Visual Cultures and Italian Contexts – serie

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.

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.