Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper aims to examine the problem of imitation in Luigi Pirandello’s critical and theoretical works (from his first articles, published in the late XIXth century, to the volumes Arte e scienza and L’umorismo, 1908), in order to analyse the role plaid by the author in the wider context of Modernism. On the one hand, it will be illustrated the importance of mimesis for Pirandello’s opinion on contemporary literature, especially with regard to Naturalism and Neoidealism.

The contribute describes the experience of conducting two workshops, dedicated to the analysis and design of the housing equipment and appliances on the basis of the two realized projects: the Werkbund exhibition of 1914 and the Weissenhofsiedlung, 1927. The two cultural projects are subtended by a conception of design that considers the world of objects, both tangible and intangible, as a result of dynamic evolution. The artifacts of the past considered a heritage of forms and programmatic ideas in a continuous transformation that is projected into the contemporary and near future.

The chapter explores common themes in modernist authors such as Loos and Musil and connects them to Wittgenstein's philosophy. It argues that Loos, Musil, and Wittgenstein all develop (in distinctive ways) a modernist awareness of how art, morality and the region of values falsify spiritual needs under the form of grandeur, sentimentality, moralism, ornament, and pretence. The aesthetic and the region of the higher are falsified because their current expressions sublimate ordinary activities and needs as matters of style and ornament.

Autorappresentazione e autoconsapevolezza del samizdat come processo in tutte le metanarrative che descrivono il testo clandestino: come nasce, lo spirito con cui nasce, l’ambiente in cui nasce e si diffonde. Verranno utilizzate solo fonti testuali, escludendo del tutto testimonianze e memorie (salvo fonti ibride come Momemurs di Berg e Trapanazione del cranio di Gandlevskij), così da avere un quadro di grande intensità, non certo documentalmente attendibile, ma porta d’accesso esclusiva alla dimensione più profonda del fenomeno.

The paper explores the relation between space, both urban and rural territory arranged by Ottoman Empire, and a western power (Italy) that wanted to impose different aesthetic codes to shape new spatial structures, those derived from a complex blending of Modernism and rhetorical architecture (Ciucci, 1989). Italian modernism, at the beginning of twentieth century, molded autocratic spaces by four main design tools: pure volumes, colors and materials, rhythms, and scales (Rava, 1931).