Lucio Fontana

In 1961, a solo exhibition by Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana met with ascathing critical response from New York art critics. Fontana (1899--1968), well known in Europe forhis series of slashed monochrome paintings, offered New York ten canvases slashed and punctured,thickly painted in luridly brilliant hues and embellished with chunks of colored glass. One criticdescribed the work as "halfway between constructivism and costume jewelry," unwittinglyputting his finger on the contradiction at the heart of these paintings and much of Fontana's work:the cut canvases suggest avant-garde iconoclasm, but the glittery ornamentation evokes outmodedforms of kitsch. In Lucio Fontana, Anthony White examines a selection of the artist's work from the1930s to the 1960s, arguing that Fontana attacked the idealism of twentieth-century art by marryingmodernist aesthetics to industrialized mass culture, and attacked modernism's purity in a way thatanticipated both pop art and postmodernism. Fontana painted expressionist and abstract sculptures inthe pinks and golds of mass-produced knick-knacks, saturated architectural installations withfluorescent paint and ultraviolet light, and encrusted candy-colored monochrome canvases withglitter. In doing so, White argues, he challenged Clement Greenberg's dictum that avant-garde andkitsch are diametrically opposed. Relating Fontana's art to the political and social context inwhich he worked, White shows how Fontana used the materials and techniques of mass culture tocomment on the fate of the avant-garde under Italian fascism and the postwar "economicmiracle." At a time when Fontana's work is commanding record prices, this new interpretation ofthe work assures that it has unprecedented critical relevance.

Anthony White, a writer and curator, is Senior Lecturer in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.