Tuesday 28 January 2020

NEW BOOK ONLINE

Lionello Venturi and The Taste of the Primitives: From Text to Context (1918–1931). The Concept of the Primitive as a Perspective for Analysis.
Turun yliopiston julkaisuja – Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, Ser. B, Humaniora, tom. 502. Turku 2020.
printed and electronic (UTUPub)


Antonella Perna employed the concept of the primitive in reading art history, the history of art history, and the history of art collecting in the 1920s. The thesis deals with the Italian art historian Lionello Venturi (1885-1961) and his connections to an international network of scholars, artists, antiquarians, and collectors during the 1920s. In particular, the research investigates Lionello Venturi and art collector and entrepreneur Riccardo Gualino’s (1879-1964) relationship with the Finnish-Swedish (suomalaisruotsalainen) art historian Osvald Sirén (1879-1966). Starting from the textual analysis of Venturi’s book ‘The Taste of the Primitives’ (1926), the research has contributed to highlight aspects related to the artistic and cultural debate in the context of the Fascist regime.




International networks

What did the Italian art historian, Lionello Venturi, have in common with a Finnish-Swedish scholar, Osvald Sirén, living thousands of kilometers apart in an age when communication and mobility were not as simple as today, during the 1920s? Much more than one could expect, as is shown by Antonella Perna’s doctoral thesis in art history. They did not only share a common aesthetic view and an interest towards Italian Early-Renaissance art, but they also belonged to the same international network of intellectuals committed to making art history an independent academic discipline. They exchanged books, published articles in the same journals, and shared expertise in the art market. Yet more surprisingly, they cooperated to include, justify, and brand Chinese artworks in an Italian private art collection – the Riccardo Gualino Collection. 


Method of research 

This connection, as other new insights into Venturi’s professional and personal life, were opened up thanks to the original approach based on the concept of the primitive as a perspective for analysis and supported by textual and extensive archival research. This perspective constitutes a common thread to an otherwise fragmentary intellectual biography and enhances a coherent interpretation of Venturi’s work during the years under examination. 


The meaning of the term primitive

Perna’s research indeed began questioning the meaning and the background of Venturi’s employment of the term primitive, from the traditional definition of the Italian art of the Pre-Renaissance to a conceptual use rooted in Formalist aesthetic theories. Primitivism meant to Venturi a discursive frame that allowed to explain and promote his collecting choices, together with the aesthetic theory behind them, and to participate in the cultural debate of the time dominated by the Fascist arts policy and modern classicist aesthetics. In practice, the discursive use of the primitivist frame had the function of a self-referential tool of dissent. 


Structure of the book

Perna’s research begins with a theoretical analysis focusing in particular on Venturi’s main text from the 1920s, the historiographical essay The Taste of the Primitives. It then goes on taking into account the influence of the art market and art collecting, in particular Venturi’s role as an advisor to the Italian entrepreneur Riccardo Gualino’s art collection, as important part of the art scholar’s profile. It concludes with considerations about the Italian art history and the Fascist arts policy of the 1920s.

#primitivism, historyofarthistory, arthistorians, artcollecting, Chineseart, ItalianStudies, Fascism, Formalism, connoisseurship, LionelloVenturi, RiccardoGualino, OsvaldSirén, BernardBerenson, discoursetheory, MichelFoucault, networking



Lionello Venturi (right) and Riccardo Gualino (center)

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