Antonella Perna

Antonella Perna is leading her PhD project at the University of Turku (Finland) at the Department of Art history. At the moment the main field of her interest is the history of art criticism, especially in relation with aesthetics and art history as in the 19th century and 20th century. She is also interested to contemporary art and new media. In past she has cooperated with several museums and her Master Degree program has dealt with conservation and restoration issues.

The present research, “Lionello Venturi (1885-1961) and the development of art history and criticism until the 1920s: the concept of primitive”, deals with the conceptual definition of primitive within the critical literature and in particular its role within the art criticism in the 1920s. The historical “travelling” and the aesthetical meaning of the concept are in fact investigated in order to build up the base of the analysis of the concept of primitive in the art theorization and in the criticism of 1920s. A specific attention is given to the distinction between primitive and primitivism, with a special regard to the modernism. The final interest of the research is the evaluation of the incidence of the concept of primitive on Venturi’ s perspective, and his international connections, on the history of art criticism as historiographic method, based on the idea of cultural relativism and universality expressed in terms of preference and fortune, and on the identification of primitive with art and modernity.