par Yves Chevrefils Desbiolles*

ABSTRACT: Born in Lodz in 1893, settled in Francia from 1911 on, Jerzy Waldemar Jarocinski, better known as Waldemar-George, quickly became one of the most influential art critics in the period between the two World Wars. His name is associated to the "neo-humanist" movement, which considered man as the measure of all things in art. The movement has suffered from its closeness to the Fascist sympathies of his theorist, who was received by Benito Mussolini in a private hearing, in Rome, in the spring of 1933.

Son regard plongeant tout droit dans la chambre, elle aperçut directement au-dessous d’elle, comme au bout d’un fil à plomb, le crâne de Kaminsky, son beau crâne noir comme un plumage de corbeau. Ses cheveux plaqués, luisant de brillantine et séparés dans le milieu, faisaient assez l’effet de deux ailes. [...] Son long visage olivâtre, au gros nez, aux grosses lèvres, aux joues bien pleines, exprimaient un bonheur qu’il ne cherchait pas à cacher.

(Louis Guilloux, Le Sang noir, 1935)

Ce portrait de Kaminsky que donne Louis Guilloux (1899-1980) est en fait celui du jeune Waldemar-George, un proche de l’écrivain durant la Première Guerre mondiale. Dans ce roman, il est parfois question d’une voiture préfectorale dans laquelle Kaminsky, en compagnie du médecin-major et d’autres officiers, postés à Saint-Brieuc, vont à la rencontre de leurs maîtresses qui les attendent dans une maison louée au bord de la mer…[1]  (Fig. 1).

di Monica Cavicchi

ABSTRACT: Federico Zeri began collecting photographs in the late 1940s. From that years on his photographic library continued to grow as a dynamic organism until the scholar’s death on 5 October 1998. This collection of 290.000 prints, which Zeri organized in a complex structure, bears witness to the method of the great art connoisseurs of the 19th and 20th centuries based on analogical photograph’s use for the comparative analysis. The importance of Zeri’s photographic collection lies not only in the richness of the works documented but also in the extraordinary potential of the knowledge there sedimented. The cataloguing project of Zeri’s photographic library, that includes the filing, digitization and online publication of 140.000 photographs (the complete section of the “Pittura Italiana”), managed to save all the levels of information on the back of each print and also the hierarchical structure of the archive that reflects scholar’s concept of art history. Zeri’s photographic archive is a true pictorial mapping of the Italian heritage. Its rich store of visual records (never static, always open to applications, critical updates, comparisons and references) bears eloquent witness to the scholar’s daily commitment and to his faith in the value of knowledge for the preservation of the cultural heritage.

All’interno di un dibattito fecondo che negli ultimi decenni ha visto il tema dell’archivio affrontato da molteplici ambiti disciplinari, si pone anche il dialogo, già ricco di contributi critici, attorno alle raccolte fotografiche di storia dell’arte. La prospettiva archivistica che invita a valutare quelle raccolte storicizzate nei termini di “sedimentazioni”, ne sollecita la valorizzazione del potenziale epistemologico.[1]

di Fabrizio Corrado, Paolo San Martino

L’ebanista torinese Piero Piffetti materializza l’immagine collettiva di Barocco come stile astruso, capriccioso ed elitario. Idea nata non dal vero Barocco bensì dalla sua fortuna nel neobarocco ottocentesco di Napoleone III e Vittorio Emanuele II, una sorta di clone estremizzato, un arcibarocco delle masse, che raggiunge l’eclettismo novecentesco del design, le carrozzerie trionfali delle automobili americane anni cinquanta, il Kitsch e la Pop Art.

Capolavoro emblematico di questo arcibarocco può essere considerato il doppio corpo (cassettone a ribalta con scansia) conservato nel Palazzo del Quirinale: una sinfonia plastica, coloristica e tattile che lascia spiazzati anche gli esperti: da dove proviene uno stile così eminentemente piemontese eppure affatto alieno da una mentalità non certo fastosa come quella subalpina?