Italian Futurism and Bay Area Dada in the 1970s
April 18, 2024, 6:00 PM
General Admission: $15, Members & Students: FREE
This presentation will discuss the revival and interest in Italian Futurism by a group of important but lesser-known performance and correspondence artists based in San Francisco known as the Bay Area Dadaists. A loose coalition of figures who often went by assumed names—Monte Cazazza, Bill Gaglione (Daddaland), Irene Dogmatic, etc.—their engagement with the historical avant-garde was vectored, in poignant and prescient ways, against both conceptualism and pop art, critiquing artistic commodification and authorship. Although separate, their interest in Futurism and engagement with collage paralleled that of Nanni Balestrini and the Italian Neoavanguardia, while it prefigured and influenced the development of Bay Area punk rock.
Branden W. Joseph is Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Columbia University. He is the author of five books and nearly 100 articles on contemporary art, music, and film. He is co-curator of the exhibition Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines on view at the Brooklyn Museum until March 31, 2024.
Light refreshments will be offered
