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'Fragments of an Unknowable Whole': Michelangelo Antonioni's Incorporation of Contemporary Visualities in London, 1966

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 20:22 authored by David Mellor
Acting as sensitive conduits for some of the more significant strands in contemporary art and photography, Pierre Rouve, as executive producer, and Assheton Gorton, as art director, advised and formed choices of topic and content made by Michelangelo Antonioni during his direction of Blow-Up in London in 1966. In particular, the work of the painter Ian Stephenson and the photographer Don McCullin became central to the narrative of the film, reflecting the heightened awareness of trace and indexical remains in British visual culture at that juncture, equally spurred by thematics of the Sublime and late Symboliste abstraction, as well as documentary and criminal social evidence. The radical ambiguities arising from the micro-structures of photographic grain and divisionist touch, in both their arts, became a rare instance of the bringing to film of visual theory. Rouve, a London-based art critic who was colleague and friend of Stephenson, was an exceptional pioneer in his awareness of continental philosophy and critical theory: Gorton took London as a space for a play of environmental scenographic interventions in colour.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Visual Culture in Britain

ISSN

1471-4787

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

2

Volume

8

Page range

45-61

Pages

16.0

Department affiliated with

  • Art History Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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