CFP: Di politica: Intersections of Italian Art and Politics since WWII
The history of postwar Italy overflows with accounts of political triumph, social struggle, crisis, and scandal, and it is equally pervaded by tales of artistic innovation, retrenchment, and aesthetic dilemma. Existing scholarship has addressed the relationship between Futurism and Fascism, as well as the visual strategies of Fascist regimes. But scholars, and art historians especially, have not yet sufficiently taken up correlations between art and politics of the second half of the 20th century. This panel seeks papers that investigate contemporary Italian visual art in relation to the nation’s vibrant and chimerical sociopolitical conditions since the foundation of the Italian Republic in 1946. The session organizers encourages papers on Italian cultural history, visual studies, or theory that shed light on the intersections (and telling disconnections as well) of visual art and politics—with “politics” taken here as broadly signifying an effort to change society as a whole—in contemporary Italy. We are particularly interested in studies that connect the artists’ tactical approaches to the political climate of a given era. Paper topics might include (but are not limited to):
- The body in postwar Italian art and Italy’s vivid history of political demonstration
- Artistic production in relation to the status of the worker in specific eras
- Neo-Realism and/or Pop during the “Economic Miracle”
- Arte Povera and the long 1960s
- Visual strategies during the Anni di piombo
- Art and the visual codes of the Italian feminist movement
- Orientalism in film and other media alongside the indiani metropolitani
- Underappreciated political aspects of Transavanguardia
- Art and visual culture during the premiership of Silvio Berlusconi
- The status of the artist during the current European economic crisis
Please send a brief abstract (no more than 200 words) and a brief c.v. (1 page maximum) to Christopher Bennett and Elizabeth Mangini. Deadline 13 June 2014.