Giancarlo Politi, writer, artwork critic, and founding father of Flash Artwork, one of the vital influential up to date artwork magazines to emerge from Europe’s postwar period, died on February 24. He was 89. Information of his demise was first reported within the Italian-language press.
Based in 1967 in Rome, Flash Artwork was among the many first usually printed magazines devoted completely to artwork criticism—and one of many earliest to flow into internationally. Over many years, it expanded to incorporate editions in French, Polish, Chinese language, Spanish, German and Russian-language editions. But every version sought to map the artwork world as an interlinked entity, presenting it not as a scatter of far-flung scenes however as a constellation of overlapping facilities, every in fixed trade.
From its headquarters in Milan, Flash Artwork documented a number of the most seismic artwork actions of the late twentieth century, together with Arte Povera—which means “poor artwork”—the unconventional Italian ideology outlined by its use of on a regular basis objects and natural ephemera.
Politi, collectively together with his spouse, the artwork critic Helena Kontova, created a launchpad for artists and critics who proceed on to form the up to date canon. Marina Abramović, Maurizio Cattelan,, and Jeff Koons have been these featured in its pages, which likewise noticed bylines by influential artwork world figures resembling Germano Celant, the critic who coined “Arte Povera,” Francesco Bonami, curator of the 2003 Venice Biennale, and the American historian and author Hal Foster.
Kate Shanley, daughter of former Artwork in America writer Paul Shanley and a Flash Artwork worker from 1980 to 2017, shared a remembrance of Politi on Instagram. She recalled selecting up bundles of the journal at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport—the place customs as soon as objected to a problem that includes art work by Pierre Klossowski—and driving them straight to SoHo and the East Village to ship to galleries.
“Giancarlo and Helena Kontova have been fantastic to work for. It was a real collaboration with a dynamic couple who have been each inventive and good,” she mentioned, noting that they trusted their staff “like a household” because the journal grew, advanced, and weathered the ups and downs of the up to date artwork world over the many years.
His management, nonetheless, was not with out controversy. In 1972, Politi marketed his providers for $1,000 to “artists, galleries, museums, and universities,” together with “particular preparations for actually handsome feminine artists.” He drew additional scrutiny in 1997 for defending Alexander Brener’s vandalism of Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematisme. In 2011, studies surfaced that he had despatched inappropriate emails to a feminine Flash Artwork intern who had allegedly been denied honest compensation; the messages have been later posted on-line. Politi described the trade as “notably aggressive and underhanded” and expressed his remorse.
Politi was born in 1937 in Trevi, in Italy’s Umbria area. In 1993, he based the Trevi Flash Artwork Museum, which hosted exhibitions by worldwide artists resembling Damien Hirst, Vanessa Beecroft, and Andres Serrano. He departed the museum in 2005; it has since been renamed the Palazzo Lucarini Modern. Within the early 2000s, he launched a collection of “no-budget biennales,” starting in Tirana, Albania, adopted by six editions in Prague and three editions of the Prague Picture Biennale.
He’s survived by his spouse, Helena, and their daughter, Gea, who has additionally served as an editor of Flash Artwork.
The article shall be up to date with further info because it turns into obtainable.
