University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO Fine Arts Faculty Publications Department of Fine Arts 2011 A "Desperate Vitality": Tableaux Vivants in the Work of Pasolini and Ontani (1963–1974) Anna Mecugni University of New Orleans,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/fa_facpubs Part of the Fine Arts Commons Recommended Citation Mecugni, Anna. “A ‘Desperate Vitality’: Tableaux Vivants in the Work of Pasolini and Ontani (1963–1974),” Palinsesti: Contemporary Italian Art Online Journal 1, n. 2: 94–116. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Fine Arts at ScholarWorks@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fine Arts Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ANNA MECUGNI A “desperate vitality”. Tableaux vivants in the work of Pasolini and Ontani (1963-74) I am a force of the Past. Only tradition is my love. I come from the ruins, the churches, the altarpieces, the villages abandoned on the Apennines, the Alpine foothills where my brothers lived. I rove the Tuscolana like a madman, or the Appia like a dog without a master. Or I look at the twilights, the mornings over Rome, Ciociaria, the world, like the first acts of post-history, which I witness, thanks to my date of birth, from the far edge of some buried age... And I, adult fetus, more modern than all the moderns, roam in search of brothers that are no more. Pier Paolo Pasolini, “10 giugno 1962”, Mamma Roma1 This essay focuses on four key works by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) and Luigi Ontani (b.