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Giorgio Verzotti analyzes the presence and function of the object of use in contemporary art: from the fragments of newspaper and wallpaper of the Cubists to the objects used by the Dadaists to bring the work of art back into the realm of experience, up to the subversion of function by the Surrealists and Duchamp’s ready-made. A further evolution is marked by the second post-war period, in which the birth of Pop Art leads to the appropriation, “if not of the actual objects, of the images of the massified and consumerist civilization.” If the Sixties are characterized by an almost maniacal attention to the object, the following decade, starting from the revolts of ‘68, marks a total rejection of the object and its commercial aesthetics, to return instead to the “material understood in an original and primary sense.” The last stage of this path is conceptual art, in which “the object is eclipsed by the pure eidetic process documented with writings or photographs” and if it returns, as it does in Kosuth, it becomes pure documentation of verbal language in its relationship with reality.

Giorgio Verzotti (Boca, 1953) is an art critic and curator. He has taught at the Carrara Academy of Bergamo, the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, NABA – New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and the Catholic University of Brescia. He is member of the Scientific Committee of Fondazione Antonio Ratti and of Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in Milan. From 1991 to 2001 he was curator (since 1999 in the role of chief curator) of Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’arte contemporanea in Rivoli (Turin), while from 2002 to 2005 he was chief curator of MART – Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto. At Castello di Rivoli he curated exhibitions by Giulio Paolini, Wim Delvoye, Giuseppe Penone, Guillaume Bijl, Enzo Cucchi, Carla Accardi, Haim Steinbach, Maurizio Cattelan, Mona Hatoum, Armando Testa, Shirin Neshat, Wolfgang Tillmans, Keith Haring, Pier Paolo Calzolari, among others. For Mart he curated the exhibitions Nuovo spazio italiano, 2002; Il racconto del filo, with Francesca Pasini, 2003, Skin Deep. Il corpo come luogo del segno artistico, 2003, Montagna. Art Science Myth, 2003; Reading Rooms. Giulio Paolini dialogues with the permanent collection, 2004, Carol Rama 2004; Mimmo Jodice from the Cotroneo collection, 2004; Il Bello e le bestie, with Lea Vergine, 2004; Runa Islam, 2005; La danza delle avanguardie, 2005; Douglas Gordon, 2006, among others. He has curated numerous exhibitions for other institutions, writes regularly for magazines such as Artforum and Flash Art, and holds lectures and conferences in Italian and European institutions