The re-identification of Pop Art: its reception from an Italian perspective

The Pop Art phenomenon has been a subject of discussion for art critics, gallerists, collectors and the artists themselves, since its first appearance in the ’50s. However, since the ’80s there has been a strong interest in retrospectively studying the current, trying not only to define its spread in geographical and chronological terms, but also to identify which artists and single pieces of artwork can be labeled as ‘Pop’. Despite the efforts made in describing the current, previous research has trivialized it, so much so that the term Pop has been misattributed, and its features are not precise. Within this framework, this thesis aims to investigate the artistic fortunes of Pop Art in Italy, trying to understand whether what happened in Italy could be identified as such, especially focusing on the period between 1962 and 1964, and the period immediately after. Among the centers where Pop Art spread, Milan and Rome are the focus of this investigation that works to observe their possible connections with the US. For this reason, the research has been conducted according to a linguistic and visual philological methodology, analyzing primary material (such as the archives of the so-called Italian Pop artists), as well as critical primary and secondary sources (from the end of the Fifties to nowadays). Additionally, due to the influence of other art forms, such as music, cinema and theater, the topic calls for an inter-disciplinary approach in order to describe the socio-cultural context in which Pop Art appeared. In light of such analysis, this research provides a comprehensive overview of the Pop current based on historical data, redefining the term, the socio-cultural context and the issues to resolve, in order to re-read such a phenomenon. Finally, the thesis suggests that the work done here be followed as a methodological approach to reidentify Pop Art in single territories, in order to better understand the diverse iterations of either the current itself or its aesthetic characteristics.