Abstract

In 1999 Umberto Eco, in the Festschrift in Honor of Paolo Fabbri, compared him to “a modern Spartacusµ, the leader of the largest slave rebellion of the Roman Republic, by hinting at the active role of the public as a recurring issue in Fabbri’s work. We will demonstrate, theoretically and experimentally, to which extent Fabbri has taken care of this matter. In particular, a close reading analysis of his research on the public consumption of Untitled (2004), by Maurizio Cattelan, allows to see how Fabbri has developed the question of receivers for actual outcomes, fostering the construction of a model of meaning effects.