This volume comprises 14 articles providing a comprehensive examination of the work of Italian experimental writer Gianni Celati (1937–2022), exploring the intersections of his work with the visual arts. These articles serve as both subjects of critical analysis and spaces for interdisciplinary studies.
Originally presented at a two-day international convention with the same title, La scrittura dello sguardo. Gianni Celati e le arti visive (8–9 November 2018, Strasbourg), the articles delve into Celati's reflections on cinema, photography, and figurative arts. While the initial intention of the two-day conference was to fill a gap in Celati studies, this volume also enriches future discussions in Italian Studies, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Studies.
Preceding the articles is a presentation by Nunzia Palmieri, followed by an introduction by Matteo Martelli and Marina Spunta, the volume editors. These initial essays provide a fundamental introduction for scholars, whether they are interested in reading specific articles or the entire book, which successfully gathers contributions from researchers across various disciplines and countries, including Italy, France, the UK, and the USA. The articles are organised convincingly, moving from essays focusing on Celati's work to those examining intersections between his work and that of painters and sculptors, and then cinema.
The first essay by Maria Teresa De Palma explores Gianni Celati's perspective on vision and imagery as a way of engagement with art. This essay introduces the readers to Celati's emphasis on the liberating effect of images from rigid theories and aesthetic norms, offering a profound way to experience reality emotionally and aesthetically. In the second essay, Matteo Martelli juxtaposes Celati's essay ‘Collection of Spaces’ with the works of artists such as Alberto Giacometti and Rachel Whiteread, as well as philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy. Martelli illuminates Celati's dynamic approach to the seen and unseen, suggesting that Celati's reflections entail a dialectical interplay between visibility and concealment, resonating with themes evident in the œuvres of these figures. Celati's nuanced portrayal of perception as a multifaceted phenomenon – wherein life is glimpsed and dispersed amidst space – underscores his exploration of vision as a layered experience, transcending mere observation.
The following two essays by Marco Antonio Bazzocchi and Filippo Milani discuss Gianni Celati's engagement with light, painting, and Po Valley landscapes, drawing connections with artists like Giorgio Morandi and J.M.W. Turner. They highlight Celati's use of appearances to construct narratives about the outside world, akin to Morandi's aesthetic and Luigi Ghirri's photography. Both essays place Celati within landscape reflection and English Romantic traditions, emphasising his exploration of space and vision as ambiguous phenomena, offering insights into his artistic influences and themes. For his part, Giacomo Micheletti's essay investigates an overlooked aspect in previous studies: Celati's collaboration with Antonio Faeti on the pedagogical imagination. Drawing from unpublished material, Micheletti argues that Faeti and Celati's collaboration aimed to reinterpret Italian imagination history, challenging conventional views. This sheds light on Celati's interdisciplinary collaborations, broadening readers’ understanding of his artistic pursuits.
The following three essays by Marco Belpoliti, Marina Spunta, and Gabriele Gimmelli survey the parallels between Celati and other artists, focusing on appearances and immersion in photography (Belpoliti), the incorporation of photography into Celati's conceptual framework of ‘thinking in images,’ and his collaboration with Carlo Gajani alongside Luigi Ghirri (Spunta). Both Spunta's and Gimmelli's essays highlight the collaboration between Celati and Luigi Ghirri's photography, which captures human experience through emotion and imagination. Such collaboration has been central to the artist's creativity in previous studies, which is also pointed out in the introduction to the volume. The essays successfully show, from different perspectives, how Celati's writings – profoundly influenced by Ghirri's work – reveal the latter's deep involvement in visual arts and exploration of literature's connection to photography.
The volume also successfully sheds light on Gianni Celati's engagement with cinema through various essays. Cecilia Monina's contribution discusses Celati's use of ‘double framing,’ comparing it with Luigi Ghirri and Michelangelo Antonioni's approaches while linking cinematic influences to Celati's narrative style and exploration of perception and imagination. Andrea Rondini juxtaposes Celati's themes with John Cassavetes’, highlighting their mutual interest in marginalised characters and improvisational techniques. Michele Ronchi Stefanati examines Celati's documentaries as examples of ‘militant cinematography,’ charting Celati's cinematic evolution from his early works to his narratives in the 1980s. Ugo Fracassa delves into the sustainability of Celati's gaze, contrasting figurative seeing with the realism-naturalism perspective prevalent in literature and cinema. Giulio Iacoli interprets Celati's early work, ‘La farsa dei tre clandestini’, as a pastiche-rewriting of Marx Brothers’ comedies, exploring Celati's approach to media transposition and narrative joy. Overall, these essays stress Celati's profound exploration of perception, imagination, and social commentary through cinematic artistry. Each of them contributes to a nuanced understanding of Celati's multifaceted engagement with cinema, offering insights into how his work intersects with broader cinematic traditions and themes. Denis Brotto's unique essay concludes the volume by evaluating the significance of Gianni Celati's interpersonal relationships, particularly with figures like John Berger, emphasising shared perspectives on the role of art and language in contemporary society. The exchange of letters between Celati and Berger highlights their mutual understanding of various intellectual themes.
This collection of articles offers new perspectives and various methodological approaches to the reading and discussion of Celati's published and unpublished work. Moreover, it constitutes an original study – and a great addition to Comparative Literature Studies – which embraces the interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of literary texts, especially the study of literature and the visual arts where photography and cinema present both thematic and technical inspiration. This collection is also distinctive in its choice of Celati, a literary figure whose exceptional work and style reflect a dialogue with various artistic works (Turner, Morandi, Faeti, Ghirri, Gajani, etc.), with works that encompass both theoretical and philosophical realms (such as Berger, Benjamin, and Deleuze) as well as with the cinema (Visconti, Fellini, Antonioni, Cassavetes, and Rosellini).
