Andrea Diprè martire del trash

This essay offers a preliminary sociosemiotic analysis of Andrea Diprè: a lawyer, failed politician, art critic and dealer, television huckster, and a pivotal figure in mid-2010s internet and social media culture, propelled to notoriety through viral videos, catchphrases, and obscenities. The text seeks to reconstruct a basic chronology, tracing Diprè’s progression from a persistent pornographic gaze – initially focused on the display of “freaks” (first from provincial Italy, then from YouTube) – to proper pornography. The paper includes a brief focus on the video featuring painter Osvaldo Paniccia and on an episode of the broadcast “Mi manda Raitre” in which Diprè was exposed as a fraudster and engaged in a now-iconic moment of trash television with art critic Achille Bonito Oliva. In that exchange, Diprè articulated a stance on the ontology of art that was arguably more mature and contemporary than that of his critics. Today, Diprè appears to linger at the fringes of the world he helped construct, having subjected even himself to the same objectifying treatment he applied to his “creatures”.