Mappe, liste e classificazioni. L’opera di Luca Vitone tra immagine e parola sulle tracce di Joseph Cornell e Georges Perec

This article examines the fundamental relationship between word and image in Luca Vitone’s artistic research and practice. In particular, it analyses and tries to assess the relationship between images (including photographs and maps) and specific verbal forms like lists, classifications and categories, and suggests that in contemporary artworks, these verbal forms are employed as artistic techniques that converse with traditional artistic genres (portrait, landscape and genre-painting). The article traces two fundamental sources of inspiration in Vitone’s use of the list and classification: the American artist Joseph Cornell and the Oulipo writer Georges Perec. The author focuses on the relationship between verbal lists and images in some of Vitone’s most reknowned artworks including Wide City (1998), Wider City (2006), Liberi tutti! (1996, 1997, 2008), Nulla da dire solo da essere (2004) and Nel nome del padre (with Cesare Viel, 2001).