Giuliano Sergio’s essay analyses the visionary coherence with which Piero Manzoni, one of the 20th century’s most famous artists, intuited the fundamental role that the mass-media played in defining artistic languages and the figure of the artist in the fifties. In the late 50s, the romantic icon of the artist-genius, represented by Jackson Pollock, was asserted through the photographic and cinematographic story of his gestures, suggesting a model of fusion between art and life that became a veritable critical interpretation of the work.
From the rejection of Action Painting, of the “useless gestures” of Pollock and his followers, Manzoni created his complex image, constructed in a diametrically opposite way. His “gesture” took the form of observing the unfolding of the work with secular irony: the unfolding of the line, the swelling of the body of air, the extension of the achrome surface. The actions that Manzoni performed for newsreels – Long Lines, Bodies of Air, Living Sculptures, Egg Sculptures – were filmed as cabaret scenes; the artist resorted to advertising photography to promote his artist’s shit. He created paradoxical reportages where he signed naked models and marked hard-boiled eggs with his own thumb print. These were images produced to be published in illustrated magazines or projected during the intervals at the cinema. Manzoni addressed the general public to sow doubt about the role of the artist and the function of art. At the dawn of consumerism, Manzoni’s genius shifted the attention from the “product” to the artist, giving a precise indication to the Italian avant-garde and initiating an important lesson with respect to the concept of behaviour and identity that would become one of the nodes of Arte Povera and Process Art.
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