Spreading visual culture: contemporary art through periodicals, archives and illustrations.
So, if it is possible to speak of a real Pica phenomenon, especially for his work as literary critic, it would be very useful to carry out a deeper study about its monumental art criticism works, starting from the contributions by M.M. Lamberti, M.M. Lamberti, "Vittorio Pica e l´Impressionismo in Italia", in «Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia», III, V, 1975, 3, pp. 1149-1201 e "Ambivalenze della divulgazione dell´arte giapponese in Italia: Vittorio Pica", in «Bollettino d´arte», s. VI, 72, 1987, 46, pp. 69-78; A. Cambedda, "Linformazione sullarte straniera in Italia nella critica di Vittorio Pica", in "Roma 1911", edited by G. Piantoni, Roma, De Luca editori darte, 1980, pp. 89-96; G. Donzello, "Arte e collezionismo. Fradeletto e Pica segretari alle Biennali veneziane 1895-1926", Firenze, Firenze Libri, 1987; P. Zatti, "Le prime Biennali veneziane (1895-1912): il contributo di Vittorio Pica", in «Venezia Arti», 7, 1993, pp. 111-116; "Un´affettuosa stretta di mano. L´epistolario di Alberto Martini a Vittorio Pica", edited by M- Lorandi, Monza, Viennepierre, 1994; "Il manifesto. Arte e comunicazione nelle origini della pubblicità: Vittorio Pica", edited by M. Picone Petrusa, Napoli, Liguori, 1994; up to the most recent articles by B. Musetti, "Emporium, un pont éditorial lancé par Vittorio Pica entre la France et l´Italie", in "Les revues d´art. Formes, stratégies et réseaux au XXe siècle", edited by R. Froissart Pezone and Y. Chevrefils Desbiolles, with the collaboration pf R. Mathieu, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011, pp. 39-51 and by E. Manente, "Vittorio Pica. La successione ad Antonio Fradeletto attraverso la Biennale del 1914", in Accademia & Biennale. Passato, presente, futuro («Annuario Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia»), Padova, Il Poligrafo, 2011, pp. 41-58.
Among the contributions of Davide Lacagnina dedicated to Pica art critic, we can mention: "Votre oeuvre si originale et si puissante". Vittorio Pica scrive a Joaquín Sorolla, in «Materia», 5, 2005 (2007), pp. 69-89; "Vittorio Pica, Art Critic and Amateur d´estampes, in "Symbolism. Its Origins and Its Consequences", edited by R. Neginsky, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, pp. 455-480; "Avanguardia, identità nazionale e tradizione del moderno: Zuloaga e la critica italiana (a partire da due articoli di Vittorio Pica)", in "Emporium: parole e figure" cit., pp. 403-433; "Le penombre di un giardino spagnolo. Vittorio Pica e la fortuna di Santiago Rusiñol in Italia fra pittura e letteratura", in «Storia dell´Arte», 130, 2011 (2012), pp. 94-109; "Arte moderna italiana: collezionismo e storiografia fra le pagine di Emporium", in "Emporium: parole e figure tra il 1895 e il 1964", edited by G. Bacci, M. Ferretti and M. Fileti Mazza, Pisa, Edizioni della Normale, 2014, pp. 455-480.
Post-war Italian periodicals, despite their importance, are currently less studied and documented. Especially in the field of militant critic, independent and avant-garde reviews are among the most cited by historiographic bibliographies, compared to an almost complete lack of distribution and reproduction. The most accurate anthologies as well as the most rigorous philological studies have just limited themselves to transcribe or simply copy the documentation coming from these rare periodicals in footnotes. Often, indeed, such transcripts or quotations are considered as a secondary source, if not third-degree, causing the dispersion of entire parts of the original documents, their original artwork and layout equipment which, in the case of neo-avant-garde plays a crucial role in supporting the poetic and artistic manifestos of each trend. The absence of the original documents and of any anastatic reprint - the only known case is «Azimuth» (reprinted in: “Azimut & Azimuth”, edited by Marco Meneguzzo, Milan, Mondadori, 1989) - constitutes an irreparable gap in these studies, that are more and more frequently promoted by an increasing number of international organizations and research institutes. This phase of Italian art-history has been able to collect a truly international interest, as we can measure by taking a look at the global success attained by artists such as Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Piero Manzoni, or events of the caliber of the Arte Povera or Trans-avant-garde.
Following page...
On a literary level we can remark that literary militant periodicals, now, suffers from two different kind of approach, both too partial: 1) study of single examples; 2) by contrast, exhaustive cataloguing repertoires, but limited to only essential bibliographic data. In the first one there are interesting and brilliant studies focused on just a monographic record of cases. We have only a few specific contributions of individual cases following the World War II; these few studies have only appeared in the two main anthologies on the Italian art journals between the 19th and 20th centuries: «Il Verri», studied by Giuseppina dal Canton and published in “Percorsi di critica: un archivio per le riviste d'arte in Italia dell'Ottocento e del Novecento” (edited by R. Cioffi and A. Rovetta, Milan, Vita & Pensiero, 2007. pp. 489-99), and three periodicals of the Sixties and the Seventies, studied by Gaia Salvatori, Maria Teresa Roberto and Gianni Contessi and presented in “Riviste d'arte fra Ottocento ed età contemporanea: forme, modelli, funzioni” (edited by G. C. Sciolla, Milan, Skira, 2003, pp. 283-310). To these are added two other monographic contributions recently published on-line by Marina Giordano (http://www.unipa.it/tecla/rivista/2_rivista.php) and Giuliano Sergio (http://www.palinsesti.net/index.php/Palinsesti/article/view/21/26). Each of these studies corroborates and confirms the need to analyse these reviews, looking at the original copies, without separating their components: criticism, art-works reproduced and graphics aspects. In the second area, however, we underline the prevalence of three different initiatives which have constituted the basic repertoire to establish the corpus of this section of the present Project: for the Forties and Fifties, the lexical study by Flavio Fergonzi (“Lessicalità visiva dell'Italiano: la critica d'arte contemporanea 1945-1960”, 8 Florence - Pisa, Accademia della Crusca - Scuola Normale Superiore, 1996, 2 vols.); for the next two decades, the study by Giorgio Maffei Riviste d'arte d'avanguardia: esoeditoria negli anni Sessanta e Settanta in Italia”, Milan, Bonnard, 2005); for a more general and detailed archive, we refer to the project PRIN of the Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli to establish a database of journals between Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Moving on Visual Poetry, our essential starting point is L. Pignotti - S. Stefanelli, “Scrittura verbovisiva e sinestetica”, Udine, Campanotto Editore, 2011 (which updates the edition of 1980). Around «Lotta Poetica» are to be remembered: M. Corgnati, “Il caso «Lotta Poetica»”, in “Poesia totale. 1897-1997: Dal Colpo di Dadi alla Poesia Visuale”, exhibition catalogue (Mantua, 1998), edited by A. Mascelloni and Sarenco, Colognola ai Colli, Adriano Parise, 1998, pp. 107-111); “Omaggio a Lotta Poetica. 74 artisti e una rivista”, exhibition catalogue (Brescia, Fondazione Berardelli, 2009), edited by M. Gazzotti, N. Zanoletti, Colognola ai Colli, Adriano Parise, 2009. For an overview see “La parola nell'arte. Ricerche d'avanguardia nel ´900. Dal futurismo a oggi attraverso le collezioni del Mart”, exhibition catalogue (Rovereto, Mart, 2008), edited by G. Belli, Ginevra - Milan, 2007.
|Objectives | The project ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) | Hide |
Research Units
Collaborations
Impressum
