School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemSeeing art by people with experience of mental illness and/or psychological trauma: a multi-dimensional framework(The Cunningham Dax Collection, 2008)Mental illness is a subject clouded by misunderstanding and prejudice. Creative works by people with an experience of mental illness and/or psychological trauma are often similarly misunderstood. There is a tendency for such works to be viewed from one standpoint only, thereby denying their multi-faceted nature. The exhibition, The Art of Making Sense, has been developed to resolve one of these difficulties. Several years of research undertaken independently by the Cunningham Dax Collection, and more recently in partnership with several partner institutions, have led to the development of a “multi-dimensional” framework for exhibiting, viewing and understanding the art of people with mental illness and/or psychological trauma. The central idea behind the multi-dimensional framework is that creative work by people with experience of mental illness and/or psychological trauma cannot be understood through one perspective. As this exhibition proposes, such work can be viewed through several different interpretive frameworks including, but not limited to, the personal, the medical, the ethical, the historical, and the creative.
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ItemIan Friend: cryptic architecture(Andrew Baker Art Dealer, 2008)It is often assumed that structure is the antithesis of chaos, that architecture must define itself against nature’s randomness. But things are not that simple. The Italian Rationalist architects of the 1930s, for example, argued that a mathematical equation known as the Golden Section was visible in nature. The fact that the structure of nautilus shells adhered to this formula was read as evidence that order pervaded the natural world. Similarly, chaos theory has told us that what seems like disorganized activity in nature conforms to patterns that have shape and form.
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ItemArt and mental illness: an art historical perspective(Neami Splash Art, 2007)Mental illness has for centuries been closely associated in the popular imagination with exceptional creativity and great works of art. I will argue today that it is important not to be complacent about this association, as it has led to some grave misconceptions about the nature of mental illness. The persistence of such misconceptions in the media demonstrates that there is a pressing need for ongoing analysis and debate about appropriate and ethical ways in which to discuss, exhibit and interpret the art work of people who experience mental illness. Coming from an art historical perspective, I hope to suggest ways to make progress in this debate. For the purpose of today’s talk, in speaking of ‘art,’ I will be referring not only to those works judged to provide evidence of exceptional creativity but rather any created visual product in any medium. Mental illness will be defined as clinically significant, psychological syndromes associated with distress, disability or loss of freedom.
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ItemAbstract art, ethics and interpretation: the case of Mario Radice( 2004)Modernist abstract art can be interpreted as the expression of ethical ideals. The elimination of figuration and illusionistic space in the work of abstract painters such as Piet Mondrian or Frank Stella might seem to militate against any reading of their work as embodying principles or standards of human conduct. However, I will demonstrate in this essay that a specific example of modernist abstraction, created in Italy during the 1930s, can be interpreted as responding to ethical principles articulated in the culture at large. I will also show that such principles are not inherent in the formal structure of such works, as the ethical meaning attributed to them depends upon the context in which they are received.
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ItemAbstract art and Fascism in Como( 2003)During the 20th century abstract art was often connected with radical politics, most famously in the work of the Russian Constructivists. Although few would argue today that there is an inherent connection between abstract art and left-wing opposition, there is little awareness of how abstract art could be complicit with fascism, as happened during the 1930s in Italy. This lack of awareness can be partly credited to the role that Italian artists and historians have played in suppressing this complicity by publishing altered documents in exhibition catalogues. ‘Abstract Art and Fascism in Como’ will focus on a series of murals produced by Mario Radice (1898 – 1987) for Como’s Fascist Headquarters in 1936. A discussion of the role played by these murals in the propagandistic function of the building will give rise to a number of historiographical questions: Given the complicity of abstraction and fascism in this instance, as opposed to the more common association between abstract art and left-wing politics, should we assume that abstraction is politically neutral, an empty vessel for the inscription of ideology? Although there is an ethical obligation not to distort the historical record, are historians always obliged to read such works through a political lens? Or are there conditions under which such works might be understood to transcend their immediate political context?
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ItemLucio Fontana: the post-Fascist masculine figure( 2005)The ‘cut’ paintings of the Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899 – 1968) are intensely sexual objects. For many viewers, their rawly coloured surfaces ruptured by deep vertical gashes strongly evoke female genitalia. Fontana’s violent cutting of the canvas has also been compared to the muscular gestures of male ‘action’ painters such as Jackson Pollock. What such interpretations fail to grasp, however, is the critique of gender identity, and in particular masculine identity, at the heart of Fontana’s work. However, as I will show, Fontana relied on an inversion of diametrically opposed notions of maleness and femaleness rather than any deconstruction of the opposition itself. As I outline in my paper, Fontana’s critique first emerges in the artist’s depictions of the male body immediately after Italy’s military defeat in WWII. Fontana’s limp and mangled clay warriors splashed with oozing layers of reflective glaze directly challenge the hard, ballistic ideal of the masculine body theorized in the proto-fascist writings of the Italian Futurist poet Filippo Tomasso Marinetti. Drawing on the work of Hal Foster and Jeffrey Schnapp on the representation of fascist masculinity, I argue that Fontana developed an alternative model of maleness to that encountered in the official culture of Mussolini’s Italy. Accordingly, as I also demonstrate, his work gives insight into the extraordinary transformations in male body imagery that took place in avant-garde and official cultural circles in Italy during the first half of the 20th century.