American artists in Rome : mid-century art and cultural exchange / Peter Benson Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benson Miller, Peter, author.

Series:

Visual Cultures and Italian Contexts.

Visual Cultures and Italian Contexts

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Artists.

Arts and society--History--Italy--20th century.

Arts and society.

Expatriate artists--History--Italy--20th century.

Expatriate artists.

Rome (Italy)--Intellectual life.

Rome (Italy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (367 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Distribution:

London : Bloomsbury Publishing (UK), 2025.

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2025.

System Details:

text file HTML

Summary:

Drawing on unpublished archival sources, this book reconstitutes the experiences of a wide range of American artists, critics, and writers working in Rome in a charged environment of "Cold War cosmopolitanism." After the Second World War, American artists flocked to Rome in record numbers, even as the United States shored up Italy as a bulwark against the spread of Communism. While the market for modern art in Rome was less vigorous as those in Paris and New York, numerous galleries, artist-run spaces, and other institutions acted as important catalysts, making Rome an international artistic hub. The city attracted now canonical figures Lee Bontecou, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Thek, and Cy Twombly, along with less well-known artists, such as Eugene Berman, Gene Charlton, Carlyle Brown, Peter Chinni, William Congdon, Claire Falkenstein, Marcia Hafif, John Heliker, James Leong, Beverly Pepper, and Laura Ziegler, among many others. Rather than focusing on institutions and diplomatic relationships, the book centres the experience of artists, and also addresses Rome's gay subculture and the role of female artists during the period, eschewing traditional narratives of the male "cultural ambassador." Through case-study based investigation, Peter Benson Miller explores the reciprocal relationships between American modernist artists and Italian artists in postwar Rome, and reveals how these artists perceived Rome as less constrained by the demands of a national school, and as an alternative to New York. This congenial creative atmosphere yielded "new pictorial forms" developed in tandem with or absorbed from like-minded Italian artists, engaging the city and its multiple layers of history, from antiquity to the profound trauma inflicted by the recent conflict. The book also establishes the entangled social networks, galleries, exhibitions, and institutions sustaining their work and providing entrée into local artistic circles. Focusing on a series of specific exchanges, this study contributes to our understanding American modernism in an international context.

Contents:

Cover

Halftitle page

Copyright page

Title page

Dedication

CONTENTS

PLATES

FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

1 Introduction

Cold War tensions

Splintered windshield

2 The Left Bank of the Tiber: Americans in Rome

Mixers

Un Americano a Roma

Italian Americans

3 The Great Collage: Eleanor Clark, Eugene Berman, and the Postwar Viaggio in Italia

Trompe-l'oeil

Americani a Roma

'La pittura in cellofan'

And so to Rome

Tombstone

4 Adventurers: The Rome-New York Art Foundation

Art Autre

La Pinacoteca circolante

L'Avventura moderna

Moments of Vision

A leap into the void

5 A New Pictorial Form

Battle scars

Strange textures

Décollage

Cy Twombly

Salvatore Meo and the Gruppo Origine

Bricoleurs

Getting sculpture off the floor

Spoleto

6 Eggheads: Carlyle Brown,Corrado Cagli, Pavel Tchelitchew, and mutations of Surrealism

Mentors

"Indefinite shapes"

Turbulent still lifes

Eggs

Archetypes

The Fantasts

Secret marriages

Il Professore

Eclipse

Eggheads

7 Conflicting loyalties: Philip Guston, Piero Dorazio, and abstraction between Rome and New York

Old Masters

The Tormentors

Mondrian

The abstract experience

Refusing to choose between alternatives

Piero Dorazio

Eliminating the tragic

8 Extremities: Paul Thek

Vitrines

Appendix American artists traveling or living in postwar Italy

NOTES

INDEX

Plates.

ISBN:

9781350446397

1350446394

9781350446373

1350446378

9781350446380

1350446386

OCLC:

1492915080