School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications

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    Abstract art, ethics and interpretation: the case of Mario Radice
    WHITE, ANTHONY ( 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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    Abstract art and Fascism in Como
    White, Anthony ( 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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    Lucio Fontana: the post-Fascist masculine figure
    White, Anthony ( 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.
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    ‘Technique and Memory’ in Lyndell Brown and Charles Green, exhibition catalogue, ARC One Gallery, Melbourne
    White, Dr Anthony ( 2003)
    The recent work of Lyndell Brown and Charles Green is located at the intersection between painting, photography and digital reproduction . Their trompe l'oeil paintings and digitally printed photographs respond critically to the pressures put on human memory by successive revolutions in image technology.
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    'The Artist and Mental Illness' from The Cunningham Dax Collection and The Artists of Neami Splash Art Studio Exhibition Catalogue, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Bundoora
    White, Dr Anthony ( 2005)
    Images produced by people experiencing mental illness can be difficult to look at. Whenever I see the distorted , open-mouthed figure in Edvard Munch's The Scream of 1893, for example, I feel an uncanny sense of altered reality, that the world could suddenly turn inside out and reveal some awful truth underlying everyday perception. With this work the Norwegian-born Munch, a professionally trained artist who at various times in his life suffered from depression and psychosis , created an image which has become a modern icon of mental anguish. At the same time, throughout his career Munch produced a broad range of works, including an extraordinary series of ful length portraits in which the artist's experience of mental illness plays no obvious part. Although these latter works are rarely noted in the literature on Munch, they highlight an important point about the relationship between art and mental health: not everything produced by artists who have experienced mental illness can be related to their medical condition. Furthermore, not even every aspect of a work such as The Scream can be attributed to the creator's inner psychological state. Indeed, when art works such as Munch's become the subject of art historical enquiry they are approached from a broad range of perspectives, including the technical , social, historical, as well as the psychological and medical. In viewing images produced by people experiencing difficulties with mental health, such as those held in The Cunningham Dax Collection or those produced at Neami Splash Art Studio, I argue that we should adopt a similarly broad approach, while not losing sight of the pain and suffering that often accompanies the onset of mental illness.
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    Lucio Fontana: The Post-Facist Masculine Figure
    WHITE, AG (Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, 2005)
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    Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles
    WHITE, AG ; WHITE, AG (National Gallery of Australia, 2002)