Iconography and Archetypes

Gallerist and art writer Mario Diacono (born 1930) has been among postwar painting's liveliest advocates, espousing, exhibiting and writing about the work of Alex Katz, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz and hundreds of others, through his eponymous galleries in Bologna, Rome, Boston and New York. This enormous compendium gathers Diacono's writings from 1985 to 1994--dates that bookend a period in which a succession of "-isms," such as Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo Abstractionism and Appropriationism, followed one another. Diacono's efforts supplied crucial international venues for these movements, and were aided over the years by cultural brokers and gallerists such as Peter Blum, Mary Boone, Raymond Foye and Bob Nickas. Among the touchstone artists Diacono revisits in several essays are Alex Katz, Eric Fischl, David Salle, Ray Smith, Peter Halley, Ross Bleckner, Philip Taaffe, Richmond Burton and Annette Lemieux.