Open Spaces and Consumerist Excess. On Marisa Volpi’s book Arte dopo il 1945. U.S.A.

Abstract

This essay presents an analysis of the book Arte dopo il 1945. U.S.A (Art after 1945. U.S.A), published by Italian art historian and critic Marisa Volpi in 1969, after traveling to the United States of America in the mid-1960s. While Volpi’s perspective is imbued with Eurocentric art genealogies, her direct observation of US contexts and encounter with artists and institutional figures in North America shape aspects of her narrative. Volpi sees contemporary US art as a response to the vast landscapes, urban materials, and excessive consumerism of US spaces and society. Volpi's introductory chapter and her chapter “Pop Art” from her book are available in English translation in this volume.

Keywords:

• Reception of US art in Italy
• women critics and art historians
• postwar US art
• Abstract Expressionism
• Pop art
• Minimalism
• art canons
• art institutions

Notes

1 Marisa Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945. U.S.A (Bologna: Cappelli, 1969), 70-1. Translations by Lucinda Byatt. I would like to thank art historians Antonella Sbrilli, Laura Iamurri, and Sonia Chianchiano for sharing their personal memories, as well as primary and secondary sources regarding Marisa Volpi, whose archives are currently not open to the public. Also, many thanks to Claudia Hopkins for inviting me to present an initial version of this paper at the session that she chaired at CAA 2020, titled Hot Art, Cold War: European Encounters with Post-War American Art 1960s-1970s.

2 Among others, see Laura Moure Cecchini, "Baroque Futurism: Roberto Longhi, the Seventeenth Century, and the Avant-Garde," The Art Bulletin 101. 2 (2019): 29-53; 1.

3 Roberto Longhi, “Editoriale,” Paragone, XIII.1 (1962): 6.

4 Carla Lonzi, Marisa Volpi, “Ben Shahn”, Paragone 6.69 (September 1955): 38-61.

5 Marisa Volpi, “Una Testimonianza Autobiografica,” in L’Arte delle Donne nell’Italia del Novecento, Laura Iamurri and Sabrina Spinazzè eds. (Rome: Maltemi, 2001), 169-70. Translation by the author.

6 James Johnson Sweeney, Rome-New York Art Foundation (Rome: The Foundation, 1957). See also Daniela Lancioni, “L’America Vista dall’Italia. Spunti per una Lettura Comparata,” in Il Guggenheim: l'Avanguardia Americana, 1945-1980 (Milan: Skira, 2012), 36.

7 Giorgia Gastaldon, “Uno Sguardo Oltreoceano: Assenze, Presenze e Fraintendimenti nella Ricezione dell'Arte Americana a Roma (1958-1963),” Palinsesti 6 (2017): 1-14.

8 This exhibition was covered by a number of reviews and triggered a range of responses. See for example: Enrico Crispolti, Pollock, un saggio critico di…. (Milan: all'Insegna del pesce d'oro, 1958); Dario Micacchi, “Il deserto dell’impotenza nella pittura di Pollock,” L’Unità, 14 March 1958, 3; Lionello Venturi, “La mostra di Pollock. Dall’America Arriva un Mito,” L’Espresso, March 23, 1958, 16. An excerpt of Crispolti’s essay is available in English translation by Lucinda Byatt, with an introduction by Martina Tanga, in Claudia Hopkins and Iain Boyd Whyte (eds.). Hot Art, Cold War-Southern and Eastern European Writings on American Art 1945-90 (New York and London: Routledge, 2021), 144-48.

9 See, among others: Daniela Lancioni, “Tutti i Nodi Vengono al Pettine. Le reazioni alla Biennale di Venezia del 1964,” in Pop Art 1956-68, exhibition catalogue, ed. Walter Guadagnini (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2007), 55-73; Christopher Bennett, “Gleaning Italian Pop,” in Postwar Italian Art History Today. Untying the Knot, eds. Sharon Hecker and Marin Sullivan (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 113-34. Giorgia Gastaldon, Schifano. Comunque, Qualcos’altro (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2021), 170-176; Silvia Bottinelli, “Pragmatic, Pioneering, and Excessive. The Reception of American Art in Italy,” in Hopkins and Boyd Whyte (eds.), Hot Art., Cold War, 132-133.

10 Sonia Chianchiano, “Negli Stati Uniti con una Borsa Fulbright,” in Marisa Volpi Orlandini. Critica militante nei decenni Sessanta e Settanta (Doctoral Thesis, Ca ’Foscari - IUAV - Università degli Studi di Verona: 2017-18), 105-44.

11 Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945, 6.

12 Ibid.

13 See Mark Godfrey, “The Black Aesthetic,” in The Soul of a Nation Reader (New York: Gregory Miller, 2021), 26-30.

14 Kelly Baum, Mericelle Robles, and Sylvia Blount, “Harlem on Whose Mind? The Met and Civil Rights,” The Met Museum, available online https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2021/harlem-on-my-mind

15 Jessica L. Horton, Art for an Undivided Earth. The American Indian Movement Generation (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017), 5.

16 Laura Iamurri, unpublished video-conversation with author, 7 February 2020.

17 Laura Iamurri, Vanessa Martini, and Lara Conte, Carla Lonzi, Scritti Sull’Arte (Milan: et.al., 2012), 545-558.

18 Kynaston McShine, Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors: April 27 through June 12, 1966: Carl Andre [and 41 Others] (New York: The Jewish Museum, 2014).

19 Crispolti, Pollock, 1958.

20 Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945, 50-55. See also Iamurri, video-conversation.

21 Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945, 12.

22 Ibid., 14-24.

23 Ibid., 20. See also Milton W. Brown, The Story of the Armory Show (New York: Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1963); while this publication preceded Volpi’s book, it is not referred to in Arte dopo il 1945. U.S.A.

24 Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945, 23.

25 Ibid. 78.

26 Ibid, 68.

27 Lucy Lippard, Pop Art (New York: Praeger, 1966).

28 Flavia Frigeri, “1966 in the World of Pop,” in The World Goes Pop, exhibition catalogue, Jessica Morgan and Flavia Frigeri eds. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016), 43.

29 Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945, 69.

30 Romy Golan, Flashback, Eclipse. The Political Imaginary of Italian Art in the 1960s (New York: Zone Books, 2021), 19. On critical debates on Pop art in Italy, see also Walter Guadagnini, Pop Art Italia 1958-68 (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2005), 17-21.

31 Golan points out that critic Tommaso Trini, who had visited the United States, had a more nuanced response to Pop art. Golan, Flashback, Eclipse. The Political Imaginary, 44; n19, 257.

32 Maurizio Calvesi, Recognition and Reportage, 1963, trans. Madeline Robinson, introduction Denis Viva, Art in Translation 12:3 (2021): 302-308.

33 Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945, 12; here, Volpi discusses Maurizio Calvesi, “Un Pensiero Concreto,” in Le Due Avanguardie (Milan: Lerici, 1966). In this chapter, Calvesi refuses an ideological reading of Pop art, and rather sees it through the lens of French theory, examining it as a form of visual language. He identifies European precedents to American Pop.

34 Darsie Alexander, “Introduction: The Edge of Pop,” in Darsie Alexander and Bartholomew Ryan (eds.), International Pop, exhibition catalogue (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2015), 79.

35 Gastaldon, Schifano, 32; 89-103.

36 Luigia Lonardelli, “How It Was that I Stopped Painting. Attempts at Distancing in 1960s Italian Art,” in International Pop, Alexander and Ryan eds., 156.

37 Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945, 77. See also Alberto Boatto, Pop Art in U.S.A (Milan: Lerici, 1967).

38 Volpi, Arte dopo il 1945, 7.

39 Ibid., 9.

40 Ibid., 21.