“Protagonisti” by Renato Barilli

This essay takes up the previous text Before and after 2000 (published by Feltrinelli in 2006) and consists in an attempt to frame and historicize the artistic currents that followed one another from the 1970s onwards. In this text I have the opportunity to retrace my steps and deepen this research. In particular, I equip myself with a metaphorical magnifying glass with which I can scrutinize some of the main protagonists of the history of art of the second half of the twentieth century more closely. I dedicate real dossiers to them and try to contextualize them in a wider panorama, using the concept of glocalism. And this is how I begin by presenting the key artists to understand the upheavals of the seventies, think of Ontani, Salvo, Baselitz, and then approach the artists who dominate the current scene, such as the Americans Koons and LaChapelle, the English Hockney and Hirst and South African Kentridge. In this text I do not limit myself to analyzing the main Western exponents, but I also delve into great artists who move in contexts such as Japan, in particular Murakami, Mori and Tabaimo, to then become interested in the artistic practice of the Iranian Neshat and finally land in America of the South through the works of Salcedo, Neto, Saraceno, Kcho. [Renato Barilli]