Circularity and Visibility in Italian Art Periodicals (1968-1978)

During the 1970s, at the apex of “dematerialized art”, the art magazines contributed a great deal to turn visibility (the photographic circulation of artworks, news on the artists, etc.) into an economic value. In a country like Italy, where museum validation was still lacking, neo-avantgarde periodicals such as Flash Art or Data introduced new communicative strategies (community building, indirect advertising, etc.) in order to provide a trans-national audience for Italian art. This study tries to enlighten the impact of advertising on art magazines’ preferences and their criteria of newsworthiness by analyzing some of their quantitative data

Gli antenati elettivi: Giacomo Balla astrattista tra Forma 1 e Origine (1948-1954)

\uabPendant de longues ann\ue9es l\u2019Italie eut en Balla un grand peintre qu\u2019elle ignora totalement\ubb. In 1950 these Christian Zervos\u2019 words incited Italian Art Critics and Literature into being aware of the international and increasing relevance of Giacomo Balla\u2019s work. It was the beginning of a renaissance which will recognize a new pivotal role in the Italian context for the old Futurist painter. His renaissance was totally involved in the self-accreditation and controversial strategy of the young abstract painters in the post Second World War period which proposed a new nonfigurative interpretation for his work. According to them, from Forma 1 to Origine or other gruops like the M.A.C., Balla became a prompt precedent for Italian Art in the history of abstraction. However, from a more careful historical point of view, since 1948 until 1954, the Balla\u2019s reception was limited and it never delved into those potentially modernists aspects of his style. His innovative outcome was only connected to the critical debate of that time or it was just conceived in terms of \u201chistoric primacy\u201d. No young artists seems to deeply learn from his style and the major part of his legacy concerns the most predictable question of dynamism. Finally the reappearance of his Compenetrazioni iridescenti and the related abstract interpretation provided by Enrico Prampolini and Ettore Colla in 1952 opened a new phase of a more modernist reception for Balla. Only Piero Dorazio\u2019s reticoli (one of the most and long-lasting interested in Balla among the young artists) will turn this new critical approach into a new painting style. \uabPendant de longues ann\ue9es l\u2019Italie eut en Balla un grand peintre qu\u2019elle ignora totalement\ubb. Nel 1950, con questo giudizio, Christian Zervos esortava la critica e la storiografia italiana a prendere coscienza del crescente riconoscimento internazionale suscitato dall\u2019opera di Giacomo Balla. Era il principio di una riscoperta che, durante la sua tarda maturit\ue0, investir\ue0 il maestro futurista di un ruolo e di un\u2019attenzione sino ad allora inediti nel panorama italiano. La sua vicenda si trov\uf2, infatti, interamente coinvolta nella controversa auto-legittimazione delle poetiche non figurative nel secondo dopoguerra, dettando ai pi\uf9 giovani i termini di un recupero storiografico che fosse, ora, d\u2019interpretazione tutta astrattista. Chiamato in causa da pi\uf9 parti, da Forma 1 ad Origine, passando per il non secondario appello del M.A.C., Balla divenne l\u2019esempio di quel contributo tempestivo all\u2019astrazione internazionale che l\u2019Italia aveva a lungo cercato. Tuttavia, ad una pi\uf9 attenta analisi storica, emerge quanto la fortuna di Balla negli anni 1948-1954 fosse stata circoscritta e non avesse riservato un vero approfondimento su quegli aspetti potenzialmente pi\uf9 modernisti della sua opera. La sua portata innovativa fu, pi\uf9 che altro, limitata al dibattito critico, al primato storico, lasciando poche tracce stilistiche nei giovani astrattisti, spesso di scontata derivazione dinamista. Sar\ue0 soltanto nel 1952, con la comparsa delle prime compenetrazioni astratte e la contestuale lettura astratta, fornita da Enrico Prampolini ed Ettore Colla, che si aprir\ue0 una reale pagina modernista per Balla. Una maturazione della sua eredit\ue0 stilistica che giunger\ue0 soltanto con i reticoli di Piero Dorazio, uno dei giovani artisti, da pi\uf9 tempo e con pi\uf9 cura, attenti al messaggio del maestro

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

Enzo Cucchi, The Drift of the Vessel

A study on the iconography and the visual resources of one of the most neo-expressionists canvas of Enzo Cucch

Nomadismo e guerriglia: l'Igloo di Giap di Mario Merz

L'Igloo di Giap di Mario Merz è tra gli emblemi dell'impegno politico radicale e terzomondista che l'Arte Povera assunse ai suoi esordi. Questo contributo prova a fare chiarezza sulle fonti ideologiche, sui tempi di realizzazione dell'opera, lungo il complesso snodo politico 1967-1968, sulle questioni di ideologia visiva e critica implicate da quest'opera

Postmodernisme et antimodernisme dans l'historiographie de l'art italien du XX\ue8me si\ue8cle (1973-1983)

In this symposium I compare the historiographic methodologies that appeared in Italy at the beginning of the eighties with the opposite postmodernists theories sustained by critics like Benjamin Buchloch. The so-called \u201cReturn to painting\u201d in Italy, including labels like \u201cTransavanguardia\u201d, tried to rehabilitate figures usually linked with anti-avantgardism and reactionarism, like Giorgio De Chirico after his disengagement with Surrealists, or Mario Sironi, who influenced Fascist style. Italian critics associated with neo-figurative tendencies rejected as outdated any ideological judgement regarding realistic painting and its claims to a national style, particularly those derived from the historicistic interpretation adopted by Giulio Carlo Argan, the most influential contemporary art historian in Italy after 1945. The exhibitions held after 1979, like \u201cLa Pittura Metafisica\u201d or \u201cAnni Venti\u201d, proposed a new vision to re-evaluate Metafisica\u2019s role, in opposition to Futurism\u2019s supremacy based on an avanguardistic progression. This effort to revise the political reactionary engagement of figures like Sironi or De Chirico, was preceded by the ex-Communist historian Renzo De Felice\u2019s broadly reconciliatory approach toward Fascism in his lengthy biography of Mussolini. At the same time, Communist Party, leaded by Enrico Berlinguer, began a renovating political strategy to emancipate itself from totalitarian policy of U.S.S.R. This change had a correspondent approach among art critics and historians close to the Party that culminated in the \u201cBiennale del Dissenso\u201d (1977) where artists persecuted by the sovietic regime can exposed their banished works. The Revisionist tendency -and its art-historical version- deeply influenced Jean Clair, who was, during the seventies, close to italian critics like Luigi Carluccio and who organized Les R\ue9alismes (1981), the most fervent attempt to eliminate the \u201cavant-garde\u201d category in historical methodology. From the opposite side, Buchloch accused Clair of being a \u201cnew reactionary anti-modernist\u201d and promoting an approach to the arts \u201coutside the historical and political context\u201d. Buchloch\u2019s Postmodern thought aimed primarily to revise Greenberg\u2019s Modernism while, at the same time, reaffirming some of its aspects (such as the distinction between the avant-garde and kitsch) thus contradicting Clair\u2019s theory. In placing Greenberg\u2019s theory at the center of Postmodernism\u2019s change, Buchloch didn\u2019t consider the possibility of other historical legacies in different political contexts such as Italy or France