Well, that's all

The semester is over. I am sitting in the library 24/7 writing papers. Listening to Tosca on repeat.
I am working diligently on this Thesis Foundation Portfolio. I hope I didn't misplace anything =/

My plans for the winter break are to order some books online from my "to read" list on this portfolio and get through a chunk of pages there. 

Dear Research Diary,
Yesterday I went to MACRO to see the portion of the archive of Fabio Sargentini and the library. The archive was amazing. It had letter correspondences between Sargentini and numerous artists, both Poveristi and huge international names, also between him and Szeeman for When Attitude Becomes Form. There were so many pictures of gallery events and of people together, I think it will be incredibly useful for mapping out what sort of interactions were happening between the artists in this period of time.
The question it raised for me was what was happening before 67? Before Kounellis or Pascali were considered Arte Povera. I want to see what they were trying to do, or trying to achieve and how they became a part of the movement.
I also visited the library and seems a little bit strict. They don't have a catalogue that is accessible and you need to make an appointment with them for date and time. Then you go with the subject and they can help you. I don't really like that system but it may be useful.
I also found a great book in the bookshop about L'Attico from 66 to 78. I couldn't resist buying it, plus if I hadn't and couldn't find it again it would have been horrible.

Dear Research Diary,
I had a revelatory moment last night. As I was speaking with my roommate about my Italian Cinema class I thought of the perfect title for my thesis. Of course this is liable to change since Bolker says it's one of the last steps of the process, but this might be good to put on the form that we need to submit soon to the registrar.
Roma Citta Povera: the Roman Poveristi
Bingo!
After having written a bit about theory and analyzing Celant's writings, I think it would be interesting to see the effect on the movement after it was completely out of Celant's control. In fact the point is that there is no control, so it should theoretically work perfectly, but doesn't this inherently put it in the stage of dissolution?
From Rome I think the individuality of the artists is much more apparent from the start to the end. Kounellis, Pascali, and Boetti are extremely different. Plus Bonito Oliva only started working with them later so there is also the effect of the institution, and you have Sargentini and L'Attico.
Hopefully tomorrow the bus wont take forever to get to the GNAM for the library visit.
Also, I am having a problem with the library visit because Professor Gianni informed me that currently most of the Attico Archive is in an exhibition at MACRO so I may just go to the MACRO library, or just a comfortable library around here like the Biblioteca dell Senato just to know another convenient place to go for silence and concentration, those are always good to know about.

Dear Research Diary,
I am very pleased because I made a huge mistake and scheduled a meeting with Professor Gianni on December 3rd, the same day as the GNAM library visit. Lukcily it's scheduled at an early hour and I will be able to make both appointments. I might have already mentioned that I am having a problem meeting regularly with my advidsor because we are both very busy, so that was really the only reason why I was worried, we have been putting this meeting off for a while now.
This morning I looked at the works of Alighiero Boetti an found that he is more interested in the relationship between the natural and the artificial. This can be found in almost all of his works including Il che prendo il sole a Torino il 19 gennaio 1969 in which his body is made of hand-sized balls of fast-drying cement molded to the shape of the interior of his hand. It is contrasted with the soft and bright colored butterfly resting on his nose.

Mappa

Il che prendo il sole a Torino il 19 gennaio 1969

His most known piece is his series of  Mappa which is a map of the world with the national flag cut to the shape of each country.

Dear Research Diary,

Yesterday I read a chapter on Giovanni Anselmo following professor Dohna’s advice of taking a good look at a couple of artworks and trying to figure out how each artist individually fits into the movement. The opening part said that Arte Povera did not in reality have a manifesto, Celant’s work is only considered that way in the light of its context in the avant-garde form. In reality they were only essays for exhibitions which served the purpose of a traditional manifesto by outlining basic trends that unify the movement as a whole. Anselmo fits into the category of somebody who deals with the thread of the natural and the artificial and the invisibility of natural forces within consumer society and the world of production. His most notable works are Scultura che mangia, Senza Titolo (plexiglass and iron bar) and Torsione which all embody the forces of nature which help the artist, and therefore he considers them “materials” in his work. 

Senza Titolo, the rock shows potential energy, gravity will be shown if it falls.

Dear Research Diary,

My trip went well and was semi-related to my thesis, in a very broad way. I was visiting Manifesta 8 “Dialogue with Northern Africa.” Everything was basically video art. It was pretty nice, actually not related at all, nevermind. Meanwhile I got responses from professor Gianni and professor Dohna saying they would read my work and comment on it. I think I am meeting tomorrow with professor Gianni and we can talk about what I wrote as well as my plans for the future, the remaining three weeks here and during the winter break when I will be back in the USA. I already know there is a show about Pistoletto in the Philadelphia Museum of Art which I can’t miss. It’s curated by the new director of the MAXXI so there should be some good pieces there. I need to spend this entire week catching up on work from Thanksgiving work, so I’ll try to place some more readings and summaries where I can fit them. I would also like to conduct an interview at some time before the semester ends, either with a gallerist at L’Attico or someone who was involved in the AP scene, but it might be difficult to schedule with finals coming up. I also need to conquer my own library for this course and I think I will make that the archive of L’Attico since they definitely have lots of things which I must read. I’ll try to plan that for either this weekend or next week since we have Wednesday off of school. I’m so stressed with all the papers I need to write now and the short time until winter break I hope I don’t get sick from it all!!!!!!

Dear Research Diary,

I am not going to be able to write for the next week because I am going on vacation. I will be spending some time in Murcia to see Manifesta 8 so it is very useful time. I will not have a computer or internet access. I think I lost some entries, they are not here, they disappeared, I don’t know what is happening. Unfortunately I will not be in class today because I thought my plane left later than it does. See you next week.

Dear Research Diary.

I spent the whole morning yesterday at Palazzo Venezia reading a bunch of books about Arte Povera. I read the book Forme per il David that professor Dohna recommended for me, but I didn’t really understand why she asked me to read it. It just talks a lot about Michelangelo but not a lot about any of the Arte Povera artists. Anyway. I wrote the essay about how the theories behind Arte Povera were incarnated and how it came to be, I am pretty unsure about it because I had to make up a lot of it off the top of my head. I still have a lot of work to do and every time I meet with professors I just have more and more work and it never ends. I’m scared about these next couple of weeks because I need to dedicate them to classes and finals, I will have about a million papers to write and I will not be able to keep up with these thesis papers at the rate that I am going now.

Dear Research Diary,

Today we had an inspiring lecture from Professor Smyth. She spoke about her research in Norther Italian Renaissance art, particularly that of Coreggio and Pordenone. Her research has involved quite a bit of difficulty, since most of the period writings are in Latin or Italian dialect. Also, Pordenone’s frescoes have disappeared since they were frescoes in the humid Venetian lagoon. Hse used the same tools of reconstruction for this project however as she did in Coreggio’s Parma Cathedral when she mapped out who would have seen which parts of the apse, therefore understanding fully what the patrons meant to achieve.

This is probably a good lecture to remember as a consolation since I wont have to battle with nearly illegible Latin. 

Dear Research Diary,

I am having trouble completing Dohna’s assignment. I don’t feel like I have any sources and so it is difficult for me to write a lot based on mere opinion. I should have done it by now but I feel that I really need to go to Palazzo Venezia and read the book she recommended. Will definitely do that on Friday. I’ll get there early and bring my laptop and devote that to answering that and Pr. Gianni’s new questions. Those are basically to pick one or two works by each artist and then compare them to try to help answering why it is considered a movement. That’s pretty easy, but I still need to tell her about my new idea to focus just on Rome. 

Dear Research Diary,

I had a great day. I met with Ilaria Gianni and we discussed the paper I wrote for her and she said it was great. Then we talked a little about the fact that Celant, unlike Tzara, Breton, or Marinetti who were artists themselves and drafted manifestoes for the avant-gardes, Celant was an outsider. This probably contributes a great deal to its difference in regards to the other movements of the 20^th century as well as of course, it’s 60’s time frame after the economic boom and the age of isolation.

Later I met with Professor Capoferri. We talked about Pasolini and how if I think something is Pasoliniano but they refuse to acknowledge his influence, it probably was because everyone hated him for being gay and were embarrassed about him until the 80’s, 5 years after his death! We talked about his participation in the warehouse in Turin when all the artists decided to leave after inviting him to talk. I also thought of a new idea, in order to compress my thesis as well as having a better question what if I focus just on the Roman scene! This would just be Pascali, Kounellis, and Boetti but I would be able to see the difference in their practice when compared to the Northern artists who didn’t have the influences of Twombly or Sonnabend.

Later I went to the galleria Federica Schiavo where I got an internship. Cool!

Then, I read the first chapter of Guy Debord’s Society of Spectacle and my mind was blown! This is almost as cool as when I read McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage. Anyway, if every day was like this I would be really cool.

Oh hey guys

Dear Research Diary,

Uff, I couldn’t seem to write for the past couple days because I didn’t have my computer handy. I couldn’t go to Palazzo Venezia on Friday so I feel like I am a bit behind where I planned out to be. I e-mailed the three pages I wrote on 1960’s Italy to my professors and got feedback from Professor Dohna who says I can use it as a sort of introduction only if I work on it a lot more (of course) but including a greater amount of comparison with coexisting movements. I only really included preceding movements so it’s true that this would give it a more full syntax of what is happening elsewhere in the world.

Recently I have been working on other things like setting up my internship for next semester, I had to get my codice fiscale and I got on interview at Galleria Federica Schiavo on Tuesday. And now I really need to get on top of my next summary. 

Dear Research Diary,

I went to Piazza Venezia on Monday and read Celant’s Arte Povera. Yesterday Professor Dohna came to present her research to the class. It was very intriguing. She works mostly on the theoretical aspects of Art History, methods of analysis and communication. She applies modern theory to Renaissance works, because it is important for a good theory to be universal and not only fit into a certain time period. Her theory was that colors have an intrinsic significance which she dubs “iconosophy” in contrast to iconography which can be figured out by reading period texts to see what certain signs mean to a Medieval or Renaissance observer. Iconosophy on the other hand cannot be put into words because it is not a verbal intellectual communication, but a sensual impact. She contrasted Albrecht Durer’s Allegory of Death and Mark Rothko’s Houston Chapel, both works dealing with the subject of death. It’s a good comparison because Durer’s woodblock print is black and white but is extremely fine in detail. Therefore people may find it easier to describe due to the fact that it contains some sort of Imitatio. Rothko on the other hand is pure color and gradations, but it is able to make viewers go through death in order to reach joy. Much like a Medieval icon of the Cruxifixion which would make viewers feel suffering and pain for Christ only to arrive at the conclusion of joy because he was their salvation, the promise of eternal joy.

I think the most important part of this to come away with is that theory is crucial but it doesn’t have to be simply memorized and learned but really applied, and not necessarily to that which it is about.

I also wrote the assignment Professor Gianni gave to me, some pages about the socio-political situation which Arte Povera finds itself in. With some artistic background in which I included Lucio Fontana, the Situationists, and the ICA and Pop Art. 

Dear Research Diary,

I spent all day yesterday at the Frohring library doing various projects. I started working on the assignment that Professor Gianni gave me which is to outline the main historical events taking place in the late 60’s in Italy. I got a couple of very useful sources, I found an Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture in the Reference section which would be great to just have around. I wrote a bit on Situationism, born out of French Lettrism and CoBrA, which was a highly politicized art. They formed some experimental research studios in northern Italy and this is essentially where Gruppo 63 came from, which was so in contact with the AP artists.

Dear Research Diary,

Yesterday I worked all day so I didn’t do much related to my thesis. I found Marshall McLuhan’s book The Medium is the Massage and read that in about half an hour, it was really beautiful. He has been mentioned many times as one of AP’s influences from a philosophical/semiotic point. He works mainly with media theory and how technology influences the workings of the human mind. His hypothesis is that we attempt to use today’s technology to fill the role of yesterday’s technology or vice versa. So there is a hesitance to plunge into the future. One part I found particularly interesting was one of the pages on children and education, which said that children are living in two worlds, one is the educational world still kept in 19^th century rigidity of factory effectiveness and censorship, and the other is the “adult world” of television in which children can receive the same information at the same moment as their parents. Neither of these worlds encourage a child to grow up.

This might seem a little bit off topic originally, but it is absolutely not. McLuhan was a huge name in the late 60’s and it’s no coincidence that this title and his other main work Understanding Media were published just before 67’ and probably has a lot to do with the presentation of performance that was made in private.

Dear Research Diary,

Yesterday I finally got my library card to BiASA! I had used the library (Bibliioteca di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte) already for two papers. My first paper on Arte Povera, and my honors paper for Venetian Art. It was nice to go again though because they changed the whole system. When I had been there we still had to sign in with an ID every time and get our paper day pass that we had to return at the end of the day with all the check marks that we had returned our books. After visiting the library I stayed a little bit extra to find some nice books. I had already found Celant’s Arte Povera and some other basic texts, but this time I got out Arte Povera in collezione which has four essential essays I need to read or re-read. So it’s very useful to know I can just go in there now, and it’s right there on the open shelves.

I learned that Ammann doesn’t know what gravity is.

Later I went to the MAXXI with Alex and it was a wonderful visit. I hadn’t seen it yet but they have lots of amazing works and many many exemplars from AP. My favorite was probably the leather room by Giuseppe Pennone. Everything was very organic and strange. I wish I didn’t constantly have a cold so I could have smelled the leather and sap. Also in here was a work by Zorio, of a an ancient column crushing the inner tube of a tire, Three Rivers by Pascali and Mario Merz’s igloo with the Fibonacci sequence. Also, I made it just in time to catch Achille Bonito Oliva’s show of De Dominicis. He was very much in dialogue with arte povera but not a part of it. It’s interesting to think of why Celant chose the artists he did when there was so much going on outside, de Dominicis and Calzolari etc…

Anyway MAXXI was so big that I got “museum feet” for the first time in so long.

Dear Research Diary,

Quite some things have happened since my last entry, it has been a wonderful day and a half.

First was my meeting with Yvonne Dohna. She was enthusiastic about my project, she seems to really admire Kounellis. She told she doesn’t want to get relegated to the type of second reader that simply reads it at the end, she wants to be equally involved as the first reader. I think this will be good because each one of my readers has a very specific perspective, so having two critiques and comments on each chapter will probably help balance them so that the work remains “mine” in a sense. She thought the idea of tracking Celant’s manifestoes seems like it has already been done, so I need to find some important point to make. She left me with the question “what novita was created with the movement.” This is good because I don’t see much of one, I see it more as a continuity.

Secondly, I read the article about the lecture series at MACBA and I wish I had attended this one. Celant apparently presented two of his important shows, one from 1967 and the other from the Venice Biennial 1976. This was part of a series about the history of exhibitions. The groundbreaking of these exhibitions was the non-materiality and the associations he drew between the artists represented. Actually I didn’t really get the point of it other than appreciating the informative part of it, there was no analysis and nothing that new.

Also, I spoke with Federica Capoferri who teaches Italian Cinema. I had asked to speak specifically with her about Pier Paolo Pasolini and his influence on the movement, since it was he who named the “social responsibility of art.” I think I’m going to write my paper for her class on his films of the 1960’s. The first thing she mentioned was Uccellacci e Uccellini DUH! MY FAVORITE FILM. THE FRANCISCANS! How could I be so stupid? OF COURSE. So that was groundbreaking, she also gave me some articles about Pasolini particularly speaking about Arte Povera so those will be helpful.

Today in class we went over the internet tools and I can’t wait to start using Zotero. 

Dear Research Diary,

Yesterday I had a meeting with Ilaria Gianni. We talked about where I am right now with my research and things I should do at this point. I told her I read Notes on Guerrilla War in Conjunction with Towards a Poor Theatre and we discussed the differences, she told me to write a short paper about the socio-political ambiance of Italy at the end of the 60’s. I’ve already done this a thousand times so I’ll just take it from my head now. I was also speaking to her about the apparent differences eye-to-eye between Celant and the artists as he continued writing manifestoes and how I could possibly do something along the lines of interviewing the artists and trying to see how they felt about the situation. Because my hypothesis right now is that Notes for a Guerrilla war was kind of a death sentence in and of itself. It forced Celant to keep writing more manifestoes and tying the group together so that they couldn’t diverge on their own exploratory paths. No one can stand this sort of thing so naturally it broke apart. With the added pressures of Italian terrorism and seeing that their anti-market works were regardless, being absorbed easily into the market. Plus a figure like Pistoletto who was already a name couldn’t tag behind Celant for very long. 

Dear Research Diary,

Tomorrow I will meet with Ilaria Gianni to discuss the topic. I have also e-mailed professor Capoferri and professor Dohna who I will meet with in the next week or so. Read Guerrilla Warfare and concluded that Celant is only missing the spiritual roots, which he must have been perfectly aware of but used to his own political aims. As art had entered a new “political responsibility.” I think the artists themselves draw more heavily upon the spiritual basis of Grotowski but it’s not explicit in this first manifesto. 

Dear Research Diary,

We didn’t have class all week. I found some nice sources on the internet. Firstly, on Flash Art there was Celant’s Notes for a Guerilla War. I still need to read it. There was also the press release for a show based on it at MACBA last year, so fortunately I speak Catalan since I couldn’t find the English version. I’m really going to try to find the “mistakes” that Christov-Bakargiev found in Celant’s interpretation of Grotowski. 

Dear Research Diary,

I have finished reading Towards a Poor Theatre and written the summary for it. I think I want to compare this next to Celant’s Notes for a Guerilla Warfare so I’ll try to see if I can find this online anywhere, or maybe at the BNC! I was also thinking about exploring more in depth the changes and continuities in Celant’s manifestoes. He seems sometimes to be at odds with the artists. At the end I think part of the reason they break away is because they don’t want to be chained to Celant’s thought and essays. Plus all the artists went on to move to the states or just abroad, and “selling out” signed to huge galleries and being paid for their temporal works. I don’t think they felt the way that Celant did in a Szeeman-esque shamanism of the artist. Or even if they initially did, we all know that Manzoni and Pistoletto at least were already big in the art world before being associated with AP. Plus this is over 10 years after the Economic Miracle and there is little that can be done through art to change the world. Once AP splintered apart everyone went on to create material works. 

I’ve been taking notes on Grotowsky’s Towards a Poor Theatre. I can see where Celant drew the inspiration for his own Arte Povera manifesto. There is a lot of spiritual language here, in his theatrical laboratory in Poland, Grotowsky intended to search for the inner innate actor. To achieve this a method was developed of skills to (forget the id?) attain pure acting. Just like the materials of AP. Also a bit Beuys-y. He tries to erase the notion of separation between actor and audience, by having no stage, and incorporating the audience into the architecture. Man – Art relationship was a big concern in AP as well………………….. ~~~~~ 

Dear Research Diary,

Today in class Ilaira Gianni came to speak about her research experience and give us advice on ours. It all seemed very interesting, exploring Bauhaus through theatre, and nostalgia in contemporary art. I have already spoken to her about my project and she has given me some useful information.

I was a little bit disturbed in class because conversation always draws towards the difficulties of writing about contemporary art. Because writing about your own time is more theoretically risky than writing about past eras. I don’t understand why this has come up so many times. I did not choose my topic at random because I thought that writing about contemporary art would be “cool,” in fact Arte Povera is not even that contemporary, it’s 40 years ago not 2.

I picked the topic because I truly believe that I am best prepared and most interested in this topic. In class we have told everyone about the progress in our research but nobody has ever really asked why we chose them. I think if you take into account that I am an Art History major, a Philosphy minor, and an Italian Studies minor, it makes perfect sense to do this topic. I would feel completely unprepared to do a Renaissance, Medieval, or Ancient topic considering I have taken two renaissance classes, no medieval, and one on Ancient Greek art. On the other hand, I have taken Contemporary, Curating, Modern, Methods, and not to mention Modern Italian History, Italian Politics, Italian Cinema, Modern Philosophy. I have been writing reviews of contemporary art shows in Rome for a year and a half. Just because one person said JCU students aren’t qualified to write contemporary  theses, all that means is that they made a generalization about our art histories and made a judgment but didn’t bother to take into account our individual interests and fortes. It might seem hard to believe that a 20 year old student knows a lot about modern and contemporary philosophy, but I love it and I read it for fun, I know absolutely nothing about the bible.

I was very disturbed by this. But I understand why people would be concerned.

Dear Research Diary,

I have been very busy studying for midterms and I haven’t had the chance to write or do much research. I can’t think about my project right now because I need to be thinking about other things for my tests and presentations. 

Dear Research Diary,

I finished reading Christov’s Summary, and overall it has provided a lot of information and opened paths for further research. Now there are chapters dedicated to each individual artist and particular pieces and shows. Most important are the connections between the four cities of Turin, Rome, Genoa, and Milan and how all of the artists found each other working on similar themes.

Overall it seems kind of frantic, unorganized, but it makes as much sense as anything in Italy. It seems that the terrorism of the 1970’s killed off the movement in a way, since the artists started to doubt their validity of art commenting politically. I need to read the texts by Celant. 

Dear Research Diary,

yesterday I took intensive notes for 10 more pages of Christov-Bakargiev’s book. It started to speak more specifically of events held in Genoa, Rome, and Turin. Kounellis and Pascali are the two Roman artists while Celant and Prini come from Genoa an most of the others including Pistoletto, Merz and Melissa Merz, Anselmo, Boetti, etc.. come from Turin. The Economic Miracle, Southern Migration, Industrial expansion of Turin, the FIAT factory are important drives for a changing city of rapidly changing values.

Learned that Rome was very important in the international art world during the 50’s, watched La Dolce Vita which shows this whole ambiance which arose with the Economic Miralce and Roma Capitale. I’m thinking I’ll summarize a chapter out of Eco’s book rather than the rest of Christov’s summary. I need a change of pace and that one is funny and intellectually charged. I think there’s a Fluxus show at Circolo degli Artisti on Tuesday. I’ll see what that’s all about.

Dear research Diary,

I got an e-mail from my thesis advisor saying that I should contact the curators at Galleria L’Attico to ask if I can go through the Archives and conduct some interviews. I’m really feeling uneasy about this because I want to have a clear direction before I start speaking to people who lived it. Galleria L’Attico is where Kounellis held his 12 Cavalli Vivi in 1969. I’m sure the archive will be very helpful, and I already replied suggesting more time and speaking to her about a distinct topic before doing this.

I’ve read more of Eco’s Misreadings and it is rather political but always in a sardonic manner. He approaches Italian society as if he were an anthropologist from the future and is able to expose very questionable matters in a funny way. Sexual Repression in the Po Valley seems particularly useful as the 50’s and 60’s in Italy were seeing great social changes in family, religion, etc…

Dear Research Diary, (Tuesday October 12)

Today I presented in class on the first half of Christov-Bakargiev’s first chapter. I will continue this for next week but I feel as though the more I read the more I notice that I have already read the information. It seems almost pointless apart from the few things I have not come across which then stick out like sore thumbs. I suppose this is how it goes when you read the bibliography on your topic. I am getting a lot of useful information from this chapter but it takes the tediousness of re-reading the basic information and scouring for something new.

Other than this I have been reading Umberto Eco’s Misreadings and they are fun and enlightening. So far I have read the first two chapters which poke fun at intellectualism. Granita the first short story in the series is a sploof of Nobokov’s Lolita in which “Umberto Umberto” is a teenage boy who has a fetish for octogenarians; he adores their “volcanic wrinkles” and fragile bones. I mention this because even though it’s a fun reading, the book mentioned that Arte Povera did have an anti-intellectual current, not against intelligence obviously but against the pretentious attitudes of the art and literary world. This ironic stance to the “intellectual class” as well as the folkloric inclusion and regionalism shares a lot with the general public agenda at the moment. As mentioned, Pasolini’s obsession with the Borgate, regional dialects, and the life of poor people. Also Gramsci’s notion of Italian communism, how each nationality needed to construct its own appropriate form of Marxism, and of course his great despise of the Italian intellectuals who allied themselves with the bourgeoisie.

Dear Research Diary,

Today I was very busy with schoolwork and spent all day in the library reading and writing for these midterms. But I was able to also dedicate some time to reading more of the Survey from Christov’s book. It went into the different movements which had happened directly before AP and influenced it. Spazialismo (Lucio Fontana) Cobra (Asger Jorn) and Yves Klein in particular as well as the Fluxus happenings and Gutai and John Cage. There was also some historical contextualization as she went into the student movements of 68’ for the first time, it’s hardly mentioned in Lista, but of course it is very significant that the movement started at around the same time as all of this revolutionary action, anti-Vietnam war, drug era, etc… Very useful was her explication of the important writers of that time period, among the names are Barthes, Adorno, Lacan, Chomsky. Also important is the heightened attention to theatre as art became more theatrical through the ideas of performance art and the action painting of Pollock. This source is proving to be a very rich one and I need to continue through this, it’s really dense and big, but here I go. 

Dear Research Diary,

Yesterday was a very fun and interesting day. Achille Bonito Oliva curated a show called Invito all’Opera #7 at Galleria Ponte dell Contemporanea as part of the Roma Art 2 Nights. I went to see how his show was since he was such a crucial point in the early development of the Roman scene in AP. Even though now he is an old man and the exhibition was very normal in presentation, there were elements of little pranks in the way he chose to organize everything and his selection of works. I also went to the library today and found Umberto Eco’s Misreadings in the collection, so hopefully I will be able to take a look at some of these stories. It’s a little bit frustrating to be finding all of these things that I should most definitely read, but having no time to do so! Midterms are coming up and I am trying to tread my way through the workload, but hopefully I can dedicate more time to reading these things once that is over after next week. 

Dear Research Diary,

Today was pleasantly productive. I received Jerzy Grotowski’s Towards a Poor Theater in the mail and I am looking forward to starting to read some of the important chapters such as his manifesto for the poor theater. I also decided it would be a good idea to start reading Christov-Bakargiev’s book since it is the most comprehensive work published on AP. So far I have read the preface and a bit of the survey, it’s pretty long and dense but I can finish it easily by Tuesday. So far Some interesting points have been the definition of the 13 AP artists which are neatly listed in parentheses, and the addition of influential texts apart from Towards a Poor Theater Christov includes Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ideal agrarian society and Umberto Eco’s Semiology. Eco is probably particularly connected to Kounellis who did his Alfabeto series before joining AP. Tomorrow I can try to see if the library at school has any of these texts, or if I can find them elsewhere.

Kounellisssssssss

Dear Research Diary,

Today I didn’t do much related to my thesis =(

I looked to see if there were any books about Arte Povera in the Norwegian Institute and there weren’t any!! But I did find Germano Celant’s very useful book called Arte Povera while doing a basic search on the URBS catalog at the Austrian Institute. I couldn’t even find any books on Contemporary Art, so I had to content myself with a book by Mieke Bal and another on portraiture. Everything is useful, Omnia Disce. I ordered a play by Jerzy Grotowski but I think I will never get it because Amazon sent me some strange e-mail but I didn’t read it, so I hope the package was just delayed by the slow Italian postage system.

I still need to choose an article to read and carefully summarize for next Tuesday! What will it be?? I should look at Giovanni Lista’s book and find out with piece by Eco was particularly influential to the movement, or just look if he wrote on the movement himself! 

Today I finished reading Bolker’s 1^st chapter of Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day it shows the importance of writing for developing the thesis. Embarking on a research project takes determination and can end up being a stressful task. It is important to analyze texts critically as you read them and reflect on your own thought critically in order to find loop holes, counter arguments, and inconsistencies. Trying to write a little bit every day on the topic also helps to keep the brain focused and fresh regarding the topic at hand. Writing a research journal may also motivate me to do a little bit of something every day to have something to write about at night.

So far I have read many introductory texts to the movement, but I feel as though I should move deeper into primary sources and theoretical texts. The movement itself is obviously too broad of a topic and I am not very interested in writing in any artist in particular, but I was thinking it would be interesting to assess the roles of the two most important curators, or rather theoretical formers, of the movement; Germano Celant and Achille Bonito Oliva. First I am going to read more about the movement in general closing in on it, and I’ll try to see if this idea can be plausible to write extensively on. In Giovanni Lista’s book I took note of the influences of Umberto Eco and Jerzy Grotowski, so I’ll try to get my hands on the works in connection and read them.