Lara Conte and Michele Dantini, eds., Narrazioni atlantiche e arti visive 1949-1972 (Milan: Mimesis, 2024)., 2024
The essay provides a historical context for Young Italians: the exhibition held in 1968 at the In... more The essay provides a historical context for Young Italians: the exhibition held in 1968 at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston and the Jewish Museum in New York.The exhibition was the first overview of trends in Italian art from the 1960s in an American museum, covering movements ranging from Nuova Figurazione to Optical Art, from Pop Art to Arte Povera. Bedarida investigates how the exhibition was influenced by the compounding factors of cultural diplomacy surrounding the mid-century economic boom, the Cold War emphasis on transatlantic exchange, and anti-imperialist initiatives emerging in the wake of the Vietnam War. After mapping the sociopolitical climate, Bedarida reflects on how the scholar and activist Eugenio Battisti conceived of the exhibition and why it came to be curated by Alan Solomon, the curator of the 1964 Venice Biennale. The essay concludes with a consideration of Young Italians’ legacy, which served both as a formative experience and a cautionary tale for Germano Celant and Kynaston McShine, two curators who shaped the art discourse on Arte Povera and Conceptual Art in this period.
Alternative Attuali. L'esperienza di Enrico Crispolti all'Aquila. 1962-1968, 2024
Ricostruzione della mostra Omaggio a Cagli all'interno della rassegna aquilana Aspetti dell'arte ... more Ricostruzione della mostra Omaggio a Cagli all'interno della rassegna aquilana Aspetti dell'arte contemporanea come momento fondante del metodo storico critico di Enrico Crispolti e strumento per superare l'idea venturiana e modernista di progressione storica.
Eredità culturale e memoria dei totalitarismi, a cura di Franca Sinopoli e Franco Baldasso, 2024
Il volume presenta le tematiche affrontate nel corso di alta formazione su Cultural Heritage and ... more Il volume presenta le tematiche affrontate nel corso di alta formazione su Cultural Heritage and Memory of Totalitarianism - Eredità culturale e memoria dei totalitarismi realizzato a partire dall’anno accademico 2020-2021 presso la Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia di Sapienza Università di Roma. La natura interdisciplinare e internazionale del corso di studi, nonché la presenza di docenti operanti in Italia e all’estero, e la scelta di produrre un volume in lingua italiana, rispetto alla dimensione anglofona del corso, rispondono principalmente alla mancanza in Italia, a differenza del contesto internazionale, di uno strumento didattico e scientifico multidisciplinare e comparatistico sulla questione dell’eredità e la postmemoria culturale dei totalitarismi europei, in primis quello italiano del così detto Ventennio. Attraverso un viaggio di rilettura critica di queste difficili eredità, il volume raccoglie i contributi delle lezioni tenute in aula su cultura visiva e sui testi letterari e storici fondamentali per la comprensione del totalitarismo. Lezioni in aula pensate e coordinate in connubio con le lezioni in situ, ovvero le visite criticamente guidate a musei, biblioteche, archivi privati, monumenti, edifici e realizzazioni architettoniche antiche e moderne. I capitoli di questo lavoro sono momenti di una ricerca non esaustiva e tuttora in progress che si prefigge però di rinnovare al presente la conoscenza critica del nostro controverso passato.
The Journal of Holocaust Research, special issue - "Exhibiting the Holocaust in the Immediate Postwar Period: Histories, Practices and Politics," edited by: Rachel Perry and Agata Pietrasik, 2023
The article discusses how anti-fascism, the Resistance, and the
Holocaust have been exhibited in ... more The article discusses how anti-fascism, the Resistance, and the Holocaust have been exhibited in Italy since the end of Mussolini’s regime. It uses the exhibition ‘Post Zang Tumb Tuuum,’ held at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2018, as a starting point to evaluate curatorial practices in the immediate postwar period. The author positions ‘Post Zang’ as a culmination of a curatorial tradition of Resistance shows, which have their roots in the mid-1940s. To this end, the author performs a close reading of the 2018 exhibition and its individual objects, casting a spotlight on the historical complexities that curator Germano Celant and his team largely elided in wall texts, the catalogue, or other interpretative materials made available to audiences. Through the interpretative framework of the 2018 Milan exhibition, the article highlights two issues: how fascism absorbed and neutralized political dissent by endorsing a relative artistic freedom; and how the Resistance became, in the immediate postwar period, a dominant narrative, which marginalized the Holocaust and promoted a redemptive interpretation of Italian victimhood, which partly absolved the Italians from both collusion with fascism and the Holocaust. This narrative blurred, absorbed and partly obfuscated testimonies and artistic narrations of the Holocaust, thereby in e!ect using the Holocaust instrumentally to the creation of anti-Nazi narratives of the Resistance.
Oral history emerged as a discipline and still is widely utilized as method to approach and proce... more Oral history emerged as a discipline and still is widely utilized as method to approach and process traumatic events. Because of its ability to share experience and build community, oral history is being widely utilized as a tool to document and respond to the Covid global pandemic, which impacted social rituals and community building moments. Inspired by artists' use of oral history for socially engaged forms of art and in light of Italy's tradition of oral history theory, the article identifies important historical precedents and methodological coordinates for an oral history of art as an understudied and underdeveloped area of research in this country.
Overview of the third issue of Italian Modern Art dedicated to the MoMA 1949 exhibition Twentieth... more Overview of the third issue of Italian Modern Art dedicated to the MoMA 1949 exhibition Twentieth-Century Italian Art, including a literature review, methodological framework, and acknowledgments.
Lara Conte and Michele Dantini, eds., Narrazioni atlantiche e arti visive 1949-1972 (Milan: Mimesis, 2024)., 2024
The essay provides a historical context for Young Italians: the exhibition held in 1968 at the In... more The essay provides a historical context for Young Italians: the exhibition held in 1968 at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston and the Jewish Museum in New York.The exhibition was the first overview of trends in Italian art from the 1960s in an American museum, covering movements ranging from Nuova Figurazione to Optical Art, from Pop Art to Arte Povera. Bedarida investigates how the exhibition was influenced by the compounding factors of cultural diplomacy surrounding the mid-century economic boom, the Cold War emphasis on transatlantic exchange, and anti-imperialist initiatives emerging in the wake of the Vietnam War. After mapping the sociopolitical climate, Bedarida reflects on how the scholar and activist Eugenio Battisti conceived of the exhibition and why it came to be curated by Alan Solomon, the curator of the 1964 Venice Biennale. The essay concludes with a consideration of Young Italians’ legacy, which served both as a formative experience and a cautionary tale for Germano Celant and Kynaston McShine, two curators who shaped the art discourse on Arte Povera and Conceptual Art in this period.
Alternative Attuali. L'esperienza di Enrico Crispolti all'Aquila. 1962-1968, 2024
Ricostruzione della mostra Omaggio a Cagli all'interno della rassegna aquilana Aspetti dell'arte ... more Ricostruzione della mostra Omaggio a Cagli all'interno della rassegna aquilana Aspetti dell'arte contemporanea come momento fondante del metodo storico critico di Enrico Crispolti e strumento per superare l'idea venturiana e modernista di progressione storica.
Eredità culturale e memoria dei totalitarismi, a cura di Franca Sinopoli e Franco Baldasso, 2024
Il volume presenta le tematiche affrontate nel corso di alta formazione su Cultural Heritage and ... more Il volume presenta le tematiche affrontate nel corso di alta formazione su Cultural Heritage and Memory of Totalitarianism - Eredità culturale e memoria dei totalitarismi realizzato a partire dall’anno accademico 2020-2021 presso la Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia di Sapienza Università di Roma. La natura interdisciplinare e internazionale del corso di studi, nonché la presenza di docenti operanti in Italia e all’estero, e la scelta di produrre un volume in lingua italiana, rispetto alla dimensione anglofona del corso, rispondono principalmente alla mancanza in Italia, a differenza del contesto internazionale, di uno strumento didattico e scientifico multidisciplinare e comparatistico sulla questione dell’eredità e la postmemoria culturale dei totalitarismi europei, in primis quello italiano del così detto Ventennio. Attraverso un viaggio di rilettura critica di queste difficili eredità, il volume raccoglie i contributi delle lezioni tenute in aula su cultura visiva e sui testi letterari e storici fondamentali per la comprensione del totalitarismo. Lezioni in aula pensate e coordinate in connubio con le lezioni in situ, ovvero le visite criticamente guidate a musei, biblioteche, archivi privati, monumenti, edifici e realizzazioni architettoniche antiche e moderne. I capitoli di questo lavoro sono momenti di una ricerca non esaustiva e tuttora in progress che si prefigge però di rinnovare al presente la conoscenza critica del nostro controverso passato.
The Journal of Holocaust Research, special issue - "Exhibiting the Holocaust in the Immediate Postwar Period: Histories, Practices and Politics," edited by: Rachel Perry and Agata Pietrasik, 2023
The article discusses how anti-fascism, the Resistance, and the
Holocaust have been exhibited in ... more The article discusses how anti-fascism, the Resistance, and the Holocaust have been exhibited in Italy since the end of Mussolini’s regime. It uses the exhibition ‘Post Zang Tumb Tuuum,’ held at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2018, as a starting point to evaluate curatorial practices in the immediate postwar period. The author positions ‘Post Zang’ as a culmination of a curatorial tradition of Resistance shows, which have their roots in the mid-1940s. To this end, the author performs a close reading of the 2018 exhibition and its individual objects, casting a spotlight on the historical complexities that curator Germano Celant and his team largely elided in wall texts, the catalogue, or other interpretative materials made available to audiences. Through the interpretative framework of the 2018 Milan exhibition, the article highlights two issues: how fascism absorbed and neutralized political dissent by endorsing a relative artistic freedom; and how the Resistance became, in the immediate postwar period, a dominant narrative, which marginalized the Holocaust and promoted a redemptive interpretation of Italian victimhood, which partly absolved the Italians from both collusion with fascism and the Holocaust. This narrative blurred, absorbed and partly obfuscated testimonies and artistic narrations of the Holocaust, thereby in e!ect using the Holocaust instrumentally to the creation of anti-Nazi narratives of the Resistance.
Oral history emerged as a discipline and still is widely utilized as method to approach and proce... more Oral history emerged as a discipline and still is widely utilized as method to approach and process traumatic events. Because of its ability to share experience and build community, oral history is being widely utilized as a tool to document and respond to the Covid global pandemic, which impacted social rituals and community building moments. Inspired by artists' use of oral history for socially engaged forms of art and in light of Italy's tradition of oral history theory, the article identifies important historical precedents and methodological coordinates for an oral history of art as an understudied and underdeveloped area of research in this country.
Overview of the third issue of Italian Modern Art dedicated to the MoMA 1949 exhibition Twentieth... more Overview of the third issue of Italian Modern Art dedicated to the MoMA 1949 exhibition Twentieth-Century Italian Art, including a literature review, methodological framework, and acknowledgments.
In the 1930s the young Italian artist, Corrado Cagli was a rising star of the Scuola Romana, supp... more In the 1930s the young Italian artist, Corrado Cagli was a rising star of the Scuola Romana, supported by the Fascist regime despite being both Jewish and a homosexual. Following the Racial Laws, he fled first to Paris, and then to the USA, where he remained until 1947. Raffaele Bedarida’s new book, Corrado Cagli – La pittura, l’esilio, l’America (1938-1947) Donzelli Editore, 2018 (soon to be translated into English by CPL Editions), focuses on Cagli’s American exile.
While examining Cagli in the context of the artistic and intellectual migration from Europe to the US, Bedarida provides valuable new insight into the specific plight of this Italian Jewish artist, once championed by Fascism and into the complexities of the use of art for cultural diplomacy.
The author combines biography, cultural history, and critical analysis in exploring a decisive period in the life and work of a painter whose complex personality and non-signature style, defy classifications. The book also provides thought-provoking and nuanced arguments on the ideologically based ostracism that Cagli encountered upon returning to Italy in the immediate aftermath of the war. Because of his past as a former regime-endorsed artist, his recent American success, his participation in the liberation of Europe from Nazi-Fascism with the American army, and Jewish exile, Cagli simply did not fit into any of the faction of Italy’s post-war heated cultural disputes.
Based on extensive original research and written with brio, Bedarida’s book is an essential contribution to the growing field of transnational modernism studies.
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... more 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.
Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today, Bloomsbury, 2022
On the centenary of the fascist party in Italy's ascent to power, Curating Fascism examines the w... more On the centenary of the fascist party in Italy's ascent to power, 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, and 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 through 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, to address the physical and cultural legacy of fascism in the context of the current historical moment.
Table of Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Rethinking Historical Exhibitions in Italy
1. Exhibiting Art of the Fascist Ventennio: Curatorial Choices, Installation Strategies, and Critical Reception from Arte Moderna in Italia 1915–1935 (Florence, 1967) to Annitrenta (Milan, 1982), Luca Quattrocchi, University of Siena, Italy
2. Pluralism as Revisionism: Annitrenta at Palazzo Reale, Milan, 1982, Denis Viva, the University of Trento, Italy
3. Interview with Renato Barilli, Curator of Annitrenta Exhibition at Palazzo Reale (Milan, 1982), Raffaele Bedarida, Cooper Union, New York, USA
4. Art, Life, Politics, and the Seductiveness of Italian Fascism: Post Zang Tumb Tuuum at Fondazione Prada (Milan, 2018), Sharon Hecker and Raffaele Bedarida, Art historian and Curator, Italy; Cooper Union, New York, USA
5. Italy's Holocaust on Display: From Carpi-Fossoli to Auschwitz (to Florence), Robert S. C. Gordon, Cambridge University, UK
6. Umbertino Umbertino: The Many Masks of Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Romy Golan, the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA
Part Two: Exhibitions of Fascism Around the World
7. Exhibiting and Collecting the F-word in Britain, Rosalind McKever, Curator, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
8. Novecento Brasiliano: Margherita Sarfatti, Ciccillo Matarazzo, and the Italian Collection of MAC USP, Ana Gonçalves Magalhães, University of São Paulo (MAC USP), Brazil
9. Contextualizing Razionalismo in the exhibition Photographic Recall (2019): Fascist Spaces in Contemporary German Photography, Miriam Paeslack, University at Buffalo (SUNY), New York, USA
10. Feeling at Home: Exhibiting Design, Blurring Fascism, Elena Dellapiana and Jonathan Mekinda, the Politecnico di Torino, Italy; University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), USA
11. Italian Jewish Artists and Fascist Cultural Politics: on Gardens and Ghettos at the Jewish Museum in New York (1989), Emily Braun, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA, interviewed by Raffaele Bedarida and Sharon Hecker
Part Three: Absences
12. Exhibiting the Homoerotic Body, the Queer Afterlife of Ventennio Male Nudes, John Champagne Penn State Erie, the Behrend College, USA
13. “Partigiano Portami Via”: Exhibiting Antifascism and the Resistance in Post-Fascist Italy, Raffaele Bedarida, Cooper Union, New York, USA
14. Looking at Women and Mental Illness in Fascist Italy: An Exhibition's Dialogical and Feminist Approach, Lucia Re, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
15. Silencing the Colonial Past: The 1993 Exhibition Architettura italiana d'oltremare 1870-1940 in Bologna, Nicola Labanca, University of Siena, Italy
16. Recharting Landscapes in the Exhibition Roma Negata: Postcolonial Routes of the City (2014) and the Digital Project Postcolonial Italy: Mapping Colonial Heritage, Shelleen Greene University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Part Four: Curatorial Practices
17. From MRF to Post Zang Tumb Tuuum: The Responsibilities of the Re-hang, Vanessa Rocco, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, USA
18. The Final Ramp: Addressing Fascism in Italian Futurism at the Guggenheim Museum, Vivien Greene and Susan Thompson, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, USA; Curator and Writer, Brooklyn, USA
19. The Making of MART and the Archivio del Novecento: Interview with Gabriella Belli, Director of the Foundation from the Municipal Museums of Venice
20. Now You See It, Now You Don't: Reconstructing Artists' Studios in Exhibitions on Fascist-Era Art, Sharon Hecker, Art Historian and Curator, Italy
21. Interview with Maaza Mengiste on Project 3541: A Photographic Archive of the 1935-41 Italo-Ethiopian War, Raffaele Bedarida and Sharon Hecker, Art historian and Curator, Italy; Cooper Union, New York, USA
Enrico Crispolti Luca Maria Patella: Hanno caldo al cubo / They Are Hot in Their Cube, Quodlibet, 2021
IT. Attraverso una serie di conversazioni inedite tra Enrico Crispolti e Luca Maria Patella, il v... more IT. Attraverso una serie di conversazioni inedite tra Enrico Crispolti e Luca Maria Patella, il volume ripercorre l’intera ricerca dell’artista dagli esordi alla fine degli anni Cinquanta del Novecento fino al 2000, anno in cui è avvenuto questo dialogo. Illustrato da cinquantaquattro immagini, annotato e introdotto storiograficamente da Raffaele Bedarida e Antonio Petrone, il libro è uno strumento fondamentale per approfondire il lavoro di Patella e per uno sguardo non ortodosso sui molti ambienti artistici in cui è intervenuto liberamente e senza lasciarsi incasellare: dal cinema d’artista all’arte concettuale, dall’arte povera all’installazione, dalla poesia visiva al libro d’artista. Si tratta di idee complesse e di un percorso non lineare, presentati con il linguaggio diretto e informale di una chiacchierata. Il volume contiene la trascrizione delle conversazioni, un apparato iconografico e un QR code mediante cui accedere alle registrazioni audio originali.
EN. In a series of never before published conversations between Enrico Crispolti and Luca Maria Patella, the book traces the artist’s work from the beginnings in the late 1950s to 2000, the year when these conversations took place. Illustrated by fifty-four images, annotated and introduced historiographically by Raffaele Bedarida and Antonio Petrone, this book is an important tool with which to delve into Patella’s world and take an unorthodox look at many of the artistic milieus in which he acted freely, without ever being rigidly classified: from artist’s cinema to Conceptual art, from Arte Povera to the installation, from visual poetry to artist’s books. Complex ideas and a trajectory that are never linear, presented in the direct and informal language of a chat. In addition to the text and the images, the book contains a QR code to access the original audio recordings.
Enrico Crispolti Gianfranco Baruchello: I pittori non sono farfalle / Painters Ain't Butterflies, Quodlibet, 2021
IT. Attraverso una serie di conversazioni inedite tra Enrico Crispolti e Gianfranco Baruchello, i... more IT. Attraverso una serie di conversazioni inedite tra Enrico Crispolti e Gianfranco Baruchello, il volume ripercorre la ricerca dell’artista dagli esordi alla fine degli anni Cinquanta del Novecento fino al 2004, anno in cui è avvenuto questo dialogo. Illustrato da quarantuno immagini, annotato e introdotto storiograficamente da Raffaele Bedarida, il libro è uno strumento fondamentale per approfondire il lavoro di Baruchello e i molti ambienti artistici in cui è intervenuto liberamente e senza aderire a fazioni o movimenti, tra Roma, Parigi e New York: dall’assemblage neo-dada al cinema d’artista, dalla pittura al video, dalle azioni a iniziative prolungate nel tempo tra arte e vita, tra estetica e politica (ad esempio un’azienda agricola pienamente funzionante). Si tratta di idee complesse e di un percorso non lineare, presentati con il linguaggio diretto e informale di una chiacchierata. Il volume contiene la trascrizione delle conversazioni, un apparato iconografico e un QR code mediante cui accedere alle registrazioni audio originali.
EN. In a series of never before published conversations between Enrico Crispolti and Gianfranco Baruchello, this book traces the artist’s work from the beginnings in the late 1950s to 2004, the year when these conversations took place. Illustrated by forty-one images, annotated and introduced historiographically by Raffaele Bedarida, the book is an important tool with which to delve into Baruchello’s work and the many artistic milieus in which he acted freely, without ever joining individual factions or movements, between Rome, Paris, and New York: from Neo-Dada assemblage to artist’s cinema, from painting to video, from actions to long-term initiatives, between art and life, aesthetics and politics (for instance, a fully functioning farm). Complex ideas and a trajectory that are never linear, presented in the direct and informal language of a chat. In addition to the text and the images, the book contains a QR code to access the original audio recordings.
This volume documents the film Roots, a visionary 3-D animation by Italian artist Mariagrazia Pot... more This volume documents the film Roots, a visionary 3-D animation by Italian artist Mariagrazia Potorno (born 1978) in which the skyscrapers of Manhattan, as visible from Central Park, and some of the park's vegetation, are uprooted from the earth and lift off in flight.
Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today, edited by Sharon He... more Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today, edited by Sharon Hecker and Raffaele Bedarida, London: Bloomsbury, 2023, 292 pp., 100 b. and w. illus., paperback, $37.95.
Exhibiting Italian Art in the United States from Futurism to Arte Povera: ‘Like a Giant Screen’, by Raffaele Bedarida, London: Routledge, 2022, 244 pp., 55 b. and w. illus., hardback, £130.
What is the relationship between the exhibition and institutional power? How does politics enter and shape modes of display? Which is the role of visual arts in cultural diplomacy? Through rigorous scholarship and extensive research, Curating Fascism and Exhibiting Italian Art provide far-reaching answers to these critical questions. Focusing on the Italian context in the twentieth century, both books uncover how exhibitions served different political agendas, tackling fascist modalities of display and the regime’s propagandist use of art. Despite sharing a common field of enquiry, their aims and perspectives, as well as their contributions to art history, differ in several respects.
Simone Marsi
La memoria del fascismo in Italia. Linee di ricerca
di uno studio in espansione
The... more Simone Marsi La memoria del fascismo in Italia. Linee di ricerca di uno studio in espansione
The memory of fascism in Italy is a topic that receives considerable attention, both in political and cultural debates and within academic research. In recent years, numerous volumes have been published which, approaching the subject from different perspectives, investigate the persistence of fascist memory by studying cultural products. Two books, The Italian Literature of the Axis War by Guido Bartolini, and Against Redemption by Franco Baldasso, analyze the complicated formation of fascist memory using literary texts as main sources. Two other volumes, I luoghi del fascismo edited by Giulia Albanese and Lucia Ceci, and Curating Fascism edited by Sharon Hecker and Raffaele Bedarida, consider memory from the viewpoint of public spaces and art exhibitions. These four volumes provide a deeper exploration of the influence of fascism in republican Italy (from the early years of the republic to the present day) and the role of literature, architecture, and art in shaping the collective memory of a community. These four books, moreover, offer the opportunity to discuss the investigative methods and theoretical frameworks inherent the study of fascist memory, and, more broadly, the study of memory using literary and artistic products as sources.
28 ottobre 2024, alle 18:00
Università di Pavia, Fondazione Ghislieri
Parte della serie "I... more 28 ottobre 2024, alle 18:00
Università di Pavia, Fondazione Ghislieri
Parte della serie "I lunedì della storia" - Collegio Ghislieri, Pavia
Curating Fascism. Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today (Bloomsbury, 2022), a cura di SHARON HACKER e RAFFAELE BEDARIDA. Ne discute con i curatori FRANCESCO TORCHIANI, Università di Pavia
Attraverso le quattro opere di Cagli in mostra, si discuterà il percorso dell'artista dal fascism... more Attraverso le quattro opere di Cagli in mostra, si discuterà il percorso dell'artista dal fascismo al dopoguerra come caso studio per una storia culturale degli ebrei italiani, tra individualità, divisioni ed esperienze condivise, tra assimilazione al contesto nazionale e specificità comunitaria.
I MERCOLEDÌ DI S. CRISTINA - INCONTRI CON L'ARTE, 2024
Coordina: Pasquale Fameli e Francesco Spampinato
L'esportazione dell'arte contemporanea italia... more Coordina: Pasquale Fameli e Francesco Spampinato
L'esportazione dell'arte contemporanea italiana negli Stati Uniti tra anni trenta e settanta del novecento ha svolto un ruolo molteplice e spesso ambiguo. Se, gli obiettivi evidenti erano la conquista di un mercato dell'arte in crescita e la diplomazia culturale nei confronti di un interlocutore sempre più influente, l'impulso più profondo anche se spesso contraddittorio era quello di rivalsa nei confronti dell'egemonia dell'arte contemporanea francese, prima, e statunitense, poi; ma era anche una ricerca di legittimazione nel luogo simbolo della modernità. Tra Ventennio e Guerra fredda, negli anni in cui gli USA emersero come potere economico, politico e culturale dominante, esporre l'arte italiana contemporanea negli Stati Uniti fu uno sforzo proiettivo attraverso cui gli italiani periodicamente ridefinirono la propria modernità rispetto allo sguardo, in parte reale ma soprattutto immaginato, dell'America.
The Cooper Union and the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) host a screening and discussion aro... more The Cooper Union and the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) host a screening and discussion around five short documentaries developed by CIMA that showcase the variety of approaches that contemporary artists embrace in order to address pressing questions related to identity, social issues, history, and the active role of art in public discourse. The first documentary presents the exhibition on Italian artist Corrado Cagli (1910–1976), curated by Cooper Union Professor of Art History Raffaele Bedarida, which served as the background for a project with contemporary artists Leslie Hewitt, Kambui Olujimi, Sheila Pepe, Juan Sanchez, and Bea Scaccia; it was developed with a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The following four shorts feature interviews with each of the artists recorded in their respective studios over the course of Fall 2023 about their practice and various questions related to art, society, and community. Each screening will be accompanied by conversation among the artists and art historians Raffaele Bedarida and Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva.
Migrações nas Artes Visuais – Trocas entre a Itália e as Américas, 2024
In the decade preceding Word War II, the Italian government as well as artists, critics, and gall... more In the decade preceding Word War II, the Italian government as well as artists, critics, and gallerists exhibited contemporary art in the US as a tool to promote an Italian way to modernity, alternative to the dominant School of Paris. If the propaganda goal was to counter the negative reception of Mussolini's aggressive colonial effort, the deeper, unspoken ambition was to conquer metaphorically an idealized "America" which had symbolized modernity for generations of Italian migrants.
In the postwar period, as the US increasingly affirmed its economic, political, and cultural hegemony over Italy, the exportation of contemporary Italian art to the US became a tool to rehabilitate the country after the fall of Fascism. By projecting their own modernity across the Atlantic, Italians measured the alleged rebirth of Italian culture against the new dominant model, but also processed the ongoing Americanization of Italian society.
Join us for a conversation on George Balanchine and his collaboration with Corrado Cagli, the sub... more Join us for a conversation on George Balanchine and his collaboration with Corrado Cagli, the subject of CIMA’s current exhibition. In the years after the Second World War, Cagli settled temporarily in New York City, where he engaged with the local cultural milieu. His acquaintance with George Balanchine, the co- founder of the Ballet Society (today’s New York City Ballet), blossomed into an artistic collaboration and into the staging of The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, performed in New York in 1948, for which Cagli designed distinct costumes and the stage set.
An expert on George Balanchine and author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated biography Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022), Jennifer Homans will examine his activities in those early postwar years, while Raffaele Bedarida will illustrate the complexity of the costumes and of the set designed by Cagli for The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne. Together they will delve in the historical and political coordinates behind the project, the role of Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder with Balanchine of the Ballet Society, and the importance of performance art at MoMA.
Giorno della Memoria, Consolato Generale d'Italia, New York, 2024
First performance of the full score by Vittorio Rieti since 1948 by Cantori and lecture by Raffae... more First performance of the full score by Vittorio Rieti since 1948 by Cantori and lecture by Raffaele Bedarida on Cagli's role in the project in collaboration with George Balanchine, Vittorio Rieti and Lincoln Kirstein. Video of the full program available at: https://youtu.be/W0ZTJoCHdnQ?si=bKjg_VtddIlR5w8d
Event organized by NYU's Casa Italiana Zerrilli Marimò, The Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), Centro Primo Levi, and Consolato generale d'Italia in New York. Hosted by the New York Public Library for Performing Arts, part of the program for Giorno della Memoria. January 28, 2024.
SCUOLA DI SPECIALIZZAZIONE IN BENI STORICO ARTISTICI
Direttrice Prof. ssa Carla Subrizi
Conferen... more SCUOLA DI SPECIALIZZAZIONE IN BENI STORICO ARTISTICI Direttrice Prof. ssa Carla Subrizi
Conferenze di Raffaele Bedarida Associate Professor of Art History, The Cooper Union, New York Visiting Professor Sapienza maggio-luglio 2023
SCAVARE L’ARCHIVIO, ESPORRE L’ARCHIVIO 12 giugno 2023, ore 9-11_Aula Carlotta Nobile Studiare ed esporre l’esilio di Corrado Cagli 19 giugno 2023, ore 9-11_Aula Carlotta Nobile Documentare e rappresentare l’antifascismo in Italia nel dopoguerra e oggi
26 giugno 2023, ore 9-11_Aula Multimediale L’arte italiana al MoMA
Le Conferenze di Raffaele Bedarida sono parte del Programma di Tirocinio della Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Storico Artistici
on line: meet.google.com/nkq-pjzo-ize
Abstract: Se l’archivio è uno strumento di studio fondamentale per il lavoro di ricostruzione e indagine del passato, anche recente, allo stesso modo è il risultato del momento storico, delle circostanze, e delle ideologie che lo hanno prodotto: come individuare tutto questo e far parlare anche i silenzi, le reticenze e le censure? Come riconoscere i limiti e le manipolazioni dell’archivio quando lo si espone al pubblico? Le lezioni affrontano tre casi studio: un artista, Corrado Cagli, parte attiva della propaganda fascista, ma anche censurato in quanto ebreo e apertamente gay; una mostra Post Zang Tumb Tuuum del 2018, che si proponeva come espressione di una “storia reale e contestuale” rievocando il passato fascista attraverso l’uso massiccio di opere d’arte e materiali d’archivio; lo sforzo proiettivo, fatto collettivamente da artisti, critici, galleristi e politici italiani, per mostrare il volto moderno dell’Italia negli Stati Uniti attraverso una serie di mostre tra gli anni Venti e Sessanta.
Arte Povera: Artistic Tradition and Transatlantic Dialogue, 2023
Magazzino Italian Art is pleased to present the fifth iteration of the annual spring lecture seri... more 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.
EPCAF: New Research in European Postwar and Contemporary Art Lecture Series, 2022
This is a series of online talks organized by the European Postwar and Contemporary Art Forum (EP... more This is a series of online talks organized by the European Postwar and Contemporary Art Forum (EPCAF) for books on postwar and contemporary art in Europe that have been published in the past several years. It was conceived as a response to the dampening effect that COVID has had on opportunities for authors to publicly present their new research.
Conference: Italy at Work: the Italian Lifestyle on Display, 2022
Fontana, uno degli artisti simbolo della rinascita italiana dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale, ha p... more Fontana, uno degli artisti simbolo della rinascita italiana dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale, ha partecipato alle principali mostre di arte italiana organizzate negli Stati Uniti a cavallo tra anni Quaranta e Cinquanta, Handicraft as Fine Art in Italy (1947), Twentieth Century Italian Art (1949) e Italy at Work(1951-53). In tutti e tre i casi presentava opere in ceramica. Il mio studio colloca questa scelta nella retorica della Ricostruzione in Italia, che vede nella ceramica il lavoro povero e dignitoso di un'Italia laboriosa impegnata umilmente a tirarsi su con le proprie forze e la propria creatività. Si tratta di una retorica centrale in Italy at Work - a partire dalla copertina illustrata dall'artista Corrado Cagli con l'immagine di un ceramista al tornio - anche con l'intento di distanziare la nuova rinascita italiana dal recente passato fascista. Il caso di Fontana tuttavia rivela inquitanti linee di continuità proprio con quel passato. Se infatti le ceramiche fontaniane degli anni Trenta venivano rilette nel dopoguerra in chiave antiretorica e addirittura antifascista, in realtà rientravano pienamente nel discorso fascista di un artigianato radicato nelle tradizioni locali e letteralmente legato alla terra.
ITA/ENG.: Nell’ambito del progetto PRIN 2017 «Transatlantic Transfers: the Italian presence in po... more ITA/ENG.: Nell’ambito del progetto PRIN 2017 «Transatlantic Transfers: the Italian presence in post-war America (TT)», saranno dedicate tre giornate di studio alle arti visive, alla critica e alla storia delle esposizioni, con focus imperniati su temi, questioni, ideologie connessi alla ricezione e circolazione delle neoavanguardie italiane negli Stati Uniti, nel periodo che va dall’affermazione del monocromo all’arte concettuale.
As a part of 2017 PRIN «Transatlantic Transfers: the Italian presence in post-war America (TT project)», three days of study will be dedicated to visual arts, art criticism and history of exhibitions with main focuses on topics, issues and ideologies connected to the reception/circulation of Italian neo-avant-gardes in the United States between “monochrome painting” and Conceptual Art.
Uploads
Papers by Raffaele Bedarida
Holocaust have been exhibited in Italy since the end of
Mussolini’s regime. It uses the exhibition ‘Post Zang Tumb
Tuuum,’ held at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2018, as a
starting point to evaluate curatorial practices in the immediate
postwar period. The author positions ‘Post Zang’ as a culmination
of a curatorial tradition of Resistance shows, which have their
roots in the mid-1940s. To this end, the author performs a close
reading of the 2018 exhibition and its individual objects, casting
a spotlight on the historical complexities that curator Germano
Celant and his team largely elided in wall texts, the catalogue, or
other interpretative materials made available to audiences.
Through the interpretative framework of the 2018 Milan
exhibition, the article highlights two issues: how fascism
absorbed and neutralized political dissent by endorsing a relative
artistic freedom; and how the Resistance became, in the
immediate postwar period, a dominant narrative, which
marginalized the Holocaust and promoted a redemptive
interpretation of Italian victimhood, which partly absolved the
Italians from both collusion with fascism and the Holocaust. This
narrative blurred, absorbed and partly obfuscated testimonies
and artistic narrations of the Holocaust, thereby in e!ect using
the Holocaust instrumentally to the creation of anti-Nazi
narratives of the Resistance.
Holocaust have been exhibited in Italy since the end of
Mussolini’s regime. It uses the exhibition ‘Post Zang Tumb
Tuuum,’ held at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2018, as a
starting point to evaluate curatorial practices in the immediate
postwar period. The author positions ‘Post Zang’ as a culmination
of a curatorial tradition of Resistance shows, which have their
roots in the mid-1940s. To this end, the author performs a close
reading of the 2018 exhibition and its individual objects, casting
a spotlight on the historical complexities that curator Germano
Celant and his team largely elided in wall texts, the catalogue, or
other interpretative materials made available to audiences.
Through the interpretative framework of the 2018 Milan
exhibition, the article highlights two issues: how fascism
absorbed and neutralized political dissent by endorsing a relative
artistic freedom; and how the Resistance became, in the
immediate postwar period, a dominant narrative, which
marginalized the Holocaust and promoted a redemptive
interpretation of Italian victimhood, which partly absolved the
Italians from both collusion with fascism and the Holocaust. This
narrative blurred, absorbed and partly obfuscated testimonies
and artistic narrations of the Holocaust, thereby in e!ect using
the Holocaust instrumentally to the creation of anti-Nazi
narratives of the Resistance.
While examining Cagli in the context of the artistic and intellectual migration from Europe to the US, Bedarida provides valuable new insight into the specific plight of this Italian Jewish artist, once championed by Fascism and into the complexities of the use of art for cultural diplomacy.
The author combines biography, cultural history, and critical analysis in exploring a decisive period in the life and work of a painter whose complex personality and non-signature style, defy classifications. The book also provides thought-provoking and nuanced arguments on the ideologically based ostracism that Cagli encountered upon returning to Italy in the immediate aftermath of the war. Because of his past as a former regime-endorsed artist, his recent American success, his participation in the liberation of Europe from Nazi-Fascism with the American army, and Jewish exile, Cagli simply did not fit into any of the faction of Italy’s post-war heated cultural disputes.
Based on extensive original research and
written with brio, Bedarida’s book is an
essential contribution to the growing
field of transnational modernism studies.
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, and 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 through 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, to address the physical and cultural legacy of fascism in the context of the current historical moment.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Rethinking Historical Exhibitions in Italy
1. Exhibiting Art of the Fascist Ventennio: Curatorial Choices, Installation Strategies, and Critical Reception from Arte Moderna in Italia 1915–1935 (Florence, 1967) to Annitrenta (Milan, 1982), Luca Quattrocchi, University of Siena, Italy
2. Pluralism as Revisionism: Annitrenta at Palazzo Reale, Milan, 1982, Denis Viva, the University of Trento, Italy
3. Interview with Renato Barilli, Curator of Annitrenta Exhibition at Palazzo Reale (Milan, 1982), Raffaele Bedarida, Cooper Union, New York, USA
4. Art, Life, Politics, and the Seductiveness of Italian Fascism: Post Zang Tumb Tuuum at Fondazione Prada (Milan, 2018), Sharon Hecker and Raffaele Bedarida, Art historian and Curator, Italy; Cooper Union, New York, USA
5. Italy's Holocaust on Display: From Carpi-Fossoli to Auschwitz (to Florence), Robert S. C. Gordon, Cambridge University, UK
6. Umbertino Umbertino: The Many Masks of Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Romy Golan, the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA
Part Two: Exhibitions of Fascism Around the World
7. Exhibiting and Collecting the F-word in Britain, Rosalind McKever, Curator, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
8. Novecento Brasiliano: Margherita Sarfatti, Ciccillo Matarazzo, and the Italian Collection of MAC USP, Ana Gonçalves Magalhães, University of São Paulo (MAC USP), Brazil
9. Contextualizing Razionalismo in the exhibition Photographic Recall (2019): Fascist Spaces in Contemporary German Photography, Miriam Paeslack, University at Buffalo (SUNY), New York, USA
10. Feeling at Home: Exhibiting Design, Blurring Fascism, Elena Dellapiana and Jonathan Mekinda, the Politecnico di Torino, Italy; University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), USA
11. Italian Jewish Artists and Fascist Cultural Politics: on Gardens and Ghettos at the Jewish Museum in New York (1989), Emily Braun, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA, interviewed by Raffaele Bedarida and Sharon Hecker
Part Three: Absences
12. Exhibiting the Homoerotic Body, the Queer Afterlife of Ventennio Male Nudes, John Champagne Penn State Erie, the Behrend College, USA
13. “Partigiano Portami Via”: Exhibiting Antifascism and the Resistance in Post-Fascist Italy, Raffaele Bedarida, Cooper Union, New York, USA
14. Looking at Women and Mental Illness in Fascist Italy: An Exhibition's Dialogical and Feminist Approach, Lucia Re, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
15. Silencing the Colonial Past: The 1993 Exhibition Architettura italiana d'oltremare 1870-1940 in Bologna, Nicola Labanca, University of Siena, Italy
16. Recharting Landscapes in the Exhibition Roma Negata: Postcolonial Routes of the City (2014) and the Digital Project Postcolonial Italy: Mapping Colonial Heritage, Shelleen Greene University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Part Four: Curatorial Practices
17. From MRF to Post Zang Tumb Tuuum: The Responsibilities of the Re-hang, Vanessa Rocco, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, USA
18. The Final Ramp: Addressing Fascism in Italian Futurism at the Guggenheim Museum, Vivien Greene and Susan Thompson, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, USA; Curator and Writer, Brooklyn, USA
19. The Making of MART and the Archivio del Novecento: Interview with Gabriella Belli, Director of the Foundation from the Municipal Museums of Venice
20. Now You See It, Now You Don't: Reconstructing Artists' Studios in Exhibitions on Fascist-Era Art, Sharon Hecker, Art Historian and Curator, Italy
21. Interview with Maaza Mengiste on Project 3541: A Photographic Archive of the 1935-41 Italo-Ethiopian War, Raffaele Bedarida and Sharon Hecker, Art historian and Curator, Italy; Cooper Union, New York, USA
Il volume contiene la trascrizione delle conversazioni, un apparato iconografico e un QR code mediante cui accedere alle registrazioni audio originali.
EN. In a series of never before published conversations between Enrico Crispolti and Luca Maria Patella, the book traces the artist’s work from the beginnings in the late 1950s to 2000, the year when these conversations took place. Illustrated by fifty-four images, annotated and introduced historiographically by Raffaele Bedarida and Antonio Petrone, this book is an important tool with which to delve into Patella’s world and take an unorthodox look at many of the artistic milieus in which he acted freely, without ever being rigidly classified: from artist’s cinema to Conceptual art, from Arte Povera to the installation, from visual poetry to artist’s books. Complex ideas and a trajectory that are never linear, presented in the direct and informal language of a chat.
In addition to the text and the images, the book contains a QR code to access the original audio recordings.
Il volume contiene la trascrizione delle conversazioni, un apparato iconografico e un QR code mediante cui accedere alle registrazioni audio originali.
EN. In a series of never before published conversations between Enrico Crispolti and Gianfranco Baruchello, this book traces the artist’s work from the beginnings in the late 1950s to 2004, the year when these conversations took place. Illustrated by forty-one images, annotated and introduced historiographically by Raffaele Bedarida, the book is an important tool with which to delve into Baruchello’s work and the many artistic milieus in which he acted freely, without ever joining individual factions or movements, between Rome, Paris, and New York: from Neo-Dada assemblage to artist’s cinema, from painting to video, from actions to long-term initiatives, between art and life, aesthetics and politics (for instance, a fully functioning farm). Complex ideas and a trajectory that are never linear, presented in the direct and informal language of a chat.
In addition to the text and the images, the book contains a QR code to access the original audio recordings.
Exhibiting Italian Art in the United States from Futurism to Arte Povera: ‘Like a Giant Screen’, by Raffaele Bedarida, London: Routledge, 2022, 244 pp., 55 b. and w. illus., hardback, £130.
What is the relationship between the exhibition and institutional power? How does politics enter and shape modes of display? Which is the role of visual arts in cultural diplomacy? Through rigorous scholarship and extensive research, Curating Fascism and Exhibiting Italian Art provide far-reaching answers to these critical questions. Focusing on the Italian context in the twentieth century, both books uncover how exhibitions served different political agendas, tackling fascist modalities of display and the regime’s propagandist use of art. Despite sharing a common field of enquiry, their aims and perspectives, as well as their contributions to art history, differ in several respects.
La memoria del fascismo in Italia. Linee di ricerca
di uno studio in espansione
The memory of fascism in Italy is a topic that receives considerable attention, both in political and cultural debates and within academic research. In recent years, numerous volumes have been published which, approaching the subject from different perspectives, investigate the persistence of fascist memory by studying cultural products. Two books, The Italian Literature of the Axis War by Guido Bartolini, and Against Redemption by Franco Baldasso, analyze the complicated formation of fascist memory using literary texts as main sources. Two other volumes, I luoghi del fascismo edited by Giulia Albanese and Lucia Ceci, and Curating Fascism edited by Sharon Hecker and Raffaele Bedarida, consider memory from the viewpoint of public spaces and art exhibitions. These four volumes provide a deeper exploration of the influence of fascism in republican Italy (from the early years of the republic to the present day) and the role of literature, architecture, and art in shaping the collective memory of a community. These four books, moreover, offer the opportunity to discuss the investigative methods and theoretical frameworks inherent the study of fascist memory, and, more broadly, the study of memory using literary and artistic products as sources.
Università di Pavia, Fondazione Ghislieri
Parte della serie "I lunedì della storia" - Collegio Ghislieri, Pavia
Curating Fascism. Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today (Bloomsbury, 2022), a cura di SHARON HACKER e RAFFAELE BEDARIDA. Ne discute con i curatori FRANCESCO TORCHIANI, Università di Pavia
L'esportazione dell'arte contemporanea italiana negli Stati Uniti tra anni trenta e settanta del novecento ha svolto un ruolo molteplice e spesso ambiguo. Se, gli obiettivi evidenti erano la conquista di un mercato dell'arte in crescita e la diplomazia culturale nei confronti di un interlocutore sempre più influente, l'impulso più profondo anche se spesso contraddittorio era quello di rivalsa nei confronti dell'egemonia dell'arte contemporanea francese, prima, e statunitense, poi; ma era anche una ricerca di legittimazione nel luogo simbolo della modernità. Tra Ventennio e Guerra fredda, negli anni in cui gli USA emersero come potere economico, politico e culturale dominante, esporre l'arte italiana contemporanea negli Stati Uniti fu uno sforzo proiettivo attraverso cui gli italiani periodicamente ridefinirono la propria modernità rispetto allo sguardo, in parte reale ma soprattutto immaginato, dell'America.
The first documentary presents the exhibition on Italian artist Corrado Cagli
(1910–1976), curated by Cooper Union Professor of Art History Raffaele Bedarida, which served as the background for a project with contemporary artists Leslie Hewitt, Kambui Olujimi, Sheila Pepe, Juan Sanchez, and Bea Scaccia; it was developed with a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The following four shorts feature interviews with each of the artists recorded in their respective studios over the course of Fall 2023 about their practice and various questions related to art, society, and community.
Each screening will be accompanied by conversation among the artists and
art historians Raffaele Bedarida and Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva.
In the postwar period, as the US increasingly affirmed its economic, political, and cultural hegemony over Italy, the exportation of contemporary Italian art to the US became a tool to rehabilitate the country after the fall of Fascism. By projecting their own modernity across the Atlantic, Italians measured the alleged rebirth of Italian culture against the new dominant model, but also processed the ongoing Americanization of Italian society.
An expert on George Balanchine and author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated biography Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022), Jennifer Homans will examine his activities in those early postwar years, while Raffaele Bedarida will illustrate the complexity of the costumes and of the set designed by Cagli for The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne. Together they will delve in the historical and political coordinates behind the project, the role of Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder with Balanchine of the Ballet Society, and the importance of performance art at MoMA.
https://youtu.be/W0ZTJoCHdnQ?si=bKjg_VtddIlR5w8d
Event organized by NYU's Casa Italiana Zerrilli Marimò, The Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), Centro Primo Levi, and Consolato generale d'Italia in New York. Hosted by the New York Public Library for Performing Arts, part of the program for Giorno della Memoria. January 28, 2024.
Direttrice Prof. ssa Carla Subrizi
Conferenze di Raffaele Bedarida
Associate Professor of Art History, The Cooper Union, New York
Visiting Professor Sapienza maggio-luglio 2023
SCAVARE L’ARCHIVIO, ESPORRE L’ARCHIVIO
12 giugno 2023, ore 9-11_Aula Carlotta Nobile
Studiare ed esporre l’esilio di Corrado Cagli
19 giugno 2023, ore 9-11_Aula Carlotta Nobile
Documentare e rappresentare l’antifascismo in Italia nel dopoguerra e oggi
26 giugno 2023, ore 9-11_Aula Multimediale
L’arte italiana al MoMA
Le Conferenze di Raffaele Bedarida sono parte del Programma di Tirocinio della Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Storico Artistici
on line: meet.google.com/nkq-pjzo-ize
Abstract:
Se l’archivio è uno strumento di studio fondamentale per il lavoro di ricostruzione e indagine del passato, anche recente, allo
stesso modo è il risultato del momento storico, delle circostanze, e delle ideologie che lo hanno prodotto: come individuare tutto
questo e far parlare anche i silenzi, le reticenze e le censure? Come riconoscere i limiti e le manipolazioni dell’archivio quando
lo si espone al pubblico? Le lezioni affrontano tre casi studio: un artista, Corrado Cagli, parte attiva della propaganda fascista,
ma anche censurato in quanto ebreo e apertamente gay; una mostra Post Zang Tumb Tuuum del 2018, che si proponeva come
espressione di una “storia reale e contestuale” rievocando il passato fascista attraverso l’uso massiccio di opere d’arte e materiali
d’archivio; lo sforzo proiettivo, fatto collettivamente da artisti, critici, galleristi e politici italiani, per mostrare il volto moderno
dell’Italia negli Stati Uniti attraverso una serie di mostre tra gli anni Venti e Sessanta.
As a part of 2017 PRIN «Transatlantic Transfers: the Italian presence in post-war America (TT project)», three days of study will be dedicated to visual arts, art criticism and history of exhibitions with main focuses on topics, issues and ideologies connected to the reception/circulation of Italian neo-avant-gardes in the United States between “monochrome painting” and Conceptual Art.