Art and Television in Italy: First Attempts to Map a Troubled History

Video art and experimental film have been often interpreted considering their antagonist approach to television. From a transdisciplinary and in-depth study of the relationships between art and television, though, the two realms seem to have cross-fertilized each other. This essay aims to collect a few notes toward a future process of mapping the Italian situation, where the history of art and TV is characterized by artists’ fluctuating approach, collaborative at times, and oppositional at others, or else a troubled history that still has to be properly analyzed. Case studies considered include works by artists such as Lucio Fontana, Pino Pascali, Gianfranco Baruchello, Fabio Mauri, Eugenio Carmi, Mario Sasso, and Francesco Vezzoli; experimental television programs by authors such as Paolo Giaccio and Enrico Ghezzi; and hybrid productions at the crossroads of art and underground culture such as those of the collectives Dodo Brothers and Grabinsky. The aim is to understand, through the discussion of artists’ videos, installations, TV programs, and interventions, about or for television, how this persuasive mass medium has impacted over time—from the earliest broadcast of 1954 to the advent of reality TV—the country’s social, cultural, and political life, not mentioning the influence it had on the processes of identity formation and decision making of virtually every Italian citizen.