Abstract

The enigmatic character of Italian society and culture is especially felt in Italian aesthetics. The «art of suspicion» seems to be the fundamental criterion to manoeuvre in a multiform and viscous society where the sophistication of Renaissance and Manneristic origins meets and combines with the complexity of post-industrial society by creating conceptual characters and cultural products of the highest aesthetic quality. Nonetheless this positive side is often intertwined with a darker side, which has its roots in the past and feeds on the decay of bourgeois society.