. The master plans were based on participatory urban planning and practices of active citizenship.
Cresci, who was trained as a graphic and product designer, defined himself as an ‘artistic operator’ directly intervening upon reality, acting within complex networks of relations among people, animals and objects. Distancing himself from the sentimentalist and aestheticising nostalgia of the Italian rural south typical of the work of photographers such as Cartier-Bresson, Cresci used his own photographs, as well as family photographs of sorts, as means to trace models of sociability strongly related to the identity of places and people. Though a constant dialogue among Cresci and the other members of Il Politecnico, photographs conceived as material objects with their social biographies were fully integrated into urban planning as research tools and as means of communication, as a way of encouraging historical awareness, building community identity, improving local economy, encouraging local craft.
Cresci, who was trained as a graphic and product designer, defined himself as an ‘artistic operator’ directly intervening upon reality, acting within complex networks of relations among people, animals and objects. Distancing himself from the sentimentalist and aestheticising nostalgia of the Italian rural south typical of the work of photographers such as Cartier-Bresson, Cresci used his own photographs, as well as family photographs of sorts, as means to trace models of sociability strongly related to the identity of places and people. Though a constant dialogue among Cresci and the other members of Il Politecnico, photographs conceived as material objects with their social biographies were fully integrated into urban planning as research tools and as means of communication, as a way of encouraging historical awareness, building community identity, improving local economy, encouraging local craft.
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"In 1966, at the beginning of his artistic career, Franco Vaccari published a book entitled Le tracce. The volume is a collection of photographs of graffiti taken by the artist in Italian cities during the first half of the 1960s. In the... more
"In 1966, at the beginning of his artistic career, Franco Vaccari published a book entitled Le tracce. The volume is a collection of photographs of graffiti taken by the artist in Italian cities during the first half of the 1960s. In the introduction, the poet, literary critic and publisher Adriano Spatola describes Vaccari as an archeologist of urban modernity.
Vaccari’s images of graffiti as ‘found poetry’ are based on an approach to photography opposite to Cartier-Bresson’s notion of the decisive moment. Vaccari’s aim was not that of creating images, but of immersing himself into the materiality of everyday reality, registering fragments of juxtaposed gestures interacting with one another. The writings and drawings illicitly scratched or scribbled on the walls of buildings along the streets or inside public toilets, as well as the tears and drawings on advertising posters, offer an anthropological, sociological and psychological portrait of the country at the time of the ‘economic miracle.’
Vaccari’s work on graffiti is of crucial importance for a deeper understanding of both the relationship between the Italian artistic neo-avant-garde and visual poetry, and the international developments of conceptualism and poverism.
The encounter between photography, visual poetry and the city in Vaccari’s early works is at the base of the artist’s whole research. Only after having bought the street to the page in his book on urban graffiti, Vaccari was able to invert his path and go from the page to the street, experimenting with photography, environments, performance and conceptual art. By reducing his authorial presence to a minimum level, and by exalting the materiality of experience, Vaccari exposed public spaces and societal processes as complex semiotic and material networks in which human and nonhuman actors -such as photographs- move through space and time interacting with each other producing reality.
"
Vaccari’s images of graffiti as ‘found poetry’ are based on an approach to photography opposite to Cartier-Bresson’s notion of the decisive moment. Vaccari’s aim was not that of creating images, but of immersing himself into the materiality of everyday reality, registering fragments of juxtaposed gestures interacting with one another. The writings and drawings illicitly scratched or scribbled on the walls of buildings along the streets or inside public toilets, as well as the tears and drawings on advertising posters, offer an anthropological, sociological and psychological portrait of the country at the time of the ‘economic miracle.’
Vaccari’s work on graffiti is of crucial importance for a deeper understanding of both the relationship between the Italian artistic neo-avant-garde and visual poetry, and the international developments of conceptualism and poverism.
The encounter between photography, visual poetry and the city in Vaccari’s early works is at the base of the artist’s whole research. Only after having bought the street to the page in his book on urban graffiti, Vaccari was able to invert his path and go from the page to the street, experimenting with photography, environments, performance and conceptual art. By reducing his authorial presence to a minimum level, and by exalting the materiality of experience, Vaccari exposed public spaces and societal processes as complex semiotic and material networks in which human and nonhuman actors -such as photographs- move through space and time interacting with each other producing reality.
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