Formality, Alexander invariants, and a question of Serre

We elucidate the key role played by formality in the theory of characteristic and resonance varieties. We show that the I-adic completion of the Alexander invariant of a 1-formal group G is determined solely by the cup-product map in low degrees. It follows that the germs at the origin of the characteristic and resonance varieties of G are analytically isomorphic; in particular, the tangent cone to V_k(G) at 1 equals R_k(G). This provides new obstructions to 1-formality. A detailed analysis of the irreducible components of the tangent cone at 1 to the first characteristic variety yields powerful obstructions to realizing a finitely presented group as the fundamental group of a smooth, complex quasi-projective algebraic variety. This sheds new light on a classical problem of J.-P. Serre. Applications to arrangements, configuration spaces, coproducts of groups, and Artin groups are given.