Johan & Levi

If we know what we know about the extraordinary art revolution of the second half of the sixties, about Arte Povera, Conceptural Art, Process Art and Land Art; if we now see in Boetti, Pistoletto and Zorio some of the most important exponents of their generation; if we know what Lucio Fontana’s last comments were or we have read about recently discovered figures such as the ones by Agnetti, Baruchello, Dadamaino, Mulas and Griffa, it is also thanks to the news reports, the reviews, the essays, and the publishing and teaching work of Tommaso Trini (Sanremo, 1937).This anthology fills a gap that has long needed to be filled and contributes to drawing up a more accurate map of the panorama of Italian art criticism, leaving aside tired polarized ways of thinking. Through painstaking research and discussion carried out by Luca Cerizza in conversation with the author, the book brings together for the first time a selection of Trini’s art criticism: from pioneering texts dedicated to the future protagonists of Arte Povera, to the series of in-depth descriptions of other key figures in the post-war years, as well as newspaper reports and analyses – some of the earliest international ones – that define in real time the characteristics of the post-minimalist art movements that shook up the second half of the sixties. Trini is revealed here to be a keen-eyed witness and a perceptive interpreter of much of the best art in this half-century. This book gives art lovers (but also the general reader) sparkling well-paced criticism written with intelligence, where the “militant” stance never strays into sectarian or ideological positions.

Robert Lebel (1901–1986) was an outstanding poet and novelist, a refined art critic, an expert on antique painting, and an eccentric collector. Today he is remembered primarily for his celebrated monograph on Marcel Duchamp that came out in 1959, after ten years of intense dialogue with the artist across the Atlantic. However, if we were simply to describe him as a Duchamp scholar, we would risk overlooking the many facets of this important witness to the culture of his time. This first collection of writings on Surrealism, composed by Lebel between 1943 and 1984, aims to rectify a partial view of his career by illustrating the complexity and depth of his ties with the movement founded by André Breton. The selection of theoretical texts, monographic essays and critical notes is accompanied by photographs, most of which have never been published. The writings fully conveys the protean nature of an intellectual who dons, in turn, the guise of the reluctant adept, the stubborn viewer and the impartial commentator on Surrealist adventures, in order to render the vicissitudes and controversial relations of its protagonists, starting from the time of his American exile. Lebel is like a loose cannon, but still able – thanks to his humour and irreverence – to maintain an independent viewpoint, due to a deep aversion to any form of militancy or collective action. But this detachment does not stop him from turning his “hyperlucid” gaze on an artistic universe filled with truly subversive characters  – from Roberto Matta to Isabelle Waldberg, Yves Tanguy and Jean-Pierre Duprey – attesting to its passions in a sumptuously classical and free style. In revealing both the brilliant and frightening aspects of a seminal movement of the 20th century, Lebel is not only motivated by a desire to show us the less familiar side of the  works by the artists,such as Lam, de Chirico or Ernst. He also seeks to respond, at every stage of his life, to a question put to him one day, which we now ask ourselves again: At what point are we with Surrealism?

This book is the first in the last thirty years devoted exclusively to the photographic work of Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008). Through examination of the photographs taken in the crucial period from 1949 to 1962, Nicholas Cullinan retraces the artist’s trajectory, reconsidering his work as a whole – including painting, collage, sculpture and performance as well as a mixture of all these elements – from an essentially photographic viewpoint. Rauschenberg began to study and use photography in his works in the late 1940s and early ’50s at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and felt its attraction so strongly as to be torn for a certain period between it and painting. In the end, he chose both. The photographic dimension (images taken from the mass media and found photographs as well as his own personal snapshots, family photos and landscapes) distinguishes his combines, transfer drawings and silkscreen paintings, developing still further in the Spreads and Scales series to culminate in the last works of the Runts series. In addition to finding a place as elements of his works, some of Rauschenberg’s photographs also serve as documentation, casting light on works either lost or undergoing transformation, configuration and reconfiguration. There are also shots of artist friends like Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Merce Cunningham and John Cage engaged in creative action. According to the American curator Walter Hopps, “The use of photography has long been an essential device for Rauschenberg's melding of imagery ... [and] a vital means for Rauschenberg's aesthetic investigations of how humans perceive, select and combine visual information. Without photography, much of Rauschenberg's oeuvre would scarcely exist.” As the artist himself said to Barbara Rose, “I’ve never stopped being a photographer.”

The photographer John Loengard was just thirty when Life magazine sent him to the barren wastes of New Mexico in 1966 and 1967 to take a series of photographs for the eightieth birthday of Georgia O’Keeffe. The great lady of American painting had been living on her own at Ghost Farm near Abiquiu for twenty years. Already enjoying a world-wide reputation, O’Keeffe had decided to leave New York, the heart of civilization, after the death of her husband Alfred Stieglitz in 1946 and retreat to the unspoilt setting of a Native American reservation. She died in Santa Fe twenty years later in 1986, shortly after celebrating her ninety-ninth birthday. This book presents a selection of photographs taken by Loengard of the wonderful and solitary lady of the desert alongside some of her paintings. This juxtaposition sheds surprising light on how the desert landscape and the artist’s everyday life are reflected in the motifs of her paintings and shows the extent to which her artistic imagination was fuelled by the raw reality of her ascetic hermitage in the desert of New Mexico.

Despite its traditional resistance to technological innovation, the art world is not immune to the upheavals caused by artificial intelligence: its impact and growing presence, in both sales and creative processes, are plain to see for all those in the industry, from the most sceptical to the most enthusiastic.This volume offers an overview of the possible applications of AI within common practices in the art market – such as authentication, attribution and the valuation of works – where it acts as an assistant capable of enhancing human capabilities. As well as promoting transparency and objectivity in a world notoriously opaque and poorly regulated, emerging technologies are proving to be valuable tools in the hands of gallery owners, curators and artists who wish to promote their work through exciting immersive experiences. The rise of AI-generated art and the emergence of a new category of collectors interested in online markets and NFTs are among the highly topical issues addressed by the author, who does not overlook, finally, the ethical implications and legislative challenges posed by artificial intelligence regarding artists’ rights.Through the testimonies of industry professionals attuned to these epoch-making transformations, Jo Lawson-Tancred invites us to reflect on a present – and a future – in constant evolution, in which the interaction between art and technology is not only inevitable, but perhaps even desirable.

Italy’s historical and artistic heritage has a problem so glaring and obvious that we end up not even noticing it: it fails to speak to those who visit it. With a few fortunate exceptions, our museums do little to help visitors understand and appreciate their collections, archaeological parks their ruins, or monuments our past. For seven out of ten Italians who never set foot in them, art and the past are nothing but a bore. Meanwhile, the others, who flock mainly to the most famous sites, often return home with a vague and fleeting sense of wonder, without anything new having been kindled within them.The reason why our cultural heritage does not speak to us, like Michelangelo’s Moses in the legend, is simple: it can almost never do so on its own. And until recently, we have not bothered to give it a voice. So today we are among the best at studying, protecting and restoring, but we have not yet learnt to ‘interpret’, and thus to offer the public new knowledge, curiosity and emotions. To spark their imagination. To make them want to see and know more.Giovanni Carrada proposes using this book as a starting point to begin building a new skill set—essential for those working in the world of cultural heritage—if not a new profession altogether. Because promotion—the real kind—is not measured in euros or tickets sold, but in the number of people enriched by the experience they have had.

Jacques Henri Lartigue (Courbevoie, 1894 – Nice, 1986) had his first camera at just eight years of age and from then on never ceased to take pictures of a gay and carefree life: children’s games, picnics, elegant ladies in the Bois de Boulogne, trips with friends, car races and the first aeroplanes. The albums built up over a lifetime are a meticulous record of a family and an entire century. Lartigue succeeded in capturing modernity like very few others and his work now belongs to history.

Few architects have had the privilege of shaping a city, and a capital city at that, a challenge that Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) boldly pursued in the futuristic Brasilia, a city of undulating, sensual forms. From Rio de Janeiro, via Paris and Milan, over the course of his long career this master of concrete created buildings that imposed his style, made up of domes, suspended columns and primary colours, grafting his idea of light and ‘tropical’ modernism also into furniture and design objects. An architect of excellence courted by illustrious patrons, he always remained faithful to communist thought, fully convinced that his work was only a pretext: what really counts is life, the human being, with his soul, his feelings and his perennial hunger for justice and beauty. With a text by Philippe Trétiack.A preview on the publisher's website.

Pierre Paulin (1927-2009) is the designer who best interpreted the spirit of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, with armchairs with sculptural and organic shapes in bright colours - such as Tongue, Ribbon and Groovy - that have become true pop icons. He was the first to bring modernity to the Elysée Palace, creating furniture for the private flats of President Georges Pompidou (1971) and for the presidential offices of François Mitterrand (1983). Many of his handcrafted sculptural pieces have also been mass-produced for the general public, while his modular furniture is considered a collector's item. Over the course of half a century, he explored all facets of design and established fruitful partnerships with various companies, including the Dutch company Artifort, which continue to produce many of his timeless creations to this day. With texts by Anne Bony and Anne-Marie Fèvre.A preview on the publisher's website.

This short essay explores the characteristic use of photographic images in Surrealism between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. In particular the Surrealists chose functional images with a documentary or informative purpose, decontextualising them in their art in order to raise questions and unsettle the viewer. The use of these images became a Surrealist gesture in its own right, stimulating the imagination and creating a form of poetry that generates surprise, or the ecstasy so beloved by the Surrealists. This subverts the meaning of the images, lending them added power and connotations that are both artistic and non-artistic.

What is an image and why have images become so important in our daily lives? And what does the gaze mean? Federico Ferrari reflects on our society of images and the cadenced relationship between words and pictures, a relationship that forges our horizon. He focuses on the use made of images and the world they create, and how the gaze refracts: a single vision of the world, a single measure is impossible. The contemporary image calls for a new definition of the gaze, which springs from the unique nature of each vision and is also capable of embracing its plurality. As the number of possible visions is by definition infinite, what really counts is what underpins them and is therefore common to them all. To borrow the terms of set theory, it is an empty set that appears null but also contains something: our gaze. The force that precedes us and is remains open, capable of going beyond all possible visions, all given images. The empty set of the gaze and the power of vision.

In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of artists who, in shunning technical virtuosity, have produced works that challenge the very definition of painting. Enormous canvases overflowing with smudges and failed attempts bear witness to an intense struggle with the medium. Works of modest dimensions are further diminished by an uncertain hand and a sloppy style. Others still opt for self-sabotage, concealing their content behind torn canvases. Why on earth should painters sign paintings doomed to failure? Perhaps to free art from the yoke of the market and the expectations that have weighed upon painting for centuries.Artists such as Albert Oehlen, Mary Heilmann, David Hammons, Christopher Wool, Michael Krebber and Raoul De Keyser choose the path of impermanence, moving away not only from the idea of the ‘masterpiece’, but also from any semblance of completion. After all, Cézanne, with his tormented reinterpretations of Mont Sainte-Victoire, or Giacometti, with his unfinished portraits, already demonstrated a certain distrust of the finished work. The history of modern art is studded with acts of negation, of radical rejection: an attitude that finds resonance in Asian arts and philosophies, where the “unfinished” is perceived not as a flaw but as a quality to be appreciated and sought after.In the essays collected here – published from 2009 onwards – Raphael Rubinstein traces a genealogy of ‘provisional painting’ and explores an art capable of asserting its own transience as an authentic value.Afterword by Luca Bertolo