Michelangelo Pistoletto: Figuration and Cultural Politics

Examining the Italian artist’s career-long exploration of the human figure, this book offers new perspectives on the history of postwar and contemporary art Widely regarded as the central protagonist of Arte Povera, the twentieth-century Italian art movement characterized by its rejection of representation, Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933) is known for his movement-defining Minus Objects and iconic mirror paintings, as well as his recent social practice addressing migration and climate change.What has unified Pistoletto’s work over six decades, argues author Tenley Bick, is his persistent, and seemingly paradoxical, investigation of figuration, most often as a system of representation of the human body. Michelangelo Pistoletto: Figuration and Cultural Politics traces the figure as a throughline across the artist’s painting, photomontage, sculpture, installation, performance, and social practice, from the formative years of his career in the 1950s to today.It situates Pistoletto’s expl