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E-book
Author Bottinelli, Silvia, author.

Title Double-edged comforts : domestic life in modern Italian art and visual culture / Silvia Bottinelli
Published Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2021]
©2021

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Description 1 online resource (x, 322 pages) : illustrations (some color)
Contents Depicting the Italian home : history of an idea and an experience from the 1940s to the 1970s -- Bed stories : sleep, Eros, and violence in the domestic space -- Purifying, beautifying, and intimidating : visual interpretations of domestic bathing and body care -- The home as a site of labour : housekeeping in Italian art and visual culture -- Cooking, feeding, and dining : weaving relationships around the table -- Representations of the television at home : voices from the outside -- Conclusion: Looking forward
Summary "Peeking into the home through the eyes of artists and image-makers, this book unveils the untold story of Italian domestic experiences from the 1940s to the 1970s. Torn between the trauma of World War II and the frenzied optimism of the postwar decades, and haunted by the echoes of fascism, the domestic realm embodied contrasting and often contradictory meanings: care and violence, oppression and emotional fulfillment, nourishment and privation. Silvia Bottinelli casts a fresh light on domestic experiences that are easily overlooked and taken for granted, finding new expressions of home - as an idea, an emotion, a space, and a set of habits - in a variety of cultural and artistic movements, including new realism, visual poetry, pop art, arte povera, and radical architecture, among others. Double-Edged Comforts finds nuance by viewing artistic interpretations of domestic life in dialogue with contemporaneous visual culture: the advertisements, commercials, illustrations, and popular magazines that influenced and informed art, even materially, and often triggered the critical reactions of artists. Bottinelli pays particular attention to women's perspectives, discussing artworks that have fallen through the cracks of established art historical narratives and giving specific consideration to women artists: Carla Accardi, Marisa Merz, Maria Lai, Ketty La Rocca, Lucia Marcucci, and others who were often marginalized by the Italian art system in this period. From sleeping and bathing, chores, and making and eating food to the arrival of television, Double-Edged Comforts provides a fresh account of modern domesticity relevant to anyone interested in understanding how we make sense of the places we live and what we do there, showing how art complicates the familiar comforts and meanings of home."-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [283]-314) and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ProQuest platform, viewed on August 18, 2023)
Subject Home in art.
Families in art.
Art, Italian -- 20th century.
ART / European
Art, Italian
Families in art
Home in art
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0228013739
9780228013730