Schifano and Friends: Anthony Foutz and Ettore Rosboch
October 28, 2021
This conversation and Q&A is part of a broader series titled Schifano and Friends, which explores the relationship and connections between Mario Schifano and the work of other American and Italian artists and intellectuals.
Anthony Foutz, American writer and filmmaker, spent formative years alongside Schifano in 1960s Rome, where the two interacted with major protagonists of the literary, artistic, cinematographic, and musical scene of the era, such as Anita Pallenberg, the Rolling Stones, Marco Ferreri, Ugo Tognazzi, Ettore Rosboch, Sam Shepard. He was the writer-director of Saturation 70, an uncompleted, surreal sci-fi film that still attracts the interest of scholars and fans. His screenwriting has been serving major production entities, including Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Carlo Ponti, Titanus.
Ettore Rosboch, film producer, is among the protagonists of the Italian independent film scene of the 1960s. A close friend of Schifano, he produced the artist’s feature-length film Umano non umano; he collaborated with directors such as Marco Ferreri and Giuseppe Bertolucci, he was behind major successes such as Tu mi turbi (featuring Roberto Benigni) and Non ci resta che piangere (featuring Roberto Benigni and Massimo Troisi).
Foutz and Rosboch’s conversation with Dr. Francesco Guzzetti, curator of Facing America: Mario Schifano, 1960-1965 will focus on Schifano’s experimental cinematographic production in the 1960s.
Free public access to this event is made possible thanks to funding from:
Schifano and Jazz: An Evening of Music
October 20, 2021
In conjunction with the opening of the Schifano Study Days, join us for a special concert dedicated to Schifano’s passion for American Jazz. CIMA will host a live, unplugged music performance paying homage to the Jazz artists that influenced Schifano’s art, such as Miles Davis, Bud Powell, and Freddie Hubbard.
Before the performance, make sure to toast with us with a glass of prosecco to salute another season of modern Italian art in NYC!
This special program will have discounted tickets for CIMA members and students.
Registration, masking, and proof of vaccination required.
RESERVE A SEAT!
Program schedule:
6 – 6.30pm – registration, aperitivo, and viewing of Facing America: Mario Schifano, 1960-1965
6:30 – 7.30pm – Jazz performance by Stefan Zeniuk (bass clarinet), Cody Geil (violin), Ari Folman-Cohen (upright bass).
7:45pm – evening concludes
About the musicians:
Stefan Zeniuk is a NYC-born saxophonist, composer, animator and DJ. He has released 4 albums with his 10-piece psycho-mambo group, Gato Loco. His original stop-motion animations have been featured on NPR and Billboard. He is the inventor of the Flame-O-Phone, a fire-breathing baritone sax, and has performed and recorded with bands ranging from Vampire Weekend to The Violent Femmes. He is a weekly radio DJ on WKCR 89.9fm in NYC.
Cody Geil is a multi- instrumentalist and singer. She writes and records full string quartet arrangements and original compositions. Originally from Chicago Il, Cody is now based in New York City, and has released two original albums. Go with the Day, a collection of original world fusion instrumental compositions, and The Chase-Lion Tamer is an eclectic indie pop collaboration, which mixes looped violin lines, layered haunting vocals and catchy beats.
Ari Folman-Cohen is an eclectic and open minded musician and his repertoire and stylistic approach fuse the varied experiences he finds himself in. As bass player for Grammy award winning guitarist Stephane Wrembel he holds down exciting and sturdy Gypsy Jazz bass lines. In Avant Punk Mambo group Gato Loco he thrashes melodically on the electric bass. When playing with his ska and rocksteady project Pangari and The Socialites he supplies the melodic foundations. In addition to musical pursuits he works on his own film creation, as well as forays into short stories, cartoons and script writing.
Mario Schifano Study Days
October 20 - 23, 2021
CIMA hosts the international conference Mario Schifano Study Days on October 20, 21, 22, 23. This annual event offers an opportunity for CIMA’s fellows to share their new research alongside other scholars.
The Study Days aim to investigate the major themes of CIMA’s annual exhibition, Facing America: Mario Schifano, 1960-1965, curated by Dr. Francesco Guzzetti, as well as to contribute to the general debate on Mario Schifano. The sessions of this international conference were conceived by the 2020–2021 CIMA Fellows, following an open call for papers.
Please note: due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, the keynote address and the first three sessions of the conference (October 20, 21, 22) will be held online as Zoom seminars. The final day of the conference will be held in-person at CIMA on Saturday, October 23.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN US FOR THE ONLINE SESSIONS, OCTOBER 20-22.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN US FOR THE IN-PERSON SESSIONS AT CIMA, ON OCTOBER 23.
Full program schedule below:
ONLINE SESSIONS
Wednesday, October 20, 10-11:30AM EST: Keynote Lecture
Thomas Crow (NYU, Institute of Fine Arts), New York Pop Art as an Immigrant Affair
Wednesday, October 20, 12-1:30PM EST: Schifano Pop-olare (Chair: Carlotta Vacchelli)
Ginevra Addis (Università Cattolica, Milano), Mario Schifano’s Cultural War on US Pop Art from 1960 to 1965: from Artworks to Art Critics
Flavia Frigeri (National Portrait Gallery, London), On and Off Screen: Mario Schifano’s Tele-Visual Painting
Paola Di Giammaria (Musei Vaticani, Rome), Photography in Mario Schifano’s Painting. Genesis and Narrations
Giorgia Gastaldon (Università degli Studi dell’Aquila, Italy), Not (only) an American Story: Mario Schifano and the Italian Pop Way
Thursday, October 21, 12-1:30PM EST: Schifano’s Long Shadow: Citation and Literary Encounters (Chair: Virginia Magnaghi)
Matthew Holman (University College, London), Across Endless Oceans: Words & Drawings (1964) and Citational Practice
Mae Losasso (Royal Holloway, University of London), Definition of Blue: Mario Schifano, John Ashbery and the Shadow of Giorgio de Chirico
Carlotta Vacchelli (CIMA Fellow), A Transcultural Figure. Portrayals of Mario Schifano from the 1990s to the 2010s
Friday, October 22, 12-1:30PM EST: Framing the Gaze. Schifano’s Artistic Practice in the 1960s (Chair: Biancalucia Maglione)
Giovanni Lusi (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy), Re-reading Schifano’s Leonardo: between Twombly and Rauschenberg
Virginia Magnaghi (CIMA Fellow), Reportage, Impression, Anemia. Mario Schifano’s Landscapes between Rome and New York (1963-66)
Raffaella Perna (Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy), Revolutionary Utopia: Franco Angeli and Mario Schifano in 1968
IN-PERSON SESSIONS
Saturday, October 23
10-10:30AM EST:
Conference registration and exhibition viewing
Welcome remarks from CIMA President, Laura Mattioli
Session 1, 10:30AM-12:00PM EST: Sources Revealed. Schifano between Politics and Art History (Chair: Aja Martin)
Laura Mattioli (CIMA President), Mario Schifano’s Encounter with Futurism in the 1960s
Marica Antonucci (CIMA Fellow), Mario Schifano and the Thorns of Realism
Filippo Bosco (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy), Schifano’s Drawings and their Function from the Sixties to the Seventies: Encounters, Redefinitions, Rediscoveries
Flavio Fergonzi and Luca Nigro (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy), A Maoist Propaganda Visual Source for Festa cinese, 1969
12:00PM-1:15PM EST: lunch break
Session 2, 1:15-2:30PM EST: Theoretical Discourses: Frames, Objects, and (Non)Figures (Chair: Marica Antonucci)
Aja Martin (CIMA Fellow), (Non)Figures within Mario Schifano and Frank O’Hara’s Words and Drawings
Biancalucia Maglione (CIMA Fellow), Shaping the View. Apertures on Schifano’s Painting through the Photographic “Syntax”
Alessandro Giammei (Bryn Mawr College, USA), Objects of Use: Mario Schifano & (New) Materialism
Final Roundtable: 2:30-3:00PM
Schifano and Celluloid: A Focus on Film and Photo
October 12, 2021
Mario Schifano’s artistic practice extended well beyond the realm of painting. Indeed, many of his works on canvas are direct reflections and translations of a process that begins with photographs, film, and television. Professors Walter Guadagnini (Accademia di Belle Art di Bologna) and Giulia Simi (Università di Sassari) will discuss Schifano’s multifaceted work with CIMA Fellow Biancalucia Maglione.
Walter Guadagnini is an art critic and Professor of History of Photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, Italy. He has served as Director of the Galleria Civica di Modena, and currently serves as Director of CAMERA – Centro italiano per la fotografia. He is the author of numerous important books on the history of photography (La Fotografia, 4 vols., Skira, 2011-2014; Racconti dalla camera oscura, Skira, 2015) and has curated critically acclaimed exhibitions on Pop art, Andy Warhol, and on contemporary trends in photography, such as True Fictions: fotografia visionaria dagli anni settanta a oggi (Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia, 2020).
Giulia Simi received her PhD at the University of Pisa and she is currently a Researcher in Cinema, Photography and Television at the Università degli Studi di Sassari, Italy. Her scholarly interests focus on the relationship between film and the visual arts, and particularly on experimental films and autobiographical narrations. She is the author of Corpi in rivolta: Maria Klonaris e Katerina Thomadaki tra cinema espanso e femminismo (ETS, 2020). She has curated the 2018 film survey Soggetti imprevisti: cinema e video di ricerca delle donne in Italia dagli anni ’60 a oggi at the Mostra del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro, and co-curated the 2020 edition of FAScinA – Forum Annuale delle Studiose di Cinema dell’Audiovisivo. She’s the curator of Patrizia Vicinelli – in transito, a multifaceted project devoted to the Italian avant-garde poet, visual artist, performer (Bologna, Teatro Comunale and other places, Festival Archivio Aperto 2021).
Free online event. RSVP here.
The event is made possible thanks to a generous contribution from:
Identities in Motion: Tracing Mediterranean Crossings from the Decolonization Era to Contemporary Migrations
September 23, 2021
This roundtable discussion takes cue from Mario Schifano’s biographic experience: born in colonial Libya in 1934 , the artist and his family were displaced to the Cinecittà refugee camp during World War II. Movements across the Mediterranean such as the one that Schifano undertook—whether as a result of wartime resettlement or as part of the post-WW2 decolonization process—play a pivotal role in the construction of the modern Italian identity. Professors Pamela Ballinger (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Rhiannon Welch (Univ. of California, Berkeley) and Eleanor Paynter (Migrations Postdoctoral Fellow, Einaudi Center, Cornelly University) will join CIMA Research Fellow Aja Martin for a conversation on these subjects, which inform the art, literature, and cinema of the postwar era, and can provide useful insights in today’s migratory phenomena and negotiations of Italian identity.
In-person event. Proof of at least one Covid-19 vaccination (NYS Excelsior Pass, NYC Covid Safe app, or original vaccination card) and masking are mandatory. CIMA continues to enforce strict cleaning protocols, social distancing, and air filtering.
About the speakers:
Pamela Ballinger is Professor of History and the Fred Cuny Chair in the History of Human Rights in the Department of History at the University of Michigan. She holds degrees in Anthropology (B.A. Stanford University, M. Phil Cambridge University, M.A. Johns Hopkins University) and a joint Ph.D. in Anthropology and History (Johns Hopkins). She is the author of History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton University Press, 2003), La Memoria dell’Esilio (Veltro Editrice, 2010), and the World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy (Cornell University Press, 2020). She has published in a wide range of journals, including Austrian History Yearbook, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Contemporary European History, Current Anthropology, Journal of Contemporary History, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Journal of Refugee Studies, Journal of Tourism History, and Past and Present. Her areas of expertise include human rights, forced migration, refugees, fascism, seaspace, and modern Mediterranean and Balkan history.
Eleanor Paynter studies displacement, asylum, and migrant testimony, focusing on Africa-Europe mobilities and the Black Mediterranean, and drawing on narrative and ethnographic methods. She is especially interested in race, borders, migrant rights, and colonial memory in the Italian context. Her current book project, Emergency in Transit, engages oral, written, filmic, and visual witnessing forms to discuss the complex dynamics shaping Italy’s recent immigration “crises”. Her writing can be found in academic journals such as the minnesota review andA/B: Auto/Biography studies, as well as in venues including Forced Migration Review, The New Humanitarian, and the LA Review of Books, and she hosts the Cornell podcast A World on the Move. She holds a PhD in Comparative Studies from the Ohio State University and is currently a postdoctoral associate with Cornell University’s Migrations initiative and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
Rhiannon Noel Welch works on modern Italian literature, film, and critical theory. Her first book, Vital Subjects: Race and Biopolitics in Italy, reads a range of canonical and lesser-known texts through the lens of biopolitics in order to demonstrate how race and colonialism have long been central to Italian modernity and national culture, rather than a fascist aberration or a contemporary phenomenon resulting from immigration.
Her current book project, Crisis and the Aesthetics of Deceleration, examines recurring figures of deceleration, dilation, and/or slowness, in Italian literature and film in light of the numerous biopolitical crises plaguing Italy and the world today (the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, mass migration, the failures of late capitalism, etc.).
Welch’s research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, the Cornell University Society for the Humanities, the Cornell University Institute of European Studies, and the Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences. Before joining the faculty at Berkeley, Welch held positions at Cornell University, Franklin & Marshall College, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Rutgers University.
A Night among the Artists
September 18, 2021
Let’s celebrate the artists in our community and their practice with a special evening tour, followed by a meet and greet with our Fall Research Fellows, Biancalucia Maglione and Aja Martin!
The event will start with a fellow-guided tour of our current exhibition, Facing America: Mario Schifano, 1960-1965. After the tour, artists in attendance will have an opportunity to network among each other and to chat with our Fellows about their artistic practice. As professional art historians with curatorial and gallery experience, the Fellows will be happy to learn more about the work, successes, challenges and statements of the artists in CIMA’s community and beyond!
Light refreshments will be served during the meet&greet.
General Admission: $15
CIMA Members: Free
Schifano and Friends: Fulvio Abbate
September 02, 2021
Tune in on September 2nd at 12:00 pm for a Facebook premiere of another segment of our ongoing series, Schifano & Friends, with art critic and writer Fulvio Abbate in conversation with CIMA Fellow Carlotta Vacchelli.
This conversation and Q&A is part of a broader series titled Schifano and Friends, which explores the relationship and connections between Mario Schifano and the work of other American and Italian artists and intellectuals.
Beyond the Canvas: Schifano and Cinema – Final Screening
August 18, 2021
From the Cedar Tavern to Piazza del Popolo, the Beat generation meets Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the avantgarde travels from New York to Rome and back. A videoart journey in the international Counterculture of the Sixties through the eyes of Mario Schifano.
On August 18, we will screen Schifano’s rare shorts Reflex (1964, 8 min) and Souvenir (1967, 11 min.). The screening is made possible thanks to a Cultural Loan from Rome’s Cineteca Nazionale.
CIMA Research Fellow Biancalucia Maglione will deliver a short introduction before the screening.
The event is free and open to the public. RSVP not necessary but strongly encouraged. It will help the staff at Elizabeth Street Garden set up adequate seating.
In partnership with Elizabeth Street Garden.
For information about how you can help save Elizabeth Street Garden, visit www.elizabethstreetgarden.com.
Free public access to this event is made possible thanks to funding from:
Interns Night at CIMA!
August 12, 2021
Let’s celebrate the end of Summer Internships across the 5 boroughs with a special evening event open to all interns of artistic and cultural institutions!
7:00 PM: Tour of CIMA’s exhibition, Facing America: Mario Schifano, 1960-1965
7:30-9:00 PM: Music, aperitivo, and conversation
This is an in-person event. CIMA maintains extra cleaning practices in place as well as air sanitization. Mask wearing remains mandatory for non-vaccinated individuals.
Limited capacity! RSVP here.
Beyond the Canvas: Schifano and Cinema
July 28, 2021
From the Cedar Tavern to Piazza del Popolo, the Beat generation meets Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the avantgarde travels from New York to Rome and back. A videoart journey in the international Counterculture of the Sixties through the eyes of Mario Schifano.
CIMA Research Fellow Marica Antonucci will deliver a short introduction before the screening.
The event is free and open to the public. RSVP not necessary but strongly encouraged. It will help the staff at Elizabeth Street Garden set up adequate seating.
In partnership with Elizabeth Street Garden.
For information about how you can help save Elizabeth Street Garden, visit www.elizabethstreetgarden.com.
Free public access to this event is made possible thanks to funding from: