Pier Paolo Pasolini for Art History and Practice - by Ara Merjian (Paperback)

About the Book

Pier Paolo Pasolini's influential cinematic and literary works attest to a crucial early formation: his intermittent practice as a painter, critic, and historian of art. Spanning the fifth-century BCE to the early twenty-first century, this volume's wide-ranging chapters reflect the breadth of Pasolini's aesthetic concerns, from Greek vase painting to the painting of Andy Warhol.

Book Synopsis

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) remains best known for his influential cinematic and literary works. These attest in turn to a crucial early formation: Pasolini's intermittent practice as a painter, critic, and historian of art. Spanning the fifth-century BCE to the early twenty-first century, this volume's chapters reflect the breadth of Pasolini's aesthetic commitments and predilections, from Greek Attic vase painting to the to the spread of Caravaggism; from folkloric ethnography to the painting of Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Alongside essays examining his influence on twentieth- and twenty-first century aesthetics, artists of different nationality, gender, and generation address Pasolini's continued consequence for their own work. The very notion of a politically engaged artistic practice owes a debt to Pasolini's oeuvre - one he called "extravagantly interdisciplinary," and which finds incisive reflection in the media, methods, and subjects addressed in these pages.

From the Back Cover

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) remains best known for his influential cinematic and literary works. These works, in turn, reveal the formative influence of Pasolini's intermittent practice as a painter, critic, and historian of art. His university studies under Roberto Longhi - a key contributor to art history as an academic discipline - decisively shaped Pasolini's cinematic and poetic corpus. Pasolini's self-declared 'figurative epiphany' continues to dynamise aesthetics, politics, and their urgent intersection.

Spanning the fifth-century BCE to the early twenty-first century, this volume's chapters reflect the breadth and depth of Pasolini's aesthetic and theoretical predilections: from Greek Attic vase painting to the Lombard cinquecento and the spread of Caravaggism; from stylistic questions of the Spanish and Italian Baroque to neoclassical sculpture; from post-war Communist cultural policy and folkloric ethnography to the painting of Pablo Picasso, Giorgio Morandi, Andy Warhol.

Alongside essays examining Pasolini's influence on twentieth- and twenty-first century aesthetics, artists of different nationality, gender, and generation address Pasolini's consequence for their own work today. The very notion of a politically engaged artistic practice owes a debt to Pasolini's interdisciplinary body of work, which finds reflection in the wide-ranging media, methods, and subjects addressed in these pages.

About the Author

Ara H. Merjian is Professor of Italian Studies at New York University.