This volume is one of three companion catalogues to an exhibition taking place simultaneously at three venues in Rome on the large-scale projects of Pier Paolo Pasolini. They explore a theme dear to Pasolini — sacredness — with a multidisciplinary approach that will shed a light on his main characteristics as a poet, writer, director, and artist and on the cultural influence he wielded. This catalogue for the exhibition at the Palazzo Barberini connects a selection of paintings from the Gallerie Nazionali as well as other national and international museums to photographs, audio samples, and texts linked to Pasolini. It investigates what we may call “Pasolinian imagery” by focusing on a series of questions, such as: What is Pasolini’s influence on today’s visual culture? To what extent are our observations of past works, their interpretation, and the impressions they elicit indebted to a manner of seeing, an “optical subconscious” of sorts, that Pasolini’s aesthetics and ideology contributed to shaping?


Text in English and Italian.