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SUMMARY:A Collective of One: Umberto Boccioni’s I/We and Photography before Futurism
DESCRIPTION:Sometime between 1905 and 1907\, the artist Umberto Boccioni stepped into a photographic cabinet to sit for a “multigraph”: a fivefold (self-)portrait created with the aid of an unseen mirror.  Appealing to the general public as the twentieth century progressed\, the format would also become a visual calling-card for several avant-gardists.  Yet Boccioni’s multigraph stands at odds with his subsequent artistic trajectory as the chief theorist of Italian Futurism; he would in fact eventually crusade against the inclusion of photography in the movement’s ever-expanding repertoire of media. \n  \nTo what extent may we read back into this image the questions that would preoccupy Boccioni and his peers in painting\, sculpture\, and other formats after 1910?  For\, the image anticipates various paradoxes central to Futurism’s theoretical enterprise: externalized multiplicity and singular insight; an air of scientism and its unlikely proximity to the occult; the cold objectification of the self and an investment in visionary subjectivity.   Taking Boccioni’s image as a touchstone\, this talk examines Futurism’s fraught attitudes toward positivism and its perceived opposites. \n  \nAra H. Merjian is Professor of Italian Studies at New York University\, where he is Director of Graduate Studies and an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts\, the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies\, and Comparative Literature.  He is the author and editor of several books\, including Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche\, Paris Modernism (Yale University Press\, 2014; MIT Press 2027)\, Against the Avant-Garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini\, Contemporary Art and Neocapitalism (University of Chicago Press\, 2020)\, and Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting (Verso\, 2023).  He has just published two new volumes\, Fragments of Totality: Futurism\, Fascism\, and the Sculptural Avant-Garde (Yale University Press) and Futurism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press)\, and is finishing a volume due out in the fall: Beat\, Black\, Queer: Pasolini’s ‘Other America’\, to be published with Verso.  Before arriving at NYU\, he taught at Harvard\, Stanford\, and the San Quentin State Penitentiary College Education Program.
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/a-collective-of-one-umberto-boccionis-i-we-and-photography-before-futurism/
LOCATION:Louis A. Simpson International Building – A71
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240424T163000
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DTSTAMP:20260526T074403
CREATED:20240206T190747Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240415T193147Z
UID:10000147-1713976200-1713981600@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Dangerous Flight: Amerindian Featherwork\, Michelangelo\, and the Violence of Natural History
DESCRIPTION:In Michelangelo’s drawings for Tommaso de’ Cavalieri the motifs of wings and feathers have long been understood to serve metaphorical ends\, alluding simultaneously to Neoplatonic concepts of divine ascent and the dangerous allure of mortal desire.  In this paper\, I propose that this double-edged hermeneutic\, deeply informed by Dantean and Ovidian poetics of flight\, could have also structured the early modern viewing and interpretation of Amerindian featherwork.  Both types of objects—the drawings (and their many copies in a wide range of media) and featherwork from the Americas—were collected and circulated among the same elite circles of patrons.  Cavalieri himself possessed featherwork admired by the great Bolognese naturalist\, Ulisse Aldrovandi.  Characterized by brilliant colours and scintillating surfaces\, these imported objects enacted an almost otherworldly material transmutation that was particularly well-suited to those that portrayed Christian images.  Yet the peril of desire and physicality of violence aestheticized in Michelangelo’s works is made manifest in the very fabrication of these objects.  Crafted from the feathers of hummingbirds\, their manufacture came about from destruction\, just as the burgeoning pursuit of natural history was predicated upon similar processes of both literal and epistemological dismemberment. \n  \nJessica Maratsos is currently Assistant Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Italian Studies at Cambridge University.  Before taking up the post in Cambridge\, she taught at a variety of institutions\, including the American University of Paris\, Columbia University\, and Harvard University.  She has published on early modern art\, religion\, and literature in numerous edited volumes and journals\, including the Sixteenth Century Journal\, Art History\, and The Art Bulletin.  Her first monograph\, Pontormo and the Art of Devotion in Renaissance Italy\, was published in 2021 with Cambridge University Press.
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/dangerous-flight-amerindian-featherwork-michelangelo-and-the-violence-of-natural-history/
LOCATION:Louis A. Simpson International Building – A71
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SUMMARY:What is the Value of Literature in the Internet Age? Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium as a Guide to Meaningful Digital Communication
DESCRIPTION:In his Six Memos for the Next Millennium\, Italo Calvino offers a critical synthesis of his work\, a rich appraisal of the Western literary tradition\, and a forward-looking vision of the value of literature in the 21st century. In this presentation\, Dr. Luca Cottini investigates Calvino’s Lezioni americane as a prophetic description of the internet age\, and a complex reflection on literature as the ultimate value creator in digital communication. \nCalvino’s concepts anticipate the key features of social media (e.g.\, rapidity and multiplicity)\, visual branding (e.g.\, lightness and visibility)\, and content marketing (e.g.\, exactness and consistency). Calvino’s metaphors (e.g.\, the cloud\, the net\, and the chase) outline the core epistemology of the internet and a new ethics of complexity\, where literature and  storytelling act as creators and multipliers of meaning. Lastly\, Calvino’s idea of literature as an “open encyclopedia\,” and of writing as a dynamic vector connecting invisible points prefigure the polyhedral nature of digital communication and knowledge sharing. \nIn light of these considerations\, the reading of Calvino’s Lezioni aspires to provide a novel perspective on digital communication\, a diverse interdisciplinary approach to Italian Studies\, and a renewed reflection on the status of literature in contemporary academia. \n  \nLuca Cottini is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Villanova University\, and the creator of Italian Innovators\, a YouTube channel exploring Italy’s approach to innovation and entrepreneurship through profiles\, interviews\, and lessons (on fashion\, food\, technology\, sports\, music\, and engineering). \nTrained in Italy (University of Milan\, BA) and the United States (University of Notre Dame\, MA; Harvard University\, PhD)\, his research and courses touch upon Italian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries; the intersection of arts and business; and the cultural history of industry\, advertising\, and design in Italy. \nHis books include a monograph on 20th century writer Italo Calvino (I passaggi obbligati di Italo Calvino\, Longo 2017)\, an award-winning study on the origins of Italian design (The Art of Objects. The Birth of Italian Industrial Culture\, 1878-1928\, University of Toronto Press\, 2018)\, and a recent biography of chocolate storyteller and entrepreneur Michele Ferrero (Il fabbricante di cioccolato. Nel mondo di Michele Ferrero\, Piemme 2023). \nHis Italian Innovators project (YouTube\, Spotify\, LinkedIn\, and Instagram) bridges academic scholarship and storytelling\, creative and strategic thinking\, as well as Italian and American perspectives on the processes and values underlying meaningful innovation. The channel (bit.ly/italianinnovators) has become a virtual piazza for academics\, students\, designers\, and entrepreneurs across the world (more info at www.italianinnovators.com). His work has been featured in national Italian media (La Stampa\, Sole 24 ore\, Canale 5) and his expertise in content creation and digital communication made him a business mentor and a guest speaker at numerous academic and corporate venues.
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/what-is-the-value-of-literature-in-the-internet-age-calvinos-six-memos-for-the-next-millennium-as-a-guide-to-meaningful-digital-communication/
LOCATION:Louis A. Simpson International Building – A71
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