Petracca’s growing awareness of the pervasiveness of Italian American stereotyping radically redirected the content and tenor of his art. His first artistic response was a powerful series of paintings and prints entitled These are not my Shoes. The imagery was so effective both as art and as social statement that when the series was first exhibited at the Kim Foster Gallery in New York, it nearly sold out immediately. In these works Petracca selected images of well-known Italian Americans (Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, John Gotti and his daughter Victoria who now has her own television series), the Italian equivalent of our Charlie Chaplin (the famed buffone Toto), the incomparable Neopolitan tenor Enrico Caruso, and even artistic masterpieces by giants of the Italian Renaissance (Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s ink sketch for the bronze David with the Head of Goliath, both in the Louvre, Paris). He then combined these immediately recognizable icons with reactionary quotes about people of Italian heritage by both obscure and high profile American figures. In one particularly potent painting entitled 78 Percent (2003), Petracca paired a fedora-capped Old Blue Eyes with a fragment of a startling statistic drawn from a recent public poll: 78% of Americans believe that all Italian Americans have some connection with organized crime.1 In another work, He Said/She Said (2004) a portrait of Caruso is paired with the now infamous FDR slam—i.e., not to worry about the efficacy of Italians during World War II since they were just a bunch of opera singers.

But one of the most profoundly damaging revelations addressed in Petracca’s work is that Italian American stereotyping exists increasingly not only outside the Italian American community but within it. Italian Americans who are the fifth largest ethnic group in the United States, numbering some 26 million, are buying into their own romanticized bigotry. The more they assimilate, the more Italian Americans find themselves wondering exactly what it means to be Italian. They (we) latch onto stereotypes because they are so seductively concrete, colorful, accessible. The Godfather with its riveting performance by Marlon Brando can be rented anytime at Blockbuster. The Sopranos’ Family Cookbook is available at Border’s, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble with a click of a mouse. A notable example of Italian Americans embracing their own stereotypes recently in New York City gave rise to the title work in Petracca’s series These are not my Shoes. Three years ago in Manhattan’s Little Italy, the organizers of an Italian food festival needed an image for the poster which would advertise their event. They chose a black-and-white still from the 1954 film, The Gold of Naples, by Italian director Vittorio De Sica. The film is actually a string of six plays unified by the character of Toto, the bumbling fool, who is taken advantage of by every character in the film. The still showed several figures seated around a table stuffing themselves with fists full of pasta. In its strong light-dark contrasts it resembles the early work of the seventeenth-century Italian painter, Caravaggio. To the side of this spaghetti bending fraternity stands Toto, ramming skeins of pasta into the deep pockets of his black shirt and sagging trousers. According to Petracca, “A group of the Italian Americans involved with the festival was outraged and wanted the poster pulled. It was a poor choice because it reinforced all the negative stereotypes.” Of course taking a still out of context, particularly one involving a clown, is precarious business since the clown is a loaded character, as Roberto Beanigni, the well-known Italian comic actor was quick to point out in a fascinating 1998 interview. Although he’s the element of humor in the film, the buffo almost always functions as the opposite as well, humor and fear in one. “When the clown comes up close to you,” Benigni noted, “the smile becomes green because of the make-up and I was really impressed by this. So when I saw Toto for the first time, he scared me. Behind Toto’s shoulder under the makeup I could see the mask of the dead. That is why he is so strong, and such a wonderful character, because he can scare you.” 2

Petracca realized that the comedy-tragedy, love-fear duality contained in the figure of Toto, or of any comic element, was closely related to the task he had set for himself artistically in These are not my Shoes—commenting upon ethnic stereotyping by incorporating the loaded stereotype itself into his art. The stereotype usually functions first as humor, something of which Petracca is keenly aware, and more than a little wary because its use can backfire, particularly when he pairs it with a slice of text or an image to which it seems to have no obvious relation. He is always in danger of being perceived as someone perpetuating the stereotype. But he persists with his tack, knowing it is human to laugh at absurdity, and his juxtapositions are often calculated to be downright silly. But it is also just as human to look for a pattern or a point of connection in seemingly unrelated things: why were these elements paired up in the first place? What’s really going on here? Petracca is working towards this second end, calling for viewers to take that closer look, and then perhaps go back and rethink their initial superficial response, snap judgment, faulty conclusion—an act that’s just like bigotry. In These are not my Shoes, Petracca juxtaposed the figure of Toto lifted from De Sica’s film via the Little Italy food festival poster, a snippet of text referring to Italians and their Bologna sausage, and a marvelous sketch by Michelangelo showing a triumphant David standing in easy contrapposto on the head of the vanquished Goliath.3 Petracca’s point here? The images seem to have nothing in common. However, a closer inspection reveals that the very different looking figures are in fact standing in the same pose—one the clown and one the hero, one having performed well and the other stupidly. Both are also images created by Italians separated by 500 years. Things, and more importantly, people, Petracca stresses, aren’t always what they first appear to be. And, of course, everything Italian isn’t silly.