Pietro Conte

Misunderstanding is part and parcel of human relationships, and when those communicating are Erwin Panofsky, the foremost theorist of medieval and Renaissance iconology, and Barnett Newman, exponent and leading theorist of Abstract Expressionism, disaster is assured. Especially if no one is willing to come to terms.A controversy around the term 'sublime' gives the go-ahead for a much broader reflection on the state of aniconic art. In the United States in particular, it announced itself as completely alien not only to the figurative tradition and the categories of formal beauty and European-style classicism, but also to the abstract art of the Old Continent itself. The main objective of American abstractionism was to free itself from all proportions and the rigidity of form and geometry, without renouncing content, an aspect that critics and theorists such as Panofsky found difficult even to imagine.In this anthology of essays, edited by Pietro Conte, the positions of supporters and detractors of that current emerge, which set as its goal the constant search, the attempt to arouse terror mixed with pleasure, with the loss of all coordinates and fixed points, still expressing, but in a completely new way, the sublime.