Anthony White

Cold War Cultures and Globalisation Art and Film in Italy: 1946-1963

Conventional analyses of the Cold War rely on a static binary division between the US and the USSR. This article, focusing on art and film production in Italy between 1946 and 1963, reveals a more complex and dynamic interaction between cultures beyond this binary. In Cold War Italy, important cultural exchanges and networks emerged across political, national and intellectual boundaries. By placing an Italian case study at the centre of the analysis, we propose more generally that Cold War art and cinema should be read as culturally inventive, politically charged and globally networked in unexpected ways. These networks provide us with new directions for understanding Cold War cultures and how they presage present-day globalisation.

Futurism, Territory and War in the Work of Fortunato Depero

Abstract The work of the Italian futurist artist Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) conveys the geographic, cultural, and personal dislocation brought about by military conflict. Taking as its subject a series of artworks by the artist from the late 1910s and early 1920s, this article demonstrates how Deperos perception of Trentino – the region in which he was born – was transformed during World War I. As I argue, in works such as La Città meccanizzata dalle ombre, Serrada and Padre e figlio di legno of 1920 Depero explored the radical upending of Italian society, and the profound destabilization of concepts of self, of home and of national identity, that took place as a result of the war.

Surrealism in Italy? Sexuality and Urban Space in the Work of Scipione (1904–1933)

The relationship between Italian art and surrealism in the 1920s and 1930s was complex. In the early 1920s, the work of the Greek-born Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico was of fundamental importance to the genesis of the French surrealist movement. The leader of the surrealists, Andr e Breton, taking his cue from de Chirico’s iconography of objects encountered in the modern city—such as rubber gloves, tailors’ dummies, and eyeglasses—saw de Chirico’s paintings as the harbinger of a new ‘modern mythology’ based on uncanny juxtapositions of objects. Furthermore, the early work of Max Ernst was influenced by de Chirico’s painting of empty piazzas, and many contributors to the surrealist periodical Litt eraturewere admirers of the Italian artist. The writings of surrealist authors such as Louis Aragon strongly evoked certain aspects of de Chirico’s painting, particularly their haunting depictions of classical statuary within a modern, urban environment. However in the mid-1920s, when de Chirico’s work began to make more explicit references to Italian Renaissance painting, Breton subjected the painter to a savage critique for producing, among other things, ‘ridiculous copies of Raphael’. If the leader of the surrealists was to be considered a worthy judge, at least, then the primary surrealist painter in Italy no longer qualified for that description. Moreover, and in spite of the early influence of de Chirico on the Paris-based avant-garde movement, de Chirico was understood and received during the later 1920s and 1930s in Italy not principally as a surrealist, but as a ‘metaphysical painter’. This term, invented by de Chirico and used to describe an art movement that encompassed not only his own work but also that of Carlo Carr a and Giorgio Morandi, described a set of artistic concerns that were consonant with, but also quite distinct from, those of French surrealism. Another factor to consider in this relationship is that in the period after World War I a ‘call to order’ was witnessed in the art world across many parts of Europe, including Italy, where, along with the rise of Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement, there had been attempts to produce a modern art that would be more in harmony with tradition than had been the case with the avant-garde. In this climate, the innovative art forms of the first two decades of the twentieth century, in particular

Abstract art, ethics and interpretation: the case of Mario Radice

Art, Ethics and Interpretation: The case of Mario Radice