“Artists have always thought that their birth was meant to be pain ” (M.F. Left, n.3/2015)
This study aims to relate Massimo Fagioli’s theorization with the panorama of visual and performing arts and art criticism coeval with the publication of Death instinct and knowledge. Starting from the analysis of a series of events, critical writings and works staged, published and produced since 1970 and beyond, the research proposes a comparison between the philosophical and cultural orientations of post-1968 artistic thought and the “Theory of birth”.
The survey starts from two 1970s group exhibitions: Amore mio and Vitalità del negativo, both curated by Achille Bonito Oliva respectively in June at Montepulciano, and in December at Rome, which anticipate many of those themes and ideologies that will characterize the new decade, showing the the artists’ urge to place individuals at the center of art, moving research beyond the perceived reality and mere representation, to delve into the deepest areas of human experience and identity; on their hand, critics renounced the xclusive role of mediation and interpretation of artworks, by sharing the same ground of the expressive activity of the artists with their writings.
In the first catalog, ABO conceives his writing/presentation as a sort of poème en prose along the lines of the Igitur ou la Folie d’Elbehnon (1869) by Stéphane Mallarmé, where the French author describes in an autobiographical way of overcoming a long creative block after a psychological crisis; The critic publishes a sequence of eight empty pages and then other eight pages filled by the reiteration of his expressionless face where, written on small fragment of text, there develops the narration of a suicide seen as the realization of a “lucid enterprise to proceed outside oneself ( …) ideal act, already impersonal, where thinking and dying explored each other in their mutual truth “. In the catalog of the second show, Bonito Oliva explains the root and use of that term which, associated with “vitality”, was selected for the title of the event. It was inspired by “the love for Nietzsche and for the German philosophy of the negative, at a time when everyone was afraid to resume these trends that had been considered dangerous”; likewise, in the poster, where Michelangelo’s David is rendered as a black silhouette on a white background, the philosophical “negative” finds correspondence to the psychoanalytic “negative” by means of the Jung’s shadow theme.
This premise is particurarly significant if read for example in relation to the Anti-Oedipus. Capitalism and schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, published in 1972, ackowledged as an ideological source for ABO and the group of artists who worked in Rome in those years. The two French authors achieved on the philosophical level a comparison between Micheal Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx and on the psychoanalytic level, starting from Wilhelm Reich’s critique of Sigmund Freud, they come to theorize the “vital” value of schizophrenia as an instrument for the individual liberation within society, finding ground and followers in the art world; To this assumption, Fagioli instead oppones the vision of the death instinct as a disappearance fantasy in this way unhinging the dissociation-creativity link.
This presentation aims to clarify the extent to which events and publications, such as those mentioned , may have impacted Death instinct‘s writing, to retrieve the real relationship of the author and his volume with the artistic culture of his time and verify, beyond the historiography that has been passed on us, if there had taken place a reception or an influence of the “Theory of Birth in some critics and artists. The emergence of fundamental themes such as birth, eroticism, death, so significant to become the subject and title of an exhibition curated by Alberto Boatto in 1974, led to artistic expressions with often very disturbing tones and contents which nevertheless remain as testimony of a generally felt need for in-depth study and knowledge.
The study will be conducted through a reading and analysis of the some of the passages of Death instinct and kwowledge and subsequent insights into the theoretical elaboration and its historical and cultural context developed by the author himself in the lectures of the University of Chieti (2002-2012, published between 2009 and 2021 by L’Asino d’oro Edizioni, Rome), in the articles published in the former weekly magazine Left then merged into the series of volumes Left (2006-2017, published between 2009-2019 by L’Asino d’oro Edizioni, Rome) and other sources by the author that I will be consider useful. This investigation will run in parallel with a survey of direct sources, catalogs, reviews of exhibitions and writings by artists, with the aid of some significant art magazines, such as “NAC” (1968-1974) or “Marcatrè” (1963-1972).
Main bibliography reference:
- Bonito Oliva, A. (Ed.) (1970) Amore mio, Firenze: Centro Di.
- Bonito Oliva, A. (Ed.) (1970) Vitalità del Negativo nell’arte italiana 1960/70, Firenze: Centro Di.
- Chiodi, S. (Ed.) (2016) Ghenos, Eros e Thanatos e altri scritti sull’arte di Alberto Boatto 1968-1985 Roma: L’Orma.
- Dario, M., Del Missier, G., Stocco, E., & Testa, L. (2016) Psichiatria e psicoterapia dell’Unità d’Italia ad oggi. Roma: Asino d’oro.
- Belloni, F. (2012) Approdi e vedette: Amore mio a Montepulciano nel 1970. Studi di Memofonte, 9, 121-165.
- Belloni, F. (2013), 1970-1974 temi, passaggi, contropartite in Lancioni, D., (Ed.) Anni 70. Arte a Roma (pp. 32-41) Roma: Iacobelli.
- Fagioli, M. (1999) Le notti dell’isteria Il sogno della Farfalla, 8, n. 1.
- Frangi, S. (2008) Il negativo fecondo. Dinamiche della ideazione e della creazione artistica tra Platone e Merleau
- Ponty. ACME Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Milano, 61, n. 3.
- Golan, R. (2014) Vitalità del negativo/Negativo della vitalità. Artists Design Exhibitions: A special issue, 150, 113-132.
- Knapp, B. (1977) Igitur or Elbehnon’s Folly”: The Depersonalization Process and the Creative Encounter. Yale
- French Studies, 54, 188-213.
- Lancioni, D. (Ed.) (2013) Anni 70. Arte a Roma. Roma: Iacobelli.
- Zuanazzi, G. (1987) La Concezione del negativo in C. G. Jung. Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica, 79, n. 3, 420- 444.
