Art Catalogues — Richard Milazzo

Where these publications are not OP (out of print),
they are available either through
1. the individual publishers; 2. Amazon.com; 3. Ursus Books; 4. Arcana; 4. edgewisepress.org;
or directly through 5. jlglass@mindspring.com

Natural Genre:
From the Neutral Subject to the Hypothesis of World Objects
Collins & Milazzo
(Tallahassee, Florida: Fine Arts Gallery and Museum, School of Visual Arts, Florida State University, 1984). OP

Spiritual America
Collins & Milazzo
(Buffalo, New York: C.E.P.A., 1986). OP

The New Poverty
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: John Gibson Gallery, 1987). OP

Media Post Media
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: Scott Hanson Gallery, New York, 1988). OP

Art at the End of the Social
Collins & Milazzo
(Malmö, Sweden: The Rooseum, 1988). OP

Hybrid Neutral: Modes of Abstraction and the Social
Collins & Milazzo, Gary Indiana
(New York: Independent Curators, Inc., 1988). OP

Pre-Pop Post-Appropriation
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: Stux Gallery / in cooperation with Leo Castelli Gallery, 1989). OP

Buena Vista
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: John Gibson Gallery, 1989). OP

A Curatorial Project: Ford Beckham (One-Person Exhibition)Meg Webster (Projects Room);
Sal Scarpitta (One-Person Exhibition), Robert Rauschenberg (Projects Room), Change Inc. Benefit;
Token Gestures (A Painting Show), Charles Clough(Projects Room)
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: Scott Hanson Gallery, 1990). OP

The Last Decade: American Artists of the ’80s
Collins & Milazzo, Robert Pincus-Witten
(New York: Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 1990). OP

Who Framed Modern Art or the Quantitative Life of Roger Rabbit
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: Sidney Janis Gallery, 1991). OP

Outside America: Going into the 90’s
Collins & Milazzo
(Atlanta, Georgia: Fay Gold Gallery, 1991). OP

A New Low
Collins & Milazzo
(Turin, Italy: Claudio Botello Gallery, 1991). OP

Sal Scarpitta: New Works
Collins & Milazzo, Thomas McEvilley
(New York: Annina Nosei / in cooperation with Leo Castelli Gallery, 1991). OP

Theoretically Yours
Collins & Milazzo
(Aosta, Italy: Regione Autonoma della Valle d’Aosta, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, 1992). OP

Who’s Afraid of Duchamp, Minimalism, and Passport Photography?
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: Annina Nosei Gallery, 1992). OP

Elvis Has Left the Building (A Painting Show)
Collins & Milazzo
(521 West 23rd Street, New York / sponsored by Sandro Chia, 1993). OP

Vik Muniz: Photographs and Sculptures
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: Grand Salon / Verona, Italy: Ponte Pietra, 1993). OP

Sandro Chia: Small Bronze Sculptures
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: Grand Salon, New York, 1994). OP

Alessandro Twombly: Paintings
Collins & Milazzo
(New York: Grand Salon, New York, 1994). OP

Across the River and into the Trees (A Sculpture Show)
Collins & Milazzo
(Woodbury, New York: The Rushmore Festival, 1994). OP

Bill Rice: New Paintings
Richard Milazzo, Ed Burns
(New York: 11, rue Larrey at Sidney Janis Gallery, 1996). OP

Michel Frère: New Paintings
Richard Milazzo, Michel Frère
(New York: 11, rue Larrey at Sidney Janis Gallery, 1996). OP

Sandro Chia: New Paintings
Richard Milazzo, Sandro Chia
(New York: Sidney Janis Gallery, 1996)

Realism After Seven A.M.:
Realist Painting After Edward Hopper –
An Exhibition of 25 Artists in Honor of the 25th Anniversary of the Hopper House
Richard Milazzo
(Nyack, New York: The Hopper House Museum and Study Center, Nyack, 1996). OP

Alessandro Twombly: New Sculpture
Richard Milazzo
(New York: 11, rue Larrey at Sidney Janis Gallery, 1997). OP

Malcolm Morley: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Sculptures
Richard Milazzo, Achille Bonito Oliva
(Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Gallery, 1998)

Barney & Joan: Barney Rosset’s Photographs of Joan Mitchell
Richard Milazzo
(New York: James Danziger Gallery, 1998). OP

La Salle des Pieds Perdus:
The Sculptures and Drawings of Abraham David Christian
Richard Milazzo
(New York: Annina Nosei Gallery, 1999)

Saint Clair Cemin: Bronzes
Richard Milazzo
(Brussels, Belgium: Gallery Velge & Noirhomme, 1999). OP

Ross Bleckner: Paintings 1997-1999
Richard Milazzo, Achille Bonito Oliva
(Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Gallery, 1999)

Sandro Chia: New Paintings
Richard Milazzo
(Brussels, Belgium: Velge & Noirhomme, Brussels, Belgium, 2000)

Robert Longo: 1980-2000
Richard Milazzo
(monograph)
(Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Gallery, 2000)

Alex Katz: New Paintings, 2001-2002
Richard Milazzo, Achille Bonito Oliva
(Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Gallery, 2003)

Alessandro Twombly: New Paintings
Richard Milazzo
(Brussels, Belgium: Gallery Alain Noirhomme, Brussels, Belgium, 2003). OP

David Salle: New Paintings, 1999-2003
Richard Milazzo, Achille Bonito Oliva
(Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Gallery, 2003)

Robert Longo: Fire, Water, Rock, 2003-2005
Richard Milazzo, Achille Bonito Oliva
(Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Gallery, 2005)

Mark Innerst: Paintings of New York, 2005-2006
Richard Milazzo
(monograph)
(Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Gallery, 2007)

William Anastasi: Paintings, Small Works, Drawings
Richard Milazzo
(monograph)
(Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Gallery, Modena, Italy, 2009)

The Flower Paintings of Ross Bleckner
Richard Milazzo
(monograph)
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editions, 2011)

Mimmo Paladino: New Paintings, 2008-2011
Richard Milazzo
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editions, 2012)

Peter Nagy:
Entertainment Erases History – Works 1982 to 2004 to the Present
Richard Milazzo
(monograph)
(New York: EISBox Projects, 2014)

The Mannequin of History:
Art After Fabrications of Critique and Culture
Richard Milazzo
(Modena, Italy: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2015)

Skewed:
Ruminations on the Writings and Works of Peter Halley
Richard Milazzo
with an Italian translation by Brunella Antomarini and Pietro Traversa
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2016)

The Corner of the Room:
Ross Bleckner’s Paintings of the 1970s,
with New Works by the Artist
Richard Milazzo
with an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio.
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2018)

A Kiss Before Dying:
Walter Robinson – A Painter of Pictures and Arbiter of Critical Pleasures
with an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2020)

Franco Fontana, 1961-2017
with an Italian translation by Mario Mazzoli
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2021)

Pizzi Cannella: Night Owl, 2014-2022,
with an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli, Editore, 2022.

Nostalgia for Scandal:
The ‘Not’ Paintings, Sculptures, Works on Paper by Mike Bidlo
with an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2022).

Gian Marco Montesano’s Cathedrals of Italy and the Pertinence of the Soul;
or, “My Laissez-faire Attitude Is the Mark of a Hidden Sorrow”
with an Italian translation by Ginevra Qudrio Curzio and Stephen Piccolo
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2023.)

Pier Paolo Calzolari: Le Terre Est Bleue Comme une Orange
with an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio
(Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2024).

Art at the End of the Social
Collins & Milazzo
With a Swedish translation by Stefan Sandelin.
First edition: 1988.
376 pages, with a color cover by Robert Gober and 177 color reproductions,
11.25 x 9.25 in., printed and bound by Bohusläningens Boktryckeri AB, Uddevalla, Sweden.
ISBN-10: 0-945295-03-3.
Malmö, Sweden: The Rooseum, 1988. OP

The Last Decade: American Artists of the ’80s
Collins & Milazzo
With essays by Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo, and Robert Pincus-Witten,
and black and white photographic portraits of the artists by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
First edition: March 1990.
140 pages, with 35 color reproductions, 12.25 x 9.5 in., printed in the United States.
New York: Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 1990. OP

Who Framed Modern Art or the Quantitative Life of Roger Rabbit
Collins & Milazzo
First edition: March 1991.
32 pages, with 12 color reproductions, 7.5 x 9.5 in., printed and bound the United States.
New York: Sidney Janis Gallery, 1991. OP

Sal Scarpitta: New Works
Collins & Milazzo
With texts by Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo, and Thomas McEvilley
and Giorgio Franchetti.
First edition: 1991.
32 pages, with 1 black and white and 8 color reproductions, 9.5 x 9.5 in.,
printed and bound the United States.
New York: Annina Nosei, in cooperation with Leo Castelli, 1991. OP

Theoretically Yours
Collins & Milazzo
With an Italian translation by GianCarlo Pagliasso, Renato Ghiazza, Anne-Maryse Newmann.
First edition: May 1992.
228 pages, with a 4-colour cover by Philip Taaffe and transparent plastic jacket,
36 black and white photographs and 35 color reproductions,
8.75 x 9.25 x .75 in., printed and bound in Italy.
Aosta, Italy: Museum of the Regione Autonoma della Valle d’Aosta,
Chiesa di San Lorenzo, 1992. OP

Malcolm Morley: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Sculpture
Richard Milazzo
With an essay by Richard Milazzo and a text by Achille Bonito Oliva
and Italian and English translations by Anel Bedy, Massimiliano Gioni, Gianni Romano.
First edition deluxe hardback: September 1998.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
104 pages, with a 4-colour cover and transparent plastic jacket,
pages printed in various colors, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece
by Roger Tully, 29 color and 5 black and white reproductions,
13.50 x 19.5 x .75 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Castelvetro, Piacentino (Pc), Italy.
ISBN-10: 1-893207-10-2. ISBN-13: 978-606-8229-48-5.
Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Editore, 1998.

Richard Milazzo’s essay, “Malcolm Morley: The Art of the Superreal, the Rough, the Neo-Classical, and the Incommensurable,” in this exhibition catalogue, Malcolm Morley: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Sculptures, analyzes many of the most seminal paintings the artist executed from 1958 to 1998, as well as all of the sculptures and several of the watercolors and drawings. Written old school style, this monograph closely scrutinizes the relation between the artist’s life and work. He examines the two post-World War II art movements that Malcolm Morley founded – the Superrealism of the 1960’s and 1970’s and the Neo-Expressionism of the 1980’s –, as well as the most recent work of the 1990’s, which the author contends is a synthesis of the first two bodies of work and identifies as ‘Neo-Classical’.

The author analyzes these three periods through his theory of the incommensurable which attempts to locate and explain — and which reflects Morley’s own efforts to explore — the discrepancies existing between the artist’s subconscious and his well-known grid technique. The author shows that it is precisely the ‘mistakes’ or ‘slip-ups’ generated by the libido of the individual in conflict with the ‘superego’ or overriding rational systems of art and history that result in the visionary blindness of the artist. He writes: “What all the phases of Malcolm Morley’s life and work have in common are the boats – whether the giant ocean liners of his Superrealist paintings or the more modest sail and ‘life’ boats of his Neo-Expressionist works; and, in a sense, they can all be related to the toy model, H.M.S. Nelson, he lost as a child in World War II. All the subsequent boats can be viewed as a reenactment of the painful loss of innocence or as an excruciating separation and ultimate loss of this beloved mother ship or object of desire. Combined with the adulterations of later life, it can be seen that the artist has spent his whole life recuperating from the trauma of this symbolic loss.” Traveling timelessly and relentlessly through a Cézanne-like space – which “becomes more dimensional the more it is flattened” – to salvage his symbolic, beloved ‘Rosebud’ from the wreck of History, Morley rediscovers at the end what he already knew at the beginning: that this ‘object’ is lodged ultimately, deeply, forever in the port soul of his art.

According to the author, Malcolm Morley tried from the very beginning to fill symbolically the holes of his existence – from the bombed-out wall in his bedroom during the war (which destroyed his toy boat) to the hole literally under the kitchen sink which he could not repair or fill during his first job after he got out of prison, to the break-ins and prison cells (that were his first ‘studios’), to the portholes, fissures, and folds in his paintings. In the spirit of Cézanne (and Barnett Newman), Morley becomes perversely a defender of the illusionism of painting through its materic values (flatness, as well as facture), even as he battles against personal and social disillusionment and struggles for the mythic or primitive and the tragic or ‘slip-up’ over the binding super-structural ideas and ideologies of art and society, among which he counts the ‘grid’ both as a technique in his work that he favors and as the preeminent symbolic mode of rationality that he persistently questions. Where family, religion, ideology, and even beauty are found to be wanting, or even corrupt, as values, Morley asserts instead the experience of transformation as a mode of outer and inner transcendence or “deeper unexpectedness.” The artist, as a blind man, can he as such perhaps dream in colors and forms never before glimpsed?

At the end of this long essay, Richard Milazzo asks and answers the following questions: “Is the figure with blank, green eyes or sunglasses who dominates the scene [in Aegean Crime], Oedipus, who unknowingly kills his father, sleeps with his mother, and then plucks out his own eyes in retribution? Or is he the blind man Malcolm Morley encountered as a young boy of five or six long ago along the boardwalk in a seaside town on the English Channel in 1930’s? Is the crime blindness – the artist’s, ours, the universe’s? Do the green eyes or sunglasses reflect the enormous incommensurability of the cosmos itself or are they transparent to the cosmos as a rhetorical figure, waiting to be re-invented at the drop of a coin in a blind man’s tin cup? Where civilization could once transform the blind man into a prophet or a visionary, can culture now only convert vision into blindness, tragedy into bathos, and the unconscious itself into a form of kitsch? So what is it in the end that blocks our view, and makes us see only what we want to see in the heart of man – murder or some other unspeakable crime? I think people subconsciously want to see this dark thing in Morley because of what they actually see there – a radically uncompromised practice that will stop at nothing, that will acknowledge no boundary, to achieve its end. They want to see Caravaggio’s misdeeds in Morley because what they really want to see is a form or level of painting that is as defiant and definite in our time as Caravaggio’s was in his. And this is just another way to get to it.” In the end, this is precisely what the author argues they get in the artist’s work.

Ross Bleckner: Paintings, 1997-1999
Richard Milazzo
With an essay by Richard Milazzo and a text by Achille Bonito Oliva
and Italian and English translations by Aldo Tagliaferri and Paul Vangelisti.
First edition deluxe hardback: October 1999.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
92 pages, with a 4-colour jacket, pages printed in various colors,
a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece by Allen Zindman, 24 color reproductions,
13.50 x 15.5 x .5 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Castelvetro, Piacentino (PC), Italy.
Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Editore, 1999.

Robert Longo: 1980-2000
Richard Milazzo
With an essay by Richard Milazzo and a text by Achille Bonito Oliva
and Italian and English translations by Manuela Brushini and Steve Piccolo.
First edition deluxe hardback: November 2000.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
184 pages, with a 4-colour jacket, pages printed in various colors,
a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece by Garrick Imatani,
70 color reproductions, 15.5 x 12.5 x 1 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Castelvetro, Piacentino (Pc), Italy.
Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Editore, 2000.

Alex Katz: New Paintings
Richard Milazzo
With an essay by Richard Milazzo and a text by Achille Bonito Oliva
and Italian and English translations by Manuela Brushini and Paul Vangelisti.
First edition deluxe hardback: January 2003.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
138 pages, with a 4-colour jacket, pages printed in various colors,
a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece by Vivien Bittencourt, 29 color reproductions,
13.50 x 15.5 x .5 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Castelvetro, Piacentino (Pc), Italy.
Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Editore, 2003.

Alessandro Twombly: New Paintings
Richard Milazzo
First edition hardback: September 2003.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
48 pages, with a 2-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist
on the frontispiece by the author, 11 color reproductions, 3 black and white photographs of the artist by the author,
13.25 x 9.75 x .5 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Brussels, Belgium.
Brussels, Belgium: Gallery Alain Noirhomme, 2003.

David Salle: New Paintings
Richard Milazzo
With an essay by Richard Milazzo and a text by Achille Bonito Oliva
and Italian and English translations by Aldo Tagliaferri and Steve Piccolo.
First edition deluxe hardback: October 2003.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
140 pages, with a 4-colour jacket, pages printed in various colors,
a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece by Ralph Gibson, 29 color reproductions,
13.50 x 15.5 x .5 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Castelvetro, Piacentino (Pc), Italy.
Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Editore, 2003.

Robert Longo: Fire, Water, Rock 2003-2005
Richard Milazzo
With an essay by Richard Milazzo and a text by Achille Bonito Oliva
and Italian and English translations by Manuela Brushini and Paul Vangelisti.
First edition hardback: June 2005.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
112 pages, with a black silk slipcase, a black and white jacket,
a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece by Brian Gilmartin,
33 black and white reproductions, a black and white photograph of the artist by the author,
13.25 x 9.75 x .5 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Castelvetro, Piacentino (Pc), Italy.
Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Editore, 2005.

The Paintings of Ross Bleckner
Richard Milazzo
First edition hardback: January 2007.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
460 pages, with a 4-colour jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist
on the frontispiece by Ralph Gibson, 134 color reproductions, 250 black and white illustrations,
13.5 x 9.75 x 2 in. (39.3 x 34.3 x 10.2 cm.),
printed, sewn, and bound in Savignano sul Panaro, Modena, Italy.
ISBN-10: 2-930487-01-1. ISBN-13: 978-930487-01-4.
Brussels, Belgium: Éditions Alain Noirhomme, 2007.

The Paintings of Ross Bleckner is the first monograph on the artist covering thirty years of his work, from 1976 to 2006. About the book, the author Richard Milazzo writes: “The work has always been interested in bringing abstract painting closer to the realities of the external world, while endeavoring to plumb the depths of the subliminal realm of the psyche. Much lauded for the work Bleckner has done for ACRIA, the American Community Research Institute Initiative on AIDS, and as an outspoken advocate of the fight against the disease since the late 1980s, his paintings are symbolic expressions of a larger humanity, and, as such, also comprise formal as well as social values.”

Further, he explains: “Bleckner’s work can be appreciated also for its ‘non-signature qualities – for his independent-mindedness and his willingness and ability to change the ‘look’ of his paintings whenever he has seen fit to do so, something he has done relentlessly since the very beginning of his career in the 1970s. So, rather than commence where his retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York left off, in 1995, this book traces the development of the artist’s work through all its various phases, and tries to show, with the greatest possible detail, its multifaceted nature.”

The monograph begins with an analysis of Bleckner’s much overlooked Constructivist and Post-Constructivist paintings of the 1970s. It continues with chapter by chapter studies of all the series: the Stripe, Weather, Chandelier, and Memorial (or AIDS) paintings of the early to mid-1980s; the Post-Memorial or Stripe paintings reprised, the Unknown Quantities of Light, the Knight/Night and Architecture of the Sky series of the mid- to late 1980s; the Examined Life and Flower paintings of the early to mid-1990s; the Dream and Do, Cell and DNA works of the mid- to late 1990s; and the Specific and Anonymous, Inheritance, Protein, and Meditation paintings of the New Millennium.

Whether they are motivated by the brutal realism of the Cell paintings, the faint hope implicit in the Protein series, or the contemplative qualities of the new Meditation paintings, these images fly, and fall, like Icarus, through the divine vaults of humanity to the great ‘oculus’ or void at their very center: they are nothing, these works, if they do not examine mortality as the extreme expression of art. As another writer put it, it is “death as the ultimate artistic expression” that is at stake here. And this falling, is it not a “stepping into the eternal” – the ultimate groundlessness of the transcendent?

In addition to the intensive analysis of each of the works, The Paintings of Ross Bleckner contains 250 black and white illustrations, 134 color plates of Bleckner’s most seminal works, a comprehensive history of his exhibitions, and a complete bibliography.

Mark Innerst: Paintings of New York, 2005-2007
Richard Milazzo
With an Italian translation by Brunella Antomarini.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: October 2007.
200 pages, with a 4-colour jacket, pages printed in various colors,
a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece by the author,
a black and white photographic self-portrait of the artist on the frontispiece, 49 color reproductions,
13.2 x 15 x 1 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Savignano sul Panaro, Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Editore, 2007.

William Anastasi: Paintings, Small Works, Drawings
Richard Milazzo
With an Italian translation by Brunella Antomarini.
First edition deluxe hardback: May 2009.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
240 pages, with a 4-colour jacket, pages printed in various colors, a black and white photograph of the artist
on the frontispiece by the author, 35 color reproductions, 112 black and white illustrations,
15.75 x 12.5 x 1.5 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2009.

Mark Innerst: New Paintings, 2006-2008
Richard Milazzo
First edition hardback: November 2009.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
88 pages, with a 4-color jacket, a black and white photographic self-portrait of the artist on the frontispiece,
32 color reproductions, 2 black and white illustrations,12 x 12.25 x .5 in.,
printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
ISBN-13: 978-930487-07-6.
Brussels, Belgium: Gallery Alain Noirhomme, 2009.

The Flower Paintings of Ross Bleckner
Richard Milazzo
First edition hardback: January 2011.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
460 pages, with a 4-colour jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece by Robert Banat,
126 color reproductions, 200 black and white illustrations,
13.5 x 9.75 x 2 in. (39.3 x 34.3 x 10.2 cm.),
printed, sewn, and bound in Castelvetro, Piacentino (Pc), Italy.
Modena, Italy: Emilio Mazzoli Editore, 2011.

The Flower Paintings of Ross Bleckner by Richard Milazzo is the most comprehensive study of the artist’s work since the author’s monograph, The Paintings of Ross Bleckner, was published in Brussels in 2007, and since the catalogue for Bleckner’s retrospective exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1995.

“Why analyze the floral portion of Bleckner’s work,” the author asks, “considering the diversity of his vision and his non-signature style? Because they become a primary and recursive part of his work, and because he sees the flower as the figure that most closely embodies the relation between mortality and the human condition. It is this ‘figure,’ perhaps even more than his infamous stripes, cells and birds, that will come to exemplify the relation between darkness and light, abstraction and figuration, and ultimately, epitomize the psychological object of desire, the flower’s fragility and transience, as such, appealing most of all to him.”

The flowers in Bleckner’s work have always been, from the very beginning, a ‘vehicle’ to explore this object or ‘tenor’ of transformation. The metaphor at work in the paintings is that of mortality, and the working method, that of methodological and metaphysical doubt. From the early ‘still lifes’ and sublime ‘landscapes’ of the Constructivist and Suprematist period, from 1976 to 1983, to the subtlest or symbolic, and sometimes kitsch, functions of the Memorial (or Commemoration) paintings and the Examined Life series, from 1985 to 1991; from the expressive immediacy of the classical Flower or Hothouse paintings, including the Yellow and Black series, from 1992 to 1997, to the lyrical and ‘documentary’ continuities of the Cell-influenced Inheritance paintings of the new millennium, from 2003 to 2006; from the more structural and spiritual continuities of the Meditation paintings to the rawest of temporalities in the most recent floral series, the Time (or Clock) paintings, from 2006 to 2010, “flowers have functioned basically within the context of a transformational ethos.”

In Bleckner’s art, the evolution of the flower will follow a very specific trajectory: depending upon light as a source of energy (photosynthesis), they (the ‘organisms’ or objects of desire) will manifest themselves as pure forms or streams of light (the stripes), evolve into light sources (chandeliers and stars) that will transform themselves into flowers, and then, into cells, and later, into abstract or floral forms of light. The Flower Paintings of Ross Bleckner documents a journey that will carry us through the late works of such artists as Goya, Turner, Monet, de Kooning, and especially, the last flower paintings of Manet, as well Velásquez, Sargent, Malevich, Nolde, Mondrian, Guston, Burchfield, O’Keeffe, Mitchell, Smithson, and such contemporaries, as Twombly, Marden and Kiefer, to the very heart of Bleckner’s work.

Mimmo Paladino: New Paintings, 2008-2011
Richard Milazzo
With an Italian translation by Brunella Antomarini.
First edition hardback: January 2012.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
160 pages, with a 4-color gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the author
on the frontispiece by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, 32 black and white illustrations,
13.25 x 9.75 x .5 in., printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena (Italy): Galleria Mazzoli, 2012.

Peter Nagy:
Entertainment Erases History – Works 1982 to 2004 to the Present
Richard Milazzo
First edition hardback: January 2014.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
480 pages, with a 2-colour jacket, 120 black and white and 45 color reproductions, 300 black and white illustrations,
13.5 x 9.75 x 2 in. (39.3 x 34.3 x 10.2 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Turin, Italy.
ISBN-10: 0-615-49792-6. ISBN-13: 978-0-615-49792-1.
Brooklyn, New York: EISBox Editions, 2014.

Peter Nagy: Entertainment Erases History – Works 1982 to 2004 to the Present by Richard Milazzo is the first monograph on the artist-dealer. The monograph grew out of a related exhibition the author curated at EISBox Projects, an independent space, in Brooklyn, New York, in April 2011. Where the exhibition focused on the first presentation of all of Nagy’s Xerox works from 1982 to 1984, accompanied by a limited selection of Cancer, Baroque and Rococo, and early Orientalist Paintings, the monograph compiles all, and analyses most, of the artist’s extant works from 1982 to 2004, including the Color Paintings he made in India, where the artist has lived and worked since 1992.

The author discusses also the history of Nagy’s fabled East Village gallery, Nature Morte, within the wider context of the art and culture of the 1980s, and the avant-garde role it continues to play in the world of contemporary art in India today. By the time the artist closed the gallery in New York in 1988, he had created several significant bodies of work, beyond the early Xeroxes: the Cancer Paintings of 1985 and 1986, which addressed through the use of abstraction the ‘cancer’ of global consumption; the metallic works of 1987, which commented on the negative aspects of the technological ‘revolution’; and the Baroque and Rococo Paintings of 1988 and 1989, which appropriated architectural motifs to generate a visionary form of critique in painting. With the Orientalist Paintings of the 1990s, with such series as the Self-Portraits and A Soft History of Imhotep, and his Color Paintings, stupas, and installations, the author elucidates how the artist moved from his earliest utilization of maps, floor plans, and architectural citations and from an American and European vision to a wider global ethos that included Asian or Middle East and Far Eastern cultures. Even as Nagy continued to work as an artist, he reopened Gallery Nature Morte in India, in 1997, to exhibit again the revolutionary art of his time and in the new millenium, this time half way around the world, and begins to work also as a curator and a writer on its behalf.

From his earliest 8½ x 11 in. Xeroxes to his Postmodern ‘altars,’ from his use of collage and montage, the techniques of miniaturization and magnification, to his use of extreme forms of abstraction, synchronicity, heterogeneity, contradiction, complexity and hybridization, critically reflecting the global culture and economy, the corporate Spectacle, all around him, the author shows how Nagy has formulated throughout his oeuvre a unique aesthetic. Like the exhibition, Peter Nagy: Entertainment Erases History – Works 1982 to 2004 to the Present discloses how the paintings, and the work, in general, moved from appropriation to abstraction to a combined use of both methodologies to create overall a body of work that remains unprecedented to this day.

In addition to an intensive, chapter-by-chapter analysis of each individual work and each period, this 480-page monograph contains 291 black and white illustrations, 129 black and white and 45 color reproductions of Nagy’s most seminal works, a timeline, a comprehensive history of his works and exhibitions, and a complete bibliography.

The Mannequin of History:
Art After Fabrications of Critique and Culture
Richard Milazzo
First edition deluxe hardback: September 2015.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Brunella Antomarini and Pietro Traversa.
352 pages, with a 4-colour gatefold jacket,
188 color and 38 black and white reproductions,
13.5 x 9.75 x 1.75 in. (39.3 x 34.3 x 4.4 cm.), printed, sewn and bound in Modena, Italy.
ISBN-13: 978-88-570-1021-2.
Modena, Italy: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2015.

On the occasion of EXPO MODENA 2015, Modena City Council, with the patronage of Region Emilia-Romagna in collaboration with APT Servizi srl and Confindustria Modena, presented an international exhibition of contemporary art, The Mannequin of History: Art After Fabrications of Critique and Culture, curated by Richard Milazzo, and taking place at MATA, the newly renovated Manifattura Tabacchi building which will function as a new cultural center in the future, in Modena, Italy, from September 18, 2015 to January 31, 2016. The exhibition was accompanied by a major book of theory and criticsm.

The exhibition and book included 48 artists from 11 countries (Italy, Libya, Great Britain, Switzerland, Panama, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Iran, China, and America): William Anastasi, Donald Baechler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Carlo Benvenuto, Ross Bleckner, Alighiero e Boetti, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Gregory Crewdson, Enzo Cucchi, Gino De Dominicis, Nicola De Maria, Urs Fischer, Nan Goldin, Felix González-Torres, Andreas Gursky, Peter Halley, Jenny Holzer, Mark Innerst, Alex Katz, Anselm Kiefer, Louise Lawler, Annette Lemieux, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, Malcolm Morley, Vik Muniz, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Luigi Ontani, Mimmo Paladino, Richard Prince, Thomas Ruff, David Salle, Salvo, Mario Schifano, Julian Schnabel, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Haim Steinbach, Philip Taaffe, Wolfgang Tillmans, Franco Vaccari, Meg Webster, Chen Zhen.

In a chapter by chapter analysis, the critic and curator Richard Milazzo discusses in detail each of the artists’ contribution to the exhibition and their work in general. In the course of his analysis he argues that “art has been turned into a spectacle, not only by the auction houses, art fairs, commercial galleries, museums, collectors and corporate consortiums, but also by the critics, curators (myself included), and the media, in general, and, to a certain extent, by the artists themselves. Art, as a result, within this spectacle, has been turned into a mannequin.

“In Goya’s cartoon for the tapestry, The Straw Mannikin (1791-92), the figure is tossed into the air by the celebrants, four maidens, holding a blanket. The pretext is a rural and rustic celebration, not unlike this EXPO in Modena or the Venice Biennale, and the presumption is that the maidens will catch him when he falls. If we read this image allegorically, the basic reality is that the figure of the mannequin-as-art is being tossed (up, down, around) by all involved in the celebration, in the games or the spectacles of critique (this one included) and culture.” The author goes on to ask: “In defense of itself, has art, in fact, generated a meta-Spectacle, as it were, to counter the constructions or fabrications of history? In what manner has art formulated or conceptualized itself not so much to protect itself but to elude this fate, its destiny, as a mannequin of history? In the end, is the construction of a meta-Spectacle sufficient to combat the mannequinization of history, whether it is the history of art, critique or culture?”

The catalogue contains 188 color and 38 black and white reproductions, biographies of all the artists, and a checklist of all the works in the show.

Skewed:
Ruminations on the Writings and Works of Peter Halley,
with New Paintings by the Artist
Richard Milazzo
First edition deluxe hardback: November 2016.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Brunella Antomarini and Pietro Traversa.
224 pages, with a 3-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece
by Andy Warhol, 190 color and black and white illustrations and 12 full-color plate reproductions,
13.5 x 9.75 x 1.75 in. (39.3 x 34.3 x 4.4 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2016.

Peter Halley: New Paintings – Associations, Proximities, Conversions, Grids is the artist’s first exhibition at Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, November 12, 2016 - January 2017. For this exhibition of twelve new paintings, curated by Richard Milazzo, the curator has prepared a seminal new book, a unique critical document, entitled Skewed: Ruminations on the Writings and Works of Peter Halley.
The author-curator writes: “I have for the past several years been in the process of writing a monograph on Peter Halley’s work. A natural part of this process has been to examine and sometimes question the ideas and principles behind the work, both the paintings and the writings. This is especially important because Halley’s writings became one of the main lynchpins for understanding the art of the 1980s and early 1990s. Some of the ideas expressed in his essays would even forecast developments in art in the twenty-first century. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, Halley produced not only paradigm-shifting paintings, he theorized many of the concepts that went into the making of the art of his generation and beyond, which contributed specifically to the displacement of New-Expressionism in art and the rise of Neo-Conceptual, in general.
“It should be mentioned that the title of this book was inspired, rather ironically, by the only title of Halley’s paintings, Skewed, not included in the subtitle for the show: Peter Halley: New Paintings – Associations, Proximities, Conversions, Grids. In its reference to the title of the painting, it is purely descriptive, given that the paintings themselves are all skewed toward the more Minimal end of Halley’s aesthetic, both in terms of the limited number of colors and the limited number of conduits and cells used in the paintings. However, there is at least one other irony embedded here: instead of writing a catalogue essay about a specific group of paintings, I have chosen to write about writing, Halley’s writings, and, of course, about his art, oddly ‘encouraging’ his essays to proactively skew my text(s), in an attempt to balance somewhat the terms of the ‘exchange’, making whatever is simply discursive here more dialectical.
“Halley’s writings, like his paintings, shined brightly in the 1980s precisely because of their radical and experimental nature, and this cursory (hopefully not too microscopic) re-examination, conducted nearly thirty years later (in the case of certain of these essays), remains in the best spirit of observation and experimentation, a spirit that should animate not only science in general but the arts. If my texts are skewed, they are skewed only by Halley’s writings and paintings, that is, only insofar as they are the content of my observations and ruminations about them. For better and for worse, we are operating here in the dark, in a forest of free-range ideas, where mistakes and missteps (I am sure I am making my share of them) are not encouraged, but nor do they become the reason to suppress speculation, contradiction, unhampered dialogue.”
In addition to the intensive analysis of Peter Halley’s writings (abundantly excerpted in the author’s dialogical text), the book contains 190 color and black and white illustrations, 12 full-color plate reproductions of the artist’s paintings in the show, a comprehensive history of his exhibitions, and a complete bibliography.

The Corner of the Room:
Ross Bleckner’s Paintings of the 1970s,
with New Paintings by the Artist
by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: June 2018.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio.
480 pages, with a 3-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece
by Chuck Close, 470 color and black and white illustrations and 148 full-color plate reproductions,
13.5 x 9.75 x 2 in. (39.3 x 34.3 x 10.2 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2018.

Ross Bleckner: New Paintings 2017-2018 is the third exhibition of the artist’s work at Galleria Mazzoli, in Modena, from June 16 through September 2018, curated and with a book by Richard Milazzo, The Corner of the Room: Ross Bleckner’s Paintings of the 1970s.

Functioning as the catalogue for the exhibition of the White Paintings (2012-18) and the most comprehensive presentation of the Blue Monet Paintings (2011-18) in Ross Bleckner: New Paintings, The Corner of the Room: Ross Bleckner’s Paintings of the 1970s documents for the first time the works the artist produced in the 1970s, and continues where the second volume, The Flower Paintings of Ross Bleckner, left off, covering the major paintings from 2011 to the present: the Brain Paintings (2012-15), the Black Monet Paintings (2012-17), the Treasury of Light Paintings (2013-14), the Architecture of the Sky (or Dome Paintings) Reprised (2013-16), the provocative Burn Paintings (2015-17), the Bird Paintings Reprised (2016-17), and the Paintings Based on the Photographs by Cy Twombly (2018), exquisite smaller paintings functioning as homages to Twombly’s photographs.

The first volume, The Paintings of Ross Bleckner, of this three-part monograph, was published in Brussels in 2007 [see above]; the second, The Flower Paintings of Ross Bleckner, was also published by Galleria Mazzoli, and it accompanied the second exhibition at the gallery in 2010 [see above]. (The first volume, The Paintings of Ross Bleckner, of this three-part monograph, was published in Brussels in 2007.)

Rather than writing a comprehensive text, the author chose, instead, in the third volume, The Corner of the Room, to conduct a series of conversations with the artist, primarily analyzing the work of the 1970s, but also covering the recent works since 2011, including those being shown in the exhibition, Ross Bleckner: New Paintings, namely the White Paintings and the Blue Monet Paintings. Approaching the work through this more personal approach not only opened “the door to last year,” but also to many years past and to the present. The subjects discussed and the experiences revealed include the relentless desire and futile attempt to achieve the ‘perfect’ surface in abstract painting but being faced with the ultimate asymptotic reality of innumerable thresholds and the contradiction of wanting this same painting to reach beyond itself to the social issues of the larger world. We see the artist trying to come to terms with the “hard nut of who we are,” refusing to deny this reality but also knowing that much of what we accept about any given reality is constructed and therefore possibly subject to transformation. We observe Bleckner develop from the small formal and existential corners of his life and painting in the 1970s, moving away from the prescriptive parameters of Minimalism and Conceptualism toward a post-Constructivist aesthetic and ethos during this period, attempting to generate “structures of emotion” that made him feel and the work seem less “cornered,” leading him ultimately to create his Grid and infamous Op or Stripe paintings of the early 1980s, and still later, his Memorial or AIDS Paintings. It is this disciplined but libidinal trajectory that finally results in the multi-faceted Flower Paintings addressing the more generic human predicament of mortality. Along the way, Bleckner dialogues formally with such artists as Piero della Francesca, Tintoretto, Goya, Manet, Monet, Malevich, Picabia, Nolde, de Kooning, Newman, Cy Twombly, Guston, and Smithson – but sufficiently transmuting these influences, even where he may even be quoting a bouquet of flowers handed to him by Manet on his deathbed or a single waterlily by Monet.

Other topics of discussion are “growing up absurd” on Long Island; going to school at Cal Arts; murder, entropy, the Mudd Club, and the art world in New York City in the 1970s; Buddhism, consciousness raising, and the Forgotten; the Sea and Mirror episode with Alec Baldwin, previously covered primarily by Page Six of the New York Post; putting one’s finger in the fire of the Burn Paintings, oblivion and death edits. And, of course, the incomparable beauty of the Blue Monet Paintings (or what the artist calls his White Paintings). The author/curator writes: “Perhaps it is these appointments of color that not only distinguish the Blue Monet Paintings from their predecessors, the Weather Paintings, but also lend them their exquisite characterology. It is color that is fundamentally imbued with impermanence, with the sensation that it (any one color) may never appear, never resonate, again quite in the same way. We can say this about the forms, as well. Do we not feel exactly the same way about a water lily painting by Monet, with its irrepressible but ungraspable subtleties of form and color? And so, too, do the barely visible, barely sustainable ‘structures of emotion’ in the floating world of the Blue Monet Paintings survive perception. Making each mark, each trace of color, feel all the more precious, all the more irretrievable, all the more indispensable – like the unique life of a person, even though we know that humanity goes on, presumably, and that there is more paint in the tube or in the bowl from whence these forms and colors came.”

The Corner of the Room: Ross Bleckner’s Paintings of the 1970s contains an extensive conversation with the artist over the course of several days, annotated by the author, 480 color and black and white illustrations, 148 color plates of Bleckner’s most seminal works, a comprehensive history of his exhibitions, a complete bibliography, and an index of works by the artist.

A Kiss Before Dying:
Walter Robinson – A Painter of Pictures and Arbiter of Critical Pleasures
by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: January 2021.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio.
632 pages, with a 4-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece,
950 color and black and white illustrations and 47 full-color plate reproductions,
13.5 x 9.75 x 2.5 in. (39.3 x 24.8 x 6.4 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2021.

On the occasion of this museum-worthy exhibition, Walter Robinson: New Paintings and Works on Paper, 2013-2020, with 15 large new paintings, including Robinson’s masterful Grand Guignol of a painting, Pulp Romance, and dramatic images of American hamburgers, beer, cigarettes, lovers, painkillers, dolls, Pinocchio (Mazzoli’s alter ego!), Warholian stacks of money, and even a Massimo Bottura salad, and a Ferrari race car at the head of the pack, Galleria Mazzoli Editore has published the epic monograph A Kiss Before Dying: Walter Robinson – A Painter of Pictures and Arbiter of Critical Pleasures by Richard Milazzo, with an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio. The monograph also contains a catalogue with a checklist and reproductions of the works in the exhibition. It is the first major monograph on this important American artist and critical voice. The book documents fifty years of his work, beginning in the 1970s and during the revolutionary heydays of the East Village, tracking his ubiquitous presence right through millennium and continuing to this day.

Both as the curator of the exhibition and the author of this major monograph on the artist, A Kiss Before Dying, Milazzo writes: “I have tried to write a book that would give a comprehensive picture of this major but under-appreciated and quintessential American artist who has functioned both as a painter and a critic (in the tradition of Fairfield Porter, but with a bite as big as his bark). Robinson, in his capacity of artist-as-critic, was one of the earliest and most seminal exponents of Picture Theory art, invested in the postmodern critique of representation, and yet who decided to paint rather than employ photography as his primary medium, even where many of his ‘paintings-as-pictures’ are based on photography and drawn from various photographic sources such as the covers of cheap romance and detective novels and the onslaught of images generated by the advertising industry. Even where, as a part of his working process, he projects a photographic image onto the canvas, this does not prevent him from executing the image in a most sensuous and painterly manner. Few others have used painting as Robinson has, to critique the Spectacle of the photo-based world of images, but not without reasserting the values of sincerity of aesthetical purpose in a cynical culture, even bringing romance (impassioned emotion) to the table, no matter how sinister or lovingly portrayed.

“The fact that this critic-as-artist has also conducted a major career as a writer is extraordinary. Besides founding Art-Rite magazine with Edit DeAk and working for Art in America during its heyday, Robinson was a critical gadfly in the East Village during the 1980s, writing about its colorful characters and street life, and constructing by default a history of the scene there and in the Lower East Side of New York City. While these sectors of the City (and the South Bronx) were in severe social disarray, tragically afflicted by homelessness and AIDS, the period between 1982 and 1988 contributed to the paradigmatic reinvention of the art world. Robinson was a seminal part of this reenvisionment (sic), in terms of his painting, writing, and editing, having been the Art Editor of the East Village Eye, a short-lived, rambunctious and outré publication covering the arts in general. But it was for Art in America that he wrote, in collaboration with Carlo McCormick, his most controversial essay, ‘Slouching Toward Avenue D,’ which evoked the treacherous response from one of October magazine’s henchmen, Craig Owens.

“It is for these and many other reasons I felt it was necessary for Robinson, this Janus-configured artist-as-critic and critic-as-artist, to speak in his own voice. Hence, the many citations in the course of this monograph, not only his but others, as well, and the various ‘campaigns’ I have conducted in behalf of other artists, creating hopefully a critical cacophony dominated by no one, especially the author. To advance the cause of this dialectical or dialogical environment, I have employed square brackets to intervene upon texts and expository captions to create autonomous sideshows in this circus or Célinesque Grand Guignol of a monograph, which is hopefully less mono and more multi. It is additionally my hope this new expansive critical methodology – these ubiquitous square brackets and expository captions – will comprise a new more inclusive way of doing art history, advancing, if not revolutionizing, the cause of critique as a source of libidinal pleasure and self-critique. This, in the still greater hope subjectivity and so-called objectivity might play into each other’s hands, like one of the harlequins or clowns in Picasso’s Family of Saltimbanques failing sadly to juggle far too many balls.

“By the way, could a title, A Kiss Before Dying, be any more symptomatic or appropriate, if not ironic, during this period of the Great Pandemic of 2020? Although it was not intentional on my part to assign this additional fervid but mournful meaning to these poignant words (stolen by the artist from a movie title no less), I am sure the sincerity of the artist’s work in general, despite the explicit cynicism of his work and habit of mind, and the author’s deciduous role in constructing this self-critical tome, contributed to this massive but subtle ironic deterioration in behalf of this agonizing penultimate fate of a piteous kiss before dying. But, in the end, could we not also say a fearful but fiercely joyous fate?”

In addition to the intensive critical and dialectical analysis of Walter Robinson’s paintings and writings (abundantly excerpted), the 632-page volume contains approximately 950 color and black and white illustrations, 47 full-color plate reproductions of the artist’s paintings and works on paper in the show, a checklist of these works in the exhibition, a comprehensive history of his exhibitions, a selected bibliography, and an index of the works by the artist in the monograph.

Franco Fontana
1961-2017
by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: June 2021.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Mario Mazzoli.
150 pages, with a 4-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece,
63 color and black and white illustrations and 68 full-color plate reproductions,
11.5 x 11.5 x 1 in. (29.2 x 29.2 x 2.5 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2021.

On Saturday 19th June, 2021, at 5.30 p.m., Galleria Mazzoli in Modena will have the pleasure of inaugurating a major retrospective exhibition by the Modenese photographer Franco Fontana.

About seventy works by the artist, mostly unpublished, made from 1961 to 2017, will be on display. They will feature some of his most classic subjects: the famous landscapes, characterized by his interest in color and analysis of the geometry of nature, the urban and industrial scenarios of American cities, the seaside resorts with their inevitable tourists, swimming pools, shadows, and asphalt pavements.

An important selection of unpublished Polaroids, made by the artist over the years, will also be presented. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of two major catalogs, one focusing on the production of Fontan’s Polaroids with text by the famous Italian art historian Achille Bonito Oliva, the other on the artist’s photographic production over the course of fifty-six years, from 1961 to 2017, with a text by the American critic and independent scholar Richard Milazzo.

Achille Bonito Oliva, in his text, describes the artist’s poetics as follows: “Fontana’s photography is not casual and instantaneous, not the result of an elementary doubling; it is instead the placement in a pose that complicates the reality from which it stems, making it ambiguous,” while Richard Milazzo points out that calling Franco Fontana’s aesthetic minimalist “is not quite right, given how full of life his images are. It is more like he is making room for us in the space of his vision, or space for us to experience small parts of the world that aspire to more universal values […] One almost gets the sense he would like us to experience the universe in a grain of sand. Silly as that might sound, but I think this is his aspiration. A laudable aspiration, rewarded by its realization.”

Pizzi Cannella: Night Owl, 2014-2022
by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: May 2022.
With an Italian translation by Benedicta Frœlich.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
104 pages, with a 4-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece,
32 color illustrations and 29 full-color plate reproductions,
13.5 x 9.75 x 2.5 in. (39.3 x 24.8 x 6.4 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2022.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Piero Pizzi Cannella: Night Owl, 2014-2022, Galleria Mazzoli Editore is proud to publish a major catalogue, with an essay by Richard Milazzo, and an Italian translation by Benedicta Frœlich. Here are fragments from the author’s provocative essay “Piero Pizzi Cannella: The Exquisite Inexactitudes of the Soul,” fragments which reiterate the artist’s own extraordinary method or working: “Piero Pizzi Cannella: ‘night owl’ extraordinaire, poet, a decadent documenter of the soul’s most inconspicuous vices; an ancient voyager lost at sea, who like Odysseus himself finally finds his way back to the shores of Rocca di Papa, where he was born, in 1955, but over and over again – because that is what an artist does, like a phoenix but with the wisdom of an owl, he rises up in the light of the moon and recreates himself from the ashes of who he just was, from the ashes of his last cigarette! And always just a few imaginary steps from the Mediterranean!”

“In Cannella’s paintings we are made to experience the woman as an erotic absence, a sensuous void, within the shadowy presence of a dress or a necklace or a fan, seemingly disembodied, but embodying the metaphysical essence of her being. It is this sexualized absence Cannella will generalize, into the all-consuming, all-encompassing presence of space. And what could be more vital, more erotic, to an artist than space endowed with such motifs as chandeliers, dots or specks of vanquished light, a deliberate conflation of inner (psychologized) and external (mythic) worlds, and an exceedingly sensuous laying down of paint?”

“Achille Bonito Oliva properly refers to the ‘skeletal’ remains of things presented according to their most minimal and/or essential qualities in Cannella’s work. But there is also the strange relation between the darkness of his pictures and their sensuous, erotic qualities. The artist sees erotic thresholds in almost all his figurations, no matter how dark or enigmatic, no matter how abstract; indeed, precisely because these apparitions generated by the senses are erotic, they are rendered necessarily as visceral but also paradoxically as shadowy and inapprehensible forms. With the mere suggestion of their existence, these objects of desire, unknown perhaps even unto themselves, transform the skeletal into the carnal but in the most subtle of ways.”

“Reality in Piero Pizzi Cannella’s work is always complicit with the imagination, and the imaginary configuration of elements that comprise his pictures are always in dire, famished need of these objects. He cannot conceive of the journey of the imagination without perceiving the world all around us. Even if that reality never moves beyond his studio at the night. It is precisely in the field of inexactitude that he stumbles upon the dilations (as opposed to the dilution) of the soul. It is this darkness itself he has perfected. It is precisely the imperfections that comprise the soul, and in the end, it is these damages, these imperfections, these inexactitudes, that constitute who we were right from the beginning. And no damages, no imperfections, no inexactitudes, are more exquisite than Piero Pizzi Cannella’s.”

Cannella himself writes: “In a way, this exhibition documents my years as a night owl, spent in my studio, and in God knows how many other rooms, in hotels and spaces I can no longer remember, dreaming the stars into oblivion or at least into the morning hours, traversing unknown spaces, traveling to places, real and imaginary, unknown to me, engaging friends and strangers, never being quite sure which were which, compiling treasures and things of very little value except to me. I could never tell the difference, did not want to know the difference, between a world of riches and a soul seemingly impoverished but, in fact, engorged, by an indifference towards those things.

“I am nothing but a painter, and a poor one at that, and you, my dear friend, my old friend, you, Emilio, are a lion and my accomplice in this crime that we are about to commit, trying our best to trick others into believing this is an exhibition worth doing! In the dark, you are forced to work in a circular manner. Which means I always return to the place where I began. My work is an almanac of moments, of beautiful, but also, brutal nights. I want to die working, like a soldier, with my paintbrush in my hand! The sadness and ecstasy of the night – are there any greater companions?!”

“I have lived long and hard,” Pizzi continues, “and so why should I stop now; I have a story to tell. My pictures recount stories of the night. That is when I travel the best and the farthest! When I am blinded by the darkness, not just the light – that is when I see best! When I am trapped in a room. That is when I travel more deeply, that is when I travel the farthest. I am a room traveler. The smaller the space, the smaller the space of the painting or work on paper, the farther, the deeper, I go. When the stars exhaust themselves, that is when I get started, that is when I try, arrogantly enough, to relight them – with my cigarette, with the tip of my tongue, with my paintbrush, with whatever is handy!” Milazzo: “Pizzi loves vast spaces, vast constellations, vast canvases, endless imaginary voyages. Rimbaud would have loved his pictures. Not that Pizzi has not actually traveled – to Russia, Cuba, Afghanistan, Africa, Singapore, and many, many other places.”

Pizzi: “I don’t just use black and white, I use light and shadow; I use all the colors I need. Painters, such as myself, are ‘chamber travelers’; it is almost always night in my room. You can hear the sounds better that way, you can see the light better, even the smells are stronger at night; you can also move much more slowly. Painters have a slow pace; they avoid moving with sudden jerks and accelerations, and, like mountain climbers, to get to the top they have to pay attention to their breathing. I am like a sloth; I, too, need a lot of time to do nothing. Painting is not just about touching the surface, the body; its history, the history of painting, also belongs to the work. The time it takes to finish a painting changes from painting to painting, and this time taken, this attention, is not insignificant, cannot be shortchanged. There are no short cuts in art, in painting, not even in life. Knowing there are those who possess eyes to see this and the ‘infinite wealth of colors that have been lost or that have not yet been discovered’ makes the job of a painter more bearable.”

Milazzo: “Piero’s constellations are crisscrossed with random scratches and deformed caresses. Or is that the sound of the artist’s brushstrokes against the canvas or paper? Or is it the beautiful but hollow echo of a fan quivering in empty space. In the darkness of its penumbra, the images appeal to us as perhaps no more than an erotic threshold. But it could not be any more satisfying, even if it seems rendered as a mere afterthought, as so much of Cannella’s best work is: precarious, reckless, amorphous, indiscreet – sometimes little more than an inundation of shadows. And yet, so utterly romantic in its self-indulgence and lustfulness, a dimension we cannot deny.”

“So, what are we to make of all these cathedrals and vistas? With all these great domes in the distance and arches leaping endlessly into the sky? Is Piero locating us in the mythical city, the ancient civilization, of Rome? Or could these domes and arches be derived from just about anywhere in the world? Are they, in fact, purely imaginary? And what is all this liquidity, all these washes in the pictures; are they referencing the Tiber River or the fluid way in which we remember things and forget them just as easily? Are we in the Prado or The Hermitage or in a corner of Pizzi’s studio? What corner of the universe are we in? And who and where is the ‘night owl,’ where exactly might we locate the artist, the man who can neither sleep at night nor stay awake during the day, prone as he to sleepwalking in his studio from picture to picture at night and daydreaming his way from vision to vision when he is supposed to be conscious? A phenomenological adventure if ever there was one. Are those Pizzi’s pictures we see hanging in the meta-space of his studio? The artist’s brushstrokes remind us that these images are figment of his imagination, constructs that might suggest such cathedrals as the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute in Dorsoduro, Venice, or the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, but in the end they are the outcome of his own dissolute vision. Even the smallest church, mosque, temple, shrine, shed or hut is never anything other than an expression of Pizzi’s faith in our appreciation of beauty, however fanciful or seemingly inconceivable.”

In addition to the close analysis of each of Piero Pizzi Cannella’s 29 works, this 104-page volume contains 32 color illustrations, 29 full-color plate reproductions of the artist’s works in the show, a checklist of these works, a comprehensive history of his exhibitions, a selected bibliography, and an index of the works by the artist discussed and/or referenced in the catalogue.

Nostalgia for Scandal:
The ‘Not’ Paintings, Sculptures, Works on Paper by Mike Bidlo
by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: September 2022.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio
368 pages, with a 4-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece,
392 color and black and white illustrations and 16 full-color plate reproductions,
13.3 x 10 x 1.75 in. (33.7 x 25.4 x 4.4 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2022.

Nostalgia for Scandal: The ‘Not’ Paintings, Sculptures, Works on Paper of Mike Bidlo, 1984-2010/22 was written by Richard Milazzo on the occasion of the exhibition he curated at Galleria Mazzoli Editore, September 2022.

Regarding the title, the curator explains forthrightly: “In a world in which, politically speaking, not to mention sexually, scandal is no longer possible, the scandalous has acquired the valence of wishful thinking. And yet, Bidlo’s outrageous appropriations still seem to scandalize viewers to this day. It is rare and special to have in a single exhibition works from so many different vectors of Bidlo’s oeuvre. However, given the labor-intensive nature of his works, it should surprise no one that he has executed so few one-person shows in his lifetime. Indeed, the only other time an exhibition of this magnitude and of mixed works has happened was in his Masterpieces show at the Bruno Bischofberger Gallery in 1989. This exhibition at Emilio Mazzoli Gallery might even be described as Masterpieces II, especially as it contains works of artists that post-date that show in Zurich thirty-three years ago, by such artists as Courbet, Malevich, Miró, Klein, Fontana, and Twombly, almost all of which of have never been seen before.

“Of course, all the titles of Bidlo’s works are preceded by his by-now infamous word ‘Not’: Not Picasso, Not de Chirico, Not Duchamp, Not Magritte, Not Morandi,Not Tanguy, Not Warhol, Not Pollock, Not Twombly. The phenomenon of appropriation in Bidlo’s work functions simultaneously as a critique (a dialectical negation) of, and a homage to, the history of Modernism, pertaining specifically to some of its most radical and monumental artists and works, such as Picasso’s Self-Portrait of 1901 [on the cover]; Duchamp’s Bottle Rack (1914), Fountain (1917) and L.H.O.O.Q. (1919); Malevich’s White on White (1918) [on the back cover]; Magritte’s Elective Affinities (1933), and various hypothetical works by the above mentioned artists.

“Two controversial issues,” the author continues, “merit clarification: for those who see only the ‘scandal’ of theft or plagiarism in Bidlo’s appropriations, they should have their eyes examined by an optometrist. For if an artist paints a Caravaggio and transacts it as such, as a painting by Caravaggio, then it is what it is: a crime, a fraud, perpetrated against the public. But if an artist paints a Caravaggio and titles it Not Caravaggio and signs it with his own name, then that is an authentic work of art by the artist who signs it, however complex it is to understand (the relation of the present is to the past). Let me repeat this principle for those skeptics who surely must be pretending not to understand: if an artist makes a Cézanne and transacts it as such, that is a crime and the work constitutes a fake, not unrelated to fake news and disinformation. But if he makes a Cézanne and acknowledges that it is not by this artist, as Bidlo did, when he titled the work Not Cézanne (The Large Bathers, 1898-1905), signed it ‘Mike Bidlo,’ and dated it 1986, that makes it an authentic work of art, one by Mike Bidlo.

“The second issue is perhaps still more controversial having to do with Bidlo’s anti-Duchampian ethos, operative in several of the works’ most radical instances, including his ‘actions’ or performances, involving not only the self-destruction (or, to put it more politely, the abnegation) of the ego or Self, in the personification of Mike Bidlo, but the destruction of the work of art per se. For an artist who might be rightly described as having continued the avant-garde ‘tradition’ of Duchamp and the readymade, effectively treating Modernist masterpieces as readymades, it is more than a little strange, or perhaps not so strange at all, for Bidlo to subvert what has become the convention of appropriation in contemporary art. Accordingly, Bidlo steam-rolled over Duchamp’s first readymade, the Bottle Rack, and perhaps most emphatically of all, destroyed a prototype of Duchamp’s urinal, in his Fractured Fountain, then reassembled it, but left the ‘history’ of its fractures in evidence, just to give two primary instances of the destruction that functions as a desublimation of the self-destruction of Bildo’s ego. It is the sacrifice or destruction of this ego in the works he appropriates that remains the most stunning and controversial achievement of his art.

“Who else but Bidlo,” the author writes, “looked back, turned toward the past, then peed and shit on it, peed in a fireplace in behalf of Pollock, shit in a can in behalf of Manzoni, erased not one but sixteen de Kooning drawings Bidlo himself made, erased multiple Warhol Brillo boxes in a country (Germany) where a whole race of people were shoved into crematoriums and erased; steam-rolled over a bottle rack and fractured a urinal to critique the fetishization of an idol (Duchamp); shattered a plaster cast of Mademoiselle Pogany in behalf of Brancusi; in a word, destroyed a portion of the history of radical Modernism almost indiscriminately, right down to cutting a cravat (Nam June Paik’s) in behalf of one of the most pacific artists of all time (John Cage); and executed a blank canvas in honor of Clyfford Still’s caustic critique (well ahead of his time) of art schools and the art and artists they produce. It is as if Bidlo were looking at the art world and its history through Duchamp’s Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), except that Bidlo’s ‘looking glass’ is not accidentally broken but intentionally shattered. Who else but Bidlo could have perpetuated such destruction in behalf of such self-destruction?”

In addition to the controversial analysis of Mike Bidlo’s paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, this 150-page volume contains 63 color and black and white illustrations, 68 full-color plate reproductions of the artist’s works in the show, a checklist of these works, a comprehensive history of his exhibitions and actions/installations, a selected bibliography, and an index of the works by the artist discussed and/or referenced in the monograph.

Gian Marco Montesano: Bussate e Vi Sara Aperto
by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: December 2023.
With an Italian translation by Ginevra Qudrio Curzio and Stephen Piccolo.
Designed by Jacopo Noera.
132 pages, with a 4-colour cover,
23 black and white illustrations and 30 full-color plate reproductions,
13 x 11 x .5 in. (33 x 27.9 x 1.3 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2023.

The following is an excerpt from the author’s catalogue essay, “Gian Marco Montesano’s Cathedrals of Italy and the Pertinence of the Soul; or, ‘My Laissez-faire Attitude Is the Mark of a Hidden Sorrow’”: […] do not listen to me, listen to Montesano himself, an unflinching creature of the night soul – the soul that believes, as do I, there is only darkenss at the end of tunnel: “To go you don’t know where, take the road you don’t know.” Here, he is actually quoting San Giovanni della Croce. But these words embody his nomadic spiritual life perfectly. “That’s the story of my life. I got involved with politics and art because I didn’t know where they led.” How marvelous to be so lost. “My laissez-faire attitude is the mark of a hidden sorrow.”

The ‘cathedral’ of his life has always fallen to the ground all around him, but the soul he possesses, perhaps a bit like a madman, like Nietzsche, is inimitable. “I can follow the road the air du temp wants me to take, but I can’t fight for a career [in effect, a ‘cathedral’]. I only fight for daily survival [a small delapidated church, as it were]. I don’t think further than that, because I never thought life belongs to me.” How lovely that last thing he says. Montesano’s life strikes me as that of fallen saint. A mystic, without a spiritual center or even a physical periphery. What we have here is fallenness iconically epitomized, from painting to painting, image to image, utterance to utterance.

“I earn a living without bothering anyone. Making paintings isn’t the same as polluting the environment with a chemical plant.” Especially paintings of cathedrals. Cathedrals, religion, belief, do not pollute the environment, provided they do not embody the dictatorship of the spirit, do not become dogmatic, doctrinaire.

“My paintings are exactly what you see – but obviously you have to know how to read into appearances.” Since ultimately, nothing and no one is what it or he or she appears to be. “My work obviously deals with images,” which are not even his own, but extracted like bad teeth from the media, “that are visually empty; there’s an abstraction of content.” We need only look at the visual emptiness of his cathedrals – mere outlines, skeletons, wraiths – the grisaille only emphasizing this “abstraction of content” all the more. “It’s enough if you perceive that – my paintings don’t say anything else.” They are perfectly propositional, perfectly Wittgensteinian, perfectly imperfect in that they are devoted to perfecting their imperfections, not merely the soul’s imperfections but the soul as an abstraction of content, the soul as imperfection.

“Everything,” Montesano says, “is contained in the pure act of looking.” And if we see nothing, perhaps that is because nothing is there. Because this nothing is the visual content of emptiness, of the soul as an abstraction that is compiled from appearances that fade in and out of each other, nomadically, belonging to no one. But know this, Montesano is not postulating the purity of appearances, not at least without also making a case for perception, the demanding and inevitable experience of “reading” into things, into appearances. No matter how superficial the intent.

What a brave soul Montesano is, because he is willing to ‘appear’ so unseemly, so abject, so ignoble. This is an objective I myself fondle. Of course, stage acting was in his family, and if you have been around that sort of thing you know that after a while you can no longer tell the difference, or even want to know the difference, between acting and whatever else we do to express ourselves. “I’d like to hang on to my indifference, because it is my usual way to go about living, but there’s room for a provisional balance-sheet, too.” Hence, the cathedrals we see before us, bare bones as they are. Balance-sheets are like that, should be like that. If they are drastic, if they are dire, if they are existential in nature.

Pier Paolo Calzolari:
Le Terre Est Bleue Comme une Orange
by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: July 2024.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio.
168 pages, with a 4-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece,
30 color and black and white illustrations and 20 full-color plate reproductions,
10 x 11.5 x 1 in. (25.4 x 29.2 x 2.5 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, July 2024.

Pier Paola Calzolari: Le Terre Est Bleue Comme une Orange, is the third show Galleria Mazzoli has mounted of the artist’s work. Although forty-five years have passed since the first show in 1979 (the second one was in 1981), the gallerist, Emilio Mazzoli, has never stopped lauding Calzolari as one of the greatest artists to emerge in Europe since the Second World War.

For this exhibition of 11 paintings and 4 drawings, Emilio Mazzoli has conscripted the art critic, curator and independent scholar, Richard Milazzo, no friend of Conceptual or Minimal Art, to write for the catalogue a major three-part critical essay about the artist: “The Silent Circus: The Illicit and Inept Rhapsodies of Pier Paolo Calzolari.”

What follows is an excerpt from the essay: “Although somewhat more lenient when it comes to the European iterations of the modalities of Minimalism and Conceptualism, better known as Arte Povera in Italy, as opposed to what can be called the corporate version of these movements in the U.S., what is at the heart of the conflation of these two modalities in Pier Paolo Calzolari’s work is the ancient act of poeisis.

“The difference between the two cultures is the rampant rational and ideological belief in materials for materials’ sake, which often amounts to a form of materialism in the U.S, despite the rhetoric of ‘dematerialization’; whereas Calzolari, not unaware of the politics of his time, especially during the 1960s and ’70s, has dialectically suspended that belief, in behalf of a blind faith, an existential ‘blindness’ (that is the artist’s own word), not just in materials, but in sculpture, in the exquisite hybrid constellations of the materials animating his installations over the years, and, most controversially, in paintings that have found themselves both inside and outside these parameters, often turning the paintings themselves, as in this show, into their own kinds of installations.

“What obtains in Calzolari’s practice are the ‘post-installation’ parameters of painting as a viable form of art, proclamation-free and yet categorically subversive – which is to say, his paintings are more intimate than our expectations would allow, but never less outré, even louche, and self-exiled, where his art expresses ultimately an inapposable and unappeasable reality.

“Rather than playing to the three-ring circus of culture – Arte Povera, transavantguard, and nouveau realisme or American Pop Art – in the last fifty or so years, Pier Paolo Calzolari has always sought the radical quietude of the sideshow or what I am calling here the ‘Silent Circus’ of art reaching beyond itself, or what the artist has called the poetry of the ‘suspended song.’ When he has been compelled to enter the three-ring circus of several documentas, Venice Biennales, and gallery shows, he has always done so as a trapeze artist hurling himself across the space-time continuum without a safety net. Risking all in behalf of the poetry of art, the art of making art, a tautological form of creative ecstasy.

“Perhaps the artist himself put it best, as early as the late 1960s, nearly a half century ago, especially in relation to the odd man out, namely painting, in terms of so-called avant-guard practice, avant-guardism often itself academic and reactionary in nature: ‘If one negates painting when it is still alive, one does so out of desire for something that burns still more than painting, something that touches ‘feelings,’ impossibility and emotion itself.’ And that something is art, unshackled, untoward, even unseemly, and often taking the formless, illicit, inept, and rapturous reality of the soul bursting beyond itself into forms of poetry we shall never be able to reduce, not even to words and not even to the sacred (or should we say sanctimonious) materialism of art.

“Given what I view as my own prejudices and strong opinions about the art under scrutiny here, I have brought other voices into the tent of this silent circus, so that other vistas may obtain, even if only from the rafters: Germano Celant, Catherine David, Bruno Corà, Mario Bertoni, Massimiliano Gioni, Denys Zacharopouos, Luciana Rogozinski, Achille Bonito Oliva, David Anfam, Vincenzo de Bellis, Andrea Viliani, Ana Cuomo and Eduardo Milone, and, of course, the august artist himself, Pier Paolo Calzolari.

“Art history is an untamable creature, no matter how many lion tamers or ringmasters we invite into the temple or circus tent. For those who have the courage to stick their heads into the lion’s mouth, I have only these words to proffer, which could function both as a caveat and an epigram here: ‘dead animals / evolve / into circular suicides / the length / of a man’s neck / in the throat of a lion.’ Which applies to me perhaps more than to all the others unknowingly congregated here.”

Pier Paolo Calzolari was born in 1943 in Bologna, Italy. As a young man, he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, and was invited to participate in a show that will make history, known simply by its subtitle, When Attitudes Become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern. Calzolari was only twenty-five years old at the time. Having impressed one and all by his efforts, he will be invited to participate in documenta 5, in 1972. During the past decades, Calzolari has participated in exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum and MoMA PS1 in New York, and at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Naples came knocking in 2019, giving him a retrospective, Painting as a Butterfly, at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina. Among the countless one-person gallery and museum exhibitions Calzolari has had, from 1965 to the present, we must count shows with Bentivoglio in Bologna, the Sperone and Sonnabend galleries in Turin, Rome and Paris, the Knoedler, Gladstone, and Zwirner galleries in Zurich, New York, and Cologne, respectively. Other significant one-persons shows in the next three decades include: Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; and FAE Musée d’art contemporain, Pully - Lausanne. Among other group shows of significance, there were exhibitions at Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome; Kunsthalle, Bern; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin; the various Biennials in Venice; Musee National d’art Modern - Centre George Pompidou, Paris; the various documentas in Kassel; Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen; Kunsthalle Nürnberg; and IVAN Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderna, Valencia.