Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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Boetti, Alighiero
b. 16 December 1940, Turin; d. April 1994, Rome
Artist
Boetti was always intensely interested in the idea of order and disorder, and he used his
art to suggest unexpected relationships between ordinary things. In semiotic terms, Boetti
transforms a conventional relation into a causal one, as when he writes a word so as to
form the shape of the object it represents. Working in a style related to the ideas of arte
povera, pop and conceptual art, Boetti conceived works which he then had
manufactured by Afghan embroiderers.
L’albero delle ore (The Tree of the Hours), from 1979, uses the idea of church bells
which sound on the hour and quarter hours, and converts them to visual signs which form
a large Christmas Tree, linking tree and time. Arazzo (Tapestry), from 1980, is a map of
the world which shows each country in the colours and design of its flag. These
connecting protocols are of no practical use, but they do create surprise and wonderment.
In the early 1970s, Boetti changed his name to ‘Alighiero e Boetti’, suggesting a
duplication of his personality.
MAX STAPLES
Bolognini, Mauro
b. 28 June 1922, Pistoia
Film director
Trained in architecture and with an interest in painting, Bolognini became known for the
formal beauty and pictorial composition of his films. An uneven collaboration matched
his elegant direction with Pier Paolo Pasolini’s raw screenplays about the subproletariat.
Concluding their working relationship with a successful film version of Vitaliano
Brancati’s Il bell’Antonio (1960), Bolognini continued adapting classics of modern
Italian literature to the screen, creating films in which he demonstrated his skill at
recreating the ambience of Italy’s various regions in bygone eras. Bolognini defended his
work against accusations of ideological vacuity by claiming that, like Luchino Visconti,
he studied the dynamics of familial power relationships as a microcosm for the political
operations of society at large.
Entries A–Z 101
Further reading
Montezemola, V.C. (ed.) (1977) Bolognini, Rome: Istituto Poligrafo dello Stato (text in English,
French and Italian; includes an extended interview with Bolognini and an important essay on his
adaptation of literary works by the film critic/historian Gian Piero Brunetta).
Witcombe, R.T. (1982) ‘Form as Fatherscape: Bolognini and Bertolucci,’ in The New Italian
Cinema, New York: Oxford (explores the theme of family conflict in the work of both
directors).
WILLIAM VAN WATSON
Bongiorno, Mike
b. 26 May 1924, New York, USA
Television presenter and broadcaster
The name of Mike Bongiorno is synonymous with Italian television. Having been present
at its inauguration as one of the two interviewers on Arrivi e partenze (Arrivals and
Departures), the RAI’s first public television programme broadcast on 3 January 1954,
Bongiorno has gone on to appear uninterruptedly on Italian television for almost half a
century, continuing to exercise his role of high priest of quiz with all the resilience and
confidence of a national institution.
Born in New York of an American father and Italian mother, Bongiorno was in Italy
during the Second World War but returned to America in 1945 and began his
broadcasting career as the presenter of a radio programme called Voci nuove dall’Italia
(New Voices from Italy). In 1953 he returned to Italy and began to work for the RAI, first
in radio and then in television. Although he made his television debut in 1954, his first
real success came in 1956 with the now legendary Lascia o raddoppia (Double or
Nothing), a weekly quiz show modelled on the American The $64,000 Dollar Question,
which ran for 191 consecutive weeks and marked a milestone in Italian television culture.
The programme’s overwhelming popularity not only served to rapidly increase licences
and sales of television sets but even forced cinemas to interrupt film screenings on
Thursday nights, sometimes showing the programme themselves. Bongiorno thus became
a household name, and in the years that followed he consolidated his position as grand
quizmaster with new shows that attempted to rejuvenate a familiar formula: Caccia al
numero (Hunt the Number) (1962), La fiera dei sogni (The Dream Fair) (1963), Giochi in
famiglia (Family Games) (1966), Rischiatutto (Risk All) (1970), Scommettiamo (Let’s
Bet) (1978) and Flash in 1980.
By 1981, however, Silvio Berlusconi was preparing his own entry into Italian
television, and Bongiorno was drawn away from the RAI to work for Berlusconi’s
Canale Cinque, where he has remained to preside forever over much-watched quiz
shows like Superflash, Telemike and La ruota della fortuna (The Wheel of Fortune).
Over the years he has also been called upon to host the Sanremo Festival eleven times,
his most recent appearance being in 1997 with sexy soubrette Valeria Marini at his side.
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His popularity undiminished and having finally and formally achieved the status of a
living legend—in 1997 he entered the Guinness Book of Records for the length of his
career in television—Bongiorno has continued to shrug off accusations of mediocrity and
venality levelled at him by more intellectual critics, and reasserted his eternal willingness
to continue being the extraordinary incarnation of the ordinary televisual Italian.
See also: broadcasting; private television
Further reading
Eco, U. (1963) ‘Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno’ (Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno), Diario
minimo (Miniature Diary), Milan: Mondadori (a classic study of Bongiorno as a significant
cultural phenomenon by the famous Italian semiotician who himself worked briefly on
Bongiorno’s Lascia or raddoppia).
GINO MOLITERNO
Bonino, Emma
b. 9 March 1948, Bra, Cuneo
Social activist and politician
With a degree in foreign languages from the prestigious Bocconi University of Milan,
Bonino began her political career during the 1970s as militant feminist, vocal and active
in the campaign for the legalization of abortion. She was jailed for her pro-abortion
activities in 1975, but in 1976 was elected to Parliament as a deputy for the Radical
Party. From 1979 onwards she also served as a member of the European Parliament, and
in 1994 became European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Consumer Rights and
Fishing. Highly respected internationally for her passionate support for the environment,
equality and human rights, she was named European of the Year in 1996. Equally popular
at home, in 1999 she became a strong contender for the Presidency of the Republic, the
first time a woman had even been considered for the position. In the event she lost the
Presidential contest to Ciampi, but proved herself again in June 1999 when she led a
strong team of Radicals to success in the elections for the European Parliament.
GINO MOLITERNO
Entries A–Z 103
Bonito Oliva, Achille
b. 4 November 1939, Caggiano, Salerno
Art critic and curator
Bonito Oliva has curated numerous art exhibitions since 1969, and has written over
twenty books. In 1979 he coined the term transavantgarde, and the next year he
achieved prominence by launching the artists of this grouping in the open section of the
Venice Biennale.
Because of the markedly partizan nature of his writing, Bonito Oliva has been
regarded more as a promoter than a researcher. His strongly opinionated judgements have
often provoked harsh reactions as, for example, when he characterized arte povera as
repressive and masochistic and the 1992 Documenta as a mere waste of money by
uninformed organizers.
In 1993 he returned to the Venice Biennale as Artistic Director, an appointment which
tends to reflect political influence. In fact, the actual title of Director was denied him, as
in the meantime his Socialist sponsors had fallen from grace.
See also: art criticism
Further reading
Bonito Oliva, A. (1982) Transavantgarde international, Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore (a sample
of Bonito Oliva’s writings on art).
MAX STAPLES
Bossi, Umberto
b. 19 September 1941, Cassano Magnano, Varese
Political leader
A medical student at Pavia in the 1960s, Umberto Bossi joined the student movement
becoming, a member of, successively, il manifesto, PDUP (the Democratic Party of
Proletarian Unity) and the Greens (see Verdi). In 1982 Bossi founded the Lombard
Autonomous League, and in 1987 he was elected Senator of the Lombard League.
Success in the European and regional elections of 1989 and 1990 respectively led to his
establishing and leading the Lega Nord (Northern League), which triumphed in the 1992
national elections with 80 MPs elected. Bossi’s blunt, even crude, rhetorical style and his
political ability in mobilizing a mass movement had thus helped break the mould of
Italian politics. In 1994, a tactical alliance with Berlusconi put the League briefly in
government, but Bossi quickly re-established the League’s oppositional character, which
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proved electorally successful in 1996. A populist rather than a statesman, his movement
nevertheless put state reform, and specifically federalism, firmly on the national political
agenda.
MARK DONOVAN
boxing
The 1960s were the golden age of Italian boxing. Duilio Loi was the world junior
welterweight champion in 1960–2, and Sandro Lopopolo held the same title in 1965–6.
Italy won five gold medals in the Olympics of 1960 and 1964. Among the medallists was
Giovanni (Nino) Benvenuti, who dominated the welterweight division at the 1960 Rome
Olympics and then advanced to the light middleweights, taking the world title in 1965–6.
He then defeated Emil Griffith to become the middle-weight champion of the world in
what Ring magazine declared the best fight of 1967. Benvenuti was the only Italian to
triumph in different weight categories. He retained his middleweight title until 1970,
when he lost it to Carlos Monzon.
After Benvenuti, the only Italian boxing champions to gain international recognition
were middleweight Vito Antuofermo, who attained a brief moment of glory in 1979, and
Michele Piccirillo, who took the welterweight crown in 1998.
PAOLO VILLA
BPR
Officially refounded in 1947, the architectural studio BPR had initially been established
in 1937 as Studio architetti BBPR, a name formed from the initials of its four partners:
Gian Luigi Banfi (1910–45), Lodovico Belgiojoso (1909), Enrico Peressutti (1908–45)
and its principal Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909–69). The studio served as a personal and
intellectual association for its founding members, and maintained its original form even
after Banfi’s death in the concentration camp of Mauthausen, though postwar events did
prompt a slight change of name to signify the group’s maturity. The members drew much
of their inspiration and guidance from older architects such as Giuseppe Pagano (who had
also died at Mauthausen), and sought to introduce modern ideas about architecture into
the Politecnico of Milan, an institute then directed by Gaetano Moretti with a long-
established conservative curriculum against which the nascent BBPR reacted. Their work
continued to be grounded in considerations about the wider social and cultural context,
and the group maintained a reputation for attempting to rescue Italian architecture from a
stifling formalism.
FASSIL ZEWDOU
Entries A–Z 105
Branca, Vittore
b. 9 July 1913, Savona
Literary critic and essayist
Branca’s long and illustrious career has been marked by an ability to combine the more
scientific and philological aspects of literary research with the more openly interpretative
aspects of criticism, an approach which is exemplified in the volume he co-authored with
Jean Starobinski, Filologia e critica (Philology and Literary Criticism) (1977). Branca’s
critical method is best represented by his fundamental studies devoted to Boccaccio,
culminating in his Boccaccio medievale (1959, revised 1981) and in his critical edition of
the Decameron in 1976. A tireless and hardworking scholar, author, organizer and
promoter of cultural events, Branca is the editor (with Carlo Ossola) of the journal
Letters Italiane, and also currently president of one of the most active and prestigious
Italian cultural institutes, the Giorgio Cini Foundation of Venice. Besides his lifelong
works on Boccaccio, Branca has written extensively on humanism and on the eighteenth
century. He contributes to several major newspaper such as Il sole Ventiquattore.
ANDREA CICCARELLI
Brancati, Vitaliano
b. 24 July 1907, Pachino; d. 25 September 1954, Turin
Novelist, playwright and critic
Although Brancati lived for many years in Rome, he remained tied to the people and
customs of Sicily, often using his native land as a backdrop for his novels and plays. His
early plays reflected fascist leanings, but Brancati eventually repudiated his earlier
politics and his later work deals with themes such as the relationship between men and
women, and provincial life in Sicily. Frequently focussing on social and sexual situations,
these works tend to satirize the traditional male Sicilian code of honour. Brancati’s
novels, generally infused with tragicomic undertones, include Gli anni perduti (The Lost
Years) (1941), Don Giovanni in Sicilia (Don Juan in Sicily) (1942) and Paolo il caldo
(Paolo the Hot) (1955). His Il Bell’Antonio (1949), later adapted for the cinema by Mauro
Bolognini and starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale, depicts a
stereotypical Don Juan type whose philanderings are eventually revealed as merely a ruse
to hide his sexual insecurity and impotence.
LAURA A. SALSINI
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Branzi, Andrea
b. March 1938, Florence
Architect
Often called the godfather of Italian New Design, Branzi regarded design and
architecture as privileged forms of expression, joining functionality and artistry and
transforming the real into the imaginary. In 1968, Branzi became involved in ‘radical’
design, and in the late 1970s he emphatically rejected the current preoccupation with pure
functionality and proposed a novel aesthetics built on symbolism and allegory. A
founding member of Archizoom Associati, he advocated an alternative architectural
language, proposing natural materials for new architectural expression. He joined Studio
Alchimia and Studio Memphis, and in 1983 he founded the exclusive post-graduate
Domus Academy in Milan. In 1986, he joined the EEC Commission to develop and
promote design in Europe, and in 1987 he received the Golden Compass Award for
theory and design. Branzi provided an important contribution to the post-functional
design that, after the 1980s, was to become decisive in Italy’s design culture.
See also: anti-design; design education; interior design
Further reading
Branzi, A. (1992) Luoghi Andrea Branzi: The Complete Works, introduction by G. Celant, London:
Thames & Hudson (an illustrated anthology of Branzi’s work assembled from several exhibition
catalogues).
FASSIL ZEWDOU
Brass, Tinto (Giovanni)
b. 26 March 1933, Milan
Film director
After studying in France in the 1950s and working for a period at the Paris
Cinémathèque, Brass served as assistant director to Rossellini on India (1958) and Il
generale Della Rovere (General Della Rovere) (1959). His first feature film as director,
Chi lavora è perduto (Whoever Works is Doomed), made in 1963, was an anarchic and
semi-autobiographical work strongly influenced by the French New Wave. There
followed a number of other films in the late 1960s that manifested a strong degree of
originality and caustic anti-conformism, but from the mid-1970s the explicit sexual
content of his films became ever more pronounced. This tendency continued through the
1980s and 1990s to become something of a trademark, leading many to regard Brass as
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the great Italian master of cinematic eroticism while others dismiss these later films as
commercial soft porn thinly disguised as cultural provocation.
GINO MOLITERNO
bread
Directly derived from the Latin word panis, the Italian term for bread is pane. This
fundamental component of the Italian diet is made from a dough obtained using wheat
flour, water, yeast and salt. After leavening, it is cooked in an oven.
In Italy, as in many other countries, bread has always carried symbolic and religious
connotations. For Catholics in particular, bread is the fundamental component of the
Eucharist, where believers achieve communion with Christ by eating it as spiritual
nourishment; the fundamental prayer of the Christian liturgy, the ‘Our Father’, begins
with a request to ‘give us this day our daily bread’. This religious legacy explains many
deeply rooted Italian habits such as the reluctance to throw away bread, perceived as an
expression of food wasting, or the aversion for resting bread upside down, interpreted as
a sign of disrespect towards a holy food. One might have expected that, with the almost
total disappearance of peasant culture in the later postwar period, the reverential attitude
to bread may have faded. However, as a cultural habit touching on both religion and
superstition, it still survives to a certain extent, at least at a subconscious level. The term
pane, used as a synonym for food, also appears in countless expressions with metaphoric
value: buono come il pane, as good as bread; rendere pan per focaccia, to exchange tit
for tat; mangiare pane a ufo, to scrounge a living.
Bread is an integral component of the Italian daily diet, and is included in most main
meals. Italians eat it for breakfast with caffellatte, and it is likely to be omnipresent on the
table at lunch and the evening meal. In contrast to the widespread habit elsewhere,
Italians do not normally spread butter on their bread, which falls into two main
categories. The first or common one, pane comune, is made with the basic ingredients
indicated above. According to the type of flour used, it is called casareccio (homemade)
or integrale (wholemeal), and pane bianco (white bread) where the whiteness of the flour
characterizes the product itself. To make pane speciale (special bread), additional
ingredients—oil, potatoes, herbs, milk—may be used and different kinds of flour (corn,
rye, soya flours) may be added. Under the generic labels of pane bianco and pane nero
there proliferate a large number of bread types, with regional differences playing a role in
three distinct ways: flavour, names and shapes of the product. Across internal regional
boundaries, bread varieties have migrated far from their place of origin, so that, for
example, Neapolitan bread is popular also in Milan and Tuscan bread (without salt) is
sold in most northern and southern towns. For toast lovers, pane a cassetta (sliced bread)
is the required element, while panini (bread rolls) in countless forms, consistency and
flavours are available everywhere on the peninsula. Bread sticks or grissini (born in Turin
and named after its dialect) are a popular alternative to bread for those worried about
gaining weight. No one likes pane raffermo (stale bread), while pan grattato (bread
crumbs) is an essential ingredient of many dishes. Typical of central Italy is bruschetta, a
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generous slice of roasted bread on which garlic is rubbed before adding salt and virgin
olive oil; the southern variation includes pieces of fresh, ripe tomatoes. Internationally
renowned focaccia is a close relation of bread, in fact a variation on the bread theme. It
consists of a flattened layer of bread dough, cooked in a large baking tin and covered
with a variety of ingredients. Focaccia in its simplest version was known in Roman
times. The delicious combination of ingredients used as a topping have become more
elaborate in recent years, giving origin to a wide range of different specialities in each
region (see regional cooking).
MARIELLA TOTARO GENEVOIS
Brera, Giovanni Luigi (Gianni)
8 September 1919, San Zenone al Po; d. 19 December 1992, Codogno
Journalist and writer
The most- famous and influential Italian sports journalist of all time, Gianni Brera wrote
for La Gazzetta dello Sport, Il Guerin Sportivo, Il Giorno and La Repubblica. Brera
willingly voiced his often provocative opinions on a variety of subjects ranging from his
lifelong passion for food and wine to politics, literature and Italian history. football
(calcio) and cycling. However, his main professional interests remained
Studies of Brera’s distinctive use of the Italian language have highlighted his
resourceful combination of erudite and vernacular idiom, and he coined many neologisms
that subsequently became standard elements of Italian sports vocabulary (such as libero
to designate the defensive soccer player who does not guard a specific opponent). A
prolific writer, Brera published several collections of essays and articles, a history of the
World Cup, soccer manuals and novels.
Further reading
Brera, G. (1993) L’Arcimatto 1960–1966, ed. A. Maietti, Milan: Baldini & Castoldi (a collection of
articles selected from the weekly feature of the same name that appeared in Il Guerin Sportivo).
PAOLO VILLA
Brioni
Fashion designer Gaetano Savini and tailor Nazareno Fonticoli inaugurated the Brioni
men’s fashion house in Rome in 1945, naming it after an elegant Adriatic resort. Brioni’s
new way of dressing men seemed to appeal to Hollywood actors such as Clark Gable and
Entries A–Z 109
Gary Cooper, who flocked to Rome with the great success of Italian cinema in the 1950s.
Brioni’s reputation spread around the world with award-winning fashion shows in New
York and other American cities Eventually Brioni branched out from its hand-sewn
jackets and trousers to a shirt factory, a leather fashion house and a women’s line. Quality
has always been a trademark of Brioni, with each garment requiring at least eighteen
hours of work. ‘Your suit will be pressed no less than 184 times in a two-month period,
the time you’ll need to wait for it to be finished’ says Mr Savini-Brioni. Apparently the
wait is not a problem for the elite clientele of 25,000 customers, who order two or three
garments per season.
BERNADETTE LUCIANO
broadcasting
Broadcasting in Italy is dominated by the state corporation Radiotelevisione Italiana
(RAI) and a commercial sector that is principally controlled by Silvio Berlusconi’s
Fininvest corporation. There are seven national terrestrial television networks, with three
public channels—Rai Uno, Rai Due and Rai Tre—and four private channels, Rete
Quattro, Can ale Cinque and Italia Uno which are part of the Mediaset group in which
Fininvest holds a controlling stake, and Telemontecarlo, purchased in 1995 by cinema
producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori. There are no cable networks, though Mediaset offers
entertainment (Tele+1) and sport (Tele+2) oriented ‘pay-per-view’ channels. News
programmes are a legal requirement for national channels. The state broadcaster provides
five national radio stations—Radiouno, Radiodue, Radiotre, Stereo Rai and Radio Verde
Rai—and regional and local stations, and also broadcasts overseas. There are many
commercial local radio stations.
At the national level, the coverage of public affairs is supplied by a virtual ‘duopoly’
of the Rai state channels and Fininvest private channels. Since Berlusconi’s entrance into
politics at the helm of the Fininvest-created Forza Italia party, there have been a series
of conflicts between the political alliances of centre—left and centre—right over the issue
of par condicio (the fair balance of political coverage and control over resources). Public
office has not dampened Berlusconi’s enthusiasm for utilizing his communication
resources for political self-promotion. It should be noted, however, that broadcasting was
also a field for political conflict in the ‘First’ Republic.
The broadcasting system has been a slow developer relative to its European
counterparts. Before the mid-1970s it remained trapped, like many aspects of Italian
culture and society, within an incomplete process of modernization. Television was the
only ‘mass’ medium in the sense that it addressed the entire population. People turned to
newspapers for political commentary, as broadcast news was rather unsophisticated and
limited in appeal. News coverage tended to report uncritically the activities of the
government of the day, provided little space for opposing views and excluded the
Communists (PCI) from representation. The sole supplier was the state broadcasting
monopoly RAI. In most Western democracies, established regulatory norms and
institutional codes of conduct ensure that the media coverage of politics maintains
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