Italian Journal 7: CINEMATIC ITALY

Italy as set, protagonist and muse of filmmaking, past and present.

Italian Journal 7: Cinematic Italy

 

FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE

Volume 20. Number VII. 2012

Ludovica Purini Recieves Venere Award for Music

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Notable, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 /

On International Women’s Day 2012, the City of Rome bestowed the Venere Award on 20 leading women whose contributions across social, artistic and political spheres improve the City’s culture, health and wellness. Among them, Ludovica Rossi Purini, President of Compagnia per la Musica and frequent collaborator with the Italian Academy Foundation, received recognition for her dedication to music.

IAF Names Kim Brizzolara to Board of Directors

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Notable, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 /

The Italian Academy Foundation announced that Kim Brizzolara has joined its board of directors. Ms. Brizzolara is a feature and documentary film producer and serves as an advisor to several non-profit organizations. She is executive vice chair of the Hamptons International Film Festival, serves on the Board of the We are Family Foundation, and Creative Visions, and is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at the School of Government at Harvard.

Directors Rising: A look at some of the new, notable filmmakers out of Italy

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by William HOPE

Italian cinema experienced several golden eras during the course of the 20th century, periods during which the artistic vision and expertise of Italian film-makers and technicians were unparalleled. The opulent mise-en-scène of early works such as Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914), the stark stylistic originality of the neorealist era from the mid-1940s onwards, and the lavish cinematography of Oscar-winning works such as Giuseppe Tornatore’s Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1989) and Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo (1991) – these latter films revisiting, sometimes nostalgically, the community life and interpersonal solidarity of former generations –consolidated Italy’s position as an epicentre of cinematic innovation.

Focus on Davide Manuli: His vibrant film showcased in Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Established auteurs and emerging filmmakers alike offer their own perspectives on contemporary Italy at “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema”, the leading North American showcase for contemporary Italian cinema, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center together with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà and Filmitalia. This year’s edition (June 8-14, 2012) brought together directors (1) from different backgrounds and ages, who embody different ideas of cinema and contribute to piecing together a multi-faceted, complex picture of today’s Italy.

Cinecittà: Set, story, and social scene

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Located 10 miles from the center of Rome in a parkland estate extending over 99 acres, Cinecittà is the hub of Italian Cinema as well as the largest filmmaking facility in Europe. Since its foundation in 1937, it has hosted more than 3,000 films, which have made the history of cinema – from classics like Quo Vadis? (1951), Ben Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1863) and La dolce vita (1960) to more recent productions, such as The Name of the Rose (1986), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Godfather Part III (1990), The English Patient (1996), Gangs of New York (2002), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), The Passion of the Christ (2004) and the BBC/HBO series Rome (2004-2007).

Filmic Victory: The Taviani Brothers surprised themselves and others with the impact of their new film

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The Berlinale’s Golden Bear to Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, two masters of Italian cinema (respectively 80 and 82), for Caesar Must Die, sheds a new light on the contemporary Italian film scene, and perhaps on Italy as a whole. In a moment when Italy seems to struggle to live up to its glorious past, this prestigious international recognition is felt not only as a well-deserved appreciation of the Taviani brothers’ outstanding work, but as a sign of encouragement to a whole country. “Many people, after the award ceremony, thanked us on behalf of Italy, as if this prize were a prize to Italy” – says Paolo Taviani. “One even called us on the phone and said: ‘Thanks! I’ve hung the Italian flag out of my window!’ This is a tricky moment for our country. People believe it’s time for a change, they hope for a turning point. So this film, which is quite anomalous, somehow complies with these wishes.”

Universal Appeal: Italian filmmakers whose work transcends nationality

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Francesco DEL GROSSO

Italy boasts an extremely rich film tradition, which over the years has also become a burden difficult to bear and almost impossible to get rid of. In the last few decades, Italian filmmakers have made every effort to prove that Italian cinema has moved beyond the glories of the past, beyond the “Peplum” epics that dominated the Italian film industry from the first decade of the 20th century to the 1960s, beyond Neorealism and the Italian-style Comedy, beyond the Spaghetti Western and the Dolce Vita. Although the most recent productions “made in Italy” have not been able to live up to this glorious past, there is a variegated number of authors from different backgrounds, styles and ages whose work is particularly noteworthy: they are actually “mavericks” moving within an absent film industry that is neither financially sound nor effective in terms of regulations able to support technical and creative professionals.

Italy: Location as a Protagonist Recent films use the setting of Bel Paese to evoke emotion

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Pierpaolo FESTA

Woody Allen calls it “an osmosis,” something that is not done on purpose. Something that little by little penetrates the subconscious. It can be about art or history. Of course, it is also about landscape – just like walking among the stones of Via Appia, sipping Chianti while enjoying the Tuscany countryside or swimming in the magnificent blue sea of Sicily. This dive into the Italian culture is like an epiphany, a big emotion that nowadays American cinema wants to find more and more.

The State and Status of Film: A study of the effect of politics on Italian filmmaking

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Roberto SILVESTRI

The state of Italian film making comprises not only stalwarts like Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Francesco Rosi, Sabina Guzzanti, Paolo Sorrentino, Marco Tullio Giordana, but also names like Michelangelo Frammartino, Pietro Marcello, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Del Bono, Daniele Ciprì, Roberta Torre, Franco Maresco, and Stefano Savona; making the industry multi-faceted. The neo-realism of 1945-1948 saw a resurgence of a country in ruins and split by the European Recovery Program, which preferred American corporations taking advantage of low wages in a country beholden to the Western superpower. Today, that same country is still in ruin, spiritually and morally.

A Certain Age: The golden era of Italian cinema in 10 exemplars

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Enrico AZZANO

There is an old saying which says that we must look to the past to reconstruct the future. The golden years of cinema seem so far away: the years of neorealism, peplum (sword-and-sandals), spaghetti-westerns, thriller and horror, comedies, melodramas, politics; and of the Oscar winners, Cannes Film Festival winners, Cinecittà stars, and the many other internationally known and recognized awards.

Italian Video Art, A Review: The curator of the exhibit Electronic Body reports

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Contemporary Art, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

The topic of which I write arrives in the nick of time (perhaps I should say in the “flick” of time in honor of the filmatic subject). What follows is a general exploration of Italian video art, the subject of a fortunate concomitance with the exhibition I have just curated for the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation. Entitled Electronic Body, the show gathers together 16 artists using the video medium exclusively to express a range of issues, approaches and visions.

Dressing the Part: 2012-2013 Italian collections have a vintage filmic quality

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Fashion, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI

When movies first began to be mass-marketed, right after the turn of the century, actors and actresses usually looked to their own closets for contemporary stories. For period pieces, of course, a wardrobe department was necessary, but it was not until 1916 that the first costume designer was credited on film, a certain Frenchman Louis J. Gasnier.

Director’s Backstory, Dark and Light

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Literature, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

If a maverick is, by his own admission, “a filmmaker who finds a way with the system of making the films he has chosen to make”, Martin Scorsese is certainly one. From his early works, directly emanating from the ethnic melting pot of New York’s Lower East Side where he grew up, to his latest Oscar-winning celebration of the dream factory, Hugo (2011), Scorsese has worked his way up in the film industry within and outside the system, “above ground” and “underground”, in and out of Hollywood, putting onto film his deepest obsessions.

Roberto Benigni

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Face File, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Logan METZER

Among plebians and film-connoisseurs alike, Roberto Benigni is oft remembered for his flamboyant celebration at the 1998 Academy Awards. Clambering over chairs, reciting Dante’s Divina Commedia, and appearing in the sequel to Woody Allen’s acclaimed Midnight in Paris just tell a part of Benigni’s story and the extraordinary impact he has had on the Italian arts.

Uncategorized

Notable

SD 26: Private Dining

/ Columns, Notable, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 /

Beloved New York restauranteurs Tony May and his daughter Marisa announce the opening of their spacious restaurant for private events. Designed by Massimo Vignelli, the location has three floors and 13,000 square feet of space, including a chic Balcony Room, a wine connoisseurs’ dining area and a grand main dining room. The Executive Chef Matteo […]

Muti Receives 2013 Premio Giustiniano, IAF’s Carusi Awarded Special Mention

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 /

The fact that 2013 is the Verdi bicentennial makes it all the more fitting that Riccardo Muti won this year’s Premio Giustiniano, Ravenna’s top prize for arts and culture. Muti is arguably the most famous contemporary Italian conductor, and has always considered Verdi a muse and an inspiration, recently releasing a book about him.

Violinist Nicola Benedetti Debuts in Rome

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 /

World-renowned violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti debuted in Rome this March. The Scottish-born daughter of Italian immigrants started playing at age four, and by the age of eight had auditioned for and made the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland. By age nine, she had passed all eight grades of musical examinations. By 16, she had studied under Yehudi Menuhin, won BBC’s Young Musician of the Year and signed with a record label.

Compasso D’Oro Celebrates Italian Design Excellence

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Considered the Oscar of Italian design, as well as an authoritative barometer of the state of the cultural debate on industrial design itself, the Compasso d’Oro award is the major acknowledgement of Italian design and enjoys a high reputation throughout the world, so much so that London’s prestigious Phaidon Press has selected it among the top 999 design classics of all time.

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Photography

Editor's Journal

A Traviata for All Time

/ Columnists and Contributors, Editor's Journal, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

La Scala’s December 7 season premiere of La Traviata made headlines in Italy — large type exclamations of how the director was boo’ed. The director’s intrepid vision was to demonstrate that Verdi’s love story need not be trapped in a 19th century Paris boudoir, but whose characters and emotions resonated in an ultra-chic, 20th-century Milanese […]

Interwoven

/ Editor's Journal, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Claudia PALMIRA ACUNTO

It is essentially American to assimilate the influences of its myriad foreign-born communities and traditions while nonetheless individuating them. And one could say that Italian culture is “one of a kind” and not readily integrated. Italianità in America has mostly resisted over-adaptation and watered-down versions of itself, creating an almost amorous symbiosis between the two.

Face File

Valeria Golino

/ Columns, Face File, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI
For three decades, Valeria Golino, 47, has enjoyed a career of unusual variety, alternating in the past 25 years between Hollywood movies and films in her native Italy. Best known to English-speaking audiences as Topper Harley’s sexy, exotic girlfriend in the popular Hot Shots! and for her role in Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, Valeria, born to a Greek mother and Italian father in Naples, began her career as a model. She started working as an actress during the 1980s, after she was discovered by Italian film icon Lina Wertmüller, who cast her in A Joke of Destiny (1983) when she was still in high school. Three years later she won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival for Storia d’Amore.

Fabiola Gianotti

/ Columns, Face File, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Tegan GEORGE

Italians who have impacted the world bring to mind either Renaissance masters, ancient statesmen or contemporary entertainers and designers, like Roberto Benigni, Sofia Loren, Giorgio Armani, or Guccio Gucci. We don’t, however, often think of physicists. This changed after December 19, 2012, when Milanese physicist Fabiola Gianotti was named runnerup for Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Roberto Benigni

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Face File, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Logan METZER

Among plebians and film-connoisseurs alike, Roberto Benigni is oft remembered for his flamboyant celebration at the 1998 Academy Awards. Clambering over chairs, reciting Dante’s Divina Commedia, and appearing in the sequel to Woody Allen’s acclaimed Midnight in Paris just tell a part of Benigni’s story and the extraordinary impact he has had on the Italian arts.

Riccardo Muti

/ Columns, Face File, Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Nona TEPPER

On April 15th, at Carnegie Hall, the crowd listening to Othello shouted repeatedly, “Bravi!”, and Riccardo Muti took a deep bow. This certainly wasn’t the first time Muti, the current Musical Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has received a standing ovation, and surely it won’t be the last. Once this Naples-born conductor puts down his baton, listeners inevitably rise to their feet, moved by the emotional force of his music, clapping without inhibition for more.

Volume 20. Number II. 2009

Italy’s Mission in the U.N.: Remarks by the Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations, Ambassador Cesare Maria Ragaglini, to the Gruppo Esponenti Italiani (GEI) in New York

/ Columns, Notable, The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

I could not be more happy to speak about two of the issues we are cur­rently dealing with at the Italian Mission to the United Nations. One of our top concerns in the past year has been Italy’s leadership of the Group of the Eight Most Industrialized Countries, whose work we have tried to correlate more closely with the agenda of the United Nations. The other is the Lisbon Treaty, which enters into force on December 1, and promises to affect the role of the Eu­ropean Union at the United Nations. I promise to be brief.

Rome and Vatican Recieve Newly Appointed American Ambassadors

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

The swearing in of the new U.S. Am­bassador to Rome, David Thorne, 64, marks new era for U.S.-Italian rela­tions. Investor, entrepreneur, author and supporter of the arts, Thorne is the co-founder of Adviser Investments one of the U.S.’s top firms specializing in Van­guard and Fidelity mutual funds and ex­change trade funds. He is a former Presi­dent and current Board member of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and led the design oversight team for its new building in Boston. Additionally, he has participated in a variety of other un­dertakings including marketing, consult­ing, and real estate.

Italian Technology to Save Venice: An interview with Dr. Maria Teresa Brotto, head of the Department of Design of the M.O.S.E. Project

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

The fifth Annual Conference of the Ital­ian Language Inter Cultural Alliance (ILICA) in New York was called: “Saving Venezia & Protecting New Orleans.” The leaders of the M.O.S.E. project (Modulo Sper­imentale Elettromeccanico or Experimental Electromechanical Module) were in New York to demonstrate how the technology designed to save Venice can be applied to New Orleans. Here, Dr. Maria Teresa Brotto explains how this Italian high-tech project will work.

“Italian-Type” Food: Artful naming can fake the authenticity of food origins

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

by Efthalia STAIKOS

As consumers, we fight a battle every time we enter a supermarket. Do we buy or do we not buy? Is it healthy or unhealthy? Will it be tasty or disgusting? A burden is placed on us to utilize the wealth of knowledge at our disposal so that we do not make ignorant decisions. Between the internet, books, and maga­zines about every topic imaginable, we become handicapped by knowledge. We assume we can trust food companies be­cause clearly they would not trick us if it’s so easy for us to research into the truth about their products. The only problem is that this assumption makes us lazy and we do not end up doing our research. We trust that if a product says it is “Authentic Italian Tomato Sauce,” then it must be. Clearly the company would be penalized for lying. Unfortunately, this is not the case and we buy into food counterfeiting scams every day.

Men Who “See” Stars

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Piergiorgio ODIFREDDI

On January 7, 1610, Galileo wrote a letter to Antonio de’ Medici where he briefly reported on the results of his first observations of the sky through a telescope exactly 400 years ago, late in the summer of 1609. The letter con­cluded with some news of the day: “Only this evening I have seen Jupiter accompa­nied by three fixed stars totally invisible because of their smallness.” With under­standable and justifiable pride, he also noticed: “We can believe to have been the first in the world to discover some­thing about the heavenly bodies from so nearby and so distinctly.”

Galileo, Engineer: The astronomer’s experiments appeal to an engineer’s mind

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Matteo VALLIERIANI

The interested reader may have no­ticed how historians in recent de­cades have attempted to deconstruct the identity of Galileo Galilei. He is no lon­ger just the great astronomer or even just the founder of the modern experimental method in science. Even the political val­ue of his work and his life, systematically reconsidered in the frame of the debates about the relation between Church and research institutions or between religion and science, is no longer the single rel­evant perspective for approaching this kind of historical thread. Thanks to the work of historians of science of the last twenty years, readers are now used to very different interpretations. Galileo is now also a heretic, a revolutionary mar­tyr, a mathematician, an Aristotelian natural philosopher, an artist – almost with brush and palette in his hand – and finally a gifted courtier. This, however, is only an apparent process of fragmen­tation. Historiographically speaking, a process of this kind tends to cancel cat­egories such as “genius” from scientific activities and their histories. Such catego­ries are used to justify the impossibility of explaining historical phenomena. In other terms, the actual history of science requires science and its history to remain rational activities. For this reason, it is relevant to undertake an investigation of Galileo in all of his contexts.

The Equisite Experimentalist: Galileo’s penchant for live “trials” of his ideas inspires the author to do the very same

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Paolo PALMIERI

When Galileo Galilei was a student at the University of Pisa in the 1580s, physics was a loose bundle of ideas inherited from the Greeks, mostly from the philosopher Aristotle, via the mediation of the Latin Middle Ages. Projectiles keep going after being released by their projectors because air keeps pushing them for a while, as the most in vogue theory of the time would have it (though there were variations). Theirs is a violent motion. Heavy things fall downwards because the centre of the earth is the natural place for them to achieve their natural state of rest. Theirs is a natural motion. Pendulums are constrained motions. Is the motion of a pendulum violent or natural? Why does it turn back after reaching a summit? Why do violent motions such as those of cannon balls cease? These were the questions a professor of physics would investigate at that time.

Reflections on Motivations and Durations of Ideas: Two revolutionary 16th-century thinkers both upended their contemporary scientific norms, an approach that could inspire innovative thinking even today

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

by Efthalia STAIKOS

Breakthroughs, progress, solutions, new theories, modern research… all of these words conjure up images of discovery and contribution in the scien­tific world. Grasping the natural world and understanding what we cannot see provides a sense of satisfaction, even comfort, to most. Science, however, is an example of a field where solutions and progress are actually driven by a cer­tain dissatisfaction with what is already known. It is discomfort with the status quo that has motivated many scientists to push for new answers, alternative op­tions; and to test and ponder persistently until they are satisfied with a new reality. Many scientists throughout history questioned the laws of nature that guide the movement of the stars and planets. It was previously believed that until Galileo, scientists never began to truly speculate on the theories put forth by Aristotle. It did not seem as though anyone had really questioned and researched into creation of the universal systems until Galileo came along. As everyone was frantically searching for an answer they could be­lieve in, Galileo put forth solutions even though his research and his conclusions eventually led to his persecution.

Patrimony and Discovery: Since its beginning, science has been supported by a variety of patrons, from the popes and princes of the Renaissance to State funding, up to the new forms of social patronage of today

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The history of arts as we know it today wouldn’t be the same without the support provided by kings, popes and rich aristocratic families to musicians, painters and sculptors. This phenom­enon, which is usually referred to as “pa­tronage,” had its maximum development in Italy during Renaissance, when the major masterpieces in the history of art were conceived and came to life, mainly thanks to the influence of the House of Medici in Florence. Among the artists who benefited from their sponsorship were Brunelleschi, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Medicean “Stars” of Scientific Patronage

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The Medici Granducal Archive (Mediceo del Principato)

For over two centuries, the Medici fam­ily ruled Tuscany as sovereign Grand Dukes. Their archival collection – called the Mediceo del Principato – has sur­vived virtually intact in the State Archive in Florence (Archivio di Stato di Firenze). It covers the chronological span of their rule: from the moment Cosimo I became Duke of Florence in 1537 to the death in 1743 of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, sister of Gian Gastone, the last of the Medici Grand Dukes. In other words, it begins with Michelangelo’s work on the Last Judgment and ends with the birth of Thomas Jefferson.

“And Yet It Moves…”: The film Galileo represents the neverending struggle for scientific freedom against all forms of censorship

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

A yearly appointment not to be missed by film critics and moviego­ers from all around the world, the 66th edition of the Venice Film Fes­tival confirms itself as one of the most prestigious events in the film calendar, with a rich and variegated selection of international titles and the ever-present parade of stars and celebrities.

Live Building: Architect Renzo Piano’s design for a science museum is a (literally) living example of environmentally-aware architecture

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

by Efthalia STAIKOS

The California Academy of Sciences, guided by the mastermind architect Renzo Piano, has successfully created a self-sustaining, green structure. Its ex­cellence was acknowledged by the U.S. Green Building Council that awarded it Platinum status. LEED Platinum (Lead­ership in Energy and Environmental De­sign) is the highest rating a building can achieve. The Academy, a design of Renzo Piano’s, is now the greenest museum in the world, and the largest Platinum-rated public building in the world. The science that went into creating the building did nothing to take away from the beauty of its design, which uniquely integrates it into the surrounding Golden Gate Park.

Sculptural Chemistry: Spatial intersections in steel works of sculptor Alfio Mongelli

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Genny DI BERT

“The field of physics/mathematics that characterizes the imposing works of Algio Mongelli is transformed by an expressive freedom that confounds any scientific pattern. The unity and syth­nesis achieved in his creations, whether large sculptural manifestations in stain­less steel or geometric graphic forms, re­veal the exceptional quality of this artist among the most successful contempo­rary artists.”

Thus wrote Nobel prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini in 1994 referring to the Roman artist Algio Mongelli (born 1939). An astute observation on the part of a perceptive scientist who, oblivious to the writings of the most renowned and profound art critics (Mussa, Masi, Strina­ti, Benincasa, Crispolti, Restany, Berger) arrived at the most defining aspect of the artist’s work: sythesis. It is from this core that his works originate––seemingly simplistic, oddly logical in content, their structure a relationship between space and substance.

Primal Emotions: Author and physicist Paolo Giordano uses a mathematic principle as a metaphor for the human condition

/ Columns, Literature, The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

A man whose mind has gone astray should study mathematics,” said philosopher Francis Bacon, pointing out a strict relationship between mathemati­cal thought and that kind of extraordi­nary, sometimes borderline, sensitivity that is commonly associated to poetry. That must be the case of Paolo Giorda­no, a 27-year-old Italian scientist working on a doctorate in particle physics, who has recently won five literary awards – included the prestigious Premio Strega, Italy’s answer to the Man Booker Prize – with his bestselling debut novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers.

Volume 20. Number III. 2010

Fini Presents Gift from Italy to Library of Congress: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi receives Michelangelo’s La Dotta Mano from President of Italian Chamber of Deputies Gianfranco Fini with these remarks

/ Columns, Notable, The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 /

During his February visit to the U.S., Gianfranco Fini attended a reception at the Library of Congress hosted by the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, where he presented a rare volume of Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano, as a gift to Congress. Late in the evening, Fini attended a dinner hosted by Italian Ambassador Giulio Terzi.

Caravaggio Assoluto: Curators of Rome’s landmark exhibit contextualize the artist

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / , /

by Francesco BURANELLI and Rossella VODRET

On the 18th of July 1610, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – one of the greatest painters in the history of Italy – ended his short turbulent life at the young age of 39, at the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice Hospital of Porto Ercole, in the Southern Coast of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. About him, André Berne-Joffroy stated: “What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting.”

Inherent Revolution: Why the artist was the first to make paintings of timeless mass appeal

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Claudio STRINATI Caravaggio inevitably attracts us because we sense that his life and art are tightly, inextricably connected.  At one time, the explanation for this fact seemed straightforward: He lived a tragic, challenging life, withstanding many difficulties, which manifested itself in the extreme (some say grotesque) power of his art filled with violence, inescapable […]

Portraits and Portrayals

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by John VARRIANO

Portraiture is perhaps the most natural challenge to the realist painter. Alone of the genres, it combines spirit with substance and focuses directly on living individuals. It would seem particularly natural that Caravaggio be moved to paint portraits since he was instinctively drawn to the human figure and the expressive psychology of the mind. Portraiture, moreover, was renowned among his predecessors and contemporaries in Lombardy and Rome. Painters in the north like Moroni, Lotto, and Cavagna, or Romans like Pulzone or Ottavio Leoni had fashioned highly realistic likenesses that Caravaggio could hardly have failed to notice. His principal patrons in Rome were enthusiastic collectors of portraits and their palaces were full of such pictures. Indeed, more than half of the 600 paintings in the Del Monte Collection were portraits.

Performing the Paintings: A contemporary artist inhabits the Baroque realist’s paintings in a work entitled “Cara Viaggio”

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by John KELLY

My performance work evolved out of a background in dance and visual art, and has remained essentially ephemeral. I’ve retained a long-standing desire to merge these two disciplines into a tangible synthesis. This impulse resulted in a studio practice I recently implemented while a Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

The Quoted Artist: Contemporary fascination with Caravaggio is, in itself, Baroque

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Mieke BAL

Like any form of representation, art is inevitably engaged with what came before it, and that engagement is an active reworking. It specifies what and how our gaze sees. Hence, the work performed by later images obliterates the older images as they were before that intervention and creates new versions of old images instead. This process is exemplified by an engagement of contemporary culture with the past that has important implications for the ways we conceive of both history and culture in the present.

Reverberations of Realism: “Caravaggismo” in 17th-,18th- and 19th-century art

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Genny DI BERT

From 1600 until the present, Caravaggio’s work has influenced many trends in art, including that of Cezanne. Caravaggio’s breakthrough was his sharp realism: Saints shown as average people and religious experiences as ordinary human drama – expressed through emotions, theatre and allegory. He depicted idealized concepts as manifested in the visible world. Though an extraordinary colorist, he was selective in his compositions – each detail of his paintings corresponds to reality and the models he used.

Speaking of Realism: A show of Czechoslovakian Realism 1948-1989 looks to debut in New York. An interview with director Francesco Augusto Razetto

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Genny DI BERT

Realism in Socialist Czechoslovakia was shown at the Gallery Mánes, the museumm of modern art in Prague in December 2009. The exhibition comprised over 70 works revisting the period of Czech realism through a selection of paintings, sculpture, graphics and photography, many previously unpublished or unseen. The curator of architecture of the Prague Foundation Eluetheria, Francesco Augusto Razetto, along with the show’s other curators, including his brother Ottaviano Maria Razetto, are working on bringing the exhibition to Italy and New York.

Sacred, Profane Naples: In her collection of short stories, Italian novelist Valeria Parrella catches the intrinsically Baroque side of Naples and its inhabitants

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

With its colourful carnival of clothes and bed sheets hanging from the windows, its maze of narrow streets and secret corners, its roaring chaos of motorbikes and shouting vendors, its inebriating mixture of coffee aromas and pizza flavours, Naples is by its nature a Baroque city.

Volume 20. Number IV. 2011

The Stability of the Euro and the Role of Italy: Ambassador Giulio Terzi speaks on the European financial picture to the members of Gruppo Esponenti Italiani (G.E.I.)

/ Columns, Design Save Italy, Notable, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 /

by Ambassador Giulio Terzi

I am delighted to be here with you again today and honored by your invitation, a most welcome sign of your great friendship. The last time I had the pleasure of being with you – as Permanent Representative to the United Nations – I talked about international security issues. Over the last year and a half, I have somehow changed my perspective – but not too much: in Washington, diplomatic work is at once global and bilateral too. Today I would like to address a topic which has both a global scope, as it relates to the world’s monetary system, and a “bilateral” one which refers to relations between the EU and the US: I am referring to the stability of the euro-zone.

Hotels: The Latest in Italian Luxury Labeling: Boutique hotels and villas by top designers make a smart aesthetic – and business –– statement

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Michael BOTTARI

Some of the biggest names in Italian design and fashion have a new way to enjoy their aesthetic luxury, to become enveloped in its greatness instead of just wearing it. This new phenomenon comes in the form of design or boutique hotels, located in some of the most alluring cities in the world.

Design V. Styling: The role of the traditional Italian design studio in contemporary business culture

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Stefano Giovannoni

The design activities of Italian and American design studios are based on totally different business models. In the American system we find large professional studios, multinational organizations that reach a company size measured in hundreds of employees, while Italian design factories work with designers who usually operate from small professional studios with which the company has a consolidated relationship. Many designers of the older generation – Castiglioni, Magistretti, Sapper, Mari and Zanuso – worked with facilities reduced to the limits!

The Courage and Risk of a Vision: Using past successes to inspire, not overshadow, the present

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Domitilla DARDI

In 1972 Italy: the new domestic landscape, the exhibition curated by Emilio Ambasz, opened at MoMA: it was a momentous event for Italian design, consecrating the industrial production of the glorious decade of the Sixties in the world. The exhibition pointed out the experimental character of Italian design, the courage of a vision of interior design able to fill the industrial and technological gap between Italy and other countries with a stronger training and production background.

It is in the Use of an Object that its Destiny is Written: The director of Milan’s Triennale Design Museum reflects on the functional side of design

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Silvia ANNICHIARICO

A little more than two years have passed since December 2007, when we inaugurated the Triennale di Milano Design Museum. Since that time, the bearing idea for our project—that of giving life to a changing museum that would be capable of periodically renewing itself in terms of contents, of selection criteria, and of modalities of fruition—has been refined and consolidated, becoming even a pilot model for significant foreign experiences.

What does Italian Design Mean to You?: The design world answers the Italian Journal’s question

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

compiled by Laura GIACALONE

“I believe that, in some respects, the great fortune of Castiglionis’ work, and of Italian design in general, was that we had a very free, disenchanted relationship with technology. Experimenting was quite affordable, which probably helped our research, whereas today it requires the support of large manufacturing companies, and needs huge investments. Luckily there still exist, within large companies, very talented craftsmen with whom it is easy to work, and that surely helps the research a lot.” Achille Castiglioni

The Memory of Objects, an Interview with Gaetano Pesce

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

An unrelenting research on new materials, an unrestrained use of colour, the political dimension of his projects, the handcrafted quality of his creations make Gaetano Pesce one of the greatest and most unconventional artists of Italian contemporary design scene. His career is studded with memorable masterpieces, which blur the distinction between art and design: from “Up” (1969), a series of “feminine” anthropomorphic armchairs which exploit the morphological memory of the polyurethane, returning to their shape and consistency as soon as they are freed from their packaging, to the “Rag Chair” (1972) and the “Sit Down” seat furniture (1975), based on the intriguing idea of having no two pieces alike. Other notable works include the “Dalila” chairs (1980), whose sensuous shape intentionally evokes the soft forms of the female body, the humorous “Umbrella” chair (1995), which folds up like an umbrella and opens out like its namesake, and “Sessantuna” (2010), sixty-one different tables, all of them unique, to celebrate Italy on the 150th anniversary of its unification.

Design as an Approach to Life, an Interview with Gabriele Pezzini

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Born in 1963, Gabriele Pezzini is one of the most prominent figures in the Italian design’s contemporary scene. His strong artistic background has always driven him into the field of experimentation. Interested in the relations between product and industry, he has dedicated himself to innovative research projects, focusing on the conception and organization of exhibitions that have allowed him to develop his analyses and theories on perception and cross-contamination of everyday objects.

The Superficial Truth: A controversial video-turned-book looks at the one-dimensional presentation of women in Italian television

/ Columns, Design Save Italy, Literature, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Please don’t retouch my wrinkles” – said the great Italian actress Anna Magnani, a muse for Neorealist maestro Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City, 1945), while instructing her make-up artist not to conceal the lines on her face – “Leave them all there, it took me so long to earn them.” Many years have passed since then, and women’s concerns and ambitions seem to have changed a lot.

Volume 20. Number V. 2011

Making Italy: How the Disparate North and South tried giving “Italy” a try

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Don H. DOYLE

Italy began its modern national existence as the newly united Kingdom of Italy in the same troubled spring of 1861 that witnessed the break up of what some Europeans began calling the “dis- United States.” The Italians called their struggle for national independence and unification the Risorgimento, implying that modern Italy was to be a “resurgence” of something that came before, something destined to live again once foreign intruders were cast off. America won independence from British rule, and then, by way of treaties, wars, and expulsion, between the 1780s and 1840s the new nation wrested control of the hinterland from Spain, France, Britain, Native Americans, and Mexicans. The Italians had to dislodge several different “foreign” rulers between 1859 and 1870: Austrians in the North, Spanish Bourbons in the South, and finally the French troops defending Rome and the Papal States in central Italy.

Italy in Bocca: The origin and nature of what we call Italian food

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by John MARIANI

Simply put, there was no Italian food before there was an Italy. There was Tuscan food and Ligurian food and Sicilian food and Sardinian food, but for 2,000 years there was no Italian food. Not until 1861, when most of its 20 regions were unified as a kingdom under Victor Emmanuel II, was there a country called Italy. Even then, city states like Venice and Rome, which was declared the new capital, and part of the Papal States, remained separate from the new country. Before 1861 and for a century afterwards, what people ate in Rome had little to do with what they ate in Bari, and when Florentines dined, it was not on the same food and wine enjoyed by Neapolitans or Venetians. There was regional food, but for 2,000 years there was no Italian food. Especially in the kitchen, Italians have always resisted being mere Italians.

Transcending the Appenine Divide: Italy’s mountainous terrain affects its socio-political history

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Daniel B. GALLAGHER

American high-school students often come away from a basic course in European geography believing that the Alps are the only major topographical feature to note in Italy’s landscape. Having studied the epic crossings of Hannibal and Napoleon, they are left with the impression that it is “all downhill from there.” I was reminded of this recently while helping some friends arrange a road trip from Rome to San Giovanni Rotondo. Much to their chagrin, they discovered that there is no “direct route” from point A to point B since a mountain range – namely the Apennines – runs down the middle of the country.

Music for a Revolution – C. 1860: The natural role of opera and composer Verdi during the age of the Risorgimento

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Giovanni BIETTI

As many scholars have pointed out, before being politically united, Italy had already been musically unified by opera. Nothing could be truer: it is enough to scroll through the list of the main theatres active in the first half of the 19th century (La Scala in Milan, La Fenice in Venice, San Carlo in Naples, just to mention the three most famous ones, but also the Roman theatres, such as Valle, Argentina, or the now closed Apollo Theatre, as well as the opera houses of Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and so on) to realize that operas circulated throughout the Italian peninsula, constantly crossing the borders between the various States.

Civil Games: How the sport of soccer reflects the state of Italian nationalism

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by John FOOT

When a number of intellectuals were asked, in the 1990s, what it was that held Italians together, a fair number cited the national soccer team. When Italy play in international tournaments, Italian flags – normally so rare – suddenly spring up on windowsills and on rooftops. In Naples in 2002 I witnessed an enormous Italian flag – which had been paid for by a door-to-door collection – being hung across a small urban street. Within days, Italy were out, and the flag came down. In a young and regionally divided nation, soccer has formed a powerful glue around which national identity has been able to form. La Nazionale – the national team – has always inspired classic nationalist sentiments, flag-waving, celebration and discussion. Italians are united when Italia is playing, at least in their support for the team itself.

Inside Support: The representation of patriotic women in the visual art of the Risorgimento

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Eugenio F. BIAGINI

The surviving written evidence, for both patriots and reactionaries, predominantly concerns upper-class women. Of course, this reflects the nature of the evidence studied so far, and the interests of the historians who have examined it. Both are likely to change in years to come. One primary source increasingly used by historians is provided by contemporary paintings and prints. Although Banti has devoted considerable attention to “historical” paintings as an expression of the Nazione del Risorgimento in its making, he has restricted his attention to early Romantic artists such as Francesco Hayez (1791-1881). Hayez specialized in portraits and “heroic” paintings of medieval and Renaissance episodes, and appropriated for nationalistic purposes themes from the older regional patriotisms. Such is the case for I Vespri Siciliani (1844-6), which celebrated a Medieval rising of the Sicilians against the French invaders.

Passion all’Italiana: An interview with Fred Plotkin

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The New York Times described Fred Plotkin as “a New Yorker, but with the soul of an Italian” who is a legend for “his renaissance mastery” of Italian music and food. He attended the Universities of Bologna and Pavia, worked at La Scala as a Fulbright Scholar and is the Italy expert that others turn to for definitive and complex answers about everything in his favourite nation. He lectures all over the world on topics on which he is passionate, including how we can live the life of the Renaissance Man in modern times.

Riccardo Muti

/ Columns, Face File, Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Nona TEPPER

On April 15th, at Carnegie Hall, the crowd listening to Othello shouted repeatedly, “Bravi!”, and Riccardo Muti took a deep bow. This certainly wasn’t the first time Muti, the current Musical Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has received a standing ovation, and surely it won’t be the last. Once this Naples-born conductor puts down his baton, listeners inevitably rise to their feet, moved by the emotional force of his music, clapping without inhibition for more.

Fashion

Schiap Happy

/ Columns, Fashion, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI

Elsa Schiaparelli, “Schiap” to friends (born in Rome on September 10, 1890), was an innovative woman and fashion designer and had a lot of “firsts” in the fashion industry. Her first collection in 1927, in fact, consisted of sweaters adorned with surrealist trompe l’oeil images – a theme that was to become Schiaparelli’s trademark (featured in American Vogue).

Maps and the Heroic Age of explorers are in fashion

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Fashion, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

Collections of 1a Classe Alviero Martini fall 2012, one of Italy’s top manufacturers of leather goods, accessories and women’s clothing are characterized by a “geographic map” motif (called the ‘Geo-Map’), an original design inspired by the era of legendary voyages, explorations and by the Belle Époque.

Dressing the Part: 2012-2013 Italian collections have a vintage filmic quality

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Fashion, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI

When movies first began to be mass-marketed, right after the turn of the century, actors and actresses usually looked to their own closets for contemporary stories. For period pieces, of course, a wardrobe department was necessary, but it was not until 1916 that the first costume designer was credited on film, a certain Frenchman Louis J. Gasnier.

Futurism Fashion

/ Columns, Fashion, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Futurism Fashion Balla and Biagotti: Milan’s fashion week celebrates the centenary of Futurism with a collection of creations that seems to revive Giacomo Balla’s myth of the “Anti-Neutral Clothes” (1914). For her autumn/winter collection, Laura Biagiotti draws on Balla’s Futurist aesthetics, proposing outfits with avant-garde embellishments and agile, dynamic, playful and asymmetric forms. The “Anti-Neutral” […]

Contemporary

NYC Welcomes Natalia Quintavalle in the Consul General’s Office: An Interview with Italian Journal

/ Contemporary, Notable, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 /

The first woman to be appointed as Italian Consul General in New York, Minister Plenipotentiary Natalia Quintavalle took her seat at the Park Avenue Consulate in September 2011. The prestigious assignment is only the last of a series of important achievements in her diplomatic career, which has seen her actively work in the defense of human rights and in the promotion of Italian culture and interests in the world.

Notes on New Italian Art

/ Columns, Contemporary, Contemporary Art, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

Italian Contemporary Art: Three words suggesting such a tangle of opposing considerations, cultural and commercial developments and widespread interests that it is quite difficult to have a comprehensive picture of it. For historical reasons and recent twisted events, the Italian art world embodies an anomalous reality, both for its well-acknowledged qualities and its congenital faults. We have a great tradition of art that the world much appreciates – this goes without saying. From Giotto to Mario Schifano, enviable talents and universal geniuses have come one after the other, producing new expressive modes and groundbreaking innovations.

Two Remarkable Shows, NY

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Amanda Romero

There are 89 Italian Cultural Institutes in the world – and they all participated in “Venice Biennale In The World,” a project led by renowned Italian art critic Vittorio Sgarbi to promote Italian artists internationally. In collaboration with museums, universities, organizations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prominent art critics and scholars served as the judges for the 217 Italian artists nominated to show around the world. These artists’ works were also included in a video documentary presented at the 2012 Venice Biennale.

Reading Contemporary Works in Two Examples

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Genny DI BERT

Quella che osserviamo è la fotografa di una scena, di un momento d’espressione artistica in cui l’ambiente e l’uomo interagiscono, che viene, durante la realizzazione, con uno “scatto” resa opera d’arte apparentemente bidimensionale. L’immagine riprodotta valorizza l’irripetibilità dell’azione ed ogni scena diventa opera d’arte unica. La rappresentazione, come la realtà osservata e dipinta, viene studiata, immaginata, riprodotta attraverso l’occhio fotografico attento a cogliere l’istante creativo.

Art, Visual Vehicle of Energy: Italian Journal interviews 2011 Venice Biennale Visual Arts Director Bice Curiger

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE


One of the world’s most important forums for the dissemination and illumination of current developments in international art, La Biennale di Venezia can boast a well-reputed personality at the helm. Appointed Director of the Visual Arts sector for the 54th International Art Exhibition (2011), Bice Curiger (pictured) is an art historian, critic and curator of international exhibitions. Her curatorial activity at Kunsthaus Zurich parallels her important work in the publishing sector. In 1984, she co-founded the prestigious art magazine Parkett, of which she is editor-in-chief. She has been publishing director of London Tate Gallery’s magazine Tate etc since 2004, and is also the author of various publications and catalogues of contemporary art. Her insight into contemporary art surely adds value to an exhibition that, once again, is bound to consolidate its success.

Venice: Exhibitionist City, Then and Now

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Veronica Maria WHITE

In 1948, Peggy Guggenheim exhibited her collection of avant garde paintings and sculptures at the Venice Biennale. Among the 73 artists featured were Picasso, Ernst, Kandinsky, Pollock and Rothko. The show was revolutionary in its presentation of Cubist, Surrealist and Abstract works to the general European public, as well as to contemporary Italian artists. Soon after the show, Peggy settled in Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where from 1951 onward her collection opened its doors to visitors. The heiress’ choice of Venice as a home and showcase for her works is significant, for she had already experienced the contemporary art scene in Paris, London and New York. Located in a Renaissance palazzo on the Grand Canal, the Peggy Guggenheim collection in fact highlights Venice’s dual identity as a historic maritime city and a protagonist in artistic innovation.

Many Institutions, Few Artists: The business of Contemporary Art in Italy

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Walter SANTAGATA

As in all worlds of art and culture, even in contemporary art there are two conflicting policies at work: conservation and production of new works of art. Whereas conservation means to safeguard the historical heritage of a country, its most immediate expression being the “museum-ization ” of art, i.e. the entrusting of art to the sacredness of a museum, production means to create new works of art. Conservation is a backward- looking policy dealing with the preservation of the past; production is instead a forward-looking policy interested in the future and in the development of new works of art. Conservation relies on legal and institutional instruments, such as regulations and laws, whereas production is a policy consisting of many different steps: selection of artists, creation and production of works of art, distribution, modes of consumption.

Vogue Patronage: Italy’s Fashion Houses are Emerging as Contemporary Art Patrons

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Besides their worldwide renown for setting the trends of cutting-edge styles, Italian fashion designers have now established themselves as the modern patrons of contemporary art, being the most active supporters of avant-garde art projects and drawing on works of art for inspiration. In the last few years, many initiatives launched by top luxury brands of fashion have contributed to introduce a new generation of Italian artists to the international scene.

What Grows in War-Ravaged Soil

/ Columns, Contemporary, Literature, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Reading Twice Born is like taking a journey that, once started, has no turning back. It is something to be experienced, more than just read. It slowly sinks into your heart and, page by page, leaves you completely helpless, defenceless, as after a storm of mixed emotions. It is like being revealed the unspoken truth of human condition, with its eternal carousel of joy and sorrow, and turning it into a personal memory.

Risorgimento Reflected

Making Italy: How the Disparate North and South tried giving “Italy” a try

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Don H. DOYLE

Italy began its modern national existence as the newly united Kingdom of Italy in the same troubled spring of 1861 that witnessed the break up of what some Europeans began calling the “dis- United States.” The Italians called their struggle for national independence and unification the Risorgimento, implying that modern Italy was to be a “resurgence” of something that came before, something destined to live again once foreign intruders were cast off. America won independence from British rule, and then, by way of treaties, wars, and expulsion, between the 1780s and 1840s the new nation wrested control of the hinterland from Spain, France, Britain, Native Americans, and Mexicans. The Italians had to dislodge several different “foreign” rulers between 1859 and 1870: Austrians in the North, Spanish Bourbons in the South, and finally the French troops defending Rome and the Papal States in central Italy.

Italy in Bocca: The origin and nature of what we call Italian food

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by John MARIANI

Simply put, there was no Italian food before there was an Italy. There was Tuscan food and Ligurian food and Sicilian food and Sardinian food, but for 2,000 years there was no Italian food. Not until 1861, when most of its 20 regions were unified as a kingdom under Victor Emmanuel II, was there a country called Italy. Even then, city states like Venice and Rome, which was declared the new capital, and part of the Papal States, remained separate from the new country. Before 1861 and for a century afterwards, what people ate in Rome had little to do with what they ate in Bari, and when Florentines dined, it was not on the same food and wine enjoyed by Neapolitans or Venetians. There was regional food, but for 2,000 years there was no Italian food. Especially in the kitchen, Italians have always resisted being mere Italians.

Transcending the Appenine Divide: Italy’s mountainous terrain affects its socio-political history

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Daniel B. GALLAGHER

American high-school students often come away from a basic course in European geography believing that the Alps are the only major topographical feature to note in Italy’s landscape. Having studied the epic crossings of Hannibal and Napoleon, they are left with the impression that it is “all downhill from there.” I was reminded of this recently while helping some friends arrange a road trip from Rome to San Giovanni Rotondo. Much to their chagrin, they discovered that there is no “direct route” from point A to point B since a mountain range – namely the Apennines – runs down the middle of the country.

Music for a Revolution – C. 1860: The natural role of opera and composer Verdi during the age of the Risorgimento

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Giovanni BIETTI

As many scholars have pointed out, before being politically united, Italy had already been musically unified by opera. Nothing could be truer: it is enough to scroll through the list of the main theatres active in the first half of the 19th century (La Scala in Milan, La Fenice in Venice, San Carlo in Naples, just to mention the three most famous ones, but also the Roman theatres, such as Valle, Argentina, or the now closed Apollo Theatre, as well as the opera houses of Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and so on) to realize that operas circulated throughout the Italian peninsula, constantly crossing the borders between the various States.

Civil Games: How the sport of soccer reflects the state of Italian nationalism

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by John FOOT

When a number of intellectuals were asked, in the 1990s, what it was that held Italians together, a fair number cited the national soccer team. When Italy play in international tournaments, Italian flags – normally so rare – suddenly spring up on windowsills and on rooftops. In Naples in 2002 I witnessed an enormous Italian flag – which had been paid for by a door-to-door collection – being hung across a small urban street. Within days, Italy were out, and the flag came down. In a young and regionally divided nation, soccer has formed a powerful glue around which national identity has been able to form. La Nazionale – the national team – has always inspired classic nationalist sentiments, flag-waving, celebration and discussion. Italians are united when Italia is playing, at least in their support for the team itself.

Inside Support: The representation of patriotic women in the visual art of the Risorgimento

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Eugenio F. BIAGINI

The surviving written evidence, for both patriots and reactionaries, predominantly concerns upper-class women. Of course, this reflects the nature of the evidence studied so far, and the interests of the historians who have examined it. Both are likely to change in years to come. One primary source increasingly used by historians is provided by contemporary paintings and prints. Although Banti has devoted considerable attention to “historical” paintings as an expression of the Nazione del Risorgimento in its making, he has restricted his attention to early Romantic artists such as Francesco Hayez (1791-1881). Hayez specialized in portraits and “heroic” paintings of medieval and Renaissance episodes, and appropriated for nationalistic purposes themes from the older regional patriotisms. Such is the case for I Vespri Siciliani (1844-6), which celebrated a Medieval rising of the Sicilians against the French invaders.

Passion all’Italiana: An interview with Fred Plotkin

/ Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The New York Times described Fred Plotkin as “a New Yorker, but with the soul of an Italian” who is a legend for “his renaissance mastery” of Italian music and food. He attended the Universities of Bologna and Pavia, worked at La Scala as a Fulbright Scholar and is the Italy expert that others turn to for definitive and complex answers about everything in his favourite nation. He lectures all over the world on topics on which he is passionate, including how we can live the life of the Renaissance Man in modern times.

Riccardo Muti

/ Columns, Face File, Risorgimento Reflected, Volume 20. Number V. 2011 / /

by Nona TEPPER

On April 15th, at Carnegie Hall, the crowd listening to Othello shouted repeatedly, “Bravi!”, and Riccardo Muti took a deep bow. This certainly wasn’t the first time Muti, the current Musical Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has received a standing ovation, and surely it won’t be the last. Once this Naples-born conductor puts down his baton, listeners inevitably rise to their feet, moved by the emotional force of his music, clapping without inhibition for more.

Design Save Italy

The Stability of the Euro and the Role of Italy: Ambassador Giulio Terzi speaks on the European financial picture to the members of Gruppo Esponenti Italiani (G.E.I.)

/ Columns, Design Save Italy, Notable, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 /

by Ambassador Giulio Terzi

I am delighted to be here with you again today and honored by your invitation, a most welcome sign of your great friendship. The last time I had the pleasure of being with you – as Permanent Representative to the United Nations – I talked about international security issues. Over the last year and a half, I have somehow changed my perspective – but not too much: in Washington, diplomatic work is at once global and bilateral too. Today I would like to address a topic which has both a global scope, as it relates to the world’s monetary system, and a “bilateral” one which refers to relations between the EU and the US: I am referring to the stability of the euro-zone.

Hotels: The Latest in Italian Luxury Labeling: Boutique hotels and villas by top designers make a smart aesthetic – and business –– statement

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Michael BOTTARI

Some of the biggest names in Italian design and fashion have a new way to enjoy their aesthetic luxury, to become enveloped in its greatness instead of just wearing it. This new phenomenon comes in the form of design or boutique hotels, located in some of the most alluring cities in the world.

Design V. Styling: The role of the traditional Italian design studio in contemporary business culture

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Stefano Giovannoni

The design activities of Italian and American design studios are based on totally different business models. In the American system we find large professional studios, multinational organizations that reach a company size measured in hundreds of employees, while Italian design factories work with designers who usually operate from small professional studios with which the company has a consolidated relationship. Many designers of the older generation – Castiglioni, Magistretti, Sapper, Mari and Zanuso – worked with facilities reduced to the limits!

The Courage and Risk of a Vision: Using past successes to inspire, not overshadow, the present

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Domitilla DARDI

In 1972 Italy: the new domestic landscape, the exhibition curated by Emilio Ambasz, opened at MoMA: it was a momentous event for Italian design, consecrating the industrial production of the glorious decade of the Sixties in the world. The exhibition pointed out the experimental character of Italian design, the courage of a vision of interior design able to fill the industrial and technological gap between Italy and other countries with a stronger training and production background.

It is in the Use of an Object that its Destiny is Written: The director of Milan’s Triennale Design Museum reflects on the functional side of design

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Silvia ANNICHIARICO

A little more than two years have passed since December 2007, when we inaugurated the Triennale di Milano Design Museum. Since that time, the bearing idea for our project—that of giving life to a changing museum that would be capable of periodically renewing itself in terms of contents, of selection criteria, and of modalities of fruition—has been refined and consolidated, becoming even a pilot model for significant foreign experiences.

What does Italian Design Mean to You?: The design world answers the Italian Journal’s question

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

compiled by Laura GIACALONE

“I believe that, in some respects, the great fortune of Castiglionis’ work, and of Italian design in general, was that we had a very free, disenchanted relationship with technology. Experimenting was quite affordable, which probably helped our research, whereas today it requires the support of large manufacturing companies, and needs huge investments. Luckily there still exist, within large companies, very talented craftsmen with whom it is easy to work, and that surely helps the research a lot.” Achille Castiglioni

The Memory of Objects, an Interview with Gaetano Pesce

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

An unrelenting research on new materials, an unrestrained use of colour, the political dimension of his projects, the handcrafted quality of his creations make Gaetano Pesce one of the greatest and most unconventional artists of Italian contemporary design scene. His career is studded with memorable masterpieces, which blur the distinction between art and design: from “Up” (1969), a series of “feminine” anthropomorphic armchairs which exploit the morphological memory of the polyurethane, returning to their shape and consistency as soon as they are freed from their packaging, to the “Rag Chair” (1972) and the “Sit Down” seat furniture (1975), based on the intriguing idea of having no two pieces alike. Other notable works include the “Dalila” chairs (1980), whose sensuous shape intentionally evokes the soft forms of the female body, the humorous “Umbrella” chair (1995), which folds up like an umbrella and opens out like its namesake, and “Sessantuna” (2010), sixty-one different tables, all of them unique, to celebrate Italy on the 150th anniversary of its unification.

Design as an Approach to Life, an Interview with Gabriele Pezzini

/ Design Save Italy, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Born in 1963, Gabriele Pezzini is one of the most prominent figures in the Italian design’s contemporary scene. His strong artistic background has always driven him into the field of experimentation. Interested in the relations between product and industry, he has dedicated himself to innovative research projects, focusing on the conception and organization of exhibitions that have allowed him to develop his analyses and theories on perception and cross-contamination of everyday objects.

The Superficial Truth: A controversial video-turned-book looks at the one-dimensional presentation of women in Italian television

/ Columns, Design Save Italy, Literature, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Please don’t retouch my wrinkles” – said the great Italian actress Anna Magnani, a muse for Neorealist maestro Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City, 1945), while instructing her make-up artist not to conceal the lines on her face – “Leave them all there, it took me so long to earn them.” Many years have passed since then, and women’s concerns and ambitions seem to have changed a lot.

Volume 20. Number I. 2009

America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900 The Fenimore Art Museum is organizing the first major exhibition on the topic of American artists’ depictions of 19th-century Rome, called America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900. This project, inspired by the important interdisciplinary work of William L. Vance, will be undertaken in celebration of […]

Star Chef of France Admits to “Secret Ingredient”

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Star Chef of France Admits to “Secret Ingredient” With six Michelin stars to show for his restaurants in Roanne, Burgundy, Paris and Tokyo, the renowned Chef Michel Troisgos, celebrates the Italian heart of European cuisine with his latest book entitled L’Italie (2009). In a recent interview with the Italian national newspaper il Corriere della sera, […]

Italian Gem

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Italian Gem The opening night for the Bulgari anniversary show in Rome was filled with gem-studded stars, creating a glittering effect both inside the exhibition rooms and out. The stunning display of gems tell the 125-year-old history of the renowned Italian jeweler, whose diamonds, emeralds and rubies adorned the most beautiful women of the last […]

Leaders of Talking

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Leaders of Talking In times of economic crisis, Italians might have to downsize in certain areas… but never mobile phones. A recent report by the European Union on telecommunications showed that, compared to the U.S.’s 84% cell phone penetration, Italians are at 119% market penetration. The visual evidence is everywhere–– churches, restaurants, openings. During the […]

La Dolce…Grafica

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

LA DOLCE…GRAFICA DESIGNER GIULIO IACHETTI CURATES AN ILLUSTRATED TOUR OF RECENT ITALIAN ICONOGRAPHY. BACI PERUGINA, THE VESPA SCOOTER AND THE STOVETOP ESPRESSO MAKER ARE RECREATED IN LIGHTHEARTED DRAWINGS BY THE ARTISTS “ALE+ALE.” ACCOMPANYING EACH ILLUSTRATION ARE DESCRIPTIONS BY TOP ITALIAN INDUSTRIAL AND GRAPHIC DESIGNERS, INCLUDING ALBERTO BASSI, ALESSANDRO GUERRIERO AND CHRISTINA MOROZZI.

Puccini Through Benvenuti’s Lens: In the magnificent movie Puccini e la fanciulla, Paolo Benvenuti unveils secrets, silence and colours of the great Italian composer

/ Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Sometimes the story preceding a movie– the original glimpse of an idea, the attentive archive research, the choice of characters and settings – is as interesting and compelling as the movie itself. That’s the case of Puccini e la fanciulla (Puccini and The Girl), the last magnificent movie by Paolo Benvenuti and Paola Baroni produced by Arsenali Medicei and the Fondazione Festival Pucciniano. The release of the movie coincides with the 150th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s birth and sheds a new light on the Italian composer’s life and genius.

Futurism Art: Where to see the art, poetry and history of the Futurists

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Where to see the art, poetry and history of the Futurists Aosta Futurismi Centro Saint Benin Bari La Puglia e il Futurismo: Parigi 1909-Bari 2009 Padiglione della Fiera del Levante Bologna Bologna avanguardia futurista Casa Saraceni Brescia D’Annunzio e Marinetti. L’arte al potere Santa Giulia Brindisi Collezionare il Futurismo Palazzo Granafei Nervegna Casale Monferrato Mafarka, […]

Futurism Celebrated

/ Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

FUTURISM CELEBRATED ROME : Laser lights slash through atmospheric smoke, illuminating the crowd and creating a live futurist painting on Piazza del Popolo, while a sound sculpture evoked the cacaphonic and noise-filled poetry of Marinetti. Green, indigo and red, the preferred colors of painters Balla, Boccioni and Calle, made diagonals and sweeping stripes. Photos by […]

Futurism Contemplated: Is Futurism Proto-Punk?

/ Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 / /

by Karen PINKUS

In many ways, Italian Futurism could be considered an unacknowledged precursor to punk.

The Futurists were members of the Italian bourgeoisie. Punks were working class, but both movements shared a disdain for high culture, for detatched bohemian/hippie art, and for lethargy or nostalgia. Marinetti wrote his founding manifesto of the Futurist movement in 1909 and quickly found a following in a group of painters, sculptors, poets, dramatists, architects, and musical innovators– including Carlo Carra, Umberto Boccioni, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Antonio Sant’Elia, Fortunato Depero, and many others.

Futurism Protagonists

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Who Was Who c. 1909 Giacomo Balla, painter Umberto Boccioni, painter, sculptor Anton Giulio Bragaglia David Burliuk, painter Vladimir Burliuk, painter Mario Carli Carlo Carrà, painter Ambrogio Casati, painter Primo Conti, artist Tullio Crali Luigi De Giudici, painter Fortunato Depero, painter Gerardo Dottori, painter, poet and art Critic Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, poet […]

Futurism Fashion

/ Columns, Fashion, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Futurism Fashion Balla and Biagotti: Milan’s fashion week celebrates the centenary of Futurism with a collection of creations that seems to revive Giacomo Balla’s myth of the “Anti-Neutral Clothes” (1914). For her autumn/winter collection, Laura Biagiotti draws on Balla’s Futurist aesthetics, proposing outfits with avant-garde embellishments and agile, dynamic, playful and asymmetric forms. The “Anti-Neutral” […]

1 2

Futurist Manifestations

America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900 The Fenimore Art Museum is organizing the first major exhibition on the topic of American artists’ depictions of 19th-century Rome, called America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900. This project, inspired by the important interdisciplinary work of William L. Vance, will be undertaken in celebration of […]

Star Chef of France Admits to “Secret Ingredient”

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Star Chef of France Admits to “Secret Ingredient” With six Michelin stars to show for his restaurants in Roanne, Burgundy, Paris and Tokyo, the renowned Chef Michel Troisgos, celebrates the Italian heart of European cuisine with his latest book entitled L’Italie (2009). In a recent interview with the Italian national newspaper il Corriere della sera, […]

Italian Gem

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Italian Gem The opening night for the Bulgari anniversary show in Rome was filled with gem-studded stars, creating a glittering effect both inside the exhibition rooms and out. The stunning display of gems tell the 125-year-old history of the renowned Italian jeweler, whose diamonds, emeralds and rubies adorned the most beautiful women of the last […]

Leaders of Talking

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Leaders of Talking In times of economic crisis, Italians might have to downsize in certain areas… but never mobile phones. A recent report by the European Union on telecommunications showed that, compared to the U.S.’s 84% cell phone penetration, Italians are at 119% market penetration. The visual evidence is everywhere–– churches, restaurants, openings. During the […]

La Dolce…Grafica

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

LA DOLCE…GRAFICA DESIGNER GIULIO IACHETTI CURATES AN ILLUSTRATED TOUR OF RECENT ITALIAN ICONOGRAPHY. BACI PERUGINA, THE VESPA SCOOTER AND THE STOVETOP ESPRESSO MAKER ARE RECREATED IN LIGHTHEARTED DRAWINGS BY THE ARTISTS “ALE+ALE.” ACCOMPANYING EACH ILLUSTRATION ARE DESCRIPTIONS BY TOP ITALIAN INDUSTRIAL AND GRAPHIC DESIGNERS, INCLUDING ALBERTO BASSI, ALESSANDRO GUERRIERO AND CHRISTINA MOROZZI.

Puccini Through Benvenuti’s Lens: In the magnificent movie Puccini e la fanciulla, Paolo Benvenuti unveils secrets, silence and colours of the great Italian composer

/ Futurist Manifestations, Notable, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Sometimes the story preceding a movie– the original glimpse of an idea, the attentive archive research, the choice of characters and settings – is as interesting and compelling as the movie itself. That’s the case of Puccini e la fanciulla (Puccini and The Girl), the last magnificent movie by Paolo Benvenuti and Paola Baroni produced by Arsenali Medicei and the Fondazione Festival Pucciniano. The release of the movie coincides with the 150th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s birth and sheds a new light on the Italian composer’s life and genius.

Futurism Art: Where to see the art, poetry and history of the Futurists

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Where to see the art, poetry and history of the Futurists Aosta Futurismi Centro Saint Benin Bari La Puglia e il Futurismo: Parigi 1909-Bari 2009 Padiglione della Fiera del Levante Bologna Bologna avanguardia futurista Casa Saraceni Brescia D’Annunzio e Marinetti. L’arte al potere Santa Giulia Brindisi Collezionare il Futurismo Palazzo Granafei Nervegna Casale Monferrato Mafarka, […]

Futurism Celebrated

/ Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

FUTURISM CELEBRATED ROME : Laser lights slash through atmospheric smoke, illuminating the crowd and creating a live futurist painting on Piazza del Popolo, while a sound sculpture evoked the cacaphonic and noise-filled poetry of Marinetti. Green, indigo and red, the preferred colors of painters Balla, Boccioni and Calle, made diagonals and sweeping stripes. Photos by […]

Futurism Contemplated: Is Futurism Proto-Punk?

/ Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 / /

by Karen PINKUS

In many ways, Italian Futurism could be considered an unacknowledged precursor to punk.

The Futurists were members of the Italian bourgeoisie. Punks were working class, but both movements shared a disdain for high culture, for detatched bohemian/hippie art, and for lethargy or nostalgia. Marinetti wrote his founding manifesto of the Futurist movement in 1909 and quickly found a following in a group of painters, sculptors, poets, dramatists, architects, and musical innovators– including Carlo Carra, Umberto Boccioni, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Antonio Sant’Elia, Fortunato Depero, and many others.

Futurism Protagonists

/ Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Who Was Who c. 1909 Giacomo Balla, painter Umberto Boccioni, painter, sculptor Anton Giulio Bragaglia David Burliuk, painter Vladimir Burliuk, painter Mario Carli Carlo Carrà, painter Ambrogio Casati, painter Primo Conti, artist Tullio Crali Luigi De Giudici, painter Fortunato Depero, painter Gerardo Dottori, painter, poet and art Critic Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, poet […]

Futurism Fashion

/ Columns, Fashion, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Futurism Fashion Balla and Biagotti: Milan’s fashion week celebrates the centenary of Futurism with a collection of creations that seems to revive Giacomo Balla’s myth of the “Anti-Neutral Clothes” (1914). For her autumn/winter collection, Laura Biagiotti draws on Balla’s Futurist aesthetics, proposing outfits with avant-garde embellishments and agile, dynamic, playful and asymmetric forms. The “Anti-Neutral” […]

1 2

Volume 20. Number VI. 2011

NYC Welcomes Natalia Quintavalle in the Consul General’s Office: An Interview with Italian Journal

/ Contemporary, Notable, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 /

The first woman to be appointed as Italian Consul General in New York, Minister Plenipotentiary Natalia Quintavalle took her seat at the Park Avenue Consulate in September 2011. The prestigious assignment is only the last of a series of important achievements in her diplomatic career, which has seen her actively work in the defense of human rights and in the promotion of Italian culture and interests in the world.

Notes on New Italian Art

/ Columns, Contemporary, Contemporary Art, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

Italian Contemporary Art: Three words suggesting such a tangle of opposing considerations, cultural and commercial developments and widespread interests that it is quite difficult to have a comprehensive picture of it. For historical reasons and recent twisted events, the Italian art world embodies an anomalous reality, both for its well-acknowledged qualities and its congenital faults. We have a great tradition of art that the world much appreciates – this goes without saying. From Giotto to Mario Schifano, enviable talents and universal geniuses have come one after the other, producing new expressive modes and groundbreaking innovations.

Two Remarkable Shows, NY

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Amanda Romero

There are 89 Italian Cultural Institutes in the world – and they all participated in “Venice Biennale In The World,” a project led by renowned Italian art critic Vittorio Sgarbi to promote Italian artists internationally. In collaboration with museums, universities, organizations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prominent art critics and scholars served as the judges for the 217 Italian artists nominated to show around the world. These artists’ works were also included in a video documentary presented at the 2012 Venice Biennale.

Reading Contemporary Works in Two Examples

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Genny DI BERT

Quella che osserviamo è la fotografa di una scena, di un momento d’espressione artistica in cui l’ambiente e l’uomo interagiscono, che viene, durante la realizzazione, con uno “scatto” resa opera d’arte apparentemente bidimensionale. L’immagine riprodotta valorizza l’irripetibilità dell’azione ed ogni scena diventa opera d’arte unica. La rappresentazione, come la realtà osservata e dipinta, viene studiata, immaginata, riprodotta attraverso l’occhio fotografico attento a cogliere l’istante creativo.

Art, Visual Vehicle of Energy: Italian Journal interviews 2011 Venice Biennale Visual Arts Director Bice Curiger

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE


One of the world’s most important forums for the dissemination and illumination of current developments in international art, La Biennale di Venezia can boast a well-reputed personality at the helm. Appointed Director of the Visual Arts sector for the 54th International Art Exhibition (2011), Bice Curiger (pictured) is an art historian, critic and curator of international exhibitions. Her curatorial activity at Kunsthaus Zurich parallels her important work in the publishing sector. In 1984, she co-founded the prestigious art magazine Parkett, of which she is editor-in-chief. She has been publishing director of London Tate Gallery’s magazine Tate etc since 2004, and is also the author of various publications and catalogues of contemporary art. Her insight into contemporary art surely adds value to an exhibition that, once again, is bound to consolidate its success.

Venice: Exhibitionist City, Then and Now

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Veronica Maria WHITE

In 1948, Peggy Guggenheim exhibited her collection of avant garde paintings and sculptures at the Venice Biennale. Among the 73 artists featured were Picasso, Ernst, Kandinsky, Pollock and Rothko. The show was revolutionary in its presentation of Cubist, Surrealist and Abstract works to the general European public, as well as to contemporary Italian artists. Soon after the show, Peggy settled in Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where from 1951 onward her collection opened its doors to visitors. The heiress’ choice of Venice as a home and showcase for her works is significant, for she had already experienced the contemporary art scene in Paris, London and New York. Located in a Renaissance palazzo on the Grand Canal, the Peggy Guggenheim collection in fact highlights Venice’s dual identity as a historic maritime city and a protagonist in artistic innovation.

Many Institutions, Few Artists: The business of Contemporary Art in Italy

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Walter SANTAGATA

As in all worlds of art and culture, even in contemporary art there are two conflicting policies at work: conservation and production of new works of art. Whereas conservation means to safeguard the historical heritage of a country, its most immediate expression being the “museum-ization ” of art, i.e. the entrusting of art to the sacredness of a museum, production means to create new works of art. Conservation is a backward- looking policy dealing with the preservation of the past; production is instead a forward-looking policy interested in the future and in the development of new works of art. Conservation relies on legal and institutional instruments, such as regulations and laws, whereas production is a policy consisting of many different steps: selection of artists, creation and production of works of art, distribution, modes of consumption.

Vogue Patronage: Italy’s Fashion Houses are Emerging as Contemporary Art Patrons

/ Contemporary, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Besides their worldwide renown for setting the trends of cutting-edge styles, Italian fashion designers have now established themselves as the modern patrons of contemporary art, being the most active supporters of avant-garde art projects and drawing on works of art for inspiration. In the last few years, many initiatives launched by top luxury brands of fashion have contributed to introduce a new generation of Italian artists to the international scene.

What Grows in War-Ravaged Soil

/ Columns, Contemporary, Literature, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Reading Twice Born is like taking a journey that, once started, has no turning back. It is something to be experienced, more than just read. It slowly sinks into your heart and, page by page, leaves you completely helpless, defenceless, as after a storm of mixed emotions. It is like being revealed the unspoken truth of human condition, with its eternal carousel of joy and sorrow, and turning it into a personal memory.

Volume 20. Number VII. 2012

Ludovica Purini Recieves Venere Award for Music

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Notable, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 /

On International Women’s Day 2012, the City of Rome bestowed the Venere Award on 20 leading women whose contributions across social, artistic and political spheres improve the City’s culture, health and wellness. Among them, Ludovica Rossi Purini, President of Compagnia per la Musica and frequent collaborator with the Italian Academy Foundation, received recognition for her dedication to music.

IAF Names Kim Brizzolara to Board of Directors

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Notable, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 /

The Italian Academy Foundation announced that Kim Brizzolara has joined its board of directors. Ms. Brizzolara is a feature and documentary film producer and serves as an advisor to several non-profit organizations. She is executive vice chair of the Hamptons International Film Festival, serves on the Board of the We are Family Foundation, and Creative Visions, and is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at the School of Government at Harvard.

Directors Rising: A look at some of the new, notable filmmakers out of Italy

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by William HOPE

Italian cinema experienced several golden eras during the course of the 20th century, periods during which the artistic vision and expertise of Italian film-makers and technicians were unparalleled. The opulent mise-en-scène of early works such as Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914), the stark stylistic originality of the neorealist era from the mid-1940s onwards, and the lavish cinematography of Oscar-winning works such as Giuseppe Tornatore’s Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1989) and Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo (1991) – these latter films revisiting, sometimes nostalgically, the community life and interpersonal solidarity of former generations –consolidated Italy’s position as an epicentre of cinematic innovation.

Focus on Davide Manuli: His vibrant film showcased in Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Established auteurs and emerging filmmakers alike offer their own perspectives on contemporary Italy at “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema”, the leading North American showcase for contemporary Italian cinema, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center together with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà and Filmitalia. This year’s edition (June 8-14, 2012) brought together directors (1) from different backgrounds and ages, who embody different ideas of cinema and contribute to piecing together a multi-faceted, complex picture of today’s Italy.

Cinecittà: Set, story, and social scene

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Located 10 miles from the center of Rome in a parkland estate extending over 99 acres, Cinecittà is the hub of Italian Cinema as well as the largest filmmaking facility in Europe. Since its foundation in 1937, it has hosted more than 3,000 films, which have made the history of cinema – from classics like Quo Vadis? (1951), Ben Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1863) and La dolce vita (1960) to more recent productions, such as The Name of the Rose (1986), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Godfather Part III (1990), The English Patient (1996), Gangs of New York (2002), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), The Passion of the Christ (2004) and the BBC/HBO series Rome (2004-2007).

Filmic Victory: The Taviani Brothers surprised themselves and others with the impact of their new film

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The Berlinale’s Golden Bear to Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, two masters of Italian cinema (respectively 80 and 82), for Caesar Must Die, sheds a new light on the contemporary Italian film scene, and perhaps on Italy as a whole. In a moment when Italy seems to struggle to live up to its glorious past, this prestigious international recognition is felt not only as a well-deserved appreciation of the Taviani brothers’ outstanding work, but as a sign of encouragement to a whole country. “Many people, after the award ceremony, thanked us on behalf of Italy, as if this prize were a prize to Italy” – says Paolo Taviani. “One even called us on the phone and said: ‘Thanks! I’ve hung the Italian flag out of my window!’ This is a tricky moment for our country. People believe it’s time for a change, they hope for a turning point. So this film, which is quite anomalous, somehow complies with these wishes.”

Universal Appeal: Italian filmmakers whose work transcends nationality

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Francesco DEL GROSSO

Italy boasts an extremely rich film tradition, which over the years has also become a burden difficult to bear and almost impossible to get rid of. In the last few decades, Italian filmmakers have made every effort to prove that Italian cinema has moved beyond the glories of the past, beyond the “Peplum” epics that dominated the Italian film industry from the first decade of the 20th century to the 1960s, beyond Neorealism and the Italian-style Comedy, beyond the Spaghetti Western and the Dolce Vita. Although the most recent productions “made in Italy” have not been able to live up to this glorious past, there is a variegated number of authors from different backgrounds, styles and ages whose work is particularly noteworthy: they are actually “mavericks” moving within an absent film industry that is neither financially sound nor effective in terms of regulations able to support technical and creative professionals.

Italy: Location as a Protagonist Recent films use the setting of Bel Paese to evoke emotion

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Pierpaolo FESTA

Woody Allen calls it “an osmosis,” something that is not done on purpose. Something that little by little penetrates the subconscious. It can be about art or history. Of course, it is also about landscape – just like walking among the stones of Via Appia, sipping Chianti while enjoying the Tuscany countryside or swimming in the magnificent blue sea of Sicily. This dive into the Italian culture is like an epiphany, a big emotion that nowadays American cinema wants to find more and more.

The State and Status of Film: A study of the effect of politics on Italian filmmaking

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Roberto SILVESTRI

The state of Italian film making comprises not only stalwarts like Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Francesco Rosi, Sabina Guzzanti, Paolo Sorrentino, Marco Tullio Giordana, but also names like Michelangelo Frammartino, Pietro Marcello, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Del Bono, Daniele Ciprì, Roberta Torre, Franco Maresco, and Stefano Savona; making the industry multi-faceted. The neo-realism of 1945-1948 saw a resurgence of a country in ruins and split by the European Recovery Program, which preferred American corporations taking advantage of low wages in a country beholden to the Western superpower. Today, that same country is still in ruin, spiritually and morally.

A Certain Age: The golden era of Italian cinema in 10 exemplars

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Enrico AZZANO

There is an old saying which says that we must look to the past to reconstruct the future. The golden years of cinema seem so far away: the years of neorealism, peplum (sword-and-sandals), spaghetti-westerns, thriller and horror, comedies, melodramas, politics; and of the Oscar winners, Cannes Film Festival winners, Cinecittà stars, and the many other internationally known and recognized awards.

Italian Video Art, A Review: The curator of the exhibit Electronic Body reports

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Contemporary Art, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

The topic of which I write arrives in the nick of time (perhaps I should say in the “flick” of time in honor of the filmatic subject). What follows is a general exploration of Italian video art, the subject of a fortunate concomitance with the exhibition I have just curated for the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation. Entitled Electronic Body, the show gathers together 16 artists using the video medium exclusively to express a range of issues, approaches and visions.

Dressing the Part: 2012-2013 Italian collections have a vintage filmic quality

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Fashion, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI

When movies first began to be mass-marketed, right after the turn of the century, actors and actresses usually looked to their own closets for contemporary stories. For period pieces, of course, a wardrobe department was necessary, but it was not until 1916 that the first costume designer was credited on film, a certain Frenchman Louis J. Gasnier.

Director’s Backstory, Dark and Light

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Literature, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

If a maverick is, by his own admission, “a filmmaker who finds a way with the system of making the films he has chosen to make”, Martin Scorsese is certainly one. From his early works, directly emanating from the ethnic melting pot of New York’s Lower East Side where he grew up, to his latest Oscar-winning celebration of the dream factory, Hugo (2011), Scorsese has worked his way up in the film industry within and outside the system, “above ground” and “underground”, in and out of Hollywood, putting onto film his deepest obsessions.

Roberto Benigni

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Face File, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Logan METZER

Among plebians and film-connoisseurs alike, Roberto Benigni is oft remembered for his flamboyant celebration at the 1998 Academy Awards. Clambering over chairs, reciting Dante’s Divina Commedia, and appearing in the sequel to Woody Allen’s acclaimed Midnight in Paris just tell a part of Benigni’s story and the extraordinary impact he has had on the Italian arts.

The Art of Science

Italy’s Mission in the U.N.: Remarks by the Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations, Ambassador Cesare Maria Ragaglini, to the Gruppo Esponenti Italiani (GEI) in New York

/ Columns, Notable, The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

I could not be more happy to speak about two of the issues we are cur­rently dealing with at the Italian Mission to the United Nations. One of our top concerns in the past year has been Italy’s leadership of the Group of the Eight Most Industrialized Countries, whose work we have tried to correlate more closely with the agenda of the United Nations. The other is the Lisbon Treaty, which enters into force on December 1, and promises to affect the role of the Eu­ropean Union at the United Nations. I promise to be brief.

Rome and Vatican Recieve Newly Appointed American Ambassadors

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

The swearing in of the new U.S. Am­bassador to Rome, David Thorne, 64, marks new era for U.S.-Italian rela­tions. Investor, entrepreneur, author and supporter of the arts, Thorne is the co-founder of Adviser Investments one of the U.S.’s top firms specializing in Van­guard and Fidelity mutual funds and ex­change trade funds. He is a former Presi­dent and current Board member of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and led the design oversight team for its new building in Boston. Additionally, he has participated in a variety of other un­dertakings including marketing, consult­ing, and real estate.

Italian Technology to Save Venice: An interview with Dr. Maria Teresa Brotto, head of the Department of Design of the M.O.S.E. Project

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

The fifth Annual Conference of the Ital­ian Language Inter Cultural Alliance (ILICA) in New York was called: “Saving Venezia & Protecting New Orleans.” The leaders of the M.O.S.E. project (Modulo Sper­imentale Elettromeccanico or Experimental Electromechanical Module) were in New York to demonstrate how the technology designed to save Venice can be applied to New Orleans. Here, Dr. Maria Teresa Brotto explains how this Italian high-tech project will work.

“Italian-Type” Food: Artful naming can fake the authenticity of food origins

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

by Efthalia STAIKOS

As consumers, we fight a battle every time we enter a supermarket. Do we buy or do we not buy? Is it healthy or unhealthy? Will it be tasty or disgusting? A burden is placed on us to utilize the wealth of knowledge at our disposal so that we do not make ignorant decisions. Between the internet, books, and maga­zines about every topic imaginable, we become handicapped by knowledge. We assume we can trust food companies be­cause clearly they would not trick us if it’s so easy for us to research into the truth about their products. The only problem is that this assumption makes us lazy and we do not end up doing our research. We trust that if a product says it is “Authentic Italian Tomato Sauce,” then it must be. Clearly the company would be penalized for lying. Unfortunately, this is not the case and we buy into food counterfeiting scams every day.

Men Who “See” Stars

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Piergiorgio ODIFREDDI

On January 7, 1610, Galileo wrote a letter to Antonio de’ Medici where he briefly reported on the results of his first observations of the sky through a telescope exactly 400 years ago, late in the summer of 1609. The letter con­cluded with some news of the day: “Only this evening I have seen Jupiter accompa­nied by three fixed stars totally invisible because of their smallness.” With under­standable and justifiable pride, he also noticed: “We can believe to have been the first in the world to discover some­thing about the heavenly bodies from so nearby and so distinctly.”

Galileo, Engineer: The astronomer’s experiments appeal to an engineer’s mind

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Matteo VALLIERIANI

The interested reader may have no­ticed how historians in recent de­cades have attempted to deconstruct the identity of Galileo Galilei. He is no lon­ger just the great astronomer or even just the founder of the modern experimental method in science. Even the political val­ue of his work and his life, systematically reconsidered in the frame of the debates about the relation between Church and research institutions or between religion and science, is no longer the single rel­evant perspective for approaching this kind of historical thread. Thanks to the work of historians of science of the last twenty years, readers are now used to very different interpretations. Galileo is now also a heretic, a revolutionary mar­tyr, a mathematician, an Aristotelian natural philosopher, an artist – almost with brush and palette in his hand – and finally a gifted courtier. This, however, is only an apparent process of fragmen­tation. Historiographically speaking, a process of this kind tends to cancel cat­egories such as “genius” from scientific activities and their histories. Such catego­ries are used to justify the impossibility of explaining historical phenomena. In other terms, the actual history of science requires science and its history to remain rational activities. For this reason, it is relevant to undertake an investigation of Galileo in all of his contexts.

The Equisite Experimentalist: Galileo’s penchant for live “trials” of his ideas inspires the author to do the very same

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Paolo PALMIERI

When Galileo Galilei was a student at the University of Pisa in the 1580s, physics was a loose bundle of ideas inherited from the Greeks, mostly from the philosopher Aristotle, via the mediation of the Latin Middle Ages. Projectiles keep going after being released by their projectors because air keeps pushing them for a while, as the most in vogue theory of the time would have it (though there were variations). Theirs is a violent motion. Heavy things fall downwards because the centre of the earth is the natural place for them to achieve their natural state of rest. Theirs is a natural motion. Pendulums are constrained motions. Is the motion of a pendulum violent or natural? Why does it turn back after reaching a summit? Why do violent motions such as those of cannon balls cease? These were the questions a professor of physics would investigate at that time.

Reflections on Motivations and Durations of Ideas: Two revolutionary 16th-century thinkers both upended their contemporary scientific norms, an approach that could inspire innovative thinking even today

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

by Efthalia STAIKOS

Breakthroughs, progress, solutions, new theories, modern research… all of these words conjure up images of discovery and contribution in the scien­tific world. Grasping the natural world and understanding what we cannot see provides a sense of satisfaction, even comfort, to most. Science, however, is an example of a field where solutions and progress are actually driven by a cer­tain dissatisfaction with what is already known. It is discomfort with the status quo that has motivated many scientists to push for new answers, alternative op­tions; and to test and ponder persistently until they are satisfied with a new reality. Many scientists throughout history questioned the laws of nature that guide the movement of the stars and planets. It was previously believed that until Galileo, scientists never began to truly speculate on the theories put forth by Aristotle. It did not seem as though anyone had really questioned and researched into creation of the universal systems until Galileo came along. As everyone was frantically searching for an answer they could be­lieve in, Galileo put forth solutions even though his research and his conclusions eventually led to his persecution.

Patrimony and Discovery: Since its beginning, science has been supported by a variety of patrons, from the popes and princes of the Renaissance to State funding, up to the new forms of social patronage of today

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The history of arts as we know it today wouldn’t be the same without the support provided by kings, popes and rich aristocratic families to musicians, painters and sculptors. This phenom­enon, which is usually referred to as “pa­tronage,” had its maximum development in Italy during Renaissance, when the major masterpieces in the history of art were conceived and came to life, mainly thanks to the influence of the House of Medici in Florence. Among the artists who benefited from their sponsorship were Brunelleschi, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Medicean “Stars” of Scientific Patronage

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The Medici Granducal Archive (Mediceo del Principato)

For over two centuries, the Medici fam­ily ruled Tuscany as sovereign Grand Dukes. Their archival collection – called the Mediceo del Principato – has sur­vived virtually intact in the State Archive in Florence (Archivio di Stato di Firenze). It covers the chronological span of their rule: from the moment Cosimo I became Duke of Florence in 1537 to the death in 1743 of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, sister of Gian Gastone, the last of the Medici Grand Dukes. In other words, it begins with Michelangelo’s work on the Last Judgment and ends with the birth of Thomas Jefferson.

“And Yet It Moves…”: The film Galileo represents the neverending struggle for scientific freedom against all forms of censorship

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

A yearly appointment not to be missed by film critics and moviego­ers from all around the world, the 66th edition of the Venice Film Fes­tival confirms itself as one of the most prestigious events in the film calendar, with a rich and variegated selection of international titles and the ever-present parade of stars and celebrities.

Live Building: Architect Renzo Piano’s design for a science museum is a (literally) living example of environmentally-aware architecture

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 /

by Efthalia STAIKOS

The California Academy of Sciences, guided by the mastermind architect Renzo Piano, has successfully created a self-sustaining, green structure. Its ex­cellence was acknowledged by the U.S. Green Building Council that awarded it Platinum status. LEED Platinum (Lead­ership in Energy and Environmental De­sign) is the highest rating a building can achieve. The Academy, a design of Renzo Piano’s, is now the greenest museum in the world, and the largest Platinum-rated public building in the world. The science that went into creating the building did nothing to take away from the beauty of its design, which uniquely integrates it into the surrounding Golden Gate Park.

Sculptural Chemistry: Spatial intersections in steel works of sculptor Alfio Mongelli

/ The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Genny DI BERT

“The field of physics/mathematics that characterizes the imposing works of Algio Mongelli is transformed by an expressive freedom that confounds any scientific pattern. The unity and syth­nesis achieved in his creations, whether large sculptural manifestations in stain­less steel or geometric graphic forms, re­veal the exceptional quality of this artist among the most successful contempo­rary artists.”

Thus wrote Nobel prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini in 1994 referring to the Roman artist Algio Mongelli (born 1939). An astute observation on the part of a perceptive scientist who, oblivious to the writings of the most renowned and profound art critics (Mussa, Masi, Strina­ti, Benincasa, Crispolti, Restany, Berger) arrived at the most defining aspect of the artist’s work: sythesis. It is from this core that his works originate––seemingly simplistic, oddly logical in content, their structure a relationship between space and substance.

Primal Emotions: Author and physicist Paolo Giordano uses a mathematic principle as a metaphor for the human condition

/ Columns, Literature, The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

A man whose mind has gone astray should study mathematics,” said philosopher Francis Bacon, pointing out a strict relationship between mathemati­cal thought and that kind of extraordi­nary, sometimes borderline, sensitivity that is commonly associated to poetry. That must be the case of Paolo Giorda­no, a 27-year-old Italian scientist working on a doctorate in particle physics, who has recently won five literary awards – included the prestigious Premio Strega, Italy’s answer to the Man Booker Prize – with his bestselling debut novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers.

The Caravaggio Moment

Fini Presents Gift from Italy to Library of Congress: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi receives Michelangelo’s La Dotta Mano from President of Italian Chamber of Deputies Gianfranco Fini with these remarks

/ Columns, Notable, The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 /

During his February visit to the U.S., Gianfranco Fini attended a reception at the Library of Congress hosted by the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, where he presented a rare volume of Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano, as a gift to Congress. Late in the evening, Fini attended a dinner hosted by Italian Ambassador Giulio Terzi.

Caravaggio Assoluto: Curators of Rome’s landmark exhibit contextualize the artist

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / , /

by Francesco BURANELLI and Rossella VODRET

On the 18th of July 1610, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – one of the greatest painters in the history of Italy – ended his short turbulent life at the young age of 39, at the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice Hospital of Porto Ercole, in the Southern Coast of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. About him, André Berne-Joffroy stated: “What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting.”

Inherent Revolution: Why the artist was the first to make paintings of timeless mass appeal

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Claudio STRINATI Caravaggio inevitably attracts us because we sense that his life and art are tightly, inextricably connected.  At one time, the explanation for this fact seemed straightforward: He lived a tragic, challenging life, withstanding many difficulties, which manifested itself in the extreme (some say grotesque) power of his art filled with violence, inescapable […]

Portraits and Portrayals

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by John VARRIANO

Portraiture is perhaps the most natural challenge to the realist painter. Alone of the genres, it combines spirit with substance and focuses directly on living individuals. It would seem particularly natural that Caravaggio be moved to paint portraits since he was instinctively drawn to the human figure and the expressive psychology of the mind. Portraiture, moreover, was renowned among his predecessors and contemporaries in Lombardy and Rome. Painters in the north like Moroni, Lotto, and Cavagna, or Romans like Pulzone or Ottavio Leoni had fashioned highly realistic likenesses that Caravaggio could hardly have failed to notice. His principal patrons in Rome were enthusiastic collectors of portraits and their palaces were full of such pictures. Indeed, more than half of the 600 paintings in the Del Monte Collection were portraits.

Performing the Paintings: A contemporary artist inhabits the Baroque realist’s paintings in a work entitled “Cara Viaggio”

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by John KELLY

My performance work evolved out of a background in dance and visual art, and has remained essentially ephemeral. I’ve retained a long-standing desire to merge these two disciplines into a tangible synthesis. This impulse resulted in a studio practice I recently implemented while a Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

The Quoted Artist: Contemporary fascination with Caravaggio is, in itself, Baroque

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Mieke BAL

Like any form of representation, art is inevitably engaged with what came before it, and that engagement is an active reworking. It specifies what and how our gaze sees. Hence, the work performed by later images obliterates the older images as they were before that intervention and creates new versions of old images instead. This process is exemplified by an engagement of contemporary culture with the past that has important implications for the ways we conceive of both history and culture in the present.

Reverberations of Realism: “Caravaggismo” in 17th-,18th- and 19th-century art

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Genny DI BERT

From 1600 until the present, Caravaggio’s work has influenced many trends in art, including that of Cezanne. Caravaggio’s breakthrough was his sharp realism: Saints shown as average people and religious experiences as ordinary human drama – expressed through emotions, theatre and allegory. He depicted idealized concepts as manifested in the visible world. Though an extraordinary colorist, he was selective in his compositions – each detail of his paintings corresponds to reality and the models he used.

Speaking of Realism: A show of Czechoslovakian Realism 1948-1989 looks to debut in New York. An interview with director Francesco Augusto Razetto

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Genny DI BERT

Realism in Socialist Czechoslovakia was shown at the Gallery Mánes, the museumm of modern art in Prague in December 2009. The exhibition comprised over 70 works revisting the period of Czech realism through a selection of paintings, sculpture, graphics and photography, many previously unpublished or unseen. The curator of architecture of the Prague Foundation Eluetheria, Francesco Augusto Razetto, along with the show’s other curators, including his brother Ottaviano Maria Razetto, are working on bringing the exhibition to Italy and New York.

Sacred, Profane Naples: In her collection of short stories, Italian novelist Valeria Parrella catches the intrinsically Baroque side of Naples and its inhabitants

/ The Caravaggio Moment, Volume 20. Number III. 2010 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

With its colourful carnival of clothes and bed sheets hanging from the windows, its maze of narrow streets and secret corners, its roaring chaos of motorbikes and shouting vendors, its inebriating mixture of coffee aromas and pizza flavours, Naples is by its nature a Baroque city.

Cinematic Italy

Ludovica Purini Recieves Venere Award for Music

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Notable, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 /

On International Women’s Day 2012, the City of Rome bestowed the Venere Award on 20 leading women whose contributions across social, artistic and political spheres improve the City’s culture, health and wellness. Among them, Ludovica Rossi Purini, President of Compagnia per la Musica and frequent collaborator with the Italian Academy Foundation, received recognition for her dedication to music.

IAF Names Kim Brizzolara to Board of Directors

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Notable, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 /

The Italian Academy Foundation announced that Kim Brizzolara has joined its board of directors. Ms. Brizzolara is a feature and documentary film producer and serves as an advisor to several non-profit organizations. She is executive vice chair of the Hamptons International Film Festival, serves on the Board of the We are Family Foundation, and Creative Visions, and is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at the School of Government at Harvard.

Directors Rising: A look at some of the new, notable filmmakers out of Italy

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by William HOPE

Italian cinema experienced several golden eras during the course of the 20th century, periods during which the artistic vision and expertise of Italian film-makers and technicians were unparalleled. The opulent mise-en-scène of early works such as Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914), the stark stylistic originality of the neorealist era from the mid-1940s onwards, and the lavish cinematography of Oscar-winning works such as Giuseppe Tornatore’s Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1989) and Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo (1991) – these latter films revisiting, sometimes nostalgically, the community life and interpersonal solidarity of former generations –consolidated Italy’s position as an epicentre of cinematic innovation.

Focus on Davide Manuli: His vibrant film showcased in Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Established auteurs and emerging filmmakers alike offer their own perspectives on contemporary Italy at “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema”, the leading North American showcase for contemporary Italian cinema, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center together with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà and Filmitalia. This year’s edition (June 8-14, 2012) brought together directors (1) from different backgrounds and ages, who embody different ideas of cinema and contribute to piecing together a multi-faceted, complex picture of today’s Italy.

Cinecittà: Set, story, and social scene

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Located 10 miles from the center of Rome in a parkland estate extending over 99 acres, Cinecittà is the hub of Italian Cinema as well as the largest filmmaking facility in Europe. Since its foundation in 1937, it has hosted more than 3,000 films, which have made the history of cinema – from classics like Quo Vadis? (1951), Ben Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1863) and La dolce vita (1960) to more recent productions, such as The Name of the Rose (1986), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Godfather Part III (1990), The English Patient (1996), Gangs of New York (2002), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), The Passion of the Christ (2004) and the BBC/HBO series Rome (2004-2007).

Filmic Victory: The Taviani Brothers surprised themselves and others with the impact of their new film

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The Berlinale’s Golden Bear to Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, two masters of Italian cinema (respectively 80 and 82), for Caesar Must Die, sheds a new light on the contemporary Italian film scene, and perhaps on Italy as a whole. In a moment when Italy seems to struggle to live up to its glorious past, this prestigious international recognition is felt not only as a well-deserved appreciation of the Taviani brothers’ outstanding work, but as a sign of encouragement to a whole country. “Many people, after the award ceremony, thanked us on behalf of Italy, as if this prize were a prize to Italy” – says Paolo Taviani. “One even called us on the phone and said: ‘Thanks! I’ve hung the Italian flag out of my window!’ This is a tricky moment for our country. People believe it’s time for a change, they hope for a turning point. So this film, which is quite anomalous, somehow complies with these wishes.”

Universal Appeal: Italian filmmakers whose work transcends nationality

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Francesco DEL GROSSO

Italy boasts an extremely rich film tradition, which over the years has also become a burden difficult to bear and almost impossible to get rid of. In the last few decades, Italian filmmakers have made every effort to prove that Italian cinema has moved beyond the glories of the past, beyond the “Peplum” epics that dominated the Italian film industry from the first decade of the 20th century to the 1960s, beyond Neorealism and the Italian-style Comedy, beyond the Spaghetti Western and the Dolce Vita. Although the most recent productions “made in Italy” have not been able to live up to this glorious past, there is a variegated number of authors from different backgrounds, styles and ages whose work is particularly noteworthy: they are actually “mavericks” moving within an absent film industry that is neither financially sound nor effective in terms of regulations able to support technical and creative professionals.

Italy: Location as a Protagonist Recent films use the setting of Bel Paese to evoke emotion

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Pierpaolo FESTA

Woody Allen calls it “an osmosis,” something that is not done on purpose. Something that little by little penetrates the subconscious. It can be about art or history. Of course, it is also about landscape – just like walking among the stones of Via Appia, sipping Chianti while enjoying the Tuscany countryside or swimming in the magnificent blue sea of Sicily. This dive into the Italian culture is like an epiphany, a big emotion that nowadays American cinema wants to find more and more.

The State and Status of Film: A study of the effect of politics on Italian filmmaking

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Roberto SILVESTRI

The state of Italian film making comprises not only stalwarts like Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Francesco Rosi, Sabina Guzzanti, Paolo Sorrentino, Marco Tullio Giordana, but also names like Michelangelo Frammartino, Pietro Marcello, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Del Bono, Daniele Ciprì, Roberta Torre, Franco Maresco, and Stefano Savona; making the industry multi-faceted. The neo-realism of 1945-1948 saw a resurgence of a country in ruins and split by the European Recovery Program, which preferred American corporations taking advantage of low wages in a country beholden to the Western superpower. Today, that same country is still in ruin, spiritually and morally.

A Certain Age: The golden era of Italian cinema in 10 exemplars

/ Cinematic Italy, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Enrico AZZANO

There is an old saying which says that we must look to the past to reconstruct the future. The golden years of cinema seem so far away: the years of neorealism, peplum (sword-and-sandals), spaghetti-westerns, thriller and horror, comedies, melodramas, politics; and of the Oscar winners, Cannes Film Festival winners, Cinecittà stars, and the many other internationally known and recognized awards.

Italian Video Art, A Review: The curator of the exhibit Electronic Body reports

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Contemporary Art, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

The topic of which I write arrives in the nick of time (perhaps I should say in the “flick” of time in honor of the filmatic subject). What follows is a general exploration of Italian video art, the subject of a fortunate concomitance with the exhibition I have just curated for the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation. Entitled Electronic Body, the show gathers together 16 artists using the video medium exclusively to express a range of issues, approaches and visions.

Dressing the Part: 2012-2013 Italian collections have a vintage filmic quality

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Fashion, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI

When movies first began to be mass-marketed, right after the turn of the century, actors and actresses usually looked to their own closets for contemporary stories. For period pieces, of course, a wardrobe department was necessary, but it was not until 1916 that the first costume designer was credited on film, a certain Frenchman Louis J. Gasnier.

Director’s Backstory, Dark and Light

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Literature, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

If a maverick is, by his own admission, “a filmmaker who finds a way with the system of making the films he has chosen to make”, Martin Scorsese is certainly one. From his early works, directly emanating from the ethnic melting pot of New York’s Lower East Side where he grew up, to his latest Oscar-winning celebration of the dream factory, Hugo (2011), Scorsese has worked his way up in the film industry within and outside the system, “above ground” and “underground”, in and out of Hollywood, putting onto film his deepest obsessions.

Roberto Benigni

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Face File, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Logan METZER

Among plebians and film-connoisseurs alike, Roberto Benigni is oft remembered for his flamboyant celebration at the 1998 Academy Awards. Clambering over chairs, reciting Dante’s Divina Commedia, and appearing in the sequel to Woody Allen’s acclaimed Midnight in Paris just tell a part of Benigni’s story and the extraordinary impact he has had on the Italian arts.

Columnists and Contributors

A Traviata for All Time

/ Columnists and Contributors, Editor's Journal, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

La Scala’s December 7 season premiere of La Traviata made headlines in Italy — large type exclamations of how the director was boo’ed. The director’s intrepid vision was to demonstrate that Verdi’s love story need not be trapped in a 19th century Paris boudoir, but whose characters and emotions resonated in an ultra-chic, 20th-century Milanese […]

Thinking About Verdi

/ Columnists and Contributors, Publisher's Notebook, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

“Many Minded” is how Homer, the first poet of Western Civilization has been described: “many minded” – it’s Yeats’ expression for the incredible variety, depth and scope of the poet’s work. We may confidently apply that same epithet to Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Ovid, Virgil and, in modern times, as well, to Verdi for the qualities […]

Otello’s Screen Presence

/ Columnists and Contributors, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by David SCHROEDER
Three decades of the operatic character on the silver screen.
From 1958 to 1986, four notable films of Verdi’s Otello appeared, with remarkably little in common. The first, made for RAI television by director Franco Enriquez in 1958, featured Mario Del Monaco; then came Walter Felsenstein’s East German version in 1969, five years later Herbert von Karajan both conducted and directed his with Jon Vickers and Mirella Freni, and Franco Zeffirelli’s appeared in 1986.

Verdi’s “Most Beautiful” Work

/ Columnists and Contributors, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Fred PLOTKIN
Talk to anyone in Busseto about Giuseppe Verdi, who was born five kilometers away in Roncole, and he or she will have a strong opinion about the composer who was also a national hero for giving Italy definition and voice in his operas and political activities. As often as not, Verdi is regarded with grudging respect locally for his indisputable achievements.

Missing Fellini

/ Columnists and Contributors, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Marguerite WALLER

A film that will now never be made was going to fill in the story of the forty-eight hours during which Federico Fellini went missing in L.A. just before he received the Foreign Film Oscar for Nights of Cabiria in l958. Sadly, Henry Bromell, a New Yorker-turned-television writer (Northern Exposure, Homicide, I’ll Fly Away, Chicago Hope, Brotherhood, Rubicon, Homeland), died suddenly of a heart attack just as he was due to direct his own script, Fellini Black and White, in which Fellini encounters a Black jazz musician with whom he spends those two days exploring the counter cultures of late 50s Los Angeles.

Maps and the Heroic Age of explorers are in fashion

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Fashion, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

Collections of 1a Classe Alviero Martini fall 2012, one of Italy’s top manufacturers of leather goods, accessories and women’s clothing are characterized by a “geographic map” motif (called the ‘Geo-Map’), an original design inspired by the era of legendary voyages, explorations and by the Belle Époque.

How Did “Vincenzo” Become “James?”

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

How Did “Vincenzo” Become “James?” by John Philip COLLETTA, Ph.D. The multitude of Italians who ventured to the United States in steamships at the turn of the twentieth century carried more than their trunks and bags and bundles. They carried the culture and traditions of their ancestors. When it came time to name their American-born […]

How did one man’s voyage across the world culminate to “America?”

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

2012 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Amerigo Vespucci – the Italian navigator whom the Western continents are named after. So, how did one man’s voyage across the world culminate to “America?” by Erika BLOCK Born on March 9, 1454 in Florence, Italy, Amerigo began his love affair with the uncharted early in […]

Universal Appeal: Italian filmmakers whose work transcends nationality

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Francesco DEL GROSSO

Italy boasts an extremely rich film tradition, which over the years has also become a burden difficult to bear and almost impossible to get rid of. In the last few decades, Italian filmmakers have made every effort to prove that Italian cinema has moved beyond the glories of the past, beyond the “Peplum” epics that dominated the Italian film industry from the first decade of the 20th century to the 1960s, beyond Neorealism and the Italian-style Comedy, beyond the Spaghetti Western and the Dolce Vita. Although the most recent productions “made in Italy” have not been able to live up to this glorious past, there is a variegated number of authors from different backgrounds, styles and ages whose work is particularly noteworthy: they are actually “mavericks” moving within an absent film industry that is neither financially sound nor effective in terms of regulations able to support technical and creative professionals.

Italy: Location as a Protagonist Recent films use the setting of Bel Paese to evoke emotion

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Pierpaolo FESTA

Woody Allen calls it “an osmosis,” something that is not done on purpose. Something that little by little penetrates the subconscious. It can be about art or history. Of course, it is also about landscape – just like walking among the stones of Via Appia, sipping Chianti while enjoying the Tuscany countryside or swimming in the magnificent blue sea of Sicily. This dive into the Italian culture is like an epiphany, a big emotion that nowadays American cinema wants to find more and more.

The State and Status of Film: A study of the effect of politics on Italian filmmaking

/ Cinematic Italy, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Roberto SILVESTRI

The state of Italian film making comprises not only stalwarts like Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Francesco Rosi, Sabina Guzzanti, Paolo Sorrentino, Marco Tullio Giordana, but also names like Michelangelo Frammartino, Pietro Marcello, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Del Bono, Daniele Ciprì, Roberta Torre, Franco Maresco, and Stefano Savona; making the industry multi-faceted. The neo-realism of 1945-1948 saw a resurgence of a country in ruins and split by the European Recovery Program, which preferred American corporations taking advantage of low wages in a country beholden to the Western superpower. Today, that same country is still in ruin, spiritually and morally.

Futurism Celebrated

/ Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

FUTURISM CELEBRATED ROME : Laser lights slash through atmospheric smoke, illuminating the crowd and creating a live futurist painting on Piazza del Popolo, while a sound sculpture evoked the cacaphonic and noise-filled poetry of Marinetti. Green, indigo and red, the preferred colors of painters Balla, Boccioni and Calle, made diagonals and sweeping stripes. Photos by […]

Architecture: Architettura del sacro

/ Columnists and Contributors, Futurist Manifestations, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

Architettura del sacro The Archdiocese of Milan has begun an initiative to populate the city periphery with spiritual centers that can also serve as community meeting and social spaces The Archdiocese of Milan along with the Commission for New Churches invited renowned architects to participate in the construction “l’architettura del sacro” (architecture for spiritual structures) […]

Memories from a Lost World

/ Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Literature, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

by Laura GIACALONE

It happened almost by chance. A small Italian publisher handed me this little book called Paper Fish and told me to give it a read, to see if it was any good. The moment I opened the book I knew that something had happened inside of me. I was overwhelmed by a sort of interior smile, that kind of happiness that comes when you discover something really precious, something you didn’t even know you were looking for. That was the start of my love for Tina De Rosa and of my career as a translator.

Columns

1 2 3 4 5

Contemporary Art

To Back(Stage) Or Not To Back(Stage)

/ Columns, Contemporary Art, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Gianluca Marziani
We see it, on the wall of a gallery or museum, indoors or outdoors, in or on a monitor screen, hanging, suspended or resting … to us the work of art always appears as a finished project. Ultimately, we see the end result and (almost) never behind the scenes, with executive backstage passes to witness the time between conception and design.

Studio America

/ Columns, Contemporary Art, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

The question seems simple: who are the most influential Italian artists in the American context? The answer can also be simple, if we limit the list to include only the giants that the world envies Italy for. If instead we want to test the influences on the present (at the moment that the events occur) or their influences beyond their giant status (in a context outside of their irreplaceable names), it is therefore necessary to define a suitable criterion, a measurement of incisiveness that doesn’t stop with history or the market, but touches on the figurative conscience of the work, the background and backstage of the events, the hidden inspirations, and the deepest linguistic intuitions.

Italian Video Art, A Review: The curator of the exhibit Electronic Body reports

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Contemporary Art, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

The topic of which I write arrives in the nick of time (perhaps I should say in the “flick” of time in honor of the filmatic subject). What follows is a general exploration of Italian video art, the subject of a fortunate concomitance with the exhibition I have just curated for the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation. Entitled Electronic Body, the show gathers together 16 artists using the video medium exclusively to express a range of issues, approaches and visions.

Notes on New Italian Art

/ Columns, Contemporary, Contemporary Art, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

Italian Contemporary Art: Three words suggesting such a tangle of opposing considerations, cultural and commercial developments and widespread interests that it is quite difficult to have a comprehensive picture of it. For historical reasons and recent twisted events, the Italian art world embodies an anomalous reality, both for its well-acknowledged qualities and its congenital faults. We have a great tradition of art that the world much appreciates – this goes without saying. From Giotto to Mario Schifano, enviable talents and universal geniuses have come one after the other, producing new expressive modes and groundbreaking innovations.

Literature

“It Lit” In Translation

/ Columns, Literature, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The perception of Italian culture abroad is mostly anchored to the country’s great artistic and literary heritage, to the extent that Italy is more clearly understood and celebrated for what it once was, than what it is now. If we restrict our field of observation to the book market, we can see how the authors translated and distributed abroad actually contribute to shaping the identity and perception of a given culture.

Director’s Backstory, Dark and Light

/ Cinematic Italy, Columns, Literature, Volume 20. Number VII. 2012 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

If a maverick is, by his own admission, “a filmmaker who finds a way with the system of making the films he has chosen to make”, Martin Scorsese is certainly one. From his early works, directly emanating from the ethnic melting pot of New York’s Lower East Side where he grew up, to his latest Oscar-winning celebration of the dream factory, Hugo (2011), Scorsese has worked his way up in the film industry within and outside the system, “above ground” and “underground”, in and out of Hollywood, putting onto film his deepest obsessions.

What Grows in War-Ravaged Soil

/ Columns, Contemporary, Literature, Volume 20. Number VI. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Reading Twice Born is like taking a journey that, once started, has no turning back. It is something to be experienced, more than just read. It slowly sinks into your heart and, page by page, leaves you completely helpless, defenceless, as after a storm of mixed emotions. It is like being revealed the unspoken truth of human condition, with its eternal carousel of joy and sorrow, and turning it into a personal memory.

The Superficial Truth: A controversial video-turned-book looks at the one-dimensional presentation of women in Italian television

/ Columns, Design Save Italy, Literature, Volume 20. Number IV. 2011 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Please don’t retouch my wrinkles” – said the great Italian actress Anna Magnani, a muse for Neorealist maestro Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City, 1945), while instructing her make-up artist not to conceal the lines on her face – “Leave them all there, it took me so long to earn them.” Many years have passed since then, and women’s concerns and ambitions seem to have changed a lot.

Primal Emotions: Author and physicist Paolo Giordano uses a mathematic principle as a metaphor for the human condition

/ Columns, Literature, The Art of Science, Volume 20. Number II. 2009 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

A man whose mind has gone astray should study mathematics,” said philosopher Francis Bacon, pointing out a strict relationship between mathemati­cal thought and that kind of extraordi­nary, sometimes borderline, sensitivity that is commonly associated to poetry. That must be the case of Paolo Giorda­no, a 27-year-old Italian scientist working on a doctorate in particle physics, who has recently won five literary awards – included the prestigious Premio Strega, Italy’s answer to the Man Booker Prize – with his bestselling debut novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers.

Memories from a Lost World

/ Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Futurist Manifestations, Literature, Volume 20. Number I. 2009 /

by Laura GIACALONE

It happened almost by chance. A small Italian publisher handed me this little book called Paper Fish and told me to give it a read, to see if it was any good. The moment I opened the book I knew that something had happened inside of me. I was overwhelmed by a sort of interior smile, that kind of happiness that comes when you discover something really precious, something you didn’t even know you were looking for. That was the start of my love for Tina De Rosa and of my career as a translator.

Volume 20. Number IX. 2013

Interwoven

/ Editor's Journal, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Claudia PALMIRA ACUNTO

It is essentially American to assimilate the influences of its myriad foreign-born communities and traditions while nonetheless individuating them. And one could say that Italian culture is “one of a kind” and not readily integrated. Italianità in America has mostly resisted over-adaptation and watered-down versions of itself, creating an almost amorous symbiosis between the two.

Muti Receives 2013 Premio Giustiniano, IAF’s Carusi Awarded Special Mention

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 /

The fact that 2013 is the Verdi bicentennial makes it all the more fitting that Riccardo Muti won this year’s Premio Giustiniano, Ravenna’s top prize for arts and culture. Muti is arguably the most famous contemporary Italian conductor, and has always considered Verdi a muse and an inspiration, recently releasing a book about him.

Violinist Nicola Benedetti Debuts in Rome

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 /

World-renowned violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti debuted in Rome this March. The Scottish-born daughter of Italian immigrants started playing at age four, and by the age of eight had auditioned for and made the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland. By age nine, she had passed all eight grades of musical examinations. By 16, she had studied under Yehudi Menuhin, won BBC’s Young Musician of the Year and signed with a record label.

Compasso D’Oro Celebrates Italian Design Excellence

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Considered the Oscar of Italian design, as well as an authoritative barometer of the state of the cultural debate on industrial design itself, the Compasso d’Oro award is the major acknowledgement of Italian design and enjoys a high reputation throughout the world, so much so that London’s prestigious Phaidon Press has selected it among the top 999 design classics of all time.

Silicon Savior: Italian Journal Interviews Marco Marinucci On His New Venture

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Home to many of the world’s largest technology corporations as well as thousands of small startups, Silicon Valley is the place where the future is written. It is no accident that former Google manager and dynamic leader Marco Marinucci has decided to start his new (ad)venture – as he likes to call it – exactly from there.

Startups: A Contrast

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

It is generally very difficult to find current data on newly formed companies and their founders. Most official statistics refer to traditional businesses or are generally outdated by the time they are released, which makes it difficult for policymakers and other institutional players to have a better understanding of this phenomenon and address the needs of early-stage business owners.

A Brief Meditation On Italian Photography

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Pasquale VERDICCHIO

Given the impressive cultural heritage on constant display along the length and breadth of the peninsula, it seems almost banal to say that Italian culture is highly visual. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), considered to be the first “modern” intellectual, gives an unprecedented, detailed description of the human eye as an instrument of visualization and encoding in one of his poems that is as “technologically” accurate as any contemporary description of a photo camera might be today.

House And Impermanence: Milanese Architect Gio Ponti’s Unforgettably Philosophical Bent

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Keith Evan GREEN “The house is never finished” – Gio Ponti’s architectural fables An ‘architect-artist’ true to his name, Gio Ponti (1891-1979, Milan) created connections between architecture, culture and industry, both inside and outside Italy. In bridging various expressive tendencies, Ponti assumed a number of roles himself: architect, industrial designer, set designer, painter, editor, […]

A Vision Of Pasolini

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Patrick RUMBLE

Pier Paolo Pasolini is widely recognized as one of Italy’s most important cultural figures since the Second World War, producing a remarkable body of work since the 1940s, as a writer, poet, dramatist, and filmmaker – perhaps best known for such films as Accattone (1960) and Salò (1975), his classic novel A Violent Life (1955), and the remarkable poems found in The Ashes of Gramsci (1957).

Missing Fellini

/ Columnists and Contributors, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Marguerite WALLER

A film that will now never be made was going to fill in the story of the forty-eight hours during which Federico Fellini went missing in L.A. just before he received the Foreign Film Oscar for Nights of Cabiria in l958. Sadly, Henry Bromell, a New Yorker-turned-television writer (Northern Exposure, Homicide, I’ll Fly Away, Chicago Hope, Brotherhood, Rubicon, Homeland), died suddenly of a heart attack just as he was due to direct his own script, Fellini Black and White, in which Fellini encounters a Black jazz musician with whom he spends those two days exploring the counter cultures of late 50s Los Angeles.

De Chirico’s “Long American Shadow”

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Ara H. MERJIAN

Painted in Paris and Ferrara in the mid-1910s, several of Giorgio de Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings like The Seer (1914-15) indeed recall the prosthetic bodies that came to populate Europe’s cities in the wake of the Great War. Perched on a stage-like rostrum like a shop window prophet, The Seer epitomizes de Chirico’s Nietzsche-inspired vow “to see everything, even man, in its quality of thing.”

Studio America

/ Columns, Contemporary Art, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

The question seems simple: who are the most influential Italian artists in the American context? The answer can also be simple, if we limit the list to include only the giants that the world envies Italy for. If instead we want to test the influences on the present (at the moment that the events occur) or their influences beyond their giant status (in a context outside of their irreplaceable names), it is therefore necessary to define a suitable criterion, a measurement of incisiveness that doesn’t stop with history or the market, but touches on the figurative conscience of the work, the background and backstage of the events, the hidden inspirations, and the deepest linguistic intuitions.

Schiap Happy

/ Columns, Fashion, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI

Elsa Schiaparelli, “Schiap” to friends (born in Rome on September 10, 1890), was an innovative woman and fashion designer and had a lot of “firsts” in the fashion industry. Her first collection in 1927, in fact, consisted of sweaters adorned with surrealist trompe l’oeil images – a theme that was to become Schiaparelli’s trademark (featured in American Vogue).

Architectural Crossover: Q&A with Architect Franco Purini

/ Columns, Diario Rome-NY, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Ludovica Rossi PURINI

LUDOVICA ROSSI PURINI: In what way can we talk about the contribution of Italian architects to the culture of architecture in the United States?

FRANCO PURINI: Italian architecture has profoundly influenced the development of American architecture, whether it’s in a direct or an indirect way. It’s a testimony of the works of many of the great American architects of the past century. Only one example is really necessary: the strong analogy between the Guggenheim of New York, by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the stairs of the Vatican Museums, by Giuseppe Momo, who the American architect visited in 1939.

“It Lit” In Translation

/ Columns, Literature, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The perception of Italian culture abroad is mostly anchored to the country’s great artistic and literary heritage, to the extent that Italy is more clearly understood and celebrated for what it once was, than what it is now. If we restrict our field of observation to the book market, we can see how the authors translated and distributed abroad actually contribute to shaping the identity and perception of a given culture.

Fabiola Gianotti

/ Columns, Face File, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Tegan GEORGE

Italians who have impacted the world bring to mind either Renaissance masters, ancient statesmen or contemporary entertainers and designers, like Roberto Benigni, Sofia Loren, Giorgio Armani, or Guccio Gucci. We don’t, however, often think of physicists. This changed after December 19, 2012, when Milanese physicist Fabiola Gianotti was named runnerup for Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Diario Rome-NY

Architectural Crossover: Q&A with Architect Franco Purini

/ Columns, Diario Rome-NY, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Ludovica Rossi PURINI

LUDOVICA ROSSI PURINI: In what way can we talk about the contribution of Italian architects to the culture of architecture in the United States?

FRANCO PURINI: Italian architecture has profoundly influenced the development of American architecture, whether it’s in a direct or an indirect way. It’s a testimony of the works of many of the great American architects of the past century. Only one example is really necessary: the strong analogy between the Guggenheim of New York, by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the stairs of the Vatican Museums, by Giuseppe Momo, who the American architect visited in 1939.

Ubiquitous Influences

Interwoven

/ Editor's Journal, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Claudia PALMIRA ACUNTO

It is essentially American to assimilate the influences of its myriad foreign-born communities and traditions while nonetheless individuating them. And one could say that Italian culture is “one of a kind” and not readily integrated. Italianità in America has mostly resisted over-adaptation and watered-down versions of itself, creating an almost amorous symbiosis between the two.

Muti Receives 2013 Premio Giustiniano, IAF’s Carusi Awarded Special Mention

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 /

The fact that 2013 is the Verdi bicentennial makes it all the more fitting that Riccardo Muti won this year’s Premio Giustiniano, Ravenna’s top prize for arts and culture. Muti is arguably the most famous contemporary Italian conductor, and has always considered Verdi a muse and an inspiration, recently releasing a book about him.

Violinist Nicola Benedetti Debuts in Rome

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 /

World-renowned violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti debuted in Rome this March. The Scottish-born daughter of Italian immigrants started playing at age four, and by the age of eight had auditioned for and made the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland. By age nine, she had passed all eight grades of musical examinations. By 16, she had studied under Yehudi Menuhin, won BBC’s Young Musician of the Year and signed with a record label.

Compasso D’Oro Celebrates Italian Design Excellence

/ Columns, Notable, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Considered the Oscar of Italian design, as well as an authoritative barometer of the state of the cultural debate on industrial design itself, the Compasso d’Oro award is the major acknowledgement of Italian design and enjoys a high reputation throughout the world, so much so that London’s prestigious Phaidon Press has selected it among the top 999 design classics of all time.

Silicon Savior: Italian Journal Interviews Marco Marinucci On His New Venture

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

Home to many of the world’s largest technology corporations as well as thousands of small startups, Silicon Valley is the place where the future is written. It is no accident that former Google manager and dynamic leader Marco Marinucci has decided to start his new (ad)venture – as he likes to call it – exactly from there.

Startups: A Contrast

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

It is generally very difficult to find current data on newly formed companies and their founders. Most official statistics refer to traditional businesses or are generally outdated by the time they are released, which makes it difficult for policymakers and other institutional players to have a better understanding of this phenomenon and address the needs of early-stage business owners.

A Brief Meditation On Italian Photography

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Pasquale VERDICCHIO

Given the impressive cultural heritage on constant display along the length and breadth of the peninsula, it seems almost banal to say that Italian culture is highly visual. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), considered to be the first “modern” intellectual, gives an unprecedented, detailed description of the human eye as an instrument of visualization and encoding in one of his poems that is as “technologically” accurate as any contemporary description of a photo camera might be today.

House And Impermanence: Milanese Architect Gio Ponti’s Unforgettably Philosophical Bent

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Keith Evan GREEN “The house is never finished” – Gio Ponti’s architectural fables An ‘architect-artist’ true to his name, Gio Ponti (1891-1979, Milan) created connections between architecture, culture and industry, both inside and outside Italy. In bridging various expressive tendencies, Ponti assumed a number of roles himself: architect, industrial designer, set designer, painter, editor, […]

A Vision Of Pasolini

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Patrick RUMBLE

Pier Paolo Pasolini is widely recognized as one of Italy’s most important cultural figures since the Second World War, producing a remarkable body of work since the 1940s, as a writer, poet, dramatist, and filmmaker – perhaps best known for such films as Accattone (1960) and Salò (1975), his classic novel A Violent Life (1955), and the remarkable poems found in The Ashes of Gramsci (1957).

Missing Fellini

/ Columnists and Contributors, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Marguerite WALLER

A film that will now never be made was going to fill in the story of the forty-eight hours during which Federico Fellini went missing in L.A. just before he received the Foreign Film Oscar for Nights of Cabiria in l958. Sadly, Henry Bromell, a New Yorker-turned-television writer (Northern Exposure, Homicide, I’ll Fly Away, Chicago Hope, Brotherhood, Rubicon, Homeland), died suddenly of a heart attack just as he was due to direct his own script, Fellini Black and White, in which Fellini encounters a Black jazz musician with whom he spends those two days exploring the counter cultures of late 50s Los Angeles.

De Chirico’s “Long American Shadow”

/ Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Ara H. MERJIAN

Painted in Paris and Ferrara in the mid-1910s, several of Giorgio de Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings like The Seer (1914-15) indeed recall the prosthetic bodies that came to populate Europe’s cities in the wake of the Great War. Perched on a stage-like rostrum like a shop window prophet, The Seer epitomizes de Chirico’s Nietzsche-inspired vow “to see everything, even man, in its quality of thing.”

Studio America

/ Columns, Contemporary Art, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Gianluca MARZIANI

The question seems simple: who are the most influential Italian artists in the American context? The answer can also be simple, if we limit the list to include only the giants that the world envies Italy for. If instead we want to test the influences on the present (at the moment that the events occur) or their influences beyond their giant status (in a context outside of their irreplaceable names), it is therefore necessary to define a suitable criterion, a measurement of incisiveness that doesn’t stop with history or the market, but touches on the figurative conscience of the work, the background and backstage of the events, the hidden inspirations, and the deepest linguistic intuitions.

Schiap Happy

/ Columns, Fashion, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI

Elsa Schiaparelli, “Schiap” to friends (born in Rome on September 10, 1890), was an innovative woman and fashion designer and had a lot of “firsts” in the fashion industry. Her first collection in 1927, in fact, consisted of sweaters adorned with surrealist trompe l’oeil images – a theme that was to become Schiaparelli’s trademark (featured in American Vogue).

Architectural Crossover: Q&A with Architect Franco Purini

/ Columns, Diario Rome-NY, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Ludovica Rossi PURINI

LUDOVICA ROSSI PURINI: In what way can we talk about the contribution of Italian architects to the culture of architecture in the United States?

FRANCO PURINI: Italian architecture has profoundly influenced the development of American architecture, whether it’s in a direct or an indirect way. It’s a testimony of the works of many of the great American architects of the past century. Only one example is really necessary: the strong analogy between the Guggenheim of New York, by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the stairs of the Vatican Museums, by Giuseppe Momo, who the American architect visited in 1939.

“It Lit” In Translation

/ Columns, Literature, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Laura GIACALONE

The perception of Italian culture abroad is mostly anchored to the country’s great artistic and literary heritage, to the extent that Italy is more clearly understood and celebrated for what it once was, than what it is now. If we restrict our field of observation to the book market, we can see how the authors translated and distributed abroad actually contribute to shaping the identity and perception of a given culture.

Fabiola Gianotti

/ Columns, Face File, Ubiquitous Influences, Volume 20. Number IX. 2013 / /

by Tegan GEORGE

Italians who have impacted the world bring to mind either Renaissance masters, ancient statesmen or contemporary entertainers and designers, like Roberto Benigni, Sofia Loren, Giorgio Armani, or Guccio Gucci. We don’t, however, often think of physicists. This changed after December 19, 2012, when Milanese physicist Fabiola Gianotti was named runnerup for Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Call for Submissions

Artisans into the Future

/ Call for Submissions /

No. 13 /Autumn 2014 For this third issue, we will be particularly interested in receiving contributions focusing on the surviving old Italian craftsmanship and the role of handiwork and production in future economies. Suggested topics include: The survival of old craftsmanship today: the thin line between art and crafts. Profiles of fabric makers, leather workers, […]

Photography

/ Call for Submissions /

Number 12 / Summer 2014 The Summer issue is open to contributions focusing on the old and new masters of Italian photography. Suggested topics include: Italy through photographs portraying its landscapes, people, and street life. The greatest masters in the history of Italian photography. International photographers who have chosen Italy as a privileged subject. Italian […]

The New Italians to Note / Recent Successes, Emerging Talents

/ Call for Submissions /

Number 10. Spring 2014. The New Italians to Note / Recent Successes, Emerging Talents (working title) This number is open to contributions focusing on the best contemporary and recent voices in the Italian literary, artistic and musical scene. Suggested topics include: Literature Best-selling contemporary authors; Rising stars and most promising writers; Challenges and Opportunities for […]

Volume 20. Number X. 2013

A Traviata for All Time

/ Columnists and Contributors, Editor's Journal, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

La Scala’s December 7 season premiere of La Traviata made headlines in Italy — large type exclamations of how the director was boo’ed. The director’s intrepid vision was to demonstrate that Verdi’s love story need not be trapped in a 19th century Paris boudoir, but whose characters and emotions resonated in an ultra-chic, 20th-century Milanese […]

Thinking About Verdi

/ Columnists and Contributors, Publisher's Notebook, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

“Many Minded” is how Homer, the first poet of Western Civilization has been described: “many minded” – it’s Yeats’ expression for the incredible variety, depth and scope of the poet’s work. We may confidently apply that same epithet to Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Ovid, Virgil and, in modern times, as well, to Verdi for the qualities […]

SD 26: Private Dining

/ Columns, Notable, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 /

Beloved New York restauranteurs Tony May and his daughter Marisa announce the opening of their spacious restaurant for private events. Designed by Massimo Vignelli, the location has three floors and 13,000 square feet of space, including a chic Balcony Room, a wine connoisseurs’ dining area and a grand main dining room. The Executive Chef Matteo […]

The Operas of Verdi

/ Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 /

And their premiere dates Oberto November 17, 1839 Un giorno di regno September 5,1840 Nabucco March 9, 1842 I Lombardi alla prima crociata February 11, 1843 Ernani March 9, 1844 I due Foscari November 3, 1844 Giovanna d’Arco February 15, 1845 Alzira August 12, 1845 Attila March 17, 1846 Macbeth March 14, 1847 I masnadieri […]

Otello’s Screen Presence

/ Columnists and Contributors, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by David SCHROEDER
Three decades of the operatic character on the silver screen.
From 1958 to 1986, four notable films of Verdi’s Otello appeared, with remarkably little in common. The first, made for RAI television by director Franco Enriquez in 1958, featured Mario Del Monaco; then came Walter Felsenstein’s East German version in 1969, five years later Herbert von Karajan both conducted and directed his with Jon Vickers and Mirella Freni, and Franco Zeffirelli’s appeared in 1986.

Verdi’s “Most Beautiful” Work

/ Columnists and Contributors, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Fred PLOTKIN
Talk to anyone in Busseto about Giuseppe Verdi, who was born five kilometers away in Roncole, and he or she will have a strong opinion about the composer who was also a national hero for giving Italy definition and voice in his operas and political activities. As often as not, Verdi is regarded with grudging respect locally for his indisputable achievements.

To Back(Stage) Or Not To Back(Stage)

/ Columns, Contemporary Art, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Gianluca Marziani
We see it, on the wall of a gallery or museum, indoors or outdoors, in or on a monitor screen, hanging, suspended or resting … to us the work of art always appears as a finished project. Ultimately, we see the end result and (almost) never behind the scenes, with executive backstage passes to witness the time between conception and design.

Valeria Golino

/ Columns, Face File, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI
For three decades, Valeria Golino, 47, has enjoyed a career of unusual variety, alternating in the past 25 years between Hollywood movies and films in her native Italy. Best known to English-speaking audiences as Topper Harley’s sexy, exotic girlfriend in the popular Hot Shots! and for her role in Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, Valeria, born to a Greek mother and Italian father in Naples, began her career as a model. She started working as an actress during the 1980s, after she was discovered by Italian film icon Lina Wertmüller, who cast her in A Joke of Destiny (1983) when she was still in high school. Three years later she won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival for Storia d’Amore.

Verdi Ever After

A Traviata for All Time

/ Columnists and Contributors, Editor's Journal, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

La Scala’s December 7 season premiere of La Traviata made headlines in Italy — large type exclamations of how the director was boo’ed. The director’s intrepid vision was to demonstrate that Verdi’s love story need not be trapped in a 19th century Paris boudoir, but whose characters and emotions resonated in an ultra-chic, 20th-century Milanese […]

Thinking About Verdi

/ Columnists and Contributors, Publisher's Notebook, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

“Many Minded” is how Homer, the first poet of Western Civilization has been described: “many minded” – it’s Yeats’ expression for the incredible variety, depth and scope of the poet’s work. We may confidently apply that same epithet to Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Ovid, Virgil and, in modern times, as well, to Verdi for the qualities […]

SD 26: Private Dining

/ Columns, Notable, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 /

Beloved New York restauranteurs Tony May and his daughter Marisa announce the opening of their spacious restaurant for private events. Designed by Massimo Vignelli, the location has three floors and 13,000 square feet of space, including a chic Balcony Room, a wine connoisseurs’ dining area and a grand main dining room. The Executive Chef Matteo […]

The Operas of Verdi

/ Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 /

And their premiere dates Oberto November 17, 1839 Un giorno di regno September 5,1840 Nabucco March 9, 1842 I Lombardi alla prima crociata February 11, 1843 Ernani March 9, 1844 I due Foscari November 3, 1844 Giovanna d’Arco February 15, 1845 Alzira August 12, 1845 Attila March 17, 1846 Macbeth March 14, 1847 I masnadieri […]

Otello’s Screen Presence

/ Columnists and Contributors, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by David SCHROEDER
Three decades of the operatic character on the silver screen.
From 1958 to 1986, four notable films of Verdi’s Otello appeared, with remarkably little in common. The first, made for RAI television by director Franco Enriquez in 1958, featured Mario Del Monaco; then came Walter Felsenstein’s East German version in 1969, five years later Herbert von Karajan both conducted and directed his with Jon Vickers and Mirella Freni, and Franco Zeffirelli’s appeared in 1986.

Verdi’s “Most Beautiful” Work

/ Columnists and Contributors, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Fred PLOTKIN
Talk to anyone in Busseto about Giuseppe Verdi, who was born five kilometers away in Roncole, and he or she will have a strong opinion about the composer who was also a national hero for giving Italy definition and voice in his operas and political activities. As often as not, Verdi is regarded with grudging respect locally for his indisputable achievements.

To Back(Stage) Or Not To Back(Stage)

/ Columns, Contemporary Art, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Gianluca Marziani
We see it, on the wall of a gallery or museum, indoors or outdoors, in or on a monitor screen, hanging, suspended or resting … to us the work of art always appears as a finished project. Ultimately, we see the end result and (almost) never behind the scenes, with executive backstage passes to witness the time between conception and design.

Valeria Golino

/ Columns, Face File, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

by Barbara ZORZOLI
For three decades, Valeria Golino, 47, has enjoyed a career of unusual variety, alternating in the past 25 years between Hollywood movies and films in her native Italy. Best known to English-speaking audiences as Topper Harley’s sexy, exotic girlfriend in the popular Hot Shots! and for her role in Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, Valeria, born to a Greek mother and Italian father in Naples, began her career as a model. She started working as an actress during the 1980s, after she was discovered by Italian film icon Lina Wertmüller, who cast her in A Joke of Destiny (1983) when she was still in high school. Three years later she won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival for Storia d’Amore.

Publisher's Notebook

Thinking About Verdi

/ Columnists and Contributors, Publisher's Notebook, Verdi Ever After, Volume 20. Number X. 2013 / /

“Many Minded” is how Homer, the first poet of Western Civilization has been described: “many minded” – it’s Yeats’ expression for the incredible variety, depth and scope of the poet’s work. We may confidently apply that same epithet to Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Ovid, Virgil and, in modern times, as well, to Verdi for the qualities […]

Amerigo America

Maps and the Heroic Age of explorers are in fashion

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Fashion, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

Collections of 1a Classe Alviero Martini fall 2012, one of Italy’s top manufacturers of leather goods, accessories and women’s clothing are characterized by a “geographic map” motif (called the ‘Geo-Map’), an original design inspired by the era of legendary voyages, explorations and by the Belle Époque.

How Did “Vincenzo” Become “James?”

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

How Did “Vincenzo” Become “James?” by John Philip COLLETTA, Ph.D. The multitude of Italians who ventured to the United States in steamships at the turn of the twentieth century carried more than their trunks and bags and bundles. They carried the culture and traditions of their ancestors. When it came time to name their American-born […]

How did one man’s voyage across the world culminate to “America?”

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

2012 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Amerigo Vespucci – the Italian navigator whom the Western continents are named after. So, how did one man’s voyage across the world culminate to “America?” by Erika BLOCK Born on March 9, 1454 in Florence, Italy, Amerigo began his love affair with the uncharted early in […]

Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013

Maps and the Heroic Age of explorers are in fashion

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Columns, Fashion, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

Collections of 1a Classe Alviero Martini fall 2012, one of Italy’s top manufacturers of leather goods, accessories and women’s clothing are characterized by a “geographic map” motif (called the ‘Geo-Map’), an original design inspired by the era of legendary voyages, explorations and by the Belle Époque.

From Gutenberg to Google: Reflections on the printed paper map in the era of Web-published maps

/ Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

Italian Journal, Rome-New York 2012 From Gutenberg to Google: Reflections on the printed paper map in the era of Web-published maps by William CARTWRIGHT School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University, Australia Email: william.cartwright@rmit.edu.au Maps as communicators of discoveries In a series of articles in 1999 in the Australian Good Weekend the best of […]

How Did “Vincenzo” Become “James?”

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

How Did “Vincenzo” Become “James?” by John Philip COLLETTA, Ph.D. The multitude of Italians who ventured to the United States in steamships at the turn of the twentieth century carried more than their trunks and bags and bundles. They carried the culture and traditions of their ancestors. When it came time to name their American-born […]

How did one man’s voyage across the world culminate to “America?”

/ Amerigo America, Columnists and Contributors, Volume 20. Number VIII. 2013 / /

2012 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Amerigo Vespucci – the Italian navigator whom the Western continents are named after. So, how did one man’s voyage across the world culminate to “America?” by Erika BLOCK Born on March 9, 1454 in Florence, Italy, Amerigo began his love affair with the uncharted early in […]

Volume 20. Number XI. 2014

Defining Mike Cooper

/ Cultural Re-Generation, Volume 20. Number XI. 2014 / /

An interview with the musical artist who calls Rome his home.

By Laura GIACALONE

For the past 45 years Mike Cooper has been an international musical explorer, film and video maker, installation artist and visual artist pushing the boundaries of his work. Initially a folk-blues guitarist, he is as responsible as anyone else – and more so than many – for ushering in the blues boom in the U.K. in the late ‘60s.

Cultural Re-Generation

Defining Mike Cooper

/ Cultural Re-Generation, Volume 20. Number XI. 2014 / /

An interview with the musical artist who calls Rome his home.

By Laura GIACALONE

For the past 45 years Mike Cooper has been an international musical explorer, film and video maker, installation artist and visual artist pushing the boundaries of his work. Initially a folk-blues guitarist, he is as responsible as anyone else – and more so than many – for ushering in the blues boom in the U.K. in the late ‘60s.

Volume 20. Number XII. 2015

Mimmo Jodice

/ Photographic / Photogenic, Volume 20. Number XII. 2015 / /

Mimmo JODICE
“All my work is born out of a moment of emotion, all my photography is the result of a particular encounter that determines my unique state of being. It’s as is the forms, the objects, the landscapes and the light were preparing for me, always awaiting me. Beneath an appearance of normalcy, my works hold and evoke a deep stirring inside of me for all that has occurred or will occur; and reveal memories of times past.”

Franco Fontana

/ Photographic / Photogenic, Volume 20. Number XII. 2015 / /

Franco FONTANA
“Taking photographs is an act of knowledge – it is a taking possession. What we photograph are not images but reproductions of ourselves. Creativity does not illustrate or imitate. It interprets, thus becoming the quest for an ideal truth. Creative photography does not reproduce but interprets by making the invisible visible.”

Marzia Migliora

/ Photographic / Photogenic, Volume 20. Number XII. 2015 / /

Marzia MIGLIORA
“Photography is an immense, inexhaustible source of ideas, notes, memories – a method to mark time and its passage. It is the sign of the present that leaves traces of itself. In my research, photography is always present as a timely look at the surroundings, thanks to the ability of synthesis in which even a single shot becomes a story.”

Marina Ballo Charmet

/ Photographic / Photogenic, Volume 20. Number XII. 2015 / /

Marina Ballo CHARMET
“A sacred subject is the everyday one – the ‘always seen’, ‘the background noise in our minds’. My view is characterized by a perceptual mobility, out of focus and sideways – similar to a childlike vision, which reconstitutes a fluctuating vision, a ‘peripheral awareness’, not centrally related to our preconceptions. A vision opposite to anthropocentrism.”

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Photographic / Photogenic

Mimmo Jodice

/ Photographic / Photogenic, Volume 20. Number XII. 2015 / /

Mimmo JODICE
“All my work is born out of a moment of emotion, all my photography is the result of a particular encounter that determines my unique state of being. It’s as is the forms, the objects, the landscapes and the light were preparing for me, always awaiting me. Beneath an appearance of normalcy, my works hold and evoke a deep stirring inside of me for all that has occurred or will occur; and reveal memories of times past.”

Franco Fontana

/ Photographic / Photogenic, Volume 20. Number XII. 2015 / /

Franco FONTANA
“Taking photographs is an act of knowledge – it is a taking possession. What we photograph are not images but reproductions of ourselves. Creativity does not illustrate or imitate. It interprets, thus becoming the quest for an ideal truth. Creative photography does not reproduce but interprets by making the invisible visible.”

Marzia Migliora

/ Photographic / Photogenic, Volume 20. Number XII. 2015 / /

Marzia MIGLIORA
“Photography is an immense, inexhaustible source of ideas, notes, memories – a method to mark time and its passage. It is the sign of the present that leaves traces of itself. In my research, photography is always present as a timely look at the surroundings, thanks to the ability of synthesis in which even a single shot becomes a story.”

Marina Ballo Charmet

/ Photographic / Photogenic, Volume 20. Number XII. 2015 / /

Marina Ballo CHARMET
“A sacred subject is the everyday one – the ‘always seen’, ‘the background noise in our minds’. My view is characterized by a perceptual mobility, out of focus and sideways – similar to a childlike vision, which reconstitutes a fluctuating vision, a ‘peripheral awareness’, not centrally related to our preconceptions. A vision opposite to anthropocentrism.”

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Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016

The Epic History of Italians and Their Food: Interview with John Dickie

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

A best-selling British author, historian and academic, John Dickie is an internationally recognized specialist on many aspects of Italian history and his books have been translated into many languages. Best known for his compelling journeys into the history of Italian Mafia (Cosa Nostra: A History of The Sicilian Mafia, 2004; Mafia Brotherhoods: The Rise of […]

Food as a literary and political icon in Italy

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

Italian novels and non-fiction have always been spiced with an abundance of culinary references. Far from being a mere descriptive element contributing to realistic representation, food is a significant narrative ingredient in both classic and contemporary literature, enriching it with anthropological, psychological and sociological “flavors.” In his Divine Comedy (1304-21), Dante Alighieri refers to bread […]

What Artists Ate

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

By Katherine A. McIVER  We can gain a sense of what the average (or artisan-class) person ate and what foods they preferred by looking at a few artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who was supposedly a vegetarian, or Michelangelo (1475-1564), who purportedly did not care much about food, or Pontormo (1494-1557), who kept a […]

Food Save Italy

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

L’Esposizione Mondiale del cibo 2015 ha certamente puntato il riflettore su un tema importante soprattutto in Italia. Come si concilia la storia delle tradizioni culinarie di un Paese con le contaminazioni gustative, ma anche di consumo e creative, che provengono dai processi di globalizzazione? In realtà la questione ha una portata quotidiana e di sperimentazione […]

Joe Bastianich

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water. In the case of Joe Bastianich, traditional Italian tomato sauce is also thicker than water. Bastianich worked with his parents, Felice and Lidia Bastianich, at their Queens restaurant Felidia. Lidia is famous as a beloved television chef, cookbook author, restauranteur and owner of a food and […]

Gastronomia

The Epic History of Italians and Their Food: Interview with John Dickie

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

A best-selling British author, historian and academic, John Dickie is an internationally recognized specialist on many aspects of Italian history and his books have been translated into many languages. Best known for his compelling journeys into the history of Italian Mafia (Cosa Nostra: A History of The Sicilian Mafia, 2004; Mafia Brotherhoods: The Rise of […]

Food as a literary and political icon in Italy

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

Italian novels and non-fiction have always been spiced with an abundance of culinary references. Far from being a mere descriptive element contributing to realistic representation, food is a significant narrative ingredient in both classic and contemporary literature, enriching it with anthropological, psychological and sociological “flavors.” In his Divine Comedy (1304-21), Dante Alighieri refers to bread […]

What Artists Ate

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

By Katherine A. McIVER  We can gain a sense of what the average (or artisan-class) person ate and what foods they preferred by looking at a few artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who was supposedly a vegetarian, or Michelangelo (1475-1564), who purportedly did not care much about food, or Pontormo (1494-1557), who kept a […]

Food Save Italy

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

L’Esposizione Mondiale del cibo 2015 ha certamente puntato il riflettore su un tema importante soprattutto in Italia. Come si concilia la storia delle tradizioni culinarie di un Paese con le contaminazioni gustative, ma anche di consumo e creative, che provengono dai processi di globalizzazione? In realtà la questione ha una portata quotidiana e di sperimentazione […]

Joe Bastianich

/ Gastronomia, Volume 20. Number XIII. 2016 / /

As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water. In the case of Joe Bastianich, traditional Italian tomato sauce is also thicker than water. Bastianich worked with his parents, Felice and Lidia Bastianich, at their Queens restaurant Felidia. Lidia is famous as a beloved television chef, cookbook author, restauranteur and owner of a food and […]