Sharon Hecker – författare

Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) is one of the most original and influential figures in the history of modern art, and this book is the first historically substantiated critical account of his life and work. An innovative sculptor, photographer, and draftsman, Rosso was vital in paving the way for the transition from the academic forms of sculpture that persisted in the nineteenth century to the development of new and experimental forms in the twentieth. His antimonumental, antiheroic work reflected alienation in the modern experience yet showed deep feeling for interactions between self and other. Rosso's art was transnational: he refused allegiance to a single culture or artistic heritage and declared himself both a citizen of the world and a maker of art without national limits. In this book, Sharon Hecker develops a narrative that is an alternative to the dominant Franco-centered perspective on the origin of modern sculpture in which Rodin plays the role of lone heroic innovator. Offering an original way to comprehend Rosso, A Moment's Monument negotiates the competing cultural imperatives of nationalism and internationalism that shaped the European art world at the fin de siecle.

This book takes an interdisciplinary, transnational and cross-cultural approach to reflect on, critically examine and challenge the surprisingly robust practice of making art after death in an artist's name, through the lenses of scholars from the fields of art history, economics and law, as well as practicing artists.Works of art conceived as multiples, such as sculptures, etchings, prints, photographs and conceptual art, can be—and often are—remade from original models and plans long after the artist has passed. Recent sales have suggested a growing market embrace of posthumous works, contemporaneous with questioning on the part of art history. Legal norms seem unready for this surge in posthumous production and are beset by conflict across jurisdictions. Non-Western approaches to posthumous art, from Chinese emulations of non-living artists to Native American performances, take into account rituals of generational passage at odds with contemporary, market-driven approaches.The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, the art market, art law, art management, museum studies and economics.

This book takes an interdisciplinary, transnational and cross-cultural approach to reflect on, critically examine and challenge the surprisingly robust practice of making art after death in an artist's name, through the lenses of scholars from the fields of art history, economics and law, as well as practicing artists.Works of art conceived as multiples, such as sculptures, etchings, prints, photographs and conceptual art, can be—and often are—remade from original models and plans long after the artist has passed. Recent sales have suggested a growing market embrace of posthumous works, contemporaneous with questioning on the part of art history. Legal norms seem unready for this surge in posthumous production and are beset by conflict across jurisdictions. Non-Western approaches to posthumous art, from Chinese emulations of non-living artists to Native American performances, take into account rituals of generational passage at odds with contemporary, market-driven approaches.The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, the art market, art law, art management, museum studies and economics.

Although considered an isolated event, the Italian government’s initial resistant response to COVID-19 has deep historical roots. This is the first interdisciplinary book to critically examine the ongoing phenomenon of disguising contagious disease in Italy from Unification to the present.The book explores how governments, public opinion, social entities and cultural production have avoided or sublimated contagion during cholera, typhoid, syphilis, malaria, HIV and COVID-19 to impose narratives of the nation’s healthy body in Italy and its colonies. Examples range from a tuberculosis sanatorium in Capri that masked as a luxury hotel and hideaway for queer couples to an obscure but talented professor who found a new cure for syphilis; from denial of disease in governmental actions to sublimated representations in Italian art, literature and films such as Luchino Visconti’s cinematic adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice to a sociological study of the need to include fragile figures based on the lessons of COVID-19.Intended for scholars, students and general readers interested in the history of medicine, political and cultural history, and Italian studies, this volume shows how contagious diseases clash with the official narrative of emerging modernized urban settings and challenge the desire for political and economic stability.

Although considered an isolated event, the Italian government’s initial resistant response to COVID-19 has deep historical roots. This is the first interdisciplinary book to critically examine the ongoing phenomenon of disguising contagious disease in Italy from Unification to the present.The book explores how governments, public opinion, social entities and cultural production have avoided or sublimated contagion during cholera, typhoid, syphilis, malaria, HIV and COVID-19 to impose narratives of the nation’s healthy body in Italy and its colonies. Examples range from a tuberculosis sanatorium in Capri that masked as a luxury hotel and hideaway for queer couples to an obscure but talented professor who found a new cure for syphilis; from denial of disease in governmental actions to sublimated representations in Italian art, literature and films such as Luchino Visconti’s cinematic adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice to a sociological study of the need to include fragile figures based on the lessons of COVID-19.Intended for scholars, students and general readers interested in the history of medicine, political and cultural history, and Italian studies, this volume shows how contagious diseases clash with the official narrative of emerging modernized urban settings and challenge the desire for political and economic stability.

Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art is the first edited volume to critically examine uses of lead as both material and cultural signifier in modern and contemporary art. The book analyzes the work of a diverse group of artists working in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, and takes into account the ways in which gender, race, and class can affect the cultural perception of lead.Bringing together contributions from a distinguished group of international contributors across various fields, this volume explores lead’s relevance from a number of perspectives, including art history, technical art history, art criticism, and curatorial studies. Drawing on current art historical concerns with materiality, this volume builds on recent exhibitions and scholarship that reconsider the role of materials in shaping artistic meaning, thus giving a central relevance to the object and its physicality.

On the centenary of the fascist party's ascent to power in Italy, Curating Fascism examines the ways in which exhibitions organized from the fall of Benito Mussolini's regime to the present day have shaped collective memory, historical narratives, and political discourse around the Italian ventennio. It charts how shows on fascism have evolved since the postwar period in Italy, explores representations of Italian fascism in exhibitions across the world, and highlights blindspots in art and cultural history, as well as in exhibition practices. Featuring contributions from an international group of art, architectural, design, and cultural historians, as well as journalists and curators, this book treats fascism as both a historical moment and as a major paradigm through which critics, curators, and the public at large have defined the present moment since World War II. It interweaves historical perspectives, critical theory, and direct accounts of exhibitions from the people who conceived them or responded to them most significantly in order to examine the main curatorial strategies, cultural relevance, and political responsibility of art exhibitions focusing on the Fascist period. Through close analysis, the chapter authors unpack the multifaceted specificity of art shows, including architecture and exhibition design; curatorial choices and institutional history; cultural diplomacy and political history; theories of viewership; and constructed collective memory, to evaluate current curatorial practice.In offering fresh new perspectives on the historiography, collective memory, and understanding of fascist art and culture from a contemporary standpoint, Curating Fascism sheds light on the complex exhibition history of Italian fascism not just within Italy but in such countries as the USA, the UK, Germany, and Brazil. It also presents an innovative approach to the growing field of exhibition theory by bringing contributions from curators and exhibition historians, who critically reflect upon curatorial strategies with respect to the delicate subject of fascism and fascist art, into dialogue with scholars of Italian studies and art historians. In doing so, the book addresses the physical and cultural legacy of fascism in the context of the current historical moment.

This book introduces a compelling new personality to the modernist canon, Marisa Mori (1900-1985), who became the only female contributor to The Futurist Cookbook (1932) with her recipe for “Italian Breasts in the Sun.” Providing something more complex than a traditional biographical account, Griffiths presents a feminist critique of Mori’s art, converging on issues of gender, culture, and history to offer new critical perspectives on Italian modernism.If subsequently written out of modernist memory, Mori was once at the center of the Futurism movement in Italy; yet she worked outside the major European capitals and fluctuated between traditional figurative subjects and abstract experimentation. As a result, her in-between pictures can help to re-think the margins of modernism. By situating Mori’s most significant artworks in the critical context of interwar Fascism, and highlighting her artistic contributions before, during, and after her Futurist decade, Griffiths contributes to a growing body of knowledge on the women who participated in the Italian Futurist movement. In doing so, she explores a woman artist’s struggle for modernity among the Italian Futurists in an age of Fascism.

This book introduces a compelling new personality to the modernist canon, Marisa Mori (1900-1985), who became the only female contributor to The Futurist Cookbook (1932) with her recipe for “Italian Breasts in the Sun.” Providing something more complex than a traditional biographical account, Griffiths presents a feminist critique of Mori’s art, converging on issues of gender, culture, and history to offer new critical perspectives on Italian modernism.If subsequently written out of modernist memory, Mori was once at the center of the Futurism movement in Italy; yet she worked outside the major European capitals and fluctuated between traditional figurative subjects and abstract experimentation. As a result, her in-between pictures can help to re-think the margins of modernism. By situating Mori’s most significant artworks in the critical context of interwar Fascism, and highlighting her artistic contributions before, during, and after her Futurist decade, Griffiths contributes to a growing body of knowledge on the women who participated in the Italian Futurist movement. In doing so, she explores a woman artist’s struggle for modernity among the Italian Futurists in an age of Fascism.

A much-needed corrective to the history of single authorship, this timely volume offers new insight into the lives and practices of the artist couples, friendships and communities that shaped postwar art in Italy. Bringing together a series of essays from international scholars across a variety of subject fields, the volume considers a range of longstanding intimate working relationships. Questioning the extent to which exchange formed part of artistic production, and the nature of such partnerships, the contributors explore a variety of underexplored case studies that opens to new readings of Italian art informed by key contemporary issues surrounding gender and sexuality, modern Italian identities and transcultural exchange.In covering friendships, bi-racial, trans-cultural and familial relations, the volume adds much needed perspectives to modern Italy's social and political histories, through case studies of well-known as well as overlooked figures and creative partnerships including Mario and Marisa Merz; the de Chirico brothers, William Demby and Lucia Drudi; and Antonia and Ugo Mulas. Three sections guide the reader through different working and affective dynamics: Shadowy Presences, Ins and Outs; and Alliances. The volume explores practitioners in the visual arts, as well as art critics, institutional figures, screen and theatre writers, designers, and photographers. Rather than merely a descriptive or celebratory account of couples and partnerships in postwar Italian art, Art and Intimacy in Modern Italy asks what comes into view and what is left out when thinking about art history through this relational lens.

A much-needed corrective to the history of single authorship, this timely volume offers new insight into the lives and practices of the artist couples, friendships and communities that shaped postwar art in Italy. Bringing together a series of essays from international scholars across a variety of subject fields, the volume considers a range of longstanding intimate working relationships. Questioning the extent to which exchange formed part of artistic production, and the nature of such partnerships, the contributors explore a variety of underexplored case studies that opens to new readings of Italian art informed by key contemporary issues surrounding gender and sexuality, modern Italian identities and transcultural exchange.In covering friendships, bi-racial, trans-cultural and familial relations, the volume adds much needed perspectives to modern Italy's social and political histories, through case studies of well-known as well as overlooked figures and creative partnerships including Mario and Marisa Merz; the de Chirico brothers, William Demby and Lucia Drudi; and Antonia and Ugo Mulas. Three sections guide the reader through different working and affective dynamics: Shadowy Presences, Ins and Outs; and Alliances. The volume explores practitioners in the visual arts, as well as art critics, institutional figures, screen and theatre writers, designers, and photographers. Rather than merely a descriptive or celebratory account of couples and partnerships in postwar Italian art, Art and Intimacy in Modern Italy asks what comes into view and what is left out when thinking about art history through this relational lens.

Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art is the first edited volume to critically examine uses of lead as both material and cultural signifier in modern and contemporary art. The book analyzes the work of a diverse group of artists working in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, and takes into account the ways in which gender, race, and class can affect the cultural perception of lead.Bringing together contributions from a distinguished group of international contributors across various fields, this volume explores lead’s relevance from a number of perspectives, including art history, technical art history, art criticism, and curatorial studies. Drawing on current art historical concerns with materiality, this volume builds on recent exhibitions and scholarship that reconsider the role of materials in shaping artistic meaning, thus giving a central relevance to the object and its physicality.

Drawing on unpublished archival sources, this book reconstitutes the experiences of a wide range of American artists, critics, and writers working in Rome in a charged environment of “Cold War cosmopolitanism.”After the Second World War, American artists flocked to Rome in record numbers, even as the United States shored up Italy as a bulwark against the spread of Communism. While the market for modern art in Rome was less vigorous as those in Paris and New York, numerous galleries, artist-run spaces, and other institutions acted as important catalysts, making Rome an international artistic hub. The city attracted now canonical figures Lee Bontecou, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Thek, and Cy Twombly, along with less well-known artists, such as Eugene Berman, Gene Charlton, Carlyle Brown, Peter Chinni, William Congdon, Claire Falkenstein, Marcia Hafif, John Heliker, James Leong, Beverly Pepper, and Laura Ziegler, among many others.Rather than focusing on institutions and diplomatic relationships, the book centres the experience of artists, and also addresses Rome’s gay subculture and the role of female artists during the period, eschewing traditional narratives of the male “cultural ambassador.” Through case-study based investigation, Peter Benson Miller explores the reciprocal relationships between American modernist artists and Italian artists in postwar Rome, and reveals how these artists perceived Rome as less constrained by the demands of a national school, and as an alternative to New York. This congenial creative atmosphere yielded “new pictorial forms” developed in tandem with or absorbed from like-minded Italian artists, engaging the city and its multiple layers of history, from antiquity to the profound trauma inflicted by the recent conflict.The book also establishes the entangled social networks, galleries, exhibitions, and institutions sustaining their work and providing entrée into local artistic circles. Focusing on a series of specific exchanges, this study contributes to our understanding American modernism in an international context.

Drawing on unpublished archival sources, this book reconstitutes the experiences of a wide range of American artists, critics, and writers working in Rome in a charged environment of “Cold War cosmopolitanism.”After the Second World War, American artists flocked to Rome in record numbers, even as the United States shored up Italy as a bulwark against the spread of Communism. While the market for modern art in Rome was less vigorous as those in Paris and New York, numerous galleries, artist-run spaces, and other institutions acted as important catalysts, making Rome an international artistic hub. The city attracted now canonical figures Lee Bontecou, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Thek, and Cy Twombly, along with less well-known artists, such as Eugene Berman, Gene Charlton, Carlyle Brown, Peter Chinni, William Congdon, Claire Falkenstein, Marcia Hafif, John Heliker, James Leong, Beverly Pepper, and Laura Ziegler, among many others.Rather than focusing on institutions and diplomatic relationships, the book centres the experience of artists, and also addresses Rome’s gay subculture and the role of female artists during the period, eschewing traditional narratives of the male “cultural ambassador.” Through case-study based investigation, Peter Benson Miller explores the reciprocal relationships between American modernist artists and Italian artists in postwar Rome, and reveals how these artists perceived Rome as less constrained by the demands of a national school, and as an alternative to New York. This congenial creative atmosphere yielded “new pictorial forms” developed in tandem with or absorbed from like-minded Italian artists, engaging the city and its multiple layers of history, from antiquity to the profound trauma inflicted by the recent conflict.The book also establishes the entangled social networks, galleries, exhibitions, and institutions sustaining their work and providing entrée into local artistic circles. Focusing on a series of specific exchanges, this study contributes to our understanding American modernism in an international context.

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.

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.

This book is the first critical interdisciplinary examination in English of Italian women’s contributions to intellectual, artistic, and cultural production in modern Italy.

This book is the first critical interdisciplinary examination in English of Italian women’s contributions to intellectual, artistic, and cultural production in modern Italy.