Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch

Collating and critiquing the work of Italian-Argentine artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), University of Melbourne lecturer White provides a fresh interpretation of a man whose innovation and insurgency is now demanding greater recognition and record prices more than 40 years after his death. Pinpointing Fontana%E2%80%99s first and only solo New York show in 1961 at age 62 as the realization of a lifelong dream, White wonderfully explores topics including: avant-garde paradoxes; the pastiche of Dada, Surrealism, and Russian Constructivism; and Fontana%E2%80%99s desire to be distanced from European Informel and Tachiste artists. Fontana%E2%80%99s slashed canvases, gaudy palette, and penchant for heavily applied acrylic meant his work was greeted with at best indifference, at worst disdain. Informed by Walter Benjamin in his deductions, White relates each chapter to the %E2%80%9Cdialectical structure in Fontana%E2%80%99s work,%E2%80%9D citing political events, abstract notions, and cultural shifts as influential in the anachronistic relationship Fontana had with art. Relations with contemporaries%E2%80%94Jackson Pollock, Yves Klein, and Cy Twombly%E2%80%94ranged from amiable to resentful. More engineer than philosopher during his career, the artist%E2%80%99s legacy finally reaches an audience deserving of his contribution to modern art, and White%E2%80%99s expressive conclusions explore conceptualism with admirable depth and clarity. (Oct.)