Book Description

This illustrated book accompanies the exhibition Pier Paolo Pasolini : Subversive Prophet (Neuberger Museum of Art, February 12 to May 31, 2020). Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italian, 1922-1975) is widely known in Europe for his prolific work as a poet, writer, and film director. A true humanist, his interests encompassed literature, art, history, classic tragedy, psychoanalysis, and politics. For Susan Sontag, Pasolini was "indisputably the most remarkable figure to have emerged in Italian arts and letters since the Second World War. Whatever he did once he did it, had the quality of seeming necessary." Outspoken and subversive, Pasolini made no concessions and at times deliberately provoked his contemporaries, either through challenging political articles or through his films. Violently murdered in 1975 under enigmatic circumstances that shocked Italy and intellectual circles worldwide, Pasolini left three decades of artistic production full of complex and rich themes that are as relevant today as they were then: the universal homogenization of society; the dangers of capitalism; excessive consumption; growing inequality between poor and rich; the relegation of the underprivileged to the outskirts of the city; hypocrisy and repression in the social and political spheres.The exhibition opens with artistic homages to Pasolini by two Latin American artists: the Chilean, New York-based artist Alfredo Jaar, and the late Uruguayan artist Antonio Frasconi (a former Purchase College professor). Both artists pay tribute to Pasolini's outstanding work and denounce his assassination in 1975. This first section also explores the reception of Pasolini in the Americas: in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and the United States-including his first visit to New York, in 1966. A second and larger gallery is devoted to the powerful creativity of Pasolini, featuring his poetry, novels, paintings, and drawings as well as an introduction to his most important films. The exhibition also showcases original film costumes designed in Rome by Farani, including the one used by Pasolini in The Canterbury Tales, in which he plays the role of Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of the original book by the same title.