Federico Ferrari

Under the influence of Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy he has published many essays on philosophy, as well as literature. He has written two books with Jean-Luc Nancy: the first on the subject of nude,[1] the second on the iconography of the writer.[2] More recently, he has been working on the deconstruction of the museum in post-modernity, on the issue of art and/in time and on the ontological status of the image.[3][4] In 2011 he theorized the aesthetics of "Arte Essenziale", which manifested itself in the show held at Collezione Maramotti (Reggio Emilia, Italy) and at Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany).[5] Eugenio Viola writes of Ferrari, "In a time when many continue to lament what they see as the inexorable decline of theory’s role in criticism, “Arte essenziale” (Essential Art), curated by philosopher Federico Ferrari, does its part to placate concerns with an exploration of the ties that link artistic practice and philosophical speculation. The show focuses on the Wesen, or essence, of a work of art—a notion that has always been inextricably linked with a search for the new."[6]

• La comunità errante. Bataille e l’esperienza comunitaria, Milano, Lanfranchi, 1997 ISBN 978-88-363-0066-2
• Nudità. Per una critica silenziosa, Milano, Lanfranchi, 1999 ISBN 978-88-363-0068-6
• Wolfgang Laib, Venezia, West Zone 1999
• Nus sommes. La peau des images, with Jean-Luc Nancy, Paris, Klincksieck 2002 (Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2003; Berlin-Zűrich, Diaphanes 2006). Trans. Anne O'Byrne and Carlie Anglemire as "Being Nude The Skin of Images", New York, Fordham University Press, (2014) ISBN 9780823256204
• Lo spazio critico. Note per una decostruzione dell’istituzione museale, Roma, Sossella, 2004 (with Johannes Cladders, Rosalind Krauss, Federico Nicolao, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Giulio Paolini, Claudio Parmiggiani, Harald Szeemann) ISBN 978-88-87995-82-4
• La convocazione, with Tomas Maia e Federico Nicolao, Genova, Chorus, 2006
• Costellazioni. Saggi sull'immagine, il tempo e la memoria, Milano, Lanfranchi, 2006 ISBN 978-88-363-0075-4
• Iconographie dell'auteur, with Jean-Luc Nancy, Paris, Galilée 2005 (Roma, Sossella, 2006; Tokyo, Chikuma Shobo 2008) ISBN 978-88-89829-11-0
• Del contemporaneo. Saggi su arte e tempo, with Jean-Luc Nancy, Georges Didi-Huberman, Nathalie Heinich, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Milano 2007, Pearson Paravia Bruno Mondadori
• Sub specie aeternitatis. Arte ed etica, Reggio Emilia, Diabasis, 2008 ISBN 978-88-8103-524-3
• Il re è nudo. Aristocrazia e anarchia dell'arte, Roma, Sossella, 2011 ISBN 978-88-89829-94-3
• Arte essenziale, Milano, Silvana, 2011 ISBN 978-88-3662-055-5
• L'insieme vuoto. Per una pragmatica dell'immagine, Milano, Johan & Levi, 2013 ISBN 9788860100924
• L'anarca, Milano, Mimesis, 2014 ISBN 9788857526898
• La fin des fins. Scène en deux actes, with Jean-Luc Nancy, Nantes, Éditions Cécile Defaut, 2015 ISBN 9782350183664
• Visioni. Scritti sull'arte, Milano, Lanfranchi, 2016 ISBN 978-8836300815
• Oscillazioni. Frammenti di un'autobiografia, Milano, SE, 2016 ISBN 9788867232116

• Ferrari, Federico. Arte essenziale. Collezione Maramotti. 2011. (Italian)