{"id":17640,"date":"2026-02-24T14:02:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T13:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/?post_type=magazine&p=17640"},"modified":"2026-02-25T11:31:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T10:31:25","slug":"book-caliandro-contemporary-italian-art","status":"publish","type":"magazine","link":"https:\/\/www.marsilioarte.it\/en\/magazine\/book-caliandro-contemporary-italian-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Us in the world. The book that investigates the foreign perception of contemporary Italian art"},"content":{"rendered":"42 interviews with experts in the field (artists, curators, art critics and historians, museum directors, fair directors, gallery owners, art advisors), 2 sections, 12 chapters.
\r\n
\r\nThis book is therefore also a choral narrative, focusing on what we will conveniently call the \u201cforeign perception of Italian contemporary art\u201d, the challenges it poses, and the potential it reveals. It aims to record the meaning of a work that obviously does not claim to be exhaustive but which, due to the very nature and structure of the phenomenon under investigation, is necessarily a work in progress.
\r\n
\r\nThis report, co-promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and La Quadriennale Foundation in Rome, was conceived with the idea of involving forty-two experts in the field, interviewing them and asking them a few simple questions, the same for everyone (and which naturally opened up a dialogue that was different each time, consisting of insights, connections, and digressions): How do you feel about the current perception of Italian contemporary art abroad, from your professional point of view and based on your experience? How do you think this perception has changed over the last twenty to twenty-five years? What tools and strategies, to be implemented or introduced from scratch, do you think are useful to make this perception more effective?
\r\nTHE BOOK BY CHRISTIAN CALIANDRO<\/h2>
\r\nThe \u201csurvey\u201d produced a rich and multifaceted picture (at times even contradictory, as it should be) with certain topics and themes emerging with particular force and consistency; multiple views and varied interpretations of the critical issues and opportunities presented by the role and positioning of Italian art in the global and international context. This sort of collective portrait, a blurred and out-of-focus snapshot of the Italian art system today \u2012 and the image it projects to the outside world \u2012 is complemented by excerpts from the interviews (which can be heard and seen in full on the Quadriennale website) with data that corroborate impressions and nuances, and with my personal, inevitably partial, interpretation.
\r\n
\r\nThe first part of the text analyzes the image of Italian contemporary art abroad through the themes of globalization and post-globalization, the \u201cindividualization\u201d of the artist (compared to the era of groups) and xenophilia, the market, participation in major events and international media perception, the relationship with the \u2018others\u2019 who compose the Italian imagination, institutional strategies and policies, mobility and social media. The second part, with a more historical-critical approach, addresses the specificity of contemporary Italian art through the relationship between Arte Povera and Transavanguardia, and their influence on subsequent decades, the case study of Cattelan, the negotiations between different generations, and finally the relationship with heritage and tradition.
\r\nTHE CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN ART<\/h2>
\r\nAs one of the artists interviewed, Francesco Jodice, states: \u201cIn some ways, there is a sort of generational diffraction between what history is and contemporary art\u2019s ability to relate to it. This is to say that when we talk about Italian artists and how they are perceived abroad, I would always tend to turn the table and reverse the question: what is the ability of Italian artists to understand what is happening in the world right now? What are the great secret mechanisms that somehow shift the narrative? What is our history made of? From this point of view, I could say that the question that interests me most of all, as an artist but also as a teacher of contemporary art, is: what is the ability of Italian artists to produce dreams? And what is the dimension of these dreams, their latitude, their extension?\u201d
\r\n
\r\nThis research is, of course, only a starting point. In addition to perception (by the market, institutions, curators, critics, foreign journalists, etc.), we should take a close look at the type of image we project so that it is (or is not) perceived; and we should strive to truly understand, in a very thorough and accurate manner, the object we want to be perceived externally, the object behind that image: Italian contemporary art, especially that conceived and created by the latest generations. This means constructing a narrative, or perhaps a narrative made up of several narratives, that is coherent, intelligent and \u2012 if possible \u2012 compelling, exciting, engaging, and critical of what is happening in our art scene.
\r\n
\r\nChristian Caliandro<\/strong>","protected":false},"featured_media":17735,"template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categorie_magazine":[341],"class_list":["post-17640","magazine","type-magazine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","categorie_magazine-books-from-marte"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUs in the world. 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