Mousse Magazine & Publishing

Artist and fashion designer Cinzia Ruggeri (1942–2019) made her artistic research a tool for inquiry into the functional and semantic properties of the object and the architectural and social dimension of the body, according to an original and nonconformist perspective enriched by irony and oneirism. Cinzia Ruggeri: Cinzia says… is the first monograph on this unconventional figure who moved across disciplines with absolute freedom. Her life and versatile practice were driven by the desire to redefine the formal and functional status of elements of everyday life, from apparel to accessories, from furnishings to lighting. Ruggeri created imaginative, provocative, elegant, and never predictable worlds. Published with MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, this book is constructed as a broad, expanded chronology offering documents, photographs, accounts, and essays that bring to light a story left in the shadows for too long, and a legacy to look to now. Project supported by the Italian Council (9th edition, 2020), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

This book accompanies a new exhibition of the work of Robert Morris (1931–2018), a foundational figure in the history of Minimalism, Postminimalism, and Conceptual art. The exhibition focuses on the role of installation and the phenomenology of direct encounter in Morris’s work of the 1960s and 1970s, foregrounding the relation between the sculptural object and the beholder — the “perceiving body” — in the space of the room. This volume contains texts composed from three vantage points: art-historical essays by Jeffrey Weiss, Caroline A. Jones, and Courtney Fiske consider chief works and themes; personal accounts by dancer Simone Forti and curator and critic Bernard Ceysson reflect on the authors’ working relationships with Morris during his early period; and three essays by the artist himself — here translated into French for the first time — address certain fundamental preoccupations of sculpture after 1960: medium, form, space, and time.

"Un milione di rose per Angela Davis" era il motto di una campagna di solidarietà nata nella Germania dell’Est tra il 1970 e il 1972 a sostegno di Angela Davis, filosofa americana, femminista, comunista e rivoluzionaria del Black Power, accusata di terrorismo in California. Il movimento ha saldamente ancorato l’“eroina dell’altra America” nella memoria culturale di un’utopia sociale ormai scomparsa, e che dopo la sua assoluzione l'ha accolta come ospite di Stato. Da parte sua, Angela Davis sperava in un movimento internazionalista che promuovesse una democrazia socialista, femminista e non razzista, l'antitesi delle sue esperienze di violenza e oppressione in quanto donna nera negli Stati Uniti. Questo momento di speranza costituisce il punto di partenza storico per la mostra all'Albertinum di Dresda (2020-21), che presenta materiali d'archivio, ritratti di Davis realizzati da pittori statali della DDR e opere di artisti contemporanei incentrate sulle questioni per le quali la filosofa si è battuta all’epoca, e che ancora oggi presentano un carattere d’urgenza.