From Italy to India: Luigi Ontani's 1970s Painted Photographs
dal 6/10/2010 al 6/10/2010
Segnalato da
6/10/2010
From Italy to India: Luigi Ontani's 1970s Painted Photographs
The Museum of Modern Art - MoMA, New York
This Lecture explores a series of watercolor-painted sepia photographs that Luigi Ontani realized in India in collaboration with local photographers and hand-colorists
This lecture explores a series of watercolor-painted sepia photographs that Italian artist Luigi Ontani (b. 1943) realized in India in collaboration with local photographers and hand-colorists. In these photographs, Ontani posed as characters drawn from a variety of Italian and Indian visual sources. For instance, he impersonated religious and mythological figures from old master paintings, Hindu deities from calendar art, and maharajas from miniature paintings and vintage postcards-always with a touch of irony and detachment. Entitled 'En route vers l'Inde (d'apres Pierre Loti)' (On the way to India After Pierre Loti), the series first received international attention at the Venice Biennale of 1978. Ontani started to embrace appropriation strategies in the late 1960s, nearly a decade before they became a trend in the art world internationally, as in the work of Cindy Sherman.