DAY FOR NIGHT. New American Realism

Taking its title from Day for Night, a work by New York artist Lorna Simpson in the Salamé collection, the book features a selection of works by US-based artists – including, among many others, Cecily Brown, George Condo, Nicole Eisenman, Urs Fischer, Wade Guyton, Julie Mehretu, Laura Owens, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, David Salle, Dana Schutz, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor, and Christopher Wool and many others – whose work addresses the crucial question of realism and the representation of truth. Works by emerging artists are presented alongside the work of significant predecessors who have anticipated recent reflections on the concept of verism and representation. This reflection on realism finds an original and extraordinary setting in the National Galleries of Ancient Art at Palazzo Barberini in Rome, which house the world’s largest collection of works by so-called “Caravaggisti”, the painters who, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, participated in completely reconfiguring the naturalistic representation of reality, profoundly affecting the history of Italian and European art.