Translated from Italian, Arte Povera literally means "poor art." It refers to the three-dimensional installations that were constructed from everyday, or "poor" materials, including mud, gravel, broken glass, and scrap metal. The movement emerged in the 1960s when its originators --... [more]

Translated from Italian, Arte Povera literally means "poor art." It refers to the three-dimensional installations that were constructed from everyday, or "poor" materials, including mud, gravel, broken glass, and scrap metal. The movement emerged in the 1960s when its originators -- Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Giovanni Anselmo, and Michelangelo Pistoletto, among others -- became concerned with establishing an artistic value system that was opposed to the fine-arts canon and allied to radical politics. Detaching themselves and their work from conventional judgement, these artists became free to employ metaphorical imagery culled from nature, history, and contemporary life. They pursued the ideals of the Renaissance and its attendant humanism by using materials that traditional artists and critics would have deemed unworthy. In so doing, these artists were forcing either a clash or a reconciliation of opposites through their work. A piece such as Pistoletto's "Venus of the Rags" was no less than a slap in the face to art history and to those who would seek to preserve its purity. By tossing a facsimile of the Venus de Milo with a mound of rags, Pistoletto was literally trashing the famous masterpiece -- and at the same time demonstrating its power to transcend. In an even more brazen combination of the exalted and the earthly, artist Piero Manzoni conceived "merda d'artista," wherein he canned his own excrement and sold it by the pound. Embracing the notion that art must come from the detritus of civilization, Arte Povera laid the groundwork for the shock-value art that abounds in the contemporary art world. We can draw certain parallels between the methods of Arte Povera and a piece like Serrano's "Piss Christ", which affects a debasing of traditions through the use of tasteless or poor materials. [show less]