12:30 PM

A distinguishing trait of Italian culture is the weaving of the country's past into everyday contemporary life. In the early 1960s a diverse group of Italian filmmakers and artists made this the subject of their works by quoting past art, especially that of the country’s golden age from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Well before the 1980s international phenomenon of appropriation art, this "citationist" trend developed with increasing momentum in the 1970s. This lecture focuses on the mise-en-scène or performative rendering of subjects and figures from historic paintings by costumed actors and artists in films and photographs. Works by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Luigi Ontani will be discussed in the context of 1960s and 1970s Italy in an attempt to understand what prompted such re-creations of the past.

Anna Mecugni (PhD candidate, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York) has held curatorial and educational positions at MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee in Venice, and the 52nd Venice Biennale. Currently she works as an education lecturer at MoMA and writes for Art in America. Her doctoral thesis focuses on Luigi Ontani and Italian art in the 1970s.]]> ]]> html]]>