Financial advisors can hold a range of certifications and licenses. Two such designations are CIMA (certified investment management analyst) and CFP (certified financial planner). The CIMA is intended for those who help people manage their investments, while the CFP is a much broader certification covering all aspects of personal finance. However, a CFP may also specialize in investment management.

For help finding a financial advisor who can help you achieve your goals, use SmartAsset’s free financial advisor matching service.

What Is a CIMA?

A CIMA is a certified investment management analyst. This certification is offered by the Investments & Wealth Institute for financial advisors who focus on investment management. In fact, Investment & Wealth Institute’s welcome page for the CIMA certification highlights the average assets under management (AUM) of those with a CIMA ($297 million).

A CIMA can work with either individuals or corporations, but their individual clients tend to have high net worths. They may help with a variety of investments, such as retirement funds, endowments or corporate investments.

One way CIMAs differentiate themselves is they must show expertise in business strategy, operations and management. Hence, they are well suited to helping not only individuals but also businesses.

CIMA Prerequisites

There are two primary prerequisites before one can obtain the CIMA. Firstly, applicants must have three years’ financial services experience. In addition, they must have a satisfactory record of ethical conduct. That determination is made by Investment & Wealth Institute, the organization that sponsors the certification.

CIMA Exam

CIMA certificates are available for both business accounting (BA) and professional qualifications. The BA exam is 120 minutes long with four sections; the first three have 60 questions each, while the fourth has 85 questions. The professional qualification exam comes in the form of three 90-minute-long objective tests, plus 3-hour case studies to go with each objective test. Results are issued 6-8 weeks after the case study window closes.

What Is a CFP?

A CFP is a certified professional planner, which is a professional who can focus on a wide range of personal finance specialties. For example, they may specialize in investment advice, insurance, tax or estate planning, retirement and more. Generally, CFPs focus on just one of these areas but can help you with the basics in all aspects of personal finance.

CFPs meet with clients and take inventory of all of their finances, including their investments, properties and cash, as well as any outstanding debt. Then, they work with clients to create a tailored financial plan to help them meet their goals.

Because the CFP is so broad, CFPs will often hold other certifications or licenses that match their area of expertise. Hence, a CFP might also have a CIMA or other certifications such as the retirement income certified professional (RICP).

CFPs must also adhere to CFP Board’s ethical standards, which includes the disclosure of their involvement in cases involving things like criminal activity and bankruptcy.

CFP Prerequisites

Those who want to obtain the CFP must have at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university. They must also have three years of financial planning experience or at least 6,000 hours of equivalent part-time experience.

CFP Exam

The CFP exam consists of 170 multiple-choice questions divided into two 3-hour sections for a total of six hours. There is a 40-minute break between the two sections. Each section is divided further into two subsections. There are standalone questions as well as those that go with case studies. The exam is scored on a pass/fail basis.

CIMA vs. CFP

While the CIMA and the CFP are distinct certifications, the two have some similarities in terms of their requirements, as noted in the table below.

Comparison of CIMA and CFP CIMA CFP Issuing organization Investments & Wealth Institute Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Prerequisites – 3 years’ financial services experience
– Satisfactory record of ethical conduct – Bachelor’s degree or higher
– 3 years’ experience or 6,000 hours of part-time experience Training requirements – Educational component offered by approved registered education provider
– In-class program at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania or online through Yale School of Management CFP-board registered exam or hold a relevant license, certification or degree Continuing education 40 hours every 2 years 30 hours every 2 years

Those looking for a financial advisor may wonder which certification is better for them, and it really depends what services you’re looking for. If you only want investment advice, a CIMA is a good fit. If you’re looking for more holistic planning, a CFP should be able to get the job done. Of course, some advisors have both certifications, giving you the best of both worlds.

Bottom Line

CFPs and CIMAs can have many similarities, but there are also notable differences. For instance, a CFP might advise clients on investment strategies. However, CFPs also specialize in many different areas of finance, such as tax and estate planning and insurance. Meanwhile, the CIMA is intended for financial advisors who provide investment advice. But CIMAs must also have at least some knowledge of business processes and strategy, which is absent from the CFP requirements. Both programs are rigorous, albeit in different ways.

Tips for Financial Planning

• Whether you need a CFP or a CIMA, it is critically important to invest in your retirement. But if you don’t know how much you have saved for retirement, you could be setting yourself up for financial hardship. Use SmartAsset’s free retirement calculator to estimate your retirement savings.

• Regardless of certifications, a financial advisor can help you achieve your financial planning goals. Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.

Photo credit: ©iStock.com/AndreyPopov, ©iStock.com/VioletaStoimenova, ©iStock.com/ijeab

The post CIMA vs. CFP Designations for Financial Advisors appeared first on SmartAsset Blog.

By Duruthu Edirimuni Chandrasekera

Followed by a stormy annual general meeting (AGM), serious question are been raised by stakeholders of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Sri Lanka regarding the corporate governance issues happening at its office.

On Thursday night CIMA had its 20th AGM followed by cocktails and dinner to inaugurate its new President, Gowri Shankar Somasundaram, which had most of the 500 plus invitees expressing horror at what was happening at an institute, which guarded governance and ethicality as pristine.

Longest ever AGM
“The AGM was the longest ever in the 43 year-old history of CIMA Sri Lanka,” an invitee who is also a Past President said. The AGM had taken such a long time and when members had questioned CIMA Sri Lanka accounts, both Aruna Fernando, immediate Past President and Bradley Emerson, CEO CIMA Sri Lanka were unable to answer.

Difficult accounts
“The CIMA accounts have been audited by H.L.B. Edirisinghe and Company, an audit firm. But the CEO was unable to provide the breakdown of some information that was requested by the membership. This prevented the accounts being passed at the AGM by the members,” a member who was present at the AGM said.

He said certain cost items had escalated during the last CIMA financial year. As a result the membership had requested an Extra – ordinary General Meeting (EGM) to be held to clarify the accounts. “A new committee has been appointed by the CIMA council to look at what has happened with the accounts. They will look into the ‘grey’ areas of the accounts and thereafter present them to the membership at an EGM,” he said, adding this will happen within a month’s time.

Governance issues
The AGM had also taken a new turn with the CIMA Council deciding to pass a resolution before the AGM regarding the ‘mismanagement of CIMA Sri Lanka’ at the local divisional Council meeting. “The resolution related to four serious governance issues,” a CIMA member said.

Blocking Director Operations (DO), Aruna Alwis’ official e-mail account, sending an auto reply on his e-mail saying he is unavailable without Alwis being aware of it when he was still in office, suspending Alwis without informing the Council and not presenting the monthly CIMA Sri Lanka accounts to the Council despite many requests by the Council were these governance issues.

"The Council had resolved to bring these issues to the CIMA UK Council and CIMA Global CEO Charles Tilly while requesting them to empower the local Divisional Council to manage the affairs of CIMA Sri Lanka," the member noted, adding that the Council had further agreed to table this resolution at the AGM.

He said the process took place early this week and when it was informed to CIMA UK, the office bearers there had resisted taking the governance issues to the 'wider' membership, saying it was 'unlawful'. "They had said that before a resolution was tabled at an AGM, the membership needs to be informed. So, it was not in the agenda for the AGM."

However, Thursday saw a big commotion at the CIMA AGM, when the members had brought the issue up. "The immediate past President, Mr. Fernando had then mentioned that the Council had passed a resolution and they wanted it read out at the AGM. This happened when the membership had requested to read out the resolution, as they insisted they need to be aware of what was going on. They said the local Council is appointed by the CIMA membership. Therefore it is the Council's duty to inform such wider issues to the members," the member explained.

Unfair play
Meanwhile, U.N. Jinasena, a Past President had spoken at the meeting about the injustices and unfair play with regard to Mr. Alwis being suspended. A past CIMA Council member said the Council has the control over the affairs of the division. "The present Council plans to open up dialogue with CIMA UK regarding affairs here. They in London have given an assurance that it will be done collaboratively," he said.

He said the local Council had requested CIMA London to follow the correct procedure. "London has promised a full investigation before a final decision is taken on behalf of Mr. Alwis," he added.
Mr. Jinasena noted the attempts by both the local Secretariat and London Office to push Mr. Alwis out from his employment can be duly interpreted as malicious. He pointed out that it is inconceivable that the London Office has opted or supported to resort to this type of ‘twisting the elbow’ techniques without following the standard procedures followed by even the second tier companies in Sri Lanka according to the accepted laws of this country.

“If Mr. Alwis is guilty of misconduct or any other offence there is the accepted procedure of instituting disciplinary procedures against him. In fact it is his right to be heard. It is not clear why a leading professional accounting institute of international standing professing good governance has taken this tragic course of action defeating its own advocacy of good governance and adherence to the law,” he said.

A Past President said that both the local office and the London Office will have to consider carefully the serious fallout from such legal actions. “If actions by CIMA have been unfair, unjust and malicious may compel Mr. Alwis to the option of litigation,” he said. He said the London office may exercise some supervision over matters at the local Secretariat but the CEO should not have unbridled powers.
There are allegations that the CEO reported matters of importance – like in the case of Mr Alwis’ suspension – to the London office and not the Colombo council/Exco.

Foreign assistance
Interestingly Rick Sturge, Director Employer and Strategy from CIMA UK had attended the CIMA AGM. "He was more of an observer and the membership had suspected he had visited Sri Lanka to take assessment of the situation," the past Council member said.

A top business leader, who is also a CIMA member, had expressed disappointment at what was happening with regard to Mr. Alwis' appointment at CIMA. "CIMA discourages petty politics. It is a professional body. I fail to understand why certain information was suppressed from the Council and why they were not informed, when a decision was taken to terminate Mr. Alwis," he hold The Sunday Times FT at the dinner function to felicitate Mrs. Somasundaram. "Usually the Council officials are consulted, which was not done in this case and above all there was an indecent hurry to suspend him during the last CIMA financial year (when Mr. Fernando was the President), which is strange," he noted.
At the AGM, Dian Gomes, CIMA Past President and eminent business leader, heading some MAS group companies had noted the important of greater transparency in CIMA Sri Lanka affairs.

To a question posed by The Sunday Time FT at the media conference organised on Friday to introduce Mrs. Somasundaram, the new president said CIMA CEO has key performance indicators to meet and that the division is managed by him.

However she along with Viren Wijesinghe, CIMA Divisional Deputy President and Melanie Kanaka, CIMA Divisional Vice President refused to comment on any issue pertaining to the AGM. When Mr. Emerson was asked by The Sunday Times FT, he flatly refused to comment about Mr. Alwis' suspension saying, it is inappropriate to comment on a staff matter.

36th President
Ms. Somasundaram was elected as the 36th President of CIMA Sri Lanka Division at its 20th AGM, making her the second woman to head this premier institution in Sri Lanka, and also the third woman President worldwide.

Interestingly, accepting the Presidency, Ms. Somasundaram said her vision was to reinforce the professional excellence of the fraternity. “Profession First is a theme that I will be devoted to. My year will be dedicated to the advancement of the Management Accountancy Profession, to equip, elevate and enrich it”.

Some members were skeptical, saying maybe CIMA needs to look internally and iron out the current issues. She further stated, “Our discipline is in the business of creating value. Value Creation is the foundation of any business. We will advocate ‘thought leadership’ through Technical Forums where new ideas will be encouraged. We will also be driving discussions as to the enhancement of the profession in the Public Sector by facilitating our discipline to be introduced through new initiatives.

She also highlighted that business today demands intelligent and insightful professionals with a strategic vision. “Students are our future wealth. Student development and growth will thus be a major focus in developing the ideal professional the world demands”, she added.

New CIMA President
Functioning as Advisor and Business Partner to His Royal Highness Prince Mish’al BinMohammed Bin Saud Bin Abdul Aziz of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia since February 2006, Ms. Somasundaram has been participating in business development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Region.
Consultant and Representative of the Gulf Bureau for Research and Economic consultations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ms. Somasundaram will soon take office as Country President for Kampac Group of Companies for Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Kampac is a group of companies in the Middle East with representation in 20 countries mainly in the oil industry, infrastructure and real estate development, telecommunications and hospitality. She is also developing a Finance and Restructuring Consulting Company in the Bahrain mainly for the SME sector. She travels widely to GCC countries consulting in International Finance and Business Development

How Aruna Alwis was suspended
The Sunday Times FT learns that Hayley Macdonald from the HR section of CIMA London Office together with Mr. Emerson had met with Mr. Alwis and had informed him that she was carrying a message from Mr. Charles Tilly, CEO,CIMA London that Mr. Alwis must tender his resignation and that they will compensate him with a salary of 12 months. Further, Ms Macdonald wanted Mr. Alwis to leave office then and there, all of Mr. Alwis had refused to do. Also a subsequent request to Mr. Alwis to provide his decision (on that particular afternoon) also had been turned down by him as he needed time to respond to a matter involving his career and the future.

Mr Alwis was not available for comment but his colleagues say he is contemplating legal action against CIMA depending on the outcome of an inquiry that CIMA has said it will conduct.

Merle Erickson studies the effect of taxes on the pricing and structuring of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures; and the use of accounting information in valuation and contracting. He also studies, among other things, various aspects of accounting fraud. He teaches “Taxes and Business Strategy” at Booth and has taught the course for the last twenty five years.

In addition to numerous articles published in a variety of top academic journals, Erickson is a coauthor of the widely used Taxes and Business Strategy textbook (currently in its 6th edition) and is the author/editor of the casebook, Cases in Tax Strategy. From 2005-2011, he served as a co-editor of the Journal of Accounting Research.

Over the course of his career, Erickson has consulted on complex GAAP and tax accounting issues (e.g., debt versus equity, various ASC 740 related issues, intercompany accounting and consolidation, employee stock option accounting, accounting for mergers, acquisitions and divestitures (e.g., spin-offs, leverage partnerships, reverse Morris Trust transactions), restated financial statements, etc.) in a variety of contexts (e.g., bankruptcy, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, inversions, structured finance, investment planning, cross border and intercompany financing, partnership and LLC arrangements, tax sharing agreements, shareholder disputes, and various types of tax advantaged transactions). His clients have included, among others, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, Fortune 500 companies in various industries, international financial institutions, law firms, accounting firms, and individual taxpayers. He has also assisted corporations with SEC, IRS and whistleblower investigations. Erickson brings these real world experiences to his “Taxes Business Strategy” and executive education courses at Booth.

Prior to entering academia, he assisted the U.S. Government in its prosecution of the Lincoln Saving & Loan case. He subsequently published an academic article and teaching case relating to the audit failure associated with the Lincoln Saving & Loan case. That teaching case has been used by the Big 4 to train junior auditors. 

He has been given several awards from the American Taxation Association for his research and teaching. He has received the Outstanding Manuscript Award (twice) as well as an award for teaching innovation. In addition to teaching graduate students at Chicago Booth, Erickson has taught courses to Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, General Electric Capital Corporation, Baker McKenzie, Andersen Consulting, Accenture, CareerBuilder, and the IMCA (Investment Management Consultants Association) among others. He also was been named one of BusinessWeek's Outstanding Faculty at the University of Chicago.

Erickson earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from Rockhurst College in 1987, an MBA in 1989 from Arizona State University, and a PhD in accounting from the University of Arizona in 1996. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1996.

In addition to his scholarly activities, Erickson is an avid fisherman. His angling pursuits have taken him from the pristine wilderness lakes of northern Canada to some of the remotest stretches of the Great Barrier Reef. He received the Angler Award from the Billfish Foundation in 2003 for releasing the most striped marlin worldwide that year.

Globe Business Academy (GBA), commences its LCCI Diploma in Marketing with full and part time June and November Batch on 7th April 2009.Further more, GBA will also Commence ABE advanced diploma in marketing program on 21st April 2009.

There is no entry qualification for LCCI , where as those who wants to do ABE Advanced Diploma in Marketing , should have completed either LCCI diploma in Marketing or other part /Full qualification of Professional exam like CIM (U.K), CIMA, ACCA , ICSA,ICASL, CMA.

AAT and other Professional exam with experience will be considered case by case with U.K evaluation. So If you are stuck with any professional qualification as part qualified with Experience or fully qualified, and want to diverse your career, we would like to help you to progress your career, based on the ABE entry criteria for Advanced Diploma in marketing followed with ABE membership and a fast Track to MBA, upon successful completion of the Advanced Diploma.

GBA yet again achieved excellent Pass rates in November 2008 Exam. Based on the classes' attendance, the pass rates for Marketing was 78 %, for Customer Service 82% and for Selling and Sales Management 85%, which is above all the institutes in Sri Lanka and the world pass rate, which is for selling and sales Management 57.27% and for Marketing 42.92%. We also produced the world prize winner with silver medal for Selling and Sales Management.

The world Prize winner, Thesara Jayawardane, the English Business News Reader and a Presenter of Swarnavahini said, "The Techniques Mr. Akram used and the exam Tips given were very effective. Thanks to him, I have passed my diploma with a Distinction in Marketing and a world prize for Selling and Sales Management. I truly recommend him and GBA for LCCI"

This is purely due to the full time commitment and dedication of the GBA head, Akram Abdus Samad, who also has been instrumental in the success of several other students who followed his revision program for Selling and Sales Management and Marketing. He is one of the pioneer LCCI lecturers and revision course provider.

The students of GBA had to say the following, "the techniques and teaching methodologies and imparting skills were excellent. The subjects were presented with attractive presentation and IT based teaching with practical approach with real world examples .Furthermore, exam tips and forecasted questions helped us immensely. The dedication, motivation and guidance are excellent. GBA also conducts classes for CIMA, ACCA and London O/L and A/L program.

For returning students, there may be changes to the majors and minors available and the courses you need to take. Go to the section called ‘Transitional Provisions’ in the Regulations to find out more.

In some cases the qualification or specialisation you enrolled in may no longer be taking new enrolments, so may not appear on these web pages. To find information on the regulations for these qualifications go to the Massey University Calendar.

Please contact us through the Get advice button on this page if you have any questions.

Big accounting organizations are weighing in on the ESG factor, which is reshaping industries from finance to fashion.

A report released Monday by the International Federation of Accountants, or IFAC; the American Institute of CPAs, or AICPA, and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, or CIMA, found that while ESG reporting is on the rise — it’s still subject to variation.

More from WWD

The report surveys 1,400 global companies, focusing explicitly on 2020 data, and is an update to the inaugural study from the year before. A follow-up study analyzing 2021 data is expected to be released later on.

Some 58 percent of global companies obtained ESG assurance (or a third-party aid) in 2020, up from 51 percent the previous year, yet these assurances were mostly “limited in scope” because of selective disclosure, per the report. Another finding was that 61 percent of ESG assurance services were performed by professional accounting or auditing firms. The report contends that without the help of professionals, ESG data is subject to greater variability and less oversight.

In plain speak, greenwashing is still palpable as fashion’s attempts at transparency programs reveal.

That being said, the majority (or 92 percent) of global companies provided some ESG data to investors, either through integrated, annual or standalone reports. Greenhouse gas emissions dominated reporting categories but many companies are still selectively disclosing.

“It’s encouraging to see continued high levels of reporting on sustainability information and an overall increase in assurance globally,” International Federation of Accountants’ chief executive officer Kevin Dancey said in a statement. “But our research tells us that 80 percent of companies are using multiple frameworks or standards, which results in data that is not consistent, comparable or decision-useful for investors, stakeholders or society at large.

Disclosure is getting more straightforward, however, with some help. Frameworks like the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, or SASB, standards, as the report showed, have grown in use and mention by companies as regulatory agencies look to tighten disclosure proposals. Already, many fashion players, among them Adidas, Allbirds, Gap Inc., Kering, Levi Strauss & Co., Nike Inc., PVH Corp., VF Corp. and more, report on SASB.

IFAC’s Dancey underlined that sustainability reporting and assurance will only reach its full potential when it’s based on a “harmonized global system” such as the International Sustainability Standards Board’s comprehensive baseline of disclosure.

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Click here to read the full article.

Brent Collins is a Senior Vice President and Private Client Advisor with Bank of America Private Bank in North Carolina.  He is the lead advisor on a team serving executives, high-net-worth families, private foundations and nonprofits. He helps clients unwind the complexities and opportunities that can accompany significant wealth with a multi-disciplinary approach, collaborating with certified in investments, trust and estate planning, credit and banking, executive services, and philanthropy. Prior to joining Bank of America, Brent held an investment leadership role with Wells Fargo Private Bank.

Brent earned his Bachelor’s Degree from North Carolina State University in Business Administration, and his MBA from Campbell University. Brent is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®), holding the certification awarded by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc.

Active in his community, Brent serves on the Executive Council for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night, and is the Vice Chair for the Foundation of Forsyth Technical Community College.

*Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. owns the certification marks CFP®, and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ in the U.S. 

Jul. 11—CORBIN — Mario Cima's Corbin 12-year-old All-Stars wasted little time advancing to this weekend's 11-year-old All-Star State Tournament by defeating Leslie County twice on Sunday, 9-3, and 18-2, respectively.

Game One

Corbin 9, Leslie County 3

Corbin jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning before seeing Leslie County tie the game at two apiece in the top of the second.

Then it was all Corbin as Mario Cima's squad scored three runs in the bottom of the second inning, a run in the bottom of the third inning, and three more runs in the bottom of the fifth inning to defeat Leslie County by six runs.

Paul Viars had two hits, and two RBI while Gunner Duff delivered a hit, two RBI, and two runs scored. Cameron Crusenberry delivered two hits, two RBI, and two runs scored while Cole Moore had a hit, an RBI, and a run scored. Jonah Lee, Thatcher West, and Grayson Gibbs each finished with a hit, and a run scored apiece. Colt Lay scored once in the win.

Crusenberry got the win on the mound, tossing five and one/third of an inning while allowing five hits, and three earned runs. He also struck out seven batters. West recorded the final two outs of the game while striking out a batter.

Game Two

Corbin 18, Leslie County 2

Corbin only needed three innings to Wrapup an 18-2 victory on Sunday, eliminating Leslie County in the process.

Paul Viars and Beau Hash combined to pitch a No-hitter while Viars fanned six batters, and Hash struck out one.

Corbin fell behind 2-0 in the top of the first before scoring 17 runs to put the game away in the bottom of the first inning. Corbin added another run in the second inning.

Viars had a huge game at the plate, delivering two hits, four RBI, and two runs scored while Jonah Lee had a hit, three RBI, and one run scored. Hash finished with a hit, an RBI, and three runs scored while Hartlee Viars had a hit, an RBI, and two runs scored. Cameron Crusenberry and Thatcher West each finished with a hit, an RBI, and two runs scored apiece while Colt Kay had two RBI, and two runs scored. Jonah Cima finished with an RBI, and two runs scored.

On Sunday roundtrips to Jersey City, I wait for the corner of Tonnele, where the White Mana Diner squats in 24/7 chrome tortoiseshell. Across the street, heavyweights, faded to outlines, float on an old sign at Ringside, Mario Costa’s one-stop boxing gym and bar. It’s hard to describe the deep spiritual consolation I feel among Ringside’s billboard ghosts. After all, ‘the spectacle,’ Guy Debord reminds us, ‘is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.’ A new exhibition at the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), entitled Facing America: Mario Schifano 1960-1965, highlights Italian pop art’s unique awareness of mass culture as a shared, contestable space. In Facing America, the iconographies we consume are embodied and entropic like billboard prizefighters, like us.   

In 1962, MoMA’s watershed ‘Symposium on Pop Art’ reminded Henry Geldzahler of a midnight movie. Instead of zombies or pod-people, Geldzahler, the Met’s Assistant Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, imagined ‘pop artists in different parts of the city, unknown to each other, rising up out of the muck and staggering forward.’ In MoMA’s last redoubt, the metaphor’s human survivors – Pulitzer-winning poet, Stanley Kunitz, art critics like Dora Ashton, The Nation’s Hilton Kramer, and Hunter College’s Leo Steinberg (one of Tom Wolfe’s ‘kings of Cultureburg’ in The Painted Word) – parsed the movement’s aesthetic unities and ‘value as a meaningful comment on contemporary life as well as the problematic relationship of art to mass culture.’ Dr. Peter Selz, MoMA’s Curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions, projected slides of work by Lichtenstein, Warhol, Johns, Kienholz, and others. ‘Objects depicted in paintings and assemblages,’ MoMA’s press release informed members, ‘include[d] such popular items as the American flag, Coca-Cola bottles, Campbell soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, comic-strip characters, hamburgers and pies.’

But although pop seemed to be ‘rising up out of the muck,’ Geldzahler’s ‘idols and sacred monsters’ – luminaries like Lichtenstein, Warhol, and Marcel Duchamp – had little trouble negotiating the ecosystem of MoMA symposia. None denied Kunitz’s claim that pop art’s ‘signs and slogans and stratagems come straight out of the citadel of bourgeois society, the communications stronghold where the images and desires of mass man are produced, usually in plastic.’ To pop’s critics, this collapsed what William C. Seitz called abstract expressionism’s elevation of ‘fluctuation over repose, feeling over formulation,’ and ‘the individual over society.’ For pop’s ‘sacred monsters,’ this was the point. Ensconced as American ‘high art’ by 1962, abstract expressionism imagined the canvas as a space for producing unique events. American pop, on the other hand, tended to treat art as a mechanism for staging fixed ideological critiques about the tragic permanence of mass culture, a kind of inverse ekphrasis with slick surfaces.     

Enter Mario Schifano. By 1962, the Libyan-born Italian autodidact – Schifano was a painter, collagist, photographer, filmmaker, and rock musician – had already anticipated the pop turn. We can see the turn in mid-rotation in his series, ‘Monochromes’ (1960-1962), several of which are on display at CIMA. Schifano’s ‘Monochromes’ are block fields of color, enamel on paper affixed to canvases. It’s the effect of a billboard artist looking at a corner of their work in closeup, and I suspect my Ringside ghosts would feel understood. CIMA’s curation foregrounds intersections between the ‘Monochromes’ and a recognizably ‘pop’ work like Grande particolare di propaganda, Schifano’s take on the Coca-Cola logo. The latter’s title makes its argument about consumerism obvious to the point of irrelevance, and perhaps deliberately so. Grande particolare di propaganda is far more concerned with how viewers experience the graphic and textural elements of iconographies.  

CIMA’s exhibition title, Facing America, is particularly apt in this regard. As CIMA’s president, Laura Mattioli, remarks, America ‘was a mythical country for Italians in the 50s; the new music, the new products, even contemporary furniture – everything about this place fascinated Schifano.’ The same, of course, might be said for 1950s Britain, which saw artists like David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, and members of the ‘Independent Group’ address bourgeois consumerism. In both cases, though, the artistic perspective involved negotiations with American mass culture as one competing system of iconographies among other more local or traditional ones. ‘An American,’ remarked the Italian pop artist, Tano Festa, ‘paints Coca-Cola as a value; and, for me, painting Michelangelo is the same thing, in the sense that we are in a country where, instead of consuming canned food, we consume the Mona Lisa on chocolates.’

This idea is protean in Schifano’s N.3, a ‘Monochrome’ in which two stenciled versions of the title face opposite directions. As John Yau observes this ‘means the painting can be turned around, that it has no proper top or bottom.’ The viewer can choose how to situate the work, or simply choose not to engage with the problem of upside-downness at all. I would suggest that the through-line in CIMA’s exhibition runs from N.3 to a work like Leonardo, Schifano’s pop-inflected portrait of Da Vinci, an enamel-on-paper piece overlaid across two joined canvasses. Does this work open possibilities for the viewer to imagine cultural iconographies, relationships to history, or forms of consumerism? Sure, I suppose it could. Does it insist on a particular form of critique or mass experience to be conceptually or formally legible? No. Quite to the contrary, the internal tension in Leonardo between clear constructive elements and portraiture is hyperlocal. It makes itself subject to a viewer’s determinations about naivete and context.

If ‘facing America’ implies something about Italian pop art’s fraught negotiation with American pop culture, CIMA might have equally characterized Schifano’s individual perspective as ‘facing New York.’ Some of the most intriguing pieces in CIMA’s exhibition appear in the series, Words and Drawings of Frank O’Hara and Mario Schifano. There’s an organic, revisionary quality to each one, a negotiation of small space with strata of enamel, ink, wax crayon, spray paint, and gouache. Schifano’s bleeding colors vie with clean graphic lines; there’s a temporal effect to the process highlighted by O’Hara’s texts which, like N.3, can be entered and conceptually ordered as poems from multiple vantage points. O’Hara, the ‘poet among painters,’ may have been the more ‘emblematic figure of the New York scene,’ but Schifano’s collaborative energies in Words and Drawings capture the emblematically commonplace revisions of urban landscape – New York’s evolving surface sediment of advertisements, fliers, and call-and-response graffiti that covers the limited surfaces of steel-shuttered storefronts, construction scaffolds, lampposts and brickwork planes of texture.

Kunitz’s ‘slogans and stratagems’ are, after all, a limited metric for urban life at best. I’m sure there’s a little Pleasantville somewhere, a WandaVision simulacrum of bourgeois life where people eat Campbell Soup and hang Jasper Johns’ American flags outside, but I’m only sure because the ‘kings of Cultureburg’ tell me so. Urban living, which is all I really know, is a collage I can scrawl on with my own hand. Schifano, I suspect, saw my New York that way, and at CIMA’s exhibition, I can look at myself through a stranger’s eyes that feel like my own. Pop’s Italian ‘school,’ which dominated the 1964 Venice Biennale, was known as ‘Piazza del Popolo’ – so named for the famous ‘People’s Square’ in Rome that, until recently, was choked with traffic and commerce and jostling bodies.

‘Piaza del Popolo continued to generate painters, but not painting,’ the artist, Fabio Mauri, reflected. ‘Just painters in movement, not a movement of painters.’ Perhaps, but what is the experience of urban space – the ‘People’s Square’ – but a cacophonous movement of viewers, consumers, collagists? In the back of Ringside, Mike Tyson keeps his racing birds in a high-rise ‘Pigeon Hilton’ of coops. It’s built from parts of his childhood coops, salvaged by Costa after Iron Mike’s mother died. It’s both reproduction and real. The racers fly ‘two miles and come back, then five, then ten, until they [can] complete a 300 to 500 mile run’ in different directions’ like cooing N.3s. In a bridge-and-tunnel collage of my real life, Mario Schifano is painting pigeon flight paths on the boxing billboard out front, and Frank O’Hara can write my full name on a bird.

Facing America: Mario Schifano 1960-65 runs through 13 November 2021 at CIMA. The exhibition is curated by Francesco Guzzetti, PhD, 2019–20 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Morgan Library and Museum’s Drawing Institute and former CIMA Fellow (2014–15). In-person viewings can be booked here.