Displacing Caravaggio

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Francesco Zucconi

   Pages 1-25

3. Humanitarian Archeology

   • Francesco Zucconi

   Pages 27-56

4. Un-Still Life

   • Francesco Zucconi

   Pages 57-103

5. Pathos, Survival, and “Quasi Immanence”

   • Francesco Zucconi

   Pages 105-147

6. On the Limits of the Virtual Humanitarian Experience

   • Francesco Zucconi

   Pages 149-181

7. Caravaggio on Lampedusa

   • Francesco Zucconi

   Pages 183-198

8. On Displacing

   • Francesco Zucconi

   Pages 199-206

9. Back Matter

   Pages 207-244

   PDF

This book takes its start from a series of attempts to use Caravaggio’s works for contemporary humanitarian communications. How did his Sleeping Cupid (1608) end up on the island of Lampedusa, at the heart of the Mediterranean migrant crisis? And why was his painting The Seven Works of Mercy (1607) requested for display at a number of humanitarian public events? After critical reflection on these significant transfers of Caravaggio’s work, Francesco Zucconi takes Baroque art as a point of departure to guide readers through some of the most haunting and compelling images of our time. Each chapter analyzes a different form of media and explores a problem that ties together art history and humanitarian communications: from Caravaggio’s attempt to represent life itself as a subject of painting to the way bodies and emotions are presented in NGO campaigns. What emerges from this probing inquiry at the intersection of art theory, media studies and political philosophy is an original critical path in humanitarian visual culture.   

• Baroque
• art
• humanitarian
• bodies
• philosophy
• visual
• suffering
• displacement

“This book presents a useful and compelling analysis of how art history can be mobilised alongside contemporary visual culture in the service of humanitarian communication and sheds light on the potentials and challenges of drawing on the historical legacy of classical painting.” (Tijana Stolic, Contemporary Political Theory, July 13, 2020)

“Francesco Zucconi has produced a wonderful study that considers how Caravaggio’s paintings have been involved in the politics of the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean. … I, for one, will certainly be following with great interest where the methodological displacement of the archive of art history will take him next.” (Matthew D’Ambrosio Griffith, Journal of Italien Cinema & Media Studies, JICMS, January, 2020)

“Much more than a simple reportage, the originality of Zucconi’s approach lies in his nuanced exploration of how they have been involved metaphorically, as the aesthetic qualities that define the works of the Baroque master have been effectively remediated; or, as he argues in the book’s introduction and explores through a series of comparative case studies in the following six chapters, are in the process of being displaced in the crisis’ surrounding visual culture.” (Matthew D’Ambrosio Griffith, Harvard University)

“Zucconi proposes a theoretical standpoint through which a specific iconological use of Caravaggio, from art criticism to visual literacy, may help to analyze the current mediasphere of suffering and, therefore, those media images that inform our perception of traumatic events. By embracing “the notion of displacing as a theoretical and methodological paradigm for the humanities,” the author wisely points out one of the central themes in politics nowadays” (Gianluca Pulsoni for Flash Art)'

“Connecting the current humanitarian crisis with the art of a baroque old master is a bold endeavour. It not only gives the museum pieces relevance for the outside world, but also shows the iconographic tools media use in their visual rhetoric. This shakes up both our complacency that relegates art to elitist enjoyment and our repetition-induced indifference to people dying, starving, and being displaced in front of our eyes. Zucconi makes art relevant again, and beauty socially useful.” (Mieke Bal, Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, The Netherlands)

• Iuav University of Venice, Venice, Italy

  Francesco Zucconi

Francesco Zucconi is Assistant Professor at the IUAV University of Venice, Italy. He has been a Lauro de Bosis fellow at Harvard, USA, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Centre d’Histoire et de Théorie des Arts, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France, where he remains an associate member. He has written a number of books and articles on the theory of cinema, image theory and contemporary visual culture. 


Translated by Zakiya Hanafi, Independent Scholar, USA   

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