Politics and painting at the Venice Biennale, 1948-64 : Italy and the idea of Europe / Nancy Jachec.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jachec, Nancy.

Series:

Critical perspectives in art history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Council of Europe.

Biennale di Venezia--History--20th century.

Biennale di Venezia.

Art--Political aspects--Europe--History--20th century.

Art.

Art, European--20th century--Exhibitions--History.

Art, European.

Council of Europe--History.

European federation.

Nationalism and art--Europe--History--20th century.

Nationalism and art.

History.

Art--Political aspects.

Europe.

Genre:

Exhibition catalogs.

Physical Description:

x, 213 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press, [2007]

Summary:

Although cultural exchanges were named within the Council of Europe in the mid-1950s as being second only in importance to the military as a tool for ensuring a stable and integrated Western Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, European-led initiatives have generally been overlooked in the historiography of art of the immediate post-war period. Popularly remembered as the era of the United States' cultural 'triumph', American Abstract Expressionism in particular is commonly identified as the cultural 'weapon' by which that nation conquered Western European culture.

Using the Venice Biennale as a case study, this book challenges the idea that there was an American cultural conquest in the 1950s through the fine arts, arguing instead that Western Europe retained a strong sense of world cultural leadership in the immediate post-war years. An institutional history that combines political and diplomatic with art history, and is informed by extensive archival research, it argues that Italian political and cultural figures actively promoted the 'Idea of Europe' - the Council of Europe's cultural initiative of 1955 designed to promote the idea of a homogeneous post-war European culture - at the Biennale in the form of gesture painting as an international style, as the emblem of a culturally united Western Europe, and as the repository of universal humanist values for the international community.

Scholarly but accessible, this book will appeal to all those with an interest in international cultural relations during the Cold War.

Contents:

Introduction: the Idea of Europe 1

1 The abstraction-realism debate and its background, 1938-48 18

2 Communism, anti-communism and government intervention at the Venice Biennale, 1948-52 36

3 The Biennali of 1954 and 1956: the politics of realism 64

4 The 1958 Biennale: the collapse of the Ente and the rise of gesture painting as the 'European Idea' 86

5 The Biennali of 1960 and 1962: from European to global cultural policy 106

6 Gesture painting in communist Europe 130

7 Gesture painting in Africa, Asia and Latin America 155

8 Epilogue: the 1964 Biennale - the end of gesture painting 182.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780719068966

0719068967

OCLC:

148904921