Attitudes and Actions: Arte Povera and Film

Tate Modern, 23-25 October 2015. As I write, the colourful and exuberant Pop art Exhibition at Tate Modern in London, The EY Exhibition. The World Goes Pop, is thriving and embracing the eclectic artistic and cultural expressions of protest against the mass commodification of art that took place across the globe in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Within this buzzing landscape, Tate Modern also curated a wonderful program of Italian films which were screened from 23 to 25 October 2015. This brief season was entitled “If Arte Povera was Pop: Artists’ and Experimental Cinema in Italy 1960s-70s”, which I could not miss as Arte Povera and Italian experimental films form part of my ongoing research into artists’ cinema. More specifically, it was the “If” in the exhibition title that I found particularly intriguing, suggesting as it does the cross-fertilisation of two different artistic phenomena: Pop art, with its reliance on quotation, and Arte Povera, with its aesthetic of appropriation. One needed to think about both not as opposite binaries, but as two sides of the same coin: by “stretching” the boundaries of Pop art’s conflation of mass culture tropes on one side, one could meet Arte Povera’s historical materialism in consumer culture on the other.

Études Photographiques, 2011

Arte povera is an exemplary critical phenomenon. Coined by Germano Celant in 1967, the label has enjoyed extraordinary success, attracting the attention of specialists and provoking a tremendous variety of judgments. Over the years, it has taken on a polysemic value which embodies at once an aesthetic and activist manifesto, a set of procedures, the definition of a group, and even a national trait. Germano Celant was able to use these disparate critical figures without ever solidifying his construction into a model, making it especially difficult to historicize the movement and its strategy. To understand the success of arte povera, one must analyze not so much the coherence of its discourse as the historical construction of its image. Rereading the way that German Celant incorporated photography into his critical approach in his catalogues, books, and journals helps us retrace the process by which arte povera defined and established itself within the system of contemporary art.

Magazzino Italian Art is pleased to present the fifth iteration of the annual spring lecture series which brings together some of the leading scholars of Arte Povera to present new perspectives on postwar Italian art. The 2023 Lecture Series, Arte Povera: Artistic Tradition and Transatlantic Dialogue, curated by Dr. Roberta Minnucci, Magazzino's 2022-23 Scholar-in-Residence, will address research topics which are strictly interconnected with Arte Povera's relationship with the past and its artistic exchanges with the United States.

The Burlington Magazine, 2017

Review of the exhibition "Poor Art/Arte Povera: Italian Influences, British Responses", London, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art (to Dec. 17, 2017)

2001

The catalogue features rare historical documentation and, in addition to an introduction provided by the curators of the exhibition, contains an interview with critic Germano Celant, an illustrated timeline of the cultural and political milieu by Dr. Giorgia Bottinelli, and essays by Francesco Bonami, art historian Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Robert Lumley, Professor of Italian Cultural Studies, University of London, art historian Corinna Criticos, Karen Pinkus, Professor of French and Italian, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and Judith Russi Kirshner, Dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois, Chicago. Additionally, there are profiles of each artist, a selected bibliography, and extensive illustrations of their work.

Exhibiting Italian Art in the United States from Futurism to Arte Povera: "Like a Giant Screen", Routledge, 2022

This volume explores how Italian institutions, dealers, critics, and artists constructed a modern national identity for Italy by exporting-literally and figuratively-contemporary art to the United States in key moments between 1929 and 1969. From artist Fortunato Depero opening his Futurist House in New York City to critic Germano Celant launching Arte Povera in the United States, Raffaele Bedarida examines the thick web of individuals and cultural environments beyond the two more canonical movements that shaped this project. By interrogating standard narratives of Italian Fascist propaganda on the one hand and American Cold War imperialism on the other, this book establishes a more nuanced transnational approach. The central thesis is that, beyond the immediate aims of political propaganda and conquering a new market for Italian art, these art exhibitions, publications, and the critical discourse aimed at American audiences all reflected back on their makers: they forced and helped Italians define their own modernity in relation to the world's new dominant cultural and economic power. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, social history, exhibition history, and Italian studies.

2016

Oxford Art Journal, 2012