Autodidacts
The Ways of Art Are Infinite
Giacinto Di Pietrantonio In alphabetical order: Giovanni Anselmo, Stefano Arienti, Gianfranco Baruchello, Jacopo Benassi, Alighiero Boetti, Alberto Burri, Maurizio Cattelan, Giuseppe Chiari, Enzo Cucchi, Dadamaino, Nicola De Maria, Luciano Fabro, Flavio Favelli, Pinot Gallizio, Giorgio Griffa, Goldschmied & Chiari, Ketty La Rocca, Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, Luigi Ontani, Vettor Pisani, Cesare Pietroiusti, Luca Rossi, Salvo. […]
Art, Research, Education
A New Synergy
Valentino Catricalà, Alessio Tozzi When we talk about the education system, we have to get to grips with a very broad theme which allows us to take several possible paths, bringing together multiple discourses, theories and models. These paths have long been explored by scholars and critics. So, in this text our concern is not […]
Not for Qualifications, but for Passion’s Sake
The Academy of Fine Arts as a Passageway
«Knowing how to be and remain pupils is no small thing — it means almost already being a teacher»Claudio Magris For Jannis Kounellis, “There is no problem with young artists, because if one is a great artist, one is a great artist even at the age of twelve”. He continued “Youth is an extraordinary blessing, […]
Dreaming the Impossible Is the First Step to Achieving It
Doctorates in the Academies of Fine Arts, First Steps on a Pathway
Italian fine arts academies have doctorates. Italian fine arts academies do not have doctorates. Italian fine arts academies have doctorates. Italian fine arts academies do not have doctorates. Italian fine arts academies have doctorates. Italian fine arts academies do not have doctorates. I could go on writing the same words till I have filled the […]
Twenty Years of Visual Cultures and Curatorial Studies
A Perspective on the Formation of Professional Roles in the Art System
Over the past two decades, the art system has embraced, and indeed fostered, an increasingly pronounced bipolarity: that of the artist-curator. Despite the emergence of a greater focus on a horizontal process of artistic creation (as in the last edition of Documenta) and the realisation that multiple professionals participate in the chorus-like development of complex […]
Learning to Teach Visual Art
A Journey into the Horizon of a Complex System
Is making art something that can be taught? Many say no. There is proof aplenty of this among Italian artists, if we consider how many autodidacts there are in the visual arts sector even in this country alone: from Alberto Burri to Giuseppe Capogrossi and Cesare Pietroiusti, all of whom trained as medical doctors, to […]
Towards the Future
Some Reflections on the Role of University Education and Contemporary Art
For more than a year and a half, the Fondazione Quadriennale di Roma has been promoting the Inter-University Network project, which is designed to foster exchanges between the academic world and the contemporary art scene. The project considers professors, researchers and students as its privileged interlocutors, and it already has a diverse record of activities. […]
Studies on Colonialism and the Visual Arts
Notes for a Work in Progress
ForewordStudies on Italian colonialism are today one of the most active areas of reflection in contemporary research, with increased collaboration between the academic and institutional spheres and the visual arts. This especially has to do with artists connected to research-based practices, who have been working almost in parallel to scholars, repeatedly bringing together both the […]
If It Isn’t Radical, It Isn’t Pedagogy
On Didactic Models, and Their Failure
Browsing through the most important, and less orthodox, experiences and theories in the modern history of education in Europe, it soon becomes clear that the best versions of pedagogy have always stemmed from models that are alternative, if not outright antagonistic, to the ones administered by the social construct. Which is to say — as […]
On Education and Its Alternatives
A Wager on Polytechnics of the Arts
Jean-François Lyotard’s famous text, The Postmodern Condition, published in 1979 — famous as a manifesto of the new spirit of the times, even though it originated as a research paper commissioned by the Quebec government — hypothesised that knowledge was changing status, as western societies “enter what is known as the post-industrial age and cultures […]
