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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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