Zabriskie Point: the metaphysical pop of Michelangelo Antonioni

Abstract

The presence of painting in Michelangelo Antonioni’s films is

well known, both explicitly as part of their props and set designs,

and implicitly, through their locations, frames and structural

elements of the visual syntax of the image. In both cases, the film

Zabriskie Point (1970) constitutes an interesting paradigm in which

American pop art and elements of the poetics of the Italian metaphysical

art tradition converge. His immersion in the American

social and cultural context in the late 1960s offered Antonioni the

opportunity to work with new models of reference. Information

as aesthetic experience results in a discourse that brings together

intuition, memory, and reasoning, a sophisticated coding system

that suggests certain analogies with contemporary painting.