Italian contemporary art journalism between art critique and reportage. (Case study of Italian art periodicals of 20th and 21st century).

The research paper is intended to explore and analyze the condition of art criticism and cultural journalism as interconnected and interrelated fields. The paradigm of the critical reception of the cultural environment is evolving and influencing the discourse, being one of the crucial powers affecting the future of the art market, while after the 1960s, the position and role of art critic has undergone changes. Currently, the challenge is to determine the place of art criticism in the modern art media discourse. It is difficult to draw the line between the definition of the notion of “art critic” as an expert on the one hand and “cultural journalist” and “reporter" on the other hand. In its concept, art criticism is an elusive discourse: it constantly flickers between the profane and the sacred, between mass journalism and art criticism, between explanation, broadcasting information outward, and analyzing. While back in times, the critic’s judgment was placed above the artist’s, nowadays, the functions of a critic are rather blurred, and the style of critical articles and their content no longer have such a strong influence on the art environment. The institute of criticism has always included generalists and researchers who occupied a specific niche in art and were specifically devoting themself to the quite narrow medium. Journalists working with the cultural agenda, on the other hand, were always represented in a separate niche even among the general journalistic discourse as the ones who obtain more profound and deep knowledge and connection to the field of the reporting, that provided them the status of critics rather than observers. Thus, in the thesis, I’m going to consider the matter of art journalism as a contemporary recipient of art criticism. The research paper aims to analyse how art critique developed through the last centuries, acquired new genres and formats, and shared its roles with journalistic reportage. The research is particularly interested in the Italian scene of art critique and cultural journalism, where the writing tendencies are reviewed based on the examples of art magazines and periodicals from the 20th to 21st centuries.