Italian Art Research Articles

Portrait of the Artist as a Non-Artist. Matryoshka Roles and the Heteronomization of the Italian Art Field

AbstractThis paper examines how Italian visual artists are now structurally encouraged to be proficient in performing activities unrelated to field-specific criteria, or – to use the words of one respondent – why they are supposed to “be good at being incredibly good at doing stuff they don’t know how to do.” Drawing on qualitative data (N = 135), four dimensions of unartistic yet binding concerns are explored: networking relationality, bureaucratic “callification,” systemic politics, and outward visibility. To analyze this dynamic, the concept of “Matryoshka roles” is introduced. Although uncharacteristic of artists’ work and nested inside its surface depiction (Matryoshka), each dimension entails a set of injunctions and sanctioned behavior (roles) that reconfigure the reality of contemporary visual artists and vitiate the separation between internal vs. external principles of hierarchization. Reflecting on the autonomy of the field of visual art as a transitory historical phase, mechanisms of fields’ heteronomization are addressed. By considering a series of factors (e.g., differences among early- and late-career artists, presence on social media, perception of heteronomous practices, most distinctive accomplishments, career junctions), the increasing pressure of meta-fields of economics, power, and state is detailed.

As Light as a Whale: Roberto Abbiati’s Una tazza di mare in tempesta and the Presence of Moby-Dick in Contemporary Italian Arts

Ever since Cesare Pavese’s pioneering 1932 translation of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Italy has proven particularly receptive to Herman Melville’s masterpiece, which has not only been enthusiastically loved by generations of readers and stimulated the interest and acumen of local Americanists, but has also inspired an extensive number of Italian writers and artists. The first part of this article sketches a provisional map of some of the most recent examples of Moby-Dick’s reception in the Italian arts. These range from Simona Mulazzani’s dreamy etchings of tatooed whales and Giovanni Robustelli’s delicate watercolors to Sara Filippi Plotegher’s environmentally-inspired illustrations and designer Matteo Ugolini’s Moby-Dick lamps. These works shed light on some of the meanings typically associated with Melville’s work and how they have changed over the last two decades. In particular, I intend to show how the understanding of Melville’s work has recently shifted from the somber and grave tone of early twentieth-century interpretations and rewritings – when it was all about tragedy, darkness, sacrifice, and folly – to the lighter tone of more recent admirers. Building on this shift, this essay investigates one of the most successful recent transmedial adaptations of Moby-Dick: Roberto Abbiati’s play Una tazza di mare in tempesta (A Sea Storm in a Teacup). This adaptation distills Moby-Dick into a seventeen-minute show performed for a very small audience within a wooden box that simulates the hold of a tiny ship. In fact, Abbiati manages to evoke the whole drama by using figurines and found objects, as well as by selecting with scalpel-like precision key passages from the novel. Abbiati has also published a beautiful and singular graphic novel adaptation of Moby-Dick, summarizing each chapter of the book with only one drawing. Abbiati’s works are evidence of the enduring vitality of Melville’s presence in contemporary Italian art and offer the opportunity to appreciate the lighter dimensions of Moby-Dick.

Visibility in the Italian Art World: How Far Along We Are

Even though the concept of “nationality” when we talk about an internationally acclaimed artists is more and more blurred and has little to do with the importance of the artworks, it is evident how small the Italian art presence in great international art manifestations is, sometimes almost negligible. It is then necessary to understand the causes of this situation, to draw a map of the current state of the contemporary Italian scene and state some resolutions from it. The first 2022 Report “How (well) known is Italian art abroad?” by BBS-Lombard Benefit Corporation, together with Arte Generali has investigated how much Italian contemporary artists are (in)visible in the international art market, laying the groundwork for a much more in-depth research of the art system, with the ultimate purpose of giving new solutions to overcome this situation, wandering whether Italian art has a business model with (still) some gray areas - unlike almost all other product sectors – and how building an economy to bridge the gap, having a market strategy and being attractive in the international positioning can be a strategic move. The study was conducted carrying out both qualitative and quantitative analysis throughout more than 20 interviews to Italian curators internationally known that have helped us understand causes, strengths and weaknesses of the Italian art system and a big data collection about the presence of Italian artist in international museums, art manifestations, biennials, such as Biennale di Venezia and documenta, international art galleries and auctions. The global media coverage of Italian artists was analyzed with the help of Artiker and through the artificial intelligence of Wondeur AI, partner of Arte Generali, it was possible to analyze the relationship between art development and cities, considering the city’s overall success rate (percentages of artists showing growth in the city) and the city’s risk propensity (ability to attract artists). The instrument of the Italian Council was also studied, the main MIC project (Italian Ministry for Culture) in support of Italian art and the initiatives of Italian cultural institutes abroad. From the overall analysis some relevant names have emerged: Francesco Vezzoli, Monica Bonvicini, Enrico David, Paola Pivi, Tatiana Trouvè, Roberto Cuoghi, Rosa Barba, Massimiliano Cattelan (above all) and a few others, all united by a time of study or work abroad which allowed them to create valuable relationships with curators, galleries and museums abroad.

Crafting culture in the Adriatic: a case of woodcarvers and painters in Quattrocento Dubrovnik

The well-preserved archival documentation in Dubrovnik provides valuable insights into various subjects, including production of art. This study delves into the collaboration between woodcarvers and painters in late medieval Dubrovnik, focusing on the mid-15th century, when artistic production was greatly influenced by the exceptional stability of the commune. Contribution challenges conventional assumptions regarding artist specialization during this era. Contracts from this period often delineated the responsibilities of painters in supervising carpentry work during artwork fabrication, while some documents suggest woodcarvers executed basic painting tasks. Discoveries are consistent with the knowledge of Italian art production, affirmed through meticulous examination of exceptionally well-preserved archival sources.

Sono nel club con la mia gang Uso del drill rap per l’educazione linguistica e letteraria

Starting from the innovative approach operated by Hans Hunfeld and the more recent evidence by Mirco Magnani, this paper deals with the use of literary texts in language education, among which poetic texts are no exception. The present paper aims specifically to argue that even popular songs can place their lyrics as a model for language learning, most notably after considering the recipients of education within a broad objective of inclusivity. The use of songs in linguistic education for Italian as a Second or Foreign Language is already known, but it deals mostly with the classical melodramma or Italian art song. However, here it will be argued that even contemporary music spread among teenagers and youths can belong to the education program for languages. This paper presents the drill music lyrics of Louboutin (2020) by Vale Pain and Rondo da Sosa as a less orthodox but not less valid instrument to teach and learn Italian for foreigners.

Nanni Balestrini, collage, and the aesthetics of operaismo

This article analyzes a selection of collages made during the 1960s by Italian artist, writer, editor, and extraparliamentary activist Nanni Balestrini in relation to the dissident Marxist intellectual current of operaismo (workerism). Despite his centrality to both extraparliamentary activism and the cultural landscape in postwar Italy, Balestrini’s artistic practice remains largely unexplored. Comprised of clipped, often provocative, newspaper fragments and aesthetically arranged to exploit the expressive potency of typography, the works remain visibly indebted to the tradition of avant-garde collage. However, they summon these procedures to address the challenges of a radically different historical moment. Sustained visual analysis and salient texts of political theory are utilized to demonstrate how Balestrini’s collages investigate concerns that resonate with those of operaismo, and, in so doing, participate in the unfolding of new understandings of proletarian subjectivity and anticapitalist struggle. The constitutive disjunctures of collage and the medium’s potential to spark fresh connections function crucially in this endeavor to reveal a historically contingent form of revolutionary aesthetics. At the same time, the works chart the theoretical and increasingly activist trajectories of operaismo itself, revealing sympathies for the current’s most militant strands. Considered together, Balestrini’s collages and the theories of operaismo emerge as deeply interconnected, mutually illuminating, and reinforcing one another throughout a period of intense political contestation in Italy.

Auro Lecci’s Algorithmic Art: Toward the Computer as a Thinking Machine

Abstract This paper analyzes Italian artist Auro Lecci’s contribution to pioneering media art, beginning with his paintings and ending with his computer artworks (1969–1972). As the author suggests, Lecci’s paintings were already characterized by an algorithmic method that the artist went on to develop in his computer-generated works. The paper first discusses the plotter drawings Lecci created at the Computing Center of the University of Pisa (CNUCE), and then focuses on his last computer art project, made at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, to suggest connections between Lecci’s work and artificial intelligence.

Automated inpainting of Tex Willer comics: adapting manga techniques for western comic transformation

Comic inpainting is essential for language localization and adapting comics into animations, involving the removal of speech boxes, textboxes, and sound effects while maintaining artistic integrity. This paper introduces an automated approach leveraging the Manga inpainting method by Xie et al., adapted for western comics like Tex Willer. Tex Willer comics, known for their fusion of Italian art and American Western imagery, pose unique challenges due to their distinct styles. Customized Manga Restoration and Structural Line Extraction codes are employed, along with automated mask generation using deep CNN-based speech balloon detection and segmentation. Our contributions include the development of a precise model tailored to Tex Willer Comics, resulting in visually coherent inpainting results. The paper follows a structured format, covering State-of-the-Art, methodology, results, and conclusions, aiming to streamline the process of western comic inpainting for professionals in the comics and animation industries.

False Religion and Hypocrisy in Signorelli's Antichrist

This article discusses the iconography of Luca Signorelli's Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist (c.1502–3) in the Cappella Nuova at the cathedral of Orvieto. A combined investigation of the Antichrist's subject matter, Signorelli's literary and visual sources, as well as his discarded drawings for the entire fresco decoration of the Cappella Nuova, brings fresh insights to the thematic intentions of the artist and his advisers. Signorelli's entire view of eschatology marked a renewed interest of Italian artists in the apocalyptic sublime. It also signified a revival of the medieval tradition of the Antichrist as the arch-hypocrite, and his reign as an apocalyptic age of hypocrisy. At the same time, the artist's treatment of the subject matter indicates an ambiguous stance toward religious hypocrisy characterized by a suppression of the anti-clerical and millenarian aspects of the Antichrist myth.

Translating artworks

Abstract This contribution, which sits at the intersection of translation studies and museum studies (MS), seeks to explore multiple forms of interpretation developed by museums, whereby interpretation is considered, from an MS perspective, as a variety of museum aids creating a context and conveying mediated meanings about the objects on display. The focus is on individual interpretative texts produced by an Italian art gallery, the Pinacoteca di Brera, as the results of various interpretation processes about the same piece of art: the traditional label, the online description, the general audio guide, and the audio description for the blind and the visually impaired (the latter comprising both the visual description itself and the art historical description). A selection of texts in Italian and their translations into English describing four artworks from the museum collection are compared in a bid to shed light on the distinct layers of interpretation and ways of translating and representing the objects for different expected audiences through intralingual, interlingual, and intersemiotic translation practices.

Provenance of Some Iconographie Patterns of Christ’s Passion in Medieval Wall Painting in Slovakia and the Czech Republic

In the depictions presented in the article the gesture of raised hands expresses either Mourning or the feelings connected with Entombing, whose image is supplemented by the gesture of raised hands from the scene of Mourning, among others. The main source of illustration in these works seems to be Italian art, present in Western European painting. Its basis are iconographic solutions of the Byzantine art.

AI and Synaesthetic Space: Architecture from Hybrid Visions of Intelligent Machines

AbstractOne of AI's core abilities is the conjuring up of images that seem familiar to us, based on our individual visual and architectural preoccupations. This splicing of the known with the unknown can create a sense of déjà vu that is both centred and defamiliarised. Italian artist, architect and researcher in visionary architecture Cesare Battelli takes us through some of the characters of the past who have utilised such creative tactics.

Baśń włoska. Pasaże radosne

Images of Italy by Pavel Muratov, the eminent Russian historian of art and the excellent writer as well, have been published over than one hundred years ago. This masterpiece seems to be very well known today and is commonly regarded as a very sophisticated guide of Italian art and architecture. The author presents that such kind of conceiving this legendary book is a typical form of misreading. On the contrary: he emphasizes its cognitive and literary merit. Finally, he reveals the real content of Images of Italy as a special form of Nietzschean gaya scienza, and at the same time, as a still vivid source of the existential joy.

THE EAST PERCEIVED THROUGH WESTERN PERSPECTIVE: FAUSTO ZONARO AND ISTANBUL

For many centuries, Istanbul, as a city of culture, has been a source of inspiration for artists from many different countries. Italian artists were especially influenced by the Eastern world and reflected this influence in their work in almost every era. When we talk about "Western Orientalists on Ottoman lands", we doubtlessly first think of Italian Orientalists such as Gentile Bellini, Fausto Zonaro, Leonardo de Mango, Amadeo Preziosi, Salvatore Valeri, Luigi Acquarone, Raimondo D'Aronco, whose paths crossed through the Ottoman Empire, and who built bridges between these foreign cultures by depicting these exotic lands in their works. During the reign of Sultan Abdulhamit the Second, Fausto Zonaro (1854 – 1929) assumed the title of “Palace Artist” after the Italian artist Luigi Acquarone. Zonaro, as well as being recognized for his realistic depictions, became well known for introducing the newly emerging Western art movements in the Ottoman art circles during its initial stages and became influential by nurturing a new generation of young Ottoman artists by providing training. The way Zonaro perceived Istanbul and the local culture through an Italian perspective, and his difference from other Orientalist artists are crucial in making him a pioneering figure in the history of Turkish painting.

Piano cycles of Italian composers of the late 19th – first half of the 20th century: on the problem of programming.

The object of study in this article is the piano work of Italian composers of the late 19th – first half of the 20th centuries. The subject is programming in instrumental music, represented by the genre of the piano cycle. Based on the definition of programming and the classification of types, developed in the works of domestic musicologists M. Aranovsky, L. Kazantseva, Yu. Khokhlova, the author reveals the features of its implementation in the cycles of famous Italian composers F. Busoni, J. Malipiero, A. Casella, M. Castelnuovo-Tedesco, created during the historical period under study. Particular attention is paid to considering the issue of continuing the tradition of embodying programming in cycles, established by romantic composers, as well as identifying national features characteristic of Italian art as a whole. The article uses an integrated approach, including systemic-historical and comparative methods of analysis. The author also turned to the method of musical theoretical analysis. The novelty of the research lies in the development of one of the important and relevant areas of musicology associated with the synthesis of arts, within the framework of solving a specific problem: the implementation of various types of programming. The author’s special contribution to the development of this topic is the introduction into scientific circulation of new works of Italian masters that have not previously been studied, the consideration, using their example, of various types of programming in close connection with the tradition that has developed in European art, and the identification of ways to update it. The most important feature is the integrity of the cycles, which is formed at the emotional, figurative, stylistic, compositional, and tonal levels. A conclusion is drawn about the originality of the piano cycles of Italian composers, which is manifested in close connection with national art.

Gestures in Passion Cycles in Central European Mural Painting

In medieval Passion cycles represented in Czech, Slovak (former Hungary), and Polish murals dating from the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries one may observe a number of-gestures which appear in respective scenes starting from the Entry into Jerusalem and ending with the Entombment (laying in the sepulchre). The most significant gesture in the entry scene is the outstretched hand of Christ riding a donkey. It is the language of gesture used since antiquity, transmitted through Byzantine and Italian art (including Giotto’s Entry into Jerusalem in his Arena Chapel frescoes), and transferred into art north of the Alps.

The FIFTH WALL. On DIGITAL PERFORMANCE between USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN and the METAVERSE

Before and since the pandemic, online virtual environments have emerged as critical sites for social and cultural experiences, facilitating conversations, creative projects, collective endeavours, and commercial exchanges. The rise of the Metaverse (Ball, 2021) represents a fundamental shift in today's digital presence. After Eva and Franco Mattes' historical happenings in Second Life, some recent hypermedia performances force a re-evaluation of the nature of performance, with a recontextualisation of the notions of reality, presence, community, and simulation. UX design reshapes and situates the emergence of 'metaverse-native' art in adjacent fields such as online 3D collaboration platforms: actual and perfect virtual stages.  Since the mid-1990s, the user has increasingly been invited to live an unusual experience in which the physical and the digital merge. The noun 'user experience' refers to how people experience the encounter with a system. It extends traditional human-computer interaction design by addressing all aspects of the product or service as perceived by the user, increasing satisfaction and loyalty by improving usability. The UX classification system is based on the user's emotions, preferences, attitudes, and emotional responses (Hussain et al., 2021). Its dramaturgical importance in an online digital performance has yet to be recognised.  This article proposes the analysis of three examples of digital performances (Dixon, 2007), in virtual 3D online environments, following the philosophy of User Experience Design, focusing on the perspectives and productions of Italian artists.Before and since the pandemic, online virtual environments have emerged as critical sites for social and cultural experiences, facilitating conversations, creative projects, collective endeavours, and commercial exchanges. The rise of the Metaverse (Ball, 2021) represents a fundamental shift in today's digital presence. After Eva and Franco Mattes' historical happenings in Second Life, some recent hypermedia performances force a re-evaluation of the nature of performance, with a recontextualisation of the notions of reality, presence, community, and simulation. UX design reshapes and situates the emergence of 'metaverse-native' art in adjacent fields such as online 3D collaboration platforms: actual and perfect virtual stages.  Since the mid-1990s, the user has increasingly been invited to live an unusual experience in which the physical and the digital merge. The noun 'user experience' refers to how people experience the encounter with a system. It extends traditional human-computer interaction design by addressing all aspects of the product or service as perceived by the user, increasing satisfaction and loyalty by improving usability. The UX classification system is based on the user's emotions, preferences, attitudes, and emotional responses (Hussain et al., 2021). Its dramaturgical importance in an online digital performance has yet to be recognised.  This article proposes the analysis of three examples of digital performances (Dixon, 2007), in virtual 3D online environments, following the philosophy of User Experience Design, focusing on the perspectives and productions of Italian artists.

Faith in the Stars and Architecture: Astrology as an Interpretation of Religious Permanence and the Birth of Modernity

In 1912, Aby Warburg presented his interpretation of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara at the 10th International Congress of Art History in Rome. The decision to expound his theory in an academic setting was no coincidence: Warburg’s work, and the subsequent studies of Fritz Saxl, sought to centre the attention of art history on the complex world of astrological studies. The history of astrology demonstrated—via iconological analysis—the migration of knowledge from East to West. Warburg’s innovation was to superimpose the trauma of historical-artistic paths on this network. Through the Schifanoia frescoes, he could reflect upon how an international comparison with the surviving figurative concepts of Eastern Mediterranean civilisations had generated the stylistic transformation of the human figure in Italian art. Warburg defined astrology as ancient religion’s most tenacious form of hidden survival. He traced a path of continuity through art and its relationship to the architectural space hosting it. Astrological illustrations not only enable us to reconstruct the warp and weft of religious permanence but serve as a tool to explain the procedures of iconographic change that led to the Renaissance. After the collapse of paganism, many astrological images survived into the Middle Ages as symbols associated with the essences appropriated by Christianity as its own. A complex store of astrological iconography that migrated from classical cultures and reappeared during the Renaissance's construction of a universal language. Some foretastes emerge in medieval buildings; after a long period in which Christianity and astrology were considered incompatible, astrological language completed and provided meaning to the architecture that welcomed it. Such is the case of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua. This paper aims to retrace the most significant paths of this migration of symbols through the analysis of such examples of Renaissance architecture as Villa Farnesina in Rome and the aforementioned Palazzo Schifanoia. It will also reflect on the position and training of the architect during the Renaissance and on how astrology was considered both magical thought and a mathematical description that would lead to the discovery of infinity. It is notable that the Farnesina’s astrological contents were dictated by Baldassarre Peruzzi, the building’s architect.

Measuring Italian art cities tourism: a proposal of indicators

In Italy, art cities have traditionally served as “magnets” for cultural tourism, significantly contributing to the country’s economic vitality. Many historic city centers are not simply “boxes” of artworks but are veritable open-air museums. In recent years, the profile of cultural and experiential visitors has increasingly oriented towards experiences that can be enjoyed individually or with family. While the traditional tourism system continues to offer conventional tourist products, it is also evolving to meet the growing demand for unique and unforgettable experiences. This represents new challenges for destination areas that seek to improve services and create attractions that can meet this emerging new audience. The objective of this work is to propose a composite indicator that measures the tourism potential of these art cities, drawing upon existing tourism indexes in the literature and equitable and sustainable well-being (BES) indicators, such as the domains of “landscape and cultural heritage” and “environment”. The decision to employ these indicators stems from their considerable relevance in a country like Italy, as well as the specific focus of our study. Additionally, we developed a ranking of Italian art cities, enabling us to determine their relative levels of attractiveness. To achieve this, a panel of Italian provincial capitals was selected, each with at least one museum and a UNESCO site. The composite indicator developed, which also considers social and environmental perspectives, represents an alternative quantitative approach to assessing the attractiveness of art cities. The underlying principle is that, in the ever-evolving scene of cultural tourism, beyond the indispensable role played by artistic and cultural heritage, the impact of scenic landscapes on people's quality of life and its connection to individual well-being plays a crucial role. This indicator could provide territorial planning professionals with statistical tools capable of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the tourism offer of those cities that set themselves the goal of being a privileged place of artistic tourist attraction. The proposed composite indicator should make it possible to comprehend whether and how to develop paths to enhance the entire artistic heritage, while also considering the well-being of visitors.

ICub3 avatar system: Enabling remote fully immersive embodiment of humanoid robots.

We present an avatar system designed to facilitate the embodiment of humanoid robots by human operators, validated through iCub3, a humanoid developed at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. More precisely, the paper makes two contributions: First, we present the humanoid iCub3 as a robotic avatar that integrates the latest significant improvements after about 15 years of development of the iCub series. Second, we present a versatile avatar system enabling humans to embody humanoid robots encompassing aspects such as locomotion, manipulation, voice, and facial expressions with comprehensive sensory feedback including visual, auditory, haptic, weight, and touch modalities. We validated the system by implementing several avatar architecture instances, each tailored to specific requirements. First, we evaluated the optimized architecture for verbal, nonverbal, and physical interactions with a remote recipient. This testing involved the operator in Genoa and the avatar in the Biennale di Venezia, Venice-about 290 kilometers away-thus allowing the operator to visit the Italian art exhibition remotely. Second, we evaluated the optimized architecture for recipient physical collaboration and public engagement on stage, live, at the We Make Future show, a prominent world digital innovation festival. In this instance, the operator was situated in Genoa while the avatar operated in Rimini-about 300 kilometers away-interacting with a recipient who entrusted the avatar with a payload to carry on stage before an audience of approximately 2000 spectators. Third, we present the architecture implemented by the iCub Team for the All Nippon Airways (ANA) Avatar XPrize competition.