Remerciez-le!

Remerciez @Admin pour avoir partagé cet document gratuitement, de la manière la plus simple, en partageant sur les réseaux sociaux.

70 Material Culture Review 74-75 (Spring 2012) / Revue de la culture matérielle

70 Material Culture Review 74-75 (Spring 2012) / Revue de la culture matérielle 74-75 (printemps 2012) This paper focuses on peculiar aspects of the wide international diffusion of Italian sculpture between the mid-19th and the early 20th centuries. During that period a huge quantity of artwork was moved from Europe to both North and South America. It consisted of sculptures of different kinds, made of different materials and realized by different Western artists (masters such as Bistolfi, Bourdelle, Calandra, Carriere- Belleuse, Monteverde, Querol, Rodin, Story, Vela, and Ximenes, as well as hundreds of unknown LUCA BOCHICCHIO Transported Art: 19th-Century Italian Sculptures Across Continents and Cultures Résumé Le caractère international de la sculpture du 19e siècle a été négligé durant plusieurs années et, par conséquent, la recherche et les écrits du domaine de l’art ont presque totalement ignoré le fait que la plupart des sculptures italiennes du 19e siècle sont à présent répandues dans le monde entier. Cet article a pour but d’illustrer et de documenter des aspects spécifiques de la diffusion de la sculpture italienne en Amérique entre le milieu du 19e siècle et le début du 20e siècle. Parallèlement à ce flux d’œuvres d’art, de matériaux et de sculpteurs italiens en direction des Amériques, au cours des décennies chevauchant ces deux siècles, il y eut un mouvement inverse d’artistes américains s’intéressant à la sculpture italienne qui se rendaient à Rome, Florence, Gênes, Naples, etc. Grâce à ce double échange, la sculpture italienne obtint une forte influence et reconnaissance dans le monde entier. Cet article a également pour objectif d’instaurer un contexte interdisciplinaire pour la sculpture, afin de clarifier les connexions entre les facteurs sociaux, économiques et culturels. Abstract The international identity of 19th-century sculpture has been neglected for several years, and, as a result, artistic literature and research have almost completely ignored the fact that most 19th-century Italian sculpture is now spread all over the world. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate and document peculiar aspects of the diffusion of Italian sculpture in America between the mid-19th and early 20th century. Along with the flux of artwork, materials, and Italian sculptors to the Americas, over the decades straddling these two centuries there was an inverse movement of American artists (interested in Italian sculpture) to Rome, Florence, Genoa, Naples, and so on. Thanks to that double exchange, Italian sculpture became a strong, recognized influence worldwide. The aim of this paper is to establish an interdisciplinary context for sculpture, clarifying the connections with social, economic, and cultural factors. or forgotten sculptors). Indeed, there was also an inverse influx of important young American sculptors in Europe (mainly in Paris, Rome, Munich, and Florence). Thanks to these two-way movements, Italian sculpture became influential throughout the world. Nevertheless, the international identity of the 19th-century sculpture has been neglected in Italy for several years. For one, the sculpture of the 1800s was little studied by Italian scholars for almost all of the last century, compared to Material Culture Review 74-75 (Spring 2012) / Revue de la culture matérielle 74-75 (printemps 2012) 71 the historical avant-gardes. In addition, the links between Italian migrant communities and Italy have diminished since the 1930s. The main result of that neglect has been that Italian artistic literature, art exhibitions, and art research have almost completely ignored the fact that most 19th-century Italian sculpture is now spread all over the world. Around the 1970s, critical perspectives on 19th-century sculpture started to change thanks to events such as the conference on neoclassicism held in London in 1971 (Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art 1973), the very important exhibition Metamorphoses in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture edited by Jeanne L. Wasserman (1975), and the 24th conference of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art in 1979 (Janson 1984). Moreover, in the last three decades, art historians have been involved in international conferences and exhibitions focusing on the relationship between Europe and America, especially on topics such as migration, art and culture, and political and economic exchanges.1 Between the end of the 20th and the begin ning of the 21st century, this kind of research developed alongside the American studies on specific artists, territories, or contexts related to the presence of Italian art in North and South American countries (Pineda 1973; Soria 1993; Vignola 1996). Moreover, works such as those by Sandra Berresford (2007, 2009) or Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales (2004), as well as the meet ings of the Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe (Felicori and Sborgi 2012), have recently proven that there is an international approach to studying 19th-century sculpture involving scholars from all over the world. All these studies allow us to have a more comprehensive look at the global movement of sculpture between the 19th and the 20th century, which was very dynamic. In fact, French, English, Spanish, German, and American, not only Italian, sculpture developed outside its national boundaries during the 1800s. In such a broad Euro-American circulation, Italian sculpture held a very important role. For this reason, in this paper I will address cases related to the mobility of both Italian artwork and materials, as well as the movement of artists and artisans considered in terms of circulation of knowledge and techniques. The Causes of the Wide American Diffusion of Italian Sculpture In the 1800s, the historical capacity of sculpture to represent symbolically collective values and individual success acquired new momentum from the increase of bourgeois and republican ideals in Western society.2 The public spaces of the growing metropolis become the backdrop for the artistic representation of the new political and social course. In this framework, sculpture seems to be the favourite medium of both the private and public clients. Indeed, sculpture spreads throughout urban squares, buildings, gardens, and exhibitions but also in private residences and galleries (Sborgi 1984; Wasserman 1975). Moreover, compared to paintings, drawings, and prints, sculpture needs a more complex system of processing, transport, and reproduction in order to be moved and diffused throughout different countries or regions. These social and technical aspects have to be considered in order to understand how and why a never-before-seen Atlantic circulation of sculptural artworks hap pened between the early 19th and early 20th century. We can say that a significant diffusion of sculpture in the 1800s needed: 1) an open and renewed urban society; 2) the political or collective will to build it as well as the financial capacity to do it; 3) a modern and efficient set of infrastructures for transportation and com munication; 4) highly technical and artistically skilled people. To make an extreme simplification, in the first half of the 19th century a lot of American countries gained independence from their European colonizers (especially Spain, France, and the United Kingdom). Obviously, these processes did not develop so linearly or easily, as is well demonstrated for example by Carmagnani (2003) and Codignola and Bruti Liberati (1999). Nevertheless, almost all North and South American countries had grown considerably, economically, demographically, and culturally, by the end of the century. On the opposite side of the Atlantic ocean, Italian people above all were interested in joining the growing American societies for two main rea sons. First of all, in the early decades of 1800s, the struggles for Latin American independence had much in common with the repression of Italian 72 Material Culture Review 74-75 (Spring 2012) / Revue de la culture matérielle 74-75 (printemps 2012) revolutionary aspirations; Italian intellectuals and insurgents as well as artists and politicians were pushed to leave Italy and reach Latin America. In that period, something similar was happening in the eastern United States, where the process of strengthening the Republic had already begun. Secondly, as the process of independence in Latin America strengthened, the ability of these coun tries to attract capital from abroad drew more and more Italian tradesmen and businessmen, alongside specialized art professionals such as architects, painters, and sculptors (Sartor 2006), to the Americas. That trend carried on (with highs and lows) until the end of the century, when the economic potential of both North and South America attracted a more consistent number of Italian families and non-specialized workers. In this complex interweaving of social and economic dynamics, a new generation of people able to commission artworks emerged: while the new democratic institutions of America wanted to affirm their legitimacy and greatness through magnificent monuments, the enriched Italian migrants wished to prove their success and, at the same time, stress and remember their Italian roots. Among the private clients, not only Italian migrants but also American people commissioned artworks from Italian sculptors and architects. One of the reasons for such international for tune of Italian sculpture is its strong connection to the Roman and Classic tradition. Indeed, the American institutions see in Italian contempo rary marbles and statues the same magnificence of Ancient Rome and Greece. Admittedly, not all the initial orders of Italian sculptors and archi tects that American institutions made consisted of neoclassic works in marble (for example, those in the Capitol buildings in Washington and La Habana; in the first government buildings uploads/Geographie/ administrator-mcr74-75art05.pdf