I think, here in Italy, we suffer from a similar sort of problem. The really great artists in writing (also painting) seem to be disappearing. We have produced Italo Calvino and Alberto Moravia, and these works, along with similar ones fill the bookshelves at the stores (along with the classics) We are stuck in a time warp it seems, for Italy is a very artistic country... and yet, post WWII it has focused its energy in a model after American, so that the arts have become more practical, almost craft-like save for the excellence in their skills: leather works, paper making, household item design, the best made and best looking clothes in all the world, architecture and so on, yet a lack in real philosophers, painters, writers, poets... not as bad as in Central North America, but still, a depression... It has been easy for Italians to fall back on these artisanships, for there is a long history here of such craftsmanship, and with the new pragmatism sweeping the north, with its greater wealth than in the south, but also its boring industrialismo, there is bound, as in De Tocqueville's America, to arise a system where pragmatism has overruled creativity... Though the typical Italian would never admit to such a thing... believing they have fused the two -- really, I am out of place here, because there is such an eye for the design of everything -- although, and kill me for it -- I do not think the architecture is that good, other than it bears an important link to the past -- but I see great strides in the quality of the building, how they are put up, but no Frank Lloyd Wright type breakthroughs, just the same old boxy thing, put up with great care, great materials (even -- in the north -- for the working poor). I think too, the church/state run educational system is to blame, which still points people in a certain direction from very early on, and almost always, a direction useful to the economy -- just as it is doing in the US, but not veiling this directedness so much as there; giving the image of freedom with no real freedom... and so, though the people are offended at the idea they may be losing touch with great writing, great painting, great architecture... they are, no less, losing touch with it. I think Pesce and, particularly de Chirico (who unfortunately remains largely undiscovered in the Central North American area) are the last great artists of the modern age... and that was some time ago. There is, however, starting to be a renaissance, not in worn out Tuscany, but to the north, in Turin, where modernist movements are again flourishing.
So perhaps this is turning, in my mind, into a discussion of geopolitical implications of writing and art styles. Hopefully someone will care to add, on such a vein as this, or the earlier points.
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