The Blonde Ambition

By 1969, Britain had travelled a long way from bowler-hatted repression: the country was high not just on drugs and love, but on the medium and the message. The Beatles led an outburst of feeling and free expression. Here, Lennon and Ono sum up the decade's assault on tradition. Newlyweds, they let cameras into their bedroom. They probably didn't know, however, all they were implying by this. As stars, they have allowed the media and their fans total access: the po-faced decencies of 1953 have given way to complete self-exposure as these celebrities treat themselves as public property.

It is an outrageous act of communication - and viewing this moment from the vantage point of 2012, in the 60th year of the second Elizabethan age, we can see a continuity with the cultural revolution we are experiencing today. What exploded in the reign of Elizabeth Windsor was the power of human beings to communicate with one another. And yes, Britain led the way with its 1960s conquest of global popular culture. Pop music was above all a freeing-up of words and gestures, its emotive messages sped by the new availability of records, tapes and transistor radios. Lennon saw clearer than any other star how this could become both a form of political campaigning and obliterate all distance between celebrities and the public.

guardian.co.uk

Character born from the imagination of one of the major players and innovators of Italian comic, Guido Crepax, Valentina is the star of an exhibition curated by Vincenzo Mollica and Crepax Archive. 

This is the first exhibition in Rome dedicated to her which will open to the public from May 30 to September 30, meeting at the Palazzo.

Founded in 1965 by Guido Crepax pen, the more complex and sensual women of the Italian comic is presented in an exhibition "anarchist" and emotional, consisting of thematic rooms that envelop the audience in an atmosphere always hovering between dream and reality. Valentina-size silhouettes will guide viewers through the exhibition, telling the world Crepax and providing insights from the rich cultural heritage that characterizes the stories in the saga. All amplified by spettacolarizzazioni environments and large drawn from the drawings, installations and animated with video contributions and valued from 120 original artworks selected from the approximately 2,600 that this author has dedicated to Valentina.

The exhibition opens with an analysis of the relationship with the myth of the actress Louise Brooks (1906 - 1985) and the origins of the comic book film to emphasize the autobiographical aspects of the character and the choice of the author to make a woman near real with an identity card, a job, a son, love affairs and a psychological profile and credible dream. 

It continues with a reflection on the theme of innovation brought by Crepax in the world of comics, with its distinctive construction "fragmented" of the board. The decomposition of the action in many cartoons, and the use of cinematic techniques to tell the scenes, the construction of the table in an almost architectural, using vignettes of different forms with different frames and distinguishing the dream from memory, imagination and reality. With original storyboard sketches and never before exhibited, and some "tables in motion" the exhibition is certainly an opportunity not to be missed by all fans of comics and Valentina Crepax.