Maltese modern art and the Benjamin-Baudelairean idea of urban consciousness

The University of Malta's History of Art Department is organising a public talk by Nikki Petroni entitled "The Premier and Strada Stretta: Maltese modern art and the Benjamin-Baudelairean idea of urban consciousness", as part of the modern and contemporary art lecture series. It will be held on Friday, 24 April at 6.30pm and the Art Studio at the University of Malta Valletta Campus.

Nikki Petroni is a Ph.D. student studying Maltese modern and contemporary art under the supervision of Dr Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci within the Department of History of Art, University of Malta.
Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin's writings analysed and deconstructed the condition and establishment of modernity in the 19th and 20th century respectively and which provided an understanding for the radical cultural developments of the time. Through their concepts, this paper aims to study the work by Maltese modern artists in relation to the urbanization of Valletta; the growth of new social spaces and places of entertainment which gave birth to new visual and intellectual experiences.

The focus will be on the works of Edward Caruana Dingli, Carmelo Mangion, Esprit Barthet and Antoine Camilleri and other artists whose styles and subjects developed in direct relation to Valletta's burgeoning urbanization. This gave rise to a dialectics of imagery; the energy of nightlife embodied in the paintings by Camilleri which provoked the nostalgia for the simplicity of rural peasantry as typified by Caruana Dingli's paintings. Furthermore, Mangion and Barthet conceived their own original visualizations of the urbanised landscape; a perception which assisted in the construction of a new representational language.