V. Bartalesi, T. Casini, Timeless Aspects of Modern Art (1948-1949): La ricezione dell’arte preistorica a partire da una mostra del Museum of Modern Art di New York, in Convegno Internazionale, L'arte paleolitica. Una questione contemporanea: Dalla grotta dipinta alle realtà estese (original) (raw)

2024, Organizzato da Università IULM e ERC Advanced Grant AN-ICON (Dipartimento di Filosofia “Piero Martinetti”, Università Statale di Milano) in collaborazione con il Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano

On November 18, 1948, the exhibition Timeless Aspects of Modern Art opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was ordered by the Viennese René d'Harnoncourt and contributed to by Monroe Wheeler (Elligott 2018). The exhibition, the inaugural event in a comprehensive series of celebrations organized by the New York museum to commemorate its 20th anniversary, presents a distinctive perspective on the dissemination of prehistoric material culture within a North American institution dedicated to modernity. The objective of the project was explicitly articulated from the outset, as evidenced in the initial typescripts commemorating the 20th anniversary. These documents asserted that the exhibition was designed to address «the prevalent criticism that modern art is created in isolation, detached from the broader historical and conceptual continuum of art history». The exhibition sought to demonstrate that modern art is, in fact, a dynamic and evolving phenomenon, drawing upon a rich tapestry of artistic traditions and techniques to express fundamental human concepts and emotions that have been explored in art across time. This profound, ambitious, and certainly not uncritical sense of the exhibition was to make visible to the general public—from a transcultural perspective—the persisting and constant elements that contemporary languages have with respect to all times in art, through a selection of fifty-six exemplary works. The heterogeneous selection of artifacts, spanning various geographical regions and historical periods, exhibited a core nucleus of prehistoric specimens (or their replicas, including two notable reproductions of the Willendorf and Lespugue Venuses, on loan from Alfred E. Parr, Director of the Anthropology Department of the American Museum of Natural History in New York). The presentation is organized into two sections. The initial section of the presentation, led by Tommaso Casini, seeks to contextualize the primary exhibitions on prehistoric art during the interwar period within a broader European framework. A review of the various developments surrounding the prehistoric core presented in Timeless Aspects of Modern Art, the second part of the study prepared by Valentina Bartalesi, aims to provide a broader observation of the reception of prehistoric material culture in the North American context, specifically New York, in the post-World War II era. This paper will trace the genesis of the exhibition and related publications, outline the historical and relational context in which the exhibition had to take shape, and address the main theoretical debates that arose in it. It will focus on the use of reproductions and the legitimacy, risks, and contradictions inherent in conceiving of prehistoric manifestations as belonging to the modern notion of art, its periodizations, and vocabulary. It will also examine the historical and relational context in which the exhibition had to take shape, paying particular attention to the interlocutors involved. The argument will be based on an examination of the papers held at the MoMA Archives and other US archives, which have not been extensively studied to date.