Tv And Not Tv: Lucio Fontana's Luminous Images In Movement

摘要

On May 17,1952, the Argentine-Italian sculptor Lucio Fontana published the "Manifesto of the Spatial Movement for Television," a document that announced the use of television as an artistic medium. The text was signed by seventeen artists, including Fontana, and contained the following declaration: "We spatial artists transmit, for the very first time, on television, our new forms of art... we are pleased that our spatial event, destined to renew the field of art, is being transmitted from Italy."1 The broadcast referred to in the declaration, which is often supposed to have accompanied the manifesto, has been discussed as a seminal work of new media art. Eduardo Kac, for example, recently described the transmission as "the true beginning of video art."2 In spite of such claims, Fontana's television work has yet to be fully investigated.3 Part of the reason for this oversight is that published research on the artist, particularly in English, has remained focused on his punctured and cut monochrome canvases. The emphasis on Fontana's paintings can be explained several ways. They are the best known of the artist's works, and Fontana himself believed that they represented his crowning achievement.4 Nevertheless, this focus in the literature has left unresolved many questions about the artist's work, in particular the precise nature of this television broadcast and its relationship to Fontana's early painting, his architectural installations, and his broader ideas about art and technology.