Tomaso Montanari's Art History Book Challenges Marketing-Driven Culture

Tomaso Montanari's latest book, 'La seconda ora d'arte', published by Einaudi in 2021, critiques the marketing-driven approach to art popularization in Italy, where ministers, mayors, journalists, and museum directors claim to know how to engage the public but fail to act. Montanari proposes mass education, especially in schools, as an alternative to both exclusive art history and superficial consumerist promotion. The book selects 100 artworks, from prehistoric cave paintings (linked to Bataille) to a 2013 series by Mounir Fatmi, which overlays surgical operating rooms photographed across Europe with faces of saints from Beato Angelico's predella of the San Marco altarpiece in Florence. Montanari's interpretations focus on social inequalities and civic education, as seen in his reading of El Greco's 'Visitation', where Elizabeth and Mary are depicted as poor, pregnant, abandoned by their husbands, and wrapped in an otherworldly cloak, symbolizing society's outcasts seeking solidarity. Other works analyzed include Masaccio's 'Distribution of the Church's Goods to the Poor and the Death of Anania' (1424-27), set in realistic Florence streets and hills, highlighting the poor and marginalized, and Simone Martini's 'Return of Jesus from the Temple', which captures a tense family moment with a rebellious adolescent Jesus, his furious mother Mary, and a conciliatory Joseph. The book aims to foster an artistic education that encompasses emotional and civic learning.