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Lucio Fontana : between utopia and kitsch / Anthony White.

By: Series: October BooksPublisher: Cambridge, Mass. ; London : MIT Press, [2011]Copyright date: ©2011Description: xiii, 324 pages : illustrations (some colour) ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0262015927
  • 9780262015929
Subject(s):
Contents:
Damaged Goods -- The Artificial Figure: 1930-1934 -- Between Utopia and Kitsch: 1934-1938 -- From Sculpture to Environment: 1940-1951 -- Spatial Concept: the "Holes," 1949-1953 -- Expectations: the Cuts," 1958-1966 -- The Object of Vanity: 1959-1964 -- La Chinoise.
Summary: In 1961, a solo exhibition by Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana met with a scathing critical response from New York art critics. Fontana (1899-1968), well known in Europe for his series of slashed monochrome paintings, offered New York ten canvases slashed and punctured, thickly painted in luridly brilliant hues and embellished with chunks of colored glass. One critic described the work as "halfway between constructivism and costume jewelry," unwittingly putting his finger on the contradiction at the heart of these paintings and much of Fontana's work: the cut canvases suggest avant-garde iconoclasm, but the glittery ornamentation evokes outmoded forms of kitsch. In Lucio Fontana, Anthony White examines a selection of the artist's work from the 1930s to the 1960s, arguing that Fontana attacked the idealism of twentieth-century art by marrying modernist aesthetics to industrialized mass culture, and attacked modernism's purity in a way that anticipated both pop art and postmodernism.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
Book Book CGLAS Library Monographs Room FON (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 07848

Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-313) and index.

Damaged Goods -- The Artificial Figure: 1930-1934 -- Between Utopia and Kitsch: 1934-1938 -- From Sculpture to Environment: 1940-1951 -- Spatial Concept: the "Holes," 1949-1953 -- Expectations: the Cuts," 1958-1966 -- The Object of Vanity: 1959-1964 -- La Chinoise.

In 1961, a solo exhibition by Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana met with a scathing critical response from New York art critics. Fontana (1899-1968), well known in Europe for his series of slashed monochrome paintings, offered New York ten canvases slashed and punctured, thickly painted in luridly brilliant hues and embellished with chunks of colored glass. One critic described the work as "halfway between constructivism and costume jewelry," unwittingly putting his finger on the contradiction at the heart of these paintings and much of Fontana's work: the cut canvases suggest avant-garde iconoclasm, but the glittery ornamentation evokes outmoded forms of kitsch. In Lucio Fontana, Anthony White examines a selection of the artist's work from the 1930s to the 1960s, arguing that Fontana attacked the idealism of twentieth-century art by marrying modernist aesthetics to industrialized mass culture, and attacked modernism's purity in a way that anticipated both pop art and postmodernism.