Giovanni Lista

Last updated
Giovanni Lista
Giovanni-Lista-2009.jpg
Giovanni Lista (2009), Photo Paolo Aldi.
Born (1943-02-13) February 13, 1943 (age 81)
NationalityItalian
Occupation(s) Art historian, art critic
Known forSpecialist in Futurism
AwardsGeorges Jamati Prize, Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, Chevalier of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

Giovanni Lista (born February 13, 1943, Castiglione del Lago, Italy) is an Italian art historian and art critic, resides in Paris. He is a specialist in the artistic cultural scene of the 1920s, particularly in Futurism.

Contents

Biography

He studied at universities[ specify ] in both Italy and in France until he permanently settled in Paris in February 1970.

While teaching at the university, he became a researcher at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) in 1974. [1] After being associated with the research laboratories directed by Denis Bablet and Louis Marin, he was appointed Director of Research in 1992.

He founded the review Ligeia, dossiers sur l'art (Ligeia, Art Dossiers) in 1988. Its name is taken from the myth of the Greek siren cited by Plato.

As a member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and SGDL (Society of Men of Letters of France), he was awarded the Georges Jamati Prize for the best essay on the theatre, arts and social science published in France in 1989; both the Filmcritica Prize for the best essay on cinema and photography published in Italy and the Giubbe Rosse Prize for the best literary biography essay published in Italy in 2002; and the Venetian Academy Silver Medal in 2010for the lectio magistralis (keynote speech) delivered at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. In April 2011, the French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand awarded him the title of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. In June 2011, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano awarded him the title of Chevalier of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Contributions to art criticism

Between 1973 and 1988, Lista translated the writings of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Luigi Russolo, Umberto Boccioni as well as the syntheses of plays, theoretical texts and manifestos of the Futurists by publishing several collections and anthologies which introduced and divulged the Italian avant-garde in France. At the same time he developed an original approach to the work of Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Francis Picabia, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jean Metzinger, dubbed "French Cubo-Futurism". [2]

In 1976 he published the first biography of Marinetti, while beginning to analyse the Futurism founder's political ideas. After studying the political evolution of the Futurist movement, he explored and came to terms with the distinction, formulated by the Florentine Futurists, between "Futurism" and "Marinettism". He contributed in driving the Futurist scholars' attitude towards modernity by focusing on the sense of social and psychological trauma as a result of the industrial transformation. [3] He criticised the different unitarian approaches of Futurist political ideas and in 1980 published the essay "Art and Politics: Left-Wing Futurism in Italy" (in Italian), thus completing his historiographic reconstruction of Futuristic ideology. Lista later explored Futurism's ties with anarchism, particularly tracing Marinetti's ties with the movement. [4]

In 1978 he inventoried the postal innovations of the Futurists, and established a new historiographic object: "Futuristic Postal Art", proclaiming the invention of mail art by the avant-gardists of the 1920s. That same year, he began researching Futurist photography and the problematic relationship that the Futurists had with the new technological media to which he devoted several publications and a series of exhibits (Paris, Modena, Cologne, Tokyo, New York City, London and Florence 1981–2009), particularly defining the specificity of Futurist aesthetic elaboration in the fields of photo-performance, photo-collage and photomontage, the sandwiching of several negatives. He also found that Marinetti and associated Futurists held a diminished regard for photography's potential to display the entirety of human life. [5]

In 1982 he organised the Futurism: Abstraction and Modernity exhibit in Paris, which explored Futurist contributions to an abstract art centered on the tangible experience of reality.

In 1982, and then in 1984, he published a two-volume general catalogue of the works of Giacomo Balla, a Futuristic artist of whom he later organised a major retrospective (Milan, 2008).

In 1983, in the book De Chirico and the Avant-Garde, Lista assembled unpublished epistolary documentation on the relationship between Italian and French artists. He also studied Giorgio de Chirico's role in the evolution of avant-garde artistic culture during World War I. Furthermore, he dedicated other essays to de Chirico, while also publishing a critical edition of the painter's writings on Metaphysical art.

In 1983 at the Italian Cultural Institute, Hôtel Galliffet, in Paris, he organised The Futuristic Book exhibition, which revealed the extent of Futurist innovations in the areas of books-as-objects, books-as-typography, books-as-theatre, books-as-machines, graphic compositions, words-in-freedom plates, picture poetry.

In 1985 he published Futurism, a synthesis in which he rejects the "Second Futurism" formula used in Italy to define the period following Boccioni's death. He proposes a historiographic classification by decade of the different studies on the Futuristic movement: beginning with Plastic Dynamism for the first decade, then continuing with "Mechanical Art" for the 1920s and the "Aeroaesthetics" of the 1930s. Next, he expanded on the poetics of Mechanical Art by publishing an essay on Vinicio Paladini, its originator.

In 1989, he explored the osmosis between the plastic arts and the theatre in all the phases of Futurist practises relating to the theatre with the essay "The Futuristic Scene".

In 1994 he devoted a biographical essay to Loie Fuller in which he analysed multimedia dance as an anticipation of the Futurist aesthetics of this movement. He also directed the film montage Loie Fuller and Her Imitators, which revealed Fuller's breadth and originality. That same year he also published an essay on sculptor Medardo Rosso, and assembled his theoretical writings on Impressionist sculpture.

In 1997, in the book The Modern Stage: World Encyclopaedia of the Performing Arts in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century (1945–1995), he investigates the different visual forms of scenic creation within the contemporary culture of imagery going beyond the dramatic text. In addition to traditional categories, such as opera, ballet, dance, circus and puppet shows, he lists the newer expressions of multimedia entertainment, dance theatre and artist's theatre.

In 2001 he tackled the study of Futurist cinema and advanced its discovery by organising three major retrospectives (Rovereto, Barcelona, Paris, 2001–2009). That same year, he published the book Futurism: Creation and Avant-garde, in which he considers Futurism to be the highest manifestation of an identity Kunstwollen[ definition needed ], which has fertilised and nourished modern Italian art since the country's national unity was achieved.

In 2003, he published the book The Black Sperm (in Italian), which raises major questions on the deep connection between Eros and writing.

In 2005 he published the essay "Libertine and Libertarian", showing, beyond the protean character of Dadaism, the philosophical libertine outlook as an ideological source of Dada.

In 2009 he organised the retrospective exhibit celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the creation of the Futuristic movement in Milan. He took up his previous historiographic systematisation of Futurism, stressing its activist model, research in progress and the poetics of an ephemeralisation of art.

In 2011 he published the book "The Stella d’Italia" (star of Italy), an exhaustive essay on the origins and the history of the mythology of Stella Veneris, the symbol of the Italian land's identity since the time of Ancient Rome. It features an extensive iconographic setting (works of art, monuments, illustrations, posters, decorative objects etc.) about the traditional allegorical representation of Italy: a draped woman with a mural crown surmounted by a star upon her head.

Between 2002 and 2013, he published two essays, one on Enrico Prampolini, the artist who played a major role in the futuristic aero-painting, and the other on the "Vitruvian Man" by Leonardo da Vinci and the reinterpretation of it by avant-garde artists including the Futurists, the cubo-Futurists, the expressionists, and also the neoclassical artists of the "return to order" in thé Thirties and contemporary artists such Pistoletto, Nam June Pake, Dieter Appelt, Ontani and Arnold Skip.[ clarification needed ]

He also scrutinised Antoine Bourdelle's Proto-Cubism, Auguste Herbin's abstract art and Alberto Magnelli; the theatrical innovations of Luigi Pirandello, Pierre Albert-Birot, Emile Malespine; and the dialectical repercussions and reversals of the formal ideas of Futurism as they appear in the authors, artists and neo avant-garde movements of the 20th century: Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Frank Gehry, Eugène Ionesco, Arte Povera, Poesia Visiva, process art, performance and Image-Theatre.

Major works

Interviews

References and notes

  1. Authority record created by Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
  2. "Giovanni Lista". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2020-10-30.
  3. Poggi, Christine (2009). Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. x. ISBN   978-0-691-13370-6.
  4. Berghaus, Günter (2014). International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, Volume 4. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 61. ISBN   978-3-11-033400-5.
  5. Niebisch, Arndt (2012). Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde: On the Abuse of Technology and Communication. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 83. ISBN   978-1-137-27685-8.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Filippo Tommaso Marinetti</span> Italian poet (1876–1944)

Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye de Créteil between 1907 and 1908. Marinetti is best known as the author of the Manifesto of Futurism, which was written and published in 1909, and as a co-author of the Fascist Manifesto, in 1919.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Futurism</span> Artistic and social movement

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Its key figures included Italian artists Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. Italian Futurism glorified modernity and, according to its doctrine, "aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past." Important Futurist works included Marinetti's 1909 Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Balla's 1913–1914 painting Abstract Speed + Sound, and Russolo's The Art of Noises (1913).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Umberto Boccioni</span> Italian painter and sculptor (1882–1916)

Umberto Boccioni was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Despite his short life, his approach to the dynamism of form and the deconstruction of solid mass guided artists long after his death. His works are held by many public art museums, and in 1988 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City organized a major retrospective of 100 pieces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giacomo Balla</span> Italian artist (1871-1958)

Giacomo Balla was an Italian painter, art teacher and poet best known as a key proponent of Futurism. In his paintings, he depicted light, movement and speed. He was concerned with expressing movement in his works, but unlike other leading futurists he was not interested in machines or violence with his works tending towards the witty and whimsical.

<i>Manifesto of Futurism</i> 1909 artistic manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

The Manifesto of Futurism is a manifesto written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, published in 1909. In it, Marinetti expresses an artistic philosophy called Futurism, which rejected the past and celebrated speed, machinery, violence, youth, and industry. The manifesto also advocated for the modernization and cultural rejuvenation of Italy.

<i>Blast</i> (British magazine) Vorticist magazine

Blast was the short-lived literary magazine of the Vorticist movement in Britain. Two editions were published: the first on 2 July 1914 and featured a bright pink cover, referred to by Ezra Pound as the "great MAGENTA cover'd opusculus"; and the second a year later on 15 July 1915. Both editions were written primarily by Wyndham Lewis. The magazine is emblematic of the modern art movement in England, and recognised as a seminal text of pre-war 20th-century modernism. The magazine originally cost 2/6.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gino Severini</span> Italian painter (1883-1966)

Gino Severini was an Italian painter and a leading member of the Futurist movement. For much of his life he divided his time between Paris and Rome. He was associated with neo-classicism and the "return to order" in the decade after the First World War. During his career he worked in a variety of media, including mosaic and fresco. He showed his work at major exhibitions, including the Rome Quadrennial, and won art prizes from major institutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italian futurism in cinema</span> Italian film movement

Italian futurist cinema was the oldest movement of European avant-garde cinema. Italian futurism, an artistic and social movement, impacted the Italian film industry from 1916 to 1919. It influenced Russian Futurist cinema and German Expressionist cinema. Its cultural importance was considerable and influenced all subsequent avant-gardes, as well as some authors of narrative cinema; its echo expands to the dreamlike visions of some films by Alfred Hitchcock.

<i>Zang Tumb Tumb</i> 1914 poem by F. T. Marinetti

Zang Tumb Tumb is a sound poem and concrete poem written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist. It appeared in excerpts in journals between 1912 and 1914, when it was published as an artist's book in Milan. It is an account of the Battle of Adrianople, which he witnessed as a reporter for L'Intransigeant. The poem uses Parole in libertà and other poetic impressions of the events of the battle, including the sounds of gunfire and explosions. The work is now seen as a seminal work of modernist art, and an enormous influence on the emerging culture of European avant-garde print.

"[The] masterpiece of Words-in-freedom and of Marinetti’s literary career was the novel Zang Tumb Tuuum... the story of the siege by the Bulgarians of Turkish Adrianople in the Balkan War, which Marinetti had witnessed as a war reporter. The dynamic rhythms and onomatopoetic possibilities that the new form offered were made even more effective through the revolutionary use of different typefaces, forms and graphic arrangements and sizes that became a distinctive part of Futurism. In Zang Tumb Tuuum; they are used to express an extraordinary range of different moods and speeds, quite apart from the noise and chaos of battle.... Audiences in London, Berlin and Rome alike were bowled over by the tongue-twisting vitality with which Marinetti declaimed Zang Tumb Tuuum. As an extended sound poem it stands as one of the monuments of experimental literature, its telegraphic barrage of nouns, colours, exclamations and directions pouring out in the screeching of trains, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire, and the clatter of telegraphic messages." — Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzola

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Futurist architecture</span> Early-20th-century Italian architectural style

Futurist architecture is an early-20th century form of architecture born in Italy, characterized by long dynamic lines, suggesting speed, motion, urgency and lyricism: it was a part of Futurism, an artistic movement founded by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who produced its first manifesto, the Manifesto of Futurism, in 1909. The movement attracted not only poets, musicians, and artists but also a number of architects. A cult of the Machine Age and even a glorification of war and violence were among the themes of the Futurists - several prominent futurists were killed after volunteering to fight in World War I. The latter group included the architect Antonio Sant'Elia, who, though building little, translated the futurist vision into an urban form.

Futurist meals comprised a cuisine and style of dining advocated by some members of the Futurist movement, particularly in Italy. These meals were first proposed in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Luigi Colombo (Fillìa)'s Manifesto of Futurist Cooking, published in Turin's Gazzetta del Popolo on December 28, 1930. In 1932, Marinetti and Fillìa expanded upon these concepts in The Futurist Cookbook.

Franco Casavola was a Futurist composer and theorist. He is noted as one of the authors of the Le Sintesi Visive della Musica, a manifesto that proposed the intrinsic visual counterparts of music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesco Balilla Pratella</span> Italian composer

Francesco Balilla Pratella was an Italian composer, musicologist and essayist. One of the leading advocates of Futurism in Italian music, much of Pratella's own music betrays little obvious connection to the views espoused in the manifestos he authored.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valentine de Saint-Point</span> French artist

Valentine de Saint-Point was a French writer, poet, painter, playwright, art critic, choreographer, lecturer and journalist. She is primarily known for being the first woman to have written a futurist manifesto. Additionally, she was also active in Parisian salons and the associated literary and artistic movements of the Belle Epoque. Her writings and performances of La Métachorie demonstrated her theory of "a total fusion of the arts." Performed veiled, it is an exploration of the body's relationship to nature and geometric archetypes that govern physical form and movement. Finding a similar universality in Islamic art, she converted to Islam and moved to Alexandria where she also became involved in Middle Eastern politics, writing prolifically as an advocate for Egyptian and Syrian independence from French rule. She died at the age of 78. Her Muslim name was Ruhiyya Nur al-Din and she is buried next to the Imam al-Shafii.

<i>The Art of Noises</i> Futurist music manifesto

The Art of Noises is a Futurist manifesto written by Luigi Russolo in a 1913 letter to friend and Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. In it, Russolo argues that the human ear has become accustomed to the speed, energy, and noise of the urban industrial soundscape; furthermore, this new sonic palette requires a new approach to musical instrumentation and composition. He proposes a number of conclusions about how electronics and other technology will allow futurist musicians to "substitute for the limited variety of timbres that the orchestra possesses today the infinite variety of timbres in noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anton Giulio Bragaglia</span> Italian photographer, filmmaker and writer (1890–1960)

Anton Giulio Bragaglia was a pioneer in Italian Futurist photography and Futurist cinema. A versatile and intellectual artist with wide interests, he wrote about film, theatre, and dance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fillìa</span>

Fillìa was the name adopted by Luigi Colombo, an Italian artist associated with the second generation of Futurism. Aside from painting, his works included interior design, architecture, furniture and decorative objects.

BÏF§ZF+18 Simultaneità e Chimismi lirici is a poetry book and artist's book published in 1915 by the Italian futurist Ardengo Soffici. Despite its rarity, the book has become famous as one of the finest examples of futurist 'words-in-freedom', and has been described as 'absolutely the most important book that came out of Florentine Futurism'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benedetta Cappa</span> Italian painter (1897–1977)

Benedetta Cappa was an Italian futurist artist who has had retrospectives at the Walker Art Center and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her work fits within the second phase of Italian Futurism.

Ivo Pannaggi was an Italian painter and architect who was active in the Futurist movement and later associated with the Bauhaus.