Dada in Italia. Un'invasione mancata
Author(s)
Paoletti, Valeria
Date Issued
March 3, 2009
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
The thesis Dada in Italy. An unsuccessful invasion Arises from my interest in dadaism and in his performative aspects. It aims to investigate an important but understudied event of Italian artistic life between the wars: Italian Dada Season held in Rome in 1921.
The best source for information on dadaism in Italy remains Enrico Crispolti’s “Dada a Roma. Contributo alla partecipazione italiana al Dadaismo”and Giovanni Lista’s “Dada in Italia.” They have explored Italian contribution to international dadaism: my purpose is instead to analyze international contribution to Italian dadaism.
Internationalism is in fact an essential quality of Dadaism, but the “Dada invasion” - that title refers to - hasn’t been so successful in Italy like as in others countries and the word “international” is probably more appropriate to describe an unpublished number of a review, called Bleu, dedicated to the Italian Dada Season, than to the season itself. It is edited by Julius Evola, the foremost representative of Italian Dada. I found this number of Bleu, frequently mentioned by Crispolti and others, in Vanni Scheiwiller’s Archive at the University of Milano and some Evola’s manuscripts in a private archive in Orvieto. These materials allowed me to study Italian Dada Season and Evola’s thought in depth.
The three chapters of this thesis aren’t organized chronologically. In the first chapter my analysis will focus on one of Evola’s founded manuscripts, the “Calendario della grande stagione Dada romana” and it will demonstrate his value for reconstructing Italian Dada Season. It is a multy layered analysis which also involves the role of audience and the concept of work of art. This is the first, the largest, but also the last public Dada manifestation in Italy. My purpose is to investigate the reasons of the resistance showed by public, press, art critics and artists also to “Dada invasion”.
The second chapter will explore the Salon Dada held in Paris in 1921. Like Italian Dada Season it is crucial to understand how exhibition format and public manifestation is chosen like a tool and manipulated by dadaists in an unconventionally way to show works of art but also to elicit violent audience reactions. Like Italian Dada Season it precedes the demise of the movement in Paris. The second chapter will trace the history of the last Evola’s projects before living any artistic activity.
The third chapter will focus on Evola’s tought. It will survey some Evola’s manuscripts, discussions texts for conferences held during Italian Dada Season in which he talks about dadaism as an interior state and not only as an artistic movement. This is an important, but understudied aspect of International Dada. In order to appreciate his conception of Dada, I will explore relationship between his and Tzara’s thought.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Memoria e materia delle opere d'arte attraverso i processi di produzione, storicizzazione, conservazione, musealizzazione
Subjects
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