Tag : illustration

From postmodernism to altermodernity 7

Seminario tenuto il 7 novembre 2020 presso la Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, all’interno del ciclo dal titolo Interventi attorno Chiari   The Altermodern Nicolas Bourriaud, Radicant: pour une esthétique de la globalisation , 2009 In 2011, the Victoria and Albert Museum held a retrospective exhibition on postmodernism entitled Postmodernism – Style and Subversion 1970 – 1990, curated by Glenn Adamson (1972) and Jane Pavitt, which declared the conclusion of postmodernism itself according to the French critic Nicolas Bourriaud […]

From postmodernism to altermodernity 6

Peter Greenaway, Nightwatching, 2007 Seminar held on 7 November 2020 at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, as part of the cycle entitled Interventi intorno Chiari   Postmodern cinema An excellent cinematic example of postmodernism can be found in the work of the British filmmaker Peter Greenaway. Apart from rare cases of more narrative events, most of his production is constituted as a continuous pictorial quotation, so much so that the spectator, in the absence of comprehension of those […]

From postmodernism to altermodernity 5

Carlo Maria Mariani, The city 1, 2001 (particolare) Seminar held on 7 November 2020 at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, as part of the cycle entitled Interventi intorno Chiari Postmodern painting In those years, in fact, there was an overbearing return to painting, which in the United States was expressed precisely in the form of an impetuous Hyperrealism, while in Europe it took on the characteristics of citationism typical of post-modernity and which had one of its greatest […]

From postmodernism to altermodernity 4

Seminar held on 7 November 2020 at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, as part of the cycle entitled Interventi intorno Chiari Influences on Popular Imagery As is well known, the sixties saw the rise of Pop Rock music with the Beatles, confirming the popular vocation of the entire Contemporary Era since its inception. It is, in fact, within this framework that another of those short circuits typical of this era occurred: if during the 1920s Edgar Varese (1883-1965) […]

From postmodernism to altermodernity 3

Seminar held on 7 November 2020 at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, as part of the cycle entitled Interventi intorno Chiari   The process of abstraction In the visual arts, the neo-avant-garde movements manifested themselves in the so-called cold currents, so defined because they were characterised by the abandonment of classical means of artistic expression, which certainly saw a precursor in Duchamp and his ready-made of 1914. In 1914, Duchamp simply exhibited a common bottle rack in a […]

From postmodernism to altermodernity 2

Seminar held on 7 November 2020 at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, as part of the cycle entitled Interventi intorno Chiari Postmodern thought 1883-85 Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A book for everyone and no one 1896 Bergson’s Matter and Memory 1899 Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams 1905 Die Brücke (Expressionism) 1907 Cubism 1909 First Manifesto of Futurism 1910 ca. Abstractionism 1913 Russian Constructivism 1914-18 First World War 1916 Dadaism 1913 On Swann’s Side by Marcel Proust (first volume of In […]

From postmodernism to altermodernity 1

Seminar held on 7 November 2020 at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, as part of the cycle entitled Interventi intorno Chiari The Contemporary Era I would like to start with some remarks on Chiari’s work (Giuseppe Chari 1926-2007), for which the references to the New Dada experience are indispensable, with particular reference to Rauschenberg’s research (Robert Rauschenberg 1925-2008), which, in turn, looks back to the original Dada and to Schwuitters’ assemblages (Kurt Schwitters 1887-1948) and to some of […]

Another world

If I have to think of a particularly significant illustrator, an illustrator who best represents the alphabetical development of illustration and its language, then I think of Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard (1803-1847), better known as Grandville, whose work I consider to be the constitutive root of different imaginative universes to come. Grandville brings together the distorting heritage of the caricature tradition, which began with Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) in the early 17th century, with Giovan Battista Bracelli (1584-1650) and which can be traced […]

The alphabetical roots of the illustration

Giovan Battista Zelotti, Allegory of Libra (particolre), Villa Emo in Fanzolo, dressing room of the grotesques, c. 1565.   When the dungeons (caves) of Nero’s Domus Aurea were found in Rome around 1480, the effect on the painters of the time, and Raphael in particular, was a harbinger of unstoppable changes for the future visual alphabet. Those caves had, in fact, wall decorations which combined arboreal and floral elements with animal or human presences, often giving rise to beings of […]

Provenance

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Les hasards heureux de l’escarpolette (detail), 1767-68, Wallace Collection, London, photo Alonso de Mendoza   The provenance of an author’s language, from a previous tradition, is therefore part of the dynamics of normalization (a process whereby an innovative or exceptional phenomenon, over several decades, spreads in the popular imagination), although it does not deprive it of the research content that instead continues. He takes up a discourse that comes to him from afar. He discovers that he is […]