No. 7-8 (2024): Il Surrealismo e la cultura italiana. La critica, le mostre, le ricerche degli artisti
Studies

(Un)orthodox Surrealists: Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Thek, and the queer strategies of Eugene Berman, Corrado Cagli, and the Neoromantic circle in Rome

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  • Peter Benson Miller
Peter Benson Miller
Storico dell’arte e curatore independente
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/ladiana-3400

Published 2025-03-13

Keywords

  • Queer theory,
  • Fetish,
  • Neoromantics,
  • Rome,,
  • eccentric modernisms

How to Cite

Benson Miller, P. (2025). (Un)orthodox Surrealists: Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Thek, and the queer strategies of Eugene Berman, Corrado Cagli, and the Neoromantic circle in Rome. La Diana, (7-8), 285–298. https://doi.org/10.36253/ladiana-3400
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This essay compares aspects of Paul Thek’s work from the 1960s, created in the wake of his initial sojourn in Italy – focusing on his exhibition strategies, an embrace of decorative/theatrical materials, the emphasis on fetish objects, and an overall resistance to intepretation – to Robert Rauschenberg’s Feticci and Scatole Personali, exhibited in Rome in 1953. Informed by Tom Folland’s critical reading of Rauschenberg’s “queer modernism”, the paper explores these affinities through the context of postwar Rome, with reference to similar strategies employed by Cy Twombly, Corrado Cagli, Eugene Berman, Leda Mastrocinque, Pavel Tchelitch   nd the circle of artists affiliated with the Galleria dell’Obelisco.

pdf (Italiano)