Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting

by Alessandro Giammei (editor), Ara H. Merjian (editor)

First collection on filmmaker and poet Pasolini's passion for painting

One of Europe's most mythologized Marxist intellectuals of the 20th century, Pier Paolo Pasolini was not only a poet, filmmaker, novelist, and political martyr. He was also a keen critic of painting. An intermittently practicing artist in his own right, Pasolini studied under the distinguished art historian Roberto Longhi, whose lessons marked a life-long affinity for figurative painting and its centrality to a particular cinematic sensibility.

Pasolini set out wilfully to "contaminate" art criticism with semiotics, dialectology, and film theory, penning catalogue essays and exhibition reviews alongside poems, autobiographical meditations, and public lectures on painting. His fiercely idiosyncratic blend of Communism and classicism, localism and civic universalism, iconophilia and aesthetic "heresy," animated and antagonized Cold War culture like few European contemporaries. This book offers numerous texts previously available only in Italian, each accompanied by an editorial note elucidating its place in the tumultuous context of post-war Italian culture.

Prefaced by the renowned art historian T.J. Clark, a historical essay on Pasolini's radical aesthetics anchors the anthology. One hundred years after his birth, Heretical Aesthetics sheds light on one of the most consequential aspects of Pasolini's intellectual life, further illuminating a vast cinematic and poetic corpus along the way.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Art

224 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2023

About the author

Alessandro Giammei is an assistant professor of Italian Studies at Yale University.

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is well edited and I enjoyed the lively introduction by T.J. Clark, but Pasolini's take on the visual arts is not that fully interesting. His critiques are dry, and much of the writing is for catalogs of artist friends. This alone is perfectly fine, but there is very little poison here. If you are a Pasolini fan, and I do like his novels and films, then this is a book you should read and have, but it's not essential.

[Michael Chance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably more of interest to students of Pasolini’s writing style and way of thinking than of painting ‘itself’.
The book features a well written introduction and thorough, informative footnotes which give good context to understand Pasolini’s short and varied texts.
Although the colour reproductions are welcome, it would have helped greatly to have more of them, and more images which are directly pertinent to the text. Some of the artists discussed are fairly obscure and provincial so it can be difficult to find images of the specific works that Pasolini mentions. I was grateful to be introduced to some painters that I hadn’t looked at before such as Zigaina and Carlo Levi. Short pieces on Caravaggio and Warhol are more approachable since one is of course familiar with the work already.
I’m left wishing that Pasolini had written more art criticism, and in a more sustained form. I would love a full appraisal of Picasso for instance - since his influence is clearly seen in some of Pasolini’s own paintings, if not his films. A lengthy rumination on Morandi would also be a dream - he was obviously a highly significant painter for Pasolini but is mentioned a few times here in a slightly offhand manner, as if his greatness is so obvious that it doesn’t require explanation (which is of course true as well).

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Pasolini, art history not so much.