Archetypes and Historicity: Paintings and Other Radical Forms 1995-2007

Gallerist and art writer Mario Diacono (born 1930) has been among postwar painting’s liveliest advocates, espousing, exhibiting and writing about the work of Alex Katz, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz and hundreds of others, through his eponymous galleries in Bologna, Rome, Boston and New York. This enormous compendium gathers Diacono’s essays written for exhibitions held in the Mario Diacono Gallery between 1994 and 2007, complementing Iconography and Archetypes as a critical survey of American and European painting at the turn of the millennium. As the title implies, a preoccupation throughout these writings is the creative tension between historical determinacy and recurrent motif (archetype). Among the artists discussed are Matthew Ritchie, Jacqueline Humphries, Doug and Mike Starn, Kevin Zucker, Daniel Rich, James Siena, Dana Schutz and Kelley Walker.