Art and Marginality of Everyday: When it Makes Censoship

Abstract

In the Twentieth Century the artistic appropriation of daily life hasn’t always been pacific. A possible perspective of investigation relating the shifting from functionality to aesthic in art is, therefore, the relationship between censorship and the implicit conflictual potential of an image or an action. How much do they influence collective valours, until undermine them through reasons or facts of public knowledge, but marginals on the public debate? Two well known episodes as that of never opened Hans Haacke’s exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum of New York (April 1971), and that of the prompt closing of Gino De Dominicis’ room during the Venice Biennial (June 1972), share in the censorship suffered the reasoning of not being purest work of art. On one side Haacke would have had exposed pictures and datum, yet accesibles to everyone, regarding real estate — i.e. Shapolski et al., Manhattan Real estate Holding —; on the other side the presence of a Down syndrome man within the work of the italian artist Seconda soluzione di immortalità, than known to the chronicles as the work of “The Mongoloid” even if that presence was not the principal aim of the work. Since these examples, the proposal is to develop an investigation regarding relationship between censorhip and ontology of an art work in the second part of the Twentieth Century, relating to the use of daily objects. A central point of view would be the admission of critical matters by the two artists and the way thoose are processed by the criterion of narration, mimesis, language and actuality.