Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on the work of Italian artists Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, and Piero Manzoni, Jaleh Mansoor demonstrates and reveals how abstract painting in post-WWII Italy critiqued the economic violence of the Marshall Plan and American hegemony, broke with fascist-associated futurism, and anticipated Italian social unrest in the 1960 and 1970s.
Trade Review"Brilliantly highlighting the difference between Italian autonomy/autonomia and the far more general and metaphorical evocations of factory work in American-style pop art and minimalism, Mansoor is one among a small group of authors whose work consistently undercut the historicizing and pacifying ism in the concept of modernism. What we gain is an art historical account on par with the multiple upheavals of modernity and their various contingencies."
-- Ina Blom * Critical Inquiry *
"Mansoor’s book is an inspiring investigation of Italian art in the post-war years, and an unprecedented attempt, at least in terms of a book-length study, to apply to artworks analytical tools derived from autonomous Marxism." -- Jacopo Galimberti * Oxford Art Journal *
"An ambitious book: it is literally brimming with questions and the invitation to further exploration. . . . It takes up the challenge to think differently about accepted narratives of the neo-avant-garde and of artistic practices in Europe after the Second World War." -- Teresa Kittler * Art History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction. Labor, (Workers') Autonomy, (Art) Work 1
1. The Monochrome in the Neocapitalist Laboratory 39
2. Lucio Fontana and the Politics of the Gesture 69
3. Alberto Burri's Plastics and the Political Aesthetics of Opacity 93
4. "We Want to Organicize Disintegration" 119
Conclusion. "Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike" or From Autonomy to Strike 167
Notes 207
Bibliography 249
Index 265
