IF ARTE POVERA WAS POP
On the occasion of the exhibition Imagine. Nuove immagini nell’arte italiana 1960-1969 curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, open from April 23 to September 19 2016, a cycle of films called If Arte Povera was Pop is screened May 11 and May 12. Presented for the first time in a more extended version at Tate Modern in October 2015, this anthology was brought together by Tate Film in collaboration with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia/Cineteca Nazionale Roma – Archivio Nazionale Cinema d’impresa e Museo Nazionale del Cinema.
If Arte Povera was Pop is a provocation. Arte Povera, in fact, was everything but Pop. However, the anthology aims, among other purposes, at investigating the origins and the transmission of what was unquestionably an interdisciplinary movement, impacting cinema as well as performance. Alongside rare artists’ films, documentation of seminal exhibitions, and audacious avant-garde films, If Arte Povera was Pop explores both the heterodox environment of Arte Povera in Turin and the cosmopolitanism and eccentricity of the Roman scene, historically associated with Italian Pop Art and marked by the activities of the Cooperativa del Cinema Independente, founded in 1967. The voices of non-mainstream writers such as Tonino De Bernardi, Carmelo Bene, Alberto Grifi and of artists Ugo Nespolo and Mario Schifano, as well as incursions of Pino Pascali’s advertising commissions, testify to the effervescence of a unique moment in the history of the European avant-garde, which If Arte Povera was Pop explores, interrogates and expands.
Programme of screenings and talks:
Torino negli anni Sessanta, Arte Povera e sperimentalismo cinematografico (86')
Ugo Nespolo, Neonmerzare, 1967
Ugo Nespolo, Boettinbianchenero, 1968
Ugo Nespolo, Buongiorno Michelangelo, 1968
Pia Epremian, Pistoletto & Sotheby's, 1968
Tonino De Bernardi, La vestizione, 1968
Plinio Martelli, Maria Fotografia, 1968
Che cosa è il Pop? Cinema d'artista a Roma (95')
Mario Schifano, Anna, nd
Mario Schifano, Vietnam, 1967
Mario Schifano, Souvenir, 1967
Franco Angeli, Schermi
Franco Angeli, Doppio ritratto: Schifano Angeli [title assigned], nd
Franco Angeli, Pascali in mostra [title assigned], 1969
Luca Patella, SKMP2, 1968
Luca Patella, Terra animata, 1967
Pino Pascali, Che posizione!, 1962
12 may. Talk with Luca Massimo Barbero, curator of the exhibition Imagine. Nuove immagini nell’arte italiana 1960-1969, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, 23 April – 19 September 2016, Andrea Lissoni, Senior Curator, International Art (Film), Tate Modern, Sergio Toffetti, Director of Archivio Nazionale Cinema d’Impresa di Ivrea e della sede del Piemonte del Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Martin Bethenod, former Director of Palazzo Grassi-Punta della Dogana.
La scuola di Roma (94')
Mario Masini, Immagine del tempo, 1964
Umberto Bignardi, Motion Vision, 1967
Rosa Foschi, Amour du cinéma, 1968
Claudio Cintoli, Primavera nascosta, 1969
Gianfranco Baruchello, Costretto a scomparire, 1968
Alberto Grifi, Orgonauti, evviva !, 1968-70
Carmelo Bene, Hermitage, 1967
Torino sperimentale (87')
Pia Epremian, Dissolvimento, 1970
Massimo Bacigalupo, 60 metri per il 31 marzo, 1968
Tonino De Bernardi, Il mostro verde, 1967
Tonino De Bernardi, La favolosa storia: Il bestiario, 1968