HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY ART - ADVANCED COURSE

According to the Dublin descriptors, students, at the end of the course, will demonstrate:

1) knowledge and understanding skills such as to reinforce those achieved in the first cycle; ability to elaborate original ideas, in a research context;

2) ability to apply knowledge and understanding and ability to solve problems to new or unfamiliar issues, inserted in broader (or interdisciplinary) contexts connected to one's field of study;

3) ability to integrate knowledge and to formulate judgments on the basis of information that is not necessarily complete;

4) ability to communicate one's knowledge clearly;

5) ability to carry out research autonomously.

Lectures

Slides and video

Possible visits to exhibitions and museums.

National identities and international exchanges: from after World War II to the 1960s.

The course aims to provide the methodological tools for a philological reading of Italian and international art from after World War II to the 1960s. Particular attention will be placed on the linguistic analysis of the works in order to detect the national heritages of each movement and to highlight the novel elements traceable to the main lines of international exchange and mutual updating. The linguistic examples offered by European Informal and American Abstract Expressionism, and the progressive affirmation of a new figurative grammar attentive to contemporary urban landscape and open to experimentation with new artistic media, will be highlighted.

An important part will be an understanding of the main topics of the historical-critical debate and an analysis of the international exhibition context related to institutional exhibitions and private galleries.

Part A - The years after World War II and the establishment of new expressive freedoms

- Maurizio Calvesi, Le due avanguardie: dal Futurismo alla Pop Art, pp. 205-389

- Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. Buchloh, David Joselit, edizione Italiana a cura di E. Grazioli, Arte dal 1900. Modernismo, antimodernismo, postmodernismo, Zanichelli 2017, pp. 393-590

 

Part B- The neoavantgarde

- Flavio Fergonzi, Una nuova superficie. Jasper Johns e gli artisti italiani 1958-1966, Electa, Milano 2020

- Clement Greenberg, Clement Greenberg. L’avventura del modernismo. Antologia critica, a cura di Giuseppe Di Salvatore e Luigi Fassi, Milano 2011, limited to essays:

•         La pittura “di tipo americano”, pp. 201-216

•         L’America passa alla guida, 1945-1965, pp. 341-345

•         Pose avanguardiste: la nuova arte negli anni sessanta, pp. 351-360

- Adachiara Zevi, Peripezie del dopoguerra nell’arte italiana, Einaudi, Torino 2005, pp. 226-405

- Elisa Francesconi, Per una rappresentazione aniconica del paesaggio urbano. Piero Dorazio: Rilievi, Cartografie e l’orizzonte visivo de La Fantasia dell’arte nella vita moderna (1951-1955), in “Studi di Memofonte”, 23/2019, pp. 322-345

- Elisa Francesconi, Tano Festa e Michelangelo: un episodio di fortuna visiva a Roma negli anni Sessanta, in “Studi di Memofonte”, 9/2012, pp. 91-120

- Elisa Francesconi, Tano Festa, La porta rossa (1962): oggetto o iconografia della superficie?, in “L'UOMO NERO”, n. 12, Mimesis edizioni, Sesto San Giovanni, 2016, pp. 113-129

 

Non-attending students, in addition will have to study:

Roma anni ’60: al di là della pittura, exhibition catalog, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma,  Carte segrete, Roma 1990, limited to essays:

•         Maurizio Calvesi, Cronache e coordinate di un’avventura, pp. 11-36

•         Giuseppe Gatt, L’ipotesi gestaltica, pp. 39-41

 

Please remember that in compliance with art 171 L22.04.1941, n. 633 and its amendments, it is illegal to copy entire books or journals, only 15% of their content can be copied.

For further information on sanctions and regulations concerning photocopying please refer to the regulations on copyright (Linee Guida sulla Gestione dei Diritti d’Autore) provided by AIDRO - Associazione Italiana per i Diritti di Riproduzione delle opere dell’ingegno (the Italian Association on Copyright).

All the books listed in the programs can be consulted in the Library or Studium.