Manzoni

This is a great book on Manzoni. It is full of large pictures and information about this great Artist. What else is there to say? If you're a Manzoni fan, this book won't disappoint you.

Ce livre que j'ai eu beaucoup de difficulté a trouvé, me satisfait complétement, car il illustre parfaitement le travail de Mr Manzoni et l'on comprend d'où vient l'inspiration de certain artiste contemporain.

This book is the catalogue for a museum-quality Manzoni retrospective held at the Gagosian gallery in NYC in early 2009 (the first such exhibition since 1972) and was written by legendary Italian critic and curator Germano Celant. As far as I know, it is the only such publication in English on this major and meteoric figure of conceptual Italian art.It covers the 7 years (from 1956 to 1963)that represent the artist's short but highly influential career (interrupted by his sudden death of a heart attack at the age of 29)and starts with a very interesting in-depth essay which aims at placing Manzoni's art in the historic,economic and sociological context of the 1950's and 1960's, as well as confronting it to its various contemporary influences (Rauschenberg, Burri, Klein, Fontana, etc).Germano Celant being what he is, i.e. one of the most important post-war art critics (he virtually founded the Arte Povera movement in Italy in 1967)and the author of the latest catalogue raisonné of Manzoni's work, the text is brilliant and didactic and succeeds in its main objective: to show that Manzoni was a major influence on contemporary art from the 1960's onward and that his art cannot be separated from a global vision of the world of the period. Manzoni's art is first and foremost a harsh criticism of consumerism, a trend that durably marked Italy's economic miracle of the 1960's, and beyond that, a profound and ironic reflexion on the transient nature of all human deeds (including art itself).The illustrations are wonderful and enable the reader to see the intricate texture of some works (especially in the case of the Achrome series). Undoubtedly one of the best recent contemporary art publications.

Little to add beyond what the first reviewer wrote. This is an excellent and detailed view of Manzoni, one that doesn't shy away from how controversial he was and still is. Perhaps Celant pushes the relationship to Arte Povera a little too much (Celant, after all, coined the term himself to describe a group of artists who had started working in similar styles and manners very independent from each other), but that can be forgiven for the level of in-depth commentary and the presentation of work that has often been only rumored about rather than published.