Critique of Taste

by Galvano della Volpe, Michael Caesar (Translator)

Galvano Della Volpe was the dominant philosopher of Italian Marxism for twenty years after the Liberation. His most important book was a work of aesthetic theory - Critique of Taste. Della Volpe, proponent of a robust materialism in all his writings, was concerned to rehabilitate the inherently rationally and intellectual nature of art. Opposing both the sociological reductionism of Plekhanov or Lukacs, and the formalist irrationalism of Croce or New Criticism, Della Volpe's aim was to demonstrate that conceptual meaning is always inseparable from aesthetic effect. Whether he is discussing Pindar or Gongora, Cleanth Brooks or Roland Barthes, Goethe or Mallarme, Della Volpe is always challenging, always illuminating. Critique of Taste represents one of the major crossroads of twentieth-century aesthetics.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Philosophy

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Professor of philosophy and Marxist theorist. In Italy, his work was seen by many as a 'scientific' alternative to the Gramscian Marxism which the PCI (among others) had claimed as its guide. He was also noted for his writings on aesthetics including writings on film theory. He was an atheist.

Some of his most notable works include:

Critique of Taste (Verso Books, 1991).
Logic as a Positive Science (Verso Books, 1980).
Rousseau and Marx: And Other Writings (Lawrence and Wishart, 1987).

He had a number of students and disciples including Ignazio Ambrogio, Umberto Cerroni, Lucio Colletti, Nicolao Merker, Alessandro Mazzone, Armando Plebe, Mario Rossi, and Carlo Violi

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a discourse on "the epistemology of art" Critique of Taste might leave you feeling skeptical, as it did me. Why would I ever want to "penetrate the chaos" of all ambiguity, for instance? I think Della Volpe is missing something here, and we are not just talking some ideological phantoms, or "aesthetic mysticism." I'll just leave it at finding meaning in literature is an act of interpretation, not some exacting "scientific" enquiry. Della Volpe is nevertheless a very sensitive and knowledgeable reader; there is plenty insight to glean from this short volume, despite its tendentiousness.

Another thing of interest about this book is its historical situation. Della Volpe's "scientific method" here is built on top of structural linguistics (I don't want to get into it, but his idea is that structural linguistics, mixed with a pinch of Marxist dialectics, "proves" his case on poetics unequivocally). Originally published in 1960, Critique of Taste outlines what you could call an Italian version of Structural Marxism. Certainly not as impactful as Althusser's work, but this book is an interesting historical artifact nonetheless.