INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STUDIES
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Palazzo Corsini, Via della Lungara 10, 00165 Rome (RM)
10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.
The Conference “Il Possibile: Istruzioni per l’uso. Studi sull’opera di Gianfranco Baruchello”, promoted by Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, in collaboration with Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Sapienza University of Rome, and Fondazione Baruchello, and curated by Carla Subrizi, aims to review the work of Gianfranco Baruchello (Livorno, 1924 – Rome, 2023) in the Italian and international art-historical context from the post World War II period to his most recent works.
Through new research in the foundation’s archives and beyond, the Conference aims to restore the complexity of the artist’s research, bringing to light the main threads of Baruchello’s work and the specific moments from which new ideas and research directions took shape. The aim is to reconstruct and deepen these trajectories, expanding them in the art-historical context in which they developed, connecting the best known aspects of his production with those that have been less investigated.
From the years of Fascism in Italy, which he also experienced through his family and education, to the years after the Second World War (the first post-war period, however, arrives in his formation through his father’s experience) with the implications deriving from what constituted a strong objective for young people in their twenties at that time (reconstruction, starting over, etc.) and which for Baruchello also found a possibility in starting a chemical-pharmaceutical company in the outskirts of Rome. ) and that for Baruchello also found an opportunity, later rejected, in starting a chemical-pharmaceutical company on the outskirts of Rome; to his friendship with Marcel Duchamp and Roberto Sebastián Matta and other figures on the American scene in the early 1960s; to the years of the political movements of the 1960s, which Baruchello experienced personally, and to the experiences that characterise the research of an Italian artist after the Second World War with a dense series of relationships in France, above all, but also the United States: Baruchello’s is a long history of research, experimentation and production of ideas that has taken shape in his works of a multiform nature, sometimes precursory, original and often difficult to place within the traditional canons of art history.
Over the last fifteen years, several major retrospective exhibitions in Italy and abroad (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, 2011; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg and ZKM-Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, 2014; Triennale di Milano, Milan, 2014; Raven Row, London, 2017; MART, Rovereto, 2018; Villa Arson, Nice, 2018), drew attention to the artist’s approximately seventy years of research, highlighting the multifaceted character of Baruchello, an artist, writer and refined intellectual, who since the early 1960s, alongside painting (which he never abandoned) has used the camera (and later the video camera), photography, writing, performance, installation and, as he himself defined it, ‘activity’.
Inventor of fictitious societies (Artiflex, 1968), of painting techniques (multi-layer plexiglass painting, from the end of 1963), experimenter of actions between art and agriculture, Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. (1973-1981), maker of films from pre-existing materials (Verifica incerta, 1964; Tre Lettere a Raymond Roussel, 1969), the conference aims to retrace the fundamental aspects of his work, which in its continuous renewal has maintained consistency, albeit in diversity. In the 1980s and then the 1990s, he devoted new attention to the relationship with nature and ecology by creating Il Giardino (The Garden) and curating Il Bosco (The Wood): these projects, up to the recent Beatrix, continue to turn a poetic and political gaze on the relationship of the individual with the environment.
Assembling, gluing, assembling, (in writing, in painting – on canvas, cardboard, aluminium, plexiglass – in objects, in cinema) have been ways of ‘constructing one’s own language’. Archiving has been the way of producing inventories of ideas, placing transversality as the key to understanding the world.
His international relations, his relationships with artists of his generation, but also with poets, philosophers, writers (Eco, Calvino, Manganelli, Balestrini, Castellina, Vicinelli, Jouffroy, Lyotard, Lascault, etc.) make it possible to reconstruct a biography that spans the entire 20th century, up to the first two decades of the 21st. History, politics, science and philosophy, environment and nature have intertwined in works and interventions, projects and ideas.
In 1998, he decided to set up a Foundation for Contemporary Art with Carla Subrizi, whose main purpose is to safeguard and continue to promote research into his work. The cultural project of the Foundation, an institution that preserves the archives and major outdoor projects (Giardino, Bosco, Beatrix) as well as a conspicuous nucleus of works, continued after his death.
Baruchello published dozens of books and considered his Library (donated to the Foundation in 1998) a self-portrait of himself. The work on the Catalogue raisonné (planned publication: 2025-2026) has also made it possible over the last ten years to return to the history of his works and exhibitions, to the writings (documents, manuscripts, books) concerning his work, and to reconsider much of the critical literature, which has not ceased to emphasise the essential aspects of his work.
In conjunction with the Conference, at the end of the second day, the exhibition “Gianfranco Baruchello. Mondi Possibili,” at Villa Farnesina – Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Via della Lungara 230, Rome.
Scientific Committee: Roberto Antonelli, Lina Bolzoni, Piero Boitani, Carla Subrizi, Claudio Zambianchi, Alessandro Zuccari, curated by Carla Subrizi.
Program:
23 January 2025
Greetings 10 a.m. -10:20 a.m.
Roberto ANTONELLI (President of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei)
Tristan WEDDIGEN (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte)
Arianna PUNZI (Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Sapienza University of Rome)
10:20 Carla SUBRIZI (Sapienza University of Rome, President of Fondazione Baruchello, Rome): Introduction to the Conference.
SESSION 1
Primi alfabeti e Altre tracce.
Chair: Carla Subrizi
10:30 a.m.
Francesco Tedeschi
La mappa non è il territorio. Simultaneità e stratificazione nell’opera di Gianfranco Baruchello
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
10:50 a.m.
Valérie Da Costa
Demontage e montage: altre-narrazioni della storia (dell’arte)
Université de Paris 8
11:10 a.m.
Felice Cimatti
Un linguaggio senza semantica. Baruchello e Korzybski
Università della Calabria
Interval 11:30 a.m.- 12:00 a.m.
SESSION 2
La riduzione e lo spazio della pittura. “More news in a moment”
Chair: Francesco Tedeschi
12:00 p.m.
Stefano Chiodi
Strutture oniriche e paradossi. Tre lettere a Raymond Roussel
Università degli studi di RomaTre
12:20 p.m.
Elena Di Raddo
Il carattere fragile e provvisorio della pittura. Être in avec mentre
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
12:40 p.m.
Mattia Patti
Il bianco, l’incerto e la superficie della pittura
Università di Pisa
1:00 p.m.
Judith Revel
Il molto piccolo, il molto intenso, il molto disseminato. Elogio della miopia potente
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Interval 1:20 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
SESSION 3
Il contesto internazionale
Chair: Laura Iamurri
2:30 p.m.
Claudio Zambianchi
Baruchello e gli Stati Uniti. Le mostre personali e la ricezione americana
Sapienza Università di Roma
2:50 p.m.
Alessandro Del Puppo
Disegno A-Z. La mostra European Drawings del 1966 al Guggenheim Museum di New York
Università degli studi di Udine
3:10 p.m.
Raffaele Bedarida
Monumenti ai non eroi. Antifascismo e utopia nel secondo dopoguerra
Sapienza Università di Roma
3:30 p.m.
Roberta Minnucci
Baruchello e la Francia
Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte
Interval 3:50 p.m.- 4:10 p.m.
SESSION 4
Oggetti e installazioni: le espansioni dell’immagine
Chair: Valérie Da Costa
4:10 p.m.
Marie De Brugerolle
Dallo spazio della scatola a Il Coccodrillo. Azioni, performance e teatro-ambiente
Storica dell’arte, curatrice e autrice indipendente
4:30 p.m.
Lara Demori
Roma-Parigi-Lima: altre traiettorie nella ricerca di Baruchello dei primi anni Sessanta
Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte
4:50 p.m.
Giuseppe Di Natale
Rileggere Why Duchamp oggi.
Università degli Studi dell’Aquila
Discussion 5:10 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
24 January 2025
SESSION 5
Oltre le tendenze. Terre di nessuno
Chair: Sharon Hecker
10:00 a.m.
Philippe-Alain Michaud
A partire dal dolce (1979). Origine del “giudizio” di gusto
Centre Pompidou
10:20 a.m.
Giorgio Zanchetti
Baruchello e la Galleria Schwarz (1965-1975)
Università degli Studi di Milano Statale
10:40 a.m.
Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli
Certe idee: la retrospettiva del 2011 e le partecipazioni internazionali degli ultimi anni
Art historian, Ministero della Cultura
11:00 a.m.
Andrea Cortellessa
Sentito vivere: esercizi individuali anti potere
Università degli studi di RomaTre
Interval 11:00 a.m. – 11:20 a.m.
SESSION 6
Extra media, Intertestualità, Trans-estetica, Happening mentali
Chair: Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli
11:20 a.m.
Stefano Velotti
Jean François Lyotard. Da L’Altra Casa a La Pittura del segreto
Sapienza Università di Roma
11:40 a.m.
Chiara Portesine
Un «testo con immagini/ritagli»: le Avventure nell’Armadio di Plexiglass tra sogno romanzo
Scuola Normale di Pisa
12:00 p.m.
Laura Iamurri
Baruchello alla Biennale del 1976. Politica e attivismo negli anni Settanta
Università degli studi di RomaTre
12:20 p.m.
Maria Alicata
Happening e azioni. Dal Multipurpose object ad Artiflex
Sapienza Università di Roma
Interval 12:40 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
SESSION 7
“Sono interessato alle idee”. Processi di appropriazione del già fatto
Chair: Andrea Cortellessa
2:30 p.m.
Alessandro Zuccari
Cortocircuiti e incursioni nella storia dell’arte
Sapienza Università di Roma
2:50 p.m.
Tommaso Ottonieri
La Quindicesima Riga e il rapporto con i poeti della Neoavanguardia
Sapienza Università di Roma
3:10 p.m.
Enrico Camporesi
Verifica incerta. Demistificare il mezzo tecnico
Centre Pompidou
3:30 p.m.
Franco Baldasso
Autoritratto con numeri. Sulla conversazione enciclopedica tra Baruchello e Savinio
Bard College, New York
Interval 3:50 p.m. – 4:10 p.m.
SESSION 8
Pensiero-Giardino. Il Giardino, Il Bosco, Beatrix e la Psicoenciclopedia
Chair: Elena Di Raddo
4:10 p.m.
Silvia Bottinelli
Allevare animali all’ Agricola Cornelia S.p.A.: estetica, ecologia, ed economia
Tufts University
4:30 p.m.
Giorgio Bacci
Dall’Agricola Cornelia a Il Giardino. Per un’ecologia della mente
Università degli Studi di Firenze
4:50 p.m.
Lina Bolzoni
Psicoenciclopedia possibile: Baruchello e il fascino dell’arte della memoria.
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, New York University, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, British Academy.
5:10 p.m.
Sharon Hecker
Il futuro è un albero. Beatrix: storia di un progetto a venire
Art historian and curator
Discussion 5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Conclusions
Carla Subrizi
La Fondazione Baruchello. la Biblioteca, la ricerca
To attend the conference in person, online registration is required by filling out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScwjXGjikTJ7ZeKg3QbY2p52DfsAxYBYM8xSar-55V0PwRmfw/viewform
The proceedings can also be followed by the public via streaming here: https://www.lincei.it/it/dirette-streaming