Renato Guttuso's Boogie Woogie in Rome (1953): A Geopolitical Tableau

Abstract

A quasi‐panic underlies Renato Guttuso's Boogie Woogie in Rome, his single envoi to the 1954 Venice Biennale. It depicts teenagers dancing frenetically in front of Mondrian's eponymous painting, its kinetic, neoplasticist language absorbed into their plaid clothes. This essay shows how this painting pulled into its orbit much of the geopolitics of the 1950s. Guttuso's depiction of gyrating youths drew its – mostly negative – energy from events taking place just beyond its frame. It identifies afterimages (Guttuso's painting elicited other paintings); medial crossovers as well as medial denials (namely film, a medium that Guttuso professed to abhor); anticipations thwarted by reversed scenarios (the fiasco of the Soviets and the success of Mondrian at the subsequent Biennale in 1956); and blind spots (nations with no pavilion). Its leitmotif is plaid as a multifarious sign for youthful rebellion, nonchalant bohemianism, lumberjacks and hillbilly folk, solidarity with the working class, and modish sophistication.