Untying “The Knot”: The State of Postwar Italian Art History Today
February 09 - 10, 2015
The Center for Italian Modern Art is pleased to host Untying ‘The Knot’: The State of Postwar Italian Art History Today, a two-day conference organized by Sharon Hecker and Marin R. Sullivan. Held in the days leading up to the 103rd meeting of the College Art Association, and co-sponsored by the Italian Art Society, this symposium seeks to evaluate the current state of the field and highlight alternative methodologies for future inquiry. It will bring together leading Italian, American, Canadian, and British scholars publishing in this expanding field.
2015 marks the thirty-year anniversary of curator Germano Celant’s The Knot, the 1985 landmark exhibition held at PS1 in New York, which introduced contemporary Italian art to American audiences. Yet despite the interest it generated in its time, few scholars in the United States considered postwar Italian art as a subject for study in the decades since. Today, thanks to recent exhibitions and publications, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly turning their attention to Italian art created after World War II. With the passage of half a century, European and American scholars alike are historicizing and scrutinizing the complex dichotomies that defined Italy during the period: from its dialogue with artistic and craft traditions of the past within the context of rapid industrialization, to the so-called “economic miracle” and the effects of American consumerism, to the mechanics of Italy’s desire to establish a particular kind of Italian Modernism in art, film, and design that would also become internationally influential.
SEE THE FULL PROGRAM SCHEDULE:
DAY 1: Monday, February 9
9.30am-10am Registration
10am-10:30am Opening Remarks: Heather Ewing, Laura Mattioli
Introduction: Sharon Hecker, Marin R. Sullivan
Session 1: 10:30am-12:00pm
Untying ‘the Knot’: methodological issues of postwar Italian art today
Laura Petican (Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi)
‘Yes, but are you Italian?’: Considering the Legacy of italianità in Postwar and Contemporary Italian Art
Denis Viva (Università degli Studi di Udine)
Learning from artists: visual resources and Postwar Italian Art History
Gabriele Guercio (Independent)
Gino de Dominicis, Lady of Warka
Session 1 Q&A
Session 2: 12pm -1pm
Precedents and Continuities
Sharon Hecker (Independent)
Medardo Rosso’s Postwar Italian Legacy
Laura Moure Cecchini (Duke University)
A House No Longer Divided: Patronage, Pluralism, and Creative Freedom in Italian Pre- and Postwar Art
Session 2 Q&A
Lunch Break at CIMA: 1pm-2.30pm, with Guided Tours of Medardo Rosso by CIMA Fellows
Session 3: 2:30pm-4pm
International Movement(s): Abstraction, Realism, and Pop
Davide Colombo (University of Milan)
Piero Dorazio: Non-objective Art vs. Abstract Expressionism?
Christopher Bennett (Independent)
Gleaning Italian Pop: Renato Mambor’s Thread
Fabio Belloni (Independent)
American Hyperrealism: an Italian Debate, 1972-74
Session 3 Q&A
Break: 4pm-4:30pm
Session 4: 4:30pm-6pm
Representing Reality
Christian Caliandro (Symbola Foundation, Rome)
Rediscovering the Real: Art, Literature & Cinema during the Postwar Years
Nicoletta Leonardi (University of California, Florence Study Center)
From page to street and back: photography, visual poetry and the Italian city in the work of Franco Vaccari
Romy Golan (Graduate Center, City University New York)
Switchbacks in Italian Art of the 1960s
Session 4 Q&A
Day 2: Tuesday, February 10
9:30-9:45am Registration
9:45-10am Opening Remarks
Session 5: 10am-11:30am
Institutions, Exhibitions, and the Public Sphere
Shantel Blakely (Independent)
Integration by Design: The Synthesis of the Arts and the Origins of Italian Industrial Design, 1949-1955
Silvia Bottinelli (School of the Fine Arts Museum, Boston/Tufts University)
Gianni Pettena and Ugo La Pietra: Crossing Boundaries (1968-78)
Martina Tanga (Boston University)
Institutional Reinvention: The 1974 and 1976 Venice Biennale
Session 5 Q&A
Session 6: 11:30am-12.30pm
Reassessing Arte Povera
Giorgio Zanchetti (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Summer Solstice A.D. MCMLXIII. Luciano Fabro’s Early Works
Elizabeth Mangini (California College of the Arts)
Gilberto Zorio’s Material Instability
Robert Lumley (University College, London)
Lightness: Artistic Strategies in Italy in the 1960s
Session 6 Q&A
Lunch Break at CIMA: 1pm-2:30pm, with Guided Tours by CIMA Fellows
Session 7: 2:30pm-4:30pm
Critical and Artistic Resistance
Lara Pucci (University of Nottingham)
Translating Picasso: Guttuso’s Guernica
Leda Cempellin (South Dakota State University)
The Gruppo N: Looking Closely into the Failure of a Collaborative Model
Jacopo Galimberti (Independent)
Danilo Montaldi: Activist, Collector, Gallery-owner and Art Critic
Teresa Kittler (University College, London)
Reimagining the Family Album: Carla Lonzi’s Autoritratto (1969)
Session 7 Q&A
Break: 4:30pm-5pm
Concluding Roundtable and Q&A: 5pm-6pm
Nicholas Cullinan (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Adrian Duran (University of Nebraska at Omaha)
Claire Gilman (The Drawing Center, New York)
Paolo Scrivano (Boston University)
