Author: Anthony White Publisher: MIT Press (MA) ISBN: 9780262015929 Category : Art and society Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
In 1961, a solo exhibition by Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana met with a scathing critical response from New York art critics. Fontana (1899--1968), well known in Europe for his series of slashed monochrome paintings, offered New York ten canvases slashed and punctured, thickly painted in luridly brilliant hues and embellished with chunks of colored glass. One critic described the work as "halfway between constructivism and costume jewelry," unwittingly putting his finger on the contradiction at the heart of these paintings and much of Fontana's work: the cut canvases suggest avant-garde iconoclasm, but the glittery ornamentation evokes outmoded forms of kitsch. In Lucio Fontana, Anthony White examines a selection of the artist's work from the 1930s to the 1960s, arguing that Fontana attacked the idealism of twentieth-century art by marrying modernist aesthetics to industrialized mass culture, and attacked modernism's purity in a way that anticipated both pop art and postmodernism. Fontana painted expressionist and abstract sculptures in the pinks and golds of mass-produced knick-knacks, saturated architectural installations with fluorescent paint and ultraviolet light, and encrusted candy-colored monochrome canvases with glitter. In doing so, White argues, he challenged Clement Greenberg's dictum that avant-garde and kitsch are diametrically opposed. Relating Fontana's art to the political and social context in which he worked, White shows how Fontana used the materials and techniques of mass culture to comment on the fate of the avant-garde under Italian fascism and the postwar "economic miracle." At a time when Fontana's work is commanding record prices, this new interpretation of the work assures that it has unprecedented critical relevance.
Author: Iria Candela Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art ISBN: 1588396827 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), a major figure of postwar European art, blurred numerous boundaries in his life and his work. Moving beyond the slashed canvases for which he is renowned, this book takes a fresh look at Fontana’s innovations in painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, and installation art. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} Fontana was an important figure in both Italy and his native Argentina, where he pushed the painterly into the sculptural and redefined the relationship between mediums. Archival images of environments, public commissions, installations, and now-destroyed pieces accompany lavish illustrations of his work from 1930 to the late 1960s, providing a new approach to an artist who helped define the political, cultural, and technological thresholds of the mid-twentieth century.
Author: Marina Pugliese Publisher: ISBN: 9783906915616 Category : Languages : en Pages : 184
Book Description
Documenting the first-ever reconstruction of Fontana's immersive installations Lucio Fontana's (1899-1968) Ambienti spaziali, or Spatial Environments were immersive installations that include neon crystal tubes, paint that glows under black light and captivating pa-pier-mâché sculptures. Fontana's use of technology pushed the boundaries of art beyond the canvas to "paint" with light and invite viewers into the physical space of the work itself. In spring 2020 Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles staged the first comprehensive presentation of Ambienti spaziali in the United States, carefully reconstructing the installations as they initially appeared from 1948 to the final years of the artist's life. This accompanying volume is edited in collaboration with Milan's Fondazione Lucio Fontana and includes a survey of Fontana's contributions to the evolution of conceptual art, tracing his influence on other legendary figures as Piero Manzoni, Yayoi Kusama and James Turrell.
Author: Pia Gottschaller Publisher: Getty Publications ISBN: 1606061143 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 154
Book Description
Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative post-World War II Italian artists. This title presents a technical study in English of this important painter and an informative overview of Fontana's life and work.
Author: Stephen Petersen Publisher: Penn State University Press ISBN: Category : Art, European Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
"In the Space Age," wrote Italian artist Lucio Fontana, "spatial art." Fontana's desire to create art in space came in response to unprecedented technological advances and contemporary fantasies of space travel. Fifteen years before Andy Warhol said he wanted to be as much a part of his times as rockets and television, Fontana's large-scale light-and-space installations became a short-lived but ultimately influential art-world phenomenon. The artists discussed in Space-Age Aesthetics looked beyond the limits of the picture, exploring space, mass media, pop culture, nuclear power, and science fiction to connect new art to the dramatic changes taking place through the encroaching Space Age. Space-Age Aesthetics begins by addressing the imagery of space exploration as a field of mythical representation informed by Cold War politics and acted out in an expansive variety of media, from the picture press to comic books. Through persuasive arguments that reveal the many-layered interconnections between the artists' aesthetics and theoretical responses to the dawn of an age of revolutionary technologies, this book offers new ways to think about the historical emergence of pop, conceptual, postmodern, and installation art and serves to fill the long-neglected gap in material on the post-World War II European avant-garde.
Author: Paolo Campiglio Publisher: Skira ISBN: 9788857243139 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 136
Book Description
On Lucio Fontana's little-known engagement with ceramics Given the sculptural properties of his famous slashed canvases, it is perhaps little wonder that Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) began his career as a sculptor. Less well-known is his work as a ceramicist, which commenced in the mid-1930s and produced an exploration of materiality that profoundly informed his practice as an artist. This interest was developed parallel to his painting and was, in many ways, indistinguishable from his work as a sculptor. As Fontana continued to create ceramics, he became increasingly obsessed with the concept of matter as it related to the mass and volume of the sculpted object. His exploration of the physicality and weight of a work of art prefigured his later desire to diminish the materiality of his art. As Fontana scholar Paolo Campiglio writes here, "he sought to discover a form that could exceed its own materiality. He sought to test the possibilities of space. He sought to create an object with absolute plasticity. And he sought to discover an ideal abstract form, opposed to the accepted, geometrical forms."
Author: Lucio Fontana Publisher: ISBN: 9788857214290 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
For the first time in the US, Lucio Fontana Ambienti Spaziali presents a substantial number of the spatial environments conceived by the artist between 1948 and 1968, works that can be regarded as forerunners of the environments created by figures such as Allan Kaprow and Robert Irwin and the light art of the likes of Dan Flavin and Bruce Nauman. Six environments are included in the exhibition: Spatial Environment in Black Light, 1948-49, first shown at the Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, in 1949; the Neon Structure for the 9th Milan Triennale, 1951, created for the grand staircase of the Palazzo dellArte in Milan; Chandelier, 1959-60, executed for the Cinema Duse in Pesaro; Spatial Environment, 1967, realized for the exhibition Lo spazio dellimmagine in Foligno in 1967; Spatial Environment, 1967, mounted for the first time at the Galleria del Deposito, Genoa; and Spatial Environment at Documenta 4, Kassel, 1968. The environments are both the natural conclusion of his opening up of space through holes and cuts and the basic key to its understanding, not just in painting and sculpture, but in architecture too.
Author: Louisa Guinness Publisher: Antique Collector's Club ISBN: 9781851498703 Category : Artist-designed jewelry Languages : en Pages : 335
Book Description
"The women in Man Ray's life, as well as his reverence for the female form more broadly, were reflected in his jewellery. He kept the wearer in mind with each piece; never impractical or obtrusive, his jewels played with illusion, language and form as he employed the medium to further explore the artistic preoccupations of his career." Art as Jewellery is a visually stunning introduction to jewellery made by the titans of twentieth and twenty-first century art. From Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso, through to Anish Kapoor, Damien Hirst and Grayson Perry, the great figures of modern art have all turned both thought and talent to jewellery. Often, they have eschewed the traditional jeweller's preoccupation with material value and provenance, more concerned with the conceptual or aesthetic significance of their work. As is fitting for a book that covers a range of artists, every image is as striking as it is unique. By using contemporary pictures, Art as Jewellery develops a chronological timeline of jewellery presentation. Its pages are home to a stunning variety of design sketches and photographs. Some were shot by renowned 20th century photographers, such as Ugo Mulas and Antonia Mulas, while others have been buried in archives for decades, unseen since the '60s. In contrast, modern works have been given model treatment by top photographer Alexander English, making this book a glamorous blend of new and classic jewellery art. AUTHOR: Author Louisa Guinness, collector and gallery owner, provides insightful commentary on each artist and their work. Her input can be felt on a personal level; having worked alongside many of these artists as they developed their jewellery, she is in the perfect position to reveal the personal stories behind these pieces creation. Full-page colour photographs and sketches, some showing the artist at work in the studio, or with their muse, accompany each profile. Louisa also explores each artist in the context of the genre's evolution, looking at the key exhibitions that have shaped the interest of artists and collectors. This book will be of interest to jewellery and art lovers alike. SELLING POINTS: * Includes an introduction by Vivienne Becker, an award-winning jewellery writer, and a contribution from Julia Peyton Jones, previous director of the Serpentine Gallery, London * A marvellous array of images, from archived photographs and sketches that have not been seen since the '60s, and the work of 20th-century photographers such as Ugo Mulas and Antonia Mulas, to modern shoots by Alexander English 200 colour images
Author: Anthony White
Author: Iria Candela
Author: Marina Pugliese
Author: Pia Gottschaller
Author: Sarah Whitfield
Author: Stephen Petersen
Author: Paolo Campiglio
Author: Lucio Fontana
Author: Lucio Fontana
Author: Louisa Guinness