Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
Schifano, Mario
b. 1934, Homs, Libya; d. 26 January 1998, Rome
Painter, photographer and collagist
From a period of minimalism in the early 1960s, Schifano moved into a pop style which
drew on street signs, advertising billboards and the mass media. Recognizing that film
and television have greater reach than fine art, Schifano produced paintings that
resembled a television screen, covering some of them with coloured plexiglass, as well as
venturing into experimental cinema. By the 1980s he was producing landscapes, but still
in a schematic, pop vein. Throughout his career, which encompassed a multitude of styles
and media, Schifano often alluded to the history of art without mimicking it, as in A de
Chirico (To de Chirico) of (see de Chirico). His works are very representa- 1962, a
minimalist tribute to the master of imagery tive of their times.
MAX STAPLES
scholarly publishers
The historical absence in Italy of a direct university press system has created the need for
the various Italian universities to form links with local publishing firms. Due to the strict
correlation between the academic world and socio-political life in Italy all major
commercial publishers, dealing in everything from fiction to journalistic surveys, have
also instituted special series devoted to various scholarly and scientific disciplines. These
publications usually aim at a broader audience, and host works and series which target a
non-specialized and/or academic audience. These series usually focus on the social
sciences, and, in the case of humanistic subjects, concentrate on biographies,
monographic presentations of classics and the re-reading of historical topics and periods.
In specific cases, some of these publishing series preserve a very academic and scholarly
connotation despite the more openly commercial goals of the publishing houses. This is
the case of Feltrinelli, Garzanti, Rusconi and other major publishing enterprises, which
still entrust their non-fictional editorial decisions to editorial boards mostly composed by
university professors or specialists of the various subjects. There are also publishing
houses which began largely as scholarly enterprises but have grown to be overall editorial
businesses, with a broad and varied readership, such as Einaudi, Laterza, Marsilio and
Mursia.
In the case of more specific scholarly and scientific works, the academic system has
had to turn to local and less commercial publishers—many of them internationally
acclaimed in their specific fields—which organize their editorial activity mostly around
the local or the national university system. The series, established in different disciplines,
are directly controlled by editorial boards composed of professors and scholars active in
Italian universities. Many prestigious and internationally known critical and scientific
Entries A–Z 751
works, or highly reputed journals, have been and are published by these small unofficial
university presses.
Some of these scholarly publishers have become so tied to their local academic
environment as to have practically become the local university presses, working almost
exclusively on publications suggested and financed by the local universities. Others, such
as Olschki (Florence), Bollati-Boringhieri (Turin), Il Mulino (Bologna) or, on a lesser
scale, Bulzoni (Rome) or Liguori (Naples), have in different capacities established a
nationwide distribution and a strong scholarly reputation for many or all of their
publications.
Other publishers have specialized in the critical editions of classics, and have achieved
a very prestigious scholarly status. This is the case, for instance, with UTET (Turin), or
Sansoni and Le Monnier (Florence). Others, like Vallecchi (Florence), Marietti (Genoa)
and Sellerio (Palermo) move easily between the most scholarly and academic level and a
selected and refined fictional and journalistic production. Finally, there are some that
have a more openly scholastic approach, and they address their scholarly activity mostly
towards a pedagogical market, like Zanichelli (Bologna), Loescher (Turin) or La Nuova
Italia (Florence).
ANDREA CICCARELLI
Scialoja, Toti
b. 16 December 1914, Rome; d. 1 March 1998, Rome
Artist and poet
A significant exponent of l’informale, Scialoja taught scenography and was a director of
the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He first witnessed action painting in New York in
1956, and took up the technique of dripped paint. His Impronte (Impression) series,
produced between 1957 and 1968, used a piece of paper or fabric as a stamp to produce
repeated impressions across the canvas in graduated bands of colour. He also produced
dozens of books of poetry beginning in 1952. His works for adults, which he described as
lyric prose, tended towards minimalism. The works for children, which are self-
illustrated, are more playful, and have been compared by Italo Calvino to the English
tradition of nonsense poems and limericks.
Further reading
Scialoja, T. (1975) Una vespa! Che spavento: poesie con animali, (A Wasp! What a Fright: Poems
With Animals) Turin: Einaudi (a collection of illustrated poems for children).
MAX STAPLES
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 752
Sciarrino, Salvatore
b. 4 April 1947, Palermo
Composer
Sciarrino’s precocious talent led to the performance of one of his works during the 1962
International New Music Week in Palermo, when he was aged fourteen. He discarded the
music that he had written between 1959 and 1965 as the work of immaturity, however,
and in 1969 attended the course in electronic music under Evangelisti at the Accademia
S. Cecilia. Already considered a leader of the Italian avantgarde, he went on to win a
number of significant international awards during the 1970s. Sciarrino’s mature work
begins with the radical Atto II (1965) for speaker, three trumpets and percussion. This
was followed by Quartetto II (1967), which shows a confident mastery of the form born
of study of the late works of Beethoven. His style has remained constant and,
notwithstanding occasional excursions into aleatoricism (Sonata for two pianos, 1967), is
founded on the Beethovenian elaboration of fragmentary ideas into large-scale structures.
The one-act opera Amore e Psiche (Cupid and Psyche) (1973) shows a tendency towards
symbolism and fantasy, while later works (Lohengrin, 1982–4; Vanitas, 1981) reassert
his allegiance to the past.
Further reading
Chiesa, R. (1998) Salvatore Sciarrino, Milan: Targa Italiana (a biographical study).
JOHN KERSEY
Sciascia, Leonardo
b. 8 January 1921, Racalmuto, Sicily; d. 20 November 1989, Palermo
Writer and essayist
Sciascia’s writing typically confronts the problems afflicting Sicily and considers how far
logic and reasoning can be used to improve social conditions. His style locates itself
somewhere between the essay and fictional narrative: it is essay in its depiction of social
problems—though these are sometimes composite rather than exact—while its use of
fictional narrative leads the reader through the character’s coming to conscious
realization of these social facts.
His early work, Le parrocchie di Regalpetra (The Parishes of Regalpetra) (1956) was
a thinly veiled documentary account of daily life in his own birthplace, Racalmuto.
Sciascia used an autobiographical model in recounting his childhood in Sicily under
Fascism, as he grew to understand the realities of the regime. However, his greatest
Entries A–Z 753
popular success came in 1961 with Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl), which
was soon translated into English (as Mafia Vendetta) and also made into a film by
Damiano Damiani.
In this work, Sciascia adopts the form of the classic English detective story in which
crime is an aberration with respect to the norm, and the detective needs only to identify
the perpetrator in order to gain a confession and, consequently, the restoration of order. In
Sciascia’s clever reworking of the formula, the culprits are soon identified, but this has no
practical effect because they remain safe and untouchable behind political protection,
which suggests that society itself is out of joint. Furthermore, within the apparently
fictional narrative Sciascia produces a highly accurate and realistic portrayal of how the
mafia operates, and of the mentality of its members and supporters.
As Eco would later prove with The Name of the Rose, the murder-mystery was an
ideal form for rational inquiry, and Sciascia followed Il giorno with three more detective
stories. In interviews, he admitted using the genre as a structuring device to engage the
reader while conveying information about Sicilian society. At the same time, he also
rejected the idea that crime can generally be analysed and solved through reason, and
indeed his later narratives came to shed less light and make less sense. Sciascia took the
French Enlightenment as his icon of rationalism, and it appears in his novels Il Consiglio
d’Egitto (The Council of Egypt) (1963) and Candido (Candide) (1977), but throughout
his life his attitudes wavered, from the emphatic optimism he expresses in his first works
to his ‘serene despair’ that Italy would never change, expressed shortly before his death.
Despite his popularity and success, Sciascia wrote only part-time until 1970, while
continuing to work as a teacher and civil servant. Later he served as member of local
government and then in the Italian and European Parliaments. His final works examined
the law, civic and moral responsibilities, and justice. He campaigned against capital
punishment, which he regarded as murder sanctioned by the state, laying out his
arguments in Porte aperte (Open Doors) (1987), a fictionalized account of a magistrate
who must decide whether or not to impose a sentence of death. Il cavaliere e la morte
(The Knight and Death) (1988) serves as a summing up of his reflections on life, reason,
and madness, in preparation for death.
Further reading
Farrell, J. (1995) Leonardo Sciascia, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (a substantial
discussion of Sciascia’s themes and works, showing how his philosophies are given literary
form).
Sciascia, L. (trans. 1963) Mafia Vendetta, London: Jonathan Cape.
——(trans. 1993) Open Doors and Three Novellas, trans. J. Ravinovitch and M. Evans, New York:
Vintage Books.
MAX STAPLES
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 754
Scola, Ettore
b. 10 May 1931, Trevico
Director and scriptwriter
Scola is one of Italy’s most visually and intellectually exciting film-makers. A number of
his films such as C’eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much) (1974)
and Una giornata particolare (A Special Day) (1977) have received international
acclaim, while others like Trevico-Torino: Viaggio nel Fiat-Nam (Trevico-Turin: Voyage
to Fiat-Nam) (1973) have generated aesthetic and political controversy. And yet, perhaps
because his personal life has not lent itself to scandal and because his approach to film-
making has been entirely competent and professional, he has not been the object of the
frequently morbid media and the critical interest that has surrounded better known Italian
filmmakers like Rossellini, Fellini, Pasolini or Bertolucci.
Born into a middle-class family in rural southern Italy, Scola moved to Rome when he
was four. At an early age he discovered a talent and passion for drawing caricatures,
sketches and cartoons. Against the wishes of his family, who wanted him to follow his
father in becoming a physician, Scola approached the editors of the satirical magazine,
Marc’Aurelio, with samples of his work. Initially rejected, his work was eventually
published and he continued to contribute to the magazine while still in high school.
During his four years with Marc’Aurelio (1949–53) Scola met several young men who
were to become prominent as film-makers (Cesare Zavattini, Francesco Rosi, Federico
Fellini, Mario Monicelli) and scriptwriters (Vittorio Metz, Marcello Marchesi, Steno,
Ruggero Maccari and Furio Scarpelli).
Beginning his career in the film industry in the 1950s by writing gags for more
established script-writers, Scola went on in the next three decades to co-author over fifty
scripts, mostly of commedia all’Italiana (comedy Italian style). In 1964, with little
practical experience, he directed his first film, Se permettete, parliamo di donne (If You
Don’t Mind, Let’s Talk About Women), a light comedy which was critically well
received but which provoked Lina Wertmüller to reply in kind the following year with
her Questa volta parliamo di uomini (This Time We Talk About Men). In the years that
followed, while continuing to write scripts for other directors, Scola also directed over
twenty-five films of his own.
Scola’s first films already demonstrated an evolution beyond the value-free humour of
the Marc’Aurelio towards the more trenchant social criticism of Italian mores being
articulated by the better directors and scriptwriters of the comedy Italian style. In his
subsequent films, his major interest shifted to the fate of the individual overwhelmed by
forces which can be neither controlled nor understood. In many films Scola, also
continued to explore a theme which had fascinated him from the beginning, not only
social reality but the very nature of representation in film.
Entries A–Z 755
Further reading
Bondanella, P. (1995) Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, New York: Continuum (an
analysis of Scola’s career and films).
Gieri, M. (1995) Contemporary Italian Filmmaking: Strategies of Subversion, Toronto: University
of Toronto Press (see pp. 157–97 for an analysis of Scola’s place in Italian cinema).
Marcus, M. (1986) Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press (see in particular pp. 391–421 for an analysis of C’eravamo tanto amati).
BEN LAWTON
sculpture
Like painting, contemporary Italian sculpture has found itself divided between figurative
and abstract tendencies. Traditional Italian art, along with the more recent examples of
Marini and de Chirico, provided a figurative model, but the entire thrust of modernism
and the avantgarde was towards experimentation and the denial of representation. Unlike
painting, which returned to a refreshed figuration in the 1980s, sculpture continued to
find its scope eroded by the changing market and the emergence of new genres of mixed
media and installation, with perhaps only public sculpture remaining a vital area of
activity.
Italian sculpture dominated Western art, in Imperial Rome and again during the
Renaissance, the Baroque and beyond, with masters such as Brunelleschi, Michelangelo,
Bernini and Canova. At its height, sculpture was set up in public places in order to
impress the ordinary passer-by with the deeds and power of the rich and famous. The
modern state, however, does not need sculpture as propaganda since it has more
sophisticated and wide-re aching forms of image building at its disposal such as the press
and television. This is one reason why the idea of sculpture has become disassociated
from the notion of statues.
Since the Second World War, art in Italy has been characterized by a succession of
movements all claiming to be innovative and challenging. In addition, there has been a
struggle between figurative and abstract styles. This contestation has been largely played
out in the medium of painting since, in its representation of three-dimensional objects on
a two-dimensional surface, painting encapsulates the artfulness of artistic representation.
Self-consciously modern painting initially shocked its audience precisely because it
renounced this vocation in order to revel instead in its own surface, as for example in the
works of Alberto Burri. Sculpture, however, being a three-dimensional medium
representing three-dimensional things, was never quite as central to the debate.
Significantly, when Lucio Fontana chose to explore the deep space of art, he did it in
part with rents and gashes on the surface of a two-dimensional canvas.
Some postwar sculptors continued to work in a figurative style. Marino Marini
throughout the 1950s produced an expressive series of horse and rider, which he used to
reflect the human condition. Giacomo Manzù, a professed atheist, was nevertheless able
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 756
to attract major religious commissions for figurative works, most notably the bronze
Doors of Death for St Peter’s in Rome.
Ranged against this figurative current were ‘assemblers’ such as Ettore Colla, who
organized recognizable found objects in new abstract shapes, and the rather more
whimsical Fausto Melotti and Leoncillo Leonardi, who worked with terracotta. Such
sculpture, however, despite its modernist credentials, was not highly sought after either
by private collectors or by museums. In fact, abstract sculpture had its greatest successes
when commissioned for public places. Here, it played on the great Italian tradition of
public display of art, though it tended to be located in newly created quarters or those
bereft of more traditional sculpture, with the doctrinaire purpose of bringing culture to the
people.
Recent public sculpture has been inclined to use large, geometric shapes, and to
display new materials and technologies in a positive light. Such are the geometric forms
of Arnaldo Pomodoro, displayed in Rimini and Cesena, and the formal jumbles of his
brother Gio Pomodoro, combinations of regular shapes which actively encourage
community participation.
At the same time, sculpture has found its domain eroded by two new genres,
installation and mixed media, which are less oriented to aesthetic effect and more towards
a message. Installation is a temporary arrangement of objects in a three-dimensional form
in a room or other space. Mixed media is more an extension of painting, usually
beginning with a flat surface but to which can be added all sorts of objects created or
found to make it three-dimensional.
In the 1960s, installation was non-commercial, temporary and closely tied to the
statements it sought to make. However, since then it has become largely commodified.
Much installation today is sponsored by, and set in, galleries and there are even a few
private collectors who are buying entire installations and setting them up in their homes,
thus shifting the emphasis from the message back on to the object. Moreover, since the
1960s it has become difficult to distinguish between what has been intended as sculpture
and what as installation, though a rule of thumb may be that sculpture more often consists
of objects genuinely created by the artist. For example, Giulio Paolini’s Mimesis (1975)
may look very much like sculpture—the Medici Venus in fact—but it is not. It merely
uses plaster copies of sculpture to form an installation; the artistic input lies in the
combination of the elements and the intent. Pino Pascali displays a full-size cannon in
Cannone ‘Bella Ciao’ of 1965, an ironic comment on the machines of war, not an
invitation to admire the workmanship of the armourer. His Rinoceronte e giraffe
(Rhinoceros and Giraffes) of 1966 is labelled an installation, but is apparently the work
of the artist and has aesthetic qualities, which suggests it is sculpture. This difficulty of
classification becomes extreme in the work of Jannis Kounellis, whose Cavalli (Horses)
(1969) consists of real horses. Here there is no mimesis or figuration because Kounellis
has taken the signified to represent the signifier, but this leads to the question of whether
this is ‘living’ sculpture, installation, art or merely a material joke.
Given the increasing precariousness of earning a living as a full-time sculptor,
sculpture is now more often produced by artists active in other fields. The painter Giorgio
de Chirico created his Hector and Andromache in terracotta in 1940, but this was
posthumously enlarged and cast in 1986 in order to exploit de Chirico’s greater
reputation at this time. This signals the same return to figuration as Scultura andata,
Entries A–Z 757
scultura storna (Sculpture Gone, Sculpture Averted), a bronze fountain featuring a
Renaissance-style angel produced by Enzo Cucchi and Sandro Chia in 1982. However,
such large-scale works are a commitment of time, technique and materials that few artists
today can afford to produce.
See also: art movements
MAX STAPLES
Second Vatican Council
Called by Pope John XXIII in January 1959, the Second Vatican Council transformed
the Roman Catholic Church worldwide and had profound effects on Italy. Consisting of
most of the Roman Catholic bishops of the world, experts on canon law and theology,
and many Catholic and non-Catholic observers, the Council met in three sessions from
October 1962 to December 1964. The early stages were notable for the fierce battles over
the conduct of sessions and the drafting of schema and declarations between the
conservatives in the Roman curia and progressive bishops, especially from Belgium,
France and North America. In the end, the progressives won most of the battles.
The most important outcomes of the Council were as follows:
1 The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which replaced Latin by the vernacular in the
services of the Church, and introduced mass facing the people.
2 The emergence of the concept of ‘collegiality’, whereby all bishops share in the
responsibilities of the pope and the consequent summoning of synods of bishops every
two or three years.
3 The declaration exculpating the Jews for the death of Christ which, though welcomed
by the Jews themselves, did not lead to an immediate improvement in relations
between the Vatican and the state of Israel.
4 The declaration on religious liberty and the relaunching of Catholic ecumenism with a
consequent warming of relations with Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran and
other Christian churches.
5 A new emphasis on the role of the laity in the Church.
6 A stress on the importance of individual conscience as against the absolute authority of
the teachings of the Church.
7 The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which accelerated the increasing
concern on the part of the Church for the countries of the Third World.
The work of the Council was generally welcomed inside the Church, but it was also
criticized for subverting traditional Catholic belief and discipline, most notably by the
French archbishop Lefebre and his followers, who set up a schismatic church in protest.
The influence of the Council undermined the traditional Italian Catholic culture of
obedience, giving rise to the Cattolici del dissenso, groups of Catholics at loggerheads
with the hierarchical church over such things as the liturgy, mixed lay clergy
communities and questions relating to sexuality. Most spectacularly, the Council made it
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 758
possible for some leading Catholic intellectuals to defy the Church hierarchy and
advocate a ‘no’ vote in the referendum against divorce in 1974. In broader terms, the
Council also resulted in the undermining of traditional forms of Catholic associationalism
in Italy and weakened the political influence of the Church, thus making it possible for
increasing numbers of Catholics to vote for parties other than the DC.
See also: Catholic associations; church, state and society; Vatican
Further reading
Hastings, A. (1991) Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After, London: SPCK.
JOHN POLLARD
sectorial languages
Sectorial languages (also called sectional varieties, special languages, technical languages
or subcodes) are the varieties of Italian used in specific sectors of society, such as the
language of the bureaucracy, of chemistry, of politics. More precisely, ‘sectorial’
languages refer to less specialized areas without a specific terminology and addressing
the wider audience through the mass media, such as politics and advertising ‘Specialist’
or ‘scientific’ languages, on the other hand, refer to highly specialized disciplines with
their own terminology and precise rules governing it, such as chemistry, linguistics or
physics.
Specialist and sectorial languages are rapidly expanding as a result of the creation of
new fields and subfields of specialization, which in turn create new linguistic needs.
Consequently, two major issues concern the actual number of languages that can be
identified and the boundaries between them.
Of major interest is the formation of their lexicon. Specialist and sectorial languages
draw upon ordinary language to create their own terms, but they also have an impact on
ordinary language, especially through the media. This is particularly noticeable for some
sectorial languages, such as sport or advertising. As to specialist languages, their
penetration into ordinary language has been attributed to the high prestige enjoyed by
scientific terms. Overall, current trends point to an increasing impact of these languages
on ordinary language.
Both specialist and sectorial languages fluctuate between the need to further specialize
and the need to reach out to the wider public. It is recognized that, compared to other
countries, Italy still lacks a suitable language for the wide diffusion of scientific material.
Among sectorial languages that have been studied most are the languages of sport,
politics, bureaucracy and advertising; among specialist languages, the languages of
economics, science and computers.
In the lexicon of sectorial languages, words are taken from everyday language and
given a new meaning: for example, in sport, porta ‘door’ to indicate the goal area, and
panchina ‘bench’ to refer to the coaches; in politics, linea ‘line’ to mean ‘political
Entries A–Z 759
orientation’. Archaisms or learned words are also very frequent: for example, in the
bureaucracy, dirimere ‘to settle’ and codesto ‘that’ continue to be used although
obsolete everywhere else. Sectorial languages abound in rhetorical figures: in the
language of politicians, crisi strisciante ‘creeping crisis’ and manodopera disponibile
‘available workforce’ refer to unemployment and the unemployed, for the double purpose
of catching the audience’s attention and being deliberately obscure; in the language of
sport, novanta minuti di furente battaglia ‘ninety minutes of raging battle’ may describe a
match. Frequently new words are created: in advertising, amarevole ‘bitter’, instead of
amaro, and cioccolatarsi ‘to have oneself a chocolate’ try to have a special impact on
their audience; in politics, Tangentopoli ‘corruption city’ refers to the uncovering of
political and bureaucratic corruption by the Italian magistrates. Many of these new words,
however, have a very limited life-span. Words are also borrowed from other languages:
in sport, pivot, play-maker and tie-break are imported from English. Some borrowings
may take on Italian endings, such as dribblare from ‘to dribble’. Sectorial languages
frequently use routines and formulas: in the bureaucracy, nel caso che ‘in case that’ and
non si esclude che ‘it is not excluded that’ attempt to moderate the general tone of the
statements, and entro e non oltre il giorno ‘within and not beyond the day’, when setting
deadlines, creates an effect of ‘precision’ by being redundant. Interestingly, sectorial
languages also tend to borrow terms from each other: the language of politics draws upon
economics, as in gestione ‘management’ and bilancio ‘budget’; upon sport, as in
rilanciare la palla ‘to resend the ball’; upon medicine, as in diagnosi ‘diagnosis’ and
terapia ‘therapy’; and upon technology, as in freno ‘brake’ and acceleratore
‘accelerator’.
At the grammatical level, sectorial languages display a number of features which
include (1) a very frequent use of prefixes or suffixes such as super-, ultra-, bio- and
mini- in advertising, -ista and -ino in politics, to form for example leghista ‘member of
the Lega Nord’ and pidiessino ‘member of the PDS’; and (2) a preference for nominal
structures, so that verbs tend to be substituted with a verb plus noun structure: for
example, in bureaucracy, prendere in esame ‘to take something into consideration’
instead of esaminare ‘to examine’, and opporre un rifiuto ‘to give a refusal’ instead of
rifiutare ‘to refuse’.
The lexicon of specialist languages differs from that of sectorial languages as they
need to refer to entities with maximum precision and clarity; hence, each term has one
meaning only and cannot be substituted by a synonym but at the most by a definition, in
order to avoid any possible ambiguity. Their terms often have everyday equivalents: for
example, acido cloridrico ‘hydrochloric acid’ versus acido muriatico ‘muriatic acid’.
Furthermore, new terms are created by using a few standard mechanisms: in medicine,
the suffix—osi is used to refer to a chronic disease, as in scoliosi ‘scoliosis’, and -oma to
refer to types of tumours, as in carcinoma ‘carcinoma’. Thus, a great number of new
terms can be formed through a limited number of endings. Specialist languages also
employ everyday terms with a totally different meaning—in mathematics, campo ‘field’
refers to an algebraic system with particular properties and they borrow or translate
words from other languages: for example, ‘pace maker’ in medicine, and ‘fiscal drag’ and
drenaggio fiscale in economics.
At the grammatical level, texts in specialist languages also display a strong preference
for nouns and more generally for nominalization, whereby a verb is turned into a noun,
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 760