Antonioni and the Aesthetics of Impurity

Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960s films are widely recognized as both exemplars of cinema and key texts in ushering in cinema's 'modern' incarnation. Reconnecting Antonioni's aesthetically audacious films of the 1960s to the ferment of their historical time, Antonioni and the Aesthetics of Impurity addresses these works' crucial, yet overlooked, affinity with the new 'impure' art practices that emerged in the period. At the same time, the book also offers a novel reading of the films' dialogue with postwar pictorial abstraction. Revealing an Antonioni who embraced both mixed and mass media and reflected on them via his cinema, the book replaces auteuristic accounts of the director's work with a new understanding of its critical significance in late-twentieth century cinema and visual culture.Matilde Nardelli teaches at the University of West London