Marco Rinaldi
Professor of History of Art and History of Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Author of papers, essays and books about 20th Century art, architecture and design. Scientific advisor of Gastone Novelli Archive in Rome. Former deputy editor of the journal "Zeusi - Linguaggi contemporanei di sempre", currently member of the scientific committee
Coordinator of the Course of Design in the Academy of Arts in Rome.
Expert valuator of National Agency of the University System of Evaluation and Research for Higher Education in Art and Music.
Coordinator of the Course of Design in the Academy of Arts in Rome.
Expert valuator of National Agency of the University System of Evaluation and Research for Higher Education in Art and Music.
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Papers by Marco Rinaldi
The dominant idea of a rationalist ideology pursued by the Bauhaus has actually overshadowed the different souls that composed it and that somehow sowed the seeds, sometimes fruitful sometimes sterile, of its
legacy.
Among the experiences that refer to the Bauhaus, some have simply and somewhat naively reproposed a formalism that has sanctified its myth, translated into the concepts of 'Good Design' and 'Gute Form' that
reflected the initial events of László Moholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus in Chicago and Max Bill’s Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm.
The other American school, under the direction of another Bauhaus veteran, Josef Albers, was the Black Mountain College, where instead of the Bauhaus experience, updating its myth, the democratic pedagogy
and interdisciplinary approach were taken up and translated into continuous experimentation: from here a new generation of artists would emerge and here the first performance event would be born, which would revolutionise contemporary artistic practice, but which perhaps Oskar
Schlemmer’s theatrical work within the Bauhaus already contained in potential. And in Ulm it will be Tomás Maldonado who will update the rational Bauhaus myth by extending the project to the level of communication.
There is also another fertile seed, the political one, which will bear fruit in another part of the world, Palestine, where the Zionist project to build the new state of Israel will embrace the rationalist utopia of creating a new world through architecture, a project that will be entrusted to some of the Jewish refugees from the Bauhaus diaspora, who will go to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to build houses and kibbutzim.
Finally, there is a final, more hidden plan, perhaps, that which derives from the teaching of Paul Klee, who not only translated his limpid considerations on art into theoretical writings, but also transmitted an approach to form that went beyond the life of the school itself and often translated itself into pure lyricism.
In 1963, at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum and Baden-Baden’s Staatlichen Kunsthalle, was set up an exhibition significantly titled Schrift und Bild. This exhibition, conceived by Dietrich Mahlow, then director of Baden-Baden’s Kunsthalle, was a vaste investigation about the intimate link between two communicative and expressive levels, writing and image, often considered by Western thought as separate worlds.
While Mallarmé was recognized as the inventor of the first «poem-object», Klee appeared as a key figure. Throughout a non-linear path, the materials exhibited ranged from ancient sources to medieval miniatures, from 15-16th Century printed books to oriental and Islamic calligraphy, to Cubist, Futurist and Constructivist compositions and texts by Apollinaire and Schwitters, passing through Lettrism, Concrete Poetry and Informal sign, finally arriving at a complex and varied constellation of contemporary artists who frequently resorted to contamination and combination of word and image.
Presenting a great number of historical artists, Arabian and Japanese calligraphers and more than a hundred of artists born between the 1910s and 1920s, the exhibition was really impressive. Above all, it stood (deserving a careful critical review) as one of the first attempts to focus and historicize a verbovisual artistic research, which in the early 1960s was experiencing a happy season.
Already in 1961, Intolleranza 1960, a multimedia scenic action by Luigi Nono, Angelo Maria Ripellino and Emilio Vedova, directs its exasperated experimentalism on the themes of contemporary political violence in general, and on the Algerian War in particular.
Cuban Revolution and Chinese Cultural Revolution, seen as alternative phenomena to American imperialism and Soviet socialism, fascinated many intellectuals and artists of left wing in Western World, and among them is Gastone Novelli. This latter actively participated in 1968 protest, fighting with works and words against Vietnam War. The reduction of his language to slogan category, and the use of communication form of da-tze-bao, lead him to develop further his research on free or authoritarian use of language.
practice of redesign. If redesign is defined
as a technical and formal improvement
of an existing product, it can also be said
that redesign is an understanding ability
in catching a sort of innate disposition of
the objects and in some way their hidden
essence, or, in one word, their soul.
Several examples from design history
suggest an interpretation to read some
objects’ transformations like a metaphorical
history of souls’ transmigration;
and the designer appears like the creator
who recognizes these souls. This history
of objects’ improvement (but also
their worsening) weaves together other
themes like the nostalgic gaze to the
past, the “memory’s design”, the vintage
collecting, and also the plagiarism issue.
The dominant idea of a rationalist ideology pursued by the Bauhaus has actually overshadowed the different souls that composed it and that somehow sowed the seeds, sometimes fruitful sometimes sterile, of its
legacy.
Among the experiences that refer to the Bauhaus, some have simply and somewhat naively reproposed a formalism that has sanctified its myth, translated into the concepts of 'Good Design' and 'Gute Form' that
reflected the initial events of László Moholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus in Chicago and Max Bill’s Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm.
The other American school, under the direction of another Bauhaus veteran, Josef Albers, was the Black Mountain College, where instead of the Bauhaus experience, updating its myth, the democratic pedagogy
and interdisciplinary approach were taken up and translated into continuous experimentation: from here a new generation of artists would emerge and here the first performance event would be born, which would revolutionise contemporary artistic practice, but which perhaps Oskar
Schlemmer’s theatrical work within the Bauhaus already contained in potential. And in Ulm it will be Tomás Maldonado who will update the rational Bauhaus myth by extending the project to the level of communication.
There is also another fertile seed, the political one, which will bear fruit in another part of the world, Palestine, where the Zionist project to build the new state of Israel will embrace the rationalist utopia of creating a new world through architecture, a project that will be entrusted to some of the Jewish refugees from the Bauhaus diaspora, who will go to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to build houses and kibbutzim.
Finally, there is a final, more hidden plan, perhaps, that which derives from the teaching of Paul Klee, who not only translated his limpid considerations on art into theoretical writings, but also transmitted an approach to form that went beyond the life of the school itself and often translated itself into pure lyricism.
In 1963, at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum and Baden-Baden’s Staatlichen Kunsthalle, was set up an exhibition significantly titled Schrift und Bild. This exhibition, conceived by Dietrich Mahlow, then director of Baden-Baden’s Kunsthalle, was a vaste investigation about the intimate link between two communicative and expressive levels, writing and image, often considered by Western thought as separate worlds.
While Mallarmé was recognized as the inventor of the first «poem-object», Klee appeared as a key figure. Throughout a non-linear path, the materials exhibited ranged from ancient sources to medieval miniatures, from 15-16th Century printed books to oriental and Islamic calligraphy, to Cubist, Futurist and Constructivist compositions and texts by Apollinaire and Schwitters, passing through Lettrism, Concrete Poetry and Informal sign, finally arriving at a complex and varied constellation of contemporary artists who frequently resorted to contamination and combination of word and image.
Presenting a great number of historical artists, Arabian and Japanese calligraphers and more than a hundred of artists born between the 1910s and 1920s, the exhibition was really impressive. Above all, it stood (deserving a careful critical review) as one of the first attempts to focus and historicize a verbovisual artistic research, which in the early 1960s was experiencing a happy season.
Already in 1961, Intolleranza 1960, a multimedia scenic action by Luigi Nono, Angelo Maria Ripellino and Emilio Vedova, directs its exasperated experimentalism on the themes of contemporary political violence in general, and on the Algerian War in particular.
Cuban Revolution and Chinese Cultural Revolution, seen as alternative phenomena to American imperialism and Soviet socialism, fascinated many intellectuals and artists of left wing in Western World, and among them is Gastone Novelli. This latter actively participated in 1968 protest, fighting with works and words against Vietnam War. The reduction of his language to slogan category, and the use of communication form of da-tze-bao, lead him to develop further his research on free or authoritarian use of language.
practice of redesign. If redesign is defined
as a technical and formal improvement
of an existing product, it can also be said
that redesign is an understanding ability
in catching a sort of innate disposition of
the objects and in some way their hidden
essence, or, in one word, their soul.
Several examples from design history
suggest an interpretation to read some
objects’ transformations like a metaphorical
history of souls’ transmigration;
and the designer appears like the creator
who recognizes these souls. This history
of objects’ improvement (but also
their worsening) weaves together other
themes like the nostalgic gaze to the
past, the “memory’s design”, the vintage
collecting, and also the plagiarism issue.