Catalogue — Il mondo magico
Bilingual catalog published by Marsilio
Graphic design by Leftloft
Size 17×22 cm, cardboard
pp. 280 with 76 color and b/n illustrations
€35,00 in bookstores, €30,00 in the exhibition
Essays by Giovanni Agosti, Cecilia Alemani, Giuliana Bruno, Barbara Casavecchia, Fabio Dei, Brian Dillon, Silvia Federici, Marina Warner, Chris Wiley
The exhibition Il mondo magico (The magical world) is accompanied by a book exploring the ideas at the heart of the 2017 Italian Pavilion. The volume is divided into two main sections.
The first section introduces the theme of the exhibition from various angles. It includes an essay by Cecilia Alemani on the “magical world” as a system for interpreting reality that the invited artists, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Roberto Cuoghi, and Adelita Husni-Bey, employ in very different ways; an essay by Fabio Dei, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pisa, about the research methods used by Ernesto de Martino—author of the book that inspired the exhibition’s theme and title—and the context out of which they developed; a comprehensive profile of de Martino, reprinted here with an introduction by its author, Giovanni Agosti, Professor of Modern Art History at the University of Milan, who retraces the motives that led him to study de Martino exactly thirty years ago, in 1987; and, last but not least, an essay by Marina Warner that draws on ancient imagery—the iconology of Puglia—to weave a series of visual links between different cultures and eras, bridging art and magic.
The second section is divided in two three parts, each featuring two texts on one of the three invited artists. The work of Andreotta Calò is interpreted by Giuliana Bruno, Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, and by Brian Dillon, the UK editor of Cabinet magazine; the work of Cuoghi is described by Chris Wiley, a contributor to magazines such as The New Yorker, and illuminated by passages from an ancient text that inspired the artist’s project for the Italian Pavilion; and the work of Husni-Bey is examined in an essay by Barbara Casavecchia, a contributing editor at frieze, and through a conversation between the artist and Silvia Federici, an activist and Professor Emerita of Political Philosophy and International Studies at Hofstra University (Hempstead, NY). The texts are rounded out by a selection of images—archival pictures, works by the invited artists, and iconography that inspired their projects for the Italian Pavilion—that is never merely illustrative, reflecting the in-depth research that went into writing the individual essays.
Authors
Giovanni Agosti
Educated at Pisa University and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (1980-84). Periods of study at the Warburg Institute in London (1982, 1984). Research doctorate from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (1984-87). Academic collaboration, from 1987 onward, with the Ente Casa Buonarroti in Florence. From 1988 to 1993 inspector at the Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici e Artistici of Brescia, Cremona and Mantua, with particular focus on the province of Brescia; from 1993 to 1999 inspector at the Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici of Florence, with specific responsibility for the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Galleria degli Uffizi. From 1999 associate professor of the History of Modern Art at the University of Milan. Since 2015 full professor of the same subject at the same university. The author of essays on the art of the Renaissance in Italy, and in particular on its relations with the classical world and the relations between artists and scholars. Organizer of exhibitions on these subjects. Member of advisory boards in Italy and abroad. Member of the editorial board of the art history magazine Prospettiva. From 2011 to 2014 he sat on the advisory board of the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto. From 2010 to 2012 and again since 2015 he has been on the advisory board of the Centro Internazionale d’Arte e Cultura di Palazzo Te in Mantua. Since 2008 he has been a member of the board of trustees of Villa Panza on behalf of the FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano). Since 2015 he has been the representative of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage on the advisory board of the Pinacoteca di Brera.
Giuliana Bruno
Giuliana Bruno is a Professor in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She is internationally known for her research on the intersections of the visual arts, architecture, film, and media. Her seminal book Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York – London 2002) provided new directions for visual studies, and won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Award for “the world’s best book on the moving image.” Other books include Streetwalking on a Ruined Map (Princeton 1993), winner of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies book award, and Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts (Cambridge, ma, 2007). She has contributed to numerous monographs on contemporary artists, and to exhibition catalogues of the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, and Museum of Modern Art. In her latest book, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (Chicago 2014), she revisits the concept of materiality in contemporary art.
Barbara Casavecchia
Barbara Casavecchia is a writer and independent curator based in Milan, where she teaches at Brera Art Academy. Contributing editor for frieze, she writes frequently for art agenda, ArtReview, D – La Repubblica, Mousse, Spike, amongst others. With Andrea Zegna, she curated the public art project All’Aperto in Trivero, with works by Liliana Moro, Dan Graham, Marcello Maloberti, Roman Signer, Stefano Arienti, Alberto Garutti, Daniel Buren. In 2014, she curated the retrospective Maria Lai. Ricucire il mondo at man, Nuoro (with Lorenzo Giusti). She edited the book by Enzo Mari 25 modi per piantare un chiodo (Milan 2011).
Fabio Dei
Fabio Dei teaches Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pisa. His main interests lie in forms of popular culture in Italy and the anthropology of mass violence. His publications include Beethoven e le mondine. Ripensare la cultura popolare (Rome 2002), Antropologia della violenza (Rome 2005), Ragione e forme di vita. Razionalità e relativismo in antropologia (with A. Simonicca, Milan 20082), Antropologia culturale (Bologna 2012), Terrore suicida. Religione, politica e violenza nelle culture del martirio (Rome 2016). With A. Fanelli he has brought out a special expanded edition of Ernesto de Martino’s Sud e magia (Rome 2015).
Brian Dillon
Brian Dillon is a writer, critic and curator. His books include Essayism (London 2017), The Great Explosion (London 2015), Objects in This Mirror: Essays (Berlin 2014), Ruin Lust (London 2014), and Sanctuary (Berlin 2011). He writes regularly for Artforum, frieze, ArtReview, The Guardian, and London Review of Books. He is the uk editor of Cabinet magazine, and teaches Critical Writing at the Royal College of Art, London.
Silvia Federici
Silvia Federici is a long time activist, teacher and writer. In 1972 she was one of the founder of the International Feminist Collective, the organization that launched the Campaign for Wages for Housework in the US and abroad. She has been active in the anti-globalization movement and the anti-death penalty movement. She is the author of many essays on political philosophy, feminist theory, cultural studies, and education. Her published works include Revolution at Point Zero (Oakland, CA – New York 2012) and Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (New York 2004), which has been translated in more than ten languages. Federici is Emerita Professor of Political Philosophy and International Studies at Hofstra University (Hempstead, New York).
Marina Warner
Marina Warner is a writer of fiction and cultural history principally inspired by myth and fairy tale. Her books include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London l976), Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (London l981) and Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London l985). In l994 she gave the bbc Reith Lectures on the theme of Six Myths of Our Time. She has explored the fairytale tradition in From the Beast to the Blonde (London l994) and No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock (London l998). Her study of the Thousand and One Nights, Stranger Magic: Charmed States & the Arabian Nights (London 2011) won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Truman Capote Prize, and a Sheikh Zayed Prize in 2012. She has curated exhibitions, including The Inner Eye (l996), Metamorphing (2002-03), and Only Make-Believe: Ways of Playing (2005), and contributed essays to books and catalogues, of Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer, Kiki Smith, Joan Jonas and others. A selection of her essays on art, Seeing Feelingly, will be published in 2018. Her third novel, The Lost Father, was short-listed for the Booker Prize in l988; it was followed by Indigo, a retelling of The Tempest, and, in 2001, by The Leto Bundle, a novel about a refugee travelling in time. Her most recent book is Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She is now working on a memoir-novel, Inventory of a Life Mislaid, inspired by her childhood in Cairo. A third collection of short stories, Fly Away Home, was published in 2015. She is writing now about the idea of Sanctuary, and the role of culture in times of dislocation and diaspora, while developing a project in Sicily for storytelling in refugee communities, Stories in Transit. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Professorial Research Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, a Fellow of the British Academy, a Commendatore dell’Ordine della Stella di Solidarietà, a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and dbe. She was given the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities in 2015.
Chris Wiley
Marina Warner is a writer of fiction and cultural history principally inspired by myth and fairy tale. Her books include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London l976), Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (London l981) and Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London l985). In l994 she gave the bbc Reith Lectures on the theme of Six Myths of Our Time. She has explored the fairytale tradition in From the Beast to the Blonde (London l994) and No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock (London l998). Her study of the Thousand and One Nights, Stranger Magic: Charmed States & the Arabian Nights (London 2011) won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Truman Capote Prize, and a Sheikh Zayed Prize in 2012. She has curated exhibitions, including The Inner Eye (l996), Metamorphing (2002-03), and Only Make-Believe: Ways of Playing (2005), and contributed essays to books and catalogues, of Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer, Kiki Smith, Joan Jonas and others. A selection of her essays on art, Seeing Feelingly, will be published in 2018. Her third novel, The Lost Father, was short-listed for the Booker Prize in l988; it was followed by Indigo, a retelling of The Tempest, and, in 2001, by The Leto Bundle, a novel about a refugee travelling in time. Her most recent book is Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She is now working on a memoir-novel, Inventory of a Life Mislaid, inspired by her childhood in Cairo. A third collection of short stories, Fly Away Home, was published in 2015. She is writing now about the idea of Sanctuary, and the role of culture in times of dislocation and diaspora, while developing a project in Sicily for storytelling in refugee communities, Stories in Transit. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Professorial Research Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, a Fellow of the British Academy, a Commendatore dell’Ordine della Stella di Solidarietà, a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and dbe. She was given the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities in 2015.