Overview

A much-needed corrective to the history of single authorship, this timely volume offers new insight into the lives and practices of the artist couples, friendships and communities that shaped postwar art in Italy. Bringing together a series of essays from international scholars across a variety of subject fields, the volume considers a range of longstanding intimate working relationships. Questioning the extent to which exchange formed part of artistic production, and the nature of such partnerships, the contributors explore a variety of underexplored case studies that opens to new readings of Italian art informed by key contemporary issues surrounding gender and sexuality, modern Italian identities and transcultural exchange. In covering friendships, bi-racial, trans-cultural and familial relations, the volume adds much needed perspectives to modern Italy's social and political histories, through case studies of well-known as well as overlooked figures and creative partnerships including Mario and Marisa Merz; the de Chirico brothers, William Demby and Lucia Drudi; and Antonia and Ugo Mulas. Three sections guide the reader through different working and affective dynamics: Shadowy Presences, Ins and Outs; and Alliances. The volume explores practitioners in the visual arts, as well as art critics, institutional figures, screen and theatre writers, designers, and photographers. Rather than merely a descriptive or celebratory account of couples and partnerships in postwar Italian art, Art and Intimacy in Modern Italy asks what comes into view and what is left out when thinking about art history through this relational lens.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dr. Sharon Hecker (Independent Scholar, Independent Scholar, Italy) ,  Teresa Kittler (University of York)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Dimensions:   Width: 16.00cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 23.60cm
Weight:   0.800kg
ISBN:  

9781350420335

ISBN 10:   1350420336
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   20 February 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction 1. Modern Italian art and intimacy: an introduction, Sharon Hecker (Independent) and Teresa Kittler (University of York, UK) 2. Beyond the myths of the male genius and the muse: Couples, creative collaboration and the power of two in modern Italy, Lucia Re (UCLA, USA) Part One: Shadowy Presences 3. Out of focus: Anna Piva and Giulio Paolini’s artistic partnership, Roberta Minnucci ( the Biblioteca Hertziana—Max Planck Institute of Art History, Rome, Italy) 4. Concept and contraception: Mario and Marisa Merz, Leslie Cozzi (The Baltimore Museum, USA) 5. Antonia and Ugo Mulas through the mirror, Gloria Boeri (University of Oxford, UK) and Ilaria Sgaravatto (Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Italy) 6. White feminism’s ghosts: Friendship, race and Rivolta femminile, Charlotte Matter (UZH, Switzerland) 7. Plurals and singulars: Couples and collectives at Albisola and elsewhere, Catherine Ingrams (UCL, UK) Part Two: Ins and Outs 8. Mutually impressed and distanced: Undulating collaborations between Luciano Fabro and Carla Lonzi, Sharon Hecker (Independent) 9. Pas de deux: Sauzeau e Boetti, Teresa Kittler (University of York, UK) 10. Unrecorded and Unwritten: Pietro Consagra and Carla Lonzi, 1969, Giulia Morale (Courtauld Institute of Art, UK) 11. Giorgio De Chirico and Alberto Savinio: A ménage à trois, Franco Baldasso (Bard College, USA) 12. Mogli e buoi dei paesi tuoi: Virginia Dortch, Piero Dorazio and cultural translation between Italy and the United States, Raffaele Bedarida (Sapienza University, Rome, Italy) Part Three: Alliances 13. Interracial intimacies and the transnational modern couple: William and Lucia Drudi Demby’s collaborative work in postwar Italian cinema in Congo vivo (1962), Melanie Masterton Sherazi (California Institute of Technology, USA) 14. Lea Vergine and Enzo Mari: Navigating the early 1970s between utopia and feminism, Giulia Schirripa (University of York, UK) 15. ""Noi due cineasti”— the filmmakers Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Robert Lumley (UCL, UK) 16. Artist couples at the turn of the millennium: Perino & Vele and goldiechiari, Silvia Bottinelli (Tufts University, USA) Part Four: In Conversation 17. In Conversation with Nicola Pellegrini and Ottonella Mocellin, Chiara Mannarino (MoMA, USA) 18. In Conversation with Carla Subrizi (Sapienza University, Rome), Sharon Hecker (Independent) Index

Reviews

This book offers a groundbreaking reframing of the process of artistic production in postwar Italy. Through the lens of couples, partnerships, and collaborations, it makes visible a key element of postwar cultural production: the relational. Forcing us to rethink what it means to create in the modern age, it reveals the complex and determinative role played in intimate relationships. * Marla Stone, Professor of History, Occidental College, USA *

Author Information

Sharon Hecker is an art historian and curator specializing in modern and contemporary Italian art. She is the editor of the Bloomsbury series Visual Cultures and Italian Contexts. Teresa Kittler is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of York, UK.

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