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Due to its association with Fascism, Futurism experienced a significant period of academic neglect and criticism, only starting to slowly regain ground from the late 1950s. Luciano Caruso, initially supported by Stelio Maria Martini, has played a fundamental part in this revaluation through over twenty years of intense work. His determined commitment has allowed us to discover and appreciate a great number of theoretical and poetic texts from the first Italian avant-garde movement that have been overlooked for many years, and to understand or re-evaluate some of the most critical issues. As well as his efforts to reclaim Futurism from its fascist connotations, Caruso also undertook a re-evaluation of paroliberismo (“Words-in-Freedom”). This considers not only the historical and critical perspective, but also the aesthetic and philosophical aspects. Caruso specifically recognizes the merits of Futurist paroliberismo as an approach which sought to heal an excessively sharp division between "words and things" that had occurred over the centuries, and to reintroduce the expansive power of matter into the circuit of language. This article intends to retrace the principal aspects of this critical re-evaluation by considering the reflections of Caruso and Martini on the relationship between writing and matter within the aesthetic and epistemological framework set out by Jean-François Lyotard (Discourse, Figure, 1971) which championed the primacy of the visual experience over the centuries-long Western logocentric paradigm.

The Pattern and Decoration movement, which emerged in New York in the mid-Seventies, was one of the most significant reactions to the minimalist and conceptual reductionisms of the previous artistic season. This phenomenon anticipated some of the fundamental problems of the art of the Eighties, such as the return to the materiality of the work, the recovery of the sensitive values of form and colour and, above all, the reassessment of decorativeness, still considered less important compared to other ways of the image. Supported by the gallery owner Holly Solomon and the critics Amy Goldin, John Perreault, Jeff Perrone and Francesca Alinovi, this movement was immediately successful, unfortunately followed by a rapid decline. However, its rediscovery is necessary, as proved by the concomitance of some exhibitions recently held in some of the major European and American museums. Thanks to the proscription of avant-garde formalism and the direct confrontation with the logic of Kitsch, Pattern and Decoration marked the end of modernity and its rationalizing models, deconstructing the canons of modernism and legitimizing a multi-ethnic and pluralistic aesthetic. The operational strategies of Pattern Painting also seem to faithfully reflect some of the fundamental concepts of more mature postmodernism, with particular reference to the thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The two philosophers contrast the “striated” space of modernity, based on rationalizing criteria, with the “smooth” space of postmodernity, which follows the logic of patchwork and constitutes the ideal paradigm of a nomadic, syncretic and rhizomatic culture. Starting from all these considerations, the essay focuses on the aesthetic assumptions of the movement, examining the critical reflections of Goldin, Perreault, Perrone and Alinovi and the poetics of some its exponents, including Valerie Jaudon, Robert Kushner, Kim MacConnel, Joyce Kozloff and Miriam Schapiro. The comparison with the theorie

In recent years the work of the Lucchese video artist Marcantonio Lunardi (1968) won several awards at national and international level, also receiving some attention from critics. The complexity of his language, which shows a propensity to combine painting schemes and solutions within filmic antinarrative strategies, lends itself to many levels of interpretation. In this essay we try to understand the poetics of Lunardi by analyzing some of his main and most recent video works, using theoretical tools from visual studies. A first stylistic evaluation provide a place the author’s work within a line of research that extends the operational approach of pictorialism photo to video art. For this purpose, Victor Stoichita’s theories on the framework of the painting are useful. A second way of investigation motivate the author’s technical and formal choices within a broader culturologic perspective, with the use of Lev Manovich’s theories on new media. A third way of reflecting, however, concerns the temporality of the video image, analyzed through the notion of “crystals of time” formulated by Gilles Deleuze.

Between 1959 and 1962 Italian painting made a gradual transition from the materialism of the Informal to new forms of figuration full of organicist and surrealist moods. Bologna is undoubtedly one of the cities that best represents this turning point: the research conducted between the late Fifties and early Sixties by Vasco Bendini, Pirro Cuniberti, Luciano De Vita, Giuseppe Ferrari, Mario Nanni, Leone Pancaldi, Concetto Pozzati and Sergio Vacchi confirms this. Their work is included in important national exhibitions such as Possibilità di relazione (Rome, 1960), Nuove prospettive della pittura italiana (Bologna, 1962), Alternative attuali (L'Aquila, 1962) or the 1964 Venice Biennale and is followed and supported by many important Italian critics such as Francesco Arcangeli, Renato Barilli, Maurizio Calvesi, Enrico Crispolti and Andrea Emiliani. This essay aims to outline the essential features of the artistic situation in Bologna at the end of the Fifties and to focus on the stylistic peculiarities of the individual authors with the support of critical voices who promptly commented on them.

Questo studio offre una panoramica comparata delle poetiche comportamentiste sorte in Italia tra la fine degli anni Sessanta e i primi anni Settanta. Una tale impresa non può che partire da un attento riesame del paradigma critico dell’Arte Povera, messo a punto da Germano Celant tra il 1967 e il 1971, sia per il ruolo di assoluta centralità che essa ha rivestito in quel periodo sia per l’importanza storica gradualmente conquistata negli ultimi decenni attraverso grandi mostre in gallerie e musei italiani e internazionali di elevato prestigio. A fronte della visione “ristretta” che il monopolio poverista offre oggi di quella fertile stagione, intendiamo offrire una visione più ampia e sistematica che ponga in primo piano i valori e la varietà delle poetiche rispetto ai settarismi della critica militante di allora che, ancora oggi, influenzano e condizionano la critica storiografica. Da questa revisione si passa al recupero di esperienze che hanno costeggiato e anticipato le soluzioni dell’Arte Povera. Si prendono perciò in esame le esperienze antiform e performative di Eliseo Mattiacci e di Paolo Icaro, nonché quelle di altre personalità autonome attive sul territorio italiano come Claudio Cintoli, Mario Nanni, Hidetoshi Nagasawa e Germano Olivotto, ricostruendo inoltre la situazione dello Studio Bentivoglio di Bologna. Un’indagine a tutto campo sulle poetiche comportamentiste italiane permette infine di individuare tipologie operative condivise indirizzate oltre i riduzionismi dell’Arte Povera: l’uso processuale e relazionale del medium fotografico con Franco Vaccari, Luca Patella, Aldo Tagliaferro, Adriano Altamira, Ugo Mulas e altri; l’uso immaginifico-simbolico del linguaggio con Vincenzo Agnetti, Emilio Isgrò, Ketty La Rocca, Maurizio Nannucci, Bruno Di Bello e altri, la materializzazione performativa dell’immaginario da parte di Giuseppe Desiato, Fabio Mauri, Luigi Ontani, Cioni Carpi, Michele Zaza e le “mitologie individuali” di Gino De Dominicis, Vettor Pisa, This study offers a comparative overview of the poetics of Comportamento [behavior] that arose in Italy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Such a feat can only start from a careful reexamination of the critical paradigm of Arte Povera, developed by Germano Celant between 1967 and 1971, both for the role of absolute centrality that it has played in that period and for the historical importance gradually conquered in the last decades through large exhibitions in high-prestige Italian and international galleries and museums. Faced with the "restricted" vision that the poverista critics monopoly offers today of that fertile season, we intend to offer a broader and more systematic vision that focuses on the values ​​and variety of poetics compared to the sectarianism of the militant criticism of the time that, even today, influence and condition historiographic criticism. From this review we move on to the recovery of experiences that have skirted and anticipated the solutions of Arte Povera. We therefore examine the antiform and performative experiences of Eliseo Mattiacci and Paolo Icaro, as well as those of other autonomous personalities active in Italy such as Claudio Cintoli, Mario Nanni, Hidetoshi Nagasawa and Germano Olivotto, also reconstructing the situation of the Bentivoglio Studio in Bologna. An all-encompassing survey on Italian behavioral poetics finally allows us to identify shared operative typologies that go beyond the reductionism of Arte Povera: the processual and relational use of the photographic medium with Franco Vaccari, Luca Patella, Aldo Tagliaferro, Adriano Altamira, Ugo Mulas and others; the imaginative-symbolic use of language with Vincenzo Agnetti, Emilio Isgrò, Ketty La Rocca, Maurizio Nannucci, Bruno Di Bello and others, the performative materialization of the imaginary by Giuseppe Desiato, Fabio Mauri, Luigi Ontani, Cioni Carpi, Michele Zaza and the "individual mythologies" of Gino De Dominicis, Vettor Pisani and Claudio Parmiggiani.

For many years now, the Bolognese Gian Paolo Roffi has added the collecting to his artistic and poetic activity, relying on the knowledge gained over forty years of participation in the field of visual poetry. The author has constituted a collection of about one hundred and forty pieces of small format, titled Fuoripagina, to underline the attempt to escape from the conventions of the printed page that characterizes the individual works. Starting from the collecting criteria adopted by Roffi, in the present text a partial critical path is traced which intends to highlight ways and strategies of reinvention of the printed page typical of the verbo-visual searches of the second half of the Twentieth Century.

This paper focuses on the critical analysis of Merda d’artista (1961) by Piero Manzoni, underlining the problematic nature of psychoanalytic interpretations proposed by Nancy Spector, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Gerard Silk and others related to Freudian theories. Starting from the philosophical interests of the artist and his theoretical declarations, it proposes a reinterpretation of the famous Manzoni’s work in the perspective of that bond to the social and experiential dynamics that will characterize most of the conceptual researches of the late Sixties.

Questo studio offre una panoramica comparata delle poetiche comportamentiste sorte in Italia tra la fine degli anni Sessanta e i primi anni Settanta. Una tale impresa non può che partire da un attento riesame del paradigma critico dell’Arte Povera, messo a punto da Germano Celant tra il 1967 e il 1971, sia per il ruolo di assoluta centralità che essa ha rivestito in quel periodo sia per l’importanza storica gradualmente conquistata negli ultimi decenni attraverso grandi mostre in gallerie e musei italiani e internazionali di elevato prestigio. A fronte della visione “ristretta” che il monopolio poverista offre oggi di quella fertile stagione, intendiamo offrire una visione più ampia e sistematica che ponga in primo piano i valori e la varietà delle poetiche rispetto ai settarismi della critica militante di allora che, ancora oggi, influenzano e condizionano la critica storiografica. Da questa revisione si passa al recupero di esperienze che hanno costeggiato e anticipato le soluzioni dell’Arte Povera. Si prendono perciò in esame le esperienze antiform e performative di Eliseo Mattiacci e di Paolo Icaro, nonché quelle di altre personalità autonome attive sul territorio italiano come Claudio Cintoli, Mario Nanni, Hidetoshi Nagasawa e Germano Olivotto, ricostruendo inoltre la situazione dello Studio Bentivoglio di Bologna. Un’indagine a tutto campo sulle poetiche comportamentiste italiane permette infine di individuare tipologie operative condivise indirizzate oltre i riduzionismi dell’Arte Povera: l’uso processuale e relazionale del medium fotografico con Franco Vaccari, Luca Patella, Aldo Tagliaferro, Adriano Altamira, Ugo Mulas e altri; l’uso immaginifico-simbolico del linguaggio con Vincenzo Agnetti, Emilio Isgrò, Ketty La Rocca, Maurizio Nannucci, Bruno Di Bello e altri, la materializzazione performativa dell’immaginario da parte di Giuseppe Desiato, Fabio Mauri, Luigi Ontani, Cioni Carpi, Michele Zaza e le “mitologie individuali” di Gino De Dominicis, Vettor Pisa, This study offers a comparative overview of the poetics of Comportamento [behavior] that arose in Italy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Such a feat can only start from a careful reexamination of the critical paradigm of Arte Povera, developed by Germano Celant between 1967 and 1971, both for the role of absolute centrality that it has played in that period and for the historical importance gradually conquered in the last decades through large exhibitions in high-prestige Italian and international galleries and museums. Faced with the "restricted" vision that the poverista critics monopoly offers today of that fertile season, we intend to offer a broader and more systematic vision that focuses on the values ​​and variety of poetics compared to the sectarianism of the militant criticism of the time that, even today, influence and condition historiographic criticism. From this review we move on to the recovery of experiences that have skirted and anticipated the solutions of Arte Povera. We therefore examine the antiform and performative experiences of Eliseo Mattiacci and Paolo Icaro, as well as those of other autonomous personalities active in Italy such as Claudio Cintoli, Mario Nanni, Hidetoshi Nagasawa and Germano Olivotto, also reconstructing the situation of the Bentivoglio Studio in Bologna. An all-encompassing survey on Italian behavioral poetics finally allows us to identify shared operative typologies that go beyond the reductionism of Arte Povera: the processual and relational use of the photographic medium with Franco Vaccari, Luca Patella, Aldo Tagliaferro, Adriano Altamira, Ugo Mulas and others; the imaginative-symbolic use of language with Vincenzo Agnetti, Emilio Isgrò, Ketty La Rocca, Maurizio Nannucci, Bruno Di Bello and others, the performative materialization of the imaginary by Giuseppe Desiato, Fabio Mauri, Luigi Ontani, Cioni Carpi, Michele Zaza and the "individual mythologies" of Gino De Dominicis, Vettor Pisani and Claudio Parmiggiani.

La stesura della monografia di Francesco Arcangeli su Giorgio Morandi è all’origine di un incrinarsi dei rapporti tra il giovane critico e il più anziano artista che ha ormai fatto storia. Il saggio, edito dalla galleria milanese del Milione nel 1964, circa quaranta giorni dopo la morte del maestro bolognese, ha avuto una redazione lunga e tortuosa, conclusasi con molte e severe censure costate care al suo autore. Solo nel 2007 il testo è stato riconsegnato agli studi nella sua idea originale, permettendoci di comprendere più chiaramente l’effettiva visione di Arcangeli. Ripercorrendo alcuni tra i principali punti di dissenso di Morandi, in relazione alle posizioni di Longhi e dello stesso Arcangeli espresse nella corrispondenza intercorsa tra gli autori, si prosegue ad affrontare una più generale riflessione teorica circa le difficoltà che possono intervenire nella stesura di una monografia su un artista vivente e in dialogo diretto col medesimo, verificando quali delicate e complesse dinamiche vengano a instaurarsi tra le due parti.

Arcangeli’s monograph on Giorgio Morandi is the early crack of relations between the young critic and the oldest artist. The essay, published by the Milan gallery Il Milione in 1964, about forty days after the death of the Bolognese master, had a long and complicated editing. Only in 2007 the text was returned to the studies in its original idea, enabling us to understand more clearly the actualizing vision of Arcangeli. Looking back on some of Morandi’s main points of dissent, related to the positions of Longhi and Arcangeli himself expressed in correspondence between the authors, this paper continues to face a more general theoretical reflection on the difficulties that may be involved in drawing up a monograph on a living artist and in direct dialogue with the same, verifying which delicate and complex dynamics are to be established between the two parts.

The alternative between ‘artwork’ and ‘behavior’, as a critical issue by Francesco Arcangeli at the Venice Biennale in 1972, is an important track on which contemporary artistic research continues today; however, there are many influences, convergences and exchange moments between the two lines. In the Seventies in Bologna, where the polarity had already been able to test during the exhibition held at the Civic Museum at the threshold of the decade Gennaio 70, different artists like Anna Valeria Borsari, Maurizio Osti, Piero Copertini and Piero Manai shared a ‘revealing’ of the picture, now declaring it as a trace of ‘behavior’ no as an element of ‘artwork’. In the essay we examine the poetics of the four artists and some of the most interesting solutions they developed in the Seventies, in an attempt to understand the reasons that generated them.

As against other representatives of Arte Povera, Emilio Prini’s artistic career is most uneven and least documented. This is mainly due to the artist’s operational practices, that are eventual, fleeting, ephemeral. This essay focuses on Prini’s works between 1967, the year of his debut, and the early Seventies. It follows his sporadic traces in the Italian and international contexts and in relation to Germano Celant’s principles of Arte Povera as well as to other contemporary fellow artists’ solutions.

As against other representatives of Arte Povera, Emilio Prini’s artistic career is most uneven and least documented. This is mainly due to the artist’s operational practices, that are eventual, fleeting, ephemeral. This essay focuses on Prini’s works between 1967, the year of his debut, and the early Seventies. It follows his sporadic traces in the Italian and international contexts and in relation to Germano Celant’s principles of Arte Povera as well as to other contemporary fellow artists’ solutions.

The poetics of dripping developed by the American painter Jackson Pollock has been investigated by many authoritative critics and theorists through existentialism, pragmatism, phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Through a rational comparison of these various positions, from that of Francesco Arcangeli to that of Rosalind Krauss via Enrico Crispolti, Italo Tomassoni and Allan Kaprow, the aim is to understand the experience values and those of the unconscious are present the US artist’s research, with reference also to reflections and affirmations of the painter himself.

In the late sixties a group of artists formed in Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna joined to new conceptual-behavioral frontiers, in turn summarized under the partial labels Antiform, Arte Povera and Body Art. The situation in Bologna takes on connotations entirely singular, mainly for having found its wellspring in Vasco Bendini, from Informal movement, who became brilliant forerunner of many of the most advanced solutions and features of the new art season. For a few but intense years Studio Bentivoglio becomes therefore the heart of the new fertile aesthetic research, counting among its leaders now prominent personalities such as Pier Paolo Calzolari and Luigi Ontani. The essay will reconstruct the events of those years in Bologna through the works and documents remained of, placing comparisons with the contemporary proposals, and referring not only to the poetics of various artists, but also to the critical voices – not least that of Francesco Arcangeli – who, with insight and boldness, were able to understand and comment on the changes of expression then in place.

Verso la fine degli anni Sessanta un gruppo di artisti costituitosi a Bologna tra le mura di Palazzo Bentivoglio aderisce con grande prontezza alle nuove frontiere concettuali-comportamentistiche, di volta in volta riassunte sotto le parziali etichette di Antiform, Arte Povera o Body Art. La situazione bolognese assume però connotati del tutto singolari, principalmente per aver trovato la propria scaturigine in un artista quale Vasco Bendini, che giungeva dalle secche dell’Informale storico, fattosi brillante anticipatore di molte tra le soluzioni più avanzate e caratterizzanti della nuova stagione artistica. Per pochi ma intensissimi anni lo Studio Bentivoglio diventa perciò il cuore di nuove fertili ricerche estetiche, annoverando tra i suoi animatori personalità ormai di spicco come Pier Paolo Calzolari e Luigi Ontani. Nel saggio si ricostruiscono le vicende bolognesi di quegli anni attraverso le opere e i documenti rimastici, ponendo anche proficui confronti con le coeve proposte nazionali e internazionali, e facendo riferimento non solo alle poetiche dei vari artisti, ma anche e soprattutto alle voci critiche – non ultima quella di Francesco Arcangeli – che, con acume e audacia, hanno saputo comprendere e commentare le trasformazioni espressive allora in atto.

In the late sixties a group of artists formed in Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna joined to new conceptual-behavioral frontiers, in turn summarized under the partial labels Antiform, Arte Povera and Body Art. The situation in Bologna takes on connotations entirely singular, mainly for having found its wellspring in Vasco Bendini, from Informal movement, who became brilliant forerunner of many of the most advanced solutions and features of the new art season. For a few but intense years Studio Bentivoglio becomes therefore the heart of the new fertile aesthetic research, counting among its leaders now prominent personalities such as Pier Paolo Calzolari and Luigi Ontani. The essay will reconstruct the events of those years in Bologna through the works and documents remained of, placing comparisons with the contemporary proposals, and referring not only to the poetics of various artists, but also to the critical voices – not least that of Francesco Arcangeli – who, with insight and boldness, were able to understand and comment on the changes of expression then in place.

The article examines the performative activity of Vito Acconci. It focuses on relations between Acconci’s actions, monologues and some of the most important theories on the condition of the ego in postmodern times.

Linking the categories of orality and vocalism, as in the difference thought by the Swiss philologist Paul Zumthor, to the intrapsychic elements of Super-Ego and Id theorized by Freud, the author attempts to explain the succession of the avant-garde vocal performance experiences in the Twentieth century as a step-by-step course in the Id release, according to postmodern life.