Standardizing the Author: Emilio Prini and Conceptual Art

The essay focuses on the Italian artist Emilio Prini and his work in the late 1960s, early 1970s. The most conceptual of the artists associated with Arte Povera, Prini developed a distinctive vision of his role as an artist, which was quite unique in Italy at that time and deeply resonate with the practice of international artist who would be identified as Conceptual in those years. The notion of "standard" is especially relevant in this respect. By focusing on Prini's investigation of standardization, I contextualize his practice within the theoretical and art-historical framework elicited by that term, and finally argue that the artist was prescient of major developments in the new avant-garde of the late 1960s on an international level.