vivawitt

Some time ago,  I wrote a brief essay about Burt Barr, one of the most perceptive artist I met in New York. This brief essay was published on Dialoghi Internazionali #13, Bruno Mondadori, Milano,  an Italian  magazine on sociology and economics but focusing on interesting subjects of general culture.

Here is the pdf of the article  in English.

” The painters were the working class of Soho. In order to understand Burt Barr’s cultural context it may be useful to mention a few of them. Besides the most famous ones such as “Bob” Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, there were many others who were young and still unknown such as Chuck Close, Lynda Benglis, Elizabeth Murray, Brice Marden and Richard Serra. Like some of them, Burt Barr cannot be classified as a follower of a specific movement. If in appearance he brings to mind some aspects of Pop Art or Minimalism, it is because he adhere to neither of them.
Burt Barr has been working as an artist for about twenty years. “I started late”, he says, “when everyone else was already retiring”. It all began by chance with a video camera borrowed from a family member. Over the years he went through the various formats, from magnetic tape up to digital, while maintaining a solid cinematographic “aesthetics”. Burt in fact shoots with a video camera but his videos bring to mind the cinema, in the same way that an aphorism blends poetry and philosophy.” Vittoria M Chierici ( translated by Pina Piccolo, 2011)