American Artists in Postwar Rome - (Visual Cultures and Italian Contexts) by Peter Benson Miller (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Drawing on unpublished archival sources, this book reconstitutes the experiences of a wide range of American artists, critics, and writers working in Rome in following World War Two. It presents a case-study based investigation into the reciprocal relationship between American modernist artists and Italian artists, revealing how these artists perceived Rome as an alternative to New York, attracting the likes of canonical figures like Lee Bontecou, Philip Guston and Robert Rauschenberg, alongside less well-known artists, such as Barbara Chase-Riboud, William Congdon, and Claire Falkenstein, among many others. It also establishes the entangled social networks, galleries and institutions sustaining their work and providing entrâee into local artistic circles"--

Book Synopsis

Drawing on unpublished archival sources, this book reconstitutes the experiences of a wide range of American artists, critics, and writers working in Rome in a charged environment of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.

Review Quotes

"Through precise and deep documentary research, Miller draws attention to the many personal and cultural threads converging in postwar Rome. In these pages, the city emerges as a formative laboratory for a diverse community of American artists and their original works created in confrontation with their Italian peers." --Francesco Tedeschi, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Italy

"A deeply researched and richly textured account of the "heyday of the American artist in Rome", this engaging book shows us that it was significantly the community of gay artists and writers who most splendidly ignored the strictures of Cold War binarisms, both political and aesthetic." --Romy Golan, Professor, PhD Program in Art History, City University of New York, USA

"Deeply researched and brimming with insight, this book vividly reconstructs a largely forgotten moment in the history of 20th-century art, tracing the various networks of transatlantic artistic exchange that inspired some of the most influential artists of the postwar generation." --Robert Slifkin, Edith Kitzmiller Professor of the History of Fine Arts, New York University, USA

"This long overdue study rightfully restores Rome to its proper place in postwar art history. Challenging the myth of American art exceptionalism in the 1950s and '60s, it reminds us that its art world stretched well beyond New York." --Catherine Dossin, Associate Professor of Art History, Purdue University, USA

"An important contribution to the growing scholarship on Italy-US cultural exchanges. Miller's focus on Rome's gay subculture and women is especially refreshing in a field that has largely embraced a white, male, heterosexual 'cultural ambassador' type of rhetoric." --Raffaele Bedarida, Associate Professor of Art History, Cooper Union, USA

About the Author

Peter Benson Miller is an independent art historian and curator based in Rome, Italy. From 2013 to 2019 he was the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome. His exhibitions have featured the work of Yto Barrada, Paolo Gioli, Charles Ray, Paul Thek, and Cy Twombly. He is the editor of Philip Guston: Roma (2010), and Go Figure! New Perspectives on Guston (2015).