{"id":253,"date":"2014-01-28T08:34:56","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T08:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=253"},"modified":"2016-03-30T21:35:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T21:35:11","slug":"dom-holdaway-filippo-trentin-eds-rome-postmodern-narratives-of-a-cityscape-london-brookfield-pickering-chatto-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/09-1\/c61-book-review\/dom-holdaway-filippo-trentin-eds-rome-postmodern-narratives-of-a-cityscape-london-brookfield-pickering-chatto-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Dom Holdaway & Filippo Trentin (eds.), Rome, Postmodern Narratives of a Cityscape (London & Brookfield: Pickering & Chatto, 2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t
\n\n\t\t<\/i><\/span> <\/a>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Rome qua<\/i> its sprawling peripheries, immortalised by Italian literature and cinema in their bleakest and most dramatic aspects (e.g. Pier Paolo Pasolini), has also become a well-known aesthetic trope, which is itself parasitic upon Rome\u2019s paradigmatic historic centre, whose time-honoured beauty and wealth stand in stark contrast to the more recent peripheries. Whilst the former aesthetic reception of Rome is tied indissolubly to the classical age and later classicism, the latter is a standard case of modernity qua<\/i> urban phenomenon, i.e. the pre-modern city centre being surrounded and eventually dwarfed by ever-growing circles of newly populated areas marking the inexorable advent and advance of the modern age. <\/span><\/p>\n

The contributors of the volume hereby reviewed attempt to overcome this aesthetic dichotomy and present a <\/span>postmodern<\/i> understanding of the city, drawing primarily from architecture, psychoanalysis, art history and film studies, the book\u2019s cinematographic references spanning from Enrico Guazzoni\u2019s 1913 <\/span>Quo vadis<\/i> to Michele Placido\u2019s 2005 <\/span>Romanzo criminale<\/i>. Whereas classical and modern narratives aim at establishing fixed points of reference and final evaluations, a postmodern one contents itself with their plurality, which reveals implicitly the irreducible variety of perspectives characterising human affairs and the incessant flow of human life, individual as well as collective, which no abstract concept or conception can truly grasp once and for all.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first three essays in the book pursue their postmodern interpretation of Rome by focussing upon: (1) the ever-changing urban landscape around, against, through, within, beneath and upon the Aurelian Walls (\u201cBetween Rome\u2019s Walls: Notes on the Role and Reception of the Aurelian Walls\u201d, by Marco Cavietti); (2) the impressionistic and idiosyncratic depiction of ancient and modern Rome in Federico Fellini\u2019s cinema, which has itself become part of the internationally shared imagery of the city (\u201cThe Explosion of Rome in the Fragments of a Postmodern Iconography: Federico Fellini and the Forma Urbis<\/i>\u201d, by Fabio Benincasa); and (3) the further expansion of the re-presented Rome in recent Italian films, which bear witness to the gradual cultural acceptance of more and more sections of the modern city in the same imagery (\u201cCentre, Hinterland and the Articulation of \u2018Romanness\u2019 in Recent Italian Film\u201d, by Lesley Caldwell).<\/span><\/p>\n

The second lot of three essays focuses instead upon specific places and notable artefacts in Rome, the fame of which may often hide the very different meanings that they have had in the course of their history or with regard to their observers. The chosen items are: (1) a number of famous buildings, monuments and neighbourhoods in Bernardo Bertolucci\u2019s 1979 film entitled <\/span>La luna<\/i> (\u201cTopophilia nd Other Roman Perversions: On Bertolucci\u2019s <\/span>La luna<\/i>\u201d, by John David Rhodes); (2) the 2<\/span>nd<\/sup>-century equestrian bronze statue of emperor Marcus Aurelius and emperor Augustus\u2019 1<\/span>st<\/sup>-century BCE <\/span>Ara Pacis<\/i> (\u201cMarcus Aurelius and the Ara Pacis: Notes on the Notion of \u2018Origin\u2019 in Contemporary Rome\u201d, by Filippo Trentin); and (3) the gigantic gas holder built in the Ostiense area in the 1930s to provide the citizens of Rome with cooking gas and street illumination (\u201cA Postmodern Gaze on the Gasometer\u201d, by Keala Jewell).<\/span><\/p>\n

The concluding three essays discuss Rome\u2019s two-way links with foreign architectural experiments. Specifically, they address: (1) the growingly innovative and daring architecture of the churches built outside Rome\u2019s historic centre in the 20<\/span>th<\/sup> and 21<\/span>st<\/sup> century, especially after the 1962-5 Second Vatican Council, in line with analogous developments in Glasgow (\u201cEcclesiastical Icons: Defining Rome through Architectural Exchange\u201d, by James Robertson); (2) the thirty-year-long international success of the itinerating architectural exhibition called <\/span>Roma interrotta<\/i>, in which twelve architects from different countries reinterpreted Giambattista Nolli\u2019s seminal 1748 Great Plant of Rome (\u201c\u2019Roma Interrotta\u2019: Postmodern Rome as the Source of Fragmented Narratives\u201d, by L\u00e9a-Catherine Szacka); and (3) the influence of Rome\u2019s architectures on two of the most influential 20<\/span>th<\/sup>-century American architects, i.e. Charles W. Moore and Robert Venturi (\u201cLas Vegas by Way of Rome: The Eternal City and American Postmodernism\u201d, by Richard W. Hayes).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The volume edited by Holdaway and Trentin is the second instalment of the Warwick series in the humanities and it offers an engaging exploration of Rome as an evolving cultural hub of important significations for architects and artists, well beyond the firmly established waves of classicism that, recurrently, have swept the shores of Western creativity. Also, it offers a convincing example of coherent application of \u201cpostmodernism\u201d as a useful hermeneutical tool and an established category of academic thought. Although the level of scholarly detail of the chapters is not homogenous, the overall quality of the volume is noteworthy, since this book offers many a refreshing perspective over a city about which countless perspectives have already been offered. Moreover, interesting considerations about the city\u2019s demography, politics and economic life punctuate the chapters and make this book even more appealing. Above all, a genuine fascination with Rome\u2019s vast and complex architectural and artistic history informs the whole endeavour, turning the book into an erudite act of love for the city. The reader who has never visited Rome will feel compelled to do it. The one who has already visited it will wish to do it again, in order to savour it in a new way.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rome qua its historic centre, encircled by the 3rd<\/sup>-century Aurelian Walls, has been a long-time paradigm of architectural and artistic beauty second to none.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[715,129,717,716,199,720,718,719,265,722,721],"coauthors":[990],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c61-book-review","tag-architecture","tag-art","tag-fellini","tag-film","tag-italy","tag-moore","tag-nolli","tag-pasolini","tag-rome","tag-vatican","tag-venturi-aurelian-walls-bertolucci"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}