Plasmare un'isola: ceramica in Sardegna dal Novecento ad oggi

The cultural history of Sardinian Ceramics in the XX Century is examined from three different perspectives: its links with the main artistic movements, its relation with tourism as a massconsumption phenomenon and its different functions and uses in Sardinian society. Art and Anthropology are the two academic fields where Ceramic, as material and visual culture, is discussed. The survey wants to highlight the difference between Craft and Folk Art, Pure and Applied, High and Popular Art, as they have been established in the artistic and anthropologic theory from the mid XIX to present. Analyzing the most common iconographies (male and female people, domestic and wild animals, subjects deriving from Nuragic Culture), issues about gender, economy and authenticity are discussed. Ceramic has been used for practical and symbolic purposes: cooking and storage of food, decoration in Architecture and artistic medium, mean of social distinction and/or claim for ethnic belonging and cultural identity, agent in the host/guest relationship of the tourist encounter. The title of the dissertation recalls the mythic demiurgic act of shaping clay, stressing the role of ceramic in the process of cultural reproduction and the dynamics between locality and globalization.