Laura Giacalone

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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