Art History Professor Katie Larson Kicks Off 4-Part Lecture Series at Magazzino Italian Art Museum

Notes on Making: Art, Labor, and Language in Postwar Rome
Katie Larson
March 19, 2022, 3:00-5:00 p.m.

At Magazzino Italian Art

The Magazzino's Museum kicks-off their four-part lecture series, Politics of Labor in Postwar Italian Art, with the curator of the series and Magazzino's Scholar-in-Residence, Katie Larson. Her talk, Notes on Making: Art, Labor, and Language in Postwar Rome, will discuss the distinctive postwar attitude confronted by artists working in Rome.

The series will consider how artists of the period challenged traditional methods of production and systems of value, framing their experimentation within the broader socio-political unrest of the period as protests against industrialization, consumerism, and class inequality swept across Italy.

The lecture will last approximately 45 minutes and be followed by a Q&A session.

Notes on Making: Art, Labor, and Language in Postwar Rome
Katie Larson, Magazzino's 2021-2022 Scholar-in-Residence, Assistant Professor of Art History at Baylor University
March 19, 2022, 3:00-5:00 p.m.

In the aftermath of World War II, amid the collapse of European civilization and the failure of post-WWI revolutionary ideals, Italian artists declared a tabula rasa. Promoting the idea of a “zero hour,” these modernists called for cultural rebirth and a reevaluation of their systems of value. In Rome, a group of avant-garde thinkers labored together to answer that call, adopting new linguistic and visual approaches to perceiving and understanding their postwar world.
Dr. Katie Larson’s talk will examine the role of art, labor, and language in the work of Emilio Villa, Alberto Burri, Giorgio Ascani (Nuvolo), Mimmo Rotella, and Jannis Kounellis. Villa—a poet and critic—serves as the linchpin for this research. Throughout his career, he collaborated with and promoted the art of this diverse group of individuals. He found within their work ideas that mirrored his own artistic philosophy: namely, that poetry and art should not simply reflect the world but instead catalyze new [phonetic and material] realities. Emphasizing the labor of creative production, Villa sought to contribute to Italy’s reconstruction by making and supporting art that emphasized the artist’s role in society as an active agent for change.