Out of this world: promozione e cultura visuale dell’aperitivo italiano in America. I casi di Martini & Rossi e Campari

The culture of consumption of Italian products in the United States, built within a wide system of transatlantic exchanges started in the late 19th century, played a key role in the rearticulation of Italian and American identity after World War II. If the diffusion of modern goods and advertising worked as a significant “transcultural mediator”, the promotion of Italian products encouraged the American middle class to experience the Italian lifestyle by consuming its exports. In this sense, the history of the American trades of the so-called “Italian aperitif” - together product, brand and consumerist ritual - represents an exemplary case study. In fact, since the early 1910s, the alliance between Italian artists and liquor producers pioneered a modern “artistic sentiment of promotion” which reshaped the international cocktail culture with a peculiar blend of Italian drinks, made with vermouth and bitter, and Italian styles, flourished in the modern domain of “la dolce vita”. Combining the production and promotional history of the Italian aperitif with the iconographic analysis of some historical printed ads, the article proposes a first genealogy of an “aperitif visual culture” stemmed in the United States since the early 20th century. Subsequently, the post-war American campaign “Out of this world” by Austin, Nichols & Co. for Campari bitter is examined as a “social iconic act”, analysing the illustrated material found in the Galleria Campari archives. From this first observation, the promotional blending between Italian spirits and its cultural “spirit” seems to have a major role in the diffusion of a consumerist culture based on the cosmopolitan values of versatility, conviviality, pleasure, and sophistication which, together with other expressions of Made in Italy, have influenced the social and cultural customs of post-war America.