it’s art is for people who suspect a painting can change how they live.
Every week, one artwork, looked at slowly. Hopper's diner at midnight. The twenty-three small paintings Miró made while fleeing a war. The four thousand drawings Klimt never showed anyone.
Each essay stands in front of a single work until it opens, with a philosopher or a poet for company: Dante beside Miró, Hemingway beside Hopper, Hesse beside Klimt.
Around a thousand words, ten minutes with your coffee, no art degree required.
How this started
Years ago, in a cellar in Tuscany, I stood in front of a broken vase by Marco Bagnoli and could not walk away.
I had lived in Paris, seen the museums, done the furtive walk past a thousand masterpieces. This was the first time a work held me in place, and I did not know why.
These essays are my way of finding out: standing in front of one work at a time, with the books that talk to it, until it opens.
Why "it's art"?
Because art is more than a painting, a sculpture, or a stamp. It is the force that made us human: the push to communicate with one another, to express what we feel, to touch each other's spirits through material things.
The goal of it's art is to find that force inside the encounters of ordinary life, to learn again how to be marvelled, and to investigate together what the marvel means.
Start with these
The newest essays are always free for their first two weeks; these ones have joined the archive, which belongs to paid subscribers.
Free and paid
Free: one essay a week, usually Tuesday, whole and free for its first two weeks, and one artwork a day on the Notes feed. No digests, no filler.
Paid: the full archive, every essay ever published. This is a one-person publication; each essay takes a week of reading, verifying and writing, and paid subscribers are what keeps the weekly one free for everyone else.
Reading on an iPhone? Subscribe at itisart.substack.com in the browser, not inside the app. Apple adds 30% to the price.
Who writes this
I'm Vittorio Zappa. Italian; I have lived in Paris and come back to Tuscany. I spend my time between paintings and the books that talk to them, and these essays are what happens when the two meet. I write one a week, when something is worth saying.
Questions
Is it free? Yes. Every new essay is free from the day it is published. After two weeks it joins the archive, which is for paid subscribers, so the best way to read everything is simply to arrive on time.
Can I write to you? Please do. Reply to any email or message me on Substack. I read everything and answer almost everything, and the messages where someone has been standing in front of a painting without working out why it holds them are my favourite kind.
What happens when I subscribe? One email a week, usually Tuesday. No daily digests, no filler between essays. If you want more in between, the Notes feed is where I post one artwork a day.
it’s art publishes one essay a week on a single artwork: paintings and drawings by Hopper, Klimt, Miró, Schiele, Hockney and others, read closely and paired with philosophy and literature. Art history for how to live, in ten minutes a week.
If you know someone who stands a little too long in front of paintings, send them this page.
