Jannis Kounellis & Theatre: Through Space and Time

Nasonova, Polina

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Jannis Kounellis & Theatre: Through Space and Time

Nasonova, Polina

Abstract

This thesis focuses on a neglected aspect of Kounellis’ work: the relationship between his artistic practice and theatre between the 1960s and the 1990s. After reconstructing Jannis Kounellis’ scenographical work for New Italian Theatre in the late 1960s, and his life-long collaboration with a theatre director Carlo Quadrucci, this research critically situates his practice within the contemporary theatre’s engagement with space as well as the phenomenology of the body. The artist’s interest in the form and temporality of the image, and of action, and the way his self-declared lifelong interest in theater and theatricality affected his own Arte Povera practice, revolutionized the use of non-traditional materials and modes of viewer engagement. This thesis aims not only to shed light on an unstudied dimension of Kounellis’ work, his productions as a scenographer, but also to consider the ways in which this life-long engagement might reframe contemporary art history’s understanding of the artist through the analysis of Kounellis’ work with grand-scale installations in the 1990s.