Pier Paolo Pasolini for art history and practice: Aesthetics and politics

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) remains best known for his influential cinematic and literary works. These attest in turn to a crucial early formation: Pasolini’s intermittent practice as a painter, critic, and historian of art. Spanning the fifth-century BCE to the early twenty-first century, this volume’s chapters reflect the breadth of Pasolini’s aesthetic commitments and predilections, from Greek Attic vase painting to the to the spread of Caravaggism; from folkloric ethnography to the painting of Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Alongside essays examining his influence on twentieth- and twenty-first century aesthetics, artists of different nationality, gender, and generation address Pasolini’s continued consequence for their own work. The very notion of a politically engaged artistic practice owes a debt to Pasolini’s oeuvre – one he called “extravagantly interdisciplinary,” and which finds incisive reflection in the media, methods, and subjects addressed in these pages. Read more