Michele Dantini's New Book Revises 20th-Century Italian Art History

Michele Dantini's 'Storia dell’arte e storia civile. Il Novecento in Italia' (il Mulino, 2022) offers a critical revision of 20th-century Italian art, building on his earlier works 'Geopolitiche dell’arte' (2012) and 'Arte e politica in Italia' (2018). The author frames the book as an archaeology of present impasses, stemming from a decline of metaphysics and Christian figurative heritage. Dantini focuses on Italy's antimodernist vision between the wars, engaging with Panofsky, Wind, and Gombrich. He analyzes the Italy-Germany relationship through the journal 'Valori Plastici', contrasting distrust of avant-gardes with reasonableness. The study examines Italian Surrealism, Duchamp's influence, and Ernesto De Martino's ethnoanthropology. Key figures include Edoardo Persico, who reconciled art and faith; Bernard Berenson as a militant critic; and Carlo Levi, who identified deep Italian artistic traits in archaic religiosity. Dantini also discusses Carla Lonzi and Pino Pascali, framing Pascali's 'geopolitical' practice as shamanic. The book concludes by renewing the 'Kultur' vs. 'Zivilisation' opposition in art as a tension between technical secularism and metaphysical symbolism.