Peeking into the home through the eyes of artists and image-makers, this book unveils the untold story of Italian domestic experiences from the 1940s to the 1970s. Torn between the trauma of World War II and the frenzied optimism of the postwar decades, and haunted by the echoes of fascism, the domestic realm embodied contrasting and often contradictory meanings: care and violence, oppression and emotional fulfillment, nourishment and privation. Silvia Bottinelli casts a fresh light on domestic experiences that are easily overlooked and taken for granted, finding new expressions of home - as an idea, an emotion, a space, and a set of habits - in a variety of cultural and artistic movements, including new realism, visual poetry, pop art, arte povera, and radical architecture, among others. Double-Edged Comforts finds nuance by viewing artistic interpretations of domestic life in dialogue with contemporaneous visual culture: the advertisements, commercials, illustrations, and popular magazines that influenced and informed art, even materially, and often triggered the critical reactions of artists. Bottinelli pays particular attention to women's perspectives, discussing artworks that have fallen through the cracks of established art historical narratives and giving specific consideration to women artists: Carla Accardi, Marisa Merz, Maria Lai, Ketty La Rocca, Lucia Marcucci, and others who were often marginalized by the Italian art system in this period. From sleeping and bathing, chores, and making and eating food to the arrival of television, Double-Edged Comforts provides a fresh account of modern domesticity relevant to anyone interested in understanding how we make sense of the places we live and what we do there, showing how art complicates the familiar comforts and meanings of home.

Silvia Bottinelli is senior lecturer in the Visual and Material Studies Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University.

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"Examining a rich and varied corpus, this invaluable book provides a multidisciplinary overview of how Italians viewed the home and domestic life and activities from the late 1940s through the 1970s. Bottinelli's well-written, fast-moving, and agile study of the home and its representations provides a fascinating angle through which to understand the social and cultural transformations of post–World War II Italy." Lucia Re, University of California, Los Angeles

“Bottinelli consciously chooses case studies that highlight historically marginalized voices, in particular female artists, and a range of media and artistic expressions in the volume’s abundant full page, color images. In taking the critical approach she does, the author effectively covers a wide range of visual and written communications, so the book will engage readers from visual and media studies disciplines.” Choice

"It's a pleasure to see so many works of art that are in general not well known outside Italy discussed intelligently; and the book's thesis rings true. Broadly, it argues that in asserting the patriotic nobility of traditional gender roles, Fascism stiffened the sinews of the patriarchy; and that although postwar affluence, technological progress and a measure of social change afforded those who did most of the work in the home – chiefly women, in Italy as elsewhere – a measure of freedom, their agency in their own lives, their freedom to do certain things and their freedom from certain oppressions, were sorely circumscribed." Times Literary Supplement

"Intelligently informed – but never overwhelmed – by critical theory, Bottinelli's Double-Edged Comforts introduces readers familiar with accounts of modernism centred in France and the United States to a rich archive of Italian art and artists, while illuminating more familiar works of art, such as Piero Manzoni's notorious Merda d'Artista. Bottinelli draws clear connections between the fine arts and other cultural forms, including journalistic illustration, film, television, and literature, and the combination of generous colour illustrations with Bottinelli's consistently clear, intelligent, and engaging writing makes this book a pleasure to read." Christopher Reed, Pennsylvania State University and author of Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, Domesticity

"Silvia Bottinelli fundamentally shifts our understanding of post–World War II art and culture – and not only in Italy. She constructs entirely new interpretative structures, grounded in historical contexts and close visual and textual analyses. Profoundly researched and lucidly written, this brilliant book creates new spaces for the history of art, while avoiding essentialist readings." Emily Braun, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

"Double-Edged Comforts provides an extraordinary account of a long overlooked story: that of artistic interpretations of Italian domestic experiences from the 1940s to the 1970s. Bottinelli subverts the sedimented canons, investigating the art of many artists often marginalized in criticism and in the art market. Through the lens of a wide visual culture, the issue of domesticity is addressed with rigour and a deep understanding of the context, shedding new light on the history of Italian art of the war and postwar years." Laura Iamurri, Università Roma Tre