Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy: The Legacy of Carla Lonzi 9781784537326, 9781350187153, 9781350187139

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Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy

ii

Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy The Legacy of Carla Lonzi Edited by Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Selection and editorial matter © Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi, 2020 Individual chapters © their authors, 2020 Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Ben Anslow Cover image: Carla Lonzi at the HemisFair, San Antonio, Texas, 1968. Photo: Pietro Consagra. Milan, Archivio Pietro Consagra. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ventrella, Francesco, editor. | Zapperi, Giovanna, editor. Title: Feminism and art in postwar Italy : the legacy of Carla Lonzi / Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020035254 (print) | LCCN 2020035255 (ebook) | ISBN 9781784537326 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350187139 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350187146 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Lonzi, Carla. | Feminism and art–Italy–History–20th century. Classification: LCC N72.F45 F4415 2020 (print) | LCC N72.F45 (ebook) | DDC 701/.03–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035254 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035255



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for Paola Di Cori

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Contents List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction  Against culture: Feminism and art in postwar Italy Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi

ix xi xv 1

Part One  Art writing against art 1 2

Carla Lonzi: Encountering American art Judith Russi Kirshner Magnetic encounters: Listening to Carla Lonzi’s tape recordings



Francesco Ventrella

3

(Post-)normative silence 



Sabeth Buchmann

23 45 75

Part Two  Creativity and the feminist subject 4

The making of a feminist subject: Autonomy, authenticity and withdrawal



Giovanna Zapperi

5

Turbulence zone: Diasporic resonances across Carla Lonzi’s archive



Liliana Ellena

6

‘I thought art was for women’ Suzanne Santoro interviewed by Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi

89 111 137

Part Three  Art as relation 7

The end of the affair: Carla Lonzi and the politics of Rapporto



Leslie Cozzi

8

Reimagining the family album: Carla Lonzi’s Autoritratto Teresa Kittler

159 181

Contents

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The Cooperativa Beato Angelico: A feminist art space in Rome



Katia Almerini

209

Part Four  Genealogies and resonances 10 Free escape

Elisabeth Lebovici

11 Feminism and art c. 1970: Writing (art) otherwise

233 249

Griselda Pollock

Index

275

Illustrations 1.1 Carla Lonzi at the HemisFair, San Antonio, Texas, 1968.  1.2 Carla Lonzi in Minneapolis, 1968.  2.1 Giulio Paolini, 174, 1965.  2.2 French advertisement for the Philips EL 3551 Magnetophone, 1964.  2.3 French advertisement for the Philips EL 3551 Magnetophone, 1964.  2.4 Carla Lonzi in Minneapolis, 1968.  2.5 and 2.6 Carla Lonzi at the telephone in via Frattina, Rome, n.d. (1970s).  3.1 Carla Lonzi and Pino Pascali, ‘Discorsi’, marcatré 30–33 (July 1967). 5.1 Luciano Fabro and Carla Lonzi, ‘Untitled’, in Processi di pensiero visualizzati. Junge Italienische Avantgarde, exhib. cat., Kunstmuseum Luzern, 31 May–5 July, 1970. 5.2 Carla Lonzi, Elvira Banotti and Carla Accardi during the first meetings of Rivolta Femminile in the garden of Consagra’s studio, Rome, May 31, 1970.  5.3 Poster of Carla Accardi’s exhibition at the L’ Atelier gallery, 1972–1973.  5.4 Carla Accardi, Triplice tenda (detail).  5.5 Cover of Escupamos sobre Hegel, Buenos Aires, 1975.  5.6 Book display at Gabriella Roncoroni Christeller’s Library showing Rivolta Femminile’s libretti verdi. Buenos Aires, Fondación Pio Roncoroni.  6.1 From the left: Marta Lonzi, Carla Accardi, Carla Lonzi and Suzanne Santoro in the garden of Consagra’s studio, Rome 1971.  6.2 Suzanne Santoro, Mount of Venus and beyond, 1971.  6.3 Suzanne Santoro, Per una espressione nuova/Towards new expression, Rome, Rivolta Femminile 1974 (front cover).  6.4 Suzanne Santoro, Per una espressione nuova/Towards new expression, Rome, Rivolta Femminile 1974.  6.5 Suzanne Santoro, Per una espressione nuova/Towards new expression, Rome, Rivolta Femminile 1974.  7.1 Pietro Consagra in his fourth-floor studio in Piazza del Popolo, Rome, 1952.  7.2 Carla Accardi, Sette Lenzuoli, exhibition view. 

36 37 47 51 52 53 59 79

113

117 120 122 124 125 139 143 144 145 145 160 165

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Illustrations

Carla Accardi, Sette Lenzuoli, exhibition view.  166 Carla Lonzi with Pietro Consagra at Lake Minnetonka in Minneapolis, 1967.  167 Installation view, ‘Gilardi, Piacentini, Pistoletto. Arte Abitabile’.  184 Pino Pascali with his parents, 1936.  186 Mario Nigro with his wife Violetta and their son Gianni in the countryside around Livorno, 1954.  187 8.4 Carla Accardi with her daughter Antonella. 188 8.5 Salvatore Scarpitta with his mother in California in 1923.  189 8.6 Carla Lonzi with her son Battista in 1960.  190 8.7 Carla Lonzi with her son Battista in 1964.  191 8.8 Jannis Kounellis with his wife Efi Sardi in Venezuela at a party, 1958.  192 8.9 Carla Accardi with Mimmo Rotella and Piero Dorazio in Piazza San Marco during the Venice Biennale, 1954.  193 8.10 Luciano Fabro and Carla Lonzi at the Galleria dell’ Ariete, Milan, 1966.  194 8.11 Enrico Castellani with Carla Lonzi at the Galleria de Nieubourg, 1969.  195 8.12 Jannis Kounellis with his wife Efi Sardi.  197 8.13 Pino Pascali with Michelle Coudray on the banks of the River Tiber in Rome, 1968.  198 8.14 Giulio Paolini, Autoritratto, 1968.  199 9.1 The members of the Cooperativa Beato Angelico.  210 9.2 Opening of the exhibition of L’ Aurora by Artemisia Gentileschi.  215 9.3 Carla Accardi, Origine, 1976, exhibition view.  218 9.4 Silvia Truppi, Ballo e erba, 1976.  219 9.5 Anna Maria Colucci, La Donna Oggetto, 1962.  220 9.6 Stephanie Oursler, Times Rites, 1977.  221 9.7 Leonilde Carabba, Per mare e per cielo, 1976.  222 7.3 7.4 8.1 8.2 8.3

Contributors Katia Almerini is an art historian and fine art coordinator based in London. She holds degrees in art history and heritage from the University of Bologna and Rome Tre (2007), and obtained an MA degree in history of contemporary art and visual culture from the Autonoma University of Madrid/MNCARS (2010). Among her recent publications are ‘Women’ s Art Space: Two Mediterranean Case Studies’ in All Women Art Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s, edited by Agata Jakubowska and Katy Deepwell (Liverpool University Press, 2017); and ‘Photography, Women and Feminism’ in Third Eye. Photography and Ways of Seeing, edited by Alka Pande (Speaking Tiger Publishing, 2019). Sabeth Buchmann is Professor of Modern and Postmodern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Co-founder of the artist theatre and author group minimal club (1984– 99), she is now co-editor of the book series PolyPen and member of the editorial board of Texte zur Kunst. Recent publications include Stimme als Voice & Vote. Festschrift für Diedrich Diederichsen, edited with Jens Kastner, Ruth Sonderegger and Andreas Spiegl (b_books Verlag, 2019); Putting Rehearsals to the Test: Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film. Theater, Theory, and Politics, edited with Ilse Lafer and Constanze Ruhm (Stenberg Press, 2016); and Textile Theorien der Moderne. Alois Riegl in der Kunstkritik, co-edited with Rike Frank (b_books, 2015). Recent exhibitions include Putting Rehearsals to the Test (co-curated with Ilse Lafer and Constanze Ruhm), Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery and SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montreal, and VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montreal (2016); and Ready to Sleep, Galerie Mezzanin, Vienna (2014). Leslie Cozzi is the Associate Curator for Prints, Drawings & Photographs at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She received a BA in art history from Yale University (2003) and her PhD from the University of Virginia (2012). In 2010–11 she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Italy for her doctoral dissertation Protagonismo e non: Mirella Bentivoglio, Carla Accardi, Carla Lonzi, and the Art of Italian Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2017–18 she was the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/National Endowment for the Humanities Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Winner in Modern Italian Studies at the American Academy in Rome. She helped organize several recent exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, including William E. Jones: Imitation of Christ; Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible; Tea and Morphine: Women in Paris, 1880–1914; Robert Heinecken: Object Matter; Apparitions: Frottages and Rubbings from 1860 to Now; The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris; and Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space.

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Contributors

Liliana Ellena is Research Associate at the European University Institute (Fiesole, Italy) and has also taught Cultural History and Women’s and Gender History at the University of Turin. Situated in the fields of postcolonial, gender and cultural studies, her research interests focus on the sexual politics of imperial and post-imperial visuality in Italy and on the transnational history of women’s and feminist movements. Ellena has edited the new Italian translation of Frantz Fanon’s I dannati della terra (Einaudi, 2001), and she has co-edited two issues of Zapruder: Rivista di storia delle conflittualità sociale on transnational feminisms (with Elena Petricola, 2007) and on trans-mediterranean social and political movements (with Andrea Brazzoduro, 2014). She has published in international journals and contributed to collective volumes, among which are Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità (ETS, 2011) and Il colore della nazione (Mondadori, 2015). Teresa Kittler is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary art at the University of York. Her research focuses on artistic practices from 1945 to the present day, with a special interest in Italian postwar art. Since completing her PhD, she has been the recipient of fellowships from the British Academy/Leverhulme, the British School at Rome and the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA). Her research on Carla Accardi has been published in the Oxford Art Journal, and she has written on Marisa Merz for the catalogue accompanying the exhibitions: Marisa Merz The Sky Is a Great Place (Los Angeles Hammer Museum & Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017) and Entrare nell’ Opera (Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2019). She has also worked as Assistant Curator for the 10 Gwangju Biennale (2014). Elisabeth Lebovici is an art historian and an art critic based in Paris, and has written widely on feminism, activism, queer politics and contemporary art. Formerly the chief editor of Beaux-arts magazine, she has been the arts and culture editor of Libération for  the past fifteen years. An AIDS activist, she is currently a founding member of the LIG/Lesbians of General Interest fund (https://www.fondslesbien.org). She edited L’Intime (ENSBA, 1998); with Catherine Gonnard she has written Femmes/artistes, Artistes/femmes, Paris de 1880 à nos jours (Hazan, 2007). Her latest book, Ce que le sida  m’a fait. Art et Activisme à la fin du 20è siècle (JRP/Ringier, 2017), has been awarded the Prix Pierre Daix in Art History. Since 2006, Elisabeth is the co-curator, with Patricia Falguières and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, of the seminar series Something You Should Know: Artists and Producers at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her blog: http://le-beau-vice.blogspot.com/. Griselda Pollock is Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (Centre CATH) at the University of Leeds, UK. Recent publications include After-affects/After-images: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation in the Virtual Feminist Museum (Manchester UP, 2013) and Art in the Time-Space of Memory and Migration (Freud Museum & Wild Pansy Press, 2013) and, co-edited with Max Silverman, Concentrationary Cinema. Aesthetics as Political Resistance in Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog (Berghan, 2011) and Concentrationary Memories. Totalitarian Terror and Cultural Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2013). Since the

Contributors

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publication of a major monograph on the German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon in the Theatre of Memory (Yale University Press, 2018), and articles on the work of Turner Prize–winning African-British artist Lubaina Himid and Belgian film director Chantal Akerman, Pollock is currently preparing two new books: Is Feminism a Bad Memory? (Verso, 2020), The Case against ‘Van Gogh’: Memory, Place and Modernist Disillusionment (Thames & Hudson, 2020). Judith Russi Kirshner served as Deputy Director for Education and Women’s Board Endowed Chair at the Art Institute of Chicago from 2013 to 2016. Dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago, from 1998 to 2013, Kirshner previously served as Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago from 1976 to 1980, at The Terra Museum of American Art from 1985 to 1987 and Professor in the Art History Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A long-time contributor to Artforum and other journals and recipient of an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital award for critical writing, Kirshner was consulting editor of Into the City, A History of Chicago Art (University of Chicago, 2018). An essay in Wack! Art in the Feminist Revolution, 2007, on Gina Pane, Carla Lonzi, Lea Vergine and Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti; and a chapter in Carol Rama (Skira, 2004) introduced American audiences to Italian feminist creators. Her current projects include publications on artist Christina Ramberg and an English edition of Lonzi’s Autoritratto. Suzanne Santoro is an artist based in Capranica, Viterbo. A former member of the feminist group Rivolta Femminile, in 1974 she created the book Towards New Expression published by Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. In 1975 she co-founded the Beato Angelico Cooperative, a women’s art space in Rome. In 1984, she earned a degree as Art Therapist from the Istituto di Ortofonologia of Rome, where she became responsible for the painting and graphic atelier. In recent years, Santoro has been actively involved in the Centre against Domestic Violence of Viterbo. Her works can be found in a number of private and public collections, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; and the Verbund Collection, Vienna. Group exhibitions include: The Unexpected Subject: 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy, FM Centre for Contemporary Art, Milan (2019); Doing Deculturalization, Museion, Bolzano (2019), Suite Rivolta. Carla Lonzi’s Feminism and the Art of Revolt, Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon (2015); Artist’s Objects, Il Politecnico, Rome (1994); Pearls in the Clouds, Romana Loda Gallery, Brescia (1987); Kunstlerinnen International 1877– 1977, Schloß Charlottenburg Orangerie, Berlin (1977); Posters, Books, Postcards, The Women’s Building, Los Angeles (1979). Francesco Ventrella is Lecturer in Art History at the University of Sussex, where he is also affiliated with the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence. He was Visiting Fellow at the CentreCATH, University of Leeds (2006), Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Sussex (2013–16) and the Paul Mellon Rome Fellow at the British School at Rome (Spring 2019). He has co-edited with Meaghan Clarke a special issue of Visual Resources titled Women and the Culture of Connoisseurship (2017). His articles on art historiography, aesthetics and sexuality have appeared in European

xiv

Contributors

Journal of Women’s Studies, Studi Culturali and Art History. A Former Editor of Parallax (2008–2011),Ventrella has recently joined the editorial board of Art History. Giovanna Zapperi is Professor of Contemporary Art History at Université de Tours. She was the Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor at Humboldt University in Berlin (2007– 08), a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Nantes (2009), at the French Academy at Villa Medici in Rome (2013–14) and the Wittkower Fellow at Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (2020). A former member of the editorial board of Multitudes (2005–09), in 2009 she was awarded the Gender Studies Award of the City of Paris for her doctoral dissertation, later published as L’ artiste est une femme. La modernité de Marcel Duchamp (PUF, 2012). Zapperi has also edited the French translation of Carla Lonzi’s Autoritratto (JRP, Ringier, 2012). Among her publications, Lo schermo del potere. Femminismo e regime della visibilità, with Alessandra Gribaldo (Ombre Corte, 2012), Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita (Derive Approdi, 2017) also translated into French (Les Presses du réel, 2019). Together with Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, she has curated the exhibition Defiant Muses: Delphine Seyrig and Feminist Video Collectives in France, 1970s–1980s (LaM Lille and Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2019–20).

Acknowledgements This volume has had a long and difficult gestation. Making books does not happen in a vacuum, and life is often in the way of our best intentions to edit manuscripts, meet deadlines and have to change footnotes from one referencing style to another. We are extremely grateful to our contributors for their patience and graciousness amidst so many delays. Their hard work and commitment to the project motivated ours, and we hope it will resonate with our readers. Special thanks need to go to Suzanne Santoro. Her work and words have been a constant inspiration for us, and her friendship has represented a blessing which helped us hold things together. We would like to thank all our friends and colleagues who, during the past five years, have asked about this book: Jo Applin, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Lara Conte, Luisa Lorenza Corna, Giorgia Gastaldon, Catherine Grant, Althea Greenan, Laura Iamurri, Alexandra Kokoli, Victoria Horne, Lara Perry, Helena Reckitt, Hilary Robinson, Amy Tobin. Their curiosity, enthusiasm and impatience about this book have been of encouragement for us to carry on. We would also like to acknowledge the excellent work of all those who have helped with translations and editing: Karl Hoffmann, Alyson Price, Maya Sawmi, Annette Seidel Arpaci, and Louise Woods. This publication has kindly been funded by the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir in Paris, Laboratoire Intru (EA6301) at Université de Tours, and the School of History, Art History and Philosophy at the University of Sussex. Special thanks go to the archives that have given permission to reproduce their images, some of which have never been published before: Francesco Impellizzeri (Archivio Accardi Sanfilippo), Gabriella Di Milia and Germana Formanti (Archivio Consagra), Manuela Cirino (Fondazione Jacqueline Vodoz and Bruno Danese), Ida Gianelli and Elena Musiani (Archivio di Storia delle Donne) Pauline Chéréméteff-de Mazières, Carmela and Valentina Mulas (Archivio Ugo Mulas), Giovanni Nigro (Archivio Mario Nigro), Antonio Frugis (Fondazione Pino Pascali), LeoNilde Carabba, Gian Paolo Rispoli, Gian Enzo Sperone, Milli Toja. Some of the contributions for this volume originated in a conference titled Carla Lonzi, critique d’art et féministe, organized by Giovanna Zapperi with Travelling féministe at the Maison Rouge, Paris, 11 January 2013. Giovanna would like to thank especially Patricia Falguières, who initiated the project of translating Lonzi’s writings into French, as well as Lucia Aspesi, Nicole Fernandez Ferrer, Pauline de Laboulay and Dora Stiefelmeier for their support and involvement in the conference. Fulvia Carnevale, Raffaela Cucciniello, Anna Daneri, Christophe Degoutin, Kaira M. Cabañas, Alessandra Gribaldo, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Alena J. Williams provided feedback, encouragement and friendship: thank you for being such wonderful friends. Last but not least I wish to remember the late Chiara Fumai; her unique way to express a feminist creativity has been of great inspiration.

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Francesco would like to thank his colleagues at the University of Sussex, especially Flora Dennis and Joanna Pawlik, for their support and generous feedback. My conversations about Lonzi have resonated with the work of many artists, Almare Collective, Chiara Camoni, the late Chiara Fumai, Alex Martinis Roe, Angela Marzullo, and many fellow scholars, Cecilia Canziani, Emanuela de Cecco, Linda Sandino, Ella Spencer-Mills, Adrian Rifkin, Antonia Trasforini. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Paola Di Cori (1946–2017), who always challenged and provoked both of us personally and intellectually from very unexpected directions. The originality of her thinking and the breadth and creativity of her scholarship have been, and will continue to be, an inspiration for generations of feminist and queer scholars in Italy and beyond.

Introduction Against culture: Feminism and art in postwar Italy Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi

Breaking out For several years now, the name of Carla Lonzi has been breaking out in art history after a comparatively long-time silence. Art critic, poet and feminist, Lonzi’s work evades easy definitions. Renewed interest in her writing led to two major scholarly publications written in Italian,1 alongside international responses from contemporary art historians, curators, artist exhibitions, conferences and reading groups.2 This recent attention to Lonzi has instigated new conversations around radical feminism, contributing to the delinking of an Anglo-American canon frequently associated with major accounts of the feminist movement in art. The developing discourse has also, and this is crucial, started to disseminate a feminist vocabulary that produces dissonances within mainstream strategies of presenting the relationship between art and feminism in the contemporary art world across generations and geographies.3 Introducing a volume of eleven contributions dealing with Carla Lonzi’s legacy in the arts and culture of postwar Italy does not feel like a straightforward thing to do, since one of her most important legacies, perhaps, is the radical refusal to participate in those systems of culture that have been shaped by the historical exclusion of women: art, art criticism, academia, history, publishing … and the list could go on. In fact, after working for over a decade as a professional art critic, in 1969 Lonzi announced her formal resignation from the art world, in the foreword to Autoritratto, the book based on a series of tape-recorded conversations with artists. The publication of the founding manifesto of Rivolta Femminile, the group Lonzi co-founded with Sicilian artist Carla Accardi and Italian-Eritrean journalist Elvira Banotti in the summer of 1970, famously also marked a point of no return from her profession as an art critic.4 In her involvement with feminism later on, Lonzi also rejected the prevailing concept of creativity, in particular the notion that art itself could be an emancipatory practice for women in a field of creativity colonized by ‘the myth of male culture’.5 Several scholars have questioned the meaning of this interruption in her career, underlining a problematic divide developed in biographical narratives, which seems to pivot around a time before feminism, when she was an art critic, and a time within

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Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy

feminism, when art seems to have had no space.6 As Suzanne Santoro stated in an interview, Lonzi did not want to be ‘the Lucy Lippard of the situation’, meaning that she never intended to become a feminist art critic.7 Yet, as the resurgence of interest in her writings gains momentum, the implications of her rift with the art world represent a fundamental feminist standpoint from which we can interrogate the structure of feminist art history and the role of feminist criticism in general today. This volume aims to explore the diverging trajectory of Lonzi across art and feminism, in order both to illuminate, between historicization and actualization, the potential of her directions for a feminist revision of the history of Italian art and culture, and to question the topicality of her thinking for a feminism to come. Others have proposed that Lonzi’s quitting of the art world may have been responsible for a missing link between feminism, art history and criticism in Italy.8 Lonzi’s withdrawal from art and her refusal to engage with women artists have thus been viewed as a sort of deadlock, seemingly unable to challenge the canonical narrative of postwar Italian art, which is still very much based on a cohort of (almost) entirely male artists.9 Any attempt to give an account of the histories of feminism and art in Italy inevitably stumbles upon Carla Lonzi’s farewell to the profession she was involved in throughout the 1960s. Perhaps, because it is so closely connected with her break away from the art world, Autoritratto seems to challenge the ways in which both Italian postwar art and 1970s feminism have been historicized. On the one hand, by replacing art historical judgements with everyday conversations among artists, Autoritratto eludes the conventions of art writing of the time and draws an alternative picture of the Italian art scene, one that is hardly legible via the categories through which it has been promoted internationally, most significantly under the banner of Arte Povera. On the other hand, the radical discontinuity in Lonzi’s biography has obscured the complex process of disengagement from and unravelling of her professional identification as an art critic described in the book. Lonzi’s writings on art were indeed marked by a self-reflexive positioning that led her to challenge art criticism’s institutional framework and languages. In addition, the elaboration of a subject position within the practice of art criticism strongly informed Lonzi’s feminism. Throughout the 1970s, she would keep on developing the political and existential terms of her withdrawal from the art world, which she abandoned after she had spent over a decade at the forefront of the Italian art scene. Lonzi’s farewell can therefore be productively addressed in the framework of her analysis of the institutions, habits and systems of value structuring the field of art. Instead of representing that biographical rupture as a threshold, this book proposes to delve into the overlooked connections that can be traced between Lonzi’s ideas and the feminist discussions that were emerging among artists and critics in Italy during the 1970s. Among the women who joined the Rivolta Femminile group after 1970, many were artists, gallerists, art historians and critics, demonstrating that in spite of its separatism and professed disconnection from art, Rivolta attracted women coming from Lonzi’s former professional networks.10 Very early on in the Italian women’s movement, Lonzi’s ideas came to occupy a central position for many feminist groups across Italy, which is also why, perhaps paradoxically, her art criticism quickly became irrelevant.11 Nonetheless, as recent scholarship on Italian art is starting to reveal, there

Against Culture: Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy

3

is a female constellation of writings and creative practices coming out of the 1960s and 1970s that resonates with Lonzi’s elaborations about feminism and knowledge, but has remained illegible according to the mainstream narratives of postwar art history in Italy.12 Some of the women who, in 1976, founded the Beato Angelico Cooperative in Rome, for instance, came out of Rivolta Femminile, in the aftermath of an irreconcilable break with Lonzi, around the issue of making art professionally.13 At the same time, the event of feminism was perceived by many women in Italy as having allowed them to make art in their everyday lives. Yet, their careers still exceeded the parameters established by the history of art, starting from the spaces and contexts in which their practices were discussed and shared with other artist women. For many women, experimenting with ephemeral forms of art making (like performance and assemblage) and ‘minor’ forms of writing (like the diary and the letter) represented a calculated strategy to create or preserve spaces in which they could find new expressions, spaces where they did not have to rely on the authority of the institutions of culture, or used it only to subvert it.14 Rather than the museum and the art gallery, local groups often organized around cultural centres, libraries or bookshops, each one differently engaged in a critique of art as a male myth, or in the investigation of the relationship between creativity and autocoscienza (consciousness raising).15 Working at the margins of the art world, these groups developed creative ways of being together via a set of collaborative practices that strongly resonate with Lonzi’s ongoing search for non-hierarchical relations. The notion of rapporto (relationship) therefore emerges as a crucial and recurring keyword in her writings. As Maria Luisa Boccia has pointed out, rapporto can be considered as the nucleus of Lonzi’s feminist practice as it foregrounds the relational dimension of subjectivity and the political necessity to transform the way we connect to one another, especially within the personal sphere.16 In fostering dialogues and encounters, Lonzi sought to generate a process of mutual recognition in which a new subjectivity could unfold, in opposition to the notion of the subject as an autonomous and universal individual, inherited from the modernist tradition. The emphasis on collective work practiced by groups such as Donne/Immagine/Creatività from Naples, or the use of photography as a space of interpersonal exploration in the Milan-based group Ci vediamo il mercoledì. Gli altri giorni ci immaginiamo (See you on Wednesdays. On the other days, we will imagine each other), becomes particularly significant when examined in a dialogue with ideas about women’s mutual recognition, which seeped out of Rivolta Femminile after it had established different, but communicating, cells in Genoa, Milan, Turin and Rome.17 Alongside these connections with the artistic practices of 1970s Italy, feminist scholars have also started to reconsider how many women critics, gallerists and curators of that decade engaged with concepts emanating from the publications of Rivolta Femminile. Although it would be impossible to group different modes of writing under one single feminist voice, Anne Marie Suzeau Boetti, Romana Loda and Mirella Bentivoglio, each in their own way, reimagined art criticism and the potential of creativity to liberate female subjectivity through a wave of feminist ideas that, arguably, responded to Lonzi’s silence on women’s art.18 This is attributable to not only their commitment to an elaboration of the experience of women’s difference,

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rather than equality within a world created by men, according to a radical revision of the fields of art, but also because of their emphasis on the possibilities of exploring the feminine not as an essential language, but as a repressed symbolic field, the ‘other creativity’ to come, in which woman is no longer the spectator in the theatre of male culture.19 As soon as we start to engage with the complexities of Lonzi’s writings, and what her critique of knowledge implies for a feminist questioning of art history today, her posturing against the patriarchal institutions of art and culture can no longer be taken at face value. The chapters presented in this volume claim in no way to be an exhaustive survey of art and feminism in Italy, nor do they aim to offer an alternative history of Italian art of the postwar era. Rather, while each contributor has been committed to a work of historical analysis of documents and practices from the 1950s, 1960s and especially the 1970s, their chapters represent a multidirectional encounter with Lonzi’s writings and a proposition to transform her seeming contradictions into a possibility for rethinking the very terms of the relationship between art and feminism. The starting point for us was not solely to ask what Lonzi would have thought about this book, and whether she would have criticized it as an attempt to bring her thinking back into the spaces from which she voluntarily defected. Nor did we want to uncover Lonzi’s unacknowledged influence on Italian art. Rather, we wish to take her refusal to conform with the hegemonic structures of art and culture as an opening, not as a closure, through which we can start a dialogue with her endeavours to reimagine writing, creativity and the production of knowledge from a feminist standpoint.

Carla Lonzi and Italian art history Lonzi graduated in 1956 with a dissertation in art history supervised by Roberto Longhi at the University of Florence. The topic of her thesis, Rapporti tra la scena e le arti figurative (Relations between the stage and the figurative arts), focused her research on the collaboration between artists and theatre makers, thus registering very early on a way of researching history of art for Lonzi which centred around collaborative modes of production. In her thesis, she reviews modernist theories of representation by investigating the anti-naturalist turn in theatre from the beginning of the twentieth century. She writes that both the stage and painting elaborate a ‘common notion of space’, which redefined the position of the modern spectator: ‘the space of the stage as separate from the space of the spectators, does not have sense insofar as we mean to allow art to partake in our life, instead of coldly to position ourselves in front of it: still life or live art?’20 Lonzi’s enquiry into the naturalist space of the stage resonates with the ongoing debates, in Italian criticism from the 1950s, about realism and abstraction.21 By the time Lonzi graduated, she was already writing art reviews for Il Paese, the Florentine paper aligned with the Italian Communist Party.22 These short, sometimes unassuming, reviews document her search for a critical language. Although Lonzi seems chiefly concerned with figurative painting, her ideas have moved beyond the opposition between realism and abstraction by turning to the relationship between

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art and life: ‘Indeed, today we accept the naturalistic hypothesis to the extent that it appears to be directed to merge into a newly complex situation, one centred on the rapport, wholly experimental and risky, man-modern life.’23 The intellectual breadth of these reviews also signals a growing interest in the international art scene, especially around Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel. At the beginning of 1959 Lonzi started to write for L’ Approdo, the cultural radio review of RAI, the national broadcasting corporation, which also published a weekly magazine of the same name with a selection of radio programme transcripts. Both the radio broadcasts and the magazine took part in the wider project of the cultural rebuilding of postwar Italy. First broadcast in 1945, L’ Approdo dealt with a variety of themes, including cinema, theatre and the visual arts, and its content was moderated by an exceptional editorial board mixing new intellectuals, such as Carlo Bo, Emilio Cecchi and Giuseppe Ungaretti, with old ones, like Longhi. It was thanks to Longhi that Lonzi was offered the opportunity to cover the visual arts for the programme until 1969. L’ Approdo is perhaps the first Italian experiment of a platform in which elite literary and artistic culture was disseminated through a novel use of mass media: radio, a magazine and, from 1963, television.24 Lonzi’s reviews appeared alongside those of other intellectuals of the era, such as Giovanna Bemporad, Enzo Paci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fernanda Pivano and Cesare Segre. She was not the only art historian among the authors. In fact, Anna Banti, another experimenter in art writing, had been given the film-review section in both the radio programme and the magazine. The two women were both familiar with Longhi’s ideas and writings (Banti married Longhi in 1924); like Lonzi later, Banti too abandoned academic art writing in favour of literature as a means to narrate women’s experience – Banti’s acclaimed novel Artemisia came out in 1947.25 Yet, Banti’s and Lonzi’s writing for L’ Approdo could not have been more different. While Banti used film to offer a critique of social customs, especially with regard to gender roles, Lonzi does not seem to have engaged with the issue of gender, not even when, in 1960, she reviewed the exhibition La femme in Basel, featuring traditional images of women as models or muses.26 This does not mean that she was not interested in the position of women in art history. In fact, as Laura Iamurri has revealed, that year she was discussing with Marisa Volpi, a fellow art historian who also studied with Longhi, her aspiration to write a book on women. The project involved not only collecting their writings, including diaries and letters, but also an inchiesta (investigation) among women intellectuals.27 But L’ Approdo did not represent the right cultural environment to talk about gender. Although she ended her collaboration only in 1969, Lonzi’s distancing from academic and formalist criticism often triggered the interference of her former tutor Longhi, who sat on the editorial board of the programme.28 Soon, L’ Approdo became too conservative for Lonzi’s growing interest in international art. New opportunities came from the Notizie gallery in Turin, with which she started a collaboration that helped define her critical voice among neoavant-garde artists and critics.29 As Iamurri and Vanessa Martini have pointed out, Art Informel represented for Lonzi an aesthetic field through which she started to test the possibilities of critical writing.30 In Turin, Lonzi met French art critic Michel Tapié, and the two worked side by side on the gallery’s magazine as well as on a number of

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exhibitions featuring the works of many international artists, such as Kazuo Shiraga, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Louise Nevelson and Arshile Gorky, to name a few. In the early 1960s, debates around the relationship between artists and the role of art criticism were being reenergized by neo-avant-garde forms of artistic production. This also corresponded with a time of unprecedented transformation within Italian society as a whole.31 A key moment was the XII Convegno Internazionale Artisti, Critici, Studiosi d’arte in Verrucchio [International Congress Artists, Critics, Art Historians], which was held in 1963 in conjunction with the San Marino Biennale, entitled Oltre l’Informale [Beyond Informel]. In response to the debates that followed the event, Lonzi published the article ‘La solitudine del critico’ [The critic’s solitude], a polemic against what she perceived as the hegemonic form of art criticism of her time, in which the critic authoritatively imposes his aprioristic ideas on the artist’s work. Lonzi openly dismissed this approach as an abuse of power.32 The article’s target was Giulio Carlo Argan, an eminent scholar and critic, who, more than anyone else, represented the power of academia over artists.33 Besides the controversy, what emerges from this daring intervention is her desire for a kind of art criticism that was yet to come – ‘an activity all to be invented’ – in which hierarchies would be abolished and critics could side with artists, instead of observing artwork from a distance. In the wake of her article against Argan, and in her search for her own critical voice, Lonzi started to collaborate with the avant-garde magazine marcatré, which provided the opportunity to distance herself from the conservative tone that animated L’ Approdo. Founded in 1963 by art historian Eugenio Battisti, marcatré focused on contemporary culture; thus art criticism coexisted with other fields of critical enquiry, such as ethnomusicology, architectural and literary theory, poetry and the study of mass culture. Among the editors and contributors we find an array of key figures who shaped the intellectual debate on art and culture in 1960s Italy, such as Germano Celant, Gillo Dorfles, Umberto Eco and Lea Vergine.34 With a small number of critical interventions, and in accordance with the magazine’s experimental spirit, in 1966 Lonzi inaugurated a series of ‘Discorsi’ in which she began to use a tape recorder and to experiment with the dialogical format, which would later inform the making of her book Autoritratto.35 Her use of audio recording resonated with the alternative forms of knowledge production that were promoted within the journal, particularly as they focused on documentary formats that aimed to avoid academic language while giving voice to the oppressed.36 It is within this general concern for non-authoritarian approaches that we can locate Lonzi’s use of the tape recorder in her dialogues with artists, as a way to undermine the power of art criticism she identified with Argan’s position. More importantly, the use of the tape recorder allowed her to develop the notion that art criticism could take the shape of a relational practice based on firsthand experience. Lonzi’s writings on the Venice Biennale of 1964 are a particularly interesting source to gauge the way her critical language was changing, and how her commitment had started to shift from the aesthetic questions around Informel painting, towards a new, more situated consideration of the relationship between the subjectivity of artists and their work. Lonzi was particularly concerned with the meaning of the American works in Venice. But while the review for L’ Approdo remains quite conservatively attached to

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the problem of the relationship between Neo-Dada and painting (exemplified in the works of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg),37 the text for marcatré asks how the American works force a change in the way in which art can be written about. Lonzi accuses the moralising intents of traditional art criticism in failing to recognize that Neo-Dada and Pop Art do not merely celebrate consumerism. The presence of the real object in their work, she writes, signals not the ‘rescue’ of the mass-produced object from the plots of capitalism, but a ‘recognition’ within the institutional discourse of culture.38 By stressing the removal of the object from the real world into the world of art, Lonzi indicated the social effects beyond what appeared to be a seemingly linguistic transfer: ‘thanks to their awareness, from the things themselves, apparently inert, abnormal, acephalic, derives a beauty which is also a discovery of the vitality and newness of a collective experience.’39 Her chapter on Accardi, in the Biennale catalogue, marks that recognition as something that happens specifically between two women. In opposition to the swift gestures of action painting, Lonzi introduces the slowness of Accardi’s signs as a ‘technique of life’, associated with the condition of women that is ‘constituted in the ancestral disposition to run back and forth, that existential mystery of being that other to whom it is impossible to recognise herself in the image proposed by society’.40 Lonzi’s complex thinking discloses an important reflection on sexual difference, which she will continue to elaborate with Accardi two years later, in a recorded conversation for marcatré.41 The audio-recorded conversations that appeared on marcatré over two years, 1966–67, embody a new form of art writing in which the emphasis on speech and spontaneity allows for a convivial encounter between artist and critic that exceeds the traditional format of the artist interview. The elimination of her speech in the transcripts of a conversation with Pino Pascali, her final contribution to the ‘Discorsi’ series, projected her towards a radical dissent towards the function of art criticism. However, with the publication of Autoritratto, which she conceived during a stay in the United States in the spring of 1968, Lonzi did not choose to be invisible in the text, but to reconceive her presence in a different way. In opposition to the extraneousness expected of the role of the art critic, she instead opted to reposition herself on the same level with artists and rethink art writing as a creative resource, rather than as a method of assessment and evaluation. Indeed, with Autoritratto Lonzi also took a stance towards a new generation of artists, which distinguished her from the views of art criticism of the era. As Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has noted, while most critics were starting to refer to the gestural, calligraphic and abstract-expressionist approach as a thing of the past, Lonzi instead maintained its legacy in relation to a younger generation, which later Germano Celant would gather under the term Arte Povera: ‘Lonzi’s views seem visionary as they weave through process-oriented works of the 1960s and connects them with the actionbased work of the 1940s and 1950s.’42 The book itself, with its emphasis on process and montage, and its nonlinear approach to narrative, deprives the hermeneutic role of art criticism of strength, which resonates with the concerns expressed by the artists in the audio-recorded conversations. More than the snapshot of a generation, however, Autoritratto appears like a theatre in which different voices are brought together in a space that retains a feeling of the everyday. This is largely due to the use of unedited

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transcriptions, which also gives a sense of dream-like suspension. Lonzi’s remarks on postwar art, Christov-Bakargiev concludes, ‘suggest how important it is not to view Arte Povera only as a movement that emerged in opposition to the art of the postwar period, but to search for the complex and multifarious ways in which it negotiated this heritage in a contemporary landscape’.43 And as a key element of this contemporary landscape, we should include the making of feminism, which is registered in the conversations between Lonzi and Accardi (the only other woman in the book). By following the thread of the conversation between the two Carlas of the book it is therefore possible to read Autoritratto as a document about the beginnings of Rivolta Femminile. Many of the things that Accardi says anticipate issues that will be key for the early texts of Rivolta; they openly pose a number of questions that have to do with sexual difference and the way men’s history has overdetermined women’s work.44

Art, feminism and deculturation Lonzi’s disavowal of the increasing visibility of women in the art world was not exceptional to the Italian artistic context throughout the 1970s, or to the international one. By the time the dialogue with feminism became more visible in contemporary art, many artists and critics were also starting to critique the ways in which the mainstream press presented women’s art as a new trend. In the United States, Lucy Lippard had been an advocate of feminist art as well as an acute interpreter of the risks of co-option by the mainstream. She famously voiced her concern that if women artists were to be content with a ‘piece of the pie’ so long dominated by men, their search for alternatives to the current art system would wane. Women artists entering the system for the first time after many years of painful struggle can hardly be blamed for noticing this. Pie is pie for the starving. Nevertheless, it is crucial that art by women not be sucked into the establishment and absorbed by it. If this happens, we shall find ourselves back where we started within another decade.45

Moreover, in interrogating how women related to the mainstream, Lippard was also questioning the way in which this relation might affect the way in which artist women related or would fail to relate to one another.46 In her response to the Hayward Annual of 1978, curated by women to give visibility to the variety of women’s practices in Britain at the time, Griselda Pollock acknowledged the risk that the mainstream would find in women artists a new resource to exploit. Although she lamented the lack of a discussion around the issues of feminism and art practices at the Hayward event, she also urged against the ideology of an ‘alternative’ practice for women. ‘By remaining outside institutions and therefore invisible to them and their critical discourses,’ she wrote, ‘women endorse their place in the separate sphere historically created for their work, thereby colluding in their own marginalization.’47 The fear that radical difference could become a new ‘other’ of the art world was, and still is, a shared concern in feminist art history and curating,

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especially with regard to recent debates around the representation not only of feminist art but also of black and queer practices.48 Similar concerns were not alien to the debates women were having in Italy throughout the 1970s, especially with regard to the question of the usefulness or efficacy of all-women exhibitions. While the art press was slowly starting to register the presence of women artists on the scene, the feminist movement was starting to grapple with the risk of women’s art becoming institutionalized. The first national convention Donna Arte Società (Woman Art Society), organized in Milan on 14–15 January 1978 by a number of feminist groups from across the country, began both a discussion about the prospect of a national women’s art exhibition to be organized in Genoa, and a polemic around the politics of women’s access to a whole cultural, linguistic and economic system that marginalized them. Some of these debates, which appeared in the feminist magazine Effe, express clear worries around spaces (the convention was housed in the Centro Internazionale in Brera) and competing ways of perceiving feminist autonomy in art. ‘Instead of searching together for new words, new signs independent from the existing cultural structures, which are heavy for men as well, they looked for easy frames and quiet seats,’ wrote one of the participants in a letter addressed to the magazine.49 Instead, other women within the art world did not share the opposition between professionalism and feminism. In the summer of the same year, for instance, some feminist groups also presented their projects in Venice during the 38th Venice Biennale, where Mirella Bentivoglio also curated Materializzazione del linguaggio at the Magazzini del Sale, featuring the artworks of over eighty women, a show which later travelled to New York and São Paulo. But for Bentivoglio these exhibitions, which the press quickly started to label ghetti rosa (pink ghettoes), did not mean only an uncritical sliding into the art world; instead, they were intended to explore the historical, theoretical and social limitations faced by women working as artists.50 Access to art as a profession represented a disputed issue within Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi’s stance against art, and her refusal to support women artists, led to the gradual departure of many artists from the group; these included Carla Accardi and Suzanne Santoro. However, Lonzi’s position cannot be easily explained through the dismissal of art as a patriarchal institution. Indeed, her feminist detachment from art must be connected to other feminist critiques of visuality from the 1970s, and yet it partakes in those debates at a distance. Lonzi returned to her experience as an art critic to find a figurative language that illustrated the progress of her awareness as a woman who was part of a feminist group, as she clearly states in the diary she started to write in 1972: I could never have taken part in feminism had I not been aware of the highest pinnacle reached by mankind (with art, religion, philosophy, exactly in the Hegelian sense) because for me feminism must measure itself right there in order to see the insufficiencies of the male patriarchal subject.51

By positioning herself outside art, Lonzi intended not only to expose the ‘myth of male culture’ but also to illuminate other ways of producing knowledge; of being together,

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and of conceiving a feminist subject that had enormous repercussions on people’s lives, particularly the lives of women in Italy. Conceived as a field of resonance among speakers, Autoritratto represented a tool by which she attempted an early identification with a group – artists – in the hope she could lift herself from the passive role as spectator, a role the institution of art assigns to the art critic in order to validate the artist and, as a consequence, reproduce its system. In her conversations with artists, therefore, Lonzi pointed for the first time at the structures by means of which two subjects, the art critic and the artist, must remain separate and subjected, so to speak, to one another. Thus, from reflecting on her exclusion as an art critic, she later arrived at conceiving the role of spectator that male culture demands of women as a whole. As Donatella Franchi has indicated, she identified in the different relationship men and women entertain with art one of the most sensitive knots in the power dynamics that maintain patriarchal culture.52 From being a victim of the excessive power of the critic, after her break with the art world, the artists have come to occupy a privileged position in which they can manipulate others by holding them into a passive position as spectators. In her diary, Lonzi gives an account of the shift from her previous ideas about the separation between artist and critic, towards a definition of the critic as the feminized victim of the artist’s imposture.53 The spectatorial model identified by her critique of art, therefore, represents one obstacle to women’s liberation from a system of knowledge that defines them in a way that can only be inauthentic. In order to understand the complexity of this shift in Lonzi’s thought, it is important to consider the import of sexual difference in the feminist critique of visuality. Rather than recognizing woman as an object of the male gaze (Mulvey), or as the consumer of the world made by men (Huyssen), Lonzi stresses the performative role that women play in the theatre of male culture. Hence, women’s withdrawal from the field of culture represents the precondition for the feminist act of deculturizzazione (deculturation) – or fare tabula rasa, as Lonzi also expressed it.54 When considered through the lens of her analysis of the roles that art and culture assign to women, then, Lonzi’s refusal to become a feminist art critic can start to resonate with other contemporary positions that were pointing at the structural dimension of women’s exclusion from art history.55 As Lonzi would develop later in her life, women’s role in the arena of art leaves them with no other choice than to remain silent or to speak a language of self-negation.56 Lonzi’s argument against women artists can be read in the framework of this false alternative in which she identified the pernicious effects of a structural power differential. Not only do women artists have to face the inadequacy of the existing criteria and systems of validation but, most importantly, they inevitably vacillate over their need for approval from male institutions and artists, therefore finding themselves trapped in their own alienation.57 This is the reason why, instead of engaging in a dialectical relation with their oppressors and participating in a competition that is already biased, women need to ‘move onto another level’ (muoversi su un altro piano), thus leaving the arena of culture altogether.58 These ideas are worked out chiefly in a fundamental text signed collectively by Rivolta Femminile, titled ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della cultura maschile’ (1974). Promptly translated, in the first issue of Heresies, as ‘On Woman’s

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Refusal to Celebrate Male Creativity’, the text concentrates not so much on a critique of male culture but on a feminist strategy of withdrawal: ‘Man, the artist, feels abandoned by woman as soon as she abandons her archetypical spectators’ role; their mutual solidarity rests solely in the conviction that, as a spectator gratified by creativity, woman reaches the highest possible point in the evolution of her species.’59 Lonzi conceived male culture as a form of colonization, which clashed with the feminist liberal arguments about gender equality. Instead, as her writings make clear, women can use their absence profitably: ‘But let woman remove herself, and the struggle for male supremacy becomes not man lording it over woman, but merely a struggle between individual men.’60 These premises represent a radical standpoint for feminist art history. In her anti-dialectical understanding of historical time, history itself is understood as a male construction from which women are structurally excluded. Feminism, therefore, represents the interruption of both chronological continuity and the monologue of (patriarchal) history.61 Rivolta Femminile was a separatist feminist group based on the practice of autocoscienza. Separatism defined Rivolta Femminile’s understanding of politics as a collective withdrawal from male culture. Through self-narration and active listening, women made room for a collective consciousness that could be expressed in spite of the identity historically assigned to women by male culture. Separatism and consciousness raising, therefore, define a symbolic and physical space in which the world can be renamed otherwise without reproducing the parameters of historical oppression. Thus, Lonzi maintained that, as soon as women turn away from the ‘myth of male culture’ and refrain from benefitting from the effects of authority that male culture can give, women start to recognize each other on their own terms. Can these preconditions become useful for us, not so much to historicize or map out the impact of Lonzi’s feminism on Italian art, but to reactivate the creative epistemic difference mobilized by her radical propositions? Our temporal distance should not obliterate the historical specificities posed by Lonzi’s separatism, but it may create a space of resonance to counter the representation of feminist art as yet another period in Western art history.62 The untimely temporality of autocoscienza can indeed operate as a reminder for us, feminist art historians of today, that a chronological representation of history obfuscates the discontinuities and fractures that are constitutive of the way we relate to the past.63 Rather than adding yet another segment in order to sketch a supposedly comprehensive picture of postwar art in Italy, our aim is to turn to Lonzi’s separatism as an overlooked genealogy to think of the relation between art and feminism in the present, an aim that exceeds and challenges the reassuring epistemic framework defined by the new historiographic category of ‘feminist art’. Lonzi did not recognize the label ‘feminist art’, and by not doing so she has bequeathed to us a number of radical questions about art and feminism we can no longer evade.

The legacy of Carla Lonzi These chapters represent the first assessment of Lonzi’s art writing alongside her key feminist texts from the 1970s. The authors scrutinize a range of different

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perspectives on the relationship between art and feminism in postwar Italy, including feminist separatism and the art world, the critique of the art critic’s authority, the issue of formalism and Lonzi’s search for a ‘female expression’. By using a number of previously unpublished or untranslated primary sources they document Lonzi’s artistic circles, her tangential connections with Arte Povera and her complicated relationship with women artists like Carla Accardi and Suzanne Santoro. Finally, this collection positions the legacy of Lonzi in a transnational context by exploring intellectual resonances with other writers such as Lucy Lippard and Susan Sontag. The volume is divided into four sections, which we understand could have been mounted in innumerable different ways as we do not intend to give a sense of linearity or progression. Instead, we have tried to elaborate a map of correspondences across different geographical, generational and methodological positions on the question of Lonzi’s legacy. The first three chapters engage with the way in which her art writing represents a dissonant voice in the Italian and international context of art criticism. By concentrating her study on Lonzi’s dialogue with the United States, which Lonzi visited in 1967–68, Judith Russi Kirshner shows how Lonzi’s responses to American art not only marked her distancing from Longhi’s formalist tradition but also situated her critical language about the renewal of the role and function of art criticism in the 1960s. Francesco Ventrella’s chapter turns to the importance of the oral and aural dimension of Autoritratto, in order to examine Lonzi’s undoing of traditional modes of art writing, and the role the technology of the tape recorder plays in transforming the presence of the body, thus preparing the way for the idea of feminist resonance to which Lonzi returned in her writings with Rivolta. Finally, Sabeth Buchman considers Lonzi alongside Susan Sontag and Chris Kraus, in order to show how her texts participated in an international anti-hermeneutical and post-normative debate about criticism, thus providing a theoretical framework for her plea against the division of labour between artist and critic. All three chapters elaborate on Lonzi’s essential rejection of the validating function of art criticism, which intersects with the second section of the book, in which three more authors explore the relationship between creativity and the formation of a feminist subject. Here, Giovanna Zapperi unpacks the meaning of authenticity in Lonzi’s texts, to argue that women’s autonomy begins with the refusal to comply with the structures of social and cultural identification. Thus, Zapperi situates Lonzi’s separation from art, and her desire for a shared collective practice, in the context of the social and cultural upheavals of the time. Liliana Ellena, instead, takes us away from the issue of separation and withdrawal, in order to navigate, instead, the possibility of transatlantic encounters. Through an analysis of Lonzi’s references about the colonization of female subjectivity and the comparisons she makes between the artist and the black woman, Ellena’s chapter attends to the ‘turbulence zones’ that start to appear when we look into Lonzi’s archive from a diasporic and decolonial perspective. Finally, an interview with Suzanne Santoro, a member of Rivolta Femminile between 1971 and 1975, examines the artist’s own experience with autocoscienza and the role the group’s discussions about women’s sexuality played in her own artistic practice and in her collaboration with other women.

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The third section of the book examines how Lonzi’s critique of art and art criticism has given rise to a reimagining of human relations. By stressing the dialogical model of Autoritratto, Leslie Cozzi undertakes a close analysis of Lonzi’s radical attempts to rethink interpersonal relations, first with her women friends, as recorded in her diary, and second with her partner, the sculptor Pietro Consagra, as recorded in the transcript of their audio-recorded conversation Vai pure. The sense of blurring of art and life also informs Teresa Kittler’s analysis of the visual apparatus of Autoritratto, which she introduces as a family album, in order to investigate how the book makes visible spaces of domesticity at a time of huge transformations of family life in Italy. Katia Almerini, instead, turns to the Cooperativa Beato Angelico as an experimental art space run by women, some of whom had exited Rivolta after the break with Lonzi. While Almerini underscores the importance of autocoscienza practiced by some of the women in the Cooperativa, she also introduces an important point about the need for different research methodologies to historicize women’s group work. The final section of this volume elaborates on the concepts of genealogy and resonance in order to rethink the temporalities of feminism then and now. By investigating the spatiality of the exit in Lonzi’s withdrawal from the art world, Elisabeth Lebovici questions the ways in which feminist practices can make space for the self, which she examines in relation to silences, strikes, separatism and disavowals to imagine a series of encounters between Lonzi and other radical women such as Monique Wittig and Lee Lozano. Griselda Pollock concludes the volume with a substantial meditation on the encounter between art and feminism in 1970, which considers Lonzi alongside other proto-feminist voices such as Julia Kristeva or Alina Szapocznikow who have shaped the feminist encounter between aesthetics and politics. With this volume, which represents the first extended English-language discussion of Lonzi’s legacies, we hope to furnish readers with not only a historical framework to position her intervention in the Italian context but also a set of questions around theory, which we hope will inspire feminist thinkers and practitioners. As Emanuela de Cecco aptly pointed out, the short visibility of feminism within Italian art history and art criticism is only relative to the lack of an adequate language with which women’s contribution to art can be fully appreciated beyond the sexist paradigms that still inform academic scholarship today.64 Making space for different narratives in the history of art and feminism of postwar Italy also requires us to produce and share the means to signify difference, rather than merely hope for a change of perspective. The construction of an a posteriori canon of feminist art can only respond to the necessity of the history of art, as a discipline and institutional discourse, to absorb difference within traditional epistemological parameters.65 This, in spite of the fact that feminism, and the artists and practitioners directly involved in the transnational women’s movement of the 1970s, have contributed unstintingly to putting a strain on those very parameters. The fact that Lonzi’s withdrawal was not, and cannot be, assimilated within the mainstream discourse of feminist art, therefore, represents for us an opportunity to engage with a series of questions that are still very much alive. Paola di Cori, to whom this book is dedicated, invited us to remember that the ‘proliferation of visual messages, written and verbal, of key-concepts used like salvific mantras, barely satisfies the need for more adequate tools of knowledge, which are indispensable to

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analyse movements which have deeply transformed the lives of millions of women and men and have forced us to radically rethink forms of kinship, work, everyday life, friendship, sexuality, love’.66 It is only by continually reinventing feminism, then, that we can trace its history back without turning it into a lifeless archival object.

Notes 1

*Unless otherwise stated in the footnotes, all translations by the authors. Laura Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’ arte in Italia, 1955–1970 (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2016); Giovanna Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2017). 2 See WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution, curated by Cornelia Butler, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (March 4–July 16, 2007); Autoritratti. Iscrizioni del femminile nell’arte italiana contemporanea, curated by Uliana Zanetti in collaboration with the museum women’s collective, MAMBo, Bologna (12 May–1 September 2013); Suite Rivolta. O feminismo de Carla Lonzi e a arte da revolta, curated by Anna Daneri and Giovanna Zapperi, EDP Foundation/Museo da Electricidade, Lisbon (16 October–6 December 2015); Il soggetto imprevisto. 1978 Arte e femminismo in Italia, curated by Raffaella Perna and Marco Scotini, FM Center for Contemporary Art, Milan (April 4–May 26, 2019); Doing Deculturalization, curated by Ilse Lafer, Museion, Bolzano (13 April–3 November 2019). Among the reading groups, Come una possibilità d’incontro (2013–2014), led by Lucia Farinati [http://bipbop.org/episode-6/]; the Feminist Duration reading group, led by Helena Reckitt, ongoing [http://research.gold.ac.uk/19420/]; and the study days Women Out of Joint, organized by Cristiana Collu, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome (28–30 September 2018). 3 Giovanna Zapperi, ‘Challenging Feminist Art History: Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths’, in Victoria Horne and Lara Perry, eds, Feminism and Art History Now. Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 104–23. 4 Rivolta Femminile, ‘Manifesto’ [1970], in Paola Bono and Sandra Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 37–40. 5 With this expression, Lonzi referred to the patriarchal system of culture. See Marta Lonzi, Anna Jaquinta, Carla Lonzi, La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1978). For a discussion of the use of ‘myth’ in Lonzi’s vocabulary, see Francesco Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1 (2015): 83–100. 6 Laura Iamurri, ‘Un mestiere fasullo’, in Maria Antonietta Trasforini, ed., Donne d’arte. Storie e generazioni (Rome: Meltemi, 2006), 113–32; Liliana Ellena, ‘Carla Lonzi e il neofemminismo degli anni ’70: disfare la cultura, disfare la politica’, in Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino and Vanessa Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità. Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2011), 117–43; Giovanna Zapperi, ‘L’ autoportrait d’une femme’, in Carla Lonzi, ed., Autoportrait (Paris: JRP Ringier, 2012), 7–35. 7 Suzanne Santoro and Emanuela de Leonardis, ‘Intervista’, Art Apart of Culture, 30 January 2011. Available online: www.artapartofculture.net/2011/01/30/suzannesantoro-intervista-di-manuela-de-leonardis (accessed 3 September 2014).

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8 Federica Timeto, ‘Il sospetto dell’ appartenenza. Il difficile incontro tra arte e femminismo in Italia’, in Angela Ammirati, Monica Andreani, Lucia Cardone, Denise Celentano, Loredana De Vitis, Alessandra Pigliaru, Ivana Pintadu, Doriana Righini, Federica Timeto, and Giovanna Vingelli, eds, Contro versa. Genealogie impreviste di nate negli anni ’70 e dintorni (Reggio Calabria: Sabbia Rossa, 2012). 9 Sharon Hecker and Marin L. Sullivan, eds, Postwar Italian Art History Today: Untying ‘the Knot’ (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). 10 Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita, 189–224. 11 Anna Scattigno, ‘La ricezione di Carla Lonzi nel femminismo italiano: una presenza rimossa’, in Conte, Fiorino, Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, 161–70. 12 Leslie Cozzi, Protagonismo e non: Mirella Bentivoglio, Carla Accardi, Carla Lonzi and the Art of Italian Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, PhD diss. (University of Virginia, 2012); Marta Serravalli, Arte e Femminismo a Roma negli anni Settanta (Rome: Biblink, 2013); Teresa Kittler, ‘Living Art and the Art of Living. Remaking Home in Italy in the 1960s’, PhD diss. (University College London, 2014); Ilaria Bussoni and Raffaella Perna, eds, Il gesto femminista. La rivolta delle donne: nel corpo, nel lavoro, nell’ arte (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2014). 13 Katia Almerini, Arte e femminismo nell’Italia degli anni ’70. Il caso della Cooperativa Beato Angelico, MA diss. (Università Roma Tre, 2008). 14 Maud Anne Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political. Feminism in Italy, 1968–1983 (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). For an anthology of primary sources, see Bono and Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. For a tentative history of the Italian feminist movement written by a group of women who actively participated in it, see Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). 15 Throughout this volume, we have decided to keep the Italian expression autocoscienza whenever we refer to consciousness raising, in order to maintain a specificity for a practice that was conceived differently within different groups. Rivolta Femminile, ‘Significato dell’ autocoscienza nei gruppi femministi’ [1972], in Carla Lonzi, eds, Sputiamo su Hegel/La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale e altri scritti (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1974), 141–7. See also ‘Pratica dell’ autocoscienza’, in Manuela Fraire, ed., Lessico Politico delle Donne, vol. 3, Teorie del Femminismo (Milan: Edizioni Gulliver, 1978), 125–46. 16 Maria Luisa Boccia, L’io in rivolta. Pensiero e vissuto in Carla Lonzi (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1990), 119. On the meaning of rapporto in Lonzi’s thought, see also Leslie Cozzi’s chapter in this volume. 17 Raffaella Perna and Marco Scotini, eds, The Unexpected Subject. 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy (Milan: Flash Art, 2019). 18 See Judith Russi-Kirshner, ‘Voices and Images of Italian Feminism’, in Cornelia Butler and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, eds, WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 384–9. 19 Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti, ‘L’ altra creatività’, Data, no. 16–17 (1975): 54–9; and ‘Negative Capability as Practice in Women’s Art’, Studio International 191, no. 979 (1976): 24–9. See also, Barbara Casavecchia, ‘Meaning of Her Own Through a Language of Her Own’, in Marco Scotini and Raffaella Perna, eds, The Unexpected Subject, 22–3. 20 Carla Lonzi, ‘Le arti figurative e il teatro contemporaneo’ [1959], in Carla Lonzi, Scritti sull’ arte, eds, Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, Vanessa Martini (Milan: et al./ Edizioni, 2012), 87.

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21 For a discussion of the origins of this debate, see Adrian R. Duran, Painting, Politics and the New Front of Cold War Italy (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). 22 Vanessa Martini, ‘Carla Lonzi per “Il Paese” ’, in Lonzi, ed., Scritti sull’ arte, 655–7. 23 Carla Lonzi, ‘De Gregorio, Marignoli, Orsini, Raspi, Toscano’, Il paese, 3 April 1957; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’ arte, 60. 24 Anna Dolfi and Maria Carla Papini, eds, ‘L’ Approdo’. Storia di un’avventura mediatica (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006). 25 Anna Banti, Artemisia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [1947] 1988). 26 Carla Lonzi, ‘La Femme alla Galleria Beyeler di Basilea’, L’ Approdo Letterario 6, no. 11 (1960): 138; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 219. 27 Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge, 149–50. 28 Michela Baldini, ‘Le arti figurative all’ ‘Approdo’. Carla Lonzi: Un’allieva dissidente di Roberto Longhi’, Italianistica 38, no. 3 (2009): 115–30. 29 Lara Conte, ‘Carla Lonzi a Torino: alcune coordinate’, in Lonzi, ed., Scritti sull’arte, 685–704. 30 Vanessa Martini, ‘Gli inizi della “straordinaria stagione” di Carla Lonzi: 1953–1963’, in Conte, Fiorino, Martini, eds, La duplice radicalità, 11–43; Iamurri, Un Margine che sfugge, 76–81. 31 Michele Dantini, Geopolitiche dell’arte: arte e critica d’arte italiana nel contesto internazionale, dalle neoavanguardie a oggi (Milan: Marinotti, 2012). On Italy’s ‘economic miracle’, see Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (London: Penguin, 1990), 210–96. 32 Carla Lonzi, ‘La solitudine del critico’, L’ Avanti!, 13 December 1963; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 353–6. 33 On the debates that followed the International Congress and Lonzi’s intervention, see Lara Conte, ‘La critica è potere. Percorsi e momenti della critica italiana negli anni Sessanta’, in Conte, Fiorino, Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi. La duplice radicalità, 86–109. 34 Laura Iamurri, ‘Carla Lonzi sul “marcatré” ’, in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 706–723. 35 Giorgina Bartolino, ‘Carla Lonzi: discorsi. Dai testi sull’art autre al lavoro della scrittura, 1960–1969’, in Conte, Fiorino, Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi. La duplice radicalità, 45–65. 36 These interventions were mostly published under the section ‘Class culture and contemporary folkore’. See Gianni Bosio, Roberto Leydi, Mario, Sergio Lodi, and Roberto Pecorini, ‘Piadena: un esempio di organizzazione culturale’, marcatré, no. 16–18 (1965): 280–99. See also Iamurri, ‘Carla Lonzi sul “marcatré” ’, in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 715–16. 37 Carla Lonzi, ‘Nuovi Movimenti alla XXXII Biennale internazionale d’Arte di Venezia’, L’ Approdo letterario 10, no. 28 (1964): 152–3; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 378–80. 38 Carla Lonzi, ‘Una categoria operativa’, marcatré, no. 8–10 (1964): 190–3; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 386–91. 39 Ibid., 390. 40 Carla Lonzi, ‘Carla Accardi’, in XXXII Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, exhib. cat. (Venice: Ente Autonomo La Biennale di Venezia, 1964), 114–15; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 373. 41 Carla Lonzi and Carla Accardi, ‘Discorsi’, marcatré, no. 23–5 (1966): 193–7; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 471–83. 42 Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, ‘Thrust into the Whirlwind: Italian Art Before Arte Povera’, in Richard Flood and Frances Morris, eds, Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera, 1962–1972 (London and Minneapolis: Tate and Walker Art Center, 2001), 38.

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43 Christov-Bakargiev, ‘Thrust into the Whirlwind’, 38. 44 For an elaboration on the conversations between Lonzi and Accardi, see Zapperi, Un’arte della vita, 157–88, especially 176–7. 45 Lucy Lippard, ‘The Women Artists’ Movement – What Next?’ [1975], in Lucy Lippard, ed., The Pink Glass Swan. Selected Feminist Essays on Art (New York: The New Press, 1995), 80–1. 46 Lucy Lippard, ‘Sexual Politics: Art Style’ [1971], in Lippard, ed., The Pink Glass Swan, 45. 47 Griselda Pollock, ‘Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual Exhibition 1978’ [1979], in Roszika Parker and Griselda Pollock, eds, Framing Feminism. Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–1985 (London: Pandora, 1987), 180. 48 See Angela Dimitrikaki and Lara Perry, Politics in a Glass Case. Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013); Amelia Jones and Erin Silver, eds, Otherwise. Imagining Queer and Feminist Art Histories (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). 49 Editorial, ‘Convegno Donna arte società. All’ombra del totem fallico’, Effe 6, no. 2 (1978), 9–10. See also Editorial, ‘Donna arte società. Quattro lettere per …’, Effe 6, no. 4 (1978), 31–2. 50 On Bentivoglio’s reclaiming the format of the ‘pink-ghetto’ exhibition, see Leslie Cozzi, ‘Curatorial Practice and the Language of Italian Feminism in the Work of Mirella Bentivoglio’, in Mirella Bentivoglio, Frances K. Pohl and Rosaria Abate, eds, Mirella Bentivoglio: Pages: Selected Works 1966–2012 (Claremont: Pomona College Museum of Art, 2015), 78–89. 51 Entry 14 August 1972. Carla Lonzi, Taci, Anzi parla. Diario di una femminista (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1978), 40. 52 Donatella Franchi, ‘La Novità Fertile’, in Donatella Franchi, ed., Matrice. Pensiero delle donne e pratiche artistiche (Milan: Libreria delle Donne, 2004), 27–32 53 Zapperi, Un’arte della vita, 173–83. 54 Carla Lonzi, ‘Sputiamo su Hegel’ (1971), in Carla Lonzi, ed., Sputiamo su Hegel/ La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginle e altri scritti (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2013), 37. Annarosa Buttarelli, ‘Tabula rasa’, in Diotima, ed., Approfittare dell’assenza: punti di avvistamento sulla tradizione (Genoa: Liguori Editore, 2002), 148–56. We have opted to translate deculturizzazione as ‘deculturation’, instead of ‘deculturization’ or ‘deculturalization’, as this is how the concept has been already introduced in the English-speaking literature on Carla Lonzi (Claire Fontaine, Helena Reckitt, Giovanna Zapperi). Moreover, we believe the English term ‘deculturation’ most accurately translates Lonzi’s notion of a process in which women, as subaltern subjects, disentangle themselves from the male hegemonic cultural apparatus. 55 Linda Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ ARTnews 69, no. 9 (1971): 22–39. 56 Carla Lonzi, Vai pure. Dialogo con Pietro Consagra (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1980). 57 Entry 3 December 1975. Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 1174. 58 Lonzi, ‘Sputiamo su Hegel’ [1970], in Carla Lonzi, ed., Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 42. 59 Rivolta Femminile, ‘On Woman’s Refusal to Celebrate Male Creativity’, Heresies 1, no. 1 (1977): 100. A new translation by Carla Zipoli has recently been published as: Rivolta Femminile, ‘On Woman’s Absence from Celebratory Manifestations of

18

60 61 62 63 64

65 66

Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy Male Creativity’, in Jessica Lack, ed., Why Are We ‘Artists’? 100 World Art Manifestos (London: Penguin 2017), 159–61. Ibid., 100–1. For a further elaboration on these issues, see Zapperi, ‘Challenging Feminist Art History’, 105–6. Francesco Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi’s Artwriting and the Resonance of Separatism’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 21, no. 3 (2014): 282–7. Paola di Cori, Asincronie del femminismo. Scritti 1986–2011 (Pisa: ETS 2012), 42–3. Emanuela De Cecco, ‘Trame per una mappa transitoria dell’arte italiana femminile degli anni Novanta e dintorni’, in Emanuela de Cecco and Gianni Romano, Contemporanee. Percorsi, lavori e poetiche delle artiste dagli anni Ottanta a oggi (Milan: Postmedia Books, 2000), 10. Francesco Ventrella, ‘Temporalities of the “Feminaissance”’, in Lara Perry and Victoria Horne, eds, Feminism and Art History Now. Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 207–29. di Cori, Asincronie del femmismo, 47.

References Almerini, K. (2008), Arte e femminismo nell’Italia degli anni ’70. Il caso della Cooperativa Beato Angelico, MA diss. (Università Roma Tre). Baldini, M. (2009), ‘Le arti figurative all’ “Approdo”. Carla Lonzi: Un’allieva dissidente di Roberto Longhi’, Italianistica 38, no. 3: 115–30. Banti, A. ([1947] 1988), Artemisia, trans. S. D’Ardia Caracciolo, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Bartolino, G. (2011), ‘Carla Lonzi: discorsi. Dai testi sull’art autre al lavoro della scrittura, 1960-1969’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi. La duplice radicalità, 45–65. Boccia, M. L. (1990), L’io in rivolta. Pensiero e vissuto in Carla Lonzi, Milan: La Tartaruga. Bracke, M. A. (2014), Women and the Reinvention of the Political. Feminism in Italy, 1968–1983, London: Routledge. Bussoni, I and Perna, R. eds (2014), Il gesto femminista. La rivolta delle donne: nel corpo, nel lavoro, nell’arte, Rome: DeriveApprodi. Buttarelli, A. (2002), ‘Tabula rasa’, in Diotima, eds, Approfittare dell’assenza: punti di avvistamento sulla tradizione, Genoa: Liguori Editore, 148–56. Christov-Bakargiev, C. (2001), ‘Thrust into the Whirlwind: Italian Art Before Arte Povera’, in Richard Flood and Frances Morris, eds, Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera, 1962–1972, London and Minneapolis: Tate and Walker Art Center, 38. Conte, L. (2012), ‘Carla Lonzi a Torino: alcune coordinate’, in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 685–704. Conte, L. (2012), ‘La critica è potere. Percorsi e momenti della critica italiana negli anni Sessanta’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi. La duplice radicalità, 86–109. Conte, L., Fiorino, V., Martini, V. eds (2011), Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità. Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Cozzi, L. (2015), ‘Curatorial Practice and the Language of Italian Feminism in the Work of Mirella Bentivoglio’, in Mirella Bentivoglio, Frances K. Pohl and Rosaria Abate, eds,

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Mirella Bentivoglio: Pages: Selected Works 1966–2012, Claremont: Pomona College Museum of Art, 78–89. Cozzi, L. (2012), Protagonismo e non: Mirella Bentivoglio, Carla Accardi, Carla Lonzi and the Art of Italian Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, PhD diss. (University of Virginia). Ellena, L. (2011), ‘Carla Lonzi e il neofemminismo degli anni ’70: disfare la cultura, disfare la politica’, in Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino and Vanessa Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità. Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 117–43. Dantini, M. (2012), Geopolitiche dell’arte: arte e critica d’arte italiana nel contesto internazionale, dalle neoavanguardie a oggi, Milan: Marinotti. De Cecco, E. (2000), ‘Trame per una mappa transitoria dell’arte italiana femminile degli anni Novanta e dintorni’, in E. de Cecco and G. Romano, Contemporanee. Percorsi, lavori e poetiche delle artiste dagli anni Ottanta a oggi, Milan: Postmedia Books. Di Cori, P. (2012), Asincronie del femminismo. Scritti 1986-2011, Pisa: ETS. Dimitrikaki A. and Perry, L. (2013), Politics in a Glass Case. Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Dolfi A. and Papini, M. C. eds (2006), ‘L’Approdo’. Storia di un’avventura mediatica, Rome: Bulzoni. Duran, A. R. (2014), Painting, Politics and the New Front of Cold War Italy, London and New York: Routledge. Editorial (1978), ‘Convegno Donna arte società. All’ombra del totem fallico’, Effe 6, no. 2: 9–10. Editorial (1978), ‘Donna arte società. Quattro lettere per …’, Effe 6, no. 4: 31–2. Fraire, M. ed. (1978), Lessico Politico delle Donne, vol. 3, Teorie del Femminismo, Milan: Edizioni Gulliver. Franchi, D. (2004), ‘La Novità Fertile’, in D. Franchi, ed., Matrice. Pensiero delle donne e pratiche artistiche, Milan: Libreria delle Donne, 27–32. Ginsborg, P. (1990), A History of Contemporary Italy, Society and Politics, 1943–1988, London: Penguin. Hecker, S. and Sullivan, M. L. eds (2018), Postwar Italian Art History Today: Untying ‘the Knot’, London: Bloomsbury. Iamurri, L. (2016), Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia, 1955–1970, Macerata: Quodlibet. Iamurri, L. (2012), ‘Carla Lonzi sul “marcatré” ’, in Lonzi, ed., Scritti sull’arte, 706–723. Iamurri, L. (2006), ‘Un mestiere fasullo’, in Maria Antonietta Trasforini, ed., Donne d’arte. Storie e generazioni, Rome: Meltemi, 113–32. Jones, A. and Silver, E. eds (2016), Otherwise. Imagining Queer and Feminist Art Histories, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kittler, T. (2014), ‘Living Art and the Art of Living. Remaking Home in Italy in the 1960s’, PhD diss. (University College London). Lippard, L. (1995), The Pink Glass Swan. Selected Feminist Essays on Art, New York: The New Press. Lonzi, C. (2013) Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. (2012), Scritti sull’arte, ed. Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, Vanessa Martini, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, L. (1980), Vai pure. Dialogo con Pietro Consagra, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi, C. (1978), Taci, Anzi parla. Diario di una femminista, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi, C. (1974), Sputiamo su Hegel/La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale e altri scritti, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile.

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Lonzi, M., Jaquinta, A., Lonzi, C. (1978), La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Martini, V. (2011), ‘Gli inizi della “straordinaria stagione” di Carla Lonzi: 1953-1963’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino and V. Martini, eds, La duplice radicalità, Milan: et al./Edizioni., 11–43 Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective (1990), Sexual Difference: A Theory of SocialSymbolic Practice, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nochlin, L. (1971), ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ ARTnews 69, no. 9: 22–39. Perna, R. and Scotini, M. eds (2019), The Unexpected Subject. 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy, Milan: Flash Art. Pollock, G. ([1979] 1987), ‘Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual Exhibition 1978’, in R. Parker and G. Pollock, eds, Framing Feminism. Art and the Women’s Movement 1970-1985, London: Pandora, 180. Rivolta Femminile (2017), ‘On Woman’s Absence from Celebratory Manifestations of Male Creativity’, in J. Lack, ed., Why Are We ‘Artists’? 100 World Art Manifestos, London: Penguin, 159–61. Rivolta Femminile (1991), ‘Manifesto’ [1970], in P. Bono and S. Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 37–40. Russi-Kirshner, J. (2007), ‘Voices and Images of Italian Feminism’, in C. Butler and L. G. Mark, eds, WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution, Boston, MA: MIT Press, 384–9. Santoro, S. and de Leonardis, E. (2011), ‘Intervista’, Art Apart of Culture, 30 January 2011. Available online: www.artapartofculture.net/2011/01/30/suzanne-santoro-intervistadi-manuela-de-leonardis (accessed 3 September 2014). Scattigno, A. (2011), ‘La ricezione di Carla Lonzi nel femminismo italiano: una presenza rimossa’, in Conte, Fiorino, Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, Pisa: Edizioni ETS., 161–70. Serravalli, M. (2013), Arte e Femminismo a Roma negli anni Settanta, Rome: Biblink. Suzeau Boetti (1976), ‘Negative Capability as Practice in Women’s Art’, Studio International 191, no. 979: 24–9. Suzeau Boetti, A.M. (1975), ‘L’ altra creatività’, Data, 16–17, no. (1975): 54–9. Timeto, F. (2012), ‘Il sospetto dell’appartenenza. Il difficile incontro tra arte e femminismo in Italia’, in A. Ammirati, M. Andreani, L. Cardone, D. Celentano, L. De Vitis, A. Pigliaru, I. Pintadu, D. Righini, F. Timeto, and G. Vingelli, eds, Contro versa. Genealogie impreviste di nate negli anni ’70 e dintorni, Reggio Calabria: Sabbia Rossa. Ventrella, F. (2017), ‘Temporalities of the “Feminaissance”’, in Lara Perry and Victoria Horne, eds, Feminism and Art History Now. Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice, London: I.B. Tauris, 207–29. Ventrella, F. (2015), ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1: 83–100. Ventrella, F. (2014), ‘Carla Lonzi’s Artwriting and the Resonance of Separatism’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 21, no. 3: 282–7. Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita, Rome: DeriveApprodi. Zapperi, G. (2017), ‘Challenging Feminist Art History: Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths’, in Victoria Horne and Lara Perry, eds, Feminism and Art History Now. Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice, London: I.B. Tauris, 104–23. Zapperi, G. (2012), ‘L’ autoportrait d’une femme’, in Carla Lonzi, ed., Autoportrait, Paris: JRP Ringier, 7–35.

Part One

Art writing against art

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1

Carla Lonzi: Encountering American art Judith Russi Kirshner

1 Carla Lonzi was more committed to artists than art, to creativity rather than criticality; her notoriety resulted not only from her brilliance as an art critic and art historian but also from her decision, in 1970, to shed what she deemed the false consciousness of criticism. Unable to resolve the contradictions between life and art, experience and culture, she abandoned one career, opting instead for the politics of feminism and becoming a guiding force in the Italian feminist movement. With the painter Carla Accardi and the writer Elvira Banotti, she launched Rivolta Femminile, one of the earliest Italian feminist groups, producing the manifesto Sputiamo su Hegel. In December of that same year, she published ‘La critica è potere’ (Critique is power), her final essay on criticism, in which she states her affinity with artists as opposed to the persuasive power of critics.1 Prior to 1970 Lonzi’s exceptional faculties were largely focused on the realm of art in almost 200 critical works. Having escaped from the ‘paternal swindle’ – to adapt her phrase regarding fathers, professors and priests – Lonzi became one of the  most  important voices for contemporary Italian artists. Her book Autoritratto (1969) is crucial to our understanding of some of the central figures and issues underlying Italian contemporary art. In the preceding decades, Lonzi also fixed her exacting gaze on developments outside Italy: American art of the 1950s and 1960s. From 1955 until 1970 Lonzi published essays and reviews on American art that appeared in journals such as L’ Approdo letterario, marcatré, and Paragone. Her first foray into this material was an essay on Ben Shahn, penned in 1955 with Marisa Volpi, her closest friend and collaborator.2 Subsequently, in Turin from 1957 to 1968, while affiliated with Luciano Pistoi’s Galleria Notizie, Lonzi published essays on figures that included Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson, Franz Kline and Cy Twombly. Finally, in 1967–68, she wrote about American art while in the United States, where she was living with her partner, Pietro Consagra. A recurrent theme is that of difference: the romantic mythology of the American geography and its indigenous people juxtaposed with the equally fictionalized image of an urban, unfettered spirit of experimental fervour, contrasted with the European restrictive tradition.

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Comprising a small but significant fraction of her cultural writing, Lonzi’s texts on American art may be counted as one response among the complex, controversial reception of American art in Italy during the 1960s.3 For my purposes, these incisive essays also serve as a lens through which to explore her lifelong search for subjectivity, for an identity freed from the methodology of art history, the solitude of writing and the powerlessness of the critic. Indeed, Lonzi’s encounters with American art and artists both reinforced and intersected with her textual construction of her own yearnings for autonomy and self-actualization, giving rise to a mutually reinforcing combination that afforded a greater promise for agency. This chapter relies on the important work of Lara Conte, Vanessa Martini and especially Laura Iamurri, who have compiled the entire corpus of Lonzi’s published art writings in the context of the journals and cities in which they appeared.4 It draws as well on a corollary to Lonzi’s published writing – the more than thirty letters she sent to Volpi in Rome from 1954 until 1962. Poignant revelations of her agonizing search for personhood, these letters offer us an introspective glimpse of the formative moments of Lonzi’s intellectual allegiances and art historical training under Roberto Longhi.5 They can also be read as a prologue to the diaries and Autoritratto, since they record informal interactions with friends, family and colleagues. Their immediacy and desire for reciprocity became hallmarks of Lonzi’s interviews with important artists of her time: Lucio Fontana, Luciano Fabro and Giulio Paolini, among others. I am extracting references to American art and politics from this correspondence, and will leave it to others to paint a picture of Lonzi’s relational psychology and the personal politics of this subset of artists, gallerists and writers in postwar Italy.

2 In Italy in the aftermath of the Second World War, culture was implicated as instrumental in the anti-American campaign mounted from the left by the Italian Communist Party, targeting capitalism in its attacks on the United States. Against the larger geopolitical backdrop, some members of the Italian left saw the United States as striving for global domination by means of the NATO alliance and the mass media. In this environment the rhetoric could be extreme, as when Harry Truman was compared to the likes of Adolf Hitler.6 As historian David Ellwood has written, America served as a symbol of modernity against which the Italian vision of culture was accommodated and opposed. The bifurcation of culture into expression and reflection, realism and abstraction, was part of an intense, ongoing polemic, scaffolded against the political divide between the Italian Communist Party and the Christian Democrats. In March 1948 the PCI (Partito Communista) issued ‘Per la salvezza della cultura italiana’, assailing ‘the colonization of Italian culture by American imperialism’. Yet, amid the politics of the Cold War and the $1.5 million Marshall Plan, the American model could be usefully deployed by commentators, be they Communists or Catholics, negatively inclined towards the effects of capitalism and the mass media.

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The circuit of international artistic exchange was the Venice Biennale, which was resuscitated in 1948 following the war and the defeat of Fascism. Not only a platform for American and European cultural interaction at a moment when a Europeanist spirit was growing, that year’s Biennale, highlighting Impressionism as its modernist heritage, also dramatized the debates between realism and abstraction, seen in the complicated politics of Italian modernity; the Italians presented Fronte Nuovo abstractionists in their galleries, while the Greek Pavilion displayed Peggy Guggenheim’s collection, which included some American Abstract Expressionists. Italian arguments over the Biennale in the decade that followed were also informed by the language of existentialism, tying the anxiety of the human condition to ideology and culture. This vocabulary surfaces in Michel Tapié’s 1952 book Un Art autre and in Lonzi’s analysis of the difference between the representation and experience of reality, the latter embodying the qualities of gesture and process that she applauded in abstraction. Italian society underwent such dramatic change at this time that art critics whose early formation was indebted to Benedetto Croce moved to the left, assimilated Antonio Gramsci’s theories and added political and economic layers to their analyses. Of particular significance was the conflict between the positions held by the art historians Lionello Venturi, whose approach emphasized history and context, and Roberto Longhi, an esteemed connoisseur. Commissioner of the 1950 Venice Biennale, Longhi published his ‘Proposte per una critica d’arte’ in the first issue of Paragone in 1950 and remained involved with the exposition until 1956. An influential historian who became Lonzi’s thesis advisor in Florence, Longhi was recognized for his scholarship on subjects ranging from Caravaggio to Giorgio Morandi, relying on the perceptual impact of the original work of art and the significance of historical connections. The critic Francesco Arcangeli, another Longhi student and his successor at the University of Bologna, reviewed the American contribution at the 1956 Biennale in favourable terms. In his review Arcangeli, an admirer of Pollock, expressed his appreciation for what he regarded as a ‘state of autarchy’: the democratic freedoms and abstraction, which stood in notable contrast to the traditional restraint of Italy.7 A more interesting and subtle response to the debate may be seen in the discourse on a ‘third space’ posited by Fronte Nuovo artists, who sought to identify the link between art and life as a means of maintaining creativity’s separation from politics.8 Like many of her fellow Italian critics who championed American art, Lonzi was deeply immersed in ideological issues concerning the relationship between politics and formal experimentation, especially the question of whether claims of authenticity or representations of the bourgeois self were in fact false claims of realism. Despite assertions on behalf of the primacy of the quotidian, Lonzi was well read in Françoise Sagan and Simone de Beauvoir, art history and Marxist theory; Georg Lukács and Theodor Adorno became guides for her explorations of modernism’s potential and threat of politicization. Lonzi’s first writing on American art was prompted by her encounter with the American Pavilion at the Biennale of 1954, featuring work by Ben Shahn and Willem de Kooning. Given Shahn’s association with social protest rather than the progressive abstraction represented by De Kooning, this pairing – perhaps curious

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at first glance – was actually strategic. It fulfilled many of the cultural and ideological objectives of the American Cold War mission, particularly the Open Door Policy, which not only secured a market for American products but rejected Communism and left-wing governments. Cultural products played an important role in Truman’s tactic of challenging the US negative image in Europe; they were utilized to both inspire and convince Europeans of America’s ‘legitimate aspirations for freedom, progress, and peace’ as set forth by the United States Information Agency in 1954. The governmental funding and circulation of fine art, painting and sculpture aimed at literate audiences and distinct from popular culture such as Hollywood films and jazz would, it was believed, serve as ‘an indispensable tool of propaganda’, providing an effective means of countering Soviet influence.9 The 1954 Biennale, at which other national pavilions enjoyed governmental funding, constituted a global stage for the display of art and ideology at this moment of the Cold War.10 By coupling Shahn’s social realism with De Kooning’s abstraction, the spotlight was on an artist whose love of Italy and its artistic heritage was well known. Shahn was represented by such paintings as The Red Stairway (1944), Liberation (1945), and Spring (1947), alongside numerous early works, including The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1931), centred on the trial of that pair of Italian anarchists. Shahn’s Sacco and Vanzetti cycle had already gained favour in Italy, particularly among leftist viewers. The American Pavilion was curated and underwritten by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the leading proponent of American avant-garde art in the United States. The MoMA funding was, in turn, supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund – a deliberate move designed to forestall criticism and encourage positive publicity. As Alfred Barr, the curator of the American Pavilion (and former director of MoMA), asserts: ‘Private ownership of the American pavilion will ensure, the Museum feels, a progressive spirit that is free from censure.’11 In his article Barr points to Shahn’s popularity and acclaim not as a Communist social realist but as a muralist and an easel painter, whose message in support of the class struggle would be acceptable to American liberal Democrats and Italian Christian Democrats alike. In his contribution to the catalogue, James Thrall Soby reiterates his friend Shahn’s sympathy for the working class and his love for Italy, its noble people devastated by the war and its vital artistic legacy. Barr proved prescient, as Shahn’s art – his recognizable imagery and authentically American style – held great appeal among the Italian public, who embraced his work for the dignity of its subjects, no matter how oppressed. ‘The Artist and the Politician’, which was first published in Art News and translated in the Italian journal Sele arte in 1953, was effective in defending American liberties against attacks on democracy from the left and the right.12 In the letters written soon after their visit to the Biennale, Lonzi and Volpi decide that henceforth they need to focus on the ‘contemporary’ and work in close collaboration, preferably writing together in the same room. Agreeing that their first joint project would take Shahn as their subject, Lonzi suggests that they examine the artist’s work in the context of Italian Neorealism. For both writers, attentive to a dialectical approach to difference, the concern with the idea of oppositional culture and the sense of moral urgency is readily apparent. Having seen The Red Stairway

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and Spring, among the other works by the artist on view, they insist on the larger geopolitics of their subject. Lonzi regarded the American variant of Neorealism, already conventional in Italy, as a surprisingly fruitful pictorial compromise between Expressionism and Surrealism. From this point on, the examination of binary relationships of US and Italian models – whether of styles or partners – was central to Lonzi’s methodology. In her letters to Volpi from this time, Lonzi offers her reactions to the film From Here to Eternity (1953), and she moves between remarks on Shahn and her family, confiding in Volpi about her father, a disconcerting, dark figure who always remembered her errors. To Volpi she relates her every intellectual and emotional anxiety, debates Gramsci and freedom of conscience. The poignancy of their communication is especially pronounced in their correspondence of August 1954, when Lonzi praises the realism of Jacopo Ceruti’s portrait of a veiled nun, then queries how the obvious importance of realism in music or literature can be misunderstood.13 While responsive to external innovation, both American and Italian, and experiencing various pressures – including her vulnerability in internal family struggles and preoccupation with maintaining Longhi’s esteem – she nevertheless draws her own authentic conclusions. In one letter Lonzi commends Volpi’s decision to ask Renato Guttuso to analyse the differences between Shahn’s work of the 1920s and his postwar output. At the start of their collaboration, Lonzi hurried to translate Selden Rodman’s 1951 biography on Shahn, the first full-length monograph on the artist.14 Writing to Volpi from Florence in December 1955 and urging her partner to be circumspect about their project, Lonzi indicates her preference for a distinctly ‘American’ and socially relevant approach to Shahn’s art. To best grasp his work, she urges a reading of William Saroyan and a viewing of On the Waterfront. ‘I have insisted,’ she claims, ‘on the danger of analogies, the imposition of subjectivity that creates fantastical, sentimental, psychological connections rather than historical-cultural environments for sustaining the work of the individual.’15 ‘Ben Shahn’ appeared in 1955 in Paragone – the journal edited by their illustrious patron, Roberto Longhi, and his wife, Anna Banti, herself a critic and author of a biographical novel about the seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi. In their substantial essay, the young art historians describe both Shahn’s oeuvre as a whole and each painting in the American Pavilion, including the artist’s most famous works. The authors fulfil expectations of scholarly erudition, linking Shahn’s imagery to a host of Italian influences – influences acknowledged by the artist himself – while moving easily between Giotto, Thomas Eakins and Paul Klee as sources. In this vein they reprint a letter from Shahn of 13 June 1955: When I first visited Italy [1925] I had been tutored to some extent in the way of the Venetian School—that was the rule of the art academies here. It wasn’t until I had come to Italy that I really absorbed the painting of the Florentine School which I found so close to my own way of seeing and feeling. The Italian Primitives remain among the most revered art for me. Italy itself gave me the sense of a place to which I had returned after a long absence, and I look forward with a great sense of nostalgia to the time when I shall be there again.16

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If the pair’s admiration for Shahn and their acceptance of Longhi’s patronage paved the way for their Paragone article, their receptivity nonetheless demonstrates how the erasure of Fascist politics and cultural policies mythicized the American archetypes, such as the symbolism of wide-open geography, an indigenous population and constitutional liberty. Lonzi and Volpi highlight the difference between (admittedly stereotypical) Old and New World characters, while quoting Shahn’s antagonistic statements concerning abstraction’s lack of ethical power.17 Yet they also betray their own ambivalence, having met Shahn and his wife in Rome, they observed that his traditional figurative work was more appropriate during the 1932 economic and political crises than at the present, while praising the abstraction of his precise linear forms. Faithful to the picture of the artist presented in Rodman’s 1951 monograph, the Paragone article provides us with a valuable example of critical call and response, the Italian reception of the successful US propaganda embodying the American curatorial ideology. Echoing Soby’s and Barr’s language vis-à-vis the powerful dualism that Shahn represents – figuration and narrative combined with the spirit of modernism – the Italian authors recognize Shahn’s facility with tempera and his determination to balance competing agendas, political and visual. Dutiful, even ingratiating students of Longhi, the authors on two occasions nod to one of his leading subjects, discovering Caravaggesque impulses in Shahn’s art while celebrating his Americanness. Indeed, Lonzi and Volpi are not completely immune to chauvinism, discerning other Italian sources and antecedents, such as Giorgio de Chirico and the fourteenth-century Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti.18 The emphasis on the dialectic between politics and form, between Shahn’s earlier subject matter and his current work of the 1950s, is unresolved and far-reaching. In Paris, the authors write, Shahn developed a distinctive figural style involving a quintessentially American context and assimilation of modernist tendencies. Highlighting the 1931 Sacco and Vanzetti cycle, they conclude that this work demonstrates that the dignity of the depiction is neither partisan as Communist nor nationalist as Italian but, rather, presents an expansive image of humanity. For me the transhistorical thread of the Lonzi–Volpi interpretation is their rehearsal of the liberatory potential of abstraction in American culture, tied to their own narrative release from patriarchal figures – first, Longhi and now, Shahn. In 1957, two years after the publication of ‘Ben Shahn’, Volpi and Lonzi travelled through Germany, Holland and Paris. Upon their return to Italy, the pair found themselves in Turin. A northern city facing Europe, Turin was an industrial and intellectual urban centre, home of the Fiat empire and hosting a flourishing art scene. In addition to the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, which reopened in 1959, the city was also energized by nearly a dozen private galleries – most notably, Pistoi’s Galleria Notizie, which brought Lonzi and Volpi face-to-face with the global avantgarde. Charismatic and prophetic, Pistoi had written for L’Unità and introduced major American artists in his gallery and in the journal Notizie: Arti figurative. With its confluence of galleries, collectors and artists, not to mention an important university and publishers, the cosmopolitan centre was receptive to the extraordinary impact of Michel Tapié, who brought American and Japanese art to exhibit alongside the Italian avant-garde.19

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Lonzi’s encounters with Tapié and Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, among the remarkable individuals in Turin at this moment, were significant. A compelling figure from Alba and member of the Situationist International, Pinot-Gallizio, along with Asger Jorn and Piero Simondo, established the Laboratorio sperimentale of the Mouvement internationale pour une Bauhaus imaginiste and exhibited at Galleria Notizie. Lonzi’s productive dialogues with and participation in Pinot-Gallizio’s experiential painting procedures inflected her predilection for process as meaning.20 During her time in Turin, Lonzi absorbed the vibrancy of the city’s offerings and folded multiple strands of American culture, including film, theatre, literature, into her layered interpretations of art. Given the exhausted nature of the conflict between figurative work and abstraction, she merged her life experience with art to become a respected independent presence. It was here that Lonzi thrived, becoming a regular contributor to journals and a subjective voice in the city’s dynamic, albeit still maledominated, gallery scene. She curated some thirty exhibitions and co-organized with Alberto Ulrich and Tapié the illuminating 1962 show Incontro di Torino. Refining her modernist syntax and choosing content that strengthened her self-representation, she was prolific and far-reaching.21 If her letters and relationship with Volpi had been psychologically complementary, her L’ Approdo letterario radio spots and essays were written spontaneously to directly address the reader. Already wary of the tortuous power relationships between artist and critic, artist and audience, she articulated her desire for equivalent roles as well as her awareness of her own tenuous position in Italy’s patriarchal culture. Negotiating the rapport between critic and artist, viewer and reader, Lonzi’s challenge was to transform this public arena of cultural dialogue into an opportunity to conceptualize and perform an authentic role. By the time she arrived in Turin, the language of experimentation and emancipation from European traditions had suffused the city’s art world; the radical possibilities associated with Pollock’s physical technique and existential position had been assimilated. The experimental Living Theater of Judith Malina and Julian Beck, who first performed in Turin in 1961, deployed controversial subjects and engaged audiences with actors. Turin’s response to American artists was unique. Although the Rome and Milan art scenes also regularly showcased American material, the Turin exhibitions of artists from all over the world were striking, reinforcing Lonzi’s identity as a participant, not merely a critic, in the fluid exchanges. Given her doctoral research in Paris blending theatre, scenography and art, published by Leo S. Olschi in 1995 as Rapporti tra la scena e le arti figurative dalla fine dell’ ‘800, she was particularly attuned to the multimedia, collaborative structure of theatre. Eugenio Battisti, who founded the journal marcatré and enlisted Lonzi, opened the exhibition Museo sperimentale d’arte contemporanea in the Galleria Civica, promoting his unprecedented notions of interdisciplinarity and overlapping fields of practice. This convergence offered intellectual markers for Lonzi’s responses to American art and, later, to America itself, in which the freedom she extolled in the most radical American art resonated with her own desire for selfhood. Abstract Expressionism necessarily figured prominently in Italian presentations of American art at this time. Among the many showings of this work were the exhibition The New American Painting, which was organized by MoMA in 1958, with subsequent

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venues in Milan and other European capitals, and a large Pollock retrospective. Also held in 1958 and organized by MoMA, the Pollock retrospective first travelled to Rome and Milan before making its way to other locales on the Continent; it drew a host of European collectors and critics, not all of them uniformly positive in their assessments of the show. In addition, other major American artists who were associated with the Abstract Expressionist circle had a presence in Italy in this decade. Perhaps the most notable were Jasper Johns, whose Target with Plaster Casts (1954) was published the following year by the Milan gallery Azimuth, and Robert Rauschenberg, who travelled to Italy in 1952 with Twombly, visited Alberto Burri and had solo exhibitions in Florence and Rome in 1953. Familiar with Clement Greenberg’s essays in Partisan Review, available in Italy in 1934, as well as Harold Rosenberg’s claims for American action painting in 1952, Lonzi was highly sensitive to the politics of Abstract Expressionism. Her first occasion to write about the movement arose in 1959. Reviewing that year’s Documenta exhibition in Kassel, she seized the opportunity to underscore the contrast between Wolfgang Wols and Pollock, reminding readers of their almost contemporaneous birthdates while foregrounding the difference between Berlin in 1913 and Cody, Wyoming, in 1912. Comparing Tachisme, gestures and drips, her text invokes Surrealism and theories of the unconscious, yet emphasizes the significance of technical process.22 Lonzi’s appreciation of the American attitude towards experimentation, and especially the reinforcement of process, seemingly casual or irrational, as constitutive of meaning, is especially provocative. Whether deciphering the drama of Pollock’s unconscious or the Eastern-inspired canvasses of Mark Tobey, her recognition of the eroding boundaries in American art can be seen retrospectively as a signal of her eventual rejection of and withdrawal from the limits of cultural patrimony. In her review of the 1960 exhibition 25 anni di pittura americana, dal 1933 al 1958, Lonzi makes a strong statement on behalf of the complexity of American art, addressing the ongoing debates surrounding the Venice Biennale but modifying her approbation somewhat when she notes the incorporation of European influences into American regional motifs.23 Lonzi proposes that since Americans historically were not tied to a particular national tradition, they were able to profit from a plethora of influences. Without the shadow of Pablo Picasso, the Americans, Pollock especially, began a leap from the old to the new. She enthuses about Pollock’s clamorous, anarchic gestures; his liquid, coloured lances of colour that cover the entire canvas, much like the repeated gestures of the worker, creating massive, expressive freedom. Suspended between her admiration for Pollock’s ecstatic independence and her own historical training, her conclusion, praising Ben Shahn’s politics and social realism, is decidedly a bit conservative. In a catalogue introduction of June 1962, Lonzi expresses her preoccupation with the possibilities inherent in American culture.24 The American worldview, she claims in a sweeping phrase, ‘refus[es] the myth, especially the myth of morality, that is the idealizing element of Western civilization’, replacing it with one in which ‘the artist’s consciousness of his real situation becomes fundamental to his language. The Americans redeem themselves in their own culture’. Pollock became a touchstone for Lonzi, invoked frequently in her writings on other artists, both American and European. This is seen in a piece on Mark Rothko that

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appeared in July 1962, in which Lonzi reiterates the example she constructs for Pollock’s conjunction of social destiny with higher cosmic destiny, the artist who, without the support of a belief system, dedicates his life to technique, repetition and repeatability. Yet she also admired Rothko on his own terms, for his menacing and paradisiacal colours, his energy and, most importantly, the way his work attempts to transcend the ego to achieve spirituality. On this occasion, Lonzi underlines her opinion that one must differentiate the exceptional when it appears, revisiting the Renaissance to invoke the elder Titian or Tintoretto as forerunners. In her writings on the Abstract Expressionists, Lonzi often highlights their native sources of inspiration and inventive spatial dynamics. Like numerous other authors, she points to the importance of American Indian sand paintings on Pollock; similarly, in the introduction to a 1960 catalogue on Mark Tobey, she emphasizes the artist’s early memories of the hills and woods in his birthplace of Centreville, Wisconsin, site of Indians explorations, as key to his iconography.25 Lonzi’s sense of Tobey’s mysticism as drawn from American imagery, and not solely from Asian philosophy, relies on an attraction to a landscape she imagines but has never experienced. For Lonzi, Tobey’s temperas present ‘perpetual rhythm, spilling arteries and skyscrapers, neon and industry, deserts and giant rivers, pioneers and myths of the earth, America infinite and unfathomable’. In a 1961 catalogue essay for the important exhibition Opere scelte di artisti americani, Lonzi articulates her view of the originality of the US artists: freed from European precedents, they can be innovative and stress the play of external realities on their psyches, in contrast to the European emphasis on interiority.26 Yet Lonzi credits the transplantation of European Surrealism into American postwar art with the centrality of theories of the unconscious to automatic gestures. Without overdetermining the role of Lonzi’s own yearning for the qualities she admires in American art, one can read an expression of her wish for potential emancipation, more fully articulated in ‘Una categoria operativa’.27 Lonzi recognizes that it is the spontaneity of American art that allows for unexpected consequences. Perhaps aptly, Lonzi claims that it is in fact a woman – the sculptor Louise Nevelson – who embraces the position implicit in all American art: that plastic elements need not justify anything or follow prior spatial laws or ideal plans but, instead, can evoke invention and experience to the extreme. In a 1962 catalogue essay for Galleria Notizie, Lonzi fashions a gorgeous, if paradoxical, interpretation of Nevelson’s sculptures.28 In one passage, she alleges that Nevelson’s totemic work is utterly female; in another, ‘words take flight when anxiety is revealed and everything is recuperated, at the moment that all is lost and reneged’. Hyperbolic in tone, this text is especially striking, given that the argument Lonzi threads between her strong appraisals is opposed to her quotations of the French painter Georges Mathieu. Provoked by American artists, Mathieu condemns them as mediocre, egotistical and bourgeois. Nevelson, whose work he collected, is, in his view, ‘like someone who is tired of killing so many lovers with so little joy … a profound obsession with destruction and transfiguration’. In this impassioned text on an American female sculptor, we sense Lonzi’s recognition of a potential escape from the gendered confines of society. Her inspired contrast between old taboos and the new totems of Nevelson’s compositions is

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analogous to the magic Lonzi finds in Cy Twombly’s paintings. Discussing Twombly in a 1963 catalogue essay, her phrasing captures the indecipherable and seemingly infantile qualities of his marks, wherein each sign is spontaneous and not requiring rational justification.29 Repeating the earlier comparison to Klee’s appropriation of childlike imagery, Lonzi also identifies the subtlety with which Twombly absorbed fragments of the classical world on the streets of Rome. The balance between childhood as a moment of innocence and the memory of the antique resonates with the existentialist position that Lonzi enlists for her emotional and intellectual self-realization.

3 At the 26 September 1963, international conference of Artists, Critics, and Scholars in Verruchio, Lonzi famously broke with prominent art historian and critic Giulio Carlo Argan, who wielded enormous power as president of this group and whose position on the intersections between critics and artists was opposed by many, including a group from Rome led by Consagra. From this point on, she became even more invested in connections between culture and mass communication and less so in the polemics between abstraction and reality. In a weighty essay from the same year, ‘La solitudine del critico’, Lonzi challenges Argan’s argument in favour of a group poetics: ‘Critics abuse power when they assume a supervisory role as liberators … consolidating the fracture between art and the public.’ In a protofeminist signal of future endeavours, Lonzi insists on the responsibility of the critic, concluding: ‘The fate of the activist critic seems by now to be entirely up to the resources of a setting and a personal event of great effort and insight, in view of a personal truth to achieve.’30 By 1964 Lonzi, who had also distanced herself from Longhi, was already having doubts about art criticism as a practice. Writing to Pietro Consagra on November 19, she expresses strong-willed resistance and acceptance of an unknown future: ‘I have decided not to write any more art criticism, and I feel a kind of internal liberation.’31 Both personally and professionally, 1964 represents a turning point for Lonzi. Earlier in the year Pinot-Gallizio, whose bold, pictorial experiments were so significant, died. Lonzi wrote an introduction for Carla Accardi’s work at that year’s Venice Biennale, a venue that highlighted the ascent of American Pop art, while marking the waning of Art Informel’s critical impact.32 The awarding of that Biennale’s highest honours to Robert Rauschenberg, one of the leading precursors of Pop, infuriated the Vatican and the Italian Communist Party, prompting both to condemn American art as exemplifying moral disorder, indecency and the carnivalesque. In like manner, the critic for La stampa called the Americans ‘modern savages, psychically close to those redskins who a century ago celebrated their rites wearing crushed top hats on their heads and sardine cans around their hips’; while the reviewer for Corriere della sera raged, ‘If this is America, then America is treason.’33 Of course, other critics from the United States and Europe, notably Francesco Arcangeli and Maurizio Calvesi, had already found much to admire in Pop, which married familiar materials to unfamiliar circumstances. The Italian critic Gillo Dorfles read the movement as a fracturing of past and present, a reflection of a moment of

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crisis, while Robert Rosenblum found that the ‘authentic pop artist offers a coincidence of style and subject, and … using a style which is also based upon the visual vocabulary of mass production’.34 In Lonzi’s review of the Biennale for L’ Approdo letterario, she recognizes Pop’s spirit of a mechanized and even cybernetic arena and shiny new materials, and suggests that these forms constitute a new alphabet.35 She also acknowledges the powerful spatiality of Morris Louis’s and Kenneth Noland’s Color Field abstraction. For Lonzi, the Pop artists’ strategy of foregrounding the barrage of consumer objects – signs, telephones, typewriters and the like – which break with conventional notions of beauty and address the violence of the modern world – gives voice to ‘the chaotic technological panorama’. Applauding the currency of Pop – ‘an adventure of objects’ – Lonzi moves beyond critiques of American capitalism to contrast Pop with European art still clouded by the past. She argues that this ‘generation of artists, [are] fortunately immune to morals, [and] ready themselves for an operation, not of salvation, but of awareness’. Lonzi’s reading of Pop art’s embrace of mass culture is also evident in ‘Una categoria operativa’, an essay that represents the culmination of her stance on Art Informel, while forecasting a distancing from the primacy of painting. Lonzi’s earlier unconstrained reactions to American work now became more systematized, more declarative. Extending her reach from Pop to Color Field, Lonzi references the curator Alan Solomon and the critic Clement Greenberg, yet her emphasis is now on the viewer’s role of discovery.36 The relationships Lonzi asserts between critic and artist, viewer and reader, in this new public arena of cultural liberation would become a central tenet of Lonzi’s practice. She claimed the revolutionary potential of American art and artists before she ever left Europe.

4 When Lonzi visited the United States with Pietro Consagra in 1967–68, she encountered a nation whose political landscape was in turmoil. The country was still reeling from the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Racial clashes continued, while students were becoming an increasingly powerful and disruptive force on university campuses, sparking a massive national debate over the war in Vietnam. Perhaps most striking for Lonzi were developments in the area of women’s rights. Since the early part of the decade, feminism had been gaining momentum, combating such evils as discrimination in the workplace and, in the process, provoking two decades of women-centred legal reforms. Feminists were marching, writing books and protesting to change oppressive social and political views. By 1966 the movement had grown, the National Organization for Women was founded and by 1968 ‘women’s liberation’ had become a household term. The prior year Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation was published in Italy, while in the art world Valerie Solanas, who shot Andy Warhol, published the Scum manifesto. If Lonzi’s earlier texts can be seen as strenuous projections of participatory agency rather than singular authority, onto artworks that she reviewed, that she articulated

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as figurative reflections of her autobiographical desires, then her short but vivid experience in the United States represents a telling difference. In the United States she moved from spectator to eyewitness, from periphery to centre, interweaving her analytic discourse with her lived experience. In January 1968 Lonzi reviewed a painting exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, describing it as the place to go to understand postwar painting, since previously American art ‘was only a flash of robust provincialism and not comparable to Europe’.37 In this section, I am quoting generously from this text to indicate that whereas prior to this point she emphasized the distinction between American identity and European culture, now, in the United States, she made a case for linkages. Lonzi’s mosaic metaphor is helpful as a means of synthesizing her multiple interpretations of American art. She reiterates differences between the before-and-after postwar expressions of American visual art, embellishing the dualisms she first articulated in the Ben Shahn essay. In her review she describes a poster of Grant Wood’s famous couple, the husband and wife in American Gothic (1930), as a point of departure for the intertwined nature of the US relationship with Europe. It is precisely the industrial dream of European culture that sets off the process of the American search for identity in its various phases, which still act alternatively with American thought: the Bauhaus contingent, … the Dadaist acted with Pop art, the Surrealist with Freudian theories and automatic processes at the base of action painting, … It is from a mosaic of these attitudes, from constructivism to anarchism, that this discovery of America on the part of Europe begins and … America discovers itself. Naturally, Pollock, Pop art, Minimal art are now movements that critics define as typically American, and with good reason. And there are categorical types that could be typically European.

In this passage, Lonzi speculates about what could be rethought as American if one were unbelted from those previous models. She continues: ‘Because it seems that many segments of American life from the impulses that remain internally, … are excluded from the mental schemes through which art operates … the modes of production, and the artist’s relation to his art, his position and function in society, are still European.’ Lonzi’s conclusion is provocative: Someone might object that in the last analysis America is merely Europe’s avantgarde—albeit a technical and industrial avant-garde, not another civilization— but precisely this seems to me contestable. America, the product of a human experiment that has specific characteristics, but that is not fully defined by those characteristics, determines an impressive series of phenomena on the concretely existential level as well as on the social level, that cannot be reduced to sociology.

Following such statements concerning the mutually defining relationship of European and American art, Lonzi proceeds to review the Whitney exhibition of abstract and Pop art painters. Once more, she rejects the ‘regurgitations of always latent American provincialism’, praising the Picasso sculpture show at MoMA as exemplary, and

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chronicling an international sculpture exhibition at the Guggenheim that includes work by Italians: Pietro Cascella, Ettore Colla, Pietro Consagra, Lucio Fontana, Giacomo Manzù and Marino Marini. Provoked by Claes Oldenburg’s remark that the United States has a new star every month, Lonzi is dubious of how quickly Robert Morris and Donald Judd have become canonized in America. On the other hand, she embraces critic Barbara Rose’s notion of a ‘colloquy between art and the American city, sculpture … is no longer only for private spaces and decorations for villas and gardens, but aspires to its principal function, the monument’. Lonzi reminds her readers that the valuable authentic relationship between an artist and his or her work is one of neither social utility nor political timeliness but, rather, the ‘intellectual problem that occupies the artist … a margin of pragmatic enthusiasm in American artists that has to be taken into consideration’. In Chicago she relays her excited response to the installation of the Picasso sculpture in Federal Plaza. Lonzi admires the work’s synthesis of ideas and forms, and lauds its lightness as a ‘free, fantastic element that rests on the square with all the airiness that is proper for the setting of skyscrapers and streets’. These reports from the United States provide a backdrop against which we may consider historicist attempts to understand how Lonzi might have become convinced by, and even identified with, the freedom she admired in the radical expression of American artists. Lonzi differentiates the positions of the artist in the United States and in Europe, basing her comparison on the positive reception Consagra must have received at his solo exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery: ‘the European artist entertains  relations with society that are very disturbed and fraught with reciprocal difficulty; the American artist secures a prominent place in the country’s consideration.’38 In the summer of 1968, Lonzi visited San Antonio, Texas, on the occasion of the state’s first HemisFair (Figure 1.1) and the installation of a large sculpture by Consagra for the Italian Pavilion.39 Recalling her earliest appreciation for an authentic preindustrial vision of the United States, she pays special attention to the representation of Indian tribes from Texas. Privileging the exhibitions of Native Americans, especially the Flying Indians acrobats, Lonzi also enumerates the American corporations – IBM, GM and Coca-Cola – whose presentations were so popular. Lonzi’s retrospective summary of her American sojourn in Autoritratto downplays her involvement with the contemporary art world in response to the question of whether she visited the studios of young artists. She mentions visits with friends, trips to zoos and natural history museums, and looking at modern architecture. Underscoring her fascination with American ‘Indians’, she illustrates page eighty-three with a reproduction of a Native American encampment in Wyoming. Lonzi was delighted by the city, which she regarded as racially diverse, although this was in part a promotional message cultivated by local business leaders. While Lonzi accepts the publicity statement that the fair is situated on urban renewal properties, she is nevertheless politically astute, ironically observing the new Hilton overlooking the ruins of the Alamo, a symbol of Texas patriotism. Indeed, President Johnson would have inaugurated the fair, but because of the recent assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., his wife, Lady Bird, attended the ceremony in his place.

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Figure 1.1  Carla Lonzi at the HemisFair, San Antonio, Texas, 1968. Photo: Pietro Consagra. Milan, Archivio Pietro Consagra.

Lonzi does not mention the Woman’s Building, or the fact that the previous January, 50,000 women marched in Washington, D.C., against the war in Vietnam. However, she is sharp-eyed in revealing the hagiography of Italian exports – Christopher Columbus, Chianti and Enrico Fermi – and admiring the Americans for revealing their social and political problems in film. While pleased with the inclusion of Italian sculptors, Lonzi, having earlier acknowledged the Italian presence in the New York installations, derides the installations for their resemblance to Luna Park decorations. She reserves her highest accolades for the Girard collection of Pueblo kachina figurines, which must have appeared as genuinely American and exotic to a sophisticated Italian art critic. One can suppose that, given Lonzi’s intellectual struggle as a militant, often marginalized critic, she might have imagined an alternative to her Italian identity in the emotionally spacious environment, far from home. Lonzi’s major work of art writing – Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly – was compiled in 1967–68 in Minneapolis (Figure 1.2).40 There, Consagra

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Figure 1.2  Carla Lonzi in Minneapolis, 1968. Photo: Pietro Consagra. Milan, Archivio Pietro Consagra.

taught at the Minneapolis Art Academy and received commissions from the Dayton Corporation. Lonzi, who spoke little English and felt isolated from family and friends in this cold Midwestern city, reassembled fragments from hours of her previously taped interviews into an unique montage that included touching personal photographs with one of herself in sporty bermuda shorts with her recorder at a bridge table, to fashion her self-authorized identity. Her insistence on including the non-responses, the repeated silences of the painter who refused her calls, inversely acknowledges the influence of the American Cy Twombly. The process of consciousness-raising (autocoscienza) that Lonzi would begin in 1970 can also be read as borrowed from the United States and comparable to her belief that procedures generate meaning. Much has been written about the radicality of her intemperate tone, and how Lonzi reconciled her self-erasure and self-assertion to transform herself into a participant in unconventional exchanges that would later inform her self-definition as a feminist. Excerpts from an unpublished letter to her sister Marta provide another snapshot of Lonzi’s personal reactions as a witness to American experimentation and artistic liberation. Pop art’s supremacy in the international cultural discourse was already assured, and a new art form known as Minimalism, rejecting the modernist forms realized by Consagra, was on the rise. By this point contemporary abstraction as a legitimate form of creativity, for which Lonzi had advocated so valiantly in Turin with Pistoi, was taken for granted. An astute analyst, Lonzi recoils from what she labels the latent regurgitations of provincialism and chides the speed by which American artists, unlike the Italians, are celebrated as masters; her phrasing is acerbic: ‘an official consecration for primary structures, particularly for the young not having to await

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octogenarian status.’ However, Lonzi is also compelled by what she assumes is an authentic relationship between artist and work, and with the pragmatic enthusiasm of American artists. As Consagra’s companion, she (like Consagra, a leftist) has enjoyed entrée into private homes of the wealthy: collectors, critics and gallerists who invest in capital. Understandably anxious (she is also ill with cancer) and preoccupied with her identity as a critic as well as her role in what she believes is a ‘false profession’, her private observations sound more cynical when she disparages career museum directors, critics and collectors who disappoint her everywhere.41 ‘After everything passes,’ she complains, all that is left is ‘a handsome object in a living room of the most elegant neighborhood in NY, or under a museum director’s spotlight …. In museums, only children participate in learning, but the abyss between the thing and the culture of the object remains … the critic represents falsity, creates futility around art’. In the United States she wonders why critics – who are powerful in this commercial art world – are not experiencing a crisis. Her final indictment is for the academics who provide guarantees: ‘The greatest enemies of art are the university professors who turn culture into course material; for them it is most important to categorize and judge for society those who can count on a certain number of artists in the museum, or in the bank.’42 Privileging artists such as Ben Shahn, whose political activism was exemplary, Jackson Pollock, whose expansive gestures dominated the politics of abstraction, and Louise Nevelson, the woman who scorned taboos, Lonzi fashioned the textual space and time for her own imagination. Like the spatiotemporal experiments that spilled out of abstraction’s frames, Lonzi’s desire was expressed in language, letters, oral exchanges, interviews, poetry and criticism, and, ultimately, in manifestoes and diaries. Her critical biography can be read as a text embodying a consciousness-raising model. It depends on the precious, but unreliable, relationships she had with artists, and the way she maintained her own identity through direct address. What Lonzi observed about American art were often stereotypical, yet wilful, representations of the spontaneity that signified release from all constraints. What she imagined about America was a limitless geography, a spatial template that she might bend into a malleable conception of the unexpected, the experimentation she might accomplish in the future. The question then becomes, what significance can we assign to the fact that Lonzi, who championed American art in her career, was ‘not at home’ but in the United States when she assembled her Autoritratto? Groviglio, the tangle Lonzi unravelled in Pollock’s paintings, suggests another metaphor for the threads that unwind from her astonishing output. At a moment when her experience was that of a temporary sojourner, she transcribed and reconstructed the Italian conversations in which she participated and orchestrated among colleagues. In Minneapolis, she shaped her selfportrait into a narrative of meaningful currents of contemporary Italian culture. At the same time, her deleted questions, her insertions of reassuring, intimate photographs validate the dual nature of her critical position. The previous oppositions between the American and Italian art worlds are abated, and this work foreshadows the unrestrained outpourings in the diary Taci, anzi parla (1978).43

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Challenging the proposition that American art was merely the avant-garde of Europe, Lonzi was purposeful in her defence of originality and responsive to the cultural, if not the political, debates of 1968. She revealed the fault lines and rapporti between binaries: abstraction and realism, criticism and art making, the art of the United States and that of Italy. In America, she discovered an impermanent, new and generative backdrop. Lonzi’s Autoritratto proclaims itself as a feminist practice of oral history that can be written anywhere, anytime, as a radical text of recovery and revision, in what Adele Cambria labels ibrido formale.44 Until now, English-language discussions of Lonzi have tended to cluster in the work of feminist theorists, political scientists and philosophers. Sputiamo su Hegel and Lonzi’s Libretti verdi publications for Rivolta Femminile, especially her articulation of a feminist subjectivity, provide benchmarks for American scholars such as Renata Holub and Graziella Parati. Indeed, Parati suggests some similarities between American and Italian feminism since the duality characteristic of American feminism, ‘the critical negativity of its theory, and the affirmative positivity of its politics – is at the same time feminism’s historical condition of existence and its theoretical condition of possibility’.45 In addition, recent scholarship on Lonzi’s 1970 reinvention as the principal of Rivolta Femminile has made it possible to study interlocking dialectics, her engagement with systemic change and the role of personal experience in her work. At a fundamental level, Lonzi’s profoundly relational practice – dialogues, letters, tape recordings, manifestoes, consciousness-raising – also represents her search for connectivity with readers, listeners and artists. Self-reflexively preoccupied with authenticity as a position of moral integrity, and rejecting the gendered segregation of roles, whether familial, political or cultural, Italian or American, Carla Lonzi favoured and then chose rupture over continuity. A self-proclaimed unofficial critic, Lonzi privileged her affinities with artists, including many Americans, and composed an affirmative mosaic for self-actualization.

Notes

Translations are by the author unless otherwise noted. I wish to thank the many individuals who have been very generous, sharing their time, scholarship and recollections of Carla Lonzi. I am saddened that so many have passed away before this work could be completed. In Italy I wish to thank Maria Palazzesi, Maria Luisa Boccia, the Casa Internazionale delle Donne, and especially Laura Iamurri for including me in a conference where I first presented this research. I also wish to acknowledge the important assistance over the past years of Marta Lonzi, Jacqueline Vodoz, Anna Piva Paolini, Renata Gessner, Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti, Elena Menegatti, Marisa Volpi, Carlo Basso, Francesca Pola and Maria Teresa Guerra Medici. In the United States, my thanks go to Sue Taylor and Jane Friedman, and for their translations, Lydia Cochrane, Elizabeth Fields and Lorena Camminit. I also want to acknowledge the dedication of editors Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi as well as the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for its support of this project.

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Carla Lonzi, ‘La Critica è potere’, NAC 3 (December 1970): 5–6. Reprinted in Carla Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, ed. Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, Vanessa Martini (Milan: et al./ Edizioni, 2012), 647–50. 2 Carla Lonzi and Marisa Volpi, ‘Ben Shahn’, Paragone 6, no. 69 (1955): 38–59. Volpi describes the partnership as two hands, a unique social construct for the period. Marisa Volpi, ‘Una testimonianza autobiografica’, in Laura Iamurri and Sabrina Spinazzé, eds, L’ arte delle donne nell’Italia del Novecento (Rome: Meltemi, 2001), 169–80.   3 Marcia Vetrocq, ‘National Style and the Agenda for Abstract Painting in PostWar Italy’, Art History 12, no. 4 (1989): 448–71. See also Adrian Duran, ‘Abstract Expressionism’s Italian Reception: A Question of Influence’ for another perspective on the transmission of American art in Italy in the 1950s. Available online: https:// www.academia.edu/5758052/Abstract_Expressionism_s_Italian_Reception_ Questions_of_Influence. (accessed 3 September 2019).   4 I have limited my observations to a selection of Lonzi’s responses to American art. Her insights into Morris Louis’s and Kenneth Noland’s painting will be explored in a future essay. Carla Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, ed. Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, and Vanessa Martini (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2012). See also the important essays in Carla Lonzi: La duplice radicalità; Dalla critica militante al femminismo di, Rivolta, eds, Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino, and Vanessa Martini (Pisa: ETS, 2011).   5 I am deeply grateful to Marisa Volpi (1928–2015) for sharing her correspondence from her personal archive with me; Marisa Volpi archive, http://www.marisavolpi.it/ site/. All references that follow are from these letters, translated by Lorena Camminit. These communications are regrettably one-sided, since we do not have all of Volpi’s responses. Volpi was a distinguished art critic and writer whose many publications include La casa di via Tolmino (Milan: Garzanti, 1993) and Uomini (Milan: Mondadori, 2004), in which the chapter ‘Firenze’ is her account of Roberto Longhi. She travelled to the United States, met many artists and published Arte dopo il 1945 U.S.A. (Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1969).   6 For studies of anti-Americanism in Italy, see Massimo Teodori, Maledetti Americani: Destra, sinistra e cattolici: storia del pregiudizio antiamericano (Milan: Mondadori, 2003); and David Ellwood, ‘Containing Modernity, Domesticating America in Italy’, in Alexander Stephan, ed., The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanization after 1945 (New York and Oxford: Berghan, 2006), 253–76.   7 Vetrocq, ‘National Style and the Agenda for Abstract Painting’, 464.   8 Adrian R. Duran, Painting, Politics, and the New Front of Cold War Italy (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 147–8, 155.   9 Frances K. Pohl, Ben Shahn (San Francisco: Pomegranate Art Books, 1993), 83. 10 Ibid. 11 Frances K. Pohl, Ben Shahn: New Deal Artist in a Cold War Climate, 1947–1954 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 159. 12 Ibid., 156. 13 Carla Lonzi to Marisa Volpi, n.d., November 1954. Volpi Archive. In this letter, Lonzi, fed up with Florence, labels the city ‘a spider on her heart’ and longs for the opportunity to rent a room in Rome. Meanwhile, her friend Alberto Parigi suggests that she is the type who should go to Arizona, build a ranch and colonize: an early instance of the American frontier imagined as the setting for innovation and freedom. Carla Lonzi to Marisa Volpi 9 May 1956. Volpi Archive. Here, Lonzi describes her admiration for the film The Grapes of Wrath, with Henry Fonda, as an 1

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example of American suffering and the struggles of political victims. In the same letter we sense a parallel as she praises the book I miei sette figli (1955), by Alcide Cervi, which narrates the story of partisan resistance and social injustice in the tragic battle against the Fascists. 14 Selden Rodman, Portrait of the Artist as an American: Ben Shahn; a Biography with Pictures (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951). 15 Carla Lonzi to Marisa Volpi, 24 December, 1955. Volpi Archive. 16 Lonzi and Volpi, ‘Ben Shahn’, 60–1. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. Shahn travelled in Europe in 1925 and in North Africa in 1927, and he assisted Diego Rivera with the latter’s mural in New York’s Rockefeller Center. 19 In 1951 Tapié organized Véhémentes confrontées at the Galerie Nina Dausset, Paris. The first exhibition in Europe to bring together American, Italian and French artists, Véhémentes confrontées included Camille Bryen, Giuseppe Capogrossi, De Kooning, Hans Hartung, Georges Mathieu, Pollock, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Alfred Russell and Wols, the exemplar of Art Informel. Tapié described the show as ‘a confrontation between works by individuals who belong to absolutely disparate races, milieux, cultures, experiences’ but who were engaged in what he called ‘the Informel adventure’. See Catherine Dossin, The Rise and Fall of American Art, 1940s–1980s: A Geopolitics of Western Art Worlds (New York and London: Ashgate, 2015); and Dossin, ‘To Drip or to Pop: The European Triumph of American Art’, Artl@s Bulletin 3, no. 1 (2014): 81–3. 20 Luca Massimo Barbero, ed., Torino sperimentale, 1959–1969: Una storia della cronaca (Turin, London, and New York: Umberto Allemandi, 2010); Giorgina Bertolino, ‘Carla Lonzi: discorsi. Dai testi sull’art autre al lavoro della scrittura. 1960–1969’, in Conte, Fiorino, and Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: La duplice radicalità, Pisa: ETS Edizioni, 45–56; ‘Gallizio’, exh. brochure (Turin: International Center of Aesthetic Research, 1963), n.p.; Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 328. 21 Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 688. 22 The prominence Lonzi accords to process is expanded in an important article of collected interviews on art materials and techniques co-authored with Trini and Volpi. Carla Lonzi. Tommaso Trini, Marisa Volpi Orlandini, ‘Techniche e materiali’, marcatré 37–40 (1968): 66–85; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 560–608. 23 Lonzi, ‘Rassegna d’arte: Mostra d’arte americana a Milano’, Approdo letterario, May 14, 1960, radio broadcast; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 230. 24 Carla Lonzi, Introduction to Artisti Americani: Kline, De Kooning, Tobey, Rothko, Nevelson, Bluhm, Francis, Frankenthaler, Hultberg, Gottlieb, Simpson, Twombly, Riopelle, Mitchell, Borduas, exh. cat. (Turin: Galleria Notizie, 1962), 1–6; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 292–4. 25 Carla Lonzi, Introduction to Tempere e inchiostri di Mark Tobey, exh. cat. (Turin: Galleria Notizie, 1960), 1–10; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 170–4. 26 Carla Lonzi, Opere scelte di artisti americani: Bluhm, Calder, Francis, Gorky, Gottlieb, Kline, Mitchell, Motherwell, Nevelson, Riopelle, Rothko, Tobey, Twombly, exh. cat. (Turin: Galleria Notizie, 1961), 237–40; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 237–40. 27 Carla Lonzi, ‘Una categoria operativa’, marcatré 8–10 (1964): 190–3; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 386–91. 28 Carla Lonzi, Sculture di Nevelson, dipinti di Twombly, exh. cat. (Turin: Galleria Notizie, 1962), 1–3; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 277–8.

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29 Carla Lonzi, Cy Twombly, exh. cat. (Turin: Galleria Notizie, 1963), 1–8; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 329–32. 30 Carla Lonzi, ‘La solitudine del critico’, L’ Avanti!, 13 December 1963, n.p; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 353–6. 31 Quoted in Laura Iamurri, ‘Intorno a Autoritratto: Fonti, ipotesi, riflessioni’, in Conte, Fiorino, and Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: La duplice radicalità, 76. 32 For a thoughtful analysis of the multiple tensions Lonzi confronted in 1964, see Laura Iamurri, ‘Carla Lonzi sul “marcatré,”’ in Lonzi, ed., Scritti sull’arte, 713–14. 33 Tullia Zevi, ‘The Biennale: How Evil Is Pop Art?’, in Steven Henry Madoff, ed., Pop Art: A Critical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 125. 34 Ibid., 131. 35 Carla Lonzi, ‘Nuovi movimenti alla XXXII Biennale internazionale d’arte di Venezia,’ L’ Approdo letterario 10, no. 28 (1964): 152–3; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 378–80. In this mild review, Lonzi rehearses many important arguments concerning American art’s triumph rather than becoming involved in the attendant polemics. 36 Carla Lonzi, ‘Una categoria operativa’, marcatré 8–10 (1964): 190–3; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 386–91. 37 Carla Lonzi, ‘Notizie da New York,’ L’ Approdo letterario 14, no. 41 (1968): 146–50; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 545–52. Quote translated by Lydia Cochrane. 38 Ibid., 546. 39 Carla Lonzi, ‘Hemisfair 1968 a San Antonio Texas,’ L’ Approdo letterario 14, no. 43 (1968): 143–5; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 554–8. Quote translated by Lydia Cochrane. 40 Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly (Milan: et al./ Edizioni, 2010). I have organized a translation project to publish Lonzi’s Autoritratto in English. The text was first published in 1969 in Bari by de Donato. 41 See Marta Lonzi and Anna Jaquinta, ‘Biografia’, in Carla Lonzi, ed., Scacco ragionato: Poesie dal’ 58 al ’63 (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1985), 9–73. 42 Carla Lonzi to Marta Lonzi, n.d., May 1968. This unpublished letter was kindly provided to me by Marta Lonzi. 43 Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminista (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010). 44 Graziella Parati, Public History, Private Stories: Italian Women’s Autobiography (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 127. 45 Ibid., 121.

References Barbero, L. M. ed. (2010), Torino sperimentale, 1959–1969: Una storia della cronaca, Turin, London, and New York: Umberto Allemandi. Bartolino, G. (2011), ‘Carla Lonzi: discorsi. Dai testi sull’art autre al lavoro della scrittura. 1960–1969,’ in Conte, Fiorino, and Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: La duplice radicalità, Pisa: ETS Edizioni., 45–56. Conte, L., Fiorino, V., and Martini, V. eds (2011), Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità. Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Dossin, C. (2015), The Rise and Fall of American Art, 1940s–1980s: A Geopolitics of Western Art Worlds, New York and London: Ashgate.

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Dossin, C. (2014), ‘To Drip or to Pop: The European Triumph of American Art,’ Artl@s Bulletin 3, no. 1: 81–3. Duran, A. R. (n.d.), ‘Abstract Expressionism’s Italian Reception: A Question of Influence’, Available online: https://www.academia.edu/5758052/Abstract_Expressionism_s_ Italian_Reception_Questions_of_Influence. (accessed 3 September 2019). Duran, A. R. (2013), Painting, Politics, and the New Front of Cold War Italy, London and New York: Routledge. Ellwood, D. (2006), ‘Containing Modernity, Domesticating America in Italy,’ in Alexander Stephan, ed., The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy and AntiAmericanization after 1945, New York and Oxford: Berghan, 253–76. Iamurri, L. (2012), ‘Carla Lonzi sul “marcatré”’, in Lonzi, ed., Scritti sull’arte, 706–23. Iamurri, L. (2011), ‘Intorno a Autoritratto: Fonti, ipotesi, riflessioni,’ in Conte, Fiorino, and Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: La duplice radicalità, Pisa: ETS, 67–86. Lonzi, C. (2012), Scritti sull’arte, ed. L. Conte, L. Iamurri, and V. Martini, Milan: et al./ Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1969] 2010), Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, (Milan: et al./Edizioni). Lonzi, C. ([1980] 2010), Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminista, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. (1970), ‘La Critica è potere’, NAC 3: 5–6. Lonzi, C. (1968), ‘Notizie da New York,’ L’ Approdo letterario 14, no. 41: 146–50. Lonzi, C. (1968), ‘Hemisfair 1968 a San Antonio Texas,’ L’ Approdo letterario 14, no. 43: 143–5. Lonzi, C. (1964), ‘Nuovi movimenti alla XXXII Biennale internazionale d’arte di Venezia,’ L’ Approdo letterario 10, no. 28: 152–3. Lonzi, C. (1964), ‘Una categoria operativa,’ marcatré 8-10: 190–3. Lonzi, C. (1963), ‘Gallizio,’ exh. Brochure, Turin: International Center of Aesthetic Research. Lonzi, C. (1963), Cy Twombly, exh. cat., Turin: Galleria Notizie. Lonzi, C. (1963), ‘La solitudine del critico,’ L’ Avanti!, 13 December 1963, n.p. Lonzi, C. (1962), Introduction to Artisti Americani: Kline, De Kooning, Tobey, Rothko, Nevelson, Bluhm, Francis, Frankenthaler, Hultberg, Gottlieb, Simpson, Twombly, Riopelle, Mitchell, Borduas, exh. cat., Turin: Galleria Notizie, 1–6. Lonzi, C. (1962), Sculture di Nevelson, dipinti di Twombly, exh. cat., Turin: Galleria Notizie. Lonzi, C. (1961), Opere scelte di artisti americani: Bluhm, Calder, Francis, Gorky, Gottlieb, Kline, Mitchell, Motherwell, Nevelson, Riopelle, Rothko, Tobey, Twombly, exh. cat., Turin: Galleria Notizie, 237–40. Lonzi, C. (1960), Introduction to Tempere e inchiostri di Mark Tobey, exh. cat., Turin: Galleria Notizie, 1–10. Lonzi, C. Trini, T., Volpi Orlandini, M. (1968), ‘Techniche e materiali,’ marcatré 37–40: 66–85. Lonzi, C. and Volpi, M. (1955), ‘Ben Shahn,’ Paragone 6, no. 69: 38–59. Lonzi, M. and Jaquinta, A. (1985), ‘Biografia’, in Carla Lonzi, ed., Scacco ragionato: Poesie dal’ 58 al ’63, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 9–73. Parati, G. (1996), Public History, Private Stories: Italian Women’s Autobiography, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Pohl, F. K. (1993), Ben Shahn, San Francisco: Pomegranate Art Books, 1993.

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Pohl, F. K. (1989), Ben Shahn: New Deal Artist in a Cold War Climate, 1947–1954, Austin: University of Texas Press. Rodman, S. (1951), Portrait of the Artist as an American: Ben Shahn; a Biography with Pictures, New York: Harper and Brothers. Teodori, M. (2003), Maledetti Americani: Destra, sinistra e cattolici: storia del pregiudizio antiamericano, Milan: Mondadori. Vetrocq, M. (1989), ‘National Style and the Agenda for Abstract Painting in Post-War Italy,’ Art History 12, no. 4: 448–71. Volpi, M. (2004), Uomini, Milan: Mondadori. Volpi, M. (2001), ‘Una testimonianza autobiografica,’ in Laura Iamurri and Sabrina Spinazzé, eds, L’ arte delle donne nell’Italia del Novecento, Rome: Meltemi, 169–80. Volpi, M. (1993), La casa di via Tolmino, Milan: Garzanti. Volpi, M. (1969), Arte dopo il 1945 U.S.A., Bologna: Cappelli Editore. Zevi, T. (1997), ‘The Biennale: How Evil Is Pop Art?,’ in Steven Henry Madoff, ed., Pop Art: A Critical History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 124–5.

2

Magnetic encounters: Listening to Carla Lonzi’s tape recordings Francesco Ventrella

Tape Recording as Means and Method Lucio Fontana: What do you want me to tell you if you don’t tell me what I need to talk about … what I need to say, more or less … ? You have to ask me questions, more or less, to get answers. Carla Lonzi: Let’s start from a random point, because I only desire … Pino Pascali: I would prefer something like an essay title. Ha! … Ha! … Mario Nigro: I could quit being a painter, a plastic producer and do other things … I don’t know, an explorer, a warrior, a Franciscan monk, I don’t know. Enrico Castellani: I have forgotten what I told you last year and I don’t know what to tell you this year. Giulio Paolini: I seem to have spoken about some works already, but, out of courtesy, I’m happy to repeat myself. Getulio Alviani: Here, let’s just do it this way, easy for everyone. Lonzi: Rome, 13 … Luciano Fabro: … September. Early afternoon. Try to listen if the recording and volume are fine. So: Carla, tell me something. Excite me. Salvatore Scarpitta: You who are so beautiful … Pietro Consagra: I would like to say this here. Giulio Turcato: You should do something like this, but discursive, which doesn’t involve you asking questions. Lonzi: Yeah yeah … no no … in fact, I have always … Mimmo Rotella: Really … Can you repeat? I did not understand. Lonzi: You give your pictures very specific titles, The School of Athens, The Rape of the Sabine Women, Eros and Psyche, which recall the subjects of the authors of the Renaissance. Besides, the world of antiquity and its myths have gained new interest since psychoanalysis. Have you made this connection?

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Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy Cy Twombly: (silence) Carla Accardi: I am so instinctive, these days, that if I lose interest for a moment the thought goes away. Fabro: I will tell you that later because that comes later. Lonzi: Ah, that later … So tell me in order of time. Fabro: In order of time? Lonzi: In order of stimulation.1

From its very first lines, Carla Lonzi’s Autoritratto (1969) announces itself as a book that is both startling and captivating. The text, which derives from a transcription of conversations that Lonzi recorded with fourteen artists working in Italy after the war, is strongly marked by the colloquialism of oral speech. Some of the artists’ sentences sound ungrammatical, and readers gain a strong sense of the rhythm of their conversation, animated by anaphora and an abundance of ellipses that literally punctuate the field of the page. It is not immediately obvious what they are talking about, or who is speaking to whom. Where are they? They appear to be chatting, but do not seem to make sense to one another. Are they playing games with each other? Or is it the reader they are playing with? Lonzi carefully reorganized the transcriptions using an arbitrary editing method that eludes the contingencies of time and place captured by the original tapes. Thus the artists are artificially brought together in a symposium that never really took place. We could easily define Autoritratto as a collage – not only for the unexpected effects of the editing on the legibility of the text but also because the flow of the book is interspersed with 105 illustrations seemingly unrelated to what we read on the page.2 These opening exchanges are accompanied by a reproduction of Giulio Paolini’s 174 (1965), itself a reproduction of Kurt Kranz’s diagram explaining the development of modern art from 1900 to 1970, which appeared on page 174 of the Italian translation of his Capire l’arte moderna (Figure 2.1).3 With this juxtaposition Lonzi seemingly declares her aim to replace the chronologies of art history with the tempos of life. ‘I wanted to make a book of digressions,’ she says early in the book.4 The resonances created by the reorientations of two texts, therefore, offer useful material for reflection on the function of criticism and academic knowledge for life, the relationship between freedom and creativity, and, above else, the rapport between self and writing. Ostensibly, this is a book of interviews, a compilation of audio recordings which disrupt the linearity of time while also splitting the positions of the subject in front of its own voice. In her compelling analysis of oral history in the visual arts, Linda Sandino stresses the importance of the artist interview in overcoming the solipsism of critical hermeneutics: ‘Interviews provide the circumstance and opportunity for retrospective reflection, and a means of closing the gap between the self-that-was, the current speaking self, and the projected self.’5 Sandino proposes a fruitful comparison between the genre of life writing and the artist interview, in which another identity is created from the encounters between people, objects and artworks that are captured on tape: the self abandons its assumed original space to enter the space of another.6 In the field of the visual arts, the audio-recorded interview is often used to explore the private aspects of an artist’s life behind the work. But the possibility of capturing the

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Figure 2.1  Giulio Paolini, 174, 1965. Photograph mounted on panel, 150 x 120 cm. Turin, Fondazione Anna and Giulio Paolini. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

intimacy of an artist on the tape should perhaps be considered as the ultimate fantasy of a dated modernist myth. By the mid-1960s, recorded interviews with artists had become a common practice in the international art world. The mythology of Jackson Pollock was created through this medium, and from 1964 audio and video interviews were instrumental in helping Andy Warhol to performatively fabricate his artistic persona.7 Warhol’s founding of the magazine Interview in 1969 was part of the making of a celebrity culture that capitalized on gossip as a mode of queer world making.8 Yet, the confessional mode of the interview ultimately satisfied the growing voyeurism of postwar mass culture which distinguished the ‘interview society’ that, according to Paul Atkinson and David Silverman, put great value and emphasis on lived experience. For them, the interview embodies ‘a pervasive device for the production of selves, biographies, and experiences. It furnishes the viewer/reader/hearer with the promise of privileged – however fleeting – glimpses into the private domain of the speaker’.9 The emergence of this confessional mode signalled the rise of new forms of audio-visual voyeurism also in a type of art writing increasingly committed to the exposure of the artist’s true self in public.

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However, these effects are not bound to the technology of audio recording but derive from a certain use of the recorded interview within the parameters established by the mythologization of the artist’s life that feeds the cultural fantasies of art history, the museum and the art market.10 Within the field of the visual arts, another use of the audio-recorded interview is in fact possible – one in which the tape is cherished not for its high fidelity to the private domain of the artist, but because it opens up a space for the transformation of the speakers through a split of representation. What kinds of changes are triggered by the potential, implicit in a recording, to listen and listen again, but also to rewind and erase? As a mode of voice inscription, audio recording is at once permanent and mutable, as the tape can accommodate new audio grafts that radically change the form and meaning of a previous track. Taking into account the splitting of the self that is afforded by the technology of audio recording, rather than assuming that the main value of the medium lies in its ability to document reality, is a crucial starting point to reconceptualize the tape-recorded artist interview as an experimental space for the disidentification of selves. ‘A mechanical means is totally useless if we attribute powers to it that should belong to us,’ Lonzi writes in an unpublished manuscript from 1980: I hate the collection of materials in any form, plus it would seem to me an abuse of power to reduce someone to the object of my study. I need to feel that the act of stopping something in another person does not give me more rights than what he can take for himself. Which in a sense can mean that he is convinced of being powerful: which is to say, a conscience. As for the rest, the tape recorder is completely foreign to me: it collects useless trash. It gives the illusion that one can grasp what is, without having any effect. It deceives you about the possibility that you can capture it without intervention.11

Lonzi’s position here seems consistent with that of the oral historian Alessandro Portelli, according to whom the use of the audio-recorded interview does not imply that the interviewer is automatically giving a voice to the interviewee.12 Lonzi turned to the tape recorder because she wanted to move away from what she regarded as the arrogance of the art critic to speak for the artist. Yet, she did not conceive of audio recording as a concession to the artist; instead, as I suggest below, she used it to upset the power relation between artist and critic, but also to find a different space for her self to resonate with another. Published in 1969, at the apex of Lonzi’s career in the art world, Autoritratto also assumes the function of a letter of resignation from art criticism, which Lonzi found inauthentic and, in her own words, ‘un mestiere fasullo’ (a phoney profession).13 It was after the publication of this book that Lonzi, freed from the interference of professional work, dedicated herself fully to feminism. Many scholars have already written about the impact of Autoritratto both within art history and on the feminist movement in postwar Italy. Particular emphasis has been placed on the way in which Lonzi engaged with a radical critique of spectatorship as a model of passive participation that could be found in both art criticism and the structure of sexual difference. As Giovanna Zapperi points out, if in Autoritratto the act of looking is identified with the power of

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art criticism, throughout the 1970s, Lonzi came to identify the exclusion of woman with her role as a spectator of male culture.14 In the following passage from a text published by Rivolta Femminile in 1971, entitled ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della manifestazione creativa maschile’ (On woman’s absence from the celebratory moments of male creative manifestation), Lonzi’s voice on this issue comes through clearly: ‘The creativity of men speaks to the creativity of other men while woman, as client and spectator of that dialogue, is assigned a status which excludes competition.’15 In a patriarchal culture, woman becomes the neutral witness of a male version of history. Based on this realization, the text radically suggests that in withdrawing from the celebration of male creativity, women also refuse to be defined by it as passive receivers: ‘The artist depends upon woman to glorify his work and she, until she begins her own liberation, is happy to oblige. The work of art cannot afford to lose the security inherent in her exclusively receptive role.’16 Lonzi had already started to delineate an analysis of the passive role of the spectator with regard to the position of the art critic as a spectator. Writing in her diary in 1973, she muses on Autoritratto with some regrets: ‘My disappointment with artists was this, that they didn’t reciprocate, they let me remain a spectator.’17 Despite quitting art criticism in 1970, Lonzi carried on thinking about how to nourish the fragile entanglement between self, writing and life that had first been revealed to her by working on the audio-recorded interviews. Another passage from her diary, dated 18 August 1972, sheds light on how she saw the artist as uniquely placed to reflect on the complex geometry of sexual difference: The fact that the artist expects an increasingly adequate spectator reveals the impasse of knowledge confined to a particular role. For this reason it is incorrect to speak of creativity in feminism or it must be understood that it is not a patriarchal type of creativity: the self-consciousness of one is incomplete and freezes if it is not reflected in the self-consciousness of another.18

In this chapter I maintain that the tape recorder helped Lonzi with thinking how to break the binary structure of spectatorship that upholds patriarchal culture. I am therefore interested in the tape recorder as both means and method, affording her the possibility to disidentify, as art critic and woman, from the passive position expected by male culture. At the same time, the magnetic tape offered more than a metaphor for resonance among speakers, as it created the possibility to share a form of speech that remained in the space of a separate conversation. While most Lonzi scholars focus on the discourse of orality inherent to the dialogical essence of the artist interview, here I wish to turn to the aurality embedded in audio recording to reimagine new forms of relations that may occur in spite of the self that is fixed on the magnetic tape. Nancy Katherine Hayles draws an important distinction between orality (capturing the voice) and aurality (listening to the voice) when she thinks about the revolution implicated by audio recording in the technological reconfiguration of modernist literature. The first lines of Autoritratto that I have quoted are obviously a transcription of orality into print. However, Hayles suggests, ‘there is another story to be told, one

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that would see aurality and writing not as indicating separate domains but suggesting a bodily response to certain literary possibilities.’19 Many groups in the transnational feminist movement of the 1970s put the body at the centre of their conversations – not only as a subject of political and aesthetic discussion but as a literal conduit to develop new forms of relation among women.20 The presence of the tape recorder in the room indeed registered the emphasis on the physicality and self-expression that was essential to the group practice of autocoscienza in Italy and beyond.21 Maria Gabriella Frabotta comments on the habit of recording and faithfully transcribing the words of each member in the groups as the mark of a commitment to resolve the problem between writing and practice.22 Audio recordings  and transcriptions are part of a whole letteratura grigia (grey literature) of 1970s feminism, alongside diaries, letters and flyers.23 In telling the history of feminism, it is impossible to impose a chronology on a type of speech that in fact refused a consideration of time that was external to the groups. Paola di Cori illuminates this important difference: ‘If external, social time is a time of duration, chronology and succession, the time of autocoscienza is placed in disagreement with it.’24 Feminism is not a historical decade but a transformative experience. Thus, one way of speaking about the new speech that entered the space of the everyday thanks to the advent of feminism is to embrace discontinuity, repetition and asynchronicity – all modes of temporality that I try to derive from the tape recording as means and method.

Magnetic encounters The patenting of a magnetic recording machine that replaced steel tape with the cheaper film tape after the Second World War made this technology more widely available in the general market. The affordability of tape recording on film also presented the consumer with the opportunity to become a producer, a freedom that was not accommodated by the old phonograph.25 In 1964, Philips publicized the EL3551 magnetophone, which was then available for purchase in France for 695 francs (Figures 2.2 and 2.3). A model similar to the one used by Lonzi to record her conversations with artists, this magnetophone was the first commercialized by Philips for the use of the general public, as opposed to specialized users. The adverts illustrate two domestic interiors in two very specific moments of middle-class life. The tape recorder in the foreground stands in front of two family gatherings: one around the table at a wedding, and the other around the Christmas tree. The message of the ads only reinforces the meaning of the images for the domestic use of the machine: ‘Make the sound album of the family!’ The democratization of a technology of recording and reproduction is thus entangled with a representation of the everyday that contributed to the social reproduction of gender norms after the war. Firmly associated with the key moments in the life of a white middle-class family, the Philips magnetophone was as much a marker of social status as an instrument of the privatization of personal relations.

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Figure 2.2  French advertisement for the Philips EL 3551 Magnetophone, 1964. Courtesy of Philips Company Archives. Photo: the author.

Lonzi’s magnetophone appears in one photograph included in Autoritratto, dating from the time she was in Minneapolis with Consagra, which shows her engrossed in the work of transcribing the conversations (Figure 2.4). Interestingly, Lonzi does not choose a representation of the magnetophone in action while recording her meetings with the artists. In this photo, instead, the artists are only present as an absence, as we see Lonzi intently listening to their voices on the reel. This photograph does not reproduce the assumed destination of the tape recorder championed by the image in the Philips ads.26 Here the magnetophone appears to be only in replaying mode, not in recording mode. Today you can be close to the artists by listening to them and then listening to them again, if you did not understand them the first time … But, how can you, after you’ve done a gesture like this, which is a gesture of absolute impotence on the part of the critic, because if you take a tape recorder it means that, as a critic, you no longer exist in the traditional sense. How can you do that again ‘this one yes, the other not … ’. You cannot do it.27

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Figure 2.3  French advertisement for the Philips EL 3551 Magnetophone, 1964. Courtesy of Philips Company Archives. Photo: the author.

If the tape recorder helped Lonzi to explore the everyday in the proximity of the artists, this only became meaningful to her as an attempt to ‘start from herself ’ (partire da sé).28 At the same time, the implementation of audio recording in the praxis of art writing obviously interferes with the power of the critic to validate and discriminate – a function that has been socially attributed to the profession since the eighteenth-century salons.29 Confronted with a ‘gesture of impotence’, the art critic is almost emasculated by the loss of that authority which the recorder takes away. We need to turn to the words of the only other woman in Autoritratto, the artist Carla Accardi, to start gauging the implications of Lonzi’s handling of the tape recorder as also, and indeed foremost, an exercise in listening and self-transformation. ‘When one wants to make a book like this, they should arrive to even put so much of themselves, to be a part of their life, you know what I mean?’ Accardi asks.30 The artist thought that the critic had given herself an impossible task to achieve. Nonetheless, she recognized her friend’s aspirations to feel close to the creativity that she found among the artists. ‘Hence, precisely the effort that you do in making a book which you are editing with some disordered pieces … you want to get as close as possible, as possible,

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Figure 2.4  Carla Lonzi in Minneapolis, 1968. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

right? To save about others but, in the end, to save about yourself, in the end, right?’31 Accardi understood that Lonzi was primarily trying to bridge the gap between life and writing in ways that were totally unexpected. When we read Autoritratto we notice that the medium is never concealed; on the contrary, its materiality is part of the artists’ speech. In a few instances, the tape recorder reveals itself by pointing to the inscription of the body. Its mnemotechnics seem to give Accardi particular anxiety. When she struggles to remember something that Lonzi had told her earlier, she confesses that ‘I’ll remember it for sure, but it is now that I have this recorder here that I agonise’.32 Meanwhile, Getulio Alviani belabours the relationship between technology, form and use by indicating the microphone that stands in front of him but remains invisible to us readers.33 Irreverently, Lonzi’s eight-year-old son Tita (Battista Lena) at one point blows raspberries into the microphone: ‘Oh … Prrr! So we can record it, and I’ll be famous too.’34 Tita’s intromission is interesting because it not only interrupts the conversation among adults but also fragments the social identity of the art critic by handing down a rare image of Lonzi as a working mother. All of these instances alert the reader to the text’s surrounds of sound, while also exposing audio recording as a technology of presence. A certain tangibility of the body

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is one of the most prominent hallmarks of these conversations, as Lonzi decided not to smooth out ‘the grain of the voice’ once transferred onto the page.35 Our reading is thus marked by the presence of onomatopoeia, exclamations, ellipses, vocalizations and other guttural performances that convey a variety of effects, from laughter to accent. Fabro tries to emulate the sound of an electric fan: ‘fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-f …, ’ or expresses his excitement with ‘ih! … ih! … ’36 Accardi emits sounds like ‘iiih!’ whenever she needs to convey a sense of exaggeration.37 Giulio Paolini mumbles at the beginning of his sentence: ‘Ehm … ehm … ’38 Salvatore Scarpitta tests the recorder with ‘One, two, three, four … Scarpida … Scarpida …’, and Lonzi reproduces his American accent when pronouncing the dental in his surname.39 As I argue elsewhere, in her attempt to maintain the authenticity of sound in her transcriptions, Lonzi pointed to a continuity between life and speech but also sought to explore the capacity of the voice to exceed its use only as a verbal medium. In this way, these vocal expressions show that the voice has an aesthetic, which is to say sensory, dimension that exists in spite of language, as an excess of the body.40 Adriana Cavarero elaborates on this essential difference by stressing that the voice should not be considered only as support for the word, because, before being symbolized, the voice is first and foremost sound: somatic charges, affects that are not bound to fixed meanings. The scope of the voice, she explains, is constitutively broader than that of the word. For Cavarero, the voice is not only a means of communication and oral transmission but also a record of the economy of the drives linked to an intersubjective rhythm of bodies that destabilizes the rational order upon which the phallologocentric system of communication is built. Both unique and relational, voices are always embodied and touched – contact that occurs physically through the vibration of the larynx in the mouth and tympanum in the ear.41 However, the use of the tape recorder also seems to offer a method for rethinking art criticism and art history. Thus, in the foreword of Autoritratto Lonzi challenges her readers with a striking question about one of the fathers of the discipline: ‘If it had been possible to record what the artist used to say in their everyday conversations, would we still need to read Vasari’s Lives to find a contact with them?’42 The question throws a dart in the very centre of the historiographical infrastructure of art history, and, by means of an anachronism, exposes the very capacity of tape recording to redefine the order of time. At the same time, Lonzi openly undoes the biographical model of art history that revolves around the coupling of the artist and his work, epitomized in the modernist project of the artist’s monograph.43 ‘Artists live for what others make them live,’ she muses further on, but if Vasari’s profession could be justified in his own time, contemporary critics have become an anachronism, ‘because this is no longer about making one live, but rendering sterile’.44 Lonzi believed that an artist’s work already contained more life than the summary provided by an art historian, and her fanciful positioning of a tape recorder in the time of the Renaissance invites us to interrogate the very aims of art writing. Vasari’s Lives, Lonzi points out, would be more useful in connecting us with the author, ‘and his personal charge’.45 By means of magnetic polarization, Lonzi seems to capitalize on the technological imagination of the medium to capture the presence of the body of the art historian. Lonzi found ridiculous the idea that an art critic learns about art and artists at university, and turned to audio recording as a means to obviate

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that paradox. The use of audio recording, therefore, was never meant as an enhancement of the biographical model of Vasari with the confessional mode of the artist interview. What her reflections on the magnetophone slowly unfold is a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between what is vital (vitale) and what is lived (vissuto) in the matter of art history, which ultimately ties art history to life writing. According to Michael Davidson, audio recording is a technology through which ‘the voice achieves enough autonomy to regard itself as present unto itself ’.46 It is thanks to this shift that recording can activate a new path of discovery for the self. Reflecting ten years later in a diary entry, Lonzi writes that ‘in Autoritratto, by getting them to speak, I wanted to bring them back to a concept of themselves, and to give effect to my presence in a different way’.47 Autoritratto might have had little impact on the academic and critical scene of the late 1960s, but it changed Lonzi’s life radically.48

Broadcasting, recording and listening In 1963, Lonzi engaged in a direct polemic against the omniscience of the art critic in an article titled ‘La solitudine del critico’ [The critic’s solitude], a relentless analysis of the solipsism of art writing bound to the ‘habit to devolve to the authority of the patres’.49 While the explicit target of her piece was the Marxist art historian Giulio Carlo Argan, I take the object of her critique to be an ideal male critic who maintains his authority by distancing or, in her own words, isolating himself from both artists and audience. Writing in support of the artists’ contestation at the 1963 Congress of Verrucchio,50 Lonzi concludes that art criticism, like art itself, should not depend on values and ideals that could not be verified: ‘An experiencing of life somehow parallel to that seizing of freedom determined by contemporary artworks should be for the critic the only means to establish a contact with them.’51 By emphasizing the semantics of touch, Lonzi seems to anticipate one of the key motivations that led her to embrace the magnetic technology of the tape recorder as a material means – as opposed to the abstraction of ideology – to get closer to the artists. It was arguably to overcome the remoteness of the position of the art critic that she started to experiment with the magnetophone – to converse with the artists, instead of speaking on their behalf. Lonzi’s use of the audio-recorded interview was therefore a means to overcome the division of creative labour established by the institution of art criticism in which one side makes things that the other feels entitled to comment on. I do not seek to suggest that the tape recorder represented for Lonzi a panacea to all of the wrongs of the ‘phoney profession’. It may be more plausible to say that it represented ‘uno sbocco’, a way out: Because what really annoys me … no, what I like a lot in the artists and annoys me in the art critics, where there is none of that, is this sense of measure, this moving from one topic to another. Instead, the art critic is always a dogged person (una persona accanita). To me … I cannot bear the feeling of the mind that rages on one thing (la mente che si accanisce su una cosa).52

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Lonzi’s choice of words suggests that the art critic is animalized by his profession. This almost pathological characterization of the art critic seems to return in the conversation recorded with Accardi, which offers interesting material for analysis of the germs of a feminist critique of the debilitating relationship between men and knowledge within the institutions they have created to maintain their power. Accardi is the most in tune with Lonzi’s critique of writing, pointing out in one spirited passage that ‘in many of these books there’s the anxiety of the man, of the male scholar, the sage, the philosopher of not resolving, of not being able to give definitive answers’.53 A specific type of writer, the art critic in Lonzi’s imagination is a little bureaucrat and an arriviste who appropriates the work of artists without sharing their way of life: Because I cannot understand how some critics can speak of artists and then conduct a life such that they’re either phoney when they speak of the artists or phoney when they live their life, because one cannot understand how one person can be this dissociated.54

Lonzi’s frustration with the hypocrisy of art criticism went beyond an act of moralizing judgement to encompass an entire social system in which the art critic becomes an agent. As she announces in the foreword of Autoritratto, the recorded conversations with the artists respond less to the need to understand their practice than to the need to spend time with someone else in a manner that could be wholly satisfying: ‘I have felt the work of art as the possibility of an encounter and an invitation to partake addressed by the artist directly to each one of us.’55 Lonzi was aware of the implications of the tape recorder for the institution of art criticism in general, and for her authority as an art critic in particular. In her quest to move away from the solipsism of the art critic, she turned to the capacity of the tape recorder to get closer to the vital moments of creativity that she had found among the artists but also to produce a transformation. ‘I think that, when one does the art critic, he should examine of himself, experience and absorb from this sector of activity,’ Lonzi says in Autoritratto, ‘you must enter in the thing, go down in this thing, you absorb it, and you transform yourself while you live, isn’t it?’56 While she becomes aware that the tape recording has taken away from her the authority necessary to the profession, she starts to wonder if she has become an artist herself. ‘I am no longer a stranger,’ she answers indirectly.57 A certain familiarity with the translation of the voice into text also came from her ongoing collaboration with the radio show L’  Approdo aired by RAI. A broad selection of Lonzi’s reviews for the programme made it into a trimestral publication by the same name. However, the conservative position of the editorial board, under the influence of Roberto Longhi, Lonzi’s former tutor at the University of Florence, and the commitment of the magazine to the middlebrow meant that Lonzi often had limited agency in determining the themes and tone of her writing.58 Writing for a radio broadcast must have tuned Lonzi in to the complexities not only of the translation of visual experience into words but also, and most importantly, of writing a text that could be read out. In the very first issue of L’  Approdo, Riccardo Bacchelli mused that the radio demanded a different kind of verbal exposition, a different kind of voice: ‘a measured and discreet style, more like the conversation person to person,

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rather than the oration to a crowd or the recite for an audience.’59 On the challenges that radio posed specifically to the treatment of the visual arts, Longhi elaborated in another short but dense essay, which also appeared in the first issue of the magazine.60 Entitled ‘Sinopia per le arti figurative’ (Underdrawing for the figurative arts), the essay pointed out that, compared with a commentator on a literary work, an art critic on the radio has to confront different problems, starting from the fact that a work of visual art needs to be translated, using a different art, into words. Once on air, the speech of the art critic resembles the underdrawing of a fresco, that the listener can use like a ‘track’ to join the dots of a path towards the original text, which is the work of art. Longhi imagined the role of the art critic on the radio to be about training, almost jogging the visual memory of listeners to make them better appreciate the ‘rapport’ between one work and another indicated by the words of the art critic.61 In agreement with the aims of similar radio programmes abroad, like the BBC’s The Listener, which also appeared as a weekly publication, Longhi hoped that mass media would contribute to the social improvement of public taste.62 It is in this direction that L’  Approdo ultimately aspired to become a platform of cultural regeneration in postwar Italy.63 Interestingly, in his essay Longhi also suggests that the radio gives artists of the past and the present the opportunity to speak for themselves, or engage with critics whose writing has become an art in and of itself. However, one need only glance at the list of names advanced by Longhi – Cellini, Vasari, Carrà, De Pisis, Baudelaire, Ruskin – to gauge the limitations of such a proposition. Longhi never gave up the connoisseurial preoccupation with quality and tradition, concluding that ‘in a radio, and that is in an auditory programme, one would still need to make use of some literature’.64 In his view, if the radio could make room for artists’ voices, it was only insofar as those voices (Longhi lists only male names) echoed that of the institution they were called on to represent. In the same essay, Longhi continually stresses the physicality of art writing and explains that the peculiarity of the art critic working for L’ Approdo lies in the need to travel and report back on works or exhibitions that they have actually seen: ‘the art critic will never dismiss, and rightly so, the sporty and touristic take of the traveller, the explorer, the pioneer.’65 In describing the task of the art critic on the radio, Longhi therefore also prescribed a set of approaches to the job that Lonzi was about to take up in a few months. However, while Longhi engaged with the potential of the new means of communication only to endorse the traditional values of academic art history, I suggest that the challenges posed by writing for the radio oriented Lonzi’s critical imagination in a dramatically different direction. Indeed, when she started to record her conversations with artists in the mid-1960s, she arguably revolutionized the intuitions of her former tutor by pushing the possibility of letting the artists speak for themselves to the limits of art criticism itself. By turning to the tape recorder, Lonzi showed concern not so much with improving her own critical voice as with finding a novel way of being with artists. At around the time that Lonzi started to use the magnetophone, Lonzi also embarked on a collaboration with marcatré, the avant-garde magazine founded in 1963 by the art historian Eugenio Battisti. This new cultural magazine stood out among others of its time for its interdisciplinary approach, captivating design and short but incisive critical insights into contemporary culture. Lonzi’s position at marcatré, however, was relatively marginal: she printed only one article, five transcripts of conversations and a

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few excerpts from exhibition catalogues that she had published elsewhere. Nevertheless, this magazine provided her with an open platform to experiment with a different kind of writing. marcatré was particularly committed to giving space to a plurality of voices often gleaned from round tables and questionnaires, thus familiarizing its readers with a colloquial style in which different writing registers alternated.66 As Laura Iamurri has already noticed, beyond the commitment to capture and disseminate contemporary debates as they happened, the editorial board of marcatré was particularly interested in the use of new recording media to broadcast and disseminate sound and the human voice. The magazine welcomed contemporary studies in folk and ethnomusicology associated with the research team of the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano.67 Indeed, following in the footsteps of the anthropologist Ernesto de Martino, new research in both sociology and ethno-anthropology in Italy was transformed by amply reassessing oral culture to counter the hegemonic traditions of written historical sources and narration. Thus, in the years following the war, the tape recording of rhymes and popular songs and, above all, the use of the recorded interview to reach out to underrepresented fringes of Italian society became radical means of investigation.68 Between 1966 and 1967, five conversations with Luciano Fabro, Carla Accardi, Jannis Kounellis, Philip King and Pino Pascali appeared on marcatré in a special section of the magazine aptly called ‘Discorsi’. By this time, Lonzi had already started to use transcripts of recorded conversations instead of the single-authored essays traditionally expected of an art critic in exhibition catalogues.69 Taking up the tape recorder must therefore be interpreted as a symptom of Lonzi’s desire to find a new language and jettison traditional forms of art writing that opposed the artist and the critic, in favour of the creation of a space for the encounter between the two.

The subject beside itself Lonzi considered writing as the primary site of her critical intervention to dismantle the myth of male creativity, in the Hegelian traditions of art, literature and religion, that men have created to mirror their own power. In the opening lines of her groundbreaking essay ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’ (1970) she states that ‘[t]he feminine problem is the relationship of any woman – deprived as she is of power, of history, of culture, of a role of her own – to any man: his power, his history, his culture, his absolute role’.70 For Lonzi, the advent of feminism not only shattered the chronological continuity of history but also demolished the monologue of patriarchal history. Yet such a revolution could not come simply from achieving equality with men; it had to be built on woman’s difference, which Lonzi identified in ‘her millennial absence from history’.71 Lonzi openly invited women to profit from this absence, steeped in the epistemologies of sexual difference; she famously thought that women’s recognition of each other, not their equality to men, was the authentic project of a feminine revolt. Rethinking women’s position in history as a cultural void requires a different form of engagement to experiment with living in the absence of a predetermined identity. As Annarosa Buttarelli beautifully puts it, Lonzi’s writing sought to establish ‘a lack of definitive identification with something that has been internally construed with

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the help and complacency of the culture that speaks of women’.72 Thus, Lonzi invited women to sabotage every aspect of culture that ignored their oppression. Deculturation, she famously states, is a feminist action.73 But how does writing become a tool of

Figures 2.5 and 2.6  Carla Lonzi at the telephone in via Frattina, Rome, n.d. (1970s). Photo: Jacqueline Vodoz. Milan © Fondazione Jacqueline Vodoz & Bruno Danese.

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deculturation? Neither a refuge nor an escape from life, as in the male tradition of the modern romantic genius, the need to make books was for Lonzi an attempt to interrupt the same old repetitive script of male culture, while creating the possibility of a new subject that is no longer the projection of someone else’s fantasy. Arguably, writing became for Lonzi a technology of the self, recorded via a particular engagement with the tape recorder, but also, I contend, the montage of telephone conversations, old poems, unsent letters and photographs. In their biography of Lonzi, Anna Jaquinta and Marta Lonzi recall that she ‘used to record talks with the people close to her, but also the phone calls or conversations with her friends’ (Figures 2.5 and 2.6).74 When we look at her publications, it is impossible not to notice the composite nature of her writing practice, which constantly challenges the monolithic assumptions of the authorial voice. At the same time, writing represented for Lonzi the possibility and necessity of forming a different kind of relations, as she explained in interviews. Discussing the meaning of the book series Scritti di Rivolta Femminile with radical lesbian feminist Michèle Causse, Lonzi states that ‘[t]he fact of writing allows you to change the way you read, removing much of this myth value from writing, which is the value that is attributed to something by those who do not engage in it’.75 Here, by granting writing the capacity to transform reading and readers, she indicates a path of autocoscienza by which books are written to find resonance with the experience of another. For Lonzi, writing was far from a private, individual act: every feminist reader was potentially a feminist writer.76 While still writing about art, the processes of recording, transcribing and editing the interviews revealed to her a novel set of questions about the raw stuff of life that could no longer be kept aside. Lonzi thus reflected on the use of the tape recorder as an alternative to overcome the impasse of a type of writing that already presented itself as a script: To me, personally, what is attractive in recording? I am attracted to precisely an elementary thing: being able to move from sounds to punctuation, to a writing, and find a page that is not a written page, but is a page that … In short, like in some chemical processes, when there’s condensation … that from a sound condensed into a sign, there, like a gas turns into liquid. This I like a lot, I wouldn’t know why … and I like a lot being able to read something that is different from anything that you usually read, which is the outcome of an effort of the brain, which is so tiring now, even thinking about it. A person who sits at the table and jots down some ideas … It seems to me that his effort is so unnatural, his test so fatiguing, that I already feel the neurosis and … yes, and the raging on it.77

There seems to be something toxic about the academic production of knowledge epitomized by the table in this passage. Lonzi renders clearly legible the exhaustion of the body made passive, literally broken under the burden of knowledge that strikes us as unauthentic. The neurosis of the author characterized in this paragraph seems to derive from the fact that he has forgotten that he has a body. We can feel the fatigue of scholars who would do anything to see confirmed what they already know, that is, to produce a page that mirrors, rather than transforms, them. In opposition to this

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unwholesome mode of writing, the tape recorder represents a way out that is attached to the possibility of creating and reading another kind of page in a book. Several literary critics speak of audio recording as a revolution in modernist literature.78 Through audio recording, the literary avant-garde not only jettisoned the modernist myth of originality but also reconstituted the very positionalities of the voice of and in the text. After the war, experiments with audio recording became interesting not so much as a form of automatism but as a means to rethink the production of knowledge and the power relation between speaker and listener. Between 1952 and 1961, Guy Debord recorded five lectures that he then replayed in front of a conference audience. Each time, Debord positioned the tape player on the desk, while he sat among the audience. With this dramatic gesture, he intended to mechanically induce a shift within the structures of spectatorship that bind the form of the conference delivery to the separation essential to academic knowledge production. Intriguingly, Jean-Louis Rancon writes that while Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio invented ‘industrial painting’ in 1958 as a way to move beyond easel painting, Guy Debord experimented with a type of ‘industrial conference’ as a mode of critiquing the hierarchies of knowledge within academia.79 But industrial painting and industrial conference are also two modes of cultural production which, during the postwar era, contributed to the resignification of the dialectic between the vital (vitale) and the lived (vissuto) in artistic practices – a dialectic that interested Lonzi enormously.80 Debord’s fifth magnetic recording is especially interesting in this respect, because it was played at the CNRS before the Research Group on Everyday Life led by Henri Lefebvre. The title, ‘Perspectives de modifications conscientes dans la vie quotidienne’ [Perspectives of consciousness modification in everyday life], illuminates yet another use of the magnetophone that challenges the privatization of the everyday epitomized by the Philips advert. When the tape recorder played his voice to the audience, it ultimately disrupted the boundaries between private and public that maintain capitalist society, founded on consumerism. Debord’s study of lived experience aimed not to document the everyday but to transform it. His main point of criticism was methodological, concerning academic habits that mask the division of labour within the work of research: It is thus desirable to demonstrate, by a slight alteration of the usual procedures, that everyday life is right here. These words are being communicated by way of a tape recorder, not, of course, in order to illustrate the integration of technology into this everyday life on the margin of the technological world, but in order to seize the simplest opportunity to break with the appearance of pseudo-collaboration, of artificial dialogue, established between the lecturer ‘in person’ and his spectator.81

These words highlight that although modern technologies such as the telephone, television and the tape-recorder privatize everyday experience, they can also be used to expose this privatization. While critiquing the way in which technology turns people into consumers, he also proposed a ‘liberation of the everyday’ from the interference of spectacle that is reproduced in sociological research. Debord’s recorded lectures performatively realized the disidentification of the scholar and the academic as the

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omniscient source of knowledge. By pivoting the conference around the shared experience of listening, rather than on the virtuosic performance of the speaker, the audio-recorded conference undoes the separation between those who impart knowledge and those who receive it, even if only by means of a performative coup de théâtre. In 1968, that is four years after Lonzi had started to employ recorded conversations for her art writing, Germano Celant directly re-enacted Debord’s recorded conference in a public event at the Carabaga art club in Genoa. Whereas the invite announced the critic in dialogue with a group of artists, once at the venue, the public found only a tape recorder that played the voices of Celant in conversation with the artists, while he sat in the audience.82 By being the first art critic to use the magnetophone in Italy, therefore, Lonzi’s practice participated in the international rethinking of the voice and role of the art critic. In her case too, the tape recorder helped to overcome the virtuosic performance of the art critic who no longer owns the measure of the spectacle of the history of art, in which one is the spectator to another’s show, without any possibility of participation. Only, unlike Debord and Celant, Lonzi did not solely observe the impact of a recorded conversation only on the public but also on herself. The first time I used the tape recorder I said, ‘What’s going on here?’. I did not understand it very well, I just felt strange with this recorder, it’s not an obvious thing, and then I said ‘Well, it’s logical that it means this’, which is that I want to stay close to the artists and free myself, as a person who may have some academic culturalism.83

Obviously, Lonzi was aware of the risk of romanticizing the capacity of the machine to effect a complete change: Even if it is not automatic that the tape recording technique, in itself, sufficiently produces a transformation in the critic, for which many interviews are nothing but judgments in the form of dialogue, it seems to me that this discourse is born of an observation: the complete and verifiable critical act is that which is part of the artistic creation.84

Lonzi thus insisted on establishing a comparison between art criticism and artistic creation. Her art criticism, as it was conceived at the time, did not need to be different, but it needed to become something else, a different mode of experience; a transformation of the self in the vicinity of others. It is from this standpoint that ten years later, when she rethought the meaning of the tape recorder in light of the conversation she was recording between herself and her partner, the sculptor Consagra, Lonzi concluded that ‘until I was not posing the problem of my own recognition I could not but be subject to the authoritativeness of the other’s consciousness that is recognised within culture’.85 Lonzi was intrigued by the magnetophone because it seemed to allow her to ‘find a page that is not a written page, but is a page that … ’86 The ellipses open up a space to breathe, a void pregnant with possibilities. Lonzi’s preoccupation with the relationship between audio recording and writing finally participated in a moment,

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around 1970, characterized by a radical rethinking of interpersonal relations. And it is in this direction which, I think, her legacy must be explored.

Future resonances Autoritratto was received with some reservations by some art critics in Italy, ignored by others, but not all. As Iamurri argues, ‘what must have seemed like a book of art criticism was in fact a radical interrogation of the very necessity of that form of cultural mediation and of the system upon which it was founded.’87 One year after the publication of the book, NAC magazine launched a discussion platform to make space for some pressing exchanges about the state of contemporary art criticism in the country. If, on the one hand, this debate has been interpreted as a record of the crisis of the profession in Italian art history, on the other it allows us to see how Lonzi’s book was being registered by those who used to be her fellow professionals.88 In his contribution to the debate, Tommaso Trini shows his support by literally absorbing Lonzi’s words in a 1971 article composed solely of quotations, which also included a long passage from the foreword of Autoritratto.89 More complicated, instead, are Celant’s appropriation and repackaging of some of Lonzi’s practices in the new vocabulary of the Arte Povera movement which he was defining in those very years. In the article entitled ‘Per una critica acritica’ (For an acritical criticism), Celant notably argues against the ‘linguistic violence’ imposed on the work of art by contemporary art criticism, and instead makes a plea for the critic’s ‘complicity’ with the work of art. Thus he proposes that art criticism should maintain its autonomy by becoming an archival practice of conservation and documentation of the residues of artistic production. This new kind of art criticism, he writes, stimulates art and makes it speak, it renders it in all its phonetic, visual, motor, sensorial and informational expressions and it makes them interact dialectically with the work in art, without imposing nor mediating, through a deforming fashion, the contemporary discourse of art.90

Celant is adamant that art criticism not turn into art bust must remain separate from it – a position on which, as I have showed above, Lonzi faltered. Thus Celant separates the new mission of contemporary art criticism into two waves. The first he defines ‘criticism as event’, in which he enlists Harold Rosenberg, Lucy Lippard and himself. The other is ‘criticism as conservation and cataloguing of the residues or traces by the artists or their artistic products’, which categorizes the work of Seth Sieglaub, Gregory Battcock, Carla Lonzi, Lippard and, again, Celant himself.91 Although, on the surface, Celant might seem to be in agreement with Lonzi, his argument is actually very different from hers, for a number of important reasons. First, although Celant never doubts that the practice of art criticism might change, its function remains unquestioned, as he leaves out any discussion of the new figure of the curator-archivist in the inevitable selection of materials he is impelled to document. Unlike Lonzi, Celant remains uncritical of the fidelity of an audio-recorded

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interview and does not seem concerned with the way in which the medium transforms the speakers’ consciousness, for instance, due to the splitting that occurs with the redoubling of the voice on tape. As many postwar multimedia artists and cultural theorists have demonstrated, any theory of documentation must also be a critique of realism.92 But Celant’s position appears quite naïve on this matter. Second, Celant’s text organizes into a codified theory a set of practices with which Lonzi engaged in terms of a transformation of the consciousness instead. In an article for NAC that represents her last intervention in the field of art criticism, entitled ‘La critica è potere’ (Criticism is power), Lonzi peremptorily clarifies that: By positioning himself in front of the work of art as spectator and interpreter the art critic turns it into an object of knowledge, thus demonstrating the opposite of what he originally assumed: that he has a point of view that is external to society. This may represent for him a way of salvation, but the way to salvation is not transmissible: as it is a raising of consciousness, you cannot conquer it through knowledge, that is it cannot be conquered. The chain of intellectual domination is thus interrupted.93

Finally, Celant’s position also appears dissonant with the conclusions reached by Lonzi in the foreword of Autoritratto, in which she sees herself transformed and asks if she has become an artist. Celant, therefore, seemingly echoes Lonzi’s proposition but only to the extent of a re-enchantment of art criticism within the boundaries of patriarchal culture. As Michele Dantini also suggests, ‘Celant interprets with determination his own critic-curatorial role in the guise of the producer of patriarchal myths’, among which that of the shaman-artist is perhaps the most prominent.94 Lonzi’s legacy was received differently by artist women during the 1970s. Although, as is well known, Lonzi never supported feminist art, echoes of the critical positions that she developed in Autoritratto and her writings with Rivolta Femminile seeped into various groups’ discussions about feminism and art, especially with regard to the way in which the movement had started to unpick the complicated category of the woman’s art exhibition. In 1974, the feminist magazine Effe dedicates a whole section on the topic of women’s creativity. Excerpts from Kate Millet, Eva Figes and Valerie Solanas are compiled together by the magazine editors to represent different positions on the relationship between women and creativity. A passage on deculturation from Lonzi’s essay ‘Let’s spit on Hegel’ is also included, which prepares the editors’ conclusion: ‘yes, women want to be protagonist but not of the usual old drama.’95 In the same section, a short article by artist Cloti Ricciardi interrogates the social construction of the male genius. Rather than questioning the institutions that administer art education and manage the tradition of the fine arts, as does Linda Nochlin, Ricciardi turns to the form of a Lonzian dialogue to discuss the separation between those who make art and those who are excluded from it: Question: But why do we prefer to stimulate, enrich, honour a group of big and small geniuses instead of letting the people express themselves freely?

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Answer: Because while you can easily control a group of artists, you certainly cannot foresee what the people could pull out if they were free to express themselves. Question: But then, given that they have burnt out our ability for expression, and even if we had been left one, we wouldn’t know how to use it, where do we start to change something?

Answer: What if we started from feminism?96 Ricciardi’s proposition does not rest on art historical labels but locates women’s creativity firmly within the space of feminism. Expressed colloquially, the fictive conversation on the position of the woman’s art exhibition in male culture sounds like an ongoing discussion between two women. The to and fro evoked by the unravelling of question and answer emulates the group transcriptions disseminated in feminist press of those years. By this time, the form of the dialogue that Ricciardi recast in her captivating articles was associated no longer with the transcriptions that Lonzi used in Autoritratto, but with the conversations that women were having within the various feminist groups, especially through the practice of autocoscienza. In another article for Effe in 1975, Ricciardi was again to engage with the role of the woman artist within the feminist movement. She points to the problematic separation between ‘who makes culture and who is affected by it’, which women artists should instead challenge. ‘Every artist,’ Ricciardi states, ‘is a collaborationist. Us women have always been kept outside this Olympus due to the sexist reasons that we all know, but also because they could not rightly trust us.’97 Thus Ricciardi directly addresses women and those who would like to recreate, within a feminist art movement, the separation between ‘minds’ and ‘hands’ that the movement has fought to overcome. Her point seems to follow Lonzi’s critique of the flawed cultural systems that place women in the passive role of receivers of someone else’s show. It is in order to eschew that position, which women occupy in the spectacle of male culture, that she turned to the relationship between autocoscienza and writing to create a space in which women could recognize each other instead. In one of her most lucid texts on the problematic position that women occupy within the mito della proposta culturale (myth of the cultural proposition),98 Lonzi gives us compelling definition of writing as resonance: Writing is a public act. We write to express ourselves and to resonate, so that someone else can express herself and give resonance. Every other method of writing is a manifestation of cultural insertion. If we do not recognize each other, the male is the one recognized: his culture is thus confirmed.99

The resonance often mentioned by Lonzi is above all a listening space, perhaps an effect of the replay mode embedded in the technology of the tape recorder. Although I do not wish to claim that the tape recorder was the only vehicle for women’s autocoscienza, it nonetheless registered the effects of a transformative experience. As Paola di Cori notes, the squares and the streets in which women spoke in public were not the only setting for the feminism of the 1970s. Alongside different manners of speaking,

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feminism also took place in small groups, like Rivolta Femminile. It was in these small groups that women experimented with different possibilities of listening: ‘Among the new uses attributed to listening, privilege was given to unexpected data, the fact of having to face completely unexpected things without knowing how to react properly.’100 These unexpected things Lonzi had already started to examine when transcribing her conversations with the artists, even if only to find her disappointment with them. But rather than leaving unquestioned her use of the tape recorder as a high-fidelity means to capture what happens behind the work, here I stress that it enabled her to explore creative forms of being together in which the self is no longer identified by the discourse of another but derives from recognition with another. By splitting the speaking subject and putting it beside itself, the tape recorder not only became a means of disidentification from the role of the critic and woman, but also opened a new method of resonance in which creativity appears as continuous with, rather than separate from, feminism.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

*Unless otherwise stated in the footnotes, all translations by the author. Please note that in my translation I have aimed to maintain the colloquialism and some grammatical inconsistencies which are in the original text. Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto. Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly [1968] (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 7–8. All further references are from the second edition. On the use juxtaposition of photos and text in Autoritratto, see Teresa Kittler’s essay in this volume. Kraus Kranz, Capire l’ arte moderna (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1964). On Paolini’s work, see Denis Viva, ‘L’immagine rimediata. Diagrammi e riproduzioni di opera pittoriche come fonti visive negli anni sessanta’, Palinsesti 1 (2011): 77–8. ‘Volevo fare un libro un po’ divagato’. Lonzi, Autoritratto, 16. Linda Sandino, ‘Introduction. Oral History In and About Art, Craft, and Design’, in Linda Sandino and Matthew Partington, eds, Oral History in the Visual Arts (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 3. Here I paraphrase from Molly Andrews, Shaping History: Narratives of Political Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 15; quoted in Sandino, ‘Introduction’, 3. Kenneth Goldsmith, ed., I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (Boston: De Capo Press: 2004). On gossip as queer mode of world making, see Gavin Butt, Between You and Me. Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948–1963 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). Paul Atkinson and David Silverman, ‘Kundera’s Immortality: The Interview Society and the Invention of the Self ’, Qualitative Inquiry 3 (1997): 314–15. On the modernist myth of the artist, see Griselda Pollock, ‘Artists, Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History’, Screen 21, 3 (1980): 57–96. Carla Lonzi, ‘Manoscritto A19/1’, s. d. [1980], 42. Fondo Rivolta Femminile, Fondazione Jacqueline Vodoz/Bruno Danese, Milan. I am grateful to Giovanna

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Zapperi for sharing this document with me. These comments are jotted down in relation to an audio-recorded conversation with her partner, the artist Pietro Consagra, which Lonzi transcribed and published in 1980. Carla Lonzi, Vai pure. Dialogo con Pietro Consagra [1980] (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2011). On the conversation between Lonzi and Consagra, see Giovanna Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita (Roma: DeriveApprodi, 2017), 232–40. See also Leslie Cozzi’s chapter in this volume. 12 Alessandro Portelli, ‘What Makes Oral History Different [1979]’, in Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, eds, The Oral History Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 32–42 13 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 33; See also Laura Iamurri, ‘“Un mesitere fasullo”: Note su Autoritratto di Carla Lonzi’, in Maria Antonietta Trasforini, ed., Donne d’arte. Storie e generazioni (Rome: Meltemi, 2006), 113–32. 14 Zapperi, Un’ arte della vita, 208. 15 Rivolta Femminile, ‘On Woman’s Refusal to Celebrate Male Creativity’, trans. Arlene Ladden, Heresies 1, no. 1 (1977): 101. See also Rivolta Femminile, ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrative della manifestazione creativa femminile’ [1971], in Carla Lonzi, ed., Sputiamo su Hegel. E altri scritti (Milan: et al. Edizioni, 2010), 115–20. 16 Rivolta Femminile, ‘On Woman’s Refusal’, 101. 17 Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminsita [1978], vol. 1 (Milan: et al./ Edizioni, 2010), 204. (8 February 1973). 18 Ibid., 35. 19 N. Katherine Hayles, ‘Voices Out of Bodies, Bodies Out of Voices. Audiotape and the Production of Subjectivity’, in Adalaide Morris, ed., Sound States. Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies (Chapel Hill: The University of Carolina Press, 1997), 74. 20 On the relationship between autocoscienza and the body in women’s groups in Italy, see Luisa Passerini, ‘Corpi e corpo collettivo. Rapporti internazionali del primo femminismo radicale italiano,’ in Teresa Bertilotti and Anna Scattigno, eds, Il femminimso degli anni Settanta (Rome: Viella, 2005), 181–97. Passerini also remarks the presence of the tape recorder. 21 See, for instance, Sottosopra, ‘Dalla registrazione di una discussion collettiva’, Sottosopra. Esperienze dei gruppi femministi in Italia 1 (1973), 30–8. For other uses of the tape recorder within Rivolta Femminile see Carla Accardi, Superiore e inferiore. Conversazioni fra le ragazzine delle Scuole Medie (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1972). Accardi recorded the conversations between adolescent schoolgirls about sexuality, an expedient which cost her the job as teacher. A later conversation between Lonzi and Anna Piva was distributed as an audiocassette to accompany the posthumous publication of her poems. See Carla Lonzi, Armande sono io!, eds, Marta Lonzi, Angela De Carlo and Maria Delfino (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1992). 22 Maria Gabriella Frabotta, ‘Pratica dell’autocoscienza’, in Manuela Fraire, ed., Lessico politico delle donne: teorie del femminismo (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2002), 100. 23 Teresa Bertilotti and Anna Scattigno, ‘Introduzione’, in Teresa Bertilotti and Anna Scattigno, eds, Il femminimso degli anni Settanta (Rome: Viella, 2005), vii. 24 Paola di Cori, Asincronie del femminismo. Scritti 1986–2011 (Pisa: ETS, 2012), 42. 25 Marvin Camras, Magnetic Tape Recording (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985). 26 For a discussion of how the montage of Autoritratto creates a horizontal dialogue among siblings that challenges the Oedipal family romance of art history, see Francesco Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1 (2015): 96–8.

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27 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 60. 28 On the importance of the everyday to the practice of partire da sé in Italian feminism, see Carmen Leccardi, ‘La reinvenzione della vita quotidiana’, in Bertilotti and Scattigno, eds, Il femminismo degli anni Settanta, 99–117. 29 On the intellectual formation of art criticism, see Francesco Ventrella, ‘Art History and Aesthetics’, in Richard Whatmore and Brian Young, eds, A Companion to Intellectual History (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 358–76. 30 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 16–17. 31 Ibid., 30. 32 Ibid., 248. 33 Ibid., 42. 34 Ibid., 165. 35 Roland Barthes, ‘The Grain of the Voice’ [1972], in Image/Music/Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 179–89. 36 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 164; 274. 37 Ibid., 116. 38 Ibid., 250. 39 Ibid., 26–7. Born in New York to a Sicilian father and Polish-Russian mother, Scarpitta admittedly spoke fluent Italian with an American accent. 40 Here I summarize points I have made elsewhere to show how they are inherent to my reading of Lonzi’s audio recording as a transformative practice of self-listening. See Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte’, 83–100. 41 Adriana Cavarero, For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). 42 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 4. 43 See Gabriele Guercio, Art as Existence. The Artist’s Monograph and Its Project (Boston: MIT Press, 2006). 44 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 4. 45 Ibid., 4. 46 Michael Davidson, ‘Technologies of Presence: Orality and the Tapevoice of Contemporary Poetics’, in Morris, ed., Sound States, 99. 47 Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 35. 48 For a discussion of the reception of Autoritratto among other Italian art critics, see Laura Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia, 1955–1970 (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2016), 207–13. 49 Carla Lonzi, ‘La solitidine del critico’ [1963], in Carla Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, ed. Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, and Vanessa Martini (Milan: et al./Edizioni), 355. 50 On the Congress of Verrucchio, see Federica Boragina, ‘Il convegno di Verucchio del 1963 e il dibattito critico nel mondo dell’arte contemporanea’, in Flavio Fergonzi and Francesco Todeschi, eds, Arte Italiana 1960–1964: identità culturale, confronti internazionali, modelli americani (Milan: Museo del Novecento/Scalpendi, 2017), 151–63. 51 Lonzi, ‘La solitidine del critico’, 356. My italics. 52 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 16. 53 Ibid., 116. 54 Ibid., 35–6. 55 Ibid., 3. 56 ‘Io credo che, quando uno fa il critico, dovrebbe esaminare di se stesso, fare esperinza, assorbire di questo settore di attività, cioè fare questa iniziazione – mi è

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venuta la parola e ci tengo – perchè l’iniziazione significa che tu entri nella cosa, scendi in questa cosa, la assorbi, ti transformi e vivi, intanto, no?’. Ibid., 62. 57 Ibid., 5. 58 Michela Baldini, ‘Le arti figurative all’ ‘Approdo’. Carla Lonzi: Un’allieva dissidente di Roberto Longhi’, Italianistica 38, no. 3 (2009): 115–30. Longhi sat in the editorial board alongside Roberto Bacchelli, Emilio Cecchi, Giuseppe de Robertis, Nicola Lisi, Roberto Longhi, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Diego Valeri. 59 Roberto Bacchelli, ‘L’oratoria alla radio’, L’ Approdo 1, no. 1 (January–March 1952): 30. Also cited in Baldini, ‘Le arti figurative’, 117. 60 The essay was broadcasted on 26 January 1952. Roberto Longhi, ‘Sinopia per l’arte figurativa,’ L’ Approdo 1, no. 1 (January–March 1952), 23–4. 61 Longhi suggestively defines the work of art as a ‘rapport which gives necessity to a critical response’. Roberto Longhi, ‘Proposte per una critica d’arte’, Paragone 1, no. 1 (1950): 5–19; reprinted in Roberto Longhi, Proposte per una critica d’arte (Pesaro: Portatori d’Acqua, 2014), 45. 62 Sam Rose, ‘The Visual Arts in the BBC’s The Listener, 1929–39’, The Burlington Magazine, 155 (September 2013), 606–11. 63 Anna Dolfi and Maria Carla Papini, eds, ‘L’ Approdo.’ Storia di un’avventura mediatica (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006). 64 Longhi, ‘Sinopia per l’arte figurativa’, 24. Italics in the original. 65 Ibid., 24. 66 Laura Iamurri, ‘Carla Lonzi sul marcatré’, in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 708. 67 Laura Iamurri, ‘Intorno a Autoritratto: fonti, ipotesi, riflessioni’, in Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino, Vanessa Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità: Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta (Pisa: ETS, 2011), 75. See also Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge, 128–9. 68 Davide Forgacs, ‘Intellectuals and Subaltern Groups between Structure and Discourse: The Difficult Politics of Cultural Studies’, in Graziella Parati, ed., New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies. Vol. 1: Definitions, Theory, and Accented Practices (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012), 17. On the relationship between these methods and Lonzi’s audio recordings, see Francesco Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1 (2015): 90–1. 69 For instance, a conversation with Kounellis in marcatré had already been used in the catalogue of his show at La Tartaruga Gallery in Rome (10 June 1966), while another recorded conversation with Pietro Consagra appeared only in the exhibition catalogue of his show at Galleria dell’Ariete in Milan (8 June 1967). I owe this information to the invaluable work of Laura Iamurri, who has reconstructed the publication history of these conversations. Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge, 122–49. 70 Carla Lonzi, ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’ [1970], in Paola Bono and Sandra Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991), 40. 71 Lonzi, ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’, 41. 72 Annarosa Buttarelli, ‘Tabula rasa’, in Diotima, ed., Approfittare dell’assenza (Napoli: Liguori, 2002), 156. 73 Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel, 37. For a discussion of the meaning of ‘deculturation’ in Lonzi’s thought, see Giovanna Zapperi, ‘Challenging Feminist Art History: Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths’, in Lara Perry and Victoria Horne, eds, Feminist Art History Now: Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 104–23.

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74 Anna Jaquinta and Marta Lonzi, ‘Biografia di Carla Lonzi’, in Carla Lonzi, Scacco ragionato. Poesie dal 58 al 63 (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1985), 62. 75 Interview with Michèle Causse by Carla Lonzi, in Mariagrazia Chinese, Carla Lonzi, Marta Lonzi, Anna Jaquinta, eds, É già politica (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1977), 107. 76 On the topic of resonance, see also Francesco Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi’s Art Writing and the Resonance of Separatism’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 21, no. 3(2014), 282–7. 77 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 29. Italics mine. 78 See Adalaide Morris, ‘Introduction: Sound States’, in Morris, ed., Sound States, 1–19. 79 Jean-Louis Rancon, ‘Introduction’, in Guy Debord, ed., Enregistrements magnétiques: 1952–1961 (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), 10. 80 It is possible that Lonzi was aware of Debord’s recorded conferences through Gallizio, who was involved in the Situationist International. However, in this chapter I am not interested in establishing influences or derivations. On the collaboration between Gallizio and Lonzi, see Iamurri, Un’arte della vita, 81–5. 81 Debord, Enregistrements magnétiques, 101–2. 82 This episode is described in Lara Conte, ‘“La critica è potere”. Percorsi e momenti della critica italiana’, in Conte, Fiorino, Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, 105. 83 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 60. 84 Ibid., 3. 85 Carla Lonzi, Manoscritto A19/1, s. d. [1980], 43. Fondo Rivolta Femminile, Fondazione Jacqueline Vodoz/Bruno Danese, Milano. 86 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 29. 87 Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge, 210. 88 For a discussion of art criticism in Italy, see Michele Dantini, ‘Ytalia Subjecta. Narrazioni identitarie e critica d’arte, 1963–2009’, in Gabriele Guercio and Anna Mattiroli, eds, Il confine evanescente. Arte italiana 1960–2010 (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2010), 262–307. 89 Tommaso Trini, ‘Deflorilegio: Critica, ultime battute’, NAC (October 1970), 31. 90 Germano Celant, ‘Per una critica acritica’, NAC 1 (October 1970): 29. 91 Ibid., 30. 92 Martha Rosler, Decoys and Disruptions. Selected Writings, 1975–2001 (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2004). 93 Carla Lonzi, ‘La critica è potere’, NAC (December 1970): 6. 94 Michele Dantini, Geopolitiche dell’arte. Arte e critica d’arte italiana nel contesto internazionale dalle neoavanguerdie a oggi (Milan: Marinotti, 2012), 156. 95 Editorial, ‘Che cosa hanno detto’, Effe (July 1974): 6. 96 Cloti Ricciardi, ‘Ma il genio chi è?’, Effe (July 1974): 11. 97 Cloti Ricciardi, ‘… e-to-cche-re-bbe-pre-ci-sa-me-nte-a-TE!!’, Effe (July 1975): 25. Also this article was included in the ‘Creatività’ section of the magazine. Interestingly, in the table of content the title of this article appears as: ‘Un altro modo per dividerci’ (Another way to divide us). 98 For a discussion of how Lonzi must have derived the term ‘myth’ from Roland Barthes, see Ventrella, ‘La disfatta della critica d’arte’, 87–8. 99 Carla Lonzi, ‘Mito della porposta culturale’, in M. Lonzi, A. Jaquinta, and C. Lonzi, eds, La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1978), 137.

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100 Cori, Paola Di, ‘Listening and Silencing. Italian Feminists in the 1970s: Between autocoscienza and Terrorism’, in Anna Cento Bull and Adalgisa Giorgio, eds, Speaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s, Italian Perspectives, 12 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2006), 30–41; 189.

References Accardi, C. (1972), Superiore e inferiore. Conversazioni fra le ragazzine delle Scuole Medie, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Andrews, M. (2007), Shaping History: Narratives of Political Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Atkinson, P. and Silverman, D. (1997), ‘Kundera’s Immortality: The Interview Society and the Invention of the Self,’ Qualitative Inquiry 3: 314–15. Bacchelli, R. (1952), ‘L’oratoria alla radio’, L’ Approdo 1, no. 1 (January–March): 30–1. Baldini, M. (2009), ‘Le arti figurative all’ “Approdo”. Carla Lonzi: Un’allieva dissidente di Roberto Longhi’, Italianistica 38, no. 3: 115–30. Barthes, R. ([1972] 1977), ‘The Grain of the Voice’, in Image/Music/Text, London: Fontana Press, 179–89. Bertilotti, T. and Scattigno, A. eds (2005), Il femminimso degli anni settanta, Rome: Viella. Butt, G. (2005), Between You and Me. Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948–1963, Durham: Duke University Press. Buttarelli, A. (2002), ‘Tabula rasa’, in Diotima, ed., Approfittare dell’assenza, Napoli: Liguori, 148–57. Chinese, M., Lonzi, C. Lonzi, M., and Jaquinta, A. eds (1977), É già politica, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Camras, M. (1985), Magnetic Tape Recording, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Cavarero, A. (2005), For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Celant, G. (1970), ‘Per una critica acritica’, NAC 1: 29–30. Conte, L. (2011), ‘ “La critica è potere”. Percorsi e momenti della critica italiana’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, and V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità: Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Pisa: ETS, 87–109. Dantini, M. (2012), Geopolitiche dell’arte. Arte e critica d’arte italiana nel contesto internazionale dalle neoavanguerdie a oggi, Milan: Marinotti. Dantini, M. (2010), ‘Ytalia Subjecta. Narrazioni identitarie e critica d’arte, 1963–2009’, in G. Guercio and A. Mattiroli, eds, Il confine evanescente. Arte italiana 1960–2010, Milan: Mondadori Electa, 262–307. Debord, G. (2010), Enregistrements magnétiques: 1952–1961, Paris: Gallimard. Di Cori, P. (2012), Asincronie del femminismo. Scritti 1986–2011, Pisa: ETS. Di Cori, P. (2006), ‘Listening and Silencing. Italian Feminists in the 1970s: Between autocoscienza and Terrorism’, in A. Cento Bull and A. Giorgio, eds, Speaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s, Italian Perspectives, 12, Cambridge: Legenda, 30–41. Dolfi A. and Papini, M. C. eds (2006), ‘L’ Approdo’. Storia di un’avventura mediatica, Rome: Bulzoni. Editorial (1974), ‘Che cosa hanno detto’, Effe (July): 2–6.

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Forgacs, D. (2012), ‘Intellectuals and Subaltern Groups between Structure and Discourse: The Difficult Politics of Cultural Studies’, in G. Parati, ed., New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies. Vol. 1: Definitions, Theory, and Accented Practices, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 3–19. Frabotta, M. G. (2002), ‘Pratica dell’autocoscienza’, in M. Fraire, ed., Lessico politico delle donne: teorie del femminismo, Milan: Franco Angeli, 95–108. Goldsmith, K. ed. (2004), I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, Boston: De Capo Press. Guercio, G. (2006), Art as Existence. The Artist’s Monograph and its Project, Boston: MIT Press. Iamurri, L. (2016), Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia, 1955–1970, Macerata: Quodlibet. Iamurri, L. (2012), ‘Intorno a Autoritratto: fonti, ipotesi, riflessioni, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, and V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità: Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Pisa: ETS, 67–86. Iamurri, L. (2006), ‘“Un mesitere fasullo”: Note su Autoritratto di Carla Lonzi’, in M. A. Trasforini, ed., Donne d’arte. Storie e generazioni, Rome: Meltemi, 113–32. Kranz, K. (1964), Capire l’arte moderna, Milan: Edizioni di Comunità. Leccardi, C. (2005), ‘La reinvenzione della vita quotidiana’, in T. Bertilotti and A. Scattigno, eds, Il femminimso degli anni Settanta, Rome: Viella, 99–117. Longhi, R. (1952), ‘Sinopia per l’arte figurativa’, L’ Approdo 1, no. 1: 23–4. Longhi, R. ([1950] 2014), Proposte per una critica d’arte, Pesaro: Portatori d’Acqua. Lonzi, C. (2013), Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milano: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1969] 2012), Autoritratto. Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1963] 2012), ‘La solitidine del critico’ [1963], in Carla Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, ed. L. Conte, L. Iamurri, V. Martini, Milan: et al./Edizioni, 353–6. Lonzi, C. ([1980] 2011), Vai pure. Dialogo con Pietro Consagra, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1978] 2010) Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminsita, 2 vol. Milan: et al./ Edizioni. Lonzi, C. (1992), Armande sono io!, eds, M. Lonzi, A. De Carlo, and M. Delfino, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi, C. (1991), ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’ [1970], in P. Bono and S. Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader, trans. V. Newman, Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 40–59. Lonzi, C. (1980), ‘Manoscritto A19/1’, Milan: Fondo Rivolta Femminile, Fondazione Jacqueline Vodoz/Bruno Danese, 41–4. Lonzi, C. (1978), ‘Mito della proposta culturale’, in M. Lonzi, A. Jaquinta, and C. Lonzi, eds, La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 137–54. Lonzi, M. and Jaquinta, A. (1985), ‘Biografia’, in Carla Lonzi, ed., Scacco ragionato: Poesie dal’ 58 al ’63, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 9–73. Morris, A. ed. (1997), Sound States. Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies, Chapel Hill: The University of Carolina Press. Passerini, L. (2005), ‘Corpi e corpo collettivo. Rapporti internazionali del primo femminismo radicale italiano,’ in T. Bertilotti and A. Scattigno, eds, Il femminimso degli anni Settanta, Rome: Viella, 181–97. Portelli, A. (2006), ‘What Makes Oral History Different [1979]’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson, eds, The Oral History Reader, London and New York: Routledge, 32–42.

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Pollock, G. (1980), ‘Artists, Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History,’ Screen 21, no. 3: 57–96. Ricciardi, C. (1975), ‘… e-to-cche-re-bbe-pre-ci-sa-me-nte-a-TE!!’, Effe (July): 24–5. Ricciardi, C. (1974), ‘Ma il genio chi è?’, Effe (July): 11. Rivolta Femminile ([1971] 2013), ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrative della manifestazione creativa femminile’, in Carla Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel. E altri scritti (Milan: et al. Edizioni), 115–20. Rivolta Femminile ([1971] 1977), ‘On Woman’s Refusal to Celebrate Male Creativity’, trans. A. Ladden Heresies 1, no. 1: 100–1. Rose, S. (2013), ‘The Visual Arts in the BBC’s The Listener, 1929-39’, The Burlington Magazine, 155 (September): 606–11. Rosler, M. (2004), Decoys and Disruptions. Selected Writings, 1975–2001, Boston, MA: MIT Press. Sandino, L. and Partington, M. eds (2013), Oral History in the Visual Arts, London: Bloomsbury. Sottosopra (1973), ‘Dalla registrazione di una discussion collettiva’, Sottosopra. Esperienze dei gruppi femministi in Italia 1: 30–8. Trini, T. (1970), ‘Deflorilegio: Critica, ultime battute’, NAC 1 (October): 31. Ventrella, F. (2015), ‘Art History and Aesthetics’, in R. Whatmore and B. Young, eds, A Companion to Intellectual History, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 358–76. Ventrella, F. (2015), ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1: 96–8. Ventrella, F. (2014), ‘Carla Lonzi’s Art Writing and the Resonance of Separatism’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 21, no. 3: 282–7. Viva, D. (2011), ‘L’immagine rimediata. Diagrammi e riproduzioni di opera pittoriche come fonti visive negli anni sessanta’, Palinsesti 1: 63–82. Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita, Rome: DeriveApprodi. Zapperi, G. (2017), ‘Challenging Feminist Art History: Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths’, in Lara Perry and Victoria Horne, eds, Feminist Art History Now: Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice, London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 104–23.

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(Post-)normative silence Sabeth Buchmann

Normative post-normative When I began writing about art in 1990, it was under the impression of the postmodern discourse about the loss of critical distance.1 Naturally, thinking in integrated, network-based systems had also had an impact on art criticism. Since then, art criticism’s ‘end’ has been regularly evoked without, however, preventing its expansion into the fields of cultural studies, sociology and political science; quite to the contrary. Perhaps this is what prompted Bruno Latour to ask whether critique ‘had run out of steam’. Attacking ‘explanations resorting automatically to power, society, discourse’, the sociologist and philosopher maintain that they have ‘outlived their usefulness and deteriorated to the point of now feeding the most gullible sort of critique’.2 Latour holds that such notions engender the most simpleminded forms of critique, which he even considers similar to conspiracy theories. Convinced, that a ‘certain form of critical spirit has sent us down the wrong path’ he claims ‘to get (not) away from facts but closer to them, not fighting empiricism but, on the contrary, renewing empiricism’.3 No question: Latour’s call for a ‘realist attitude’ implies a postnormative conception of critique which – in contrast to critical theories analysing social power relations through approaches rooted in (post-) Marxism, the Frankfurt School, (post-) structuralism, cultural studies and recent sociology – aims at a notion of critique that is based not on debunking social and aesthetic meanings of objects but on assembling what he calls ‘things’.4 Latour’s theoretical model (‘parliament of things’) is to be understood as a gathering of multiple human- and non-human participants meant to constitute a symmetrical networks of actors.5 With regard to possible links between Carla Lonzi’s farewell to art criticism in the late 1960s and contemporary debates on the relevance of critique, especially in the context of Latour’s actor-network theory, the claim that ‘the critic is (…) the one who offers the participants arenas in which to gather’ instead of acting as ‘one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naïve believers’ seems to offer a meaningful comparison.6 What sounds like a plea for a non-hierarchic relationship between the subjects and the objects of critique, as well as between critics and their recipients, reminds not at least of the tradition of the anti-hermeneutic refusal to analyse artworks, literature and films

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primarily as manifestations of ‘ideology’, ‘illusion’ and ‘projection’ meant to symbolize latent or hidden social norms.7 In this regard, one famous example is Susan Sontag’s essay Against Interpretation (1963), whose basic stance seems to resonate with Carla Lonzi’s book Autoritratto (1969). Both share an aversion to a distinction of form and content they consider to be unsuitable for adequately grasping aesthetic works and experiences. Opposing a manipulative and alienating intellectualization of aesthetic experience, they claim a narrowing, if not an abolishment of the distance between artistic and critical practice. Whereas Sontag states that ‘[t]he aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art – and, by analogy, our own experience – more, rather than less, real to us’,8 Lonzi demands an integration of art critique into artistic creation.9 Comparable with Latour’s plea for a new empiricism, Sontag and Lonzi seem to make the case for an ‘implied ontology’ which, in Paul Ricoeur’s sense, proposes a rejection of post-interpretation that evokes an asymmetrical relationship between the aesthetic object and the critic.10 However, unlike Sontag, Lonzi does not claim a ‘distinct’ or immediate aesthetic existence; rather, she seeks to engender a social and creative affiliation of the interpreter and the beholders in the sphere of art: At a certain point I considered the work of art to be a possibility of encounter; it was the artist’s invitation directly to each one of us to participate. […] By institutionalizing the critical moment, our society has given birth to an absurdity: we differentiate between the critical moment and the creative moment and attribute to the critical moment a cultural and practical power we wield over art and artists. We do not acknowledge the fact that the artist, because of his own creative personality, is a natural critic.11

In current art criticism a whole array of comparable positions which oscillate between anti-hermeneutical and post-normative arguments could be mentioned. In this vein, the filmmaker and author Chris Kraus has declared in an interview with the artist Annette Weisser that ‘critique’ implies a fixed, monolithic structure that one can oppose, and it isn’t really like that. The things most threatening to us are much more amorphous. More than critique, I think the most vital thing now is for artists and writers to describe the present situation as accurately as possible, and theory can give us a sense of how the present has arrived.12

Calling into question the overcoming of the binary logic of the discourse of signature in twenty-first-century (art) criticism Kraus pushes the anti-hermeneutical implications of her position towards a ‘polymorphous’ concept of writing.13 This concept resembles Lonzi’s campaign against the division of labour between artists and critics. Since Kraus seems to echo Latour’s plea to get closer to the ‘facts’ instead of presupposing a normative critique of social reality, here we also observe a post-normative impulse. But are such claims so new? Post-normative-polymorphous speech has long been a common practice elsewhere, as exemplarily shown in the introduction to the 2015

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reader Spaces in Criticism. Shifts in Contemporary Art Discourses. Its editors correctly observe that critique has now become omnipresent in the press, in advertising, exhibition catalogues, in blogs and art guides. In this sense, today we need to expand the ‘poststructuralist’ question Michel Foucault raised at the end of the 1970s, ‘What is critique?’ and ask ‘where, when, how, whose, why, for what reason critique?’14 As becomes clear not only in the writings of Carla Lonzi but also in those of the USAmerican art critic Lucy R. Lippard, contemporary answers to these questions inscribe themselves precisely into those tensions between hermeneutical and antihermeneutical traditions of critique that overlap with feminist art criticism since the late 1960s.15 By this I mean the attempt to overcome the notion of distance based on binary thinking by countering it with an awareness of the involvement of the critic in the hierarchy of power relations and, consequently, the demand for a more empathetic participation around art and in art practice. Yet, as I would like to explain in this chapter, feminist thought – unlike Latour’s – grounds its anti-binary art judgements in a form of critique that does not necessarily seek to exclude (unavoidable) notions of power, society and discourse but to address and transform their normative character in an emancipative way.

Assembled self In the above-mentioned preface of her book Autoritratto, written on the eve of the feminist awakening around the year 1968, Lonzi attacked ‘the repressive control’ of art criticism ‘over art and the artists’ which, she argued, ‘mainly contains an ideology of art and of the artists of our time’.16 The author linked her claim to a question which is relevant to the above-mentioned debate on critique: ‘Where does this need for a guarantee come from?’17 She obviously believed to have found the reason in the fact of claiming the position of a critic-subject always already in the know. Lonzi tried to oppose this position by following the maxim that frames her book, in which art is interesting in that case when one approaches it without really knowing whether it is art at all. Inspired by the emancipatory spirit of 1968, Lonzi apparently finds that the subject of knowledge positing itself as normative agent cannot serve ‘human self-realization’ but merely the ‘consumption of art.’18 Thus, like to Sontag, Lonzi too rejected hermeneutics’ academic function of legitimization along with its patronizing attitude – and in additional comparison with Latour’s model, her book can be read as a gathering of heterogeneous ‘actors’ based on a network of people, artworks, ideas and materials. Furthermore, the declared ‘attempt to become part of this world’ seems to correspond to Latour’s claim for a ‘realist attitude’ – a step that in Lonzi’s view entails a consistent questioning of the (traditional) role of the critic.19 She had successfully played that role for ten years until her book of interviews was published in 1969, after which she abandoned art criticism, in order to fully engage in the feminist struggle.20 The reason for addressing Autoritratto against the background of the current debate outlined above is that the book demonstrates how highly relevant contemporary postnormative discourses were already in the mid-twentieth century. Anticipating Latour’s

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and Kraus’ concepts of the non-binary relation between the subjects and objects of critique, Lonzi’s Autoritratto consisted of a montage of conversations that she held between 1965 and 1969 with fourteen artists working in Italy: Pietro Consagra (her partner at the time), Piero Manzoni, Jannis Kounellis, Lucio Fontana, Cy Twombly and Carla Accardi (the only female artist and later her feminist ally). After she transcribed the interviews, Lonzi proceeded according to the avant-garde methods of the time (e.g. William Burroughs’ cut-up technique) by literally cutting apart the respective transcripts and assembling them again into a non-chronological montage. The polymorphous and polylogical dissonance of the dialogical fragments assembled in this way construes the simultaneous fiction of a community – or, in the words of Latour, an assembly – of equal voices. Since it is apparently suitable to rebut the classical function of the enquiring critic, Lonzi plays with the format of the Q&A by reversing the roles. She gives the floor to the artists, so that she herself becomes the subject of contemplation and reflection. Thus, she strings together the statements of the artists while neglecting the position of the critic in longer passages. This suggests a comparison with Kraus’ quest for a non-binary description of the present situation by artists and writers. The technique of montage evokes not only a shift from the dialogical to the polymorphous and polylogical but also an inextricable mixture of orality and narration. Such mixtures can also be found in other distinct writing formats such as the (auto)biographical and the (art)critical, the theoretical-reflective and the conversational-anecdotic, sometimes ranging all the way to chitchat and gossip. The way in which Lonzi intertwines her own statements with those of the artists is surely apt to counteract institutional hierarchies of functions and roles. This also applies to the montage of art-historical illustrations, photos from family albums and personal, intimate snapshots.21 All elements are equal at all times – an aspect that makes the conversations between the critic and the artists readable as a relationship characterized by both professional and personal levels, by public and intimate knowledge, strategic interests and emotional affects. Lonzi has the conversation montage start with a clear plea by Lucio Fontana: ‘What should I say if you don’t tell me what to talk about (…) you have to ask me questions … provoke me.’ To which she responds: ‘Let’s just start somewhere, I just want to … ’, followed by Pino Pascali: ‘I would like to have something like a theme. Yes … I would!’ A theme is then immediately provided, not by Lonzi, but by Mario Nigro: ‘I could stop doing paintings or sculptures or I could do something else … I could be an explorer, a warrior, a Franciscan monk, whatever.’ Other statements by the interviewed artists follow, before Lonzi again intervenes with a succinct interjection, an unspecified date: ‘So: Rome, the thirteenth … ’22 Lonzi does all she can to sabotage the art-critical speech act that the book obviously seeks to imitate in a half-parodic, half-serious way. Even if she does not intentionally keep silent, like in her conversation with Pascali published in marcatré, she attempts to make the normative position of art criticism visible in the negative (Figure 3.1).23 Therefore, her refusal to provide questions and themes results from the attempt to make her individual interview partners initiate the dialogue, in order to make them provide the questions and themes. In opposition to the usual interview format, Lonzi

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Figure 3.1  Carla Lonzi and Pino Pascali, ‘Discorsi’, marcatré 30–33 (July 1967): 239.

allows the interviewees to speak in epic broadness, while it takes a number of pages before she explains that this is precisely her intention: I wanted to make – how should I say – a more divagated book. Because what I find annoying … no, what I like about artists and I find annoying about art critics […] is this sense of measure, this jumping from one theme to the next. […] Always having to produce knowledge … the cultural practitioner, someone who must do cultural operations.24

Ironically, in the fall of 1969, Andy Warhol launched the lifestyle magazine Interview, still being published today, which contains nothing but interviews and ads and that, with its reports on media entertainment and cultural events, embodies the function that Lonzi sought to counter with her book project. Beside his Polaroid camera Warhol also used audiotape in order to record all sorts of social events like the meetings in his Factory, exhibition openings and parties. With their preference for the original quotes, one could – with reference to Irit Rogoff – ask whether and to what extent both

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Lonzi and Warhol were interested in a definition of gossip understood as ordinary and/ or mass-cultural expression. Usually denounced as a female habit, gossip represents a gendered way of communication and knowledge production, and Rogoff defends it against its bad reputation and presents it, instead, as a subversive mode of knowledge which is capable of destabilizing the male canon of modern art history and culture.25 Lonzi’s method, based on the accumulation and recombination of text fragments, is obviously less suitable to bring the private sides and intimate secrets of stars and personalities of public life to the surface. Instead, she draws a collective portrait of the Italian avant-garde at the time while implementing the creed that the private is political, which would later become the guideline of the international women’s movement. The manner in which she questions this claim during the course of the conversations grants insights into the social and mental condition of an art milieu stretching across an older and a younger generation. Even if the artists in Lonzi’s experiment reveal more or less undaunted avant-gardist claims, they obviously struggled to get involved in the kind of institutional critique and transformation of their traditional social role as intended by her. Hence, the simultaneity of the conversations held with members of different generations over several years does not only turn into a fictive narration that replaces traditional notions of critique, but it also produces the model of a subject that does away with its attachment to binary logics. This subject becomes radically (self-) involved in a way that has been explained by the artist group Claire Fontaine: Lonzi speaks from what Maria Luisa Boccia calls the different point of view of the ‘unexpected subject,’ which is the position of feminist political struggles from the French Revolution to the twentieth century. […] There is no longer any ‘good side of the barricade,’ because in this perspective, there are no barricades. Our subjectivities themselves are the battlefield.26

In my view, this quote makes it clear that the basic idea of the post-normative critique manifested in Autoritratto is possible only through the concept of a subject that must ‘sublate’ itself, to use a Hegelian terminology, towards a non-binary subject-object relation in the speech act or the act of writing that it constitutes. I find that Lonzi’s Dada-like attempt to empty the speech act or the act of writing goes in this direction: ‘(Y)es, yes … no, no … I really always … ’27 Lonzi’s deconstructive performance implies a radical (self-)confrontation with her respective interview partner and thus undermines the binary and hierarchical structure of language inherent to the institutional code of (art) mediation which is, instead, replaced by the constitutive blind spots, misunderstandings and blackouts of interpersonal communication. This is suggested, for example, by Lonzi’s decision to have her own (alleged) stuttering followed by a fragment in which Mimmo Rotella says: ‘Really … Can you repeat that? Because I didn’t understand it correctly.’28 Precisely such moments suggestive of authenticity, like silence and stuttering, but also elliptical, epic and rambling speech, denaturalize art-critical speech. With these devices, the critical work of interpretation and attribution of meaning is finally transferred onto us, the readers. The way in which Lonzi connects literary, scientific, anecdotal, theoretical and mundane aesthetic formats (autobiography, conversation,

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description, work illustration, snapshot, etc.) allows for ‘authorship’ and ‘material’ to merge and to appear as variegated activities distributed across different times, standpoints and places. This seems to be Lonzi’s strategy that hits us ‘between the eyes with [as yet unknown] things’,29 so that those involved see themselves forced to abandon their distance and, with it, the binary relationship to the things that also structure their relationship to power and society. The erratic and associative textual fabric of the book does not aim at levelling out criticism but at newly positioning it as a polylogical scene reminiscent of the literary avant-garde’s critique of rationalism in which every actor appears in alternating roles. For example, Lonzi has the artists evolve into critics of the critics, when she cites Kounellis’ accusation that they start from ‘their own integrated assumptions’.30 Lonzi parries this off with a counterattack: ‘It is indeed odd that all artists always deceive themselves: “Let’s see if I can manage to …”’31 A parry she combines with a self-debunking statement by Enrico Castellani: ‘ … if I can manage to score off the one who said this or that about me. No matter if he has no idea or perhaps didn’t do it intentionally, he at any rate withheld what I wanted to say.’32 Such passages bring usually hidden aspects of the art world, such as mistrust, resentment, competition and power relations to light as well as they satirise them. The montage of interviews with artists that Lonzi had previously published elsewhere seems to have served as both an individual and collective respectively institutional (self-)analysis that allows for Autoritratto to be read as the experiment of a group of artists under the direction of a critic seeking to elucidate one’s own covetousness and entanglements. For example, when Lonzi at one point intersperses the phrase ‘A kiss from Luciano Fabro’, it is not at the service of the spectacle of intimacy that Foucault analysed with concept of the ‘injunction of confession’ (a symptom of a modern media culture taking recourse to techniques of truth), but it represents the manifestation of an emotional involvement and partisan complicity reflecting on the interaction of critics and artists.33 In a way similar to Lonzi’s venture, the American art critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard counters the dominating formalist detachment of Michael Fried, Clement Greenberg or Hilton Kramer with the necessity of a personal involvement with art criticism. Her statement ‘to respond to all art on a far more personal level’ is unequivocal in this sense: ‘I’m more than willing to be confessional, vulnerable, autobiographical, even embarrassing, if that seems called for.’34 In the same vein, Lonzi, too, is intent on subverting the institutional or academic legitimacy of her role through the subjectivity and relativity of art-critical speech. After staging herself over longer passages as an art critic whose diagnoses of the condition of contemporary art signal analytical distance, she then switches – as in her dialogues with Pietro Consagra – to the position of the quarrelling lover or – as in the case of Carla Accardi – the position of the allied girlfriend. Lonzi’s play with alternating roles at no point neglects de facto existing power relations but addresses the manifold positionalities within the frame of relations between the participating actors, thereby allowing for the complexity and inconsistency of art assessment to come up for discussion. Following Consagra’s polemic against the critic’s ‘(neurotic) thirst for knowledge,’ Lonzi says, ‘I could hug you’, to then have this immediately followed by Accardi’s attack against the audience-oriented appropriation

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of art.35 It remains unclear whether Lonzi’s call is to be read as a response to her lover and/or as a declaration of intent that could equally apply to her girlfriend. Hence, Lonzi’s strategy of elliptical omissions and the (re)combination of interview fragments also touches upon gender-specific codes of art-critical speech. Captured as such, she intervenes thus in the self-images of her male interviewees. Nigro’s not exactly modest statement that it appeared to him as if he ‘in 1948 – without wanting to sound presumptuous – caused a break with an entire tradition, because until then the picture was really a picture […],’ gives Lonzi the occasion to add a photo depicting the artist ten years earlier, in 1938, as the captain of a football team.36 This montage indicates an interest in the macho (self-)images that she would later ramp up with Accardi in the frame of the project Rivolta Femminile which she launched in 1970. In summary, one can say that Lonzi’s critique of art criticism always also aims at socio-biographical narratives that are excluded from academic discourses but that nevertheless play a significant role for archetypal representations. As much as she seeks the closeness to the artists she interviews, she also draws their self-images into the whirl of her at once deconstructing and reconstructing montage. So what Autoritratto offers to us as readers is a combination of subjective and objective narratives that is capable of reviewing the history of Italian art around 1967 in a fashion that is critical of institutions and authorship, a critique that is inherent in Carla Lonzi’s writing experiment. And that is possible, as Giovanna Zapperi states, even though the way Autoritratto is being regarded as entirely incompatible with the role that art criticism plays until today in establishing the canon of modern art.37

Lonzi in context Launched at about the same time as Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation (1963) and the emergence of the post-structuralist critique of authorship, the historical significance of Lonzi’s project lies not only in its relevance to the feminist version of art and institutional critique established in the 1970s, but also in the overlapping between art writing and art criticism, and thus, given the hybrid status of these works, goes back to Diderot’s method of philosophical dialogue in Rameau’s Nephew (1774) and his famous Salons.38 From this vantage point, one could draw a parallel between Lonzi’s deconstruction of art criticism by means of rhetorical and/or poetic interventions in the form of silence, stuttering, elliptical omissions, etc. In her essay ‘The Aesthetics of Silence’, published in 1969, Sontag argued that really great art and philosophy – to which she counts Arthur Rimbaud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marcel Duchamp and Ingmar Bergman – is possible only under the condition of stealing one’s own history, and that means through a break with the language that legitimises history: The truly serious attitude is one that regards art as a ‘means’ to something that can perhaps be achieved only by abandoning art; judged more impatiently, art is a false way or (the word of the Dada artist Jacques Vaché) a stupidity. […] Silence in this sense, as termination, proposes a mood of ultimacy antithetical to the mood

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informing the self-conscious artist’s traditional serious use of silence: as a zone of meditation, preparation for spiritual ripening, an ordeal which ends in gaining the right to speak. (Cf. Valery, Rilke)39

Seen through Lonzi’s perspective, one could understand Sontag’s avant-garde discourse, which is doubtless heroizing and male-oriented, in the sense that an anti-normative discourse is the prerequisite and condition for the emergence of something new that deserves to be called ‘art’ in the first place. Sontag’s definition of an ‘aesthetic of silence’ seems to be in line with Lonzi’s endeavour to overcome the history of art critique as an institution into which the ‘false’ separation between ‘creation’ and ‘critique’, in the sense of a division of labour, is inscribed.40 Here, concepts of power, society and discourse are not brushed aside, as with Latour; instead, they form the constitutive horizon of her (allegedly) post-normative critique – a moment that is an ethically understood practice within Lonzi’s entirely avant-gardist perspective on art: ‘If art in the sense of creation does not correspond with my abilities, art in the sense of creativity does, so that art implies the orientation towards the good.’41 The ‘good,’ then, consists of a creative turn of criticism, and concluding from my reading of the book, this turn lies in a poly-authorial and simultaneously polymorphous co-articulation of a critique of art, society and power in the sense of overcoming the hierarchical binary of the subject–object relations. By letting Carla Accardi have the last say in Autoritratto, one can assume that Lonzi gives her the programmatic privilege of heralding the future of criticism: But I don’t mean, now … that I want this man-woman problem to be, and that’s it. One day one tells me ‘there is no such problem’. No, no, no … when I wake up the following day, the problem is still there. […] because a woman, if she wants to change her methods, always has to keep in mind the fact that she is struggling, to become able to enjoy a bit of happiness.42

Not only in this regard is Lonzi’s experiment with a polymorphous and polylogical articulation of critique worth recalling in a time in which the advocates of postnormative judgement seriously believe that they can dispense with the concepts of power, society and discourse. By existentially questioning the institutionalized power of criticism that is so essential for its very survival, Autoritratto proves the necessity to relate it to social roles and divisions of labour like those of and between men and women. Instead, art criticism becomes visible as a process in which discourse and dialogue, fragmented and reflective writing, chance and omission, narration and projection, etc. are mixed in such a way that it approximates the communication between equal actors as envisioned by Lonzi: A procedure that oscillates between hermeneutics and antihermeneutics as well as between a normative and a post-normative concepts of critique. Lonzi deals with this aporia through a radical disappropriation of the critic and through a radical appropriation of the dialogue in terms of an always already selfinterpreting mode of language.43 Translated from German by Karl Hoffmann

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Notes 1 See Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’, New Left Review 146 (July–August 1984), 53–92. 2 See Bruno Latour, ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2, special issue on The Future of Critique (2004), 229. 3 Latour starts with a reference to deconstruction’s responses to postmodernism (e.g. Baudrillard) and sociology (e.g. Bourdieu). Latour, ‘Why Has Critique’, 225; 228 and 231. 4 Latour, ‘Why Has Critique’, 234. 5 See Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1993). 6 Latour, ‘Why Has Critique’, 246. Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) has had a huge impact, as it is demonstrated by the overwhelming quantity of academic publications referring to it, but also the appropriation of Latour’s language by the art world, as in documenta 13 and documenta 14 (e.g. ‘parliament of bodies’). 7 Ibid., 246; 240. 8 Susan Sontag, ‘Against Interpretation’, in Against Interpretation, and other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Girous, New York, 1966), 2–10. 9 Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto. Accardi, Alviani, Cstellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly (Rome: et al./ Edizioni, 2010), 5. 10 See Paul Ricœur, ‘Existence and Hermeneutics’, in Don Ihde, ed., The Conflict of Interpretations (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), 18–19. 11 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 3–4. English trans. in Zero to Infinity. Arte Povera: 1962–1972, exh. Cat. (Lonodn and Minneapolis: Walker Art Center and Tate, 2001), 165. 12 Chris Kraus and Annette Weisser, ‘For Every Theory There Is a Novel’, in Geraldine Gourbe, ed., In the Canyon, Revise the Canon. Utopian Knowledge, Radical Pedagogy and Artist-run Community Art Space in Southern California (Lescheraines: Shelter Press, 2015), 133. 13 Kraus and Weisser, ‘For Every Theory’, 133. 14 Thijs Lijster, Suzana Milevska, Pascal Gielen, and Ruth Sonderegger, ‘Introduction. A Topology of Criticism’, in Thijs Lijster, Suzana Milevska, Pascal Gielen, and Ruth Sonderegger, eds, Spaces for Criticism Shifts in Contemporary Art Discourses (Amsterdam: Antennae Valiz, 2015), 13. On the question of ‘how’, see also Tanja Widmann, Die Verstrickung der Distanz. Eine paradoxe Figur der Kritik der Kunst (Vienna: Academy of Fine Arts, forthcoming). 15 Lippard’s negotiation of art criticism led to an exploration of the fictional genre. See Lucy Lippard, I See/You Mean: A Novel (Los Angeles: Chrysalis Books, 1979). 16 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 4–5. 17 Ibid., 5. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 See Giovanna Zapperi, ‘Challenging Feminist Art History: Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths’, in Victoria Horne and Lara Perry, eds, Feminism and Art History Now: Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 104. 21 See Teresa Kittler’s contribution in this volume.

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22 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 7. 23 See C. Lonzi and P. Pascali, ‘Discorsi: Carla Lonzi e Pino Pascali’, marcatré, 30–3 (1967), 239–45; now in Carla Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, eds, Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, and Vanessa Martini (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2012), 525–37. I thank Giovanna Zapperi for his reference. 24 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 16. 25 Irit Rogoff, ‘Gossip as Testimony: A Postmodern Signature’ in Amelia Jones, ed., The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (Routledge: London and New York, 2003), 268–76. I thank Francesco Ventrella for this reference. 26 Claire Fontaine, ‘We are all clitoridian women. Notes on Carla Lonzi’s Legacy’, e-flux journal 47 (September 2013). Available online: www.e-flux.com/journal/we-are-allclitoridian-women-notes-on-carla-lonzi-legacy/letzter (accessed 30 July 2016). 27 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 8. 28 Ibid. 29 Walter Benjamin, ‘This Space for Rent’, in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913–1926, eds, Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 476. 30 Kounellis says ‘un preconcetto proprio integrato’. Lonzi, Autoritratto, 23. 31 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 24. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 25. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 68. 34 See Lucy R. Lippard, ‘Introduction: Changing since Changing’ in From the Center. Feminist Essays on Women’s Art (New York and Toronto: Dutton, 1976), 2. 35 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 21. 36 Ibid., 38. 37 Zapperi, ‘Challenging Feminist Art History’, 106. 38 Denis Diderot, Diderot on Art, vol. 2, The Salon of 1767, trans. John Goodman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 39 Susan Sontag, ‘The Aesthetics of Silence’ [1967], in Styles of Radical Will (London: Secker and Warburg, 1969), 3–34. 40 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 5. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 300. 43 In analogy with Ricœur, ‘Existence and Hermeneutics’, 3–24.

References Benjamin, W. (1996), ‘This Space for Rent’, in Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, eds, Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926, trans. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 476. Diderot, D. (1995), Diderot on Art, vol. 2, The Salon of 1767, trans. John Goodman, New Haven: Yale University Press. Fontaine, C. (2013), ‘We Are All Clitoridian Women. Notes on Carla Lonzi’s Legacy’, e-flux journal 47. Available online: www.e-flux.com/journal/we-are-all-clitoridian-womennotes-on-carla-lonzi’s-legacy/letzter. (accessed 30 July 2016).

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Jameson, F. (1984), ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’, New Left Review 146 (July–August): 53–92. Kraus, C. and Weisser, A. (2015), ‘For Every Theory there Is a Novel’, in Geraldine Gourbe, ed., In the Canyon, Revise the Canon. Utopian Knowledge, Radical Pedagogy and Artistrun Community Art Space in Southern California, Lescheraines: Shelter Press, 127–34. Latour, B. (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2: 225–48. Latour, B. (1993), We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press. Lijster, T., Milevska, S., Gielen, P., and Sonderegger, R. (2015), ‘Introduction. A Topology of Criticism’, in T. Lijster, S. Milevska, P. Gielen, and R. Sonderegger, eds, Spaces for Criticism Shifts in Contemporary Art Discourses, Amsterdam: Antennae Valiz, 127–134. Lippard, L. (1979), I See/You Mean: A Novel, Los Angeles: Chrysalis Books. Lippard, L. (1976), ‘Introduction: Changing since Changing’ in From the Center. Feminist Essays on Women’s Art, New York and Toronto: Dutton, 1–11. Lonzi, C. (2012), Scritti sull’arte, eds, Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, and Vanessa Martini, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1969] 2010), Autoritratto. Accardi, Alviani, Cstellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, Milan: et al./ Edizioni. Lonzi, C. and Pascali, P. (1967), ‘Discorsi: Carla Lonzi e Pino Pascali’, marcatré 30–3 (1967): 239–45. Ricœur, P. (2004), ‘Existence and Hermeneutics’, trans. K. McLaughlin in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. Don Ihde, London and New York: Continuum, 3–24. Rogoff, I. (2003), ‘Gossip as Testimony: A Postmodern Signature’ in Amelia Jones, ed., The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, Routledge: London and New York, 268–76. Sontag, S. ([1967] 1969), ‘The Aesthetics of Silence’, in Styles of Radical Will, London: Secker and Warburg, 3–34. Sontag, S. (1966), ‘Against Interpretation’, in Against Interpretation, and Other Essays, New York: Farrar, Straus and Girous, 2–10. Widmann, T. (forthcoming), Die Verstrickung der Distanz. Eine paradoxe Figur der Kritik der Kunst, Vienna: Academy of Fine Arts. Zapperi, G. (2017), ‘Challenging Feminist Art History: Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths’, Victoria Horne and Lara Perry, eds, Feminism and Art History Now: Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice, London: I.B. Tauris, 104–23.

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4

The making of a feminist subject: Autonomy, authenticity and withdrawal Giovanna Zapperi

In 1970, Carla Lonzi abandoned the art world in order to fully engage in feminism. However, her withdrawal did not mean that she ceased to reflect on the relationship between art and its patriarchal structures: on the contrary, her critique of art plays a crucial role in the process of imagining a new feminist subjectivity. Lonzi’s experience at the forefront of the Italian avant-garde was crucial to the subsequent experimentations of alternative forms of collective life and creativity which she pursued throughout the 1970s. Carla Lonzi’s feminism involves a number of aspects that are strongly connected to her art criticism, as it was over the course of this previous activity that she elaborated some of the concepts that were soon to be translated into a new feminist vocabulary. Her ideas about the artist’s autonomy and authenticity, her notion of culture as a repressive force, the emphasis on relations and the critique of authority within the art field are crucial to her feminism. In particular, Lonzi’s critique of art – considered as a sum of institutions, power relations and forms of sociability – is the basis upon which she developed a feminist practice of disidentification. Her continuous search for valuable forms of disobedience against the patriarchal organization of life is based upon the refusal to comply with the male mechanisms of reputation and success. Lonzi’s desire to establish non-hierarchical relations and communities explicitly counters the patriarchal emphasis on success and competition. Lonzi’s withdrawal is thus not merely a stepping aside. Rather, it becomes a challenging project which engages a desire for a transformation in which life, creativity and self-expression can exist in radically new ways. Lonzi’s writings from the late 1960s and the early 1970s demonstrate the significance of her withdrawal from art for her elaboration of a feminist subjectivity. In what follows, I wish to look at her notions of the artist’s autonomy and authenticity as they emerge throughout the 1960s, and particularly in conjunction with the 1968 uprisings, in order to consider how some of these ideas will be translated into Lonzi’s practice of disidentification. In Autoritratto, the artist’s freedom and autonomy is discussed through a set of arguments that will return, although in a different manner, in Rivolta Femminile’s early texts. Some of these arguments are crucial to her understanding of female autonomy. Indeed, the definition of a feminist subjectivity is grounded on her changing perception of the artist’s authenticity and autonomy.

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The artist’s authenticity The publication of Autoritratto [Self-portrait] in 1969 was the result of Lonzi’s attempt to imagine a new form of relation between artists and critics, which would be based on horizontality and mutual recognition.1 The book defines a relational space in which the critic becomes aware of her institutional role and identification. In the process of Lonzi’s own emancipation from the profession of art criticism, artists emerge as role models: they embody a specific form of freedom that Lonzi calls authenticity, a feature that will become crucial in her subsequent ideas about woman’s subjectivity. However, a few months after the book’s publication, Lonzi also came to realize that her endeavours to connect (and identify) with the artists were bound to fail, as art revealed itself as a social relation in which authenticity was, in the end, impossible. Authenticity is a key concept in Carla Lonzi’s vocabulary and plays a vital role which operates a key pivot on the trajectory that led her to withdraw from the art world in order to embrace feminism. Authenticity primarily refers to woman’s search for autonomy. This notion acquires its specific meaning in conjunction with what Lonzi calls a process of ‘deculturation’, which designates the endless process of breaking the ties binding the subject to a given, gendered identity. The genealogy of Lonzi’s use of this term can be traced back to French Existentialism or to her early reading of Adorno; however, Lonzi’s complex and often ambivalent use of this notion challenges any attempt to read it in a unilateral way.2 The concept of authenticity connects her art criticism to her feminism as its use during the 1970s bears the traces of the modernist notion of the artwork, which Lonzi now strongly opposes. Authenticity appears therefore enmeshed in a web of meanings referring to art, the artist’s freedom, the process of becoming subject, female sexuality and the need to disidentify from established gender roles. At the same time, authenticity sometimes became a sort of substance that can be possessed (or not), like an ultimate goal that could easily be used as an admonition in ways that had disruptive effects within the group’s dynamics. Authenticity thus turned into a battleground and its unstable meaning has to be traced back to Lonzi’s understanding of the artist’s subjectivity and freedom. Scholarly investigations on the meaning of authenticity have focused on Lonzi’s use of this term in her feminist writings and have underlined its strategic role in the process of imagining a feminist subjectivity.3 Conversely, Lonzi’s reference to authenticity in her art criticism has been largely overlooked in spite of its crucial role in her critique of art’s institutions and practices. In what follows, I maintain that this notion connects Lonzi’s identification with the artists during the 1960s to her subsequent withdrawal from art. What interests me is the opportunity to understand how ‘authenticity’ has travelled from Lonzi’s art criticism into her feminism and has informed her ideas about the making of a feminist subjectivity. More specifically, I am interested in excavating the meaning of her understanding of women’s authenticity in light of the modernist discourses around the artist’s autonomy and freedom. In 1970, after she wrote Sputiamo su Hegel [Let’s spit on Hegel], Lonzi published a polemical article entitled ‘La critica è potere’ (Art criticism is power) where she clarified the importance of authenticity in her decision to leave art.4 Considered

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her very last article to be published in an art magazine, it attacked the activity that she had been carrying out for over a decade. The magazine NAC (Notiziario Arte Contemporanea), where the text was published, had launched a debate on the role of art criticism and its crisis, prompted by the publication of Germano Celant’s article ‘Per una critica acritica’ (For an acritical criticism).5 In Lonzi’s contribution, the notion of authenticity ambivalently emerges as both that which ruptures and as that which continues some of the ideas developed in her writings. As a matter of fact, this text indicates how some of the key concepts that she had developed in the 1960s were now in the process of being translated into a new political vocabulary. The article argues for the artist’s authenticity against the critic’s interpretation, which she considers an attempt ‘to justify on the level of ideas what is, in fact, an outcome of a condition of authenticity’.6 According to Lonzi, the artist’s inherent authenticity is an ‘ahistorical value’;7 therefore, it cannot be subsumed within the Hegelian dialectics of History. If we consider that this short text follows, or is concomitant to, the writing of Let’s Spit on Hegel, it becomes clear that, at this stage, artists and women share the same condition of extraneity with respect to the Marxist understanding of a revolutionary subject. In Autoritratto, the artist’s authenticity was set in opposition to the critic’s ‘artificial’ activity, whereas ‘Art criticism is power’ introduces this concept as a political issue. What transpires through this article is the suggestion that, in this moment of transition, Lonzi is elaborating some of the concepts that have led her to abandon her previous activity. Just as she is leaving the art world, Lonzi focuses on some of the ideas that were pivotal in her contestation of art and in opening up a different direction in her search for an emancipatory politics. In modernist art criticism, the notion of authenticity is related to a series of processes aimed at defining the artwork. Aesthetic, institutional and economic values are dependent on the work’s authenticity, which is in turn related to its author’s identification as an artist. Being herself a former student of prominent Italian art historian Roberto Longhi, Lonzi had received training in differentiating the artist’s authentic and singular gesture throughout the history of painting. The connoisseurial practice of attribution was crucial in Longhi’s teaching: it consisted in a specific training of the eye enabling the art historian to recognize the author of a given painting or sculpture. Longhi’s methods defined a specific form of connoisseurship in which the visual evidence of the artwork and its connection to a specific author were equally crucial.8 For Lonzi authenticity applies to the artists rather than to their work, and it represents a way of distancing herself from the aesthetic judgement that distinguished much of art criticism’s Italian tradition. Throughout the 1960s, Lonzi’s relations with her fellow artists become increasingly important in her activity. In Autoritratto, she barely speaks about works of art, which, as she would later recall, she would receive ‘with her eyes closed’.9 From the mid-1960s, while continuing to write traditional reviews and articles for art magazines, she initiated a series of dialogues with several artists, in which she began to reflect upon her own activity from the point of view of her subjectivity. As she would go on to write in her diary: ‘Autoritratto is an acknowledgment of the artists’ authenticity in which I express my own self-nomination as a subject.’10 This is perhaps the reason why the term ‘authenticity’ is less present in the book, where Lonzi opts to

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experiment with, rather than theorize, a practice of art criticism based on what she considers to be her authentic relation with the artists.11 The shift from the work of art towards the artist’s persona was an effect of the transformations that were occurring in 1960s art. Lonzi’s commitment to the artist also ambivalently reassesses modernist notions of art and artist, and is reminiscent of her own training as Longhi’s student. Lonzi was aware of the transformative potential contained in the artistic forms that were questioning art’s practices and material conditions by the end of the 1960s. However, her use of the term ‘authenticity’ contains a number of contradictions. This notion suggests a number of traditional ideas about the artist’s intentionality, although Lonzi was mostly interested in artistic practices and processes that were strongly contesting the artist’s intentionality and calling it out as a modernist myth. As Mary Kelly has argued, ‘during the 1960s artistic practices attempted to repudiate the notions of genius, originality and taste, by introducing material processes, series, systems and ideas in place of an art based on self-expression.’12 These practices were intended to free the work of art from the artist’s intentionality through a set of heterogeneous procedures that were focused on process, participation and a variety of discursive practices. What Lonzi shared with these positions was the contradictory endeavour which consisted in overthrowing the foundations of artistic tradition, while at the same time securing the artist’s subjectivity as a primary agent of art’s production. Lonzi borrows the notion of authenticity from art criticism’s modernist vocabulary; however, its meaning is adjusted to fit her commitment to this new configuration of the artist’s relation to the artwork. This is a crucial feature of 1960s Italian art, when the refusal of traditional artistic forms could coexist with the hyperbolic reaffirmation of the artist’s subjectivity. Alex Potts has emphasized that in the context of 1950s–60s Italian art, the elaboration of a new artistic personality was entwined with the question of art’s autonomy. With the emergence of Arte Povera, ‘a strikingly self-conscious refashioning of artistic persona emerged based on a casual, often playfully ironic, takeit-or-leave-it engagement with everyday things and substances’.13 With reference to Arte Povera artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Pino Pascali or Michelangelo Pistoletto – some of whom were close to Lonzi – Potts argues that this new configuration of the artist’s persona coexisted with a variety of ambivalent attitudes towards the supposed authenticity of the creative gesture. This resulted in a series of artworks that looked openly manufactured, while at the same time refusing any reference to the artist’s gesture and expressivity. For many of these artists, the production of objects that seemed freed from the artist’s authentic gesture concerned not so much the artwork itself but their self-definition as artists.14 Lonzi seems to have grasped some of these mechanisms, with one example being her definition of the artists who she was interested in as both ‘conceptual’ and ‘authentic’, two typically contradictory definitions that could coexist in the operation that had led to Autoritratto: I had a long conversation with Sara about the artists: she calls them ‘conceptual artists,’ for me they were my friends, of course some of the very few, from the conceptual crowd, who expressed themselves in Autoritratto in a way that was

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the only one I could listen to without vomiting […]. Back then, I did not find anything more authentic than this handful of artists, their voices were the most original.15

In crediting the artist with a sort of inherent authenticity, Lonzi seemed to be struggling with a dilemma that required a rethinking of subjectivity in relation to objects that resisted the mechanisms of authentication. This is perhaps the reason why, once removed from the object, authenticity became entangled with her notion of the subject. In her 1970s reflections on art criticism, she also alludes to the connection between creativity and authenticity in the modernist vocabulary, writing: ‘I was attracted by creativity because it was a process in which authenticity was rendered manifest and worthy of recognition.’16 For Lonzi, authenticity is the sign of the artist’s freedom, i.e. the ability to express oneself beyond the forgeries of culture. In ‘Art criticism is power’ she makes reference to Malevich’s ideas of autonomy, arguing that art’s subject matter is art itself, because ‘the work of art is of a different substance which differentiates it from other cultural products, inasmuch as its subject matter cannot be contested: the work of art represents a moment of “high consciousness” that eludes the explanations to which culture is condemned’.17 In suggesting that the creative gesture renders authenticity manifest, Lonzi indicates that it is already there. Authenticity can be neither achieved nor obtained; it can only be revealed. This is what emerges from Lonzi’s use of this notion with reference to the artists. This line of reasoning is perhaps a consequence of the ways in which, in modernist discourses, the intertwined notions of autonomy and authenticity produce a distinction between art and labour. The artist’s autonomy from social relations prevents his working capacity from becoming socially available. Freedom and liberation can therefore overlap: the subject of liberation is presented as already free inasmuch as all the artist has to do is render manifest what he or she already possesses, that is, authenticity. For Lonzi, authenticity is the sign of the artist’s autonomy, a position that she would later transpose into her subsequent elaboration of a feminist subjectivity. By the time of Autoritratto, she argues that art needs to be liberated from the cultural constraints and institutions, including art criticism and theory, that prevent the unleashing of its liberating potential. At the same time, Lonzi also tries to adapt this notion of autonomy to her understanding of art as an experience rather than as an autonomous object. In an unpublished letter written in August 1970, she responds to an unnamed critic’s query about the widespread idea of a crisis in art, arguing that ‘[art] modifies and develops itself in accordance with the demands of life, and in so doing, art moves away from cultural categories and expectations, namely from the theories of art elaborated within culture’.18 As a consequence, critics typically underestimate the artist’s non-identification with cultural structures and institutions by depicting their gestures in negative terms. Art institutions, including criticism, always try to contain and neutralize the artist’s freedom. As Lonzi has already maintained in Autoritratto, artists have to move away from the institution in which their activity is contained in order to address life, as such: ‘the art problem is always a life problem, it’s not a cultural problem. Do you see what I mean? It does not concern the university. People are tired

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of playing the public or the apprentice, they want to enter the thing, or rather, they feel that they are already in it.’19 This notion of art as an activity encompassing all aspects of life, and the ensuing refusal of art’s allocated spaces (the museum, the gallery, the collector’s private homes), was a decisive aspect in the contestation of the modernist legacy. Lonzi’s conception of authenticity encompasses the same contradictions that structured Italian artistic debates and practices during these years. It was within this framework that she also condemned the mechanisms of the selection and evaluation of art, considering them to be excessively compromised owing to their association with the institution. However, what remains unchanged from her criticism, at least until 1970, is the idea that the artist is an autonomous figure, whose creativity has an inherent raison d’être and meaning, which exists beyond art criticism’s ‘repressive control upon art and artists’.20 If anything, Lonzi strives to imagine a different relation between artist and society, one that seems to be inevitably entangled in the ambivalences of authenticity.21 The contradiction structuring Lonzi’s understanding of authenticity gives away her tendency to present the artist’s experience in absolute terms. At the same time, Autoritratto also demonstrates that the artist’s subjectivity is caught up in a network of relations and dialogues, which contradicts the image of its singularity and coherence inherited from the modernist tradition. In Autoritratto, Lonzi’s relational practice becomes the ground upon which she is able to accomplish the process of unravelling her own role as a critic. However, the book also became a source of disappointment as the artists themselves were not ready to follow the same path. Their dependence on the cultural structures defining creativity resulted in their refusal to challenge the ways in which all aspects of the artist’s life are regulated by the mechanisms of reputation and success. By the early 1970s, Lonzi became aware of this divide: ‘The artist – she writes in her diary – is far too loaded with myth.’22 During the 1970s, Lonzi’s conception of artists and critics underwent a dramatic shift: the artist’s autonomy has now turned into ideology, while the critic is no longer associated with a repressive and authoritative function but has become a feminized figure and the victim of the artist’s deceit. From now on, Lonzi’s elaboration of authenticity as part of her feminist agenda will be grounded in her changing ideas about artists and critics.

Autonomy and dissent: Lonzi’s 1968 According to Paul Ginsborg, 1968 marks the beginning of the greatest season of collective action in Italian history, when a growing wave of contestation swept across Italian universities, factories and institutions, and a mass feminist movement sought to overturn the country’s social structures.23 Over these years, Italian institutions were contested at every single level by way of an unprecedented reconfiguration of the individual and the collective. Luisa Passerini underlines the significance of 1968 for Italian society, as it posed the conditions for the rise of a number of new collective subjects and individual voices, which became visible for the first time.24 According to Passerini the revolts marked a moment in which the affective sphere – such as emotions,

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personal relations and other aspects of social life traditionally dismissed as feminine – suddenly became relevant and began to be perceived as a crucial component within a process of collective becoming subject. Lonzi’s search for a practice of art criticism based on subjectivity, affects and relationality must be resituated in the wider context of a collective displacement towards a number of existential dimensions traditionally associated with femininity. However, her positions on the revolts of 1968 were, and always remained, ambivalent, as she refused to see any connection between the numerous collective actions that were shaking up Italian social and political life and the birth of the feminist movement. In Autoritratto, discussions often address the artist’s autonomy in the context of the political turmoil of 1968. In this respect, Lonzi insists on her need to distance herself from the critic’s ‘false profession’, making reference to the artist’s authenticity, which was a way for her to rethink her activity. She considers the artist’s ability to evade identification with a role, category or profession as a decisive aspect of his or her autonomy. Artists participating in the conversation show a similar understanding of autonomy as a form of resistance against the power dynamics of culture. The discussion around these issues intensified in the wake of the mounting contestation across Italian art institutions. At that time, Lonzi and Consagra had just returned to Italy from the United States and Lonzi was still recovering from her surgery in Boston, where she had been diagnosed with cancer. Luciano Fabro, Enrico Castellani, Carla Accardi, Pietro Consagra, Giulio Turcato and Carla Lonzi herself discuss the significance of the revolts from the point of view of the artist’s freedom. The upheavals become a way to engage in a debate about the relation between art and life, the power of the institution and the social role of the artist. Their positions, however, often take a defensive stand against the accusation, coming from sections of the protest, of the artist’s accommodation with power. Enrico Castellani argues for example that ‘the contestation was not directed against artists as such […], the charge was always against power and against the structures in which the oppressive side of power becomes recognizable’.25 From his perspective, power always identifies with the institution, such as the Venice Biennale, in which art’s subversive potential is channelled and neutralized. In his intervention, Consagra also takes the side of the artist’s freedom, as he believes that art must remain autonomous from the social relations surrounding creative activity: ‘an artist is a free man, he is free in his profession, this is the point. Whenever an artist finds himself in the situation of being under influence, he loses his freedom.’26 This passage indicates that, according to Consagra, as soon as the artist conforms to a social or cultural demand, his activity becomes a role, and autonomy is lost. On the contrary, in order to secure his freedom, the artist has to go beyond these mechanisms and go right to the point of renunciation: ‘this is a position of absolute freedom, for that reason society will never catch him.’27 Furthermore, thanks to this freedom, an artist can take advantage of his or her position in society in order to transform the conditions of his or her activity: ‘The artist […] uses the System for his own purposes and therefore he can modify things while using one thing and escaping something else.’28 Consagra’s argument recalls a short text that Lonzi had written with Luciano Fabro in response to the occupation of the Triennale di Milano in May and to the revolts that

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disrupted the opening of the Venice Biennale in June 1968. This short text (which was also signed by Giulio Paolini and another unidentified person) is reported by Lonzi in Autoritratto, just before Consagra’s intervention, as part of the discussion on the topic. The Triennale di Milano opened on 30th of May but was occupied and shut down by protesters – mostly students, artists, architects and designers – that same day. During the following week the exhibition space became a headquarter for political debates and self-organized assemblies, before the police evacuated the occupiers on the 8th of June.29 The disruption in Milan was followed, a few weeks later, by the uprisings during the opening of the Venice Biennale, which prompted some artists to withdraw or cover those artworks of theirs which featured in the exhibition. Protesters targeted in particular the conservatism of the art institution and the inadequacy of the exhibition formats they proposed, a position which inevitably encompassed the artists and their role in society. There was widespread concern about the commodification of art and the ways in which creative labour was increasingly subordinated to the imperatives of the market. However, despite the fact that artists such as Fabro, Paolini or Pascali shared these concerns, they quickly distanced themselves from the protesters, who tended to identify artists as cultural producers. Their dissatisfaction with the protesters took the form of a renewed emphasis on the artist’s autonomy from ideological positions and struggles. Lonzi and Fabro’s text has to be read in the context of the protest that was targeting not just art institutions as such but also the conditions in which artworks were produced and disseminated. Their intervention refuses the idea that artists could become activists, claiming instead the artist’s difference from the worker. Their argument expresses a concern for the ways in which protesters were challenging modernist notions of the artist’s freedom, by comparing artists and architects to actual workers. Hence their statement becomes an impassioned plea in favour of the artist’s autonomy from social relations and struggles, in which the authors also argue against the accusations levelled at artists of complicity with and subordination to the capitalist logic of value. According to Lonzi and Fabro, artists operate in full autonomy from these logics, as their activity differentiates them from other categories of workers. This is why artists are, so to say, outside of class relations and struggles: For the artist there is no alternative identification in this society, or in any other possible society, because he has the ability to not identify with social structures. The artist is ready to rupture institutional systems because in the current cultural situation his identity is not available for appropriation. Culture, in its process of mediation, acknowledges that the artist is not subjected to the System, but does not consider this fact as either important or dangerous inasmuch as he can overcome it. Obviously, now culture itself has to explain its own subjection to the System. Inasmuch as it cannot avoid considering the newest and most precise personalities of modernism (and we can only agree with this), culture has nevertheless operated in such a way that renders those personalities ineffective on the level of individual consciousness. There is therefore no reason for the artist to disown himself either before himself or the proletariat, because his premises are precisely to disown culture itself as that which alienates the free motives, and the forms of selfregulation from which works of art can grow.30

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The artist’s activity is not bound to a social role. On the contrary, art opens up the possibility of avoiding the alienating forces that organize social life. Lonzi and Fabro’s text maintains the need to secure the artist’s autonomy from culture, which ‘tends to create an artificial image of the artist and his personality’, thus creating a ‘commodified distortion’, in which the artwork is instrumentalized and considered useless.31 Their declaration also affirms that the artist’s authenticity and difference – the ability not to identify – need to be protected against the numerous falsifications to which they are subjected. In short, Lonzi and Fabro hold that art becomes dignified as a revolutionary force and that protesters should eventually become aware of this. The text was received frostily by the protesters: ‘we looked like people coming from outer space,’ says Lonzi.32 Their refusal to address an explicitly political message was grounded in their notion of the artist as an individual operating at the margins of the social structure. As a matter of fact, the idea of the artist’s unrelatedness to both power and society could potentially be articulated in the direction of an all-encompassing revolt against the repressive role of the institutions. However, besides their explicit disagreement with Marxist ideas, which prevailed during the occupation, Fabro and Lonzi refused to consider the artist as a political subject, precisely because this would have meant an alignment with a specific category of workers.33 The crux of their argument is that the artist’s identity and freedom have to be preserved against the recuperation of art within commodity culture. This is the reason why they are hesitant in endorsing the revolts; the artist’s freedom was widely considered in terms of ideology, that is to say, as an alibi for the institution, and not as a revolutionary force. These positions also point to a generational gap between most of Autoritratto’s protagonists and the generation that initiated 1968. Their shared ambivalence and scepticism with respect to the protesters convey the numerous paradoxes which characterized the debates of the 1950–60s on the autonomy of art. Their call for autonomy as a form of resistance against the imperatives dictated by commodity culture could in fact coexist with a desire to connect art and life. This connection could also be understood in terms of an incursion of everyday life and relations into the field of art. However, it failed to develop into something fully political. In the fall of 1968, Lonzi published an article in the Italian journal L’ Approdo in which she discusses the Triennale’s occupation and the uprisings during the opening of the Venice Biennale. Here she develops some of the ideas contained in the text written with Fabro, namely their argument in favour of the artist’s freedom. And yet, she now points to a substantial distinction between the events in Milan and in Venice, as the first one primarily concerned architects and designers, even though visual artists were also involved. Lonzi argues that in Milan the revolt was mostly directed against architects, who she considers as a distinct category, precisely because of their involvement with power: ‘The contestation against the Triennale, in which some architects were also involved, also became a self-examination and it has clarified an ideological impasse in architecture.’34 However, Lonzi argues that the same does not apply to artists, precisely because they are not workers. One can be a painter or a sculptor without being an artist; an artist is someone who ‘uses painting or sculpture in order to engage in the problems of creative freedom’.35 Accordingly, the Venice Biennale is not a reactionary institution because, in embracing artists, it includes its own contradiction, namely art, which is, in Lonzi’s view, a true revolutionary force.

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For Lonzi, artists are inherently rebels because, as she writes in Autoritratto’s preface, art is a form of critique that is carried on outside of the mental, cultural and professional schemes of the art critic.36 However, society’s need to contain art within a set of institutions and discourses places the artist in a marginal position: ‘like a specialized intellectual who accomplishes technical operations that are inaccessible to non-specialists’.37 At the same time, Lonzi seems to agree with the protesters on two main points. The first one has to do with the need to contest institutions and their boundaries: this point refers to the concerns, expressed in Autoritratto, about the institution’s involvement in neutralizing art’s liberatory potential. Unfortunately, this argument is discussed very briefly, and one can imagine that L’ Approdo’s rather conservative editors would not have tolerated an article in support of the occupation. The second point developed by Lonzi refers to the possibility of learning, so to say, from Venice. She writes that the uprisings have revealed the extent of the misunderstandings surrounding art, with the paradoxical effect of unveiling the cultural mechanisms that have distanced art from large portions of the population. Lonzi’s positions on the uprisings appear to be based on a set of modernist ideas about art’s autonomy and the artist’s freedom, which she was beginning to challenge and would eventually abandon. Her changing ideas in the conception of the artist’s autonomy involved both the phallocentrism of art (the exclusion of women) and the myth of the artist’s singularity (the creative genius), against which Lonzi would soon oppose a new, collective self-awareness. Within a few years, the artist’s freedom would reveal itself as a form of male urge to be the sole protagonist, and thereby an active contributor to the oppression of women. This is one of the reasons why Lonzi would later develop the idea that art relegates women to the roles of silent spectators, muses and caring others, whose existence is confined to the private sphere ‘where everything collapses […], and where women are required to prepare men for the efforts they will accomplish in society, as poles of attraction in order to unite society in a variety of sectors’.38 In Vai pure [You can go] Lonzi clarifies that the artist’s autonomy can only exist at the expense of the woman’s freedom, through the repression of the relational dimensions of subjectivity. Artists are incapable of authentic relations because these are considered as obstacles to their creativity. The latter, understood as an emanation of the individual subject, now appears as the myth of the artist’s autonomy from social relations. The artist’s authenticity has turned into ideology, thus becoming a function of the male organization of power relations.39 From the point of view of the artists, relations can therefore only be instrumental to the affirmation of individuality and autonomy, whereas the myth of the exceptional man needs ‘a specific female entourage which is based on self-negation’.40 A decade following her reflections and participation in 1968, Lonzi maintains that the creative process is fundamentally inauthentic: it is based on the repression of the female ‘other’ and on the alienation of an entire life lived for the sake of male success. The process of her own becoming a political subject allows her to consider the artist’s autonomy as a myth in which female authenticity is denied. Lonzi’s decision to withdraw from art thus needs to be regarded within the context of the social and cultural upheavals of her time, in which she was primarily involved from the point of view of her desire for a shared collective practice. At

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this precise moment, the art world did not seem to be the place in which it was possible to operate the kind of transformation she strived for, which now seemed incompatible with the notion of art’s autonomy that she had advocated up until this point. The artist’s uniqueness and exceptionality soon became an obstacle for Lonzi’s aspirations towards collective transformation. It is important to note that, for most of the artists participating in Autoritratto, the changes that were about to unsettle Italian society as a whole did not translate into the various forms of politicization of art that went on to occur in the following decade. According to Potts, in the context of the political, social and cultural revolts of those years, most of the strategies they had adopted became less effective, as widespread experimentations had laid the foundations for a substantial reconfiguration of the artistic forms inherited from modernism.41 The sudden transformation unleashed by 1968 demanded very different strategies, both aesthetic and political, which went in the direction that Carla Lonzi was experimenting with by the end of the 1960s. Here aesthetic experimentation was predicated on new forms of participation, collective action and sharing that were soon to become political.

From the artist’s singularity to the women’s community Carla Lonzi had already begun to consider the relation between artist and critics as based on a power differential in her polemical text of 1963, entitled ‘La solitudine del critico’ [The critic’s loneliness], stating: ‘With an abuse of power, the critic denies what constitutes the emancipatory potential of artistic research, namely the realization of an absolute lack of hierarchies and directive roles.’42 Artists are free because they do not identify with a social role, but also because they are indifferent to power. Lonzi’s mistrust of the political turmoil of 1968 is in fact rooted in her rejection of the logic of power: this is the reason why, in Let’s Spit on Hegel, she affirms feminism’s autonomy from the revolutionary (mostly Marxist) ideologies of her time. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lonzi instead showed an interest in the hippie communities that, in her view, aimed at experimenting with alternative forms of life, in contrast to the student activists, whose aspirations were mainly directed towards the conquest of power. In Autoritratto, Lonzi explains that students are ‘less creative’ and ‘older in their head’,43 because they are politicized. Conversely, she finds hippies far more attractive because of their rejection of the conventions of bourgeois life through their espousal of a lifestyle marked by greater freedom: ‘[The hippie] searches for a way of life, you understand, this is something very different that I really like. Students are political, they see a situation but they do not think that the most important thing is themselves and to live the way they want.’44 The student and the hippie crisscross both Autoritratto and Let’s Spit on Hegel presenting two distinctive ways of living: the first one is focused on power, while the second one promotes freedom and creativity. As Liliana Ellena remarks, the hippies’ lifestyle points toward a possible way out of the notion of the aesthetic as a socially separate sphere. With the hippies, the transformation of everyday life is connected to a critique of power, rather than to the students’ revolutionary politics.45 Lonzi is interested in the hippies because they are concerned with the

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subjective experience of transformation and do not try to participate in the making of History. As Consagra explains, what differentiates the hippies from the students is the hippies’ refusal to understand their activity in terms of roles and categories: ‘This is a way of withdrawing from the categories and inserting themselves in life, by taking up an attitude which constitutes a position with life. Therefore, the student should introduce himself into society through more trenchant actions that could be exemplary of the life experience of a young person, instead of presenting himself as a category, i.e. the “students”, with the all the ensuing problems and difficulties that this condition entails.’46 The hippie provides a model for liberation based on a subjective transformation, which appeared far more interesting to Lonzi’s eyes than the students’ attempts to modify social structures from the outside. It is no coincidence that the hippies reappear in Let’s Spit on Hegel, yet again in opposition to the politicized student, who has now become a contender for the role of the oppressor.47 Lonzi was particularly attracted by the hippies’ transgression of gender roles: she writes that they experiment with a ‘non-masculine kind of community’48 refusing to separate the public from the private. Hippies epitomize a ‘gender trouble’, in which male and female attitudes and behaviours could coexist. Her fascination for these communities suggests Lonzi’s simultaneous shift from her case for art’s autonomy to the collective experimentation that she was elaborating around 1968. The ‘imagined community’ emerging from late 1960s youth culture opens up the possibility for a new becoming that takes the shape of a shared political project. In this respect, Lonzi’s interest in these alternative forms of living relates to both Autoritratto’s artistic community and to the feminist practice of autocoscienza (or self-consciousness raising). These women-only meetings were based on speech acts and mutual listening as part of a collective dynamics in which the individual experience could connect to the collective struggle for liberation. From 1970 onwards, the greater part of Italian feminist groups adopted autocoscienza as the ground upon which to build a separatist politics and practice. What came out of this collective practice was, among other things, a new awareness of the constitutively political dimension of what goes on in the personal sphere. Autocoscienza’s disruption of the traditional separation between the personal and the political went much further than what Lonzi had experienced in Autoritratto or observed in the hippie communities. The definition of a separate space was central in Rivolta femminile’s understanding of autocoscienza. A short text written collectively in 1972 and entitled Significato dell’autocoscienza nei gruppi femministi [The meaning of autocoscienza in feminist groups] affirms that this new practice marks the ‘historical space’ where woman becomes a subject of her own thus preparing the ground for her autonomy: ‘It is here that feminist groups practicing autocoscienza acquire their real physiognomy as units that transform the spirituality of the patriarchal era: they operate to bring about woman’s leap into subjecthood, as women mutually recognize themselves as complete human beings no longer in need of man’s approval.’49 The imagined community of Autoritratto is thus translated into the reality of a political practice based on a participatory self-transformation. The book’s fragmentation of the subject

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becomes, within the feminist group, a form of re-composition in which each woman is empowered through her connection to the others. Whereas Autoritratto enabled Lonzi to become aware of the mechanisms of social identification sustaining art institutions, autocoscienza indicates the creative moment of withdrawal from those same mechanisms. In autocoscienza individual experience becomes politically meaningful as it opens up the possibility for a new type of knowledge that is predicated on participation in a collective project. In 1971 Lonzi wrote: ‘feminism is what allows each woman to find a collective female consciousness in which to elaborate the subject of her liberation.’50 Meetings mostly took place in private homes, often in Lonzi’s apartment in Milan, which became a new kind of space, where the boundaries between the private and the public were redefined. Separatism was indispensable within the process of mutual recognition prompted by those meetings, where woman’s experience became politically relevant. The practice of autocoscienza was based on horizontality, non-hierarchy and individual speech acts, listening and silences.51 Conflicts were equally present as they constantly resurfaced in the traditional forms of competitions, roles and antagonisms that were negotiated collectively.52 Most importantly, autocoscienza operated as a process in which self-affirmation, collective knowledge and mutual recognition were bound together through the constitution of a different community. This ‘feminist utopia of the articulation between the individual and the collective’ became the basis upon which women would constitute themselves as a political subject.53 Lonzi underlined this point in a text written in 1977 where she muses on the experience of autocoscienza: The consciousness of myself as a political subject is born out of the group, from the realization (realtà) that has taken the form of a non-ideological collective experience. Our success in rendering this group possible has given us the measure of our capacity to withdraw from male strategies and structures, to free ourselves from their oppressive power, to begin to exist for what we are. This is just the first step, but its nature is political. We understood what it means to be together, to enhance what we are instead of betraying ourselves. The group allowed us to live a sense of completeness that we have missed historically, as we have always been considered as secondary creatures.54

Woman’s autonomy takes as its starting point what is made possible by autocoscienza: a collective withdrawal from the structures of social and cultural identification. This feminist practice enacts a creative potential, as it represents an unprecedented way of being together in which a new idea of politics is developed and practiced. Autocoscienza has no pre-established rules, no leader, no control, but an integral openness towards the other. Lonzi particularly insists on the fact that autocoscienza cannot be recuperated as culture because it does not turn to men. On the contrary, it originates in what she calls a ‘void’, where an autonomous sense of the self can grow and exist: autocoscienza is how women collectively challenge patriarchal notions of subjectivity. For this reason, autocoscienza is the opposite of culture, as it abolishes roles and identifications in order to open the path towards a different becoming.

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Undoing ‘woman’ For Lonzi, feminism involves life’s facts and the conflicts that are part of it. In her early feminist writings, she often uses the term deculturizzazione (deculturation) with reference to the possibility of undoing the ways in which culture determines women’s behaviour and self-perception. Accordingly, she argues for a fundamental opposition between life and culture. ‘Deculturation’ was a crucial buzzword in 1960s–70s political jargon, but the way Lonzi uses this term encompasses the political as well as artistic spheres. Woman’s autonomy takes as its starting point the refusal of culture as ideology and power, thus recalling Lonzi’s discussion of authenticity as the possibility of speaking about art without the mediation of institutional languages. Between 1968 and 1970, the process of disidentification from a set of established roles enabled the emergence of a new subjectivity that Lonzi calls the ‘clitoral woman’. The clitoral woman makes her first appearance in Lonzi’s 1971 text La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale [The clitoral woman and the vaginal woman] where the question of sexual autonomy is connected to the wider framework of women’s liberation. This figure embodies the possibility of withdrawing from the roles that traditionally define femininity. The clitoral woman establishes her autonomy on a sort of ‘void’ – another name for authenticity – which refers to her lack of identity, identity understood here as the acceptance and repetition of a social role. Conversely, the vaginal woman, the opposite pole of femininity, fully identifies as ‘woman’, thus becoming the epitome of patriarchal oppression. The figure of the clitoral woman indicates that the process of disidentification from established gender norms has to be understood in terms of a creative process, in which authenticity can express itself beyond the conventions of gender normativity. Lonzi’s description of the clitoral woman’s subjectivity recalls in many ways her ideas about of the artist’s autonomy from social convention, even though in the case of women, the project of autonomy is understood in terms of an endless process and not as a (privileged) condition. Most importantly, this new subjectivity is grounded in a disobedient sexuality that defies the patriarchal organization of social relations. Starting from this new standpoint, Lonzi’s feminism translates a shift from art towards the refusal of culture as a whole. This point has already emerged from the first ‘Manifesto of Rivolta Femminile’ (1970), which states that woman’s autonomy begins with a new awareness of the numerous ties connecting culture and patriarchy: ‘By not recognizing herself in male culture woman deprives it of the illusion of universality […] Man’s strength lies in identifying with culture, ours in refuting it.’55 Rivolta femminile’s programme of deculturation represents a necessary step towards autonomy as part of a collective process in which culture’s oppressive apparatus is unmasked. The depreciation of male achievements will be one of its consequences. In Autoritratto, Lonzi had attempted to undo established forms of art writing within a process that had led her to consider art criticism’s knowledge production as a power operation based on observation, aesthetic judgement and hierarchical relations. Art criticism’s institutional expertise now appears to her as an act of domination and control over those who find themselves in the position of being the objects of an enquiry. By 1970, the word ‘culture’ refers to the whole apparatus through which ideology operates

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in all its ramifications, including social relations, academic knowledge, art, religion, as well as the moral values upon which the social order is secured (family, sexuality and reproductive labour). In Let’s Spit on Hegel, Lonzi writes that feminism is not an antagonistic culture, or an ideology, but a different positioning: The mode of action we chose is the shedding of our culture. It is not a cultural revolution that follows and integrates the economic revolution; it is not based on the verification at all levels of an ideology but on the lack of ideological necessity. Woman has opposed to the construction of man only her existential dimension: she has not had generals, thinkers, and scientists. Instead she has had energy, thoughts, courage, attentiveness, common sense, and madness.56

Here Lonzi enumerates a list of mythicized male roles, to which she opposes a series of nouns referring to the entwined spheres of sensations, experience and subjectivity. Autonomy is in fact integral to a wider process in which the roles defining ‘woman’ as a secondary formation in relation to men are unravelled. This process begins with the affirmation of an autonomous sexuality: the clitoral woman claims her own sexual pleasure against the patriarchal ideal of a docile, vaginal and reproductive sexuality, which is dependent on male demands. Lonzi affirms the need to withdraw from patriarchal sexuality. However, this does not necessarily entail a refusal of heterosexuality as such; it marks instead a new understanding of women’s sexual expression. The reproductive sexuality imposed upon women can thus emerge as a specific ‘culture’, ‘one whose values and taboos reflect the concept of “nature” elaborated in relation to the aims expressed by this culture’.57 For Lonzi, woman’s autonomy and agency are unfinished processes which begin with the refusal to comply with the structures of social and cultural identification. In Autoritratto, Lonzi had already defined her education as an art historian as ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘repressive’.58 After graduating from the University of Florence, instead of considering an academic career, she chose to become an art critic because she believed this could be a way to address the interrelated issues of freedom and knowledge, as she explains in a conversation: ‘[Art criticism] should be an activity that involves individuals who, like myself, wanted a more profound initiation than the one provided by culture.’59 A few months later, in Let’s Spit on Hegel, she would go on to unequivocally indict higher education for its complicity in the oppression of women: Colleges and universities are not places where young women are liberated through culture, but places where their repression is perfected, the same repression that is so well cultivated within the family. The education of a young woman consists in slowly injecting her with a poison that paralyses her just as she is on the verge of the most potentially responsible actions, of the experiences that might increase her self-confidence.60

The invocation of a poison immobilizing the young woman suggests the bodily consequences of those forms of institutional knowledge production from which Lonzi was escaping. Culture’s paralyzing effects are analogized with the image of a petrified

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subject, unable to act, constrained in the roles and stereotypes oppressing women. Here Lonzi alludes to the traditional role of woman as an object to be contained through a powerful bodily apparatus. These mechanisms, which contribute to the alienation of women from their bodies and sexuality, need to be undone in the search for those unexpected gestures opening the path towards autonomy and freedom. In order to escape paralysis, women thus have to interrupt the cycle of repetitions in which they are trapped: these involve the assumption of roles, stereotypes, categories and identifications that both oppress and define ‘woman’. In this respect, a practice of deculturation corresponds with a process of becoming a subject, in which women dare to abandon what they thought they knew about themselves. Ultimately, for Lonzi, autonomy comes to mean rising to the challenge of no longer being identified as woman: Man does not know who the woman is as soon she withdraws from his colonisation and from the roles preparing an experience established across the centuries: the mother, the virgin, the wife, the lover, the daughter, the sister, the sister-in-law, the friend and the prostitute. Woman was a readymade product and there was nothing to discover in this human being. Each role presented its own warranties; to withdraw from those roles therefore meant the end of man’s consideration, it was the end.61

The danger of falling outside of man’s field of attention means exposure to punishment, revenge and the stigma connected to the feeling of one’s inability to comply with male criteria. Against the risk of losing all that women knew about themselves, Lonzi opposes the power of creativity, which is the ‘other side’ of her withdrawal. This is perhaps the most crucial, and yet less explored, aspect within the constellation of meanings revolving around the possibility of disidentifying from social roles. Withdrawal and disidentification are to be understood as practices of freedom. However, they also connect the figure of the clitoral woman to the notion of authenticity that Lonzi had been developing throughout the 1960s. This is perhaps the reason why the process consisting in undoing gendered roles could also paradoxically produce new forms of identification. If patriarchy constructs woman as an already available product, Lonzi’s argument suggests that disidentification could lead to a preexisting, or to a new, identity. The autonomy of the clitoral woman is not simply the result of the revolt against normative roles: ‘Indeed, she has not defined herself through gestures set apart from the norm, but has consolidated herself through authentic gestures focusing on the self.’62 How should we understand the relation between authenticity and the roles that constitute us as women? The process consisting in dismantling social roles presupposes the existence of a subject that is able to liberate herself, even though Lonzi clarifies that liberation has to be understood as a process, and not as a condition. However, her constant reference to the body –via anatomy (the clitoris), actions and gestures accomplished by women – suggests that authenticity is connected to woman’s bodily existence. Lonzi’s understanding of woman’s liberation contains some of the ambivalences surrounding her idea of the artist’s authenticity, which she had previously

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held as rendered manifest through his creativity. Artists, in her discarded definition, were indifferent to social relations in much the same way that the clitoral woman claims her autonomy from patriarchal relations. This is perhaps the reason why, when Lonzi describes the clitoral woman, she repeatedly makes reference to creativity as she had experienced it in the art world, when she was mostly interested in works that focused on process and experience. Expressions such as ‘creativity’, ‘creative surge’, ‘imagination’ and ‘self-expression’ are recurrent in The clitoral woman and the vaginal woman. Creativity thus emerges as an indispensable feature in order to think woman’s disidentification as part of a transformative practice that primarily involves the affirmation of an autonomous sexuality. References to creativity also suggest the interrelated issues of desire and subjectivity, which emerge as crucial formations in the processes described by Lonzi. Indeed, the vaginal woman has given away her own creativity in order to put it to the service of male demands. This is why ‘she never finds the courage to want a creative experience for herself, which is above all, self-concentration’.63 Conversely, the clitoral woman’s autonomous creativity suggests the idea of the unexpected subject – a notion coined in Let’s Spit on Hegel – giving rise to ‘those imaginative potentials that woman confidently takes on for herself ’.64 The notion of the soggetto imprevisto (unexpected subject) indicates that a true liberation from social roles can only occur in the framework of a collective making of the feminist subject. In the already mentioned text on autocoscienza, Rivolta Femminile writes that ‘only through an unexpected act, which means a free act, can woman escape her role as object, as free means that she does not rely on someone else for her redemption’.65 This unexpected gesture demonstrates woman’s agency against, and in spite of, her oppression. It connects to a ‘sense of self ’ that is not the repetition of an already existing role whose aim is to reassure men. This is the only way to avoid the trap represented by the illusions induced by the promise of equality, which is nothing but ‘a tragic form of travesty of male power, like any other form of colonization’.66 This is a decisive argument, since it concerns the very possibility of inhabiting a space in which relations among women are not predicated on the imitation of male standards. What patriarchy proposes for women is, at best, the illusion of a recognition in which men are the only measure of the human. For this reason, autocoscienza is the opposite of culture, as it abolishes roles and identifications, turning towards women’s existences as the locus of their subjectivation. The conflict opposing woman’s search for autonomy and the false promises that attempt to invalidate feminism’s revolutionary potential emerge as one of the central features upon which Lonzi will develop her critique of art during the 1970s.

Notes 1 2

Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly (Bari: De Donato, 1969; 2nd edition Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010). Lonzi’s use of the concept of authenticity can be related to her early reading of Adorno’s Minima Moralia, or to the significance of French existentialism for her

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generation. See Laura Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2016), 31. 3 See Maria Luisa Boccia, ‘Per una teoria dell’autenticità. Lettura di Carla Lonzi’, Memoria 19–20, no. 1–2 (1987): 85–108; Elena Della Torre, ‘The clitoris diaries. La donna clitoridea, feminine authenticity, and the phallic allegory in Carla Lonzi’s radical feminism’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 21, no. 3 (2012): 219–32. 4 Carla Lonzi, ‘La critica è potere’, NAC 3 (December 1970): 5–6; reprinted in Carla Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, ed. Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, and Vanessa Martini (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2012), 647–50. All subsequent quotations refer to the 2012 edition. 5 Germano Celant, ‘Per una critica acritica’, NAC 1 (October 1970), 29–30. In this text Celant argues for an art criticism emptied of any aesthetic judgement, which would take the form of documentation, historical action and event. Celant explicitly refers to Carla Lonzi in this text. Other contributors in this debate were Tommaso Trini (an editor of the journal), Marisa Volpi, Aurelio Natali, Pier Luigi Tazzi, Lara Vinca Masini and Lea Vergine. 6 Lonzi, ‘La critica è potere,’ 647. 7 Ibid., 649. 8 See for example Roberto Longhi, ‘Proposte per una critica d’arte,’ Paragone 1, no. 1 (1950), 5–19. On Longhi’s method, see also Ezio Raimondi, Barocco Moderno. Roberto Longhi e Carlo Emilio Gadda (Rome: Donzelli 2003). 9 Carla Lonzi, ‘Untitled text [Identité italienne]’, in Germano Celant, ed., Identité Italienne. L’ art en Italie depuis 1959, exhib. cat. (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1981), 31; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 653–4. 10 Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminista (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1978; 2nd edition Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 30. Further quotations in the text from the second edition. 11 See Laura Iamurri, ‘Dell’autenticità. Carla Lonzi, l’arte, gli artisti’, in Francesca Gallo and Claudio Zambianchi, eds, L’immagine tra materiale e virtuale. Contributi in onore di Silvia Bordini (Rome: Campisano, 2013), 116. 12 Mary Kelly ‘Re-Viewing Modernist Criticism,’ Screen 22, no. 3 (1980): 48. 13 Alex Potts, ‘Autonomy in Post–War Art. Quasi Heroic and Casual’, Oxford Art Journal 27, no. 1 (2004): 53. 14 Alex Potts, ‘Disencumbered Objects’, October 124 (Spring 2008): 181. 15 Lonzi, Taci anzi parla, 296. 16 Ibid., 34. 17 Lonzi, ‘La critica è potere’, 648. 18 ‘[…] l’arte si modifica e si svolge adattandosi alle esigenze connesse con la vita e ciò facendo si discosta dalle categorie e dalle previsioni della cultura, cioè dalle teorie dell’arte da essa elaborate’. Unpublished letter, Lacona (Elba Island), 3 August 1970. The letter is addressed to an unidentified man named Paolo. Fondo Rivolta Femminile, Fondazione Jacqueline Vodoz and Bruno Danese, Milan, A 20/3. 19 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 154. 20 Ibid., 4–5. 21 Ibid. 22 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 295. 23 Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (London: Penguin, 2003), 298–346. 24 Luisa Passerini, Storie di donne e femministe (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991), 133. 25 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 171.

The Making of a Feminist Subject 26 27 28 29

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Ibid., 179. Ibid., 180. Ibid., 180. The Triennale’s exhibition subject was Il Grande Numero (The Great Number) and included works by some of the artists involved in Autoritratto, such as Fabro and Kounellis. Enrico Castellani was the co-curator of the smaller exhibition Nuovo Paesaggio (with Gino Marotta, Cesare Casati and Emanuele Ponzio), which was scheduled to open on 15 June but was eventually cancelled. On the 1968 occupation of the Triennale di Milano, see Paola Nicolin, Castelli di carte. La XVI Triennale di Milano, 1968 (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2011). See also Leonardo Passarelli, ‘Intorno al Sessantotto. Al servizio del capitale o della rivoluzione? La Triennale occupata e altre considerazioni sul design in Italia tra anni Sessanta e Settanta’, in Cristina Casero and Elena Di Raddo, eds, Anni Settanta: L’arte dell’impegno (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2009), 89–112. 30 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 176. 31 Ibid. 32 The text was probably written after the Milan occupation and later read in Venice, where Carla Lonzi’s participation in the upheavals is recalled by Consagra in his autobiography. See Pietro Consagra, Vita mia (Milan: Feltrinelli 1980), 109. Lonzi’s surgery in Boston took place on 13 May; Lonzi and Consagra returned to Italy from the United States later that month. 33 This was a widespread concern among Italian artists of the period, despite the fact that, in 1967, Germano Celant introduced Arte Povera as a politically engaged avantgarde. See Germano Celant, ‘Arte povera: appunti per un’ arte di guerriglia’, Flash Art 5 (November–December 1967): 3. For a broader analysis of the relations between art and politics in late 1960s Italy, see Nicolas Cullinan, ‘From Vietnam to Fiat-nam. The Politics of Arte Povera’, October 124 (Spring, 2008): 8–30; Elisabeth Mangini, ‘Uno specchio d’Italia. Luciano Fabro’s Italies’, Palinsesti 2 (2011): 64–76; Jacopo Galimberti, ‘A Third-worldist Art? Germano Celant’s Invention of Arte Povera’, Art History 36, no. 2 (2013): 418–41. 34 Carla Lonzi, ‘Biennale di Venezia e contestazione’, L’ Approdo letterario 14, no. 44 (October–December 1968): 144–6; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 558. Lonzi started her collaboration with L’ Approdo, a TV broadcast and journal for art and culture, in the early 1960s after a recommendation from Roberto Longhi, who was chief editor for the visual arts. 35 Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 558 36 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 4. 37 Lonzi, ‘Biennale di Venezia e contestazione’, 560. 38 Carla Lonzi, Vai pure. Dialogo con Pietro Consagra (Milano: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1980; 2nd edition Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2011), 20. These questions are developed in the last chapter of my book: Giovanna Zapperi, Carla Lonzi: Un’ arte della vita (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2017), 226–61. 39 On Lonzi’s use of the term ‘myth’, see Francesco Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1 (2015): 83–100. 40 Lonzi, Vai pure, 15. 41 Potts, ‘Disencumbered Objects’, 188. 42 Carla Lonzi, ‘La solitudine del critico’, L’ Avanti!, 13 December 1963; reprinted in Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, 355.

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43 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 213–14. 44 Ibid., 213. 45 Liliana Ellena, ‘Carla Lonzi e il neo-femminismo degli anni ’70: disfare la cultura, disfare la politica’, in Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino, and Vanessa Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi, la duplice radicalità (Pisa: ETS, 2011), 128–9. The discussion about the differences between students and hippies includes Lonzi, Consagra and Enrico Castellani. The latter seems in fact rather puzzled by Lonzi’s arguments. Castellani was perhaps the closest to the contestation among Autoritratto’s artists. Together with Enzo Mari, he had written a document proposing to stop exhibiting their work as a protest against the dynamics of the art world. The text was entitled ‘Un rifiuto possibile’ and is republished in Lea Vergine, Attraverso l’arte. Pratica politica/Pagare il sessantotto (Rome: Arcana, 1976), 52. 46 Lonzi, Autoritratto, p. 208. 47 Carla Lonzi, ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’ [1970], in Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, ed., Feminist Interpretations of G. F. W. Hegel (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 275–98. 48 Lonzi, ‘Let’s spit on Hegel’, 286. 49 Rivolta Femminile, ‘Significato dell’autocoscienza nei gruppi femministi’ [1972], in Carla Lonzi, ed., Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti (Milano: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 119. 50 Carla Lonzi, ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ [1971], in Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, 72. 51 See the interview with Suzanne Santoro in this volume. 52 There are very few documents about autocoscienza and most of the reconstructions are based on individual accounts. See for example the testimonies published in Anna Rita Calabrò and Laura Grasso, eds, Dal movimento femminista al femminismo diffuso. Storie e percorsi a Milano dagli anni ’60 agli anni ’80 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1985). The literature on the topic is also very limited; see for example Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference. A Theory of Socio-symbolic Practice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Passerini, Storie dei donne e femministe, 161–84. On the significance of autocoscienza for Rivolta Femminile, see also Maria Luisa Boccia, L’io in rivolta. Vissuto e pensiero in Carla Lonzi (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1990): 191–215. 53 Passerini, Storie di donne e femministe, 167. 54 Carla Lonzi, ‘Mito della proposta culturale’, in Carla Lonzi, Marta Lonzi, and Anna Jaquinta, eds, La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1978), 151. 55 Rivolta Femminile, ‘Manifesto of Rivolta Femminile’ [1970], in Paola Bono and Sandra Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader (London and New York: Blackwell 1991), 40. 56 Lonzi, ‘Let’s spit on Hegel’, 288. 57 Lonzi, ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’, 81. 58 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 32. 59 Ibid., 33. 60 Lonzi, ‘Let’s spit on Hegel’, 292. 61 Lonzi, ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’, 82. 62 Ibid., 102. 63 Ibid., 69. 64 Ibid., 78. 65 Rivolta Femminile, ‘Significato dell’autocoscienza nei gruppi femministi’, 115. 66 Ibid., 118–19.

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References Boccia, M. L. (1990), L’io in rivolta. Vissuto e pensiero in Carla Lonzi, Milan: La Tartaruga. Boccia, M. L. (1987), ‘Per una teoria dell’autenticità. Lettura di Carla Lonzi’, Memoria 19–20, no. 1–2: 85–108. Calabrò A. R. and Grasso L. eds (1985), Dal movimento femminista al femminismo diffuso. Storie e percorsi a Milano dagli anni ’60 agli anni ’80, Milan: Franco Angeli. Celant, G. (1970), ‘Per una critica acritica’, NAC 1 (October): 29–30. Celant, G. (1967), ‘Arte povera: appunti per un’ arte di guerriglia’, Flash Art 5 (November– December): 3. Consagra, P. (1980), Vita mia, Milan: Feltrinelli. Cullinan, N. (2008), ‘From Vietnam to Fiat-nam. The Politics of Arte Povera’, October 124 (Spring): 8–30. Della Torre, E. (2012), ‘The clitoris diaries. La donna clitoridea, feminine authenticity, and the phallic allegory in Carla Lonzi’s radical feminism’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 21, no. 3: 219–32. Galimberti, J. (2013), ‘A Third-worldist Art? Germano Celant’s Invention of Arte Povera’, Art History, vol. 36, no 2: 418–41. Ginsborg, P. (1990), A History of Contemporary Italy, Society and Politics, 1943–1988, London: Penguin. Iamurri, L. (2016), Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia, Macerata: Quodlibet. Iamurri, L. (2013), ‘Dell’autenticità. Carla Lonzi, l’arte, gli artisti’, in F. Gallo and C. Zambianchi, eds, L’immagine tra materiale e virtuale. Contributi in onore di Silvia Bordini, Rome: Campisano. Kelly, M. (1980), ‘Re-Viewing Modernist Criticism’, Screen 22, no. 3: 41–52. Longhi, R. (1950), ‘Proposte per una critica d’arte’, Paragone 1: 5–19. Lonzi, C. (2013), ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ [1971], in Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milano: et al./Edizioni, 61–113. Lonzi, C. (2012), Scritti sull’arte, ed. Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, and Vanessa Martini, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. (2011), Vai pure. Dialogo con Pietro Consagra, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1978] 2010), Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminista, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1969] 2010), Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1970] 1996), ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’ in P. Jagentowicz Mills, ed., Feminist Interpretations of G. F. W. Hegel, trans. G. Bellesia and E. Maclachnan, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 275–98. Lonzi, C. (1981), ‘Untitled text [Identité italienne]’, in G. Celant, ed., Identité Italienne. L’ art en Italie depuis 1959, exhib. cat (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou), 31. Lonzi, C. (1978), ‘Mito della proposta culturale’, in C. Lonzi, M. Lonzi, and A. Jaquinta, eds, La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi, C. (1968), ‘Biennale di Venezia e contestazione’, L’ Approdo letterario 14, no. 44 (October-December): 144–6. Lonzi, C. (1963), ‘La critica è potere’, NAC 3 (December 1970): 5–6. Lonzi, C. (1963), ‘La solitudine del critico’, L’ Avanti!, 13 December, n.p. Mangini, E. (2011), ‘Uno specchio d’Italia. Luciano Fabro’s Italies’, Palinsesti 2: 64–76.

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Mari, E. and Castellani, E. (1976), ‘Un rifiuto possibile,’ in Lea Vergine, ed., Attraverso l’arte. Pratica politica/Pagare il sessantotto (Rome: Arcana, 1976), 52. Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective (1990), Sexual Difference. A Theory of Socio-symbolic Practice, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nicolin, P. (2011), Castelli di carte. La XVI Triennale di Milano, 1968, Macerata: Quodlibet. Passarelli, L. (2009), ‘Intorno al Sessantotto. Al servizio del capitale o della rivoluzione? La Triennale occupata e altre considerazioni sul design in Italia tra anni Sessanta e Settanta’, in C. Casero and E. Di Raddo, eds, Anni Settanta: L’ arte dell’impegno, Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 89–112. Passerini, L. (1991), Storie di donne e femministe, Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier. Potts, A. (2008), ‘Disencumbered Objects’, October 124 (Spring 2008): 169–89. Potts, A. (2004), ‘Autonomy in Post–War Art. Quasi Heroic and Casual’, Oxford Art Journal 27, no. 1: 45–59. Raimondi, Ezio (2003), Barocco Moderno. Roberto Longhi e Carlo Emilio Gadda, Rome: Donzelli. Rivolta Femminile ([1972] 2010), ‘Significato dell’autocoscienza nei gruppi femministi’, in Carla Lonzi, ed, Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milano: et al./Edizioni, 115–20. Rivolta Femminile ([1970] 1991), ‘Manifesto of Rivolta Femminile’, in P. Bono and S. Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader, London and New York: Blackwell, 37–40. Ventrella, F. (2015), ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1: 83–100. Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi: Un’ arte della vita, Rome: DeriveApprodi.

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Turbulence zone: Diasporic resonances across Carla Lonzi’s archive Liliana Ellena

Carla Lonzi’s relationship to art and feminism can be defined through a double radicality that displays a history of ruptures and paradoxes pointing to various non-synchronic temporalities. Here, I wish to engage with her archive in terms of a turbulence zone that triggers disruptions between layers, diffusive interferences and transfers across the streamlines of flow. These disruptions, interferences and transfers do not occur in parallel layers but instead arise through rapid changes in pressure and intensity. During the unsettled years between 1968 and 1971, this eruptive dynamic bound Lonzi’s disengagement from art criticism with the ‘tabula rasa’ required by feminism, which she defined as ‘the becoming subject of the single members of a species subjugated by the myth of self-fulfillment in the amorous union with the species in power’.1 The turbulence that I explore in these pages, however, has also to do with the effects of the interruptions and displacements installed by Lonzi’s ‘gesture of revolt’ and their role in giving shape to her uneven legacy. Although she has long remained marginal within the international feminist debate, her name has recently resurfaced in art galleries and exhibitions and within feminist critiques of art historiography across Europe and beyond. I argue that the transformative conversations set in motion by this new circulation of her work lead also to a partial redoing and undoing of the past that allow us to envision, across Lonzi’s archive and legacy, a series of new heterogeneous apparitions.2 My engagement with the above-mentioned turbulence zone is twofold. First, I devise it as a critical vantage point from which to reconsider different strands of Lonzi’s thought and life. In exploring a distinctive praxis cutting across the subjective and the political, I wish to bring her gesture of revolt into dialogue with contemporary debates on the relationship between art practice and feminist theory. Second, the fault lines inhabited by Lonzi in turning ‘deculturizzazione’ (deculturation) into a radical feminist tool and a site of resistance entail a series of detours inscribing abrupt shifts in time and space.3 Treating the turbulence zone as a historical force driving both Lonzi’s itinerary and her legacy, I suggest taking two of these detours to interrogate circuits of diasporic resonances in the wake of the global 1960s and 1970s. My aim is to listen to uncharted stories grounded on personal exchanges, transnational circulations and

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historical formations that are usually whitewashed in both the history of feminism and that of artistic movements in postwar Italy. As noted by Francesco Ventrella, ‘resonance’ is a crucial term in Lonzi’s vocabulary; its politics define the embodied and intersubjective mode of self-knowledge and transformation at the centre of autocoscienza.4 If considered beyond the political practices of the feminist group Rivolta Femminile, the idea of resonance can be read after Joan Scott’s ‘fantasy echo’, as a site of critical reinventions of feminist histories. Elaborating on this notion, Joan Scott combines the material and affective currents implied in the ‘echo’ metaphor with psychoanalytical readings of fantasy as enabling the simultaneous masking and acting of divisions, discontinuities and differences.5 Scott’s interpretation is particularly relevant to analysis of Lonzi’s diffracted legacy through ‘delayed returns’ and ‘distorted repetitions’ brought by occluded histories of colonialism, forced and chosen migrations, decolonization and political mobility which trouble easy classifications of time and space centred on the geopolitical map of Europe and the United States. In this light, I use the term diasporic resonances to begin to map the critical potentialities activated by present day’s ‘seismic shock waves moving out from dispersed epicentres’ in deepening our understanding of feminist movements as we ‘read historical materials in their specificity and particularity’.6

Inhabiting the turbulence zone Understanding the emphasis placed on lived experience, operativity and co-presence that informs Lonzi’s practice with the artists is crucial to grasp the impact of her encounter with feminism, which established an exploration of alternative forms of political subjectivity driven by the continuing effects of displacement across art and politics.7 The Manifesto di Rivolta Femminile, which made its appearance unsigned on the streets of Rome and Milan in July 1970, is one example. Reconfiguring the relationship between speech and action, it resonated both with avant-garde art strategies and with the existentialist call to self-create and free oneself from all forms of external determination. In this sense, the name Rivolta Femminile might be related to the book L’Homme revolté (1951), in which Albert Camus refers to Nietzsche’s philosophy to identify the aesthetic as the main source of authenticity: ‘In art, rebellion (la révolte) is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.’8 Shortly before the Manifesto’s public dissemination, excerpts translated into French were superimposed onto reproductions of Luciano Fabro’s upside-down Italie in the catalogue of an exhibition on the young Italian avant-garde held in Luzern.9 Although the Manifesto was originally unsigned, the typewritten excerpts in Fabro’s pages were signed by Lonzi (Figure 5.1). Fabro’s images and Lonzi’s words entertain a literal analogy that transposes the artwork’s material gesture of turning the peninsula upside down into the overturning of the gendered logics of modernity. Even more interesting is the choice made by Lonzi in another catalogue from the same period, for the exhibition Amore mio in Montepulciano. Here, she reproduced the entries ‘Femme’ and ‘Fourier’ from the Dictionnaire de sociologie phalanstérienne (1911) to fill the pages that Fabro had left to her.10 The montage of the two entries ‘Femme’ and ‘Fourier’,

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Figure 5.1  Luciano Fabro and Carla Lonzi, ‘Untitled’, in Processi di pensiero visualizzati. Junge Italienische Avantgarde, exhib. cat., Kunstmuseum Luzern, 31 May–5 July, 1970.

devoid of their titles, merged the two texts, thus giving shape to the female revolt. Here the ‘Femme-Fourier’ stood not simply against the communist revolution, which ‘took place on male-dominated cultural and political foundations, with the repression of feminism and its instrumental use’, but also against the politics of sexual revolution through which Herbert Marcuse and William Reich were reviving Fourier’s sexual utopia.11 The interweaving of Lonzi’s art-related practice with new modes of political subjectivation is best encapsulated in her last intervention in the field of art criticism. The short text ‘La critica è potere’ (Critique is power) of 1970 articulates the nondialectical relationship between artists and society in terms of ‘a different experience of freedom’ whereby the chain of intellectual domination is interrupted: ‘consciousness raising as such cannot be acquired through knowledge, that is, it cannot be conquered.’12 Here, the use of the expression ‘innalzamento della coscienza’, the literal Italian translation of consciousness raising (a term at the time almost unknown in Italy), appears as a strategic and defiant act by which Lonzi points to the disjunction and

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reconfiguration of opposing sets of terms: subject/object, individual/society, art/life.13 This move is mirrored by her closing remarks, in which artistic practices are brought outside the domain of art, aiming no longer to produce an object but rather to convey a process capable of producing another subject: To speak on behalf of the oppressed is the strength of Marxism. However, all of the oppressed, not only the ones typical of a capitalist society, but the vast majority of the world’s population made daunted by the patriarchal structure, can suddenly become aware, beyond the management of ideology, that the artistic methodology, having reached the point of a ‘high consciousness,’ is the least compromised and most vital gesture towards the possibility of a change that must be complete and independent of the dialectics of power.14

The ‘artistic methodology’ envisioned in these lines operates under alternative methods of thinking and being that emerge from new practices of liberation and selfknowledge. In the period between the writing of Rivolta’s manifesto (spring 1970) and the publication of Lonzi’s last intervention in art writing (December 1970), the turbulence zone between art and feminism generated a complete displacement of the relationship between liberation and politics, whether in the context of Marxism or that of the sexual revolution of the 1968 youth movements. Far from being just a new field of political struggle, sexuality had become the space for inventing new operative strategies for becoming a subject. Thus, ‘Sputiamo su Hegel’ does not simply disrupt and tear down the logics of equality, progress and revolution but also performs a new subject: ‘Not being trapped within the master–slave dialectic, we become conscious of ourselves; we are the Unexpected Subject.’15 Lonzi disdainfully uproots the idea of autocoscienza from the master/slave dialectic and re-circuits it to fit a political praxis that ‘opens the doors of the limbo where women search for an actual embodiment (incarnazione) without finding it’.16 Autocoscienza establishes a distinctive understanding of consciousness raising articulated through a political practice combining group and dual relationships, written transcriptions of oral conversations and individual autobiographical writings, forms of common life and an independent publishing house. In this regard, Rivolta Femminile radicalized what Luisa Passerini interprets as a process of intersubjective recognition giving shape to a new kind of individual differentiation: ‘it is no longer that of the single woman in relation to men, but that of a specific woman among other women.’17 This form of divergence, made possible by collective experience, can, according to Lonzi, open up women’s relationship with ‘adventurousness’, while at the same time introducing ‘a paradoxical bifurcation between feminism and art’, as noted by Giovanna Zapperi.18 Remarking on the strong bond between Lonzi’s critique of sexual power relations and her art criticism, Zapperi points out that ‘contrary to the then- (almost) contemporary theorisations in the Anglo-American context, for Lonzi the woman is not the object but the spectator of the artwork; it is she who passively observes and thus legitimises male creativity through her exclusion’.19 Two texts from 1971 – ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della manifestazione creativa maschile’ (On woman’s absence from the celebratory moments of male creative manifestation) and ‘La

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donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ (The clitoral woman and the vaginal woman) – establish a structural relation between the male regime of creativity and the dogma of heterosexuality.20 Above all, these texts underpin the interpretation of autocoscienza as a decultural practice aimed to undo the ‘cultural myth’ behind the sexed relations of power. Indeed, the idea of deculturation draws on the 1960s vocabulary of art and critical debate in Italy, where ‘decultura’ became the catchword for the de-civilizing impulse that inspired contestation over the separation between art and life and the imagination of a direct relationship between art practice and social praxis that could be unmediated by ideology, codified languages and representational systems.21 Lonzi’s gesture of revolt, however, challenged the meaning of deculturation, turning it into a radical practice of disidentification that dismantled the emotional and intellectual operations through which culture, understood as a mode of values production, took the hierarchical opposition of men and women as its unquestioned a priori.

Embodied geographies across the global revolt On 8 November 1975, Lonzi wrote in her diary about a dream in which artists had appeared to her as black women with covered faces, tall and elegant: ‘Negro women are a race in their own, so the artist is a negro woman: the art in her appears to me as something that covers her face, consciousness, and uncovers her body, feeling.’22 Moving across gender and colour lines, this passage encapsulates two crucial aspects of Lonzi’s political and intellectual practice: the conflict between art and feminism, on the one side, and the relationship between sexed subjectivity and the body, on the other. Both played a fundamental role in her wider reflection born from the experience of autocoscienza in the mid-1970s, when, having abandoned art criticism, she started to reconsider her experience with the artists, and to ponder how the male myth of creativity still haunted feminism. Notably, Lonzi refused to play ‘the Lucy Lippard of the situation’ or to support feminist artists.23 Nonetheless, that dream represents an unsettling passage in a body of work that never tackles the subjectivity of black women in relation to art and politics. The commutability of categories of difference, which slip metonymically along the chain art/body/race, points to the matrix that binds together women’s positions and the de-naturalization of the subaltern logic behind the forms of identification offered by culture: Male culture operates in a colonial sense, in a subcultural sense: it decides which feminism should be declared as such, it keeps quiet about the rest […] it assigns revolutionary patents to those women who accept to be writers, painters, artists, theatricals, politicians, while it protects its own values which are hierarchical and classificatory.24

Although the figure of the ‘colonized woman’ was widely disseminated in feminist discussions of the time, Lonzi’s use of colonial power relations differs from the race/ sex analogy that marked other early Italian feminist texts. Its genealogy has received new attention foregrounding the role of transnational transfers from US and French

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women’s liberation movements in defining the strategic use of black pride and separatism to support the right to difference. Donne è bello, the influential collection of international feminist writings that also included texts by Rivolta Femminile, is a case in point. By rephrasing the slogan ‘black is beautiful’, this collection owes part of its success to the association between the oppression of black people and that of women, with explicit reference to the US civil rights movement.25 At the same time, the role played by colonial metaphors in Lonzi’s writings transcends this frame to address the embodied nature of power relations and the internalized structure of domination in relation to women’s subalternity. The relationship between Lonzi’s reference to women as colonized subjects, on the one side, and the impact of post-imperial and anticolonial circuits of encounter across art and feminism, on the other, is one of the detours I want to investigate here. The question of the sex/race alterity had already been approached in Autoritratto by Carla Accardi. In this text, Accardi extends Lonzi’s refusal of the inauthenticity of the critic according to a global perspective in which an exclusionary and normative way of knowing is not just considered a male attitude but indeed identified with the white male dominant order: So, I am very much interested in the problem of the other, of the other in relation to the white man. Who is the other in relation to the white man? The woman […] Either the sex or the race. Race, for instance, the negroes … One can say ‘Are you interested in the blacks now?’ I let negroes do what they want to do because I have nothing to do with them, of course, as a white woman; nevertheless that is what interests me the most. Do you know what I mean? Because I feel more on this side, of the other, when you say ‘alter’, I mean.26

The quotation is taken from a conversation between Lonzi and Accardi that took place in 1968, just after Lonzi’s return from the United States, and offers significant insight into the exchanges leading to the early steps of Rivolta Femminile. Yet Accardi also represents a point of connection with Elvira Banotti, the third author of the 1970 Manifesto (Figure 5.2), whose name surfaces several times in Autoritratto. Banotti arrived in Italy in the early 1960s from Asmara where she was born in 1933, during Italian colonial rule, to a family of mixed Italian and Eritrean origins. After suspending her studies in Eritrea, Banotti took a job at the Italian consulate first in Asmara and then in Addis Ababa. In 1967, following a traumatic clandestine abortion in Italy, she started to work on an enquiry on the subject, which she completed at the end of 1969. The survey involved 80 women from all over Italy of very different ages and from diverse social, political and professional backgrounds, and was one of the first documents to break the wall of silence on abortion in Italy.27 As noted by Mary Jane Dempsey, the role played by Banotti in Rivolta Femminile has been largely unexplored and acknowledged. However, her late autobiography offers several directions for reconsidering the impact of the encounters that shaped Rivolta Femminile’s positions on sexuality and abortion, as much as the contradictions they raise.28 Banotti’s enquiry on abortion put her in contact not only with psychoanalysts, historians, medical and legal experts but also with many women on Rome’s political

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Figure 5.2  Carla Lonzi, Elvira Banotti and Carla Accardi during the first meetings of Rivolta Femminile in the garden of Consagra’s studio, Rome, May 31, 1970. Photo: Pietro Consagra. Milan, Archivio Pietro Consagra.

and cultural scene. One group gathered around the Casa della Cultura, and Banotti recalls her encounter with Accardi there as follows: ‘she was incendiary, she lingered over love, over sexual behaviours and attitudes […] she was always making objections to the prestige that men had ensured through art while we brought to light their serious shortcomings on all the other aspects of life.’29 Banotti adds that Accardi convinced Lonzi, on her return from the United States, to join the group and partake in the discussion, which she did ‘with a certain circumspection’.30 In 1969, the same year Autoritratto was published, documents and materials from the US women’s movement started to circulate in Rome via the Radical Party’s international network, and made an important impact on the group gathering at the Casa della Cultura. Although rarely acknowledged as such, Lonzi’s early political texts were not only inspired by but also conceived as a political response to the local debates ensuing from these texts from the United States. In particular, she targeted the ways in which the issues of sexual liberation, abortion and the regulation of divorce were framed in terms of individual civil rights and a step towards modernization, thus reproducing the culture of the endless disposability of women’s bodies. Already, in the opening pages of ‘Sputiamo su Hegel,’ the disavowal of women as subjects under the mask of emancipation was shaped along the lines of colonial power relations: ‘Equality is what is offered as legal rights to colonized people. And what is imposed on them as culture. It is the principle through which those with hegemonic power continue to control those without.’31 The writings on sexuality radicalized these analyses and shaped Lonzi’s definition of women as the ‘defeated species’. Even without crediting Ann Koedt’s ‘The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm’, ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna

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vaginale’ shares some of Koedt’s arguments concerning sexual oppression which appear, however, reframed into a radical critique of sexual modernity. In contrast with Koedt, indeed, who refers to the practice of clitoridectomy as originating in ‘very backward nations’, Lonzi compares the sexual model behind the ‘Turkish slave’ and the ‘Indian harem’s favourite’ to the ‘cultural mutilation’ of the clitoris enacted by Freud and Reich.32 Thus she points to the equivalence of modernity and male sexual privilege. The regulation and distinction of modern/not modern female sexual pleasures in terms of the historical and individual stages of sexual pathology (Freud), or in terms of repression (Reich), are considered as ‘a gesture of cultural violence, which does not find a comparison in any other type of colonization’.33 The reading of sexual liberation as the ground upon which the patriarchal sexual model is confirmed and reinforced, rather than undermined, was the turning point in Lonzi’s dismantling of the category of sexual repression and inspired Rivolta Femminile’s position on the legalization of abortion as a solution ‘not for the free woman, but for the woman colonized by the patriarchal system’.34 In 1975, at the peak of political mobilization on the issue of abortion rights, Lonzi recorded in her diary an increasing resentment of ‘this self-satisfied male voice that has just an undertone, unconscious but not that much, of virile pride – because he defends his civilization, his woman, his coitus’.35 The reference to the colonial matrix of power informs a radical critique of sexual modernity aimed to address the violent forces embodying dualistic and oppressive epistemic structures into the psychic dynamics of subject formation. This conceptualization of power, which transforms the body into a political archive, presents several affinities with the central role Frantz Fanon confers on sexuality in the formations of raced identity, as noted by Vinzia Fiorino.36 However, the universalizing and taxonomic logic that identifies sex as a homogeneous fault line separated from that of race – ‘a black man may be equal to a white man, a black woman to a white woman’ – marks the paradox in the understanding of the modern/colonial structure of power that simultaneously erases the role of race in shaping the meanings of sex and sexuality.37 We need to turn to Banotti’s autobiography to bring to light the historical articulation of this paradox. Only in 2012 did she reclaim the connection between her work at the Italian consulate – finding juridical solutions for ‘illegitimate’ children born from relationships between East African women and Italian men – and her feminist militancy.38 This deferral historically articulates the postcolonial and decolonial critique of feminist analyses of heterosexual patriarchy, which they both fail to historicize the colonial roots of the sex/gender system and erase black women from feminist movements. As pointed out by Maria Lugones, ‘it is only when we perceive gender and race as intermeshed or fused that we actually see women of color.’39 More specifically, Banotti’s itinerary brings to light the imbrication of postwar Italian sexual modernity with imperial formations, in which the alignment between normal/nonnormal and modern/non-modern has historically been rooted. During the 1970s, the regulation of abortion was still based on the surviving Fascist legal framework, which defined abortion as a ‘crime offence against the integrity and health of the race (stirpe)’.40 Thus, the historical and symbolical structures underlying the postwar Italian juridical order, which confined ‘women’s emancipation’ to the public sphere and left untouched

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power relations in the private one, open a window onto the missed decolonization of legal norms established during the Italian colonial regime to discipline and regulate women’s bodies on a racial basis.41 The failure of Italian feminism to grasp these post-imperial connections and how colonial history was inscribed in the sexed body was due to the complex process by which, during the postwar years, Italian colonialism was relegated to the Fascist past and race was foreclosed from public discourse. This intertwined dynamic between forgetting and dissociation has occluded the historical entanglement of histories that connect colonialism with the violent sexual exploitation of bodies and the control of sexualities and reproduction. This has not only made invisible the imbrication of Italian sexual modernity with imperial formations but also fostered a specific understanding of decolonization in terms of alliances between political struggles in Italy and anticolonial movements in non-Italian contexts. In this framework Lonzi’s interpretation of autocoscienza as a practice of deculturation should be placed both alongside and in contrast with the ubiquitous references to anticolonial struggles that pervade Italian counter-cultures and, more specifically, the decultural impulse in art criticism and practice from the 1960s. Besides Carla Accardi, the references to anticolonial struggles in North Africa, the United States and Vietnam in Autoritratto inform various other discussions dealing with alienation and capitalist modernity, US cultural hegemony and artistic languages. Although Jannis Kounellis recalls the long-lasting impact on him of the African Pavilion at the V Paris Biennale in 1967, Pino Pascali’s art practice engages more directly with questions of primitivism and savagery performed through images of hunters, black bodies and African fetishes in the forms of ironic and subversive masquerades. In his dialogue with Lonzi, he contrasts art as an object of consumption with art as a system for inventing new worlds, with an explicit reference to African authenticity: Listen, what strikes me mostly, are the negro sculptures, really […] To me, any object, even handcrafted, whatever they do which is authentic, drives me crazy much more than a modern designer […] From consumer culture comes an object … instead, when negroes make objects, they create a civilisation.42

Lonzi herself was concerned with these themes, as evinced in an originally unpublished letter. In response to an unknown person seeking advice on supporting artists from the Soviet Union, Lonzi suggests that he should instead look beyond the Western world and establish contact with artists from North Africa and the Middle East to understand ‘what survives, beyond the colonization and the influence of Western habits and technology, in terms of experience and life styles, and therefore as elaboration and operational modes’.43 The reference to what remains of subjugated knowledges after the impact of colonialism echoes issues at the centre of the exchanges and contact with nonEuropean artists in the avant-garde circuits, particularly in Rome. These issues were often obscured and marginalized by the framing and theorizing of the Arte Povera movement in terms of a ‘third-worldist guerrilla’ aesthetics.44 Toni Maraini, one of the women mentioned by Accardi in Autoritratto, was one of the most crucial figures

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in a web of contacts and exchanges between Italian and Maghrebi art and politics.45 Her mother, Topazia Alliata, ran the Galleria Trastevere, a significant meeting point between Italian and international avant-garde art that hosted the work of many young artists from Maghreb and Mashrek studying at the Fine Art Academy in Rome. Thus Maraini first met Mohamed Chabâa, Mohamed Melehi and Mohamed Ataallah in Rome where they also became acquainted with Accardi, Kounellis and Pascali. After studying in the United Kingdom and the United States in the mid-1960s, Maraini moved to Morocco, where she married Melehi, and together with Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa helped to establish the Casablanca Group and the literary magazine Souffles, gathered around Abdellatif Laâbi in Rabat.46 The intense and close relationship between Accardi and Toni Maraini, who had both grown up in Sicily, entailed a number of journeys between Italy and North Africa, offering new insights into Accardi’s words in Autoritratto: So I always tell you […] “I would like to go to a country … I would like to go to Morocco, for instance.” What is Morocco? Who knows, maybe I would like to go

Figure 5.3  Poster of Carla Accardi’s exhibition at L’Atelier gallery, 1972–1973. Rabat, Pauline de Mazières Archive.

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there, because I would like to find myself in a society where there are still problems to be solved. But this is wrong, because the problems are here and they are very much, I tell you, always in this man-woman matter.47

After exhibiting the Triplice tenda in Rome, Accardi accepted Maraini’s invitation to go to Morocco, where she held a solo show at L’ Atelier in Rabat (Figure 5.3). This gallery was run by Pauline Chéréméteff-de Mazières, whom Accardi had met in Rome in 1969, and who would exhibit her work on several occasions.48 In the following years, Accardi travelled across Tunisia, Morocco and Lebanon and moved between Fez, Rabat and Tangier, where she was commissioned to produce a ceramic design for the walls of the Tarik Hotel. Both in Rome and on her journeys between Italy and Morocco, Accardi became involved – through her relationship with Melehi, Maraini and de Mazières – in the exchanges that shaped what Morad Montazami identifies as ‘transmediterranean modernism’.49 The quest for cultural and artistic decolonization that characterized the post-independence art scene in Morocco presented multiple points of contact with the questions addressed by Accardi’s feminist and artistic practice in this period. In particular, the formal hybridization of abstract and neovernacular motifs, the rejection of colonial classifications and the distinctions drawn between fine art and craft provided a space of dialogue with Accardi’s attempt to recover the discredited association of women’s work and self-expression with repetition, transforming repetition into a liberating gesture.50 It is across these exchanges that a reading of the Triplice tenda as an expression of sexed subjectivity strictly correlated with Accardi’s feminist experience may acquire a new meaning.51 Within the space of the Rabat exhibition, the artist’s attitude toward experimenting with hybrid languages could not be easily traced back to a single and homogeneous field of enquiry constituted, to borrow from Montazami, a ‘migration of forms’ across temporal and cultural boundaries that intersected personal, artistic and political spaces.52 Such transformative potential in decoding life and place resonates with Accardi’s image of the ‘three tents one into another … blowing up fixed walls’ (Figure 5.4).53 Despite Accardi’s later denial of the impact of her political commitment on her artistic trajectory, in the Rabat catalogue Toni Maraini explicitly relates Accardi’s involvement in Rivolta Femminile with her personal approach to art practice, conceived as a means for her personal exploration of identity rather than an end in itself. Accardi’s demystification of artistic myths and heroic postures was thus anchored in her bonds with Trapani, the city of her birth, which ‘turns its back on the Greek Sicily’, disregarded and despised because already ‘contaminated by Africa’.54 In contrast with the stable and powerful structure of a temple, the tent represents neither an impersonal industrial object nor an exotic parody but a space of mobility and intimacy. Maraini is very careful to distance the meaning of the exhibition from any claim based on the universality of the artwork – an illusion that, she explains, belongs to ‘bourgeois and patriarchal cultures’.55 Instead, she envisions the displacement of Accardi’s work in Rabat as an act of imagination operating on an existential and a personal level: ‘A stubborn and experimental gesture: as if to take a revenge on her childhood’s myths and finally transport her imaginary space to the other shore of the sea.’56

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Figure 5.4  Carla Accardi, Triplice tenda (detail). Photo: Landa Lanfranco, Genoa. Carte di Ida Gianelli. Bologna, Archivo di Storia delle Donne.

Maraini’s insights point to a decentred perspective where the relationship between the personal and the political is refracted across various axes of difference distinctly poised to open up situated dialogues that resist the assimilationist pull. From this point of view, Banotti does not simply embody the missing image linking postimperial formations and Italian feminism but represents an alternative questioning of the entwined archives of colonial sexuality and modernity. In a television broadcast in 1969, in the same period in which Rivolta Femminile gathered together, Banotti confronted the Italian journalist Indro Montanelli, who prided himself of having married a twelve-year-old Bilen girl in 1935 Ethiopia. Addressing the journalist, Banotti remarked: ‘You  openly said that you had a bride of, say, 12 years, and as you were 25, you did not hesitate to rape a 12-year-old girl, stating that in Africa these things happen. I would like to ask you how do you normally understand your relationship with women given these two statements?’ She added: ‘You always see the woman in a passive function of flatterer, or as the man’s partner that appears and disappears … You have never seen her as having a direct, active and different function.’57

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It is impossible to overestimate the relevance of Banotti’s observations to the reinvention of feminist histories that contest the hegemonic ways in which racialized people are perpetually located outside the temporal and spatial borders of the nation, and erased both from the historical record and from the present. Binding together colonial legacies and the individual and artistic networks of decolonization in postwar Italy, Banotti and Accardi’s trajectories allow us to read Lonzi’s use of colonial power categories and deculturation practices in the light of spaces of turbulence generated by fragmented local and translocal flows. In this reframing, the turbulence zone does not simply entail movements and displacements across art and feminism; it is also sustained by multiple histories of resistance that have been made incomprehensible ‘by the violent historicidal forces of assimilation’.58 Through the excavation of submerged stories, ‘sexual difference’ thus emerges as always already cut across, intersected and refracted along vectors of difference due to the situated interferences that trouble the past’s intelligibility along historical linearities. However, as I discuss below, these situated interferences, which to date remain unquestioned by Italian feminism, have been picked up and reformulated in other contexts more conscious of the conquistadorial uses of classificatory and exclusionary categories of difference.

‘Genealogias desviadas’: Transatlantic journeys Escupamos sobre la diversidad is the title of a recent intervention by the lesbian and queer Argentinian writer Valeria Flores. Inspired by the ‘purulent spirit of Carla Lonzi’s text’, the author invites the reader to spit on the othering hermeneutic as a gesture for unlearning imperial epistemologies.59 Flores’ main target is the way in which notions of sexual plurality and tolerance have become symbols of freedom in contemporary societies, encaging the heterogeneity of bodily, political and affective subjectivities into new regulative norms of respectability. Lonzi’s claim that the oppression of women does not ‘end with equality but continues within equality’ resonates with Flores’ critique of the permanent construction of differences in which new abject/normal dichotomies are reproduced through the colonial/modern divide that racializes temporal boundaries.60 Lonzi’s name bears witness, in an unexpected way, to the enduring impact of Escupamos sobre Hegel (Let’s Spit on Hegel) – first appeared in Buenos Aires in 1975 – on the feminist movement in Argentina (Figure 5.5). In a recent survey, the text is credited among the most influential readings of 1970s Argentine feminist experience, alongside Simone de Beauvoir’s El segundo sexo (The Second Sex) and Friedan’s La mística de la feminidad (The Mystique of Femininity).61 Although the translation is routinely mentioned by scholars, its underlying historical and personal connections have been left largely unexplored.62 In her diary Lonzi mentions various exchanges with ‘Irene’ who in 1974 she planned to visit in Buenos Aires for the release of her book.63 The woman behind the pseudonym can be identified as Gabriella Roncoroni Christeller, one of the founding members of the Unión Feminista Argentina. Born in 1924 in Milan to a wealthy family, during the Second World War Roncoroni was forced

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Figure 5.5  Cover of Escupamos sobre Hegel, Buenos Aires, 1975. Photo: the author.

to escape with her husband first to Romania and then to Switzerland, before settling down in Argentina in 1947. This experience of war and exile marked her life and fostered, in the following decades, her involvement in various international networks of non-violence activism. These included the Fortin Olmos Cooperative, established in a small village in the north of Santa Fe by the Italian priest Arturo Paoli, one of the fathers of the radical liberation theology movement.64 In the mid-1960s, following her encounters with indigenous women and the conflicts she had experienced in this context, Roncoroni decided to found the Centro de investigación y conexiones sobre la Comunicación varon-mujer to explore the biological, social, economic and cultural dimensions of the relationship between women and men. This activity brought her into contact with various research centres and women’s movements in Chile, the United States, Canada, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain. This is probably how she established direct contact with Lonzi in Italy. Traces of their intense exchange can be found in their correspondence, which is one of the sources for the biography written by Marta Lonzi and Anna Jaquinta after Lonzi’s death.65 The Unión Feminista Argentina, whose acronym ‘UFA’ also means ‘it’s enough’ in Spanish, originated in Roncoroni’s encounter with Maria Luisa Bemberg, a member of

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one of Argentina’s wealthiest families. In 1970, Bemberg, already in her forties, started to work in the film industry as the scriptwriter for Raùl de la Torre’s Cronica de una senora (Chronicle of a Lady), a story that was deeply connected with her personal life and contained references to the writings of Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan. An interview with a newspaper in which Bemberg overtly denounced the misuse of her script and declared herself a feminist became the catalyst for the group. The UFA comprised various women, including the writer Leonor Calvera, the photographer Alicia D’Amico, Sarita Torres, the theatre director Marta Miguelez, the poet Hilda Rais and Nelly Bugallo. Roncoroni is also credited with inspiring the title of Las mujeres dicen basta, one of the first collective publications of the women’s movement in Argentina.66 In the early 1990s, Leonor Calvera recalled Roncoroni and Bemberg as ‘unrepentant travellers’ who brought to the group documents and materials from the feminist movements in Europe and the United States, ‘almost in the same moment as they were appearing.’67 A partial translation of ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ was published as early as 1972, indicating that even before the translation of Escupamos sobre Hegel in 1975, Lonzi’s writings were circulating among local political networks (Figure 5.6).68 Remarking on Lonzi’s contribution to UFA meetings, Calvera writes: Her acidic and exasperated spirit moved us […] We studied [Sputiamo su Hegel] closely. Carla’s description of male/female relations and her questioning of systems of thought, of the entire culture, were brutal, ferocious, inclement, unsettling.69

The transatlantic network that connected Lonzi to feminist groups in Buenos Aires allows us also to credit Gabriella Roncoroni as the author of two Argentinian texts included in the previously mentioned collection of international texts, Donne è bello,

Figure 5.6  Book display at Gabriella Roncoroni Christeller’s Library showing Rivolta Femminile’s libretti verdi. Buenos Aires, Fondación Pio Roncoroni. Photo: the author.

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published in Italy in 1972. The first one is entitled ‘Le donne uniscono il loro rifiuto’ (‘Women Unite in Their Refusal’) and identifies ‘the root of every imperialism’ with the ‘irreducible nuclear male oppression over the female’.70 The second text, ‘Le donne e la chiesa’ (‘Women and the Church’), addresses an issue rarely considered in Italian radical feminism and is clearly connected with Roncoroni’s personal experience and conflict with the Italian priest Arturo Paoli.71 The back-and-forth exchange of texts between Italy and Argentina draws a map of Rivolta Femminile’s transnational connections that goes beyond a restricted focus on West Germany and France.72 Most importantly, however, the role played by personal exchanges and contacts foregrounds a feminist mode for the circulation of texts that is deeply influenced by a set of cultural dynamics that have shaped the diasporic trajectories of Italian identity, including the legacies of transatlantic mass migration and mobility.73 These legacies intersected with the specific tensions confronted by the sexual liberation movements in 1970s Argentina, thus destabilizing the linearity of the north/south transfer and opening up new configurations of alliances and political practices. Beyond the UFA, Lonzi’s texts circulated and were read within a larger militant network in Buenos Aires that included Nueva Mujer, a group closer to Marxist and Trotskyist organizations; the Grupo de Estudio y Práctica Política Sexual, which gathered together feminists and activists from the Frente de Liberación Homosexual; and the journal Persona, which was founded in 1974 by Maria Elena Oddone, a leading figure in the Movimiento de Liberación Femenina.74 The articulation of sexual and political liberation and the role played by translations and reading groups in shaping political practices should be considered against the backdrop of the tensions created by the late Cold War. Yet issues of sexual self-determination advanced by feminist groups were not only censored by the Right for being pro-abortion but also charged with complicity with the US plan, developed by McNamara, for the forced sterilization of Latin American women by leftist groups. In the escalating political violence that swept across the country, sexual liberation and deviant sexualities started to embody the enemy within that was the target of counter-subversive war.75 The 1976 military coup interrupted these experiences or forced them underground. The resulting trajectories of exile in Mexico, Spain, Italy, France and the United States offered new grounds for encounters between political activists and feminist experiences.76 Personal and political transformations played a crucial role in the spreading of feminist activism and debate in later decades, interwoven with new forms of transnational exchange across Latin America and US Latino movements, exemplified by the Encuentros Feministas Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, which generated an inventive entanglement between queer, feminist and decolonial practices. In addition, the diasporic journeys back and forth between Argentina and Spain point to the role played by the Buenos Aires translation in making Lonzi’s writings accessible also to Spanish feminists during Franco’s dictatorship, long before a new edition was published in Barcelona in 1981.77 Although Lonzi’s art writings are little known in Argentina, her name has recently surfaced in efforts to reconsider the role played by art and visual experimentation in the 1970s feminist movement. The art historian Maria Rosa Laura, for example, recalls

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Lonzi’s subversion of the Hegelian slave–master dialectics in her reading of Maria Luisa Bemberg’s El mundo de la Mujer (1972) and Juguetes (1978), both produced during Bemberg’s UFA years. One cannot fail to note that Lonzi’s name significantly reappears in the attempt to acknowledge the interplay between feminist and artistic practices that had previously been invisibilized by different forms of categorization of both art and politics. Together with Bemberg Maria Laura Rosa also considers the photographers Alicia d’Amigo and Ilse Fusková, both of whom had been active in the UFA and in the Movimiento de Liberación Femenina, respectively.78 The political nature of the historiographical conflict addressed by their erasure, as noted by María Laura Gutiérrez, opens up to ‘genealogías desviadas’ that contest the reproduction of established art chronologies and disclose uncharted connections between the feminist artistic interventions of the 1970s and the sexual dissident micropolitics of the 1980s and 1990s.79

Turbulent archives The connection between biographically situated itineraries and historical formations, on the one side, and spaces of encounter linked to artistic and feminist circulation, on the other, represents a site of turbulence relevant on both a historical and an interpretative level. Feminist strategies and knowledges are deeply located and contingent, not only in terms of translations between feminist languages but also within and across art and feminism. It is exactly at the intersection between these dynamics, rather than in the establishment of a cause–effect relationship, that transnational encounters emerge both as a site of memory, allowing to trace forgotten histories, and as a space in which to re-read Lonzi’s legacy. Here, place is not a neutral location within interchangeable space/time coordinates but emerges as a nexus of multiple and unfolding chains of pasts and futures. Diasporic networks marked by historical experiences of colonialism, exile and migration function as sites at which the turbulence zone between art and feminism inhabited by Lonzi unfolds new disruptive encounters with her texts. The transformative process is driven not by the logic of cultural translation and identification across borders but by ‘surreptitious transfers’ of ideas and concepts working along the lines of the ‘smuggling model’ suggested by Irit Rogoff. For Rogoff, smuggling is an operational device through which ‘the entire relation to an origin is eroded and the notion of journey does not follow the logic of crossing barriers, borders, bodies of water but rather of sidling along with them seeking the opportune moment, the opportune breach in which to move to the other side’.80 Resonances move along non-synchronic lines that mutually activate the relationships between crossing, passeurs, and the passing of time. In a repetition of unfaithful transmutations, very often acted against their own conventions, Lonzi’s radical feminism becomes a vehicle for the appearance of subjects and transnational circuits long severed from Italian postwar history. These relations make manifest the eruptive power of re-assembling traces, which are the tangible remainders of the link between archival practices and the unfolding of new temporalities. The assemblages of voices across the Italian post-imperial

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Mediterranean and the transatlantic space impact the present by unfolding a past that remains unfinished. At the same time, they introduce moments of dissonance into the insularity of Italian feminist narratives, disrupting their ‘white innocence’.81 Indeed, the exploration of the turbulence zone between art and feminism shows how the ‘unexpected subject’ of feminism is always enmeshed in the histories of Italian colonial modernity and constituted on the incorporation and appropriation of anti-colonial struggles and practices. After all, Lonzi’s turbulence zone is based on categories, classifications and institutions constructed over centuries of European colonial modernity as part of a cultural archive that excludes a large part of this history.82 Lonzi’s echoes, to return to Joan Scott, do not come from a fixed or stable point in the past but are marked by the shifting movements of multiple spatio-temporal entanglements. Exploring these dissonances allows us to re-consider connections dislodged from their specific histories and acknowledge a movement towards the present that does not follow a single direction. Displacements create gaps as well as unexpected contiguities. It is only through a specific relationship with historicity that we can start to take into account the cacophony of voices issuing from another time yet placing a demand on the present.

Notes

1 2

3

* I am deeply grateful to Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi for the opportunity to rethink my previous work on Carla Lonzi for this book and for their patience and support in the exploration of new directions of research. The writing of this contribution is profoundly indebted with my involvement in the research project ‘Bodies across Borders. Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond’ directed by Luisa Passerini at the European University Institute (Fiesole, Italy) and was partially supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement number 29585 (BABE). Unless otherwise stated in the footnotes, all translations from French, Italian and Spanish are mine. Carla Lonzi, ‘Significato dell’autocoscienza nei gruppi femministi’, in Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti (Milano: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 120. The term ‘archive’ here refers to the ‘imaginary economy’ governing the compartmentalizations of time, space and politics that have shaped Lonzi’s work and her cultural intelligibility. This perspective draws in particular on the work of Ann Laura Stoler and Gloria Wekker, among others, in bringing to light the impact of the epistemic logic governing cultural and colonial archives in the construction of feminist and sexual politics. See Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009) and Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016). Carla Lonzi, ‘Sputiamo su Hegel’ [1971], in Carla Lonzi, ed., Sputiamo su Hegel/La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale e altri scritti (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2013), 37. Here I translate deculturizzazione with ‘deculturation’ in accordance with previous uses of this term in the English/Anglophone literature on Lonzi. See Ventrella and Zapperi’s Introduction to this volume, note 54.

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4 Francesco Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1 (2015): 83–100. 5 Joan Scott, The Fantasy of Feminist History (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 48–50. 6 Ibid., 67; 79. 7 My reading of ‘ritual of transformation’ explicitly refers to José Esteban Muñoz’s approach to disidentification as a strategy of resistance that not only exposes the universalising and exclusionary scripts of the hegemonic order but also deploys them ‘as raw material for representing a disempowered politics or positionality that has been rendered unthinkable by the dominant culture’. See José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 31. 8 Albert Camus, The Rebel (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 272. On Lonzi’s reflections on Nietzsche, see Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminista, vol. II (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 775; 956. On the genealogy and contradictions of Lonzi’s notion of authenticity, see Giovanna Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’arte della vita (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2017), 88–118; also her essay in this volume. 9 Luciano Fabro and Carla Lonzi, ‘Untitled’, in Processi di pensiero visualizzati. Junge Italienische Avantgarde, eds. Irma Ineichen and Josephine Troller (Luzern: Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1970); now in C. Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2012), 643–6. 10 Carla Lonzi and Luciano Fabro, ‘Femme, Fourier’, in Achille Bonito Oliva, ed., Amore mio (Florence: Centro Di Edizioni, 1970); now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’ arte, 635–40. The pages reproduced by Lonzi are taken from Éduard Silberling, Dictionnaire de sociologie phalanstérienne. Guide des oeuvres complètes de Charles Fourier (Paris: Rivière, 1911). On these collaborations with Luciano Fabro, see Laura Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’ arte in Italia 1955–1970 (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2016), 219–24. 11 Carla Lonzi, ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’, in Paola Bono and Sandra Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 40–59. 12 ‘In quanto innalzamento della coscienza essa non si conquista attraverso la conoscenza, cioè non si conquista’(my italics). Carla Lonzi, ‘La critica è potere’, NAC 3 (December 1970), 5–6; now in Lonzi, Scritti sull’ arte, 649. 13 The term ‘consciousness raising’, which would be translated into Italian as ‘presa di coscienza’, started to circulate between 1969 and 1970, when women’s liberation texts from the United States arrived in both Milan and Rome. For the Italian translation of Kathie Sarachild’s ‘A Program for Feminist Consciousness Raising’, see Gruppo Anabasi, ed., Donne è bello (Milan: Anabasi, 1972), 104–6. 14 Lonzi, ‘La critica è potere’, 650. 15 Lonzi, ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel,’ 59. 16 Lonzi, ‘Il mito della proposta culturale,’ in Marta Lonzi, Anna Jaquinta, and Carla Lonzi, eds, La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1978), 142. 17 Luisa Passerini, Storie di donne e femministe (Turin: Rosenber & Sellier, 1991), 173. On Lonzi’s understanding of autocoscienza, see Maria Luisa Boccia, L’io in rivolta. Vita e pensiero di Carla Lonzi (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1990), 191–221. 18 Giovanna Zapperi, ‘Challenging Feminist Art History: Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths’, in Lara Perry and Victoria Horne, eds, Feminist Art History Now: Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 104–23. 19 Ibid.

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20 Carla Lonzi, ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della manifestazione creativa maschile’ and ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’, in Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, 61–113. 21 The term was coined in 1965–66 for the Manifesto del Movimento di Decultura, published in Ana Etcetera, 7 (1967), which circulated around the networks of Gruppo 63. Referring to the relationship between art, life and politics, Germano Celant describes ‘a moment that tends towards deculturization, regression, primitiveness and repression, oriented towards the pre-logical and pre-iconographic stage, towards elementary and spontaneous politics’. Germano Celant, Art Povera (New York: Paegher Publishers, 1969), 230. On deculturation in Italian art, see Lara Conte, ‘Comportamenti e azioni della critica negli anni Settanta: attraverso e oltre Roma’, in Daniela Lancioni, ed., Anni 70. Arte a Roma (Rome: Iacobelli, 2013), 84–93. On the English translation of deculturizzazione, see note 3. 22 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, vol. II, 935. The term ‘negro’ is employed here and in the following quotations from Carla Accardi and Pino Pascali according to its historical usage from the 1960s. 23 See Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita, 157–224. 24 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, vol. II, p. 950. 25 Vincenza Perilli, ‘L’ analogia imperfetta. Sessismo, razzismo e femminismi tra Italia, Francia e Stati Uniti’, Zapruder 13 (2007): 8–25. See also Liliana Ellena, ‘L’invisibile linea del colore nel femminismo italiano: viaggi, traduzioni, slittamenti’, Genesis 10: 2 (2011), 17–39. 26 Lonzi, Autoritratto (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 118. 27 Elvira Banotti, La sfida femminile: maternità e aborto (Bari: De Donato, 1971). 28 Mary Jane Dempsey, ‘Finding Postcolonial Figures: Rediscovering Elvira Banotti and Her Role in the Italian Feminist Movement’, Women’s History Review 27, no. 7 (2018), 14–15. Elvira Banotti, Una ragazza speciale (Aprilia: Ortica Editrice, 2012). 29 Banotti, Una ragazza speciale, 22. 30 Ibid. 31 Lonzi, ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’, 41. 32 Anne Koedt, ‘The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm’ [1970], in Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rampone, eds, Radical Feminism (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973), 206. On the relation between Koedt and Lonzi’s writing, see Nerina Milletti and Pintadu Ivana, ‘Il giardiniere, il giardino e le rose. L’omoerotismo in Rivolta Femminile e negli scritti di Carla Lonzi’, Genesis, 12, no. 1–2 (2012), 67–93. 33 Lonzi, ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’, in Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel, 61. 34 Lonzi, ‘Sessualità femminile e aborto’, in Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel, 59–60. 35 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, vol. II, 747. 36 Vinzia Fiorino, ‘Desideri del sé: Frantz Fanon e Carla Lonzi’, in Frantz Fanon, Pelle nera maschere bianche (Pisa: ETS, 2015), I–XV. 37 Lonzi, ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’, 41. 38 Banotti, Una ragazza speciale, 10–11. 39 Maria Lugones, ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System’, Hypatia 22, no. (2007), 193. 40 Quoted in Liliana Ellena, ‘Frontiere della liberazione e snazionalizzazione delle donne’, in Maria Teresa Mori, Alessandra Pescarolo, Anna Scattigno, and Simonetta Soldani, eds, Di generazione in generazione. Le Italiane dall’unità a oggi (Rome: Viella, 2014), 297. 41 Ibid., 277–300.

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42 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 186. Pascali’s quotation opens a chapter of Jean Loup Amselle’s seminal study L’art de la friche (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), a passionate indictment of primitivism in contemporary art defying the idea of Africa as a reservoir of alterity. Two recent exhibitions have addressed these questions: Pino Pascali, l’ Africano, Museo Civico di Castelbuono, Palermo, 28 March–29 June 2015, curated by Laura Barreca; and more recently Pino Pascali Sciamano, Fondazione Carriero, Milan, 24 March–24 June 2017, curated by Francesco Stocchi. 43 The unpublished letter is quoted in Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’arte della vita, 288. 44 See Germano Celant’s famous 1967 Manifesto, ‘Arte Povera. Appunti per una guerriglia’, Flash Art 5 (November–December 1967), 3. For a discussion of Celant’s approach, see Jacopo Galimberti, ‘A Third-worldist Art? Germano Celant’s Invention of Arte Povera’, Art History 36, no. 2 (2013): 418–41. 45 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 47; 248. 46 Toni Maraini, ‘Black Sun of Renewal’, springerin 12, no. 4 (2006). Available online: http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1869&lang=en. (accessed 13 May 2017). 47 Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto, 119. 48 Carla Accardi (Rabat: Galerie L’ Atelier, 1972), in collaboration with la Galleria Qui Arte Contemporanea, Rome, 14 December 1972–8 January 1973. See also Pauline de Mazières and Sylvia Belhassan, ‘L’ Atelier, séquences de vies’, in L’ Atelier, itinéraire d’une galerie 1971–1991 (Rabat: Kulte Editions, 2013), 39. The materials preserved in the Pauline de Maziéres archives witness the paramount relevance of L’ Atelier’s history, one of the first modern art gallery in Morocco active between 1971 and 1991. They open a unique window into the transcultural exchanges and artistic practices the Gallery built up and contributed to foster stretching from the Maghreb to the United States, Italy, France, Iran and Iraq. 49 Morad Montazami, ‘La galerie L’ Atelier: le musée sans murs du modernisme transméditerranéen’, Perspective 2 (2017), 236. 50 See Carla Accardi’s interview in Anne Marie Boetti, ‘Lo specchio ardente’, DATA 18 (1975), 50–2; and Carla Accardi, Untitled text, in Michèle Causse and Maryvonne Lapouge, eds, Ecrits, voix d’Italie (Paris: Editions des Femmes, 1977), 393. 51 See Leslie Cozzi, ‘Spaces of Self-consciousness: Carla Accardi’s Environments and the Rise of Italian Feminism’, Women & Performance. A Journal of Feminist Theory 21, no. 1 (2011), 67–88; see also Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’arte della vita, 163–73. 52 On the ‘migration of forms’, see Montazami, ‘La galerie L’Atelier: le musée sans murs du modernisme transméditerranéen’, 231. 53 Accardi, in Causse and Lapouge, eds, Ecrits, voix d’Italie, 393. 54 Toni Maraini, Untitled text, in Carla Accardi, n.p. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. See also Paolo Vagheggi in conversation with Carla Accardi, ‘Life Is Not Art, Art Is Life’, in Danilo Eccher, ed., Carla Accardi (Rome: MACRO, 2004), 138. 57 Elvira Banotti, in L’ora della verità (1969), [TV programme]. Rai 11 November. Available online: http://www.teche.rai.it/2015/07/indro-montanelli-la-mia-idea-diresistenza/. (accessed 6 May 2018) 58 Joseph Pugliese, ‘Embodied Archives’, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 11, no. 1 (2011): 4. 59 Valeria Flores, ‘Escupamos sobre la diversidad: discursos de normalicación y borriamento de identidades’, in Valeria Flores, ed., Interruqciones. Ensayos de poética activista (Neuquén: La Mondonga Dark, 2013), 303.

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60 Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel, 13. 61 Joana Viera Borges, Trajectorias e leituras feministas no Brasil e na Argentina (1960–1980), Ph. D. Dissertation (Universidade Federal de Santa Caterina, 2013). 62 Carla Lonzi, Escupamos sobre Hegel y otros escritos sobre la liberación femenina, trans. Julio Villaroel (Buenos Aires: Editorial La Pléyade, 1975). 63 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, vol. II, 606. 64 Based in a small village, the cooperative intended to share on a daily basis the impoverished conditions of the community of woodchoppers, mainly of indigenous origins and exploited by the British-owned company La Forestal. The information on Gabriella Christeller Roncoroni is taken from her collection of interviews, memoirs and archival documents Con el corazón en llamas, ed. Graciela Gonçalves da Rocha (Buenos Aires: Fundación Pio Roncoroni, 2014). I wish to express my deep gratitude to Giorgio Christeller for allowing me to access the book and sharing his memories of his mother. 65 See the long letter to Gabriella Kristeller [sic!] dated 26 March 1972, quoted in Marta Lonzi and Anna Jaquinta, Vita di Carla Lonzi (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1990), 9; 10; 15–16; 18–20; 36. 66 Alejandra Vasallo, ‘“Las mujeres dicen basta”: Feminismo y movilización política de los setenta’, in Andrea Andújar, Débora D’Antonio, Nora Domínguez, Karin Grammático, Fernanda Gil Lozano, Valeria Pita, María Inés Rodríguez, and Alejandra Vassallo, eds, Historia, Género y política en los ‘70 (Buenos Aires: Feminaria, 2005), 74. 67 Leonor Calvera, Mujeres y feminismo en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1990), 34. 68 Carla Lonzi, ‘Notas sobre sexualidad femenina’, in Marisa Cortazzo, ‘La condición de la mujer. Opresion y liberación’, in Transformaciones, Enciclopedia de los grandes fenómenos de nuestro tiempo, 66 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1972), 164–5. 69 Calvera, Mujeres y feminismo, 46. 70 [Gabriella Roncoroni Christeller], ‘Le donne uniscono il loro rifiuto, in Gruppo Anabasi, ed., Donne è bello, 83. 71 [Gabriella Roncoroni Christeller], ‘Le donne e la chiesa’, in Gruppo Anabasi, ed., Donne è bello, 90–2. 72 For France, see Causse and Lapouge, eds, Ecrits, voix d’Italie, For the French translation of ‘Manifesto di Rivolta Femminile’ and ‘Sputiamo su Hegel’, and for one of the few interviews with Lonzi, see Causse and Lapouge, eds, Ecrits, voix d’Italie, 334–75; in German, Carla Lonzi, Die lust Frau zu sein (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1975). Lonzi’s diary also mentions an English translation of Sputiamo su Hegel that requires further investigation. ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della manifestazione creativa maschile’ appeared as Rivolta Femminile, ‘On Woman’s Refusal to Celebrate Male Creativity’, Heresies 1, no. 1 (1977), 100–1, probably mediated by Lucy Lippard. 73 On the complex dynamics of Italian emigration to Argentina, see Fernando Devoto, Historia de los italianos en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2006). For a discussion of the diasporic and post-colonial dimensions of transnational mobility, see Donna Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000) and more recently Teresa Fiore, Pre-occupied Spaces. Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017).

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74 See Karina Felitti, ‘Sexualidad y reproducción en la agenda feminista de la segunda ola en la Argentina (1970–1986)’, Estudios Sociológicos 28, no. 84 (2010), 798–802. 75 Valeria Manzano, ‘Sex, Gender and the Making of the “Enemy Within” in Cold War Argentina’, Journal of Latina American Studies 47, no. 1 (2015): 1–29. 76 For a personal account see Alicia Genzano, ‘De porteña histérica a feminista romana’, Feminaria 9, no. 18/19 (1996): 22. 77 Carla Lonzi, Escupamos sobre Hegel. La mujer clitórica y la muyer vaginal (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1981). 78 Laura, Maria Rosa, Fuera de discourso. El arte feminista de la ‘segunda ola’ en Buenos Aires, Ph. D. Dissertation (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2011). See also Andrea Giunta, Feminismo y Arte Latinoamericano (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores Argentina, 2019), 96–106. 79 María Laura Gutiérrez, ‘El arte no es un lujo: Cruces y miradas sobre la teoría y la metodología feminista en/desde el arte para pensar el contexto Argentino’, in Proceedings of III Jornadas del Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Género (25–27 September, La Plata: Memoria Académica, 2013). Available online: http:// www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/trab_eventos/ev.3441/ev.3441.pdf. (accessed 10 October 2016). 80 Irit Rogoff, ‘ “Smuggling” – An Embodied Criticality’ (2006). Available online: http:// eipcp.net/dlfiles/rogoff-smuggling. (accessed 10 May 2017). 81 See Wekker, White Innocence. 82 Although Wekker grounds her discussion in the imperial history of the Netherlands, the connection between historical formations of colour-blindness and the denial of imperial and post-imperial racism is particularly pertinent to the role played by ‘white innocence’ in structuring the Italian self-representation around the notion of ‘Italiani brava gente’ (literally ‘Italians good people’). On the gendered construction of racialization in postwar Italy, see Gaia Giuliani, Race, Nation and Gender in Modern Italy (London: Palgrave, 2019).

References Amselle, J-L. (2005), L’ art de la friche. Essai sur l’ art africain contemporain, Paris: Flammarion, 2005. Anabasi (1972), Donne è bello, Milan: Anabasi. Banotti, E. (1971), La sfida femminile: maternità e aborto, Bari: De Donato. Banotti, E. (2011), Una ragazza speciale, Aprilia: Ortica Editrice. Boccia, M. L. (1990), L’io in rivolta. Vita e pensiero di Carla Lonzi, Milan: La Tartaruga. Boetti, A. M. (1975), ‘Lo specchio ardente’, DATA 18: 50–5. Calvera, L. (1990), Mujeres y feminismo en la Argentina, Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano. Camus, A. (1991), The Rebel, trans. A. Bower, New York: Vintage International. Causse, M. and Lapouge, M. eds (1977), Ecrits, voix d’Italie, Paris: Éditions des Femmes. Celant, G. (1967), ‘Arte Povera. Appunti per una guerriglia’, Flash Art 1, no. 5: 3. Celant, G. (1969), Art Povera, New York: Paegher Publishers. Conte, L. (2013), ‘Comportamenti e azioni della critica negli anni Settanta: attraverso e oltre Roma’, in D. Lancioni, ed., Anni 70. Arte a Roma, Rome: Iacobelli, 2013, 84–93.

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Cozzi, L. (2011), ‘Spaces of Self-consciousness. Carla Accardi’s Environments and the Rise of Italian Feminism’, Women & Performance. A Journal of Feminist Theory 21, no. 1: 67–88. Dempsey, M. J. (2017), ‘Finding Postcolonial Figures: Rediscovering Elvira Banotti and Her Role in the Italian Feminist Movement’, in Women’s History Review 27, no. 7: 1043–64. Devoto, F. (2006), Historia de los italianos en Argentina, Buenos Aires: Biblos. Ellena, L. (2011), ‘L’invisibile linea del colore nel femminismo italiano: viaggi, traduzioni, slittamenti’, Genesis 10: no. 2: 17–39. Ellena, L. (2014), ‘Frontiere della liberazione e snazionalizzazione delle donne’, in M. T. Mori, A. Pescarolo, A. Scattigno, and S. Soldani, eds, Di generazione in generazione. Le Italiane dall’unità a oggi, Rome: Viella, 277–300. Felitti, K. A. (2020), ‘Sexualidad y reproducción en la agenda feminsita de la segunda ola en la Argentina (1970-1986)’, Estudios Sociológicos, 28, no. 84: 791–812. Fiore, T. (2017), Pre-occupied Spaces. Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies, New York: Fordham University Press. Fiorino, V. (2015), ‘Desideri del sé: Frantz Fanon e Carla Lonzi’, in Frantz Fanon, Pelle nera maschere bianche, Pisa: ETS, i–xv. Flores, V. (2013), ‘Escupamos sobre la diversidad. Discursos de normalicación y borriamento de identidades’, in Id., Interruqciones. Ensayos de poética activista, Neuquén: La Mondonga Dark, 303–17. Gabaccia, D. (2000), Italy’s Many Diasporas, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Galimberti, J. (2013), ‘A Third-worldist Art? Germano Celant’s Invention of Arte Povera’, Art History 36, no. 2: 418–41. Genzano, A. (1996), ‘De porteña histérica a feminista romana’, Feminaria 9, no. 18/19: 22. Giuliani, G. (2019), Race, Nation and Gender in Modern Italy, London: Palgrave. Giunta, A. (2019), Feminismo y Arte Latinoamericano, Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores Argentina. Gutiérrez, M. L. (2013), ‘El arte no es un lujo: Cruces y miradas sobre la teoría y lametodología feminista en/desde el arte para pensar el contexto Argentino’, in Proceedings of III Jornadas del Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Género, 25-27 September 2013, La Plata: Memoria Académica. Available online: http://www. memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/trab_eventos/ev.3441/ev.3441.pdf. (accessed 20 October 2016) Iamurri, L. (2016), Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’ arte in Italia 1955-1970, Macerata: Quodlibet Studio. Koedt, A. ([1970] 1973), ‘The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, [1968], in A. Koedt, E. Levine, and A. Rampone, eds, Radical Feminism, New York: Quadrangle Books, 198–207. L’ora della verità (1969), [TV programme]. Rai 11 November. Laura, M. R. (2011), Fuera de discourso. El arte feminista de la ‘segunda ola’ en Buenos Aires, PhD diss. (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Lonzi, C. (1972), ‘Notas sobre sexualidad femenina, in M. Cortazzo, ed., La condición de la mujer. Opresion y liberación. Transformaciones: Enciclopedia de los grandes fenómenos de nuestro tiempo, no. 66, Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 164–5. Lonzi, C. (1975), Escupamos sobre Hegel y otros escritos sobre la liberación femenina, trans. J. Villaroel, Buenos Aires: Editorial La Pléyade. Lonzi, C. (1975), Die lust Frau zu sein, Berlin: Merve Verlag. Lonzi, C. (1978), ‘Il mito della proposta culturale’, in M. Lonzi, A. Jaquinta, C. Lonzi, La presenza dell’uomo nel femminismo, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 137–54.

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Lonzi, C. (1981), Escupamos sobre Hegel. La mujer clitórica y la muyer vaginal, trans. F. Parcerisas, Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama. Lonzi, C. (1991), ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’, in P. Bono and S. Kemp, eds, Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader, trans. V. Newman, Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 40–59. Lonzi, C. ([1968] 2010), Autoritratto, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1978] 2010), Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminista, 2 vols, Milan: et al./ Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1974] 2010), Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. (2012), Scritti sull’ arte, eds. L. Conte, L. Iamurri, and V. Martini, Milan: et al./ Edizioni. Lonzi, M. and Jaquinta, A. (1990), Vita di Carla Lonzi, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Lugones, M. (2007), ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System’, in Hypatia 22, no. 1: 186–209. Manzano, V. (2015), ‘Gender and the Making of the “Enemy Within” in Cold War Argentina’, in Journal of Latina American Studies 47, no. 1: 1–29. Maraini, T. (1972), ‘Carla Accardi’, in Carla Accardi, Rabat: Galerie L’ Atelier. Maraini, T. (2006), ‘Black Sun of Renewal,’ springerin 12, no. 4. Available online: http:// www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1869&lang=en. (accessed 13 May 2017). de Mazières, P. and Belhassan, S. (2013), ‘L’ Atelier, séquences des vies’, in L’ Atelier, itinéraire d’une galerie 1971–1991, Rabat: Kulte Editions, 38–41. Milletti, N. and I. Pintadu (2012), ‘Il giardiniere, il giardino e le rose. L’omoerotismo in Rivolta Femminile e negli scritti di Carla Lonzi’, Genesis 12, no. 1–2: 67–93. Montazami, M. (2017), ‘La galerie L’ Atelier: le musée sans murs du modernisme transméditerranéen’, Perspective 11, no. 2: 221–28. Passerini, L. (1991), Storie di donne e femministe, Turin: Rosenber & Sellier. Perilli, Vincenza (2007), ‘L’analogia imperfetta. Sessismo, razzismo e femminismi tra Italia, Francia e Stati Uniti’, Zapruder 13: 8–25. Pugliese, J. (2011), ‘Embodied Archives’, in Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 11, no. 1: 1–6. Rivolta Femminile (1977), ‘On Woman’s Refusal to Celebrate Male Creativity’, in Heresies 1, no 1: 100–1. Rogoff, I. (2006), ‘“Smuggling” – An Embodied Criticality’. Available at: http://eipcp.net/ dlfiles/rogoff-smuggling. (accessed 10 October 2017). Roncoroni Christeller, G. (2014), Con el corazón en llamas, ed. G. Gonçalves da Rocha, Buenos Aires: Fundación Pio Roncoroni. Scott, J. W. (2011), The Fantasy of Feminist History, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Stoler, A. L. (2009), Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vagheggi, P. in conversation with C. Accardi, ‘Life Is Not Art Art Is Life’, in D. Eccher, ed., Carla Accardi, Rome: MACRO, 126–40. Vasallo, A. (2005), ‘Las Mujeres dicen basta: Feminismo y movilización política de los setenta’, in A. Andújar, D. D’Antonio, N. Domínguez, K. Grammático, F. Lozano Gil, V. Pita, M. I. Rodríguez, and A. Vassallo, eds, Historia, Género y política en los ’70, Buenos Aires: Feminaria, 2005, 61–88. Ventrella, F. (2015), ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1: 83–100. Viera Borges, J. (2013), Trajectorias e leituras feministas no Brasil e na Argentina (1960– 1980), PhD diss. (Universidade Federal de Santa Caterina).

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Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita, Milan: DeriveApprodi. Zapperi, G. (2017), ‘Challenging Feminist Art History: Carla Lonzi’s Divergent Paths’, in L. Perry and V. Horne, eds, Feminist Art History Now: Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice, London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 104–23. Wekker, G. (2016), White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

6

‘I thought art was for women’ Suzanne Santoro interviewed by Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi

1) We could start by talking about your time as an art student in the School of Visual Arts in New York. Salvatore Scarpitta was one of your tutors, and you often mention Dore Ashton as one of your most influential teachers. What was their role in the school? Why did you choose to attend their seminars? I didn’t really choose their seminars; those were compulsory in the course. Dore Ashton did contemporary art history, but there were others too. Mel Bochner taught art history as well, he was wonderful. He used to discuss philosophy, and Wittgenstein. Leon Golub taught painting, he was fabulous too. He was the husband of Nancy Spero, whom I didn’t know in those years when I was there (1964–68). But I wanted to be an artist since I was a child. It was a joy for me to be in an art school. Scarpitta taught sculpture but he was really predatory, a womanizer. I was so naïve at the time. Everyone was at the School of Visual Arts then. Eva Hesse was a friend of the minimalists who were there, but I never met her. I was always interested in women artists. I guess, I thought art was for women, I identified art as a female activity. Of course I had to study everybody and everything, and at that moment it was all minimalism and conceptual art. There was Jospeh Kosuth who was my fellow student but he was already showing at Leo Castelli’s gallery. The majority of students at the School of Visual Arts were women, but the tutors were all male except Dore Ashton and Diane Wakoski who wrote the poem ‘The Mechanic’.1 I left just before the students’ movement started in 1968. When I was at high school I was involved with strange people, because I was considered from a strange family. I read The Feminine Mystique then, when I was always hanging around with two sisters who were in the Socialist Workers Party, so they were interested in women’s things.2 In 1967 Dore Ashton put me in touch with the Rothko family to work as a nanny for the summer months during their trip to Europe. We were in London first, and that is when I managed to meet my grandmother in Oldham, Manchester. We also went to Paris and then Rome, where we stayed with Carla Panicale from the Marlborough Gallery. She was really an open minded woman. Once we got into this conversation that Anglo-Saxons and Americans are so prudish so she put me up with a guy who worked in her gallery. I thought that high-society women in Rome were really liberated at the time, so they thought that everyone else should be like that. But I didn’t know what I was doing. I was so naïve. I can’t even remember him.

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2) In her classic essay Sexual Politics (1970) Kate Millet exposed the patriarchal biases that inform Western art and literature, and in order to do that she had to show the importance of speaking about sex politically. In particular, Millet challenged the idea that sexuality is a one-to-one affair to be discussed only within the intimacy of the domestic walls.3 You told us that this book made you conscious about the position of women in the art world: how did these ideas resonate with you during your move between New York and Rome? I came back to Rome because, when I was there with the Rothko family in 1967 and I had to take care of their children, they would not allow me to visit the city on my own. Here I was in Rome, as an art student, but I couldn’t do much: it was really bad, especially because from age 13 I was used to going to the beach at Coney Island by myself. I wasn’t making art either, simply because I couldn’t do anything. Sometimes I would sneak out of the apartment without permission. When I decided to return to Rome, I had $1000 in my pocket and I knew I wasn’t coming back so soon. I was determined to stay and see all the things I hadn’t seen. However, I left New York also because I needed to run away from Salvatore Scarpitta, who was my teacher at the School of Visual Arts, and who wanted to set me up as an artist. I was involved in a complicated relationship with him and I couldn’t take his sexual harassment anymore. It was too difficult to be the student of someone that constantly wants to sleep with you (and with female students in general). My relationship with him became something I needed to escape from, also because he was abusive, both with us students and with his wife. Reading Kate Millet in this context was important for me because it made me aware of what was happening in this relationship. I also realized that this was integral to the art world, where everybody is supposed to be odd and free at the same time. Becoming aware of this made me angry and disappointed. However, somehow paradoxically, my desire to be an artist was reinforced by these delusional experiences with established male artists such as Rothko and Scarpitta. I always wanted to do art, and no one could take this desire away from me. This is perhaps the reason why I didn’t have so much contrast with Carla Lonzi. Her objections weren’t really bothering me because it was clear to me what I had to do for myself. I think I already had the awareness that art and creativity didn’t necessary correspond to a certain environment (the art world). I couldn’t care less. After all these years, I never really went after galleries or anything like that. 3) You first met Carla Lonzi in New York. Can you recall this first encounter? I remember it very clearly. It was at one of these art world parties, where I went with Scarpitta. He introduced me to his friend Pietro Consagra and to Carla Lonzi, who was sitting right next to him. I didn’t know anything about her. I was just told that this was Carla Lonzi, but I didn’t know she was an art critic and had no idea I would meet her later. Consagra was an extremely charming man, and also a womanizer! I mean, he loved women, and women loved him. But, curiously, I don’t remember him so much on that occasion, I mostly remember her. She was very close to him, I don’t think she spoke any English, so she didn’t speak very much, but I remember her clearly. It was just a casual meeting. 4) When you arrived in Rome in 1968 you wanted to meet Carla Lonzi again and eventually joined Rivolta Femminile in 1971. You often say that feminism was crucial for you as an artist. You once claimed that if it were not for the feminist movement you would have not become an artist. What do you mean by this?

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I think I wouldn’t have found my own direction if it wasn’t for feminism. When I was in art school everyone was becoming a minimalist and a conceptualist, which was very boring to me. I was interested in someone like Eva Hesse, even though, at that time, I was not fully aware of the meaning of this choice. It was some kind of intuition back then, which I am now starting to understand also because of new feminist scholarship on women artists. The encounter with feminism allowed me to make work in a way that was different from what was taught at school. I arrived in Rome during the summer of 1969, after finishing my course. At the beginning, I was very depressed: I spent time in the museums and I was also drawing a lot. By the time I was almost ready to leave, I met the man that later became my husband. Scarpitta had given me some contacts in Rome, so since I was going to stay I decided to call some of these people. Carla Lonzi was one of them and I called her. This was in 1971 I think, and the choice of calling her instead of others was due to the fact that she was a woman. Of course I had no idea of what she was doing, I just called her and asked if she wanted to meet. She said that she was not interested in pushing my career or anything like that. But I never really cared about that. She said ‘If you think you’re coming here to be pushed into the art world … ’ which I really didn’t need, because Scarpitta had done enough damage already. I had enough of meeting artists, I didn’t need to meet any more of them. She said that I might not be interested in what she was doing now, I said I was because I really wanted to meet her anyway. I had to convince her. This is how I encountered Rivolta Femminile: I first met Lonzi and Carla Accardi, then I was invited to the meetings (Figure 6.1). They were already doing autocoscienza, which for

Figure 6.1  From the left: Marta Lonzi, Carla Accardi, Carla Lonzi and Suzanne Santoro in the garden of Consagra’s studio, Rome 1971. Photo: Pietro Consagra. Milan, Archivio Pietro Consagra.

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me was an explosion, or an illumination. Through autocoscienza I could make sense of what I had endured with men and artists. All the women in the meetings were somehow involved with art, either because they were artists or because their partners were artists, or for other reasons. Art was very much present, but it wasn’t explicitly discussed. Carla Accardi sometimes talked about it. However, even when the matter was art, it really wasn’t about being an artist, it was primarily about being a woman who lived in a world that is not yours. I think art was not so important because, at that moment, for me and for other women it was more important to find out where we were as women. Most of us had serious problems in the outside world, which basically means in our relationships with men. Some women couldn’t handle autocoscienza, one fainted during the meetings, others refused to continue. Often the things that were said there had never been said before, because of self-censorship and the need to keep secretes for the sake of men. This is still happening. I am thinking for example of the two versions of my book Towards New Expression: the first one was done in the right way, because I was so convinced. But when I republished the book later, I took out the whole text because I was self-censoring myself.4 I had fallen back into that feeling that I could not say these things in such an explicit way. 5) According to Carla Lonzi, there was a direct connection between autocoscienza and the process of writing. However, she considered art or visual expression as either too compromised with patriarchal culture, or as inadequate tools for self-expression. This became problematic for the women artists involved in the group, but also for other women who did not feel at ease with writing. You once said in an interview that ‘autocoscienza was everywhere’. What did the feminist practice of autocoscienza mean to you, as an artist? I think autocoscienza gave me a break from the old art world, which is still going on in its present new form. Autocoscienza gave women in the group a space to talk about things that were absolute taboo anywhere else. The possibility that I could break away from old art-world ideas and do something totally on my own, that I did not have anything to do with that string of historical stuff. You see, at that point I still considered myself to be an artist, in technical terms. I would go to openings and I would try to meet the artists and try that minimal part of self-promotion. But that was minimal, because, anyway, they were not interested in me and the kind of work that I was doing. But it was so big this thing about feminism, that art became secondary. By the same token, feminism became a source of inspiration, because there were so many things to discover, still are. So I put all those things into my work, and my work is all about this stuff that I was finding out through feminism. I think that Carla Lonzi and Carla Accardi were having a big problem with talking about art within the groups. I had a problem with it too, but in my own personal path, because I had some problems with conceptual art. So I thought I could not do any of that stuff; that stuff was their stuff. This stuff is my stuff, because it is about me, my body, my sexuality. But Accardi’s and Lonzi’s discussion never came out. They were very discreet about it. When I recently heard about the long letter Accardi had written to Lonzi after their break up, which she never sent, I was so surprised and delighted to think that, finally, we could hear Accardi’s side of the story. I hope this letter will be published soon. Each of them had taken such specific and different positions on the meaning of writing and on the

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making of images in the context of feminism; I’ve been thinking about this for the last fifty years!5 I followed Carla Lonzi everywhere, I would go to Milan and stay with her there: I had to see her, I had to listen to her. She was really fascinating. She was quiet and she was soft spoken, and she was absolutely determined, and she said incredible things. But she was never promoting her stuff. She listened to women a lot. She wasn’t a leader. I mean, she was because she was writing incredible books and no one in the group was writing incredible books like that, but she did not act like a leader. She was very calm, and very smiley. During the meetings she was not the protagonist, but everybody wanted to listen to her, and to be with her. But she listened a lot too: it couldn’t have been any other way. The fact that I had to put a text next to the images in Towards New Expression totally comes from Carla Lonzi, all those ideas come from her.6 It was like me trying to synthesize her ideas somehow. But there were other things that happened too. I remember once when I was up in Milan and Consagra was there, I decided that I was going to cook dinner. And she was watching me, she was very observing, and pointed out that I was really manual. And she wasn’t, she was all pensiero [thought]. I was making stuffed artichokes, very Southern, and I got the impression she didn’t think too highly of the manual capacity. She was very brisk and quick, she wasn’t interested in that kind of thing. A lot of people are not interested in that kind of thing. I don’t mind people who don’t like to do things with their hands, but I think it bothered her. I was all hands, so was Carla Accardi – it’s like she was born with the paintbrush in her hand. When she was painting it was like a symphony sort of thing. Accardi never painted at the meetings, but sometimes we would get together in her studio just on our own. I think I was bothering them sometimes, because I was twenty years younger. But you couldn’t learn anything from men, I needed to know what the women were doing, how they got on and how they got through … But, as I already said elsewhere, Carla Lonzi did not want to be the Lucy Lippard of the situation.7 6) You often refer to yourself as a listener of Carla Lonzi and the group, but what do you think you brought and contributed to those meetings? That experience of talking about the abusive relationships we have with male artists. That’s what I think I gave to the group. The artworld is a terrible place to be and I wanted to be an artist so what do you do about this? So feminism was a direction, it was like the clouds opening in the sky and the sun was coming out. I could find somewhere to go that wasn’t with them, because the art world was just awful, everywhere. I talked about art with Anna Maria Colucci, but you have to understand that art was somewhere else, it was not in that debate. So talking about art was probably underlying, but for the women who were there it was so important to get that stuff off their chests, the problems they were having with those men. You had to get that weight off first. Everyone continued to do what they were doing. I continued to be an artist, Anna Maria as well. But it didn’t bother me that Carla Lonzi was against art. Maybe it did, but it was not enough to stop me, certainly. Autocoscienza was so based on what was happening to us with the men, to the point that Carla Lonzi once asked ‘When are we going to stop talking about men?’ I think it was such a discovery in that moment that we could talk about sexuality, it was so big that we could do that. Nobody was doing

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that. But I realise now how scandalous my book must have seemed, and even Lonzi’s stuff about sexuality. It was really overwhelming that we could finally analyse this mess that women were in. 7) You were coming from a completely different place. You were not only coming from abroad, but you were younger than the other women in the group, and you were coming from a working class background in Brooklyn … How was that? Did you feel any conflict within the group? I did not worry about that. It was so important for me that I was getting all that information, I didn’t care where I was coming from. I came from a hard background, but my mother was so far ahead of these other people, I was so privileged. In fact, Lonzi once said to me ‘you are oriented towards the mother.’ And I don’t think I talked about my mother that much, but I must have said something that she thought that I had this inclination towards this mother mind set, which she probably did not think it was interesting. We did not talk about mothers that much, or mothers and daughters which became such a big thing within feminism later. It was mostly about sexuality and the bad times we were going through with men. But this was free. It’s so different from psychoanalysis, because there’s no leader, there’s no one who has an interpretation of things. Everybody was really free to say what they wanted to. There might have been some comments, but there was a lot of silence and I think that was really therapeutic for us. There was a lot of silence. I guess when I was talking about those horrible things that were happening to the Scarpitta women, me included, everyone just listened in awe. But people could have thought why did you allow yourself to do that sort of thing … But there was nothing like that. So there was a sense of freedom and very creative, because there was this opening kind of feeling, which is bigger than just making a piece of art in some way. Wonderful, it felt wonderful, that we could sit together. Someone coming in, we didn’t care about anything else that was going on outside … I don’t know, it was quite something, almost like a kind of religious ritual which women have lost, they certainly have lost it through organised religion, and you felt like everybody was you, and you like everybody. I didn’t feel any serious conflict with other women at the time, or maybe I was just ignoring it; I think that came out from feminism in later years when women started distinguishing who is thinking this and who is thinking that. But I think in the beginning it was like one big happy family. Even if we were saying those awful things, everybody was so happy. That’s gone. The experience of autocoscienza lasted until 1975, until we founded the Cooperativa Beato Angelico, so around four years which is really not a little time to be doing something like that. 8) Some of your works, such as Mount of Venus and Towards New Expression, strongly resonate with Carla Lonzi’s ideas about women’s sexuality, particularly what she writes in the essay ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’.8 How did this text have an impact, if any, in your work? Does it have any resonance with your shift from the making of a cast of your own sex to the exploration of images of sex in a montage of text and photographs? My reading of Carla Lonzi’s text was crucial in the process of making those sculptures. The ideas that came out from our discussions were equally important. For instance, we discussed about the need to know our body, so we shaved our sexes in order to see. Mount of Venus (1971) was born out of this practice, which had to do with

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Figure 6.2  Suzanne Santoro, Mount of Venus and beyond, 1971. Resin cast, 14 × 5 × 7 cm. Photo: Suzanne Santoro. Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia. Casa Internazionale delle Donne/Collection of the Artist.

seeing and knowing parts of our body that are supposed to be concealed (Figure 6.2). I made a cast and then I polished it, since the idea was not to have a realistic rendering of the body, which was something for instance that Marta Lonzi disapproved of – and, as you know, she was very close to her sister Carla. So I did the plaster cast. I took the plaster out when it became dry – any sculpture student knows how to do make a plaster cast: first you make a plaster cast of the object you want to reproduce, from this negative space you pour in the liquid polyester resin and when it dries you sand and polish the resin surface. These works have to do with Carla Lonzi and with my experience of Rivolta Femminile, which is something I couldn’t have said before, because of the widespread myth about the artist’s originality. On the contrary, art is something more collective than we thought it was. This idea is also something that came up in discussions with Carla Lonzi, who argued that art is a myth and that one is an artist only when someone else tells you, it’s not a natural instinct, but something that exists in a relation. She was right, but at that time I disagreed with her because I was convinced that art was rather instinctual, also because human beings have been doing this for thousands years. So it took me about fifteen years to figure this out, while working with small children on the graphic experience, and seeing how they would start drawing at a very young age. Yes, drawing is an archaic language preceding writing and is embodied. I think Lonzi didn’t want to acknowledge that the body is a language, and that the visual rendering is a language, although of course she was smart enough to know. What bothered her was the whole mythical construction around artists, more than visual language itself. However, she was not ready to separate the two, which eventually became a problem for those women who were interested in expressing

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themselves visually. For me it was impossible to understand why she privileged writing so much, and why she considered writing as a higher level of expression than visual art. I did Mount of Venus in 1971, and then I started to work on the ideas that I would develop in the book Towards New Expression (1974) (Figure 6.3). The connection between the sculptures and the book was natural as, in my view, sculptures and performative or gestural works are connected. What I want to say by that is that the cast was a starting point, because when you are dealing with the body, you first have to feel its materiality, and then you can go into a more abstract representation. This is how I understand the relation between the body’s materiality and its visual representation, the image. Mount of Venus came out of the need to see myself, to understand the body’s morphological structure. Becoming aware of this part of my body and the sensations that are attached to it, which relate to sexuality, enabled me to connect to the surrounding space in a different way. I started to realize that this same structure could be found in architecture, ancient sculptures, and prehistoric art, although it was hidden and concealed by other things (Figures 6.4 and 6.5). Since I found this same

Figure 6.3  Suzanne Santoro, Per una espressione nuova/Towards new expression, Rome, Rivolta Femminile 1974 (front cover). Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia. Casa Internazionale delle Donne/Collection of the Artist.

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Figure 6.4  Suzanne Santoro, Per una espressione nuova/Towards new expression, Rome, Rivolta Femminile 1974. Detail. Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia. Casa Internazionale delle Donne/Collection of the Artist.

Figure 6.5  Suzanne Santoro, Per una espressione nuova/Towards new expression,  Rome, Rivolta Femminile 1974. Detail. Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia. Casa Internazionale delle Donne/Collection of the Artist.

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structure in such a variety of places, I started to think that it had become symbolic. The book Towards New Expression is the result of this inquiry. I printed it on my own, maybe I collected money with other women from Rivolta, I don’t remember. While I was commencing to reflect upon these things, I started to take photographs of my own and other women’s bodies. One of them, her name was Marcella, was married to an entomologist, who helped us taking the pictures, since he had the kind of camera we needed. I remember we shaved ourselves and he would take the pictures. He was very reliable and responsible. So women from Rivolta Femminile were involved in the making of the book, although while we were taking these pictures I didn’t have the idea of the book yet, I just wanted to have these photographs. It is only later that I started to think about a montage with other images related to ancient statues, paintings and a text. I was so enamoured by what I was seeing in the museums in Rome that I started to photograph statues and paintings, or just buying postcards. I was also reading a lot about female divinities in Roman statuary and started to realize that something went lost in history. The choice of the title, Towards New Expression, has to do with the importance of sexuality and the notion of expression as related to it. So whereas Mount of Venus was primarily about seeing and knowing, the book deals with the relation between sexuality and woman’s self-expression, which was something new at the time. Autocoscienza prompted a new understanding of the words expression and creativity. For us feminism was the new creativity, which also means that you didn’t have to be an artist to express yourself creatively. So the main point was this idea of expressing oneself in a way that transgressed patriarchal representations of women’s sexuality, and therefore cannot be understood simply as art. This is, I think, what made it so powerful and, at the same time, disturbing, especially if one considers that this work was censored in 1979.9 9) In her diary, Carla Lonzi writes that she didn’t find any correspondence (rispondenza) with Towards New Expression and she openly dismisses the work. She writes: ‘it makes me feel like an art critic looking at Body Art.’10 Did you ever discuss this with her? How did you react to Lonzi’s opinion about your work? I received a letter from Adriana, a member of Rivolta in Milan, and close friend with Carla Lonzi. The letter says: ‘This can’t be Suzanne, who used to tell of the atrocious experiences about the vagina and now she makes the clitoris look so stylised, as if it were not a thing that had to do with her as a person’.11 That was Adriana’s idea, but it would have been different if it had come directly from Carla Lonzi, because the two were very friendly. At that point there was practically a total break. There was either no contact, or we were not together anymore, the group had stopped, they started flaking away, somebody else got married, or had another kid. But the seed had been planted for each one of us on how we were going to work it out. Lonzi was convinced there could only be feminism, that that was the door you had to pass through. It didn’t need to be involved or to become anything else. She never worked, but I know she had some money and paintings stashed away, she had some Fontanas so she had a way to get out, but she would never teach or get involved in any of these proletarian sort of things. I agreed with that too, except if you happen to live until ninety, you’ve got to find a way to eat. But life seemed much cheaper and simpler in the seventies, it was a moment of great freedom when people did not feel forced about making money.

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10) But in her diary she says that you spent time together after she had seen the book, and I wonder if after this time that you spent together, there was a point in which you talked about it. And there is a letter she wrote, which is in her diary, which she probably never sent to you. This is a letter that she writes to you, which means that she has been giving it a lot of thought. In the diary she calls me Diana like the huntress. I think she thought that I was hunting down ideas and taking things. I think there is still a problem of originality, not authenticity, that I was stealing from the group. But when people are together and think together, whatever comes out … She probably thought that I was haunting her down, stealing her ideas, probably, and putting them to images. I can understand that. I think people think that way, but her feminism makes us understand that creativity was everybody’s domain, and I don’t like the idea, when critics come here and talk as if I was the artist. I think there is a common ground here, it is not that I am the artist and you are the person adoring me. Collective thinking has always existed. 11) Towards a New Expression has been discussed by feminist art historians mostly in relation to its censorship from an artist books show at the ICA in 1979. Since then, the work has been used as a document to challenge the accusation of pornography that has been levelled at other artists from your generation who also have explored ‘core imagery’ or ‘vaginal iconography’, or as an example of the ‘essentialist’ slant of feminist art. In Roszika Parker’s analysis of the book, which was published right after it was censored, you explain that you ‘just wanted to make the point that I had found structural identities, not symbolic identities’.12 Can you elaborate on this significant difference? I think I still was, at that time, too much of an artist and had ideas about how to be an artist. There was also post-structuralism at that moment, which is of course filtering in my discourse, even though I am not an intellectual. Since my work was censored, I had to defend myself and I was probably afraid of talking about symbolism. I don’t know why I said that to Roszika Parker, because now it sounds like I was protecting myself, as if I am censoring myself by leaning on a structure.13 Because a structure exists, but it’s always already symbolic, even a sign is symbolic. Signs are already symbols I think. However, in these images I explore the morphology of sex, rather than its symbolic aspect. The point was not to look at the female sex as ‘symbolic of ’ something, but to find an expression that doesn’t come from already existing symbolisms. I wasn’t working on the symbolism of female anatomy, but trying to explore the morphology of sex. Now I am calling these images ‘sacred miniatures’, as I am not satisfied either with the idea that these merely refer to anatomy, nor with notions such as vaginal imagery. I like to call them ‘sacred miniatures’ also for their reference to Medieval culture, which is such an important part for my work.14 At that time, I probably didn’t want to give these images so much power by defining them as symbols, because a symbol is more powerful than a structure, I think. In the book I am not trying to give any person (man, woman, or whatever) a category or a symbolic meaning, which at that time could have been considered as something negative, because the symbolic is something that is constructed by someone else, it’s a myth. Maybe that’s why I said that it was not symbolic, because I didn’t want to give it a definite idea. 12) Some of the artists who no longer identified with Lonzi’s position against the visual arts gathered around another collective experience, which is the Cooperativa Beato

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Angelico. In this context, you organized your first solo show in Italy. What did you find were the differences and the continuities between Rivolta and the Cooperativa? How did this new space impact on the making of the show and on your responses to the reactions of the public? Carla Lonzi was against all contact with the outside and had given up art criticism. Autocoscienza was the main objective and that meant each one of us as women needed to concentrate totally on our ‘self ’. A tabula rasa was necessary for this to happen … I totally agreed with this as I needed to go deep into my quandaries about living in a male structured world. The outside world was a distraction. For women, I think, the private and the public was and still is in conflict. Carla Accardi as an already renowned painter was very enthusiastic about doing the CBA and expanding into the public as was the other artists from the group of Rivolta.15 The conflict between public and private was the reason for the end of the long and profound friendship between the two original founders of the group, Carla Accardi and Carla Lonzi, and it was the end of the Rivolta Femminile group in Rome. We thought it necessary to be active in creating a women’s collective art space and work together as a team. We collected the money between ourselves and rented a space. But, it was not really a feminist art collective. When you get into the art world, there’s so much to do … it wasn’t autocoscienza. We didn’t talk about feminism, everybody was working in so many areas, and there was so much to do. It was a feminist space, yes, but it was not like being with Carla Lonzi. It was a group of women doing something. But, I guess, it was a feminist gesture anyway. The difference of the CBA with Rivolta was that we didn’t do autocoscienza. It was a practical thing, we had to fix things up, how to make the invitations, get critics to come, we got lots of letters, we sent lots of material all over the world, and then we would meet socially for other reasons. There was no strict talking about feminist theory. It was not particularly a separatist space: although, a group of eleven women is pretty threatening to the outside which we didn’t really feel at the time. Critics were really positive, but that was also thanks to all the contacts we had in the art world. So, they were forced to confront such a situation. If it were not for Eva Menzio who did all the historical research and getting the painting by Gentileschi and all of those fancy people we wouldn’t have had so much coverage from the press … they would have thought of us as eleven housewives. The CBA was really liberating for Carla Accardi. She was very pleased when we did this thing and she found that it was a very healthy thing. And I felt great about it too. I just wanted to do things. I was upset about the end of Rivolta but I would have been even more upset if there was nothing else afterwards. We had to continue somehow. In my first exhibition I showed the Black Mirror series, Mount of Venus, the Sarcophgus which is really beautiful. And then there was a big family portrait and a sculpture on the floor. The day before my mother died, I wasn’t there for the opening. 13) The CBA opened with a show of one painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, L’ Aurora (1627). Why did a coop of contemporary women artists choose to open the doors with the show of an artist from the past? Was this an attempt at finding and founding a feminist genealogy for women artists in the present? It was Eva Menzio’s initiative to show Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting. Menzio was involved in art trade through her husband, the dealer Luciano Pistoi, she knew many

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people and was able to find this painting and obtain it for the exhibition. During the period of the exhibition, the priest of Santa Maria sopra Minerva agreed to keep the painting in that church when we weren’t there, as we didn’t have any insurance or anything like that. Normally, you would enter the church from the piazza Santa Maria sopra Minerva, but there is a second entrance, in the back, from the via del Beato Angelico, which is where our cooperative was. I don’t remember exactly how we came to the decision to open the space with the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition. The idea was really to do something together, and I think Eva Menzio proposed it because she was working on Artemisia at that point, and had the opportunity to show L’  Aurora. Eva knew a collector who owned the painting and was very happy to be able to show it since it was unpublished. It seemed it was a good idea, and also perhaps the most sensational thing we could do! The whole interest for Artemisia Gentileschi really started with this exhibition at the CBA, nobody was talking about her in Italy, but then she became so important for feminist art history, and it’s all to Eva Menzio’s credit. Parallel to the exhibition, Eva Menzio published a selection of Artemisia Gentileschi’s letters in a self-produced newspaper at the Cooperative. This was before the publication of Gentileschi’s letters with the transcription of the rape trial, later edited by Menzio herself.16 For me it is clear that only a woman would have been so intent on such letters, where Artemisia talks about her children and her need to paint, in order to feed her family. These letters resonated very strongly with what had emerged in autocoscienza, in terms of personal life and experience. This is why I believe only a woman would have been so intent in publishing such letters. This was perhaps the first time that Artemisia Gentileschi was shown as a professional artist. Eva Menzio then organized two more exhibitions of historical women artists: Elisabetta Sirani and Regina. For me, and the other artists participating in the cooperative, it was great to be exposed to women’s art and to collaborate with an art historian who was interested in retrieving women artists from the past. It was also very important that this genealogy was exposed and made visible to the public, I mean, it was not just something addressed to us, as women artists. Although it was Menzio’s project in particular, all the women were involved in terms of practical and social support, we were friends! This would happen for all projects, in fact. It was a collective endeavour and a commitment to each other. You have to imagine that it was all very spontaneous, each of us would propose a project and the others would support it. It was not much about establishing a programme. The relations among us were the centre of the cooperative. 14) During the 1970s, your work has also been supported by two champions of women’s art in 1970s Italy that were part neither of the CBA nor of Rivolta: art critic Anne Marie Suzeau Boetti and curator, writer and gallerist Romana Loda. Their writings were crucial to develop a feminist discourse on the arts in Italy. Can you tell us something about your relationship with these two women and the activities that you were involved in? By then, feminism had really expanded and inspired a lot of people, and that’s why so many people came to the CBA. A lot of women were drawn into this thing, even if they had not been involved in autocoscienza. Romana Loda was like an explosion, she was an extraordinary person. And there was a lot of talk about men’s misbehaviour, so there was extremely intimate, and extremely affectionate … quite a person. And very

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enthusiastic, a bomb. I got to know her through the art context, because it was Giulio Turcato and Vana Caruso who knew her as a gallerist and a dealer. Romana was not from the aristocracy, nor she was rich. She lived in a rented apartment and had two kids. She earned money through dealing. Feminism permeated into the art world and she was really interested in it. But if you read her stuff, she was not very theoretical, her interest in contemporary art was not always just about women. We did some shows together and I would go up to Brescia and be with her. She could talk all night, there was a lot of laughing with Romana and other women who gravitated around her, all the women would stay up all night with her. She wanted to do things in public institutions so she always went to Verona, Genova where she could pull off something public. She was so convincing, she could talk through anybody, laughing aggressively all the time, so she could convince people to do things. I showed many of my works with her. She was really close with Nanda Vigo, artist and architect, who had been with Piero Manzoni. But Nanda once got in touch with me and said ‘How could you do that to Romana? That’s the meanest thing you could do’. But Romana would laugh off this kind of thing. She loved provoking people. A lot of these were women’s shows. Anne Marie Souzeau was obviously involved with Boetti, who was also working with Pistoi, so she was playing the artist’s wife but was also the literate feminist. She was kind of on the outside, so she was watching everything, she was like an observer. On a personal level, she was quite standoffish. She was inside the art world because she had to support her children and so on. He must have been a real problem. She talks about my work in her article ‘Dalla culla alla barca’.17 She was very smart. I think it was important that there were some people who had some brains and actually started to promote something that women did. Most critics had to confront feminism and they were all positive about it. Suzeau was obviously developing a feminist discourse about the arts, but this came to us only unconsciously. It was never discussed within the CBA. 15) You mentioned that in the 1970s you were often travelling to the United Kingdom and the United States where your work could find a wider audience. You were part of an international feminist network, which included critics such as Roszika Parker and Lucy Lippard, or art spaces such as the AIR gallery in New York. How did your own connection with such different contexts impact your work? And what were the differences between feminist approaches to art in Italy and in the Anglo-American context (besides the fact that they might have been less visible in Italy)? I felt that feminism was more important here in Italy than in the United States. I mean, after meeting someone like Carla Accardi and Carla Lonzi, I had no doubts that there was something going on here that was far more interesting than anything I had known in the United States. Also, I have travelled here and there, but always for short periods, which means that I ended up knowing very little of what was going on abroad. I really didn’t know Nancy Spero so well, or the other people you are mentioning. The thing is that we recognize each other very easily because of my work and because of our involvement in the feminist movement. However, there were very few meetings, these were mostly quick and enthusiastic encounters, and I wasn’t really analysing things in terms of who did what.18 But I did really think that here, there was something very special and more profound than what I could see for instance in the U.S. I realized just intuitively that in the United States feminism was more about emancipation and

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equality. As you know, Carla Lonzi’s ideas were completely different. She thought it was better to do something else, to leave una traccia, a trace, so that somebody is going to know in the future why there is such a backlash for feminism taking place. Of course the whole Anglo-American attitude was far more optimistic! Carla Lonzi’s ideas are in a way depressing, but she goes more deep into patriarchal structures, which makes her writings more interesting. This whole idea of withdrawal as a feminist strategy was not an option in the United States. Recently, I have been thinking about how Lonzi frames the question of the gaze and women’s passivity in the creative arena, especially in reference to my research about ancient cultures, where the female gaze was very much present. In any case, of course I don’t want to generalize, but it seems to me that Anglo-American feminism then was very much concerned with the male gaze and far less with the female gaze, as if the whole visual world was a male invention, which is of course not true. Carla Lonzi questioned instead the ways in which women were looking, and she says, they have become passive and women’s gaze has been blocked. My idea is that we have lost the female gaze and that we are unable to use it as a weapon, or as something empowering, because women are afraid to scare people (i.e. men). So when I travelled to the United States or Great Britain, I had already developed my own understanding of what it meant to be a feminist, an artist and my own encounter with feminism in Italy was so important and strong, that I didn’t feel like this was something arriving from abroad: quite the contrary! Notwithstanding these important differences, showing my work in the Anglo-American context and encountering feminist artists in these different situations was a very positive and productive experience. 16) In a series of works called Specchi neri (1976) photography is not employed to isolate the detail from ancient statuary. Instead, by applying dark resin over the photographic surface you almost obscure the images which seem to resurface from a past that is hard to decipher. Can you explain how you arrived to this process? First of all, the resin is transparent. The Specchi Neri are all photographs printed by me. Untitled (The Family) was the first thing I did in 1976. I was given an old camera, which makes this very fuzzy images, it’s hard to obtain sharp photographs with such a camera. I started to take photographs with this camera and printing them. Since they were already fuzzy, I rendered them even darker, I found it very melancholy and mysterious. The atmosphere of these photographs was inspired by Sargent and Whistler’s paintings, these very dark and misty paintings, which I loved very much at that time, and I still do actually. The photograph shows my husband’s family at a Christmas dinner, at a moment in which I was very depressed because my mother had just died.19 His family was not very nice to me, and the photograph’s darkness has to do with this depressive atmosphere. The Autoritratto (1976) also deals with these depressive moments in my personal life. The other thing about these works is that I wanted to have a photograph without frames nor glass on it, in order to counter the art world standards of how to present and display photography. The idea came from the dark mirrors I had seen in a Roman palace, I think it was in the Galleria Colonna, where you have those old mirrors, which have darkened over time. 17) In their dialogue Carla Lonzi and Carla Accardi insisted on how writing for the first and painting for the latter enabled them to find a personal balance. Other women artists from your generation have embraced a remedial approach to art. Many former

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students from the first Feminist Art programme at Cal Arts, for instance, have turned to art therapy as a way to pursue their creativity through an encounter with others. During the 1980s you too turned to art therapy and started to work in a centre for speech therapy. How do you see this work in relation to your earlier investigations of female expression and creativity? First of all, it was not a choice. I had separated from my husband and I needed to find a way to survive. I wasn’t getting any money from him, he just gave me a sum, but that was not enough to live of course. I was teaching English but I hated it, so I needed to find something else. I also felt a bit depressed about the whole situation, but I knew that if I started to study something new, things would get better. Of course I couldn’t study art anymore! I had done that already. While I was figuring out what do to, I came across this institute that was looking for someone with an art background who could work with them. So I jumped on the occasion, even though that meant for me to study four more years in order to obtain the diploma. This was very important because it gave me an enormous amount of education. This was an institute that had public funding, but was private, and this is the reason why they conducted research that was more independent and experimental if compared with what you would usually have in the field of institutional child psychiatry. So I started to work with children that were mostly deaf. These kids were really into imagemaking and drawing. This is how I learned the importance of drawing, because it is really something instrumental to thought somehow, it’s a cognitive activity. Drawing is a preverbal language beginning in the womb. Sensations of sound vibration both continual and with pauses are perceived. It is assumed that lines, spaces and bumps (points, dots … ) are registered and that they remain unconsciously as accumulated structures in the body and are expressed in the outer world as an embodied experience: drawing, movement etc. It’s very different with colour, and light and dark perception, which is an even more embodied cognitive process because colour is a highly emotional experience.20 Thus, I came to the conclusion that everybody can do drawing. Of course, Carla Lonzi would argue that, on the contrary, drawing comes from culture and has to do with art. Instead, I believe that drawing is something embedded, it has always existed because it’s connected with the body and with language. I think that drawing is part of this configuration, is something that is with us, but it has been taken away from us. 18) When you started to work in speech therapy, you also started to explore the origins of speech therapy and the relationship between body and drawing. How is your art practice from 1980s and 1990s related to your work in a department of orthophonology? I was always interested in the origins of things, even in Towards New Expression. I am interested in the origins of things in general, the structures. I think that art has to do with structures in space. When you are in space, you need to create something that gives space a form. We are not talking about linear sequences in verbal language, or anything like that, we are talking about something that happens in space which is not time oriented. It is still, it is in space, and it has depth. It’s going to fix itself upon something to explain it. During the 1980s I started painting again because I was working with children and I was influenced by them, and I painted with them. I made a lot of works when I was doing therapy and the kids loved that. Therapy is not usually

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that way, but that is the way it should be. I was impressed by their spontaneity in organizing structures, certainly not their structures. When you work in therapy you work with body stuff. So in 1991 I did this exhibition titled Drawing in and out about breathing and how you stimulate breathing.21 And I did a lot of yoga too. So, when you breath in, the body tightens up. And when you exhale, there’s a release. I was very impressed by the theories of Laban who analysed how people moved in space. For instance, I realised that I walk very fast but very heavily which is an enormous waste of energy. When someone draws, everyone has a breathing process and a motory process of their own. So when they draw that’s what spontsneusly happens. What I mean by spontaneity is something like as if you are drawing with your eyes closed because you do not connect nor coordinate the eye with the hand. Drawing is a registration of bodily movements as breathing determines the rhythm of what the drawing is going to be. Everybody is different, so it’s practically instinctive, and for me that means that everyone breaths in different ways, different pressures. Women’s bodies are more in contact with this stuff because they are always in transformation. So when I say that drawing is instinctive I mean that it has nothing to do with learning how to draw. 19) Your relationship with the art world has always been complicated by your choice to show your art in contexts that were somehow linked to the women’s movement. How do you feel about the current interest of the art world towards women artists of your generation? How do you negotiate your desire to maintain a radical distance from the art world and the need to be visible to other feminists who may want to learn more about your work today as well as in the future? Well, I am very suspicious of the art world. I have no ambition towards it. I didn’t care much about the lack of recognition of my work, it was fine with me. Now, I feel a bit embarrassed by the current interest in my work. I mean, I have always shown my work, but it was in what I felt were protected contexts, as opposed to what is happening now, for example with figures such as curator Massimiliano Gioni or gallerist Richard Saltoun being interested in showing my work. Of course this is rewarding in a way, because it’s a form of recognition. But it’s also surprising, and almost scary because I am worried about being misinterpreted as I am not used to this level of exposure. The art world is for me a difficult context, but at the same time I like very much the fact that younger women are interested in my work and that we can discuss about it. Also the current interest in the history of Rivolta Femminile is very important to me, it gives me the possibility to share my experience with a new generation of feminists. I think Carla Lonzi was right when she said that feminism can only be transmitted through conversations and the encounter with the other person. That’s why I find it difficult to have an exchange about my work and experience with people who don’t have any contact with feminism, which happens all the time in the art world. It is also possible that in my suspicious attitude there is still something of Rivolta Femminile’s separatist stance, of Carla Lonzi’s ideas about the need to position oneself outside the cultural arena. Because, of course, on the one hand I am happy about this recognition and, on the other hand, my being suspicious of it has to do with my own feminist history. This is something I am still trying to understand. It’s part of the struggles in which I am involved: continuing the battle!

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9

10 11 12 13

14 15

*The interview was recorded in Capranica, Viterbo (Italy) in September 2015. The transcript has been edited in collaboration with the artist in several stages from October 2017 to July 2018. Diana Wakoski, ‘The Mechanic’, in Emerald Ice. Selected Poems, 1962–1987 (Boston: Black Sparrow, 2005), 130. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique [1963] (London: Penguin, 2010). Kate Millet, Sexual Politics [1970] (London: Virago, 1977). Suzanne Santoro, Towards New Expression/Per una espressione nuova (Rome: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1974); Suzanne Santoro, Towards New Expression/Per una espressione nuova (Rome: Privately Printed, 1979). This very long letter was written by Carla Accardi to Carla Lonzi in 1973 but never sent. The letter is now in the Carla Accardi Archive, Rome. In 2013, Accardi granted Dora Stiefelmayer the permission to read the letter in full during the conference Carla Lonzi: critique d’art et féministe organized by Giovanna Zapperi at the Maison Rouge, Paris (11 January 2013), available at: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/ xz3lhk (accessed 11 June 2018). For a discussion of the letter, see also Giovanna Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2017), 183–4. The text in Santoro’s first edition of Towards New Expression resonates with many of the ideas expressed in Carla Lonzi, ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ [1971], in Sputiamo Su Hegel/La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale (Rome: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1974), 77–140. Suzanne Santoro and Manuela De Leonardis, ‘Interview’, Art Apart from Culture, Available online: www.artapartofculture.net/2011/01/30/suzanne-santoro-intervistadi-manuela-de-leonardis/ (accessed 1 September 2017). Lonzi, ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’, 77–140. In 1978, Santoro’s book Towards New Expression was removed from an exhibition of artist books organized at the ICA, London. The exhibition had been funded by the Arts Council of Britain. On the case of censorship, see Rozsika Parker, ‘Censored’, Spare Rib 54 (January 1977): 43–5; and Lisa Tickner, ‘Female Sexuality and Women Artists since 1970’ Art History 1, no. 2 (1978), 236–51; See also Jonathan Harris, ‘Cultured into Crisis: The Arts Council of Great Britain’, in Marcia Pointon, ed., Art Apart. Art Institutions and Ideology across England and North America (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 177–91; and Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses. Women, Art and Ideology (London: Pandora, 1981), 127. Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminsita [1978] (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 425. Letter from Adriana to Suzanne Santoro, 6 February 1974. Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia, Casa Internazionale delle Donne. Parker, ‘Censored’, 45. ‘The placing of the Greek figures, the flowers and the conch shells near the clitoris is a means of understanding the structure of female genitals […] I just wanted to make the point that I had found structural identities, not symbolic identities.’ Suzanne Santoro quoted in Parker, ‘Censored’, 44. For a catalogue of Santoro’s recent work see www.suzannesantoro.com. See Katia Almerini, ‘Women’s Art Spaces: Two Mediterranean Case Studies’, in Katie Deepwell, ed., All-Women Art Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018), 189–228. See also Almerini’s essay in this volume.

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16 Eva Menzio, ed., Atti di un processo per stupro: Artemisia Gentileschi, Agostino Tassi (Milano: Edizioni delle donne, 1981). See also, Artemisia Gentileschi, Lettere, precedute da Atti di un processo per stupro, ed. Eva Menzio, with essays by Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti and Roland Barthes (Milan: Abscondita 2004). 17 Anne Marie Suzeau Boetti, ‘Dalla culla alla barca’, Data 22 (1976): 38–9. 18 Santoro was invited to speak with Nancy Spero and Susan Hiller in the Monday Night Programs at A.I.R. Gallery, 9 October 1977. See documentation in Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia, Casa Internazionale delle Donne. 19 See Ronald J. Onorato, ‘Desperadoes and Madonnas. Italian Art Today’, Art Express 2, no. 1 (1982): 20–1. 20 Magda di Renzo and Suzanne Santoro, ‘A proposito del segno’, Babele 1, no. 1 (1996): 12; Magda Di Renzo and Suzanne Santoro, ‘Sulla raffinatezza dei primi segni grafici’, Babele 1, no. 4 (1996): 14–15; Magda Di Renzo and Suzanne Santoro, ‘Il disegno del bambino tra “naturalimso” e “astrattismo” ’, Babele 1, no. 2 (1996): 3–5; Magda di Renzo and Suzanne Santoro, ‘Verso la rappresentazione del volto umano’, Babele 2, no. 5 (1997): 2–3. 21 Drawing in and out, Studio 51/a, Istituto Daniela Gara, Rome 1991.

References Almerini, K. (2018), ‘Women’s Art Spaces: Two Mediterranean Case Studies’, in K. Deepwell, ed., All-Women Art Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 189–228. De Leonardis, M. and Santoro, S. (2011), ‘Interview’, Art Apart from Culture, 1 January 2011. Available online: www.artapartofculture.net/2011/01/30/suzanne-santorointervista-di-manuela-de-leonardis/ (accessed 3 September 2017). Di Renzo, M. and Santoro, S. (1997), ‘Verso la rappresentazione del volto umano’, Babele 2, no. 5: 2–3. Di Renzo, M. and Santoro, S. (1996), ‘Sulla raffinatezza dei primi segni grafici’, Babele 1, no. 4: 14–15. Di Renzo, M. and Santoro, S. (1996), ‘Il disegno del bambino tra “naturalimso” e “astrattismo”’, Babele 1, no. 2: 3–5. Di Renzo, M. and Santoro, S. (1996), ‘A proposito del segno’, Babele 1, no. 1: 12. Friedan, B. ([1963] 2010), The Feminine Mystique, London: Penguin. Gentileschi, A. (2004) Lettere, precedute da Atti di un processo per stupro, ed. Eva Menzio, with essays by A. M. Sauzeau Boetti and R. Barthes, Milan: Abscondita. Gentileschi, A. (1981), Atti di un processo per stupro: Artemisia Gentileschi, Agostino Tassi, ed. Eva Menzio, Milano: Edizioni delle donne. Harris, J. (1994), ‘Cultured into Crisis: The Arts Council of Great Britain’, in Art Apart. Art Institutions and Ideology across England and North America, ed. Marcia Pointon, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 177–91. Lonzi, C. (2013), ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ [1971], in Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milano: et al./Edizioni, 61–113. Lonzi, C. ([1978] 2010), Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminsita, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Millet, K. ([1970] 1977), Sexual Politics, London: Virago. Onorato, R. J. (1982), ‘Desperadoes and Madonnas. Italian Art Today’, Art Express 2, no. 1: 20–1.

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Parker, R. (1977), ‘Censored’, Spare Rib 54 (January): 43–5. Parker, R. and Pallock, G. (1981), Old Mistresses. Women, Art and Ideology, London: Pandora. Santoro, S. (1979), Towards New Expression/Per una espressione nuova, Rome: Privately Printed. Santoro, S. (1974), Towards New Expression/Per una espressione nuova, Rome: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Suzeau Boetti, A. M. (1976), ‘Dalla culla alla barca’, Data 22: 38–9. Tickner, L. (1978), ‘Female Sexuality and Women Artists since 1970’ Art History 1, no. 2: 236–51. Wakoski, D. (2005), ‘The Mechanic’, in Emerald Ice. Selected Poems, 1962-1987, Boston: Black Sparrow, 130. Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita, Rome: DeriveApprodi.

Part Three

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7

The end of the affair: Carla Lonzi and the politics of Rapporto Leslie Cozzi

Arguably the most influential second-wave feminist in Italy, Carla Lonzi spent the 1970s in partial exile from the Italian art world. Her many writings evince the struggle within her identity between her two public personae – art critic and feminist – neither of which would ever fully dissipate in deference to the other. Taci, anzi parla (1978), the 1200-page diary which documents Lonzi’s growing disillusionment with the art world, and Vai pure (1980), a subsequent dialogue, represented a departure from her earlier Autoritratto. In both works, Lonzi reflects on individuals as artists or critics, protagonists or spectators, and subjects or objects. This chapter offers a critical reading of these two works to examine both the theory of human dynamics that Lonzi articulated within these writings and the significance of those dynamics for the genesis of Lonzi’s wider critical project. I argue that an essential element of Lonzi’s feminism, her rejection of ‘protagonism’, understood as a form of self-centeredness, stemmed from her interrogation of the role of the artist and her fraught relationships with those who embodied that persona: the renowned painter and Rivolta Femminile co-founder Carla Accardi; and sculptor and Forma 1 alumnus Pietro Consagra (Figure 7.1). Thus, even when she ostensibly abandoned its day-to-day happenings, the art scene and its players remained constant referents within her feminist project.1 Autoritratto, where Lonzi abandons the project of criticism understood as a monolithic and market-colluding endeavour, embodies an idealistic position which she expressed throughout the 1960s. Rather than identify herself as a critic, a role dismissed as an instrument of Capitalist exploitation or Marxist dogmatism, in Autoritratto Lonzi identifies herself as an artist. She argues in that early work that to be an artist was an essentially critical project that allowed individuals to defy imposed social models.2 More than any other individual, Lonzi shared her project with the painter Carla Accardi, an influential, though only recently acknowledged, force behind the emergence of Italian feminism in the 1970s.3 Indeed, it is no small coincidence for the evolution of both women’s careers that Accardi has the final say in that text, and in that passage she not only mentions Rivolta Femminile co-founder Elvira Banotti but also stresses the male–female relationship as the nexus of other social dilemmas.4 Accardi also underscores the importance of interpersonal interactions, saying, ‘I’d like

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Figure 7.1  Pietro Consagra in his fourth-floor studio in Piazza del Popolo, Rome, 1952. Milan, Archivio Pietro Consagra.

to see myself, myself, how I relate to others.’5 In this, she anticipates Rivolta Femminile’s emphasis on group participation and personal reflection. Within Autoritratto, Lonzi is at once more circumspect and more theoretical than Accardi. Lonzi avoids the dominant role, and her insistence on the impact of sexual difference – arguably the most influential element of Lonzi’s legacy – is not developed at length. In this early analysis, it is not the woman who has been suppressed within the master–slave dialectic. It is the artist.6 For Lonzi, the central problem is authority and creative integrity. These themes would subsequently become integral to her feminist project understood as the rejection of the idea of woman as the mirror of male culture. Yet Lonzi’s programmatic attempt to dismantle the mastery of the critic gives a sense of the theoretical rigor that she would subsequently apply to her feminist analysis, and to the importance of non-hierarchical models of human interaction, or rapporto, within it. The exchange of ideas between Lonzi and Accardi presented in Autoritratto laid the groundwork for the founding of Rivolta Femminile and the publication of its first libretti verdi in 1970. This revolutionary synthesis between artist and critic was short-lived, however. In the wake of Autoritratto, Lonzi would retract her optimistic

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assessment of an artist’s positive worth and reformulate his social role in negative terms. No longer a democratizing model of enlightenment, Taci, anzi parla and Vai pure cast the artist as an over-weening swindler who profits from the false consciousness and deceit of patriarchy. Her understanding of the critic also shifted dramatically from an essentially patriarchal figure who policed artists to an essentially feminized one who, like the viewer and Lonzi herself, gets exploited by artists instead.7 Lonzi’s changing attitudes towards Accardi and Consagra, formerly friends, lovers, and colleagues, prompted this critique. The need for mutual acknowledgement, which occupies a central position within her feminist discourse, derived from her disillusionment with these relationships. While Lonzi registered her growing antipathy towards Accardi and the power imbalance between artist and critic in the pages of Taci, anzi parla, it was Vai pure, her final dialogue of separation from Consagra, that enabled Lonzi to articulate a profoundly new, relational model of human subjectivity.

Taci, anzi parla: From Criticism to Collectivism and Back Again Lonzi’s diary Taci, anzi parla charts her increasing disgust with the art world and its prominent avatar, Carla Accardi, whose previously influential friendship Lonzi would come to dismiss as something of a poisoned chalice. In the introduction, Lonzi describes the diary in therapeutic terms. It has allowed her to come to terms with herself as she is and not as others see her. She declares triumphantly, ‘Now I exist,’ and asserts that the only will she now follows is her own.8 Such statements say a great deal about the terms in which Lonzi had come to express her identity, which is a source of considerable anxiety throughout the book.9 The diary is laced with expressions of disbelief and resentment towards her prior understanding of the ideal critic as a mere conduit of another’s ideas.10 By way of explanation, midway through the diary Lonzi writes, ‘Before I fought on the artist’s behalf, now I know that meant I was a critic. The artist is the one who sets out publically to make oneself into a myth, the critic the one who responds to the call.’11 Thus she introduces the book by distancing herself from the project of art criticism as she had come to understand it by the mid-1970s. Whereas other feminist critics of the period concentrated on the power dynamics of the artist–model relationship or on the political aspects of canonization, it was the artist–critic–spectator nexus that most interested Lonzi. She refers to the artist– spectator relationship as a form of treachery, a deceit practiced upon the viewer by the artist and a ‘hierarchical fatality between beings’ enabled by the critic.12 Referring to ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della manifestazione creativa maschile’ (On woman’s absence from the celebratory moments of male creative manifestation), written in 1971, Lonzi explains the emotional response that precipitated her professional departure from the art world. Disgusted at the mechanisms of display and encounter, she felt profoundly out of place: I suffered so much when I was a critic: the work viewed in this fetishistic way, people who didn’t listen, solely cared for prestige, for the external trappings, the social, commercial interactions, or to argue. I said ‘enough’ in that famous piece, more than anything because at shows I was a fish out of water.13

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Nonetheless, her relationships kept her in the art world on a casual and personal level. Immediately after recounting her anxieties, she talks about getting ready to attend an awards ceremony with Consagra.14 She mentions reading criticism, attends shows held by artist friends, comments sardonically about feminism being fashionable in the art world these days and expresses her appreciation for the freshness of conceptual art.15 The structure of the diary suggests that by looking at the art world from a greater distance, rather than identifying with it so closely, Lonzi is able to clarify her objections to it. Lonzi’s negative account within the pages of Taci, anzi parla of what she achieved in Autoritratto is symptomatic of her changing viewpoint. In retrospect, she feels her contribution to Autoritratto was too limited.16 As she explains: ‘with Autoritratto, I allowed artists to express themselves, I gave them the opportunity to be heard and appreciated for what they were. But who would have listened to me? Who would have given me strength and believed in me?’17 She felt ignored, subject to misprision, and taken advantage of, and even her intimacy with Accardi and Consagra could not assuage those feelings. She regrets the degree to which Accardi’s voice, more than her own, was evident within Autoritratto: ‘My disappointment with artists lay in the fact that they didn’t reciprocate, they let me remain a spectator.’18 Autoritratto was, she now decides, disingenuous: it enabled her to confront the authenticity of the artistic moment, but not her own.19 Her misgivings regarding Autoritratto may even explain her subsequent separatism – for she suggests that to work creatively with men would put her at the mercy of their approval.20 Even though discussions of the relationships with and among other members of Rivolta Femminile populate virtually every page of Taci, anzi parla, the most tumultuous is that between her and Carla Accardi. By only the second entry, the reader perceives that the two women’s friendship is strained. Lonzi feels unable to speak freely around Accardi because their relationship has made her feel inferior. She attributes this in part to a difference in disposition – even under duress Accardi remained open and warm whereas Lonzi became taciturn and isolated whenever she felt uncomfortable.21 She also repeatedly suggests that Accardi was overweening, and that her volubility would overwhelm or dictate the agenda for the rest of the group.22 She openly declares her preference for other people’s company over Accardi’s, suggesting that Accardi is generous and open with others only in order to reinforce her own sense of self.23 She even suggests that Accardi’s text, Superiore e inferiore, a series of tape-recorded conversations between elementary school girls about sexuality and gender difference that precipitated Accardi’s dismissal from her middle school teaching position, was exploitative: ‘after 20 years of inattention on her part, she had those girls talk about feminism and their oppression in the family. Discovering how startling their stories were, she appropriated them, but then those girls were abandoned.’24 Accardi, Lonzi seems to suggest, used the insights of the most vulnerable for her own advantage. But Lonzi prefers another path of liberation, expressing a desire to know herself by confronting her own problems, rather than appropriating those of others.25 At one juncture, after Lonzi puts Accardi’s mind at ease regarding their friendship, she wonders whether she didn’t reassure Accardi too much, noting, ‘I liked her a lot when she was more reserved and uncertain about the state of our relationship.’26

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It quickly becomes very clear that much of the discord between the two stems from Lonzi’s problems with Accardi as an artist. Lonzi suggests repeatedly that as an artist, Accardi’s personality is inherently self-aggrandizing. In renouncing her job as a critic, Lonzi was refusing to abet this: The creative individual, though seemingly generous with others, actually takes away their ability to concentrate on themselves and to strive towards their own liberation. The artist accepts the reflected independence that others bestow, even if unaware that the misgivings he feels towards the viewer are the unconscious result of this ambiguous operation. When I realized that I was required to identify myself as the ideal spectator, I felt uneasy. What kind of a job was that? On the other hand, the artist’s ambivalence towards the viewer also comes from the fact that he needs and therefore is entitled to procure one: he seeks the other, he entices him, he uses him, he keeps the other’s search for self-awareness at bay. In spite of it all, the artist produces a creative vacuum around himself. It is for this reason I said that [Carla] brings to feminism an ambiguity derived from the creative distribution of roles: continually referring to herself in the group’s autocoscienza seems to enrich everyone, in reality it reduces them to witnesses and prevents them from finding the strength to affirm and direct attention to themselves.27

Lonzi declares her unwillingness to function as Accardi’s mirror, whether in her professional capacity as a critic or on a more personal level as a friend. Thus, Lonzi’s departure from her previous professional identity is inseparable from her souring relationship with Accardi. Lonzi cannot detach Accardi’s artistic personality from her confrontations with Lonzi or the rest of the group. Rather than building mutual understanding through her feminism, Lonzi sees Accardi reducing everyone to the position of spectator. In Lonzi’s mind, Accardi limits the freedom and growth of others while purporting to encourage it. While Lonzi realizes that she herself could have given a similar impression of protagonismo (loosely translated to protagonism or selfcenteredness) in the group’s early years, she feels that is no longer the case. Indeed, she refers to the problem of artistic roles repeatedly, and even goes so far as to say that Accardi had stunted the Roman section of Rivolta Femminile’s growth.28 Accardi, Lonzi suggests, undervalues her relationships with others and overvalues her creativity. She flatters herself that her biggest inspiration comes from her work. Lonzi derides this as an imitation of ‘masculine individuality’, an assertion that, in light of later developments, strongly suggests that Lonzi feels Accardi has undervalued Lonzi’s friendship.29 Furthermore, creativity has become a cultural myth, as far as Lonzi is concerned, and can be demolished only by artists themselves.30 Lonzi expresses anxiety that unless Accardi accedes that creativity in the masculine world is a form of deceit, Lonzi’s ideas have been profoundly misunderstood.31 Thus even if Accardi will not acknowledge Lonzi’s personal impact on Accardi’s life, Lonzi requires intellectual recognition from her. This was because Lonzi’s writing, an act that she described as gathering up the scattered pieces of herself to attain a kind of completeness, held deeply personal significance.32 Self-expression was not a sufficient end, as far as Lonzi was concerned. Rather, communication, which entailed mutual understanding, was the

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requisite goal.33 And while Lonzi acknowledges that her relationship with Accardi was once stimulating, she regrets that it led her to hide herself within generic theorizations. Her understanding of feminism was changing; she was becoming less strident as the time for sweeping generalizations was over.34 As Lonzi’s alienation with the art world grew, she began to insist that creativity in sanctioned artistic circles is doomed. And she became frustrated at Accardi’s continued participation in it: ‘If man had to abandon creativity as art, there would cease to be women artists. […] In fact the mentality of “profit” ([Carla’s]’s term) is strongest in a woman who has chosen self-affirmation with and through men.’35 Lonzi’s pronouncement reads somewhat enigmatically; it is unclear whether she means the distinction between men and women as artists would wither, or that women would cease to be tokens in a largely male field. It is clear, though, that she disapproves of Accardi’s avocation as too dependent on the male world. Accardi’s insistence on false parity really masked the persistence of outdated models.36 Lonzi believes Accardi is committed to the myth of painting, and that she would sacrifice anyone, Lonzi included, to it.37 Later in the book, she underscores her distaste for the trumpedup claims that glorify artistic genius, saying, ‘the myth of creativity is the real penis myth.’38 Lonzi does insist, however, on a very fine distinction. It wasn’t simply that Accardi was an artist that caused the problem. It was Accardi’s attitude towards being an artist that bothered Lonzi. She asserts: ‘It’s not true that I told [Carla], “ditch the paintbrush,” it was [Accardi] that said, “I’m going to burn my canvases.” What I was really interested in was not that she stopped doing something, but that she stopped feeling like a member of the elect because of it.’39 This is an important sentiment, because it represents something of a halfway point in her change of feeling towards the artistic profession. It was not artistic praxis but rather the circuses that surrounded it to which Lonzi first objects. By the end of the decade, she would not be so equivocal. As discussed in the next section, Lonzi would soon see no way to be an artist and not be fundamentally compromised. Accardi and Lonzi manage to maintain their friendship for a time, and the first half of the book alludes to occasional reconciliations between the two.40 At times, the strain in her relationship with Accardi brings her closer to Consagra. In one passage, she recounts her appreciation for Consagra’s sweetness and restraint in company, and she is gratified by Consagra’s self-deprecating stance towards the art world. Accardi, in contrast, strikes Lonzi as smug and self-satisfied in a magazine photo.41 And while her relationship with Consagra is not always tranquil, in general Lonzi characterizes it in positive terms: ‘I told [Pietro] that I’m with him because I like him, he’s always contributed to my well-being. This is certain.’42 At the beginning of 1973, Accardi’s and Lonzi’s relationship has reached a low point. An agonized Lonzi transcribes unsent letters to Accardi in her diary and avoids Accardi when visiting Rome, while in February of that year Accardi recorded the twilight of their friendship in an unsent letter to Lonzi.43 In February 1973, Lonzi records receiving an accusatory telegram from Accardi, an incident that she feels terminates the friendship once and for all.44 Though she does not explain what event precipitated the message, she feels Accardi has rebuked her

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wrongly of being high-handed and adopting a superior tone. In reacting against her that way, Lonzi suggests, Accardi has chosen art as the only outlet for her creativity.45 Lonzi is appreciably upset, and the break strains her relationships with Consagra and others.46 Despite the fact that their friendship is finally over, Accardi continues to appear throughout the text, whether in dreams, in reported conversations with other individuals or in Lonzi’s musings.47 Lonzi’s most vehement remarks are precipitated by a 1974 exhibition at Galleria Editalia in Rome in which Accardi exhibited seven paintings made on bed sheets (Figures 7.2 and 7.3). The idea was in fact borrowed from Consagra, though Accardi refused to acknowledge the debt publicly. The episode not only precipitated an argument between the two artists but incensed Lonzi, who saw it as evidence of Accardi’s lack of character: [Carla] did a show of bedsheets copying, stealing the idea from [Pietro]! It’s not like he’s really hurt, but it’s horrible to realize that when I supported her with complete artistic loyalty, swearing that others may have taken ideas from her but certainly not her from others, I was ignorant, credulous, and unjust. As a woman artist I thought she was superior, instead she’s the unreasonable one compared to all those artists I respected. To realize that she is not conscious of it, that she has unscrupulous arguments to back herself up, that she is immune to the truth and that this is her only strength, a weakness that becomes a weapon, a bulldozer against others leaves me dumbfounded. This is the [Carla] that I loved, next to whom I felt wicked, cunning, crafty. […] I confused art for sanctity.48

The incident continues to upset Lonzi, even as Accardi makes half-hearted apologies to Consagra. Accardi has shown herself to be an illegitimate fraud, as far as Lonzi is

Figure 7.2  Carla Accardi, Sette Lenzuoli, exhibition view. Galleria Editalia, 8-31 May 1974, Rome. Rome, Archivio Accardi Sanfilippo.

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Figure 7.3  Carla Accardi, Sette Lenzuoli, exhibition view. Galleria Editalia, 8-31 May, 1974, Rome. Rome, Archivio Accardi Sanfilippo.

concerned.49 In an unsent letter Lonzi transcribes in her diary, Lonzi suggests Accardi should examine the ‘the vicious, deft kleptomania of a woman that deceives others on how easy and congenial it was for her to be a painter’.50 Lonzi’s disgust with Accardi foreshadows her future attitude towards the art world as a whole. Lonzi casts Accardi both as a foil whose faults have illuminated the better aspects of Lonzi’s personality and as the doomed embodiment of Lonzi’s own artistic illusions. She accuses Accardi of instrumentalizing people, thanks to her lack of regard for others and her inflated ego.51 Whereas Accardi’s identity was too strongly imbricated with her life as an artist, Lonzi feels that to identify oneself with an object like painting risked fetishizing and objectifying oneself.52 Finally, Accardi is portrayed as too willing to market other’s ideas as her own.53 This was not the last time, however, that Lonzi would cavil about the issue of exploitation within the arts. The tendency to use people for selfish purposes was the complaint lodged against the art world in toto in her dialogue with Consagra as well. Lonzi’s desire for mutual recognition and respect was such that after her relationship with Accardi ended, her attachment to an increasingly successful male artist could not but come under strain.

Vai pure: Reciprocity and Refusal Vai pure is a break-up in four acts. Published in 1980, the text punctuates the end of Lonzi’s long-term relationship with Pietro Consagra (Figure 7.4). Like Autoritratto, Vai pure transcribes a series of tape-recorded conversations. But this time, rather than being removed from their historical context, each exchange is transcribed in full and introduced by a specific date and location. The conversation unfolds during a twoweek period in the spring of 1980. What Lonzi offers us is not a theoretical exercise but

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Figure 7.4  Carla Lonzi with Pietro Consagra at Lake Minnetonka in Minneapolis, 1967. Milan, Archivio Pietro Consagra.

a very specifically situated exchange fraught with emotion and personal history. The two participants offer some of the traditional recriminations that one might expect from a couple on the verge of splitting up: she was sexually unavailable, he was too selfish, neither feel his or her needs are being sufficiently met. The text is not, however, a juicy tell-all intended to prejudice the art world against Consagra. What first appears to be a catalogue of personal gripes very quickly turns into a serious reflection on the relational nature of subjectivity, the problematic role of the artist and his muse, and the dialectic of power enshrined in the art world. It is also Lonzi’s most detailed indictment of protagonism, the evil that she suggests feminism must defeat. The text marks a terminus in Lonzi’s evolving relationship to the art world. Lonzi’s sense of disgust with its institutions had hardened to the point of intransigence. In part, the quarrel is personal: Lonzi accuses Consagra of self-absorption; Consagra counters that she is just envious of his success.54 But Lonzi’s disenchantment with the art world is about much more than petty jealousy. For Lonzi, the art world represented a locus of artificial and inauthentic relations that dissolved once removed from the confines of the gallery space.55 Of a piece with society at large, the art world was no longer a site of protest, as it figured in the pages of Autoritratto, but a space of adhesion and conformism to ‘those so-called universal values which aren’t for me’.56 When Consagra presents the art world as an idyllic garden in which women, as the better part of humanity, were preferable to the company of other men, Lonzi dismisses his view as a delusion. For Lonzi, the art world was not the Parnassus Consagra made it out to be but a locus of disenchantment and alienation that only offered temporary distraction from individual suffering.57 The first chapter (dated 25 April 1980) makes clear that Consagra and Lonzi had ceased not only to understand each other but also to share the same values. Consagra

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begins by recounting his faults: he is distracted, inattentive, less affectionate. Nevertheless, he feels stifled by her lack of libido and suggests that her disinterest is impeding his ability to work. Maybe she is right, he ventures to say, that he does want to be coddled. She responds rather defensively, refusing to let Consagra paraphrase her: ‘No, you said that yourself.’58 Already the conversation seems to be off to a rocky start, but Consagra is unperturbed and unapologetic. ‘I’m saying this, yes … there comes a time when you need subordinates.’59 His insistence on his need for subordinates and allies, and her refusal to play those roles, become the central, insurmountable problem subsisting between them. It also forms the crux of Lonzi’s final rejection of the arts. The argument between Consagra and Lonzi centres on his career. While Consagra complains that she would not let him work, Lonzi insists that Consagra only wanted a muse and cheerleader, and that to occupy such a role would have been a travesty of her own needs and interests.60 Indeed, Lonzi seems to deny that disinterested appreciation of an artist’s work is even possible. She dismisses the sycophants of the art world as ‘part of the artist’s entourage that is based on the negation of themselves’.61 However, Consagra insists that the artist cannot live without them. For Lonzi, this amounts to a form of exploitation that is tied to gender: ‘the artist is one who exploits this loss of attention to oneself that becomes dedication to the artist, to art, and its products … [O]nce I realized this, I could no longer accept it. More so since women are leading this group.’62 While Consagra’s positions occasionally strike the reader as reactionary and perversely chivalrous (‘men have more credibility as artists since they redeem the crime for which they are more responsible than women’), Lonzi’s are conversely radical.63 She decries the state of mind of the fan and the complacency of the artist who uses it to his advantage. And she suggests that women have been relegated to a secondary destiny within the art world as spectators. Lonzi traces many of the difficulties existing between them to her own burgeoning feminism.64 For Lonzi, to be a woman in the art world means to live in a state of constant strife, wherein she must continually repress or confront her status as spectator, mirror and crutch. Lonzi explains the situation repeatedly throughout the conversation, though Consagra never quite seems to grasp the full significance of what she says. In one of the first exchanges on this topic, Consagra asks why women have never rebelled against or refused to be used by art (referring to art in the abstract, not to artists or to the art world specifically). Lonzi responds that this is a result of the situation within women’s personal relationships that leaves them bowed, mute, even wrecked.65 And she adds that this is because, ‘while women value love for its own sake, men assess its use value’.66 She describes romantic attachment as a winner-takes-all situation in which men, rather than maintaining open and honest relationships, offer symbols of love in the form of objects.67 Women adapt themselves to an otherwise insupportable situation, one that men either cannot or will not understand.68 In fact, Lonzi finds the position of women in the art world analogous to the predicament of women under socialism that she refuted in her earlier texts.69 In both cases, she feels women have been instrumentalized and that their destiny has been consigned to tending the home fires. Once consigned to the private sphere:

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At that point, there is nothing left to do but to conform. Once you sacrifice yourself on the personal level, you want to bring it to a social plane. And you want to be the patroness, the wife of the president, the artist’s muse … Even Lenin said that the liberation of women was to elevate maternity, see, maternity, from the private to the public sphere. In the socialist revolution there was this aberration that it fell to women to support the revolution all the way to the grave of the Charismatic Leader. Lenin said this, not a thousand years ago, but a few decades ago, and his descendants obeyed him. So go figure if in art there isn’t the same mentality, in a more charming, persuasive manner.70

Consagra is not sympathetic to this claim. He suggests that she tries to create conflict. But Lonzi is unrelenting with her analysis. She maintains that art is a system, like the capitalist state, that enforces inequality and inauthenticity, because the work of art and ‘un rapporto umano’ cannot coexist.71 For Lonzi, the link between the production and display of artworks is intrinsically non-relational. In part, this deficiency stems from the disposition of the artist (and here Lonzi seems to be referring to the artist as a type, and not to Consagra specifically). Lonzi explains, reacting to Consagra’s suggestion that they lived independently of one another, ‘the artist ultimately thrives on a lack of interpersonal ties and lives off of climates, connections, suggestions that he directs and in which issues of autonomy need not enter seeing as they fluster him.’72 Thus, the artist creates his own sheltered world; it is this ability to ignore the possibility of any necessary connection to the outside, of any real social engagement, that Lonzi suggests defines the artistic temperament. The conscientious rebel paradigm Lonzi defined twelve years before has now turned into a coddled, self-indulgent recluse. Consagra finally agrees, saying that the artist finds any distraction or lapse from work degrading. In the self-satisfaction of the artist, the needs of the spectator remain unanswered: ‘The spectator does not know and cannot understand this, because if he understood, then he would know he is constantly humiliated.’73 The artist, as artist, occupies a distinguished sphere. The viewer remains unaware of his own degradation. The artwork separates the two positions. It is precisely in the veneration of the object, what Lonzi refers to as the ‘gesture’, that the viewer loses the possibility of an honest connection with the artist who appears unsurpassed. The viewer can enjoy the object only if he remains in a state of benighted ignorance regarding his role in the exchange. As soon as he realizes this disequilibrium, the artwork only serves to taunt him.74 But why must women be the losers in this game? And how can they escape this cycle? Those questions depend very much on Lonzi’s understanding of human subjectivity which is taken up again in Vai pure’s subsequent chapters. Lonzi begins the next day’s conversation with a surprising admission: she is obsessed by how impossible it is for her work to be recognized.75 She has done a very public thing, for which she demands public notice, and ‘not even a dog’ would be content with the traces of respect derived from Consagra or close friends.76 Consagra charges her with hypocrisy, suggesting that her comments grossly contradict her distaste for publicity and her general refusal to proselytize. It’s not a complaint, she says, just an observation, to which Consagra cagily replies that no one recognizes another person ‘for free’.77 But

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recognition, Lonzi retorts, is precisely what gets culturally misrepresented. It is also the crux of her own feminist criticism: The fact that my work—I’m speaking about myself but naturally all feminism, all women’s needs are behind this—by definition is based on human relationships, on reciprocal awareness, on the absolute demolition of the cultural myth of the protagonist. It’s based on the acknowledgement that things always develop through dialogue, that truths are always in a relation.78

Lonzi is articulating the view that culture is shared. That it only exists in exchange. The idea that truths are always in relation is not intended to suggest the relativist stance that all truths are valid but simply to assert that the existence of truth depends on mutual recognition. As Lonzi explains, an honest relationship ‘unveils truths, makes known not just yourself but also the other, gives a vision of two parties’.79 It is this awareness that culture, which assigns prerogatives to individuals and the works they have created, distorts. And this distortion is gendered, for agency appears concentrated in male hands. Her concern is that the male protagonist has absorbed the efforts and energy of a female counterpart without which he would cease to function. Lonzi suggests that her purpose is to bring to consciousness the intense activity that women conduct on a personal level within and around the male world.80 Thus the recognition she seeks is not a matter of personal fame or fortune. It is a drastic revision of the terms through which culture is imagined and whereby men profit from the erasure of women’s cultural contributions.81 Consagra’s 1980 autobiography Vita mia (My Life) is another hotly debated issue in their conversation.82 Consagra accuses Lonzi of harbouring the paranoid belief that he stole from her. Lonzi puts the issue a different way: ‘In my diary you can see what your presence meant to me in those years, in your book, you don’t see what I was for you, not at all.’83 Her qualm then is not accolades or originality, as Consagra suggests repeatedly, but that she does not figure in his self-presentation. She has acknowledged him, yet he availed himself of the insights gleaned from their relationship without comment on it. Lonzi feels that Consagra’s autobiography was disingenuous, obscuring the truth of the process through which individuals come to learn about themselves in relation to one another. Her presence is there, she posits, but he will not admit it.84 Lonzi requires recognition to assure that women are not atavistically destined to forever be the artist’s sounding board while never relaying their own point of view. Feminism’s task, her task, was to prevent this very situation. As Lonzi explains: Man had every right to say, ‘I am the sole consciousness, therefore all of this is mine’ if the other did not lay claim to it. It makes sense to me. But it’s different now because an individual like myself exists who claims it. […] This to me is the dramatic climax of feminism, as I live it. And this is my cultural task, to be recognized as a thinking subject.85

Consagra, who takes the almost pathological self-reliance of the artist for granted, is willing to acknowledge the importance of feminism but only to a point. Certainly,

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he admits, he is more conscientious about justice for women and equality between the sexes. Nevertheless, he considers any evidence of feminism’s impact on his selfreflection or relationships with others as extraneous to the methods and goals of his autobiography.86 For Lonzi, her partner’s reticence both proves that Consagra has used their personal relationship for cultural gain and belies the very existence of the process whereby men exploit private relationships to bolster their confidence in public.87 Lonzi sees the distinction between the personal and the public as suspect. She suggests that the division represents merely a convenient prop that allowed men to cultivate the appearance of independence. It was a cultural commonplace that masked reciprocal ties. Lonzi states that ‘these delimited spaces are, at the least an abstraction, at best a tactic that ultimately throws [woman] from the field, eliminates her presence, and allows men to live the myth, which many can’t seem to do without, of being unique, that which they always are’.88 The remark is an indictment of Consagra’s stated need for autonomy; it is also a succinct formulation of her problem with the art world. The conversation then turns from the problems surrounding his book to considerations of how they conceive of their work and its reception. For Consagra, originality can be expressed only through the object. For Lonzi, an object is not actually necessary. A mature consciousness expresses itself.89 In part because of her stress on the abstract rapporto over the concrete object, in part because of her belief in culture’s deleterious effects, Lonzi was careful to avoid functioning as a public intellectual. She saw the temptation to decamp to the so-called public sphere, to enter the channels of mainstream culture, to do press junkets and interviews, as dangerous. This was because each time feminists departed from the confines of the small group, Lonzi contends, they displayed the same tendency towards self-aggrandizement that distorted male–female relationships.90 Towards the end of the second chapter, Consagra accuses Lonzi of pandering for publicity during the 1960s by showing up to openings in miniskirts, smoking and getting herself photographed. He suggests that her behaviour smacked of inauthenticity.91 The older, more austere Lonzi can’t help but agree. ‘Precisely,’ she says, ‘it was the minimum tribute of alienation that was asked of me to remain in that world.’92 She then acknowledges that seeing old photos of herself elicits feelings of shock and even psychic peril. This is because to participate in the art world, as a woman, is inherently dangerous: To participate in that world and to risk losing oneself is one and the same. When I see women who have been fixtures in the art world for years and have adopted this pose of permanent adoration, who can’t appreciate anything outside of these myths that circulate around you, I understand the danger of entering into it. […] You go in and you see these big shots, that say things, they know everything about what’s going on … they’re a kind of presence that women, that girls have not known until then. There’s a risk of losing one’s bearings.93

It seems that women must be losers in the art world game simply because that is how the game is played. By definition, to interact with the larger-than-life personalities of artists means to defer or diminish one’s own. It is not that women submit to being

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instrumentalized; it is that the art world takes advantage of their silence as a foregone conclusion. It comes as no surprise to Lonzi that prior to her involvement in feminism she participated in the mythologized view of the artist as the sole party authorized to speak about or for himself.94 On the third day, Lonzi and Consagra continue to discuss her mood swings, the onesidedness of his needs, and the general state of their relationship. In many respects, the third instalment is merely a continuation of issues raised in the first half. However, the text also introduces some nuances to Lonzi’s understanding of relational subjectivity. It seems that for Lonzi not only is truth relational but so is existence. Lonzi even goes so far as to make the ontological claim that woman is dialogue.95 Lonzi explains: Man provides woman with the permission to carry out her sense of existence which is to be in relation. Woman feels what happens between beings very strongly, and the need for dialogue, for reciprocal analysis, that is then the relationship, tends to be in evidence; while man must not linger over these ties precisely because he must feel himself the sole protagonist. […] Therefore woman is relatively aware of her need for the other – while man is not – and brings to light that he not only needs woman, but that he activates his humanity in relationship with her.96

While man can acknowledge others on the structured and hierarchical cultural plane to set himself apart from them, in private he must dissemble and disavow the very interactions that, for Lonzi, make us human. As Lonzi explains, men shy away from these realizations because the only award to be won in the private sphere is the truth of one’s own (highly dependent, interstitial and routinely exploitative) being.97 Thus culture depends on the disavowal of the truth of one’s intersubjectivity to function. And so long as men have been recognized culturally, they need not recognize the other privately.98 The complex intersubjectivity Lonzi articulates is only partly appreciated by Consagra, who reduces it to the master–slave dialectic where one party is always somehow indebted to the other. This forces Lonzi to clarify in anti-Hegelian terms that by ‘woman’ she does not mean a biological entity as much as a ‘tendency’, and this tendency ceases when a woman attains consciousness. A woman must be in possession of her own subjectivity to understand what she provides on the other’s behalf and to make the other aware of it.99 Nevertheless, this relationship is highly asymmetrical. Men, it seems, profit from their awareness of these relationships more than women do. Whereas men were previously unaware of the benefits they gained from their relationships with women, they are now becoming fully conscious of them. But women still do not share men’s capacity to deny the other’s existence.100 Ultimately, Lonzi requires recognition from Consagra because to go without it would entail an erasure. If subjectivity only exists in relation, then it is dependent upon others. And if one does not attain recognition from others, then one effectively ceases to exist.101 ‘I am not registered by anyone, I am talking air.’102 By suggesting that the self is possible of erasure, such a formulation takes Lacan’s external locus of selfhood seriously.103 It also serves as a source of enmity between Lonzi and Consagra. For while Consagra interprets the desire for acknowledgement as a disingenuous bid

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for notoriety, Lonzi feels it is fundamentally inseparable from her consciousness. She does not want fame; she needs change.104 And for her part, Lonzi worries that if the man with whom she had spent over a decade cannot understand her, then her ideas are doomed to misprision.105 Thus Consagra is more than a barometer of her work’s reception in the outside world. For if her consciousness cannot register within his or impact his own view of the world, the risk is not just capitulation but destruction.106 Tempering the vitriolic refusals that appear elsewhere in the text, Lonzi clarifies her disillusionment with art in Vai pure’s final chapter. Art was no longer an untainted ideal but the product of flawed social relations. It was this realization that caused her internal distress, for while she found the current situation intolerable she could not believe it was inevitable.107 As she explains to Consagra, ‘so when you accuse me of being against the work, anti-art, anti-whatnot, I feel like it’s not true, I’m against this type of work, this type of art, this type of society.’108 Throughout the 1970s, the art world remained an important element of her thought, for it formed the matrix in which her social critique was rooted. Her participation in the art scene was not simply ignored, abandoned or left behind. Rather, it remained the lens through which her ideas were continually focused. Lonzi had never abandoned art criticism; she had simply radically reformulated its terms. It is not until the final pages of Vai pure that Lonzi relinquishes, in a concrete sense, her critical project or her participation, however antagonistic, in the arts. Lonzi finds that she is exhausted, and the fight against values she abhorred has ceased being productive: These days, more than anything, I am overcome by the fatigue of fighting with the male world. While up to a point I viewed it as vital, in that there was a contradiction that provoked me to think more clearly, now, having reached the end, ultimately there is no more motivation to create contradictions for myself.109

In Lonzi’s diary, many of the considerations she deals with in Vai pure—the role of the artist and the instrumentalization of the artist’s muse – are present but not fully fleshed out. Vai pure represents the denouement of that conversation. It is only when she declares a break with Consagra that her investment in these debates ceases. Lonzi finally cuts short the discussion, and with her last words directs Consagra, ‘Beh, adesso vai pure [Well, now you can go].’110 The radical, relational conception of existence at the centre of Lonzi’s critique has become a central concern within contemporary art. Though the debt to Lonzi has never been acknowledged, her premise regarding the work of art as a container of flawed social interactions underpins current attempts to radically reformulate dominant conceptions of art’s autonomy and social purchase through active viewer participation within forms alternately known as public practice, performance and relational aesthetics. These admittedly diverse practices share Lonzi’s belief that art cannot function as an instrument of democratization while retaining traditional hierarchies between creative and viewing subjects and instead seek to promote intrasubjective encounters over ‘detached opticality’.111 Among the most prominent of recent examples, Lonzi’s conception of rapporto has found formal expression in the sustained silent

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acknowledgement between Marina Abramovic and individual audience members during the Museum of Modern Art’s performance retrospective The Artist is Present, where the complicity of the artist in subordinating the viewer that Lonzi decried is both exposed and overturned through staged mutual recognition. The analysis of the relational nature of existence has also proved a centrepiece of recent critical theory, in particular the writings of feminist physicist Karen Barad, who argues that ‘individuals do not pre-exist their interactions; rather, individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating’. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev recently applied these ideas to the work of Lonzi’s contemporaries Mario and Marisa Merz.112 The ongoing debate over the integrity and efficacy of these practices demonstrates how profoundly radical Lonzi’s critique remains. More than thirty years since it was formulated, Lonzi’s desire to subvert convention in favour of non-servile forms of human interaction remains an urgent prerogative within both the art world and the diverse social media and protest movements that continue to redefine contemporary subjectivity.

Notes 1

*Unless otherwise stated in the footnotes, all translations by the author. Recent scholarship has qualified and challenged the existing narrative of Lonzi’s definitive departure from the art world. In her landmark biography, the first definitive study of Lonzi’s life and work, Maria Luisa Boccia writes,

Una volta intuito che il reciproco reconoscimento tra l’ artista e lo spettatore non si realizza, la presenza nel mondo dell’ arte cessa per Carla Lonzi di essere qualcosa di più e di diverso da un’attività culturale. L’ attegiamento critico verso la cultura, che a più riprese abbiamo incontrato, si radicalizza, diviene impossibilità di proseguire il proprio percorso restando sulle vie culturali. Fallita la propria iniziazione alla coscienza tramite l’ arte, il distacco dalle forme culturali si fa per lei totale. Boccia, L’io in rivolta: Vissuto e pensiero di Carla Lonzi (Milan: La Tartaruga edizioni, 1990), 59. Reinforcing such suppositions are the brusque synopses of Lonzi’s life on the dust-jackets of Rivolta femminile’s republished libretti verdi. In the biography that introduces Lonzi’s book of poetry, Marta Lonzi and Anna Jaquinta date Lonzi’s rejection of the art world to the publication of Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della manifestazione creativa maschile in March 1971, though they do not examine the degree to which her continued association with Consagra or Accardi undermines such a black and white reading of events. Marta Lonzi and Anna Jaquinta, ‘Biografia,’ introduction to Carla Lonzi, in Scacco Raggionato: poesie dal ’58 al ’63 (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile Prototipi, 1985), 29–30; Lonzi, Scacco Raggionato: poesie dal ’58 al ’63, back cover; Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla: Diario di una femminista (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1978): inside front cover of dust jacket. In the last decade, however, several scholars have pointed to the comingling of political and creative practice in Lonzi’s work. Giovanna Zapperi, ‘L’ autoportrait d’une femme. Préface,’ in Autoportrait, trans. by Marie-Ange Marie-Vigueur (Paris: JRP Ringier, 2012), 7–35; Laura Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge: Carla Lonzi e l’ arte in Italia, 1955– 1970 (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2016), 224–7; Giorgio Zanchetti, ‘Premessa e profezia.

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Crisi della creatività, crisi della critica e relazione secondo Carla Lonzi’, in Cristina Casero and Elena Di Raddo, eds, Anni ’70: l’ arte dell’impegno: I nuovi orizzonti culturali, ideologici e sociali nell’arte italiana (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009), 33–48. 2 Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, preface by Laura Iamurri (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 35. 3 On Accardi’s contribution to the development of feminist thought in Italy, see Leslie Cozzi, ‘Spaces of Self-Consciousness: Carla Accardi’s Environments and the Rise of Italian Feminism,’ in Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 21, no. 1 (2011): 67–88; Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge, 215–19. 4 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 300–1. 5 Ibid., 262. 6 Ibid., 176. 7 For a discussion of Lonzi’s changing conception of criticism in the context of contemporary debates, see the essays by Lara Conte and Stefano Chiodi in Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità: Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, eds. Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino, and Vanessa Martini (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2011), 87–109; 111–16. 8 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 9. 9 This appears in various moments throughout the book, from early discussions of how she was perceived by her childhood best friend’s family, to her response to the exhortation of her Catholic school teachers that she be good, to how her youthful quest for sainthood informed her current vocation. Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 17, 28, 31. 10 Ibid., 9. 11 Ibid., 593. 12 Ibid., 67. See also Patrizia Ferri, ‘Carla Lonzi: Coscienze a confronto’, Flash Art 28, no. 192 (July 1995), 112–13. 13 Ibid., 307. She recounts this feeling of being out of place at other times in the book. See Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 380. 14 Ibid., 307. 15 Ibid., 360, 364, 380, 593. 16 Ibid., 41. 17 Ibid., 263–4. 18 Ibid., 266. See also, 316–17, 334. 19 Ibid., 43. 20 Ibid., 64. Any discussion of Lonzi’s separatism must be qualified somewhat. Not only did her relationship with Consagra have a keen influence on her life and thought, but she also hypothesized that men might publish under the Rivolta femminile imprint. Considering this possibility, she notes, Ho pensato che potrebbe succedere che qualche uomo pubblichi un suo scritto nella nostra collana, in modo che non ci sia più l’ autosegregazione da parte nostra, ma perché è l’uomo a rompere l’isolamento e non noi. Noi abbiamo trovato la nostra strada e forse l’uomo può riconoscerla anche come sua. Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 318. Perhaps more significant, though, is the sense that one gets reading Lonzi’s work that relations created solely between women were far from Edenic. As she explains, the ideological aspirations of separatism were not always fulfilled:

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L’ideologia aveva dato per certo che una volta spezzata la dipendenza dal mondo maschile, la donna era salva. L’ideologia esprimeva un’aspirazione. Senza la salvaguardia ideologica non avremmo ammesso questa aspirazione, né lasciato il purgatorio con l’uomo per l’inferno tra donne. Un inferno che aveva preso il posto del paradiso originario (con la madre). Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 1002–3. For further discussion, see Maria Luisa Boccia, ‘L’io in rivolta. Sessualità e pensiero politico di Carla Lonzi’, in Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino, and Vanessa Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità: Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2011), 145–59. 21 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 25. In one memorable quote, Lonzi explains the difficulty she sometimes feels at communicating: ‘Esprimersi = ex-premere, spingere fuori. Non mi piace questo verbo, non corrisponde alla sensazione fluida che zampilla da me. Ancora il getto è piccolo, l’ acqua gorgoglia impedita da bolle d’aria e spruzza in moda irregolare.’ Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 152. 22 Ibid., 32, 36–7, 61, 386, 472. 23 Ibid., 34, 37. 24 Ibid., 114. Carla Accardi, Superiore e inferiore: Conversazioni fra le ragazzine delle Scuole Medie (Rome: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1972). See also Paolo Vagheggi, ‘In Conversation with Carla Accardi: Life Is Not Art, Art Is Life’, in Danilo Eccher, ed., Carla Accardi (Rome: MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea/Milan: Electa, 2004), 132–9. 25 Ibid., 38. 26 Ibid., 38–9. 27 Ibid., 45. In the original Italian, Lonzi uses the pseudonym Ester to refer to Accardi and Simone for Consagra. 28 Ibid., 49. For other references to Accardi’s need for spectators, see Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 219. 29 Ibid., 62. Lonzi makes similar statements on page 97. 30 Ibid., 62. 31 Ibid., 73. On pages 114–15, Lonzi also complains that she was demoralized by Accardi’s incapacity to understand her poetry. 32 Ibid., 115, 126. 33 Lonzi even writes a brief poem to this effect: Esprimersi è doloroso, comunicare è liberatorio. Esprimersi è diversità, comunicare è parità. Esprimersi è senza sbocco. Comunicare è amare. Io amo. Ibid., 165. For other references to the interrelationship of communication and liberation with respect to her feminism, see Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 173, 239. 34 Ibid., 83. For other references to Lonzi’s sense of internal transformation, see Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 167, and particularly the memorable quote on 206: ‘Ho fatto il femminismo come una bambina impaurita che corre dietro al padre e gli grida “Cattivo!” e scappa via tremante per la sua stessa audacia, e come Giovanna d’Arco pronta a andare sul rogo per testimoniare le sue “voci”.’ 35 Ibid., 75. 36 Ibid., 953.

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37 Ibid., 76. Elsewhere in the text Lonzi comments on her own, largely negative, attitude towards competition: ‘Il mio dilemma era che io volevo essere migliore e pari alle altre. Sembrava insolubile, ma la parità rende più che migliori, ottimi, se stessi. Le strade che avevo preso per migliorarmi non facevano che riportarmi alla rivalità che odiavo, ma in cui dovevo primeggiare.’ Ibid., 290. 38 Ibid., 888. 39 Ibid., 423. 40 Ibid., 63, 219. 41 Ibid., 160–1. 42 Ibid., 185. See also Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 196, 312, 376. 43 Ibid., 252–3, 260. For a discussion of Accardi’s unsent and previously unpublished letter to Lonzi, see Giovanna Zapperi, Carla Lonzi: Un’ arte della vita (Rome: Derive Approdi, 2017). 44 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 266–7, 278, 312, 1009. Though Lonzi transcribes the telegram and discusses her emotional response to it at length, she does not explain what prompted it. The text of the telegram suggests that Lonzi had made some sort of public statement that irked Accardi. Accardi never commented publicly on the break or the developments that may have led to it, so Lonzi’s writings are the only first-person accounts – a fact that renders the historical record of their relationship decidedly one-sided. Furthermore, Lonzi also reconsiders the split in later sections of her autobiography, where she attributes the differences between them to other causes, including romantic jealousy and mutual misunderstanding. See Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 901, 1015–16. 45 Ibid., 267. 46 Ibid., 269–74. 47 Ibid., 375–6, 1064. 48 Ibid., 601. For more background on the exhibition which precipitated the disagreement, see Zapperi, Carla Lonzi: Un’ arte della vita, 179 and related footnote on pages 292–3. 49 Ibid., 639, 648–9. 50 Ibid., 646. 51 Ibid., 660, 1030. 52 Ibid., 888. 53 Ibid., 962. 54 Carla Lonzi, Vai pure: Dialogo con Pietro Consagra (Rome: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, Prototipi, 1980), 37. 55 Ibid., 37. 56 Ibid., 25. 57 Ibid., 23–4. 58 Ibid., 9. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., 17–18. 61 Ibid., 18. 62 Ibid., 22. 63 Ibid., 26. 64 Ibid., 27. 65 Ibid., 33. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid.

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68 Ibid., 35. 69 Carla Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel. La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale e altri scritt (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1974. See also Laura Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge, 226, and Liliana Ellena, ‘Carla Lonzi e il neo-femminismo radicale degli anni ’70,’ in Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, 129–30. 70 Lonzi, Vai pure, 34. 71 Ibid., 40. 72 Ibid., 30. 73 Ibid., 38. 74 Ibid., 39. 75 Ibid., 44. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., 45. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., 28. See also 14. 80 Ibid., 45. 81 Ibid., 45–6. 82 Pietro Consagra, Vita mia (Milan: Feltrinelli Editore, 1980). Lonzi appears repeatedly throughout the latter half of Consagra’s biography: first as a magnetic object of desire in the midst of his divorce. Then as a boon to his work; and finally as a source of anxiety as Lonzi’s attitude to the art world soured. The biography ends on a bitter note, as Consagra declares his wish to live alone and states: ‘Arte e femminismo tra noi producevano un ribollimento di lamentale, irritazioni, ostilità’. Consagra, Vita mia, 99, 104, 116, 135–7. 83 Lonzi, Vai pure, 51. She repeats the same complaint on page 52. 84 Ibid., 52. 85 Ibid., 52–3. 86 Ibid., 54, 118. 87 Ibid., 12–13, 22–3, 33–4. 88 Ibid., 55. 89 Ibid., 56–7. 90 Ibid., 46. 91 Ibid., 64. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 65. 94 Ibid., 67. 95 Ibid., 77. 96 Ibid., 77–8. 97 Ibid., 78. 98 Ibid., 84. 99 Ibid., 78–9, 83–4. 100 Ibid., 82–3. 101 Ibid., 87–8, 115, 117. Elsewhere in the chapter, Lonzi aligns her view of intersubjectivity with existentialist subject/object distinctions. Conflating Sartre’s notion of the being-for-others and the being-in-itself, Lonzi describes a process whereby men use women to attain existential awareness and leave women immersed in immanence: Ora mi sembra che la donna lavora proprio su questo passaggio che da un’umanita implicita, nel dialogo, l’umanità diventa esplicita. A quel punto lí la donna si aspetta

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che l’uomo riconosca questo intervento. L’uomo non lo riconosce. Allora cosa succede? Che lui è diventato proprietario per cosí dire di questa umanità «per sé» mentre alla donna non glielo riconosce e lascia lei nell’ «in sé». Ibid., 116. 102 ‘Non sono registrata da nessuna parte, sono aria parlante.’ Lonzi, Vai pure, 117. 103 Jacques Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function,’ in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 76–9. 104 Lonzi, Vai pure, 87–8, 115, 117. 105 Ibid., 88. 106 Ibid., 102–5; 114. 107 Ibid., 132. 108 Ibid., 131. 109 Ibid., 138 110 Ibid., 144. 111 Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,’ October 110 (Fall 2004): 54, 61–2. 112 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), ix, quoted in Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, ‘You can make shoes out of brains’, in Connie Butler, ed., Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum; New York: Del Monico/Prestel, 2016), 275.

References Accardi, C. (1972), Superiore e inferiore: Conversazioni fra le ragazzine delle Scuole Medie, Rome: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Bishop, C. (2004), ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October 110 (Fall): 54, 61–2. Boccia, M. L. (2011), ‘L’io in rivolta. Sessualità e pensiero politico di Carla Lonzi’, in Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino, and Vanessa Martini, eds. Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità: Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2011), 145–59. Boccia, M. L. (1990), L’io in rivolta: Vissuto e pensiero di Carla Lonzi, Milan: La Tartaruga. Chiodi, S. (2011), ‘Autoritratto in assenza’, in Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino, and Vanessa Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità: Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 111–16. Christov-Bakargiev, C. (2016), ‘You Can Make Shoes Out of Brains’, in C. Butler, ed., Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space, Los Angeles: Hammer Museum; New York: Del Monico/ Prestel, 273–9. Consagra, P. (1980), Vita mia, Milan: Feltrinelli Editore). Conte, L. (2011), ‘La critica è potere. Percorsi e momenti della critica italiana negli anni Sessanta’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, and V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi. La duplice radicalità, Pisa: ETS Edizioni, 86–109. Cozzi, L. (2011), ‘Spaces of Self-Consciousness: Carla Accardi’s Environments and the Rise of Italian Feminism’, in Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 21, no. 1: 67–88 Ellena, L. (2012), ‘Carla Lonzi e il neo-femminismo radicale degli anni ’70’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, and V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità: Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Pisa: ETS, 129–30.

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Ferri, P. (1995), ‘Carla Lonzi: Coscienze a confronto’, Flash Art 28, no. 192 (July 1995): 112–13. Iamurri, L. (2016), Un margine che sfugge: Carla Lonzi e l’ arte in Italia, 1955–1970, Macerata: Quodlibet. Lacan, J. (2006), ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink, New York: W. W. Norton, 76–9. Lonzi, C. ([1969] 2010), Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. (1978), Taci, anzi parla: Diario di una femminista, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi, C. (1974), Sputiamo su Hegel. La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale e altri scritti, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi, M. and Jaquinta, A. (1985), ‘Biografia’, in Carla Lonzi, ed., Scacco ragionato: Poesie dal’ 58 al ’63, Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 9–73. Vagheggi, P. (2004), ‘In Conversation with Carla Accardi: Life Is Not Art, Art Is Life’, in D. Eccher, Carla Accardi, Rome: MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea/Milan: Electa, 132–9. Zanchetti, G (2009), ‘Premessa e profezia. Crisi della creatività, crisi della critica e relazione secondo Carla Lonzi,’ in Cristina Casero and Elena Di Raddo, eds, Anni ’70: l’arte dell’impegno: I nuovi orizzonti culturali, ideologici e sociali nell’arte italiana, Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 33–48. Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi: Un’ arte della vita, Rome: Derive Approdi. Zapperi, G. (2012), ‘L’ autoportrait d’une femme’, in Carla Lonzi, ed., Autoportrait, Paris: JRP Ringier, 7–35.

8

Reimagining the family album: Carla Lonzi’s Autoritratto Teresa Kittler

When Carla Lonzi published Autoritratto (Self-Portrait) in 1969, it marked the self-imposed end of a career that had spanned a little over ten years.1 Autoritratto is Lonzi’s swan song to art criticism, before she abandoned the circuits of artistic production to found Rivolta Femminile (Feminine Revolt), one of the better-known feminist movements in Italy.2 The book collects much of Lonzi’s art-critical output of this period, collating dozens of recorded interviews with a roll call of artists – Carla Accardi, Getulio Alviani, Enrico Castellani, Pietro Consagra, Luciano Fabro, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Nigro, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Mimmo Rotella, Salvatore Scarpitta, Giulio Turcato and Cy Twombly – many of whom shared Lonzi’s association with Luciano Pistoi’s Galleria Notizie in Turin.3 The critic’s first official appointment with the gallery had come in 1960 with the invitation to co-curate an exhibition on Pinot Gallizio’s La Gibigianna series.4 Thereafter Lonzi continued to work closely with Pistoi as she became immersed in Italy’s contemporary art world – its galleries and periodicals, including Collage and Marcatrè; writing for the majority of the publications produced by the gallery and curating a number of its exhibitions.5 (Her involvement with the gallery marked an implicit rejection of an academic trajectory she had initially embarked on as student of Roberto Longhi.6) Together with Pistoi and Alberto Ulrich, she would go on to coorganize one of the key exhibitions held in Turin in 1962: L’Incontro di Torino: Pittori d’America, Europa e Giappone (Encounter in Turin: Painters from America, Europe and Japan) at the Promotrice delle Belle Arti.7 It was also the product of a friendship made – via Pistoi – with Saverio Vertone who was working at De Donato at the time that the suggestion of Autoritratto came about and was ultimately realized as part of its ATTI (Acts) series, which addressed the social and economic issues to emerge out of the post-1968 generation and took the form of enquiries, documentaries and, as in the case of Lonzi’s Autoritratto, interviews.8 Indeed, there is a parallel between the Galleria Notizie’s own trajectory throughout the 1960s, which saw a marked shift towards young Italian artists who would transform the vocabulary of painting and sculpture in this period and Lonzi’s connection with the artists that would appear in Autoritratto.

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By the time Lonzi published Taci, anzi parla in 1978, her dismay at the lack of support that Autoritratto had received from even her closest friends and collaborators was palpable. In her diary she wrote: ‘Even Ester [Carla Accardi] would make me feel, at the start of the book, that it was not very creative … whilst I was trying to do something that was little understood.’9 Lonzi, it would seem, had wanted Autoritratto to be understood on a par with the kinds of experimental projects conceived by the artists included in its pages; at once a record of her life as critic as she attempts to reimagine it otherwise. What results from this professed intention is something that resembles an autobiographical novel and as befits this genre there are over a hundred images peppered throughout its pages. The sequence of these does not follow a particular order and certainly no chronology. Furthermore, they are reproduced as black and white photographs, often small in size, with some no larger than a postage stamp. Their at times grainy, overexposed or out-of-focus quality gives them a homely, amateur feel, like photographs culled from a family album or scrapbook.10 Lonzi’s interviews as they appeared in Marcatré and Collage throughout the 1960s had also been supplemented by photographs. These largely corresponded in some way to the artist’s practice, for example, the artist in their studio or standing in front of their work. When these dialogues were transcribed in Autoritratto, Lonzi reproduced many of these same images; a handful of which are identical to those published in exhibition catalogues produced by the Galleria Notizie throughout the 1960s, further registering Lonzi’s involvement with the gallery and the artistic scene associated with Pistoi. Additionally, however, Lonzi introduced a wide range of very different categories of images – sent to her by her interlocutors prior to the publication of Autoritratto – that draw both literally and formally from the family album – and whose level of familiarity would have seemed at odds with the formal context of the magazines and periodicals in which Lonzi’s interviews were originally published.11 Much has been made in the scholarship around the language and text that structures the book, particularly the effects of Lonzi’s pioneering use of the reel-to-reel recorder.12 Commentators have noted Lonzi’s obsessive capacity to register the artists’ voices – their every sound transcribed with all their idiosyncrasies retained so as to evoke the texture of the interactions between the speakers.13 As has been widely argued, in this way Autoritratto offers a striking alternative to traditional art criticism in the postwar period whereby Lonzi’s signature interview style is replicated on an ambitious scale, expanded to incorporate all the conversations she had recorded throughout the 1960s and edited together into a single dialogue.14 Extracts from interviews once held with Lonzi alone are shoehorned together to create a multi-stranded conversation but the resulting dialogue is often disjointed and at times even incoherent. The technique of montage that shapes the text is vividly extended through the images woven into Autoritratto, recording the life and habitat of each artist and his or her work in unexpected combinations that register different degrees of intimacy and an ever-changing chronology. Perhaps it is unsurprising that family photography should be included in Autoritratto, given its basis in an oral tradition;15 but what are the effects produced by the inclusion of certain types of images? How does photography function here in relation to the text? From the outset the images have tended to play a secondary role in the scholarly literature.16 Whilst I do not want to suggest that the

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photographs should be seen as distinct from the text, I do want to ask after the visual cues at work, particularly given the unusual appearance of Autoritratto; how does it play with the assumed authenticity of photography to both reiterate and confound the pure fiction of Autoritratto, and how does this speak to the dynamics of the group, particularly given that this latter became central to the activity of consciousness-raising that underpinned Rivolta Femminile?

Home economy By way of a starting point, there is a passage in Autoritratto where Lonzi relays Consagra’s ambivalence towards the traditional critic: ‘who are these critics?’ he asks, ‘people that stand at the door … but never come in and so they are only able to give you so much.’17 By invoking the family album, as a paradigm of domestic space, Lonzi seems to respond quite literally to this critique through her use of photography that evokes an explicitly domestic setting. The project was both conceived in and played out through this mise-en-scène. Take, for example, the photograph of Lonzi in her apartment in Minneapolis, which she shared with Consagra, her partner at the time (see Figure 1.2). It was here, perched at a desk with the reel-to-reel recorder in front of her, that Autoritratto was realized in the spring of 1968. Through the process of recording she explains that she had been able to get ‘close to the artists … listening to them repeatedly’ particularly if she ‘hadn’t understood the first time round’.18 Lonzi sits on the edge of her seat in this obviously domestic setting, wearing fur-lined slippers, the sheer curtains drawn, the low bed on the left only just cropped out of the frame. This is an image of everyday activity that would serve as a model for the entire book. It quietly registers the laborious technique of transcription, as Lonzi creates her fictional group portrait. This is the process by which Autoritratto is brought to life in all its contradictions: it is an image of the solitude in which Lonzi had conjured her community of artists; an image of isolation by which Lonzi had wanted to gain proximity to her interlocutors; an image of professional work completely unrelated to the chores of homemaking that might have been the conventional cognates of such a domestic setting within established ideological norms. In Autoritratto, Lonzi trades on the associations of the family album with the home, the domestic and, by extension, the everyday. As such it can be understood as the realization of a project that wants to reimagine artistic practice through this lens. An early precedent for this approach can be glimpsed in the group show Arte Abitabile (Habitable Art), which opened at the Galleria Sperone in Turin in 1966.19 The exhibition comprised the work of three artists – Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gianni Piacentino and Piero Gilardi – each of whom would go on to be associated with Arte Povera. A photograph taken at the time (Figure 8.1) shows a series of unusual looking structures and fixtures displayed in such a way as to redefine how sculpture had traditionally occupied the gallery space: Gilardi’s scaffold platform is just shy of the ceiling in the background; Piacentino’s Blue-Purple Big L (1966) abruptly cuts across

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Figure 8.1  Installation view, ‘Gilardi, Piacentini, Pistoletto. Arte Abitabile’, Galleria Sperone, Turin, June–July 1966. Photograph: Gian Enzo Sperone, Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.

the room; and Pistoletto’s Lampada (Lamp) (1965), visible in the foreground, dwarfs the surrounding smaller domestic light fittings. If the objects that featured in Arte Abitabile appear ill-matched to the domestic setting alluded to by the title, this was partly the point.20 After all, this exhibition was never meant as a design showroom for the latest objects made for use in the home. Pistoletto was keen to reiterate this when he wrote that ‘Arte Abitabile […] was the first to aspire to a dimension which […] stressed the desire to produce art which was not like an armchair but would push one to live together for a moment, to coagulate’.21 More recently he restates this in somewhat different terms when he explains: ‘the notion was only hinted at, but we felt a shared need not just to exhibit but to inhabit the gallery together.’22 With these words Pistoletto acknowledges a shift that was taking place in artistic practice at that moment, towards performance, installation and collective forms of making and experiencing art. This notion of collective production is encapsulated in the idea of living together, or, in his vocabulary, a moment of coagulation (‘coagularsi’), with all that this word connotes. Despite the relative lack of scholarly attention Arte Abitabile has received, the show has nevertheless come to be regarded as a key moment in the narrative around postwar Italian art, particularly as it is seen to have anticipated the founding Arte Povera exhibitions held in the years 1967 to 1968.23 In his reassessment of the period, the art critic Germano Celant would refer to the exhibition in quasi-mythical terms, as a ‘discovery’ and as a ‘new way of doing art’ that made it ‘inhabitable’.24 Tommaso Trini would similarly look back to this

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moment as a foundational one.25 He credits Arte Abitabile with having proposed a way of rethinking social relations beyond the confines of Pop and Neo-Dada.26 Echoes of Pistoletto’s sentiments can be heard in the preface to Autoritratto, where Lonzi had spoken about offering a way of recasting the artist through a new set of relations with society, imagining those relations in terms of a community: ‘a kind of coexistence, real for me as I had lived it even though it didn’t take place in the unity of time and space’.27 In the same breath Lonzi’s statement underscores the ideal of kinship that underpins her project and freely acknowledges the fictional nature and by extension the constructed character of kinship relations at the heart of such a desire.28 The conversational form that Autoritratto takes also aligns Lonzi’s project with the humanist text, a rhetorical form that can be understood as a provocation to the reader and signalled the possibility of expressing multiple, and at times competing, perspectives on a wide range of subjects that also included friendship, sociability and hospitality. If Autoritratto is to be understood as an experimental project, then it is in this respect: Lonzi had envisaged the conversants as part of a close-knit community, a family of choice, in marked contrast to the much-vilified critics that ‘stand at the door but never come in’.29

The modern tribe Candid photographs introduce siblings, partners, children and holiday snaps into Autoritratto alongside studio photographs, gallery openings and installation shots with their explicit aims at reinforcing the sense of cohesion, social bonding and communication that Lonzi had professed to have experienced. Lonzi’s visual economy relies heavily on archaic or traditional portraits to make a radical gesture about selfrepresentation: but whose memories are these photographs supposed to index? What happens when they are moved out of the domestic context in which they were taken and into Lonzi’s fictional family album – that is, into the projection of a collective experience? One consequence of her visual strategy is that on occasion Autoritratto appears to veer towards a fantasy of familial relations, seemingly upholding the myth of the ‘family romance’ – an ideal fictional family in its original Freudian conception. This is something that is later replayed in Lonzi’s diary Taci, anzi parla (1978) in which she had considered the possibility of replacing her own family, before ultimately resigning herself to its limitations.30 If the selection of images in Autoritratto expose Lonzi to such a critique, then they also draw attention to an unresolvable tension at the heart of the project: the social and political reality registered by the photographs from which Lonzi draws betrays the utopian horizon to which she aspires.31 The point is that by 1969 the emphasis on the familial and the personal necessarily assumes a political dimension, at least for Lonzi whose relative investment in this trope stands in marked contrast to traditional art criticism.32 As such, Autoritratto presses further the kinds of experiments such as those of Arte Abitabile that had sought to define art in relation to the everyday by anticipating an entire generation of feminist politics that would claim the home and personal space as their locus.33 Despite the prominence of the family album in Autoritratto it is worth noting that at

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Figure 8.2  Pino Pascali with his parents, 1936. Photo: Fondazione Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare, Bari.

times Autoritratto necessarily occasions a breakdown of the familial structures that it would at first seem straightforwardly to uphold. The photographs present the artists over the course of their life in a range of changing roles – as parents, siblings, cousins, nephews and children – powerfully suggesting that such roles are neither fixed nor predetermined and that identity cannot be reducible in this way. By including family photography that dates from the turn of the century to the late 1960s, Autoritratto also chronicles the changing level of formality that would transform the family unit in these decades. Two photographs register particularly well the distinction between the archaic portraits of the staged family and its transformation in subsequent decades. The first of these: a photograph taken in 1936 of Pascali on the day of his baptism held in the arms of his parents (Figure 8.2). Pascali is dressed in white in the centre of the photograph with his parents on either side, and in halfshadow, as they look proudly down at their son with the kind of formality and restraint characteristic of studio photography. This stands in stark contrast to the relaxed feel of the family snap, taken several decades later, of Nigro with his wife Violetta and son Gianni casually sprawled one on top of the other in the countryside near Livorno (Figure 8.3). As sociologist Chiara Saraceno has noted, one of the key transformations of the Italian family from the nineteenth century onwards has been its nuclearization.34 This shift has not followed a neat or linear trajectory, and there are obvious geographical and economic distinctions that have determined the way in which such transformations have been taken up differently.35 Of course these changes do not in themselves indicate a particular challenge to the political status quo, nor do the families pictured in the two examples referred to above contradict this picture of nuclearization. What I want to suggest, however, is that such photographs register the changing social

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Figure 8.3  Mario Nigro with his wife Violetta and their son Gianni in the countryside around Livorno, 1954. Reproduced in Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969). Brusimpiano, Varese, Archivio Mario Nigro.

values – particularly the erosion of a hierarchy – felt as a consequence of the modernization of the family. These social mores would continue to be challenged in the latter half of the 1960s. Indeed, it was in the wake of 1968 that, for the first time since the birth of the Italian Republic, the institution of the family was subjected to diverse attacks as the ‘fundamental cell’ of the State and capitalist society.36 It is by registering such shifts in social values, I would suggest, that Autoritratto is able to offer a critique of the family structure rather than simply display it as a model. Perhaps more striking still is the relaxed ambiance and intimate surroundings of the photograph of Accardi dressed in a dark robe and polka-dotted pyjamas propped up in bed with her daughter Antonella. Mother and daughter are both distracted and looking in opposite directions away from the camera (Figure 8.4). This photograph is emblematic of the numerous instances that seem to want to inscribe the maternal subject into the text. Consider a photograph taken in 1923 of a young Scarpitta (Figure 8.5). The image is out of focus but its drama is clear. It takes place on a small toy cart in a suburban backyard in California in 1923. The young Scarpitta reaches up to kiss his mother, with his head slightly tilted back and to one side in a great show of affection. Whilst Autoritratto is filled with memories and past experiences of the artists

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Figure 8.4  Carla Accardi with her daughter Antonella, n.d. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

it includes, this is far from a return to a biographical account of their work. The images, like the conversations, jump backwards and forwards spatially and chronologically in such a way that resists an attempt at formulating their lives in terms of a linear or causal sequence. Despite the emphasis on the infant’s world, this is not about a return to the way in which the origins of these artists are constituted, or a dovetailing of life and work, but rather an attempt to conjure the inhabited spaces, personal narratives and the web of relations that form their lives beyond the discrete work. The stress on the maternal axis of the family album takes on a further significance with respect to the photographs of Lonzi and her son Battista (Tita). In one example dating from 1960 (Figure 8.6), Lonzi stands by a window of a darkened room as she bottle-feeds her newly born, wrapped up in a blanket in her arms. The inclusion of images like this registers a shift in how we might be expected to look and for whom these photographs might have been taken. Lonzi signals a world beyond her professional life through the inclusion of amateur photography. She provides a view into her role as mother and allows this to exist alongside her practice of writing. This point is made

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Figure 8.5  Salvatore Scarpitta with his mother in California in 1923. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

most evidently in a photograph of Lonzi and her son, taken four years later (1964) (Figure 8.7). The frame is cropped just below their shoulders, as mother and son sit side by side at a table in an apparently domestic setting, looking in different directions and away from the camera; the young Tita breaks into a smile as he appears to be distracted by something taking place beyond the frame. The photograph accompanies a notable passage in Autoritratto, in which Tita famously interrupts a conversation held between Lonzi and Fabro to call out ‘Mamma! Mamma!’37 The accent on maternal love, on relations between the mother and infant, might further suggest a utopian model of pre-oedipal bliss that could be read as a challenge to the patriarchal and by extension traditional models of art criticism that Lonzi had wanted to contest: in a conversation with Lonzi that is transcribed in Autoritratto, Fabro had precisely described traditional art criticism as ‘oedipal’.38 Lonzi’s resistance to the model of the nuclear family is felt most clearly when the photographs are taken together, in their entirety: family photography understood in its strictest terms is group photography and in this sense its use throughout

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Figure 8.6 Carla Lonzi with her son Battista in 1960. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

the book reinforces Lonzi’s declared aims. In Autoritratto the familial often gives way to broader kinship structures. Without captions or obvious explanations the images fall into various categories that seem to stand for different forms of social organization that extends beyond the family structure. A wide array of social and sexual relations govern this fictional community, sports teams, friendship groups, tribal communities, gatherings at gallery openings, professional relations, familial connections: Autoritratto includes them all. In this respect it is a visual experiment as much as a new way of writing, where Lonzi and her interlocutors are inscribed through photography. Consider, for example, a photograph of Jannis Kounellis with his wife Efthimia Sardi (known as Efi) and friends during a carnival in Venezuela in 1958 (Figure 8.8). Sardi laughs at the figure in drag, performing for the camera, whilst Kounellis offers a smile straight into the lens. The photograph captures the friendly gazes that dart in different directions around the room. Above all else, it registers the kind of casualness and spontaneity that characterizes the friendship of the figures gathered there. In another photograph reproduced in Autoritratto, Accardi stands between Rotella and Dorazio

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Figure 8.7  Carla Lonzi with her son Battista in 1964. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

in Piazza San Marco on the occasion of the 27th Venice Biennale in 1954 (Figure 8.9). Rotella points to San Marco behind him as he looks straight towards the camera, whose lens is angled close to the ground in order to fit the landmark into the frame. Again, like the photograph of Kounellis and Sardi, this image registers the enthusiasm and informality associated with a holiday spent with friends – the relaxed attire and performance in front of the camera. Of course these photographs reveal something of the place where they were taken and the members of particular friendship groups, but the point is that with the inclusion of such imagery, the artist is seen through the lens of their relations with those friends and their experiences outside of making work. There is a tension that emerges around the question of labour and leisure here. Lonzi’s alternative to art criticism wants to stand in opposition to the perceived objectification of the artist; she makes visible the labours of homemaking or the leisure time of the artists included in its pages but as a result interpersonal relations and work are collapsed in ways that would become central to feminist debates in subsequent years around where the line between life and work could be drawn.

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Figure 8.8  Jannis Kounellis with his wife Efi Sardi in Venezuela at a party, 1958. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

As noted, Lonzi had spoken about offering a way of recasting the artist through a new set of relations with society, imagining those relations in terms of community.39 Given the particular claims placed on kinship and community, it is perhaps unsurprising then that among the interlocutors are a close circle of friends (Accardi, Castellani, Paolini, her then partner Consagra) with whom Lonzi had regularly worked throughout the 1960s.40 Here Lonzi’s professional and personal lives are collapsed in what is clearly a privileged position based on affinity. This sense of closeness is rehearsed in the way in which Lonzi inscribes herself through photography in Autoritratto. Indeed, in contrast to what has been described as ‘a portrait in absentia of the critic’ in the text, through the photographs that are included throughout Autoritratto, Lonzi insists on her visibility.41 Two photographs taken by Ugo Mulas (Figures 8.10 and 8.11) signal Lonzi’s close connection and enduring support of the artists included in Autoritratto. In Figure 8.10 Lonzi appears at the opening of Fabro’s 1969 exhibition at the Galleria De Nieubourg, Milan, and in Figure 8.11 alongside Castellani at the Galleria dell’ Ariete, Milan, to mark the opening of Accardi’s 1966 show there. In the first of these, the affinity between

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Figure 8.9  Carla Accardi with Mimmo Rotella and Piero Dorazio in Piazza San Marco during the Venice Biennale, 1954. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

Lonzi and Fabro is suggested by their matching stance, both face forwards casually smoking. (This is reiterated further still in another photograph by Mulas taken on the same occasion, though not reproduced in Autoritratto, in which Fabro gallantly kisses Lonzi’s hand.) It suggests ways in which photography can say something other than the text, by also exploiting the body language communicated in such instances. In Figure 8.11, Castellani and Lonzi appear caught off-guard; Castellani directs his gaze at Lonzi, whose mouth, half-open, is caught in a friendly exchange with the photographer. Such photographs are as much about Lonzi’s close connection to the photographer, who demonstrates his ability to document the feeling of spontaneity rather than the artwork – Accardi’s orange umbrella – on display and visible in the background. By the latter half of the 1960s, Mulas – who specialized in art world photography – had become well known in Italy. In the early 1960s, he had started recording the intellectual and artistic circles that congregated around the Bar Giamaica on Via Brera in Milan. Thereafter, he would photograph key artistic events, the open-air sculpture exhibition at Spoleto in 1962 – where he met Consagra and with whom he went on to

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Figure 8.10  Luciano Fabro and Carla Lonzi at the Galleria dell’Ariete, Milan, 1966. Photograph: Ugo Mulas. Milan, Archivio Ugo Mulas. Ugo Mulas photographs © Eredi Ugo Mulas. All rights reserved.

develop a close friendship – and the Venice Biennale, before travelling further afield to New York. Lonzi’s connection to Mulas was made through Consagra, her partner at the time; and ten photographs by Mulas are included in Autoritratto.42 Significantly, there is a parallel to be made between the proximity, dialogue and emphasis on the encounter that structures Autoritratto and the way in which Mulas had conceived of art world photography, through which he introduced a new vocabulary of informality and spontaneity: as, for example, in one photograph by Mulas that appears in Autoritratto, of Lonzi in Nigro’s studio, in which, rather than interview the artist, Lonzi would seem to be assisting him in his work. Indeed, Mulas’ presence in Autoritratto is so closely felt that Laura Iamurri has even described the photographer as ‘a virtual accomplice to the entire operation’.43 This emphasis on relational structures also extends to the environment: Autoritratto makes us think about the artist’s engagement with their surroundings as a powerful way of displacing the art object. One of the key exhibitions of this period to register such

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Figure 8.11  Enrico Castellani with Carla Lonzi at the Galleria de Nieubourg, 1969. Photograph: Ugo Mulas. Milan, Archivio Ugo Mulas. Ugo Mulas photographs © Eredi Ugo Mulas. All rights reserved.

changes within artistic practice, towards installation and performance-based work was Lo Spazio dell’Immagine (1967), in which nineteen artists who had begun to work with increasingly elastic parameters of sculpture were invited to create an environment for an entire room of the Palazzo Trinci in Foligno.44 Although Lonzi was not involved in this exhibition, a number of her interlocutors were invited to participate. Installation photographs from that exhibition are reproduced in Autoritratto, including Castellani’s Ambiente (1967), Fabro’s In Cubo (1966) and Alviani’s Interrelazione Speculare (1964), a series of undulating columns that form a labyrinthine space. Similarly, works that have since been regarded as central to the narrative of artistic practice in Italy of this period are reproduced here, such as Kounellis’ Untitled (12 horses) from his show at Fabio Sargentini’s Galleria L’ Attico in 1969 and Pascali’s Finte Sculture (Feigned Sculpture) at the Galleria Jolas in 1968. Autoritratto ends up looking the way it does in part because it chronicles the production of these new kinds of work; but it is also an experiment that enacts that new vocabulary of artistic production. As a way of conceiving of artistic practice it

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chimes with the many and various radical moves made throughout the 1960s away from object-based work and towards participation or direct action,45 a term which would signal political action as much as it resonated with artistic practice – and it dominated the rhetoric of both. In writings of the latter half of the 1960s this question of direct action is repeatedly framed in terms of encounter. Indeed, Autoritratto becomes a recapitulation of the encounter that Lonzi had also spoken about so emphatically and which is encapsulated in an unpublished letter to Pinot Gallizio from 1961: I’m increasingly convinced that a new work — a language that represents a way forward from the affirmation of the great masters after the last war — can come only from new forms of relationships between people. Basically, despite all our differences, we have one fundamental point in common: our studies and willingness to come together, and the tension that this gives us.46

In this respect, Autoritratto seems to institute a form of relational aesthetics avant la lettre – and takes the lived body as a model.47 The images in Autoritratto emphatically restore the connection between artist and the environment in which their work is produced, and it is a declaration that these overlapping worlds cannot be separated or compartmentalized by the critic.

Once again, with feeling The point I want to emphasize here is that, for Lonzi, this new set of relations would need to take place on what might be characterized as a domestic scale (rather than an exclusively domestic setting), based on proximity, individual experience and affection rather than the kind of cultural programming that art critics such as Giulio Carlo Argan had wanted to institute and who had become a foil against which Lonzi conceived her project. At times, it is difficult to avoid feeling like an intruder on the romantic scenes reproduced in Autoritratto: for instance in the tender embrace between Kounellis and Sardi reproduced as a small rectangular photograph that is not much larger than a postage stamp (Figure 8.12). With their arms interlocking, the photograph is cropped around their shoulders and face in such a way as to close in on their affectionate exchange. This echoes the way in which Lonzi had recuperated in Autoritratto the kinds of conversation that would normally have remained beyond the remit of art-critical writing. These include declarations of love by both Accardi and Paolini. Taking place on a domestic scale, Autoritratto explores the psychic and social spaces of the artists, and suggests ways of inscribing the artist-subject through a range of more human emotions rather than the categories of hero or cult figure. Autoritratto is replete with variations on this theme. Consider a further example of Pascali with his girlfriend, Michelle Coudray, taken in the summer of 1968 on the banks of the River Tiber in Rome (Figure 8.13). This was part of a series of photographs taken by Mulas of Pascali that was destined for L’Uomo Vogue. This particular series of photographs was never published, following Pascali’s untimely death in the summer of 1968, though later that year a photograph of Pascali would appear amongst other

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Figure 8.12  Jannis Kounellis with his wife Efi Sardi. Reproduced from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969).

photographs by Mulas of men of the moment (in a Vogue feature titled: ‘Sette più sette artisti d’oggi le loro opere, i loro abiti’).48 It highlights a distinction to be made with respect to the forms of address of images in other print media. Mulas’ photographs as they appear in Vogue work to spectacularize the artist; they create a milieu but not one based on friendship – in contrast to the family photographs which signal the antiprofessionalism of the artist in favour of a community of making that had so appealed to Lonzi. If Autoritratto documents the new type of performance-based practices, then it also registers a shift in the way in which the artist appears to perform for the camera. The photo of Pascali on the banks of the Tiber suggests a kind of performance of intimacy, somewhere between a private moment and a performance of that privacy for the camera: a reminder that if Autoritratto looks to the personal and the domestic, then it is also a performance of those casual relations associated with this setting as it had been enshrined in the casual rhetoric of the studio and introduced by art world photographers (such as Mulas but also Hans Namuth, Harry Shunk and János Kender) in the postwar period.49

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Figure 8.13  Pino Pascali with Michelle Coudray on the banks of the River Tiber in Rome, 1968. Reproduced in Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato, 1969). Photograph: Ugo Mulas. Milan, Archivio Ugo Mulas/Polignano a Mare, Bari, Fondazione Pino Pascali. FULL Ugo Mulas photographs © Eredi Ugo Mulas. All rights reserved.

For Autoritratto is no ordinary self-portrait: its subject remains elusive, shifting from author to artist to group and back again. In this respect it can also be understood as a response to the various attempts to reinvent self-portraiture in Italy in the postwar period as it reproduces a number of these experiments by the artists included in its pages. One notable example to appear in Lonzi’s Autoritratto is Paolini’s own Autoritratto (Self-Portrait) of 1968 (Figure 8.14), a work identified some years later by Pistoi as the definitive image of the 1960s. With its inclusion of the stylized self-portrait of Henri Rousseau in the foreground (taken from the artist’s self-portrait Moi-Même of 1890), Paolini’s black and white photo collage also chimes with Lonzi’s own interest in the figure, she having published a book on Le Douanier in 1966. Below a stylized sky, Paolini’s Self-Portrait is populated by artists, art historians and critics; a crowd of people drawn from newspapers, exhibition catalogues or found photographs recede as a mass of heads towards the horizon according to linear perspective but in defiance of chronology. Among the multitude of heads there are familiar faces from the period, including Lonzi in the second row, flanked by the artists Corrado Levi, Fontana, and Tano Festa. With the exception of a few smiling faces that appear as if they could be interacting with each other, the cut-out figures all look in different directions, isolated and free-floating. A similar tension is felt in Autoritratto between the singularity of each voice and Autoritratto’s attempt to register a collective experience. This is reflected through the selection of photographs that register the ambivalence between a focus on the individual (at times, cropped from a larger group portrait) and the foregrounding of families, friends and groups. Such images register the kind of awkward and at times

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Figure 8.14  Giulio Paolini, Autoritratto, 1968. Photograph on canvas. Emulsion Transfer. 151 x 126 cm. The George Economou Collection, Athens. © Giulio Paolini.

disconnected imaginary community that structures Lonzi’s book, where the possibility and impossibility of collectivity appear to be played out. When Paolo Fossati reviewed Autoritratto for NAC (Notiziario Arte Contemporanea)  in 1969, it was the idiosyncratic and individual experience that incurred his strong disapproval.50 In his review, he describes Autoritratto as a manifesto against what is characterized as the codifying practice of art criticism. This initial praise is quickly subsumed by the accusation that Lonzi ends up exchanging one codified system for another, which, as he explains it, takes the form of a tribe.51 Fossati’s review is peppered with vocabulary aimed at evoking this ethnographic image; he describes the palpable ‘totemism’ and Lonzi’s tribalism as a politics of exclusion.52 The real cause

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of irritation for Fossati is that Autoritratto announces its gang with little more logic or substance than a declaration and relies on rhetoric designed to be emotive. Fossati describes Autoritratto unforgivingly as ‘emotionally susceptible’ and ‘obsessively autobiographical’.53 Whilst for Fossati the tribalism of Autoritratto is dismissed as a familiar trope of this period, it is clear that Lonzi’s emphasis on the individual and on subjective experience as a way of challenging art criticism appears markedly different from that of her contemporaries.54 By its exaltation of the personal and individual, Autoritratto remains far removed from the militant rhetoric that shaped the art criticism of that entire generation that looked to collective action, and certainly from Fossati’s own social-historical perspective.55 In recent years family photography has been subjected to feminist critique for images of family life emptied of emotional conflict, or of the labour involved in its production.56 The family album has been read by Marianne Hirsch as an exemplary site of desire ‘show[ing] us what we wish our family to be, and therefore what, most frequently, it is not.’57 Similarly, Annette Kuhn has underscored the set of imperatives given by the family album: ‘they will be shared, they will be happy.’58 It is worth considering Fossati’s assessment of Autoritratto in light of more recent attempts to square family photography with everyday lived experience. These feminist critiques of photography are able to say something about what Lonzi had wished her family to look like but ultimately failed to achieve. In an entry in her diary Taci, anzi parla, Lonzi recapitulates her experience of producing Autoritratto when she writes: ‘what disturbed me was they viewed me as a spectator … perhaps they thought, I was more intelligent, more sensitive, better at recording, certainly more honest, but that is as far as it would go, an ideal spectator.’59 Within two decades of publishing his review, Fossati would in fact go on to acknowledge Autoritratto’s importance, deeming it one of six contributions to postwar artistic practice in Italy worthy of mention.60 After a period of relative obscurity following its first publication and Lonzi’s withdrawal from the circuits of artistic production, Autoritratto has now taken its place in the narrative of Italian postwar art; its author recognized as having anticipated an entire generation of European critics and curators. Lonzi’s move into feminism would not wait for Fossati’s re-evaluation.61 With Autoritratto Lonzi had effectively argued herself out of the art world after her complete immersion in it (although with that said, she continued to reflect on art and its patriarchal structures in her subsequent writing) and the significance of Autoritratto can be felt in her later practice; Lonzi would continue to appeal to the strategy of the autobiographical or diaristic that characterizes the formal appearance of Autoritratto in her subsequent projects, for example, her diary Taci, anzi parla (which in its first publication had also included images) and Vai Pure, which, with unflinching candidness, reveals the dissolution of her relationship with Consagra.62 It is a model that would similarly be taken up by fellow members of Rivolta Femminile. The lesson of Autoritratto had by then been learned, however, and Lonzi would approach the role of photography with considerably more caution. When Mariana Chinese’s La Strada Più Lunga (The Longest Road) (1976) was published by Rivolta Femminile, she claimed it as a visual record of the group – in which Lonzi features prominently.63 The photographs that are reprinted as double-page spreads, as Chinese

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explains, were taken in the spring of 1972 at various meetings of Rivolta Femminile held that year in Genoa, Milan, Turin and Florence. In the preface Chinese explains her use of photography, echoing Lonzi’s own words in the preface of Autoritratto, as a way of capturing the authenticity and immediacy of the experience, the uniqueness of a particular moment. Whilst Lonzi had indeed endorsed the publication, she utterly resists the idea that photography could evoke the collective experience of the group, something which she had at least briefly entertained in Autoritratto as she had sought to reimagine what art could be, where it could be situated and what it might mean to live with it differently.

Notes 1

2

3

4 5 6

*Unless otherwise stated, all translations are by the author. Published by De Donato, Autoritratto appeared in the Atti (Acts) series. This series covered social and economic issues that emerged out of the post-1968 generation and took the form of enquiries, documentaries and, as in the case of Lonzi’s Autoritratto, interviews. Other books published in the series included Giovanni Berlinguer, La salute delle fabbriche (1969; 1973), Renzo Stefanelli, Inchiesta sui salari (1969) and Donata Francescato and Miretta Prezza, Le condizioni della sessualità femminile (1979). On the history of the De Donato publishing house, see Luca di Bari, I meridiani: La casa editrice De Donato fra storia e memoria (Bari: Dedalo, 2012). See also Gian Carlo Ferretti, Storia dell’editoria in Italia 1945–2005 (Turin: Einaudi, 2004). Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato 1969). Reprinted with an introduction by Laura Iamurri, Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010). Throughout this chapter, I will refer to this second edition. Lonzi began her career as an art critic in the mid-1950s. Her first published essay on Ben Shahn was jointly written with Marisa Volpi and appeared in Paragone 6, no. 69 (September 1955): 38–59. For a discussion of Lonzi’s early essay, see Judith Russi Kirshner’s chapter in this volume. Lonzi did publish a number of articles after Autoritratto, for example, ‘La critica è potere’, which appeared in NAC 3 (December 1970): 5–6 and the untitled catalogue essay for the exhibition curated by Germano Celant, Identité Italienne: L’ Art en Italie Depuis 1959 (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1981), 31. Her entire art critical writings have recently been republished in Carla Lonzi, Scritti sull’arte, eds, Lara Conte, Laura Iamurri, and Vanessa Martini (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2012). On Lonzi’s connection to the gallery, see also Mirella Bandini, Maria Cristina Mundici, and Maria Teresa Roberto, Luciano Pistoi: Inseguo Un Mio Disegno (Turin: Hopefulmonster, 2008) and Carla Lonzi, Scacco ragionato. Poesie dal ’58 al ’63 (Milan: Rivolta Femminile, 1985), 17. The exhibition was co-curated by Lonzi, Renzo Guasco and Willem Sanberg. See La Gibigianna di Pinot Gallizio, exhib. cat. (Turin: Notizie Associazione Arti Figurative, 1960). Bandini, Mundici, Roberto, Luciano Pistoi, 111–19; For a careful reconstruction of Lonzi’s involvement with the gallery, see also Laura Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge: Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia 1955–1970 (Macerata: Edizioni Quodlibet, 2016), 86–9. For Lonzi’s relationship with Roberto Longhi, see Michela Baldini, ‘Le arti figurative all’ “Approdo”. Carla Lonzi Un’allieva dissidente di Roberto Longhi’, Italianistica

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38, no. 3 (2009): 115–30; Michele Dantini, Geopolitiche dell’arte (Milan: Christian Marinotti, 2012), 189–92; Marisa Volpi, La Casa di via Tolmino (Milan: Garzanti, 1993); and Marisa Volpi, Uomini (Milan: Mondadori, 2004). 7 Ibid., 28. 8 Iamurri, Un Margine che sfugge, 204. 9 Lonzi is referring to a passage in Autoritratto in which Accardi says: ‘when someone wants to create a book like this, they have to be able to put themselves in it entirely, as if it were a part of their life, you understand? You could never do it Carla, like you would want to, I am sorry to say.’ See Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla: diario di una femminista (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), 58. For the passage that Lonzi refers to, see Lonzi, Autoritratto, 16–17. 10 There is a distinction to be made here between the way in which the images relate to the text in the original publication of Autoritratto and its recent republication, where that relationship has been disrupted. 11 This is in contrast to the interviews that Lonzi personally recorded and subsequently transcribed. See Giovanna Zapperi, ‘Il tempo del femminismo: Soggettività e storia in Carla Lonzi’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1 (April 2015): 70. 12 See for example Giorgina Bertolino, ‘Carla Lonzi: Discorsi. Dai testi sull’art autre al lavoro della scrittura, 1960–1969’, 45–66; Laura Iamurri, ‘Intorno a Autoritratto: fonti, ipotesi, riflessioni’, 67–86; Stefano Chiodi, ‘Autoritratto in assenza’, 111–16, all in Lara Conte, Vinzia Fiorino, and Vanessa Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2011). See also Francesco Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1 (April 2015): 96. 13 See Bertolino, ‘Carla Lonzi: Discorsi’, 45–66; Iamurri, ‘Intorno a Autoritratto’, 67–86. 14 Lara Conte, ‘“La critica è potere”. Percorsi e momenti della critica italiana negli anni Sessanta’, in Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, 87–110. On this subject, see also Michele Dantini, ‘Ytalya Subjecta. Narrazioni Identitarie e Critica d’Arte 1963–2009’, in Gabriele Guercio and Anna Mattirolo, eds, Il confine evanescente. Arte italiana 1960–2000 (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2010), 263–309. 15 On this subject, see Deborah Chambers, ‘Family as Place: Family Photograph Albums and the Domestication of Public and Private Space’, in Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination, eds, Joan Schwartz and James Ryan (London: I.B Tauris, 2006), 96–114. 16 This paucity in the scholarship has begun to be addressed only most recently in the Italian-language scholarship. See Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge. 17 ‘Ma chi sono I critici? Della gente che viene e sta sulla porta…non è mai entrata dentro dunque ti dà quello che ti può dare’. Lonzi, Autoritratto, 199. See also Giulia Lamoni, ‘“Ti darei un bacio.” Notes on Utopia and Conviviality in Autoritratto by Carla Lonzi’, n.Paradoxa 35 (January 2015): 76–83. 18 ‘Oggi si può essere vicino agli artisti anche ascoltandoli e poi riascoltandoli, se non li hai capiti alla prima.’ See Lonzi, Autoritratto, 60. 19 Among the few exceptions to address the show in the critical literature are Robert Lumley, ‘Habitable Art: In and Around Piero Gilardi’ (paper presented at ‘Collaborative Effects’, Nottingham Contemporary, 23 March 2013); and Anna Minola, Gian Enzo Sperone Torino-Roma-New York: 35 Anni di mostre tra Europa e America (Turin: Hopefulmonster, 2000), 22–3; see also Alex Potts, ‘Disencumbered Objects’, October 124 (2008), 176.

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20 Ibid. Referring to the title of the exhibition – Arte Abitabile – Potts writes: ‘the name seems peculiarly apt for objects that so directly have to do with everyday habitation, furnishings for generically simplified and “disencumbered” patterns of living and social interchange. Such structures and the way of life they imply have been a recurring fantasy in later art, though Pistoletto clearly wanted to broaden the associations beyond ideas of everyday habitation and lifestyle.’ 21 Pistoletto explains: ‘La mostra di “Arte Abitabile” fatta nel 1966, era la prima mostra che aspirava ad una dimensione che, sebbene non chiara su quanto sarebbe successo, sottolineava il desiderio di fare un’arte non che fosse come le poltrone, ma spingesse ad abitare un momento insieme, a coagularsi.’ Minola, Gian Enzo Sperone, 102. 22 ‘Michelangelo Pistoletto in Conversation with Andrea Bellini’ in Andrea Bellini, ed., Facing Pistoletto (Zurich: J.P Ringier, 2009), 31. 23 I am referring to the series of exhibitions curated by Germano Celant starting in 1967 with Arte Povera-Im Spazio held at Galleria La Bertesca, Genoa in 1967; Collage 1, held at the University of Genoa, Istituto di Storia dell’Arte, in December 1967 and Arte Povera held at Galleria De Foscherari, Bologna in 1968. See Germano Celant, Arte Povera: History and Stories (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2011), 30–65. 24 Germano Celant, Precronistoria, 1966–69: Minimal Art, Pittura Sistemica, Arte Povera, Land Art, Conceptual Art, Body Art, Arte Ambientale e Nuovi Media (Florence: Centro Di, 1976), 52–3. 25 Tommaso Trini, ‘Livable Art, 1982’, Domus 625 (1982), 50. 26 Ibid., 50. 27 ‘[…] una specie di convivio, reale per me che l’ho visuto, anche se non si è svolto nell’unità di tempo e di luogo’ Lonzi, Autoritratto, 6. 28 On the constructed character of kinship relations, see for example Kath Weston, Families we choose: Lesbian, Gay, Kinship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 104. See also David Schneider, A Critique of the Study of Kinship (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984); Janet Carsten, ed., Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Sarah Franklin and Susan Mckinnon, eds, Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2001). 29 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 199. 30 See Lonzi, Taci, anzi Parla, 10. 31 For a definition of the term as it is used by Sigmund Freud in terms of a fantasy of the replacement of one’s parents or family with an idealized family, see ‘Family romances’, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9 (London: Vintage, 2001), 236–41. For a further discussion of the idea of the family romance as it applies to the politics of The Family of Man, see Victor Burgin, ‘Family romance’, in Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R., 1990–1994, ed., Lucien Castaing-Taylor (New York: Routledge, 1994), 452–3. Where Freud had focused on fiction writing, characterizing the family romance as the most widespread narrative structure within the genre, in which the family is made the privileged locus of dreams and desires, Allan Sekula has extended this concept of ‘family romance’ to that of visual representation and specifically to photography. In his biting critique of the exhibition The Family of Man (1955), Sekula examines its ambition to reproduce the bourgeois nuclear family on a global scale, ‘a family romance imposed on every corner of the earth’ and specifically in photography’s special capacity to achieve this aim. See Allan Sekula, ‘The Traffic in Photographs’, in Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973–1983 (Halifax: Press of Nova Scotia College of

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Art and Design, 1984), 89. The point for Sekula is that the image of the bourgeois nuclear family comes to stand as metaphor for a way of life that could best serve American multinational capital; the family romance is the ideal to be replicated and in this instance replicated through photography, which could transcend ‘linguistic barriers between peoples’ as he puts it through its supposed claims to universality. Furthermore, The Family of Man also worked to promote family photography and to domesticate the world through it, ‘to represent the whole world in familiar and intimate forms’. In this way, according to Sekula, The Family of Man functions as ‘a virtual guidebook to the collapse of the political into the familial.’ 32 For an account of the transformation of art criticism in Italy in the postwar period in response to developments in abstract art, see Flavio Fergonzi, ‘La critica militante’, in La pittura in Italia: Il Novecento, vol. 2, 1945–1990 (Milan: Electa, 1993), 569–90. 33 For an important recent contribution on this subject, see Maud Ann Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political: Feminism in Italy, 1968–1983 (New York: Routledge, 2014). 34 Chiara Saraceno, ‘La famiglia: I paradossi della costruzione del privato’, in La Vita Privata: Il Novecento, eds, Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (Bari: Laterza, 1988), 41–3. See also Enrica Asquer, Maria Casalini, Anna Di Biagio, and Paul Ginsborg, Famiglie del Novecento (Rome: Carocci, 2008); Enrica Asquer, Storia intima dei ceti medi (Rome: Carocci, 2011); Daniela Calanca, ‘Famiglia e famiglie’ in Identikit del Novecento, ed., Paolo Sorcinelli (Rome: Donzelli, 2004), 97–176. 35 Laura Cusano, Manuela Pacella, and Gabriele D’Autilia, eds, Familia. Fotografie e filmini di famiglia nella Regione Lazio, exhib. cat. (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2016), 35. 36 Sofia Serenelli Messenger, ‘Il Sessantotto e la “morte della famiglia”. Storia di una comune nella provincial anconetana’ in Asquer et al., Famiglie del Novecento, 239. 37 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 168. 38 On this subject, see Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). For the way in which Fabro characterizes traditional art criticism as ‘oedipal’, see Lonzi, Autoritratto, 122. See also Ventrella in ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, 96. 39 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 5–6. 40 Lonzi met Accardi in Rome in the early 1960s and Consagra for the first time in Paris at the exhibition Les Sources du XXe siècle. See Carla Lonzi’s biography written by Marta Lonzi and Anna Jaquinta in Lonzi, Scacco ragionato, 9–73. 41 Stefano Chiodi, ‘Autoritratto in assenza’ in Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, 114 42 Email correspondence with Alessandra Pozzati at Archivio Mulas, April 2017. See also Laura Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge, 198. 43 ‘Mulas appare quasi come complice dell’intera operazione’. Ibid. 44 Such concerns with the organization and function of space understood as a site of social interaction were also taken up within radical architecture at this time. On this subject, see Paola Navone and Bruno Orlandoni, Architettura radicale (Segrate, Milan: Documenti di Casabella, 1974); Pietro Derossi, Per un’architettura narrativa: architetture e progetti 1959–2000 (Milan: Skira, 2000); Manfredo Tafuri, Storia dell’ architettura italiana 1944–1985 (Turin: Einaudi, 1982); Pietro Derossi, Derossi Associato, racconto di architettura (Milan: Skira, 2006). 45 See for example the chapter on mobility in Briony Fer, The Infinite Line Re-Making Art after Modernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 163–88.

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46 Carla Lonzi to Pinot Gallizio, letter from Milan, 9 March 1961. Turin, Archivio Gallizio. 47 See Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002). 48 Anon., L’Uomo Vogue, no. 3 (Autumn/Winter, 1968–69): 84–93. The other artists that featured included Agostino Bonalumi, Boetti, Paolo Scheggi, Tano Festa, Silvio Pasotti, Mario Ceroli, Giorgio Bonelli, Lucio Del Pezzo, Aldo Mondino, Valerio Adami and Alviani. 49 On this subject, see also Caroline Jones, Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); on the practice of Ugo Mulas, see for example Ugo Mulas, Ugo e gli scultori: Fotografie di Ugo Mulas dal 1960 al 1970 (Rome: Galleria L’isola, 1988). 50 Paolo Fossati, ‘Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto’, NAC 27 (1969): 28. 51 Ibid. Fossati writes: ‘it becomes clear that the desire to refute one sclerotic system in order to consent to a free circulation of the ideas and human responsibilities of art, leads to another and equally codified system.’ 52 The review is republished in M. Panzeri and G. Contessi, ‘Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto’, in Paolo Fossati. La passione del critico. Scritti scelti sulle arti e la cultura del Novecento (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2009), 52–3. 53 Fossati, ‘Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto’, 28. 54 See for example the way that Germano Celant evokes this sense of tribal politics at the time in Celant, Arte Povera (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2011), 21. With reference to the conference held at Verucchio in 1963, he explains: ‘I became aware of the relationship that existed between theory and power. I decided to work freelance, without adhering to any particular school or university clan.’ 55 See Jacopo Galimberti, ‘Collective Art: Politics and Authorship in 1960’s Western Continental Europe, PhD diss. (London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2012). 56 On this subject, see Chambers, ‘Family as place: family photograph albums and the domestication of public and private sphere’, in Picturing Place, eds, Schwartz and Ryan’, 96–114; Deborah Chambers, Representing the Family (London: Sage Publications, 2001); Jessica Evans, ‘in Feminist Visual Culture, eds, Fiona Carson and Claire Pajaczkowska, eds, Feminist Visual Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 105–21; Annette Kuhn, Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (London: Verso, 1995), 25; Jo Spence and Patricia Holland, Family Snaps: The Meaning of Domestic Photography (London: Virago, 1991), 1; see also Valerie Walkerdine, Schoolgirl Fictions (London: Verso, 1990). 57 Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambrige, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 8. 58 Kuhn, Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination, 27. 59 Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla, 58. 60 Iamurri, ‘Prefazione’ in Lonzi, Autoritratto, xiv. 61 On this subject, see for example Giovanni Zapperi, Carla Lonzi: Un’Arte della Vita (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2017); Iamuuri, Un margine che sfugge; Ventrella, ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte’; Conte, Fiorino, Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità. 62 Lonzi, Vai Pure: Dialogo con Pietro Consagra (2nd edition, Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010). 63 Maria Grazia Chinese, La strada più lunga (Milan: Rivolta Femminile, 1976).

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References Anon. (1968–69), ‘Sette piu sette artistic d’oggi le loro opera I loro abiti’, L’Uomo Vogue 3 (Autumn/Winter): 84–93. Asquer, E. (2011), Storia intima dei ceti medi, Rome: Carocci. Asquer, E., Casalini, M., Di Biagio, A., and Ginsborg, P. eds (2008), Famiglie del Novecento, Rome: Carocci. Baldini, M. (2009), ‘Le arti figurative all’ “Approdo”. Carla Lonzi: Un’allieva dissidente di Roberto Longhi’, Italianistica 38, no. 3: 115–30. Bandini, M, Mundici, M. C., and Roberto, M. T. (2008), Luciano Pistoi: Inseguo Un Mio Disegno, Turin: Hopefulmonster. Bellini, A. ed. (2009), Facing Pistoletto, Zurich: J.P Ringier, 2009. Bertolino, G. (2011), ‘Carla Lonzi: Discorsi. Dai testi sull’art autre al lavoro della scrittura, 1960–1969’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, and V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 45–66. Bourriaud, N. (2002), Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Les presses du réel. Bracke, M. A. (2014), Women and the Reinvention of the Political: Feminism in Italy, 1968–1983, New York: Routledge. Burgin, V. (1994), ‘Family Romance’, in L. Castaing-Taylor, ed., Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R., 1990–1994, New York: Routledge, 452–3. Calanca, D. (2004), ‘Famiglia e famiglie’ in P. Sorcinelli, ed., Identikit del Novecento, Rome: Donzelli, 97–176. Carsten, J. ed. (2000), Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Celant, G. (2011), Arte Povera: History and Stories, Milan: Mondadori Electa. Celant, G. (1976), Precronistoria, 1966–69: Minimal Art, Pittura Sistemica, Arte Povera, Land Art, Conceptual Art, Body Art, Arte Ambientale e Nuovi Media, Florence: Centro Di. Chambers, D. (2006), ‘Family as Place: Family Photograph Albums and the Domestication of Public and Private Space’, in J. Schwartz and J. Ryan, eds, Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination, London: I.B Tauris, 96–114. Chambers, D. (2001), Representing the Family, London: Sage Publications. Chinese, M. G. (1976), La strada più lunga, Milan: Rivolta Femminile. Chiodi, S. (2011), ‘Autoritratto in assenza’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, and V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 111–16. Conte, L. (2011), ‘“La critica è potere”. Percorsi e momenti della critica italiana’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, and V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità. Dalla critica militante al femminismo di Rivolta, Pisa: ETS, 87–109. Conte, L., Fiorino, V., and Martini, V. eds (2011), Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Cusano, L., Pacella, M., and D’Autilia, G. eds (2016), Familia. Fotografie e filmini di famiglia nella Regione Lazio, exhib. cat, Rome: Gangemi Editore. Dantini, M. (2012), Geopolitiche dell’arte: arte e critica d’arte italiana nel contesto internazionale, dalle neoavanguardie a oggi, Milan: Marinotti. Dantini, M. (2010), ‘Ytalia Subjecta. Narrazioni identitarie e critica d’arte, 1963-2009’, in G. Guercio and A. Mattiroli, eds, Il confine evanescente. Arte italiana 1960-2010, Milan: Mondadori Electa, 262–307. Derossi, P. (2006), Derossi Associato, Racconto Di Architettura, Milan: Skira.

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Derossi, P. (2000), Per Un’Architettura Narrativa: Architetture e Progetti 1959–2000, Milan: Skira. Di Bari, L. (2012), I meridiani: La casa editrice De Donato fra storia e memoria, Bari: Dedalo. Evans, J. (2000), ‘Feminism and Photography’, in F. Carson and C. Pajaczkowska, eds, Feminist Visual Culture, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 105–21. Fer, B. (2004), The Infinite Line Re-Making Art after Modernism, New Haven: Yale University Press. Fergonzi, F. (1993), ‘La critica militante’, in La pittura in Italia: Il Novecento, vol. 2, 1945–1990, Milan: Mondadori Electa, 569–90. Ferretti, G. C. (2004), Storia dell’editoria in Italia 1945–2005, Turin: Einaudi. Fossati, P. (1969), ‘Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto’, NAC 27: 28. Fossati, P. ([1969] 2009), ‘Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto,’ in Gianni Contessi and Miriam Panzeri, eds, Paolo Fossati. La passione del critico. Scritti scelti sulle arti e la cultura del Novecento (Milan: Bruno Mondadori), 52–3. Franklin, S. and Mckinnon, S. eds (2001), Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Freud, S. (2001), ‘Family Romances’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9, London: Vintage, 236–41. Galimberti, J. (2012), ‘Collective Art: Politics and Authorship in 1960’s Western Continental Europe’, PhD diss. (London: Courtauld Institute of Art). Guasco, R, Lonzi, C., and Sanberg, W. eds (1960) La Gibigianna di Pinot Gallizio, exhib. cat, Turin: Notizie Associazione Arti Figurative. Hirsch, M. (1997), Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory, Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press. Iamurri, L. (2016), Un margine che sfugge: Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia 1955–1970, Macerata: Edizioni Quodlibet. Iamurri, L. (2011), ‘Intorno a Autoritratto: fonti, ipotesi, riflessioni’, in L. Conte, V. Fiorino, and V. Martini, eds, Carla Lonzi: la duplice radicalità, Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 67–86. Jones, C. (1996), Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kristeva, J. (1989), Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, New York: Columbia University Press. Kuhn, A. (1995), Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination, London: Verso. Lamoni, G. (2015), ‘“Ti darei un bacio.” Notes on Utopia and Conviviality in Autoritratto by Carla Lonzi,’ n.Paradoxa 35 (January): 76–83. Lonzi, C. (2012), Scritti sull’arte, eds. L. Conte, L. Iamurri, and V. Martini, Milan: et al./ Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1978] 2010) Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminsita, 2 voll. Milan: et al./ Edizioni. Lonzi, C. ([1969] 2010), Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010. Lonzi, C. (1985), Scacco ragionato. Poesie Dal ’58 al ’63, Milan: Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi, C. (1981), ‘Untitled text [Identité italienne]’, in G. Celant, ed., Identité Italienne. L’ art en Italie depuis 1959, exhib. cat. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 31. Lonzi, C. (1970), ‘La critica è potere’, NAC 3 (December): 5–6. Minola, A. (2000), Gian Enzo Sperone Torino-Roma-New York: 35 Anni Di Mostre Tra Europa E America, Turin: Hopefulmonster.

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Mulas, U. (1988), Ugo e gli scultori: Fotografie di Ugo Mulas dal 1960 al 1970, Rome: Galleria L’Isola. Navone, P. and Orlandoni, B. (1974), Architettura Radicale, Segrate, Milan: Documenti di Casabella. Potts, A. (2008), ‘Disencumbered Objects’, October 124: 169–89. Saraceno, C. (1988), ‘La famiglia: I paradossi della costruzione del privato’, in P. Ariès and G. Duby, eds, La Vita Privata: Il Novecento, Bari: Laterza, 34–78. Schneider, D. (1984), A Critique of the Study of Kinship, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sekula, A. (1984), ‘The Traffic in Photographs’, in Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973–1983, Halifax: Press of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 77–101. Serenelli Messenger, S. (2008), ‘Il Sessantotto e la “morte della famiglia”. Storia di una comune nella provincial anconetana’, in E. Asquer, M. Casalini, A. Di Biagio, and P. Ginsborg, eds, Famiglie del Novecento, Rome: Carocci, 239–62. Spence, J. and Holland, P. (1991), Family Snaps: The Meaning of Domestic Photography, London: Virago. Tafuri, M. (1982), Storia Dell’Architettura Italiana 1944–1985, Turin: Einaudi. Trini, T. (1982), ‘Livable Art, 1982’, Domus 625: 50. Ventrella, F. (2015), ‘Carla Lonzi e la disfatta della critica d’arte: registrazione, scrittura e risonanza’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1: 83–100. Volpi, M. (2004), Uomini, Milan: Mondadori. Volpi, M. (1993), La casa di via Tolmino, Milan: Garzanti. Walkerdine, V. (1990), Schoolgirl Fictions, London: Verso. Weston, K. (1991), Families We Choose: Lesbian, Gay, Kinship, New York: Columbia University Press. Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi: Un’ arte della Vita, Rome: DeriveApprodi. Zapperi, G. (2015), ‘Il tempo del femminismo: Soggettività e storia in Carla Lonzi’, Studi Culturali 12, no. 1: 63–81.

9

The Cooperativa Beato Angelico: A feminist art space in Rome Katia Almerini

Autocoscienza’s creative potential When I first started the research for my degree, I had very limited knowledge of feminist art practices in Italy; I was more familiar with the North American context, which had already been thoroughly researched and discussed.1 The generation that followed the second-wave feminism developed the idea that there had been no feminist art movement in Italy, despite the strong contribution of women artists to the postwar art scene. From the outset, I encountered some difficulties that came from the specificity of my object of study: how can we reconcile the contradictory relationship between sexual difference, feminism and the art world? The inability of many art critics to read the diverse artistic expressions of feminism in Italy was not helped by feminism’s refusal to employ labels that might oversimplify their conception of creativity. Women artists in Italy rarely considered themselves as ‘feminist artists’ and refused to promote their work as feminist because they wanted to challenge traditional notions of art and artist through a critique of the patriarchal dynamics already inherent to the art system. Moreover, the predominantly oral character of Italian feminism, centred on the practice of autocoscienza, produced a series of specific philosophical and linguistic choices, and the marginality of writing represented a refusal of the linguistic order imposed for centuries by patriarchal society. According to Anna Rossi-Doria ‘the hiatus between the centrality of autocoscienza practices and its untranslatability perhaps represented feminism’s most serious problem back then.’2 As I set myself to work on the Cooperativa Beato Angelico (Figure 9.1), I was faced with a lack of documents and artworks, which, as often occurs in the case of women artists, is a historiographical problem that should, in itself, be treated as the object of theoretical and political debate. The absence of substantial legible traces is also a consequence of the devaluation of feminist artworks by the art world, a world that is responsible for the economic and psychological difficulties encountered by the artists themselves, and for the consequent dispersal, poor conservation or, in many cases, destruction of the artworks.

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Figure 9.1  The members of the Cooperativa Beato Angelico. From the left: Teresa Montemaggiori, Stephanie Oursler, Carla Accardi, Eva Menzio, Nedda Guidi, Suzanne Santoro. On the front: Leonilde Carabba, Anna Maria Colucci. Rome, 1976. Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia, Casa Internazionale delle Donne.

Although these circumstances could have turned my research into an almost impossible task, I believe these difficulties needed to become part of the research methodology. However, if included and analysed as part of the story, these archival problems may become useful tools for reflection. For this reason, my research required a methodology that is both historical and theoretical. Many feminist historians have articulated the problem that women’s history may appear feeble because its foundations have rarely been written about. If we rely only on written and archival sources, we will continue to believe that women achieved very little in the past. However, this is simply because their work has been difficult to record or classify according to the existing categories produced by the hegemonic male discourse of history. If, according to those standards, women’s work has been made culturally insignificant, how do we then write about women’s work when only scarce and inchoate traces remain? In 1955, Karen Blixen stressed the importance of oral tradition and storytelling for women’s history. She claimed that, in order to start writing a story, we always need to choose the best way of showing that whenever we tell one story we must reject another.3 An important element of my methodology has been to reconnect artists who, when I first contacted them, had become isolated from each other. It was thanks to their recollections that I have been able to reconstruct a history that would otherwise have been difficult to comprehend. After decades, these artists were back in touch.4 Suzanne Santoro (b. 1946), LeoNilde Carabba (b.1938) and Anna Maria Colucci (1938–2015) have been essential to my research. I interviewed them, but there are not many transcriptions of these interviews; some of the artists refused to let me record

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our conversations, in keeping with their rejection of organized logos. The absence of transcriptions is also the result of a crossing of the interview format, because the encounters and the conversations became numerous and increasingly carried out in the style of informal meetings, phone calls, and went beyond the deadline for the submission of my thesis. Alongside the interviews, I relied on a thorough consultation of the CBA archive, created and preserved by Suzanne Santoro.5 In spite of its partial character, the archive has been indispensable. It includes a record of exhibitions and photographic documentation depicting the protagonists and the artworks. Together these convey the creative and relational dimension of the cooperativa and, at the same time, testify to the concrete reality of the event.6 The members of the CBA did not share a commonality of intents in terms of artistic mission, nor did they work in the same media or style. Instead, they worked towards the creation of something ‘unexpected’, which cannot be categorized under the label of ‘feminist art’.7 Indeed, the artists objected to the assumption that feminist art should be illustrative of women’s condition and, at the same time, rejected the idea that feminist art should be identifiable as a style. However, all these artists had an awareness of women’s position in history and reflected on it through mechanisms of analysis that derived from autocoscienza (self-consciousness raising). The artworks exhibited at the CBA express a process of artistic self-consciousness, generated by the themes of memory, absence, genealogy and identity. Both Oursler and Santoro used ancient artefacts to examine the sublimation of forms under the gaze of the patriarchy. Others were interested in exploring the past from an anthropological slant that, at the time, also influenced Arte Povera artists. The trope of the tent/cave, which can be found in Oursler’s installation, in Colucci’s performance and in Carla Accardi’s earlier works, suggests the desire to come back to an original place, before settled communities, that is before patriarchal subjugation. While autocoscienza cannot be considered as the background explanation to reach an understanding of such works, it was nevertheless an important part – conscious and unconscious – of the creative process itself. As Silvia Truppi has suggested with regard to her experience as a member of feminist collaborative projects, the practice of self-liberation is also useful to creative liberation, if women are looking for new expression.8 It is therefore impossible to understand the projects realized by the CBA without a deeper understanding of the transformative processes of the autocoscienza groups in which they were all involved. While Carla Lonzi repudiated the idea that women could be both feminists and artists, the experience of the CBA pointed to a possible path with which to bridge what she perceived as a gap. Lonzi rejected the concept of art; however, from her the CBA inherited the idea that creativity is a transformative process, rather than a means for artistic production. Lonzi, indeed, dismissed the concept of the artwork as the final object/merchandize that ended up in a capitalist and patriarchal structure of circulation. At the same time, she supported the need to develop a personal creativity as the only way to women’s liberation. Thus, many women artists carried out such projects of feminist transformation through the creative methods they knew as visual artists. They used their own tools to address new creativity, new emotional discoveries and the search for new themes. Rather than orienting their practice towards the end result, these artists followed Lonzi’s inspiration to conceive and to visualize an interior

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path towards a profoundly new identity, which was perhaps less recognizable than other artistic solutions of the time. It is the result of such transformative processes – based on an aesthetic of relationships and not on feminism as the means to an end – that still needs to be recognized internationally today. Anne Marie Sauzeau has written that feminism is the intimate search of one’s own exiled identity before being a vindication of civil rights.9 Sauzeau pushes us to acknowledge the domination of the apparatus of our visual culture, which has exiled women. In this framework, the project of women’s empowerment in art history can never be complete without an awareness of their standpoint. By critiquing the version of feminist art as imagery or iconography, Sauzeau argued that female expression will be something outside the linguistic system that has so far organized reality according to male experience.10 Thus, neither Sauzeau nor the women of CBA believed in one single feminine art, or in the creation of a possible new feminist iconography; rather, they concentrated on the search into one’s own imagery.11 This difference is perhaps one of the reasons why I felt the need to detach myself from recent attempts to recodify the transnational feminist art movement along a series of categories that do not fit my case studies. The history of art has been historically constructed through the exclusion of women, based on the codes that best responded to patriarchal and aesthetic systems that only reinforced white male privilege. However, a secondary problem then emerges, as Catherine de Zegher explained, from the recent inclusion of feminism within the history of art.12 In fact, during the past twenty years, some women artists have also been excluded because only one side of feminist art history has been represented, that which responds better to a new ‘feminist canon’. It therefore traces a new evolutionary history that is geographically partial and makes art more easily collectable for museums and galleries. De Zegher suggests that the solution may be found in a new curatorial approach, in which ‘material traces and fragmentary histories are excavated and combined to produce new meanings, insights and connections, in an elliptical rather than linear way’.13 Hence, in my research I have allowed unexpected aesthetic content to emerge, by developing an original critical literature. This literature both includes the specificities of the Italian feminist context and rejects the forced adherence to models or labels that would retroactively reinscribe the artists into established classifications that are more easily understandable but remain less authentic.

Feminism and art in Rome and Milan during the 1970s Second-wave feminism in Italy was a vast movement that took the shape of a network. In the early 1970s, from Rome to Milan, some groups were to become central to the theoretical and political evolution of Italian feminism: the Collettivo Pompeo Magno and Rivolta Femminile in Rome; Demau, Anabasi, Collettivo Cherubini and Collettivo Pratica Inconscio in Milan.14 Many other small groups were born inside trades unions and workplaces elsewhere. In most of these collectives, women participated in autocoscienza. A central practice for Italian feminism, it was widespread and intentionally in small groups that were independent from larger institutions.

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Considering the significant number of artists that were involved in these groups, we should take the importance of autocoscienza into account because, when this was practiced by artists, there was a dual reflection: being a woman in a patriarchal society, and being a woman artist in a patriarchal artistic tradition. In this passionate atmosphere, women-only exhibitions became one of the preferred strategies for empowerment in art, alongside artistic initiatives inspired by feminism. In this context, Romana Loda, critic, curator and the owner of the Multimedia Gallery in Brescia, played an important role in promoting women artists and in giving space to feminist poets. Loda put together national and international artists from different generations in a number of shows such as Coazione a mostrare (1974),15 Magma. Rassegna internazionale di donne artiste (1975)16 and Il mistero svelato/L.H.O.O.Q (1976).17 She also organized solo shows of young artists committed to feminism, including Stephanie Oursler’s Il Segreto del Padiglione D’oro (1979).18 Lea Vergine, an art historian and curator, also organized several women-only exhibitions in the 1970s, such as Le finestre senza la casa, presented in Expòarte: Ipotesi ’80 in 1977 in Bari, where she wanted to affirm the increasing female contribution to art.19 Many art initiatives in Milan attempted to articulate the relationship between art and feminism within autocoscienza groups. The argument posed by the groups was that it was essential to take a step back from the existing context and to opt instead for a separation that had to be seen as a withdrawal from patriarchal spaces, a necessary step in order to create art free from prejudice or censorship. Among these groups, Equilibrismi and Ci vediamo il mercoledì gli altri giorni ci immaginiamo (See you on Wednesdays. On the other days, we will imagine each other) both experimented with artistic projects that were intertwined with autocoscienza practices. Silvia Truppi, cofounder of the Cooperativa Beato Angelico, was also a member of these two groups. The Milan Women’s bookstore also represented a productive space for women-only exhibitions; these included CBA co-founders LeoNilde Carabba and Carla Accardi. In 1978, Mezzo Cielo, another interesting collective show organized in the Galleria di Porta Ticinese in Milan, was born out of the discussions on art and ideology between the Collettivo Autonomo Porta Ticinese and the Convention Donna/Arte/Società.20 In this show, hundreds of women participated individually and in small groups, working together on subjects such as the body, masquerade, transparency, memory, violence and gender cultural stereotypes. At the same time, some artists and art critics felt it was essential to make up for the scarceness of material on women artists, to study the past and to promote shows on earlier women artists. This intent inspired the exhibition Il complesso di Michelangelo (1976), curated in Rome by the artist Simona Weller to question the myth of the male genius by analysing women’s access to the history of art. The following year, many Italian women artists, including some co-founders of the CBA, participated in the ground-breaking show Künstlerinnen International 1877–1977 at Berlin’s Schloss Charlottenbourg, organized by a women’s collective. The exhibition represented the first international view on women’s contribution to contemporary art in the twentieth century. Several feminist organizations, bookshops, magazines and collectives existed only in the capital.21 Although many women artists worked in Rome after the war, especially during the 1960s, this did not always coincide with a feminist position. In the early

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1970s just a few artists employed explicitly feminist content in their artworks. Cloti Ricciardi, the co-founder of the feminist collective Pompeo Magno, challenged the Roman art scene with a work entitled Expertise: Conferma di identità (1972), in which she exhibits her birth certificate attesting her female gender. Ricciardi also took part in the art festival Mappa’72, curated by Achille Bonito Olive, in which, rather than use the space to show her work, she opened the space to other feminist collectives and banned men from entering. This survey is not exhaustive of the feminist networks across Milan and Rome, and it does not aim to homogenize the two contexts in two consistent narratives. However, I intended to show the strong links between feminist groups and artistic practices.

Building the Cooperativa Beato Angelico In order to reconstruct the origins of the CBA, we should begin with the relationship between Carla Lonzi and Carla Accardi. When Rivolta Femminile was founded in Rome in 1970, it soon attracted many artists, Lonzi already being a renowned art historian and Accardi a successful artist. They had been close friends since the 1960s and together they started to think critically about creativity, art criticism and women’s role within the social and artistic contexts. Lonzi was already developing a personal response to the crisis of art criticism in Italy. Her texts from the time revealed a clear position in the rejection of art as commodity within a capitalist system. A supporter of the Situationist International, Lonzi was immediately interested in the creative experience of everyday life.22 According to Laura Iamurri, Lonzi’s book Autoritratto (1969) marked a personal revolt against the role of the art critic, considered a ‘mestiere fasullo’ (phoney profession).23 By reassembling a number of interviews that she had previously captured with a reel-to-reel recorder, Lonzi deconstructs her own role as a critic, thus dismantling the hierarchical structures that separate the critic and the artist. It is in the dialogue with Accardi that the idea of a tabula rasa of patriarchal culture first appears, an idea Lonzi would later formulate in her feminist writing. Accardi’s words explain the priority to restart from herself, from subjectivity, not in a solipsistic way but collectively from an inner strength that was thousands of years old.24 She alludes to the invisible female tradition she feels while working for emancipation and artistic affirmation. When Lonzi founded Rivolta Femminile, she had already decided to leave the art world as she no longer wanted to be complicit with a system organized around power relations between the artist and the viewer, which mirrors the active and passive positions within the binary of gender. After her withdrawal from the art world, Lonzi also refused to support women artists, no matter if they considered themselves feminists, and remained interested only in an idea of creativity conceived within feminist practice. It was because of this, around 1973 after years of intense friendship, and notwithstanding their shared ideas, Accardi and Lonzi interrupted their relationship because of their fundamentally different views of art and creativity within feminism.25 The friction between Accardi and Lonzi, and the reactions to Santoro’s work, which I discuss later, caused an estrangement that encouraged three artists from Rivolta Femminile – Accardi, Santoro and Colucci – to

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meet the challenge to assert themselves as women artists, without feeling complicit with the patriarchy. Following their separation from Rivolta Femminile in 1975, Accardi, Santoro and Colucci decided to create the CBA, together with LeoNilde Carabba, Franca Chiabra, Regina Della Noce, Nedda Guidi, Eva Menzio, Teresa Montemaggiori, Stephanie Oursler and Silvia Truppi. According to Carabba, the project arose spontaneously the year before, during informal meetings: ‘we met once a month for long weekends at Carla Accardi’s home in Rome, where I used to stayed as a guest. So the project was born with this aim, let’s say, to explore what it meant to be a woman in the art world.’26 Remembering the early days of the CBA, Colucci instead argued: ‘we wanted to actively remove ourselves from the years of autocoscienza, which was indispensable, but that was becoming a continual overthink.’27 Colucci’s statement highlights how the artists involved in autocoscienza groups, and especially in Rivolta Femminile, felt the need to produce, again, artistically. The women found a space near the Pantheon where, in ancient times, there had been a temple dedicated to Minerva. When the CBA formally opened on 8 April 1976, it attracted the interest of both the national and international press.28 The opening was also noticed by other feminist groups in North America and Germany, The Feminist Art Journal of New York, and the Librairie Jeunes in Paris. The three artists based in Rome – Santoro, Accardi and Colucci – were put in charge of the space’s management. The first opening of the CBA was dedicated to a recently rediscovered self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi, an artist who represented a strong identification for the women artists in the group (Figure 9.2). This exhibition was one of three that

Figure 9.2  Opening of the exhibition of L’Aurora by Artemisia Gentileschi. Cooperativa Beato Angelico, Rome, 8 April 1976. Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia, Casa Internazionale delle Donne.

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the CBA dedicated to historical women artists.29 For the opening, art historian Eva Menzio, who had influential links with the Italian art world, prepared a pamphlet with unpublished extracts from Artemisia Gentileschi’s rape trial. Menzio, therefore, provided documentation that art history had failed to take into consideration. Indeed, the figure of Artemisia Gentileschi had started to re-emerge in the twentieth century, but it was only in the 1970s that feminist art historians engaged with an enquiry of the drama experienced by the artist as a consequence of the rape trial. Although Menzio curated this exhibition, she never undertook the role of chief organizer of the CBA, which in fact retained a horizontal structure.

Searching for new expression Another event coming out of the separation from Rivolta Femminile, and therefore connected to the founding of the CBA, was the publication of Santoro’s Towards New Expression (1974). Lonzi did not approve of the book due to its graphic representation of the female sex, which she considered incompatible with feminism.30 During the years of Santoro’s membership in Rivolta Femminile (1971–5), Lonzi was involved with the group in consideration of the oppression of women’s sexuality. In her essay La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale (1971), Lonzi argued that the first act of the colonization of a woman and her successive submission comes together with the repression and idealization of her genitalia. She denounces female acceptance of the sexual control exerted by men, exalting women as transgressors, who bypass the norm and refuse to become a sexual compensation for men. In order to recover from this oppressive social norm, Lonzi had taken autocoscienza as the starting point for an authentic liberation from sexual and reproductive patriarchal subjugation.31 These ideas were very influential for Santoro’s development of her book Towards New Expression, printed by Rivolta Femminile in 1974. Within the book, images of flowers, ancient statuary and conch shells are juxtaposed with female morphologies in order to undo the idealizing processes associated with the myth of the vagina. Santoro had grown increasingly interested in ancient sculpture since her arrival in Rome from New York in 1969. She saw how female genitalia in sculpture were always absent or sublimated into other forms, like draperies or ornaments: ‘When I saw how this subject had been treated in the past, I realized that even in diverse historical representations it had been annulled, smoothed down and, in the end, idealized.’32 Thus, Santoro started to realize a new visualization of female sexuality by recreating artistically what had been effaced culturally. Although some feminist critics have associated these images with feminist essentialism, the accompanying text, instead, declares a very different aim for this project.33 The photographic montage, Santoro writes, ‘is also an invitation for the sexual self-expression that has been denied to women till now, and it does not intend to attribute specific qualities to one sex or the other’,34 Santoro translated artistically, with originality and audacity, the contemporaneous upheaval of the female subject that no longer wanted to be categorized as lacking, subaltern and sexually subjugated.

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In April 1976, Santoro was the first member of the CBA to exhibit in the space. Simply titled Opere, her show featured early works that belonged conceptually to Towards New Expression, and were produced during the period she was a member of Rivolta Femminile, together with new works from the series Black Mirrors; these comprised group portraits, images of ancient sculptures and one self-portrait. The Black Mirrors are made with an original technique conceived by the artist; she applied a highly polished layer of resin on a wood-panel support for photographs that looked as if they had emerged from the darkness. The show was widely reviewed and gave the CBA some international visibility.35 In fact Santoro, trained at the Institute of Visual Art, New York, during the 1960s, worked very hard to connect with other women’s spaces and initiatives in Germany, Great Britain and the United States. Her correspondence with Mary O’Shea (Artists Collective Women’s Liberation Workshop, London), Mary Stevens (Heresies) and Barbara Reise (Artsra) demonstrates her desire to create an international network to discuss and exchange information about art and feminism.36 Santoro’s last show at the CBA took place in 1978, when she exhibited alongside Marisa Busanel, thus inaugurating an interest in hosting contemporary artists external to the cooperative, a practice that would have continued if the CBA had not been dismantled the same year.37 The second show opening in June 1976 was Carla Accardi’s Origine (Figure 9.3), named after her site-specific installation. The show included a number of paintings on sicofoil, an industrial transparent sheet in ethyl acetate, which she had started to use in the early 1960s. Years later, she claimed that the use of sicofoil could have been associated with an annulment of expression, which she also explored within Rivolta Femminile, as an attempt to wipe the slate clean from representation.38 The installation comprised sicofoil strips hanging from the wall, interspersed with original blackand-white photos of her mother and grandmother taken from family albums. This tribute to matrilineage shows a female genealogy that is also a double reflection on motherhood, given that Accardi herself was mother to a daughter.39 Accardi created an affective space that allowed emotions to circulate freely. Speaking about matrilineage with Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti, Accardi stated: ‘My work is located in that sphere of poetry and play that indicates the necessary and alternative moment in which the relentless quest for a rational solution is suspended: like the pause you take in order to find a breath and a detachment.’40 For her, therefore, the CBA represented another space in which to explore a practice that was deeply different from her aesthetic. Sitting alongside her abstract paintings, the photographic installation becomes a device of recognition between women and mothers, acting as a process of female selfrepresentation and collective participation akin to autocoscienza practices.41 The use of family photographs is obviously in tune with Lonzi’s use of family and intimate photographs throughout the pages of Autoritratto.42 Indeed, the CBA gave Accardi a ‘pause’ from the art world’s anxiety towards intimacy and affection, which are usually devalued in modernist aesthetics. By detaching herself from that anxiety, Accardi was able to breathe. It is surely no coincidence that she produced this installation at the CBA, where she found it easier to distance herself from the psychological pressures of critics and curators. Here she must have felt free to share feminist concepts and values,

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Figure 9.3  Carla Accardi, Origine, 1976, exhibition view. Cooperativa Beato Angelico, Rome, 1976. Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia, Casa Internazionale delle Donne.

which did not commonly enter institutional art spaces. In a dialogue with Lonzi, published in Autoritratto a few years earlier, Accardi argued that the strength and the tenacity that helped her to emerge as an artist were not only the result of her privileged personal circumstances in terms of education or economic background. Instead, it was also thanks to her will to vindicate the women in her family whose tragic destiny had been caused by men. A suffering that she indirectly inherited: If my husband comes and tells me, you see, ‘that one there has the audacity to say that she has been subjected to the power of men.’ Sure, I have: as education, as the ordering of a society established by them, by force … it may be a force going back millennia, I don’t care … through domestication, that is. I am the daughter of my mother, who was a woman subservient to men in all her being, she was imbued with subservience, because she had been raised by her father, when she lost her mum … The mum, meanwhile, had died, killed, above all, by men.43

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Accardi’s words highlight the genealogy of this later work. Hence, for her, Origine (Figure 9.3) not only represented a woman’s homage to her mother and grandmother but was also an act of feminist redemption from the power of patriarchy. In this work, Accardi exposes continuity with and a difference from the women in her family by performing a sort of reparation, as well as by making a statement about her achievement as an artist. Silvia Truppi, Anna Maria Colucci and Stephanie Oursler all showed their work in 1977. Truppi’s show Frammenti consisted of a series of photographic projects that reflected on the feminist critique of the transformation of the gaze. The work Ballo e erba (Figure 9.4) documents the artist’s experience in another collective artistic project Ci vediamo mercoledì gli altri giorni ci immaginiamo.44 Truppi positions herself inside the situation, the photographic series being an attempt to document autocoscienza practices from within. While she looks at herself mirrored in the images of others, Truppi obviously uses photography as a metaphor for autocoscienza. This is both the registration of a moment of sisterhood and, at the same time, an image of the will to build a new subjectivity together with other women.

Figure 9.4  Silvia Truppi, Ballo e erba, 1976. Photograph, mixed technique, 30 x h 24 cm. Private Collection.

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Colucci’s exhibition Osservazioni sulla realtà opened in May 1977. For the exhibition, Colucci also produced her performance piece Caos Caso Cosa inspired by esotericism and Indian philosophies that were to greatly interest her for the rest of her life.45 However, the exhibition was also conceived as a retrospective that included works from the 1960s. Although Colucci was among the first Italian artists to embrace a visual critique of the social construction of gender, by this time she had already been forgotten. Her detachment from the art world was determined by the acknowledgement of the exclusion of the young women artists of her generation.46 The collage paintings La donna oggetto (1962) concentrate not only on the objectification of women’s bodies but also on the threatening shadow of the male seducer (Figure 9.5). Colucci destroys the idyllic atmosphere of a gendered consumer culture by applying heavy, grey brushstrokes. In line with the New Dada aesthetic of her time, Colucci investigated the move from a representation of social class to a critique of the system of social representation. However, she also intersected the social representation of gender by metaphorically isolating the social-symbolic world designed by men with painting. Colucci’s drawings in the same exhibition deploy word and image in a fashion that

Figure 9.5  Anna Maria Colucci, La Donna Oggetto, 1962. Photograph, mixed technique, 47 × 37 cm. Courtesy Gian Paolo Rispoli.

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approximates concrete poetry and anticipates postmodernist aesthetics. She probed the limits of the alphabet and language to subvert established meanings and predictable expectations. These drawings present the matter of language as alterity and gender, while they also indicate different possible solutions that present themselves once the tongue does not identify with the dominant language. As Barbara Godard argues, women cannot refuse language but they can transform it, that is to adapt language to one’s own needs, without either surrendering or alienating themselves. Colucci has not yet invented a new language, but she points to the need for its deconstruction.47 Stephanie Oursler, the other North American artist of the group, exhibited 232 fossils+wall scratchings, a multimedia installation, including a slide projection and a performance exploring violence against women.48 The artist had already explored this issue in the solo show Happy New Year in 1975, and in the photo-book Album of Violence published in 1976. For this new installation, she juxtaposed several private snapshots with photos of fossils, which she took in the Dordogne region in France. The rhythm of the slides was given by the artist’s movement in a performance entitled Times Rites (Figure 9.6). With her left arm, the artist would follow a one-minute-long

Figure 9.6  Stephanie Oursler, Times Rites, 1977. Performance at the Cooperativa Beato Angelico, Rome, 10 November 1977. Photo: Vana Caruso. Collection of Suzanne Santoro.

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Figure 9.7  Leonilde Carabba, Per mare e per cielo, 1976. Private display at the Cooperativa Beato Angelico, Rome. Private Archive.

cycle, while the right was fastened to an electric cable. Each gesture corresponded to the passing of 200 years of history, to cover 6,000 years in total. With this performance, the artist intended to ritualize the memory of being subjected to electroshock therapy in a psychiatric hospital when she was a teenager.49 Considering that during the 1960s and 1970s electroshock therapy was still common practice as a cure for depression or homosexuality, the performance denounces the violence perpetuated against dissident subjects that were considered dangerous. The use of the electric cable becomes a metaphor for the control exerted by the structure of power that isolates, stigmatizes and tortures those perceived as different. Neither Teresa Montemaggiori nor LeoNilde Carabba ever exhibited at the CBA, despite being among its founding members. In Milan, Carabba was also co-founder of the Women’s Bookstore and a member of the via Cherubini group. In 1976 she took a sample of her works to Rome to discuss with the other members of the cooperative. One photograph documents a meeting behind closed doors in which the artist has laid a series of refractive serigraphs entitled Per mare e per cielo (Through sea and sky) on the floor: these serigraphs explored the iconography of natural elements, especially water (Figure 9.7). During these years, Carabba moved away from rigid abstract forms to embrace the representation of liquid morphologies, experimenting with new artistic techniques using microspheres of glass and silicon carbide, organized according to a mathematical structure that allowed her to obtain 480 colour combinations starting from four colours. She thus created a series of works suggesting the waves of the sea, water and its natural and mutable movement. This can be seen in the serigraph series Mareonda, which reflects a feminist investigation of corporality, pleasure and sexual

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liberation.50 Interestingly, one of these serigraphs was used for the cover of the Italian translation of Luce Irigaray’s Speculum.51 For Carabba, being a feminist was primarily a collective experience and a personal process of empowerment; while artistically, feminism gave her the freedom to include more complexity in her work.52 In her view, the relationship between feminism and creativity cannot be exhausted in the creation of an aesthetic or poetics. The CBA closed permanently in 1978 because it proved difficult to run the space with only three of its members based in Rome. At this time, the question of women’s art exhibitions was widely debated in the feminist press, thus originating different opinions among those who considered separatism as a fundamental strategy, and others that wanted to compete in the art world with men. As they were not bound by any kind of manifesto, the artists in the CBA eventually took different directions. Carla Accardi parted ways with feminism, even if her work did not reflect that change. A few years later she stated that the insistence on arts and craft embodied by many feminist groups was a disappointment to her, and this frustration had become the source of her disaffection: Then I was left very disappointed. So much so, that in the end I left one group the first time and then another that had opened a gallery. I left them because they disappointed me, because creativity has to be fast. Today I make one painting and tomorrow another, or a book or anything else, the dynamic is very fast, while women have traditionally expressed a practice that is so slow, which goes through generations.53

For Carabba, distance from Rome represented an obstacle in the day-to-day running of the space; this resulted in the perception that some members were too dominant, and that the creative exchange was being diminished.54 Carabba embraced Zen as a spiritual journey, and Colucci developed a connection with Indian spiritual thought. Suzanne Santoro and Silvia Truppi remained involved with feminism, both artistically and through social practice. After the cooperative, Truppi got involved in Turin’s Galleria Delle Donne.55 Santoro, who also created the archive of the CBA, is involved in anti-violence groups. None of the artists from the CBA has abandoned art practice, but continued to explore and transform the relationship between art and feminism, each in their own individual way.

Feminism, postmodernism and art historiography The relationship between art and feminism in postwar Italy has allegedly remained illegible to contemporary art historiography. However, the reason for this missing link should not be located solely in Carla Lonzi’s distance from the art world, but also in the institutional politics of the art world of the time and its reception in art history. The wake of postmodernism in the Italian art scene at the end of the 1970s manifested itself through new labels and groups such as the Transavanguardia promoted by Achille Bonito Oliva, or the Nuovi Nuovi promoted by Renato Barilli. This normative

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reorganization of the art scene, which included only male artists, did not allow space for the complexity of feminist practices explored in this chapter. According to Hal Foster, there are two distinctive kinds of postmodernism: ‘A basic opposition exists between a postmodernism which seeks to deconstruct modernism and resist the status quo and a postmodernism which repudiates the former to celebrate the latter: a postmodernism of resistance and a postmodernism of reaction.’56 We could say that the missing link between art and feminism in Italian art history lies in the missed recognition of a postmodernism of resistance, one that was more political and subversive in its attempting to re-read the past in a critical way, one that had already been explored by the artists I have discussed in this chapter. Also, as Maria Antonietta Trasforini has noted, postmodern deconstruction strategies were instrumental to developing a feminist critique of art history: a textual strategy practiced by those who produce culture, and therefore art, and interrogate their own positionality within language and, in doing so, open up a critical distance between audience and text to scrutinize the position of the viewer.57 The history of the CBA was deeply connected to the experience of early autocoscienza practices; at the same time, it was an attempt to overcome it. The CBA marked a new beginning, after a period of self-reflection, like a pause from artistic production and the making of things, intended in a traditional way. The CBA also represented an act of liberation from patriarchal rules and domination, a space that, together with other spaces outside Italy in the 1970s, started to undermine male hegemony in the field of art. It was a relational experience that built its aesthetic on relations among women. As Helena Reckitt has shown, relationality is central to women’s practices, despite Nicolas Bourriaud having excluded feminism from his argument on relational aesthetics.58 Like other spaces of second-wave feminism, the CBA could be read as a heterotopia, in that it was connected with other artistic contexts, yet it remained autonomous, self-organized and unusual in terms of its modality and systems of participation.59 According to Donatella Franchi, the subversion of the fixed roles of curator, critic and artist, which is now common practice in contemporary art, must indeed be recognized as the significant legacy of Carla Lonzi.60 The CBA used a horizontal system, refusing the hierarchies and power dynamics that structured the art world. By combining art, exhibitions, female creativity, feminist politics and relations, the CBA represented a real upheaval in the art scene of postwar Italy.

Notes 1 2 3

*Unless otherwise stated, all translations are by the author. Katia Almerini, ‘Arte e femminismo in Italia negli anni Settanta. Il caso della Cooperativa Beato Angelico’, MA Diss (University of Roma Tre, 2008). Anna Rossi-Doria, ‘Ipotesi per una storia che verrà’, in Teresa Bartilotti and Anna Scattigno, eds, Il femminismo degli anni settanta (Rome: Viella, 2005), 11. Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), ‘The blank page’, in Last Tales (London: Putnam, 1957), 99–105.

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4 In 2013 Nilde Carabba organized Suzanne Santoro’s exhibition L’immagine imprevista at Alveare in Milan. 5 Successively Santoro has donated the archive of the CBA to Archivia, at the Casa Internazionale delle Donne of Rome. 6 The archive I consulted, which was still in Santoro’s house, comprised: a notebook with articles and copies of the press related with the CBA; a typewritten postcard with a list of the exhibitions realized in the CBA; the leaflet of the opening of the CBA with the exhibition of Artemisia Gentileschi; a series of photos in black and white representing the exhibitions of the cooperative, the founders, the artists and visitors; the postcard invitation for the exhibitions; the programme of events of Palazzo Taverna in 1977; the receipt of payment of hydraulic works made in the space; some documents giving the intents of the CBA, the exhibitions organized and the works exhibited there; the catalogue of Nedda Guidi’s exhibition; the copy of the poster of Stephanie Oursler’s exhibition; the catalogue of Marisa Busanel; the notebook ‘Protocol of correspondence’; the notebook/catalogue of Suzanne Santoro. 7 For an examination of Lonzi’s theorization of the ‘unexpected subject’, see Giovanna Zapperi’s contribution in this volume. 8 See Silvia Truppi, ‘Potere magico’, in Adriana Monti, Bundi Alberti, Diana Bond, Esperanza Núñez, Mercedes Cuman, Paola Matioli, and Silvia Truppi, eds, Ci vediamo mercoledì gli altri giorni ci immaginiamo (Milan: Mazzotta, 1978), 46–55. 9 ‘Il femminismo è ricerca intima della propria identità esiliata, prima ancora che rivendicazione di diritti civili’. Anne Marie Sauzeau, ‘L’altra creatività’, DATA 16–17 (1975), 55. 10 ‘L’espressione femminile sarà “altra cosa”, fuori dal sistema linguistico che ha riordinato la realtà secondo l’esperienza maschile’. Sauzeau, ‘L’ altra creatività’, 57. 11 This aesthetic argument was in tune with the principle of ‘partire da sé’ (starting from one’s self) explored by many feminist groups at the time. 12 Catherine de Zegher, ed., Inside the Visible. An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 3. 13 Ibid. 14 See Elda Guerra, ‘Una nuova soggettività: femminismo e femminismi nel passaggio degli anni settanta’, in Teresa Bertolotti and Anna Scattigno, eds, Il femminismo degli anni settanta (Rome: Viella, 2005), 25. On Italian Feminism, see also Maud Anne Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political. Feminism in Italy, 1968–1983 (New York and London: Routledge, 2014). 15 The exhibition included Carla Accardi, Diane Arbus, Valentina Berardinone, Tomaso Binga, Marta Boto, Nilde Carabba, Dadamaino, Hanne Darboven, Sonia Delaunay, Amalia Del Ponte, Giosetta Fioroni, Nicole Gravier, Laura Grisi, Ketty La Rocca, Verena Loewnsberg, Milva Maglione, Agnes Martin, Verita Monselles, Louise Nevelson, Yoko Ono, Gina Pane, Beverly Pepper, Edda Renouf, Bridget Riley, Andreina Robotti, Dorothea Rockburne, Niki de Saint Phalle, Grazia Varisco, Dorothea Von Windheim. See Loda Romana, Coazione a Mostrare, 21 September–12 October (Brescia: Comune di Erbusco, 1974). 16 The exhibition included Marina Abramovic, Marisa Busanel, Vana Caruso, Lygia Clark, Betty Danon, Hanne Darboven, Iole de Freitas, Valie EXPORT, Nicole Gravier, Rebecca Horn, Suzy Lake, Lialiana Landi, Ketty La Rocca, Lucia Marcucci, Libera Mazzoleni, Marisa Merz, Annette Messager, Verita Monselles, Natalia LL, Stephanie Oursler, Gina Pane, Lucia Pescador, Diana Rabito, Edda Renouf, Andreina Robotti, Dorothea Rockburne, Ulrike Rosenbach, Franca Sacchi, Sandra Sandri, Suzanne

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Santoro, Katharina Sieverding, Mariella Simoni, Berty Skuber, Nanda Vigo, Dorothea Von Windheim. See Romana Loda, Magma: Rassegna Internazionale di donne artiste (Rome: Editrice Magma, 1975). 17 The exhibition was organized by Nanda Vigo and presented by Romana Loda in 1976 at Galleria Punto in Calice Ligure and later in Milan. It included the artists Valentina Berardinone, Jole de Freitas, Ketty la Rocca, Verita Monselles, Stephanie Oursler, Lucia Pescador, Berti Scuber, Nanda Vigo, Simona Weller. See Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti, ‘Il Mistero Svelato/L.H.O.O.Q’, DATA 20 (1976), 21. 18 Romana Loda, Stephanie Oursler e il segreto del padiglione d’oro/Stephanie Oursler and the Secret of the Golden Pavilion (Brescia: Multimedia Edizioni, 1979). 19 Lea Vergine, ‘Chi sa leggere il futuro sulle finestre delle case di fronte’, in L’arte in gioco. La funzione del critico e il ruolo dell’artista (Milan: Garzanti, 1988), 142. 20 The discussion took place in the Centro Internazionale of Brera in January 1978. The Collettivo Autonomo Porta Ticinese was born in 1973 in the environment of the left politics and was often involved in the events of the Galleria di Porta Ticinese by invitation of Gigliola Rovasin. Fernanda Fedi, Collettivi e gruppi artistici a Milano. Ideologia e percorsi 1968/1985 (Milano: Endas, 1986), 71. 21 See the map created by Archivia for the Casa Internazionale delle Donne in Rome: http://www.herstory.it/mappa-gruppi-anni-70 (accessed 6 August 2018). 22 See Carla Lonzi, ‘Catalogo di una mostra a Torino’, in Mirella Bandini, ed., Pinot Gallizio. 1955–1964: Alba del Piemonte (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1984), n.p. 23 Laura Iamurri, ‘“Un mestiere fasullo”: note su Autoritratto di Carla Lonzi’, in Maria Antonietta Trasforini, ed., Donne d’arte. Storie e generazioni (Rome: Meltemi, 2006), 121. 24 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 255. 25 See Giovanna Zapperi, Carla Lonzi. Un’arte della vita (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2017), 157–88 and 195–207. 26 Personal interview with Leonilde Carabba in Milan, October 2008. 27 Personal interview with Colucci in Sant’Oreste, November 2008. 28 Editorial, ‘Co-Ops New & Forming: Roman Women’, Women Artists Newsletter 2, no. 4 (September–October 1976), 6. 29 The other two exhibitions were of the futurist artist Regina 1894–1974 (November 1976) and Il pennello lagrimato (March 1977) on seventeenth-century painter Elisabetta Sirani. 30 From the interviews with Suzanne Santoro realized in 2008, Rome. 31 Carla Lonzi, ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ [1971], in Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti (Milano: et al./Edizioni, 2013), 61–113. 32 Santoro Suzanne, Towards New Expression (Rome: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1974). 33 Mary Kelly, Imaging Desire (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 18. Initially Parker and Pollock too, even if recognizing the use of female body by feminist artists as a reaction against the dominance of the male point of view in art, regarded Santoro’s work as dangerously open to misunderstanding. Roszika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistress. Women, Art and Ideology (London: Pandora Press, 1982), 127. 34 Santoro, Towards New Expression, n.p. 35 Edith Schloss, ‘Around European Galleries’, The International Herald Tribune, 22 May (1976). 36 ‘Protocollo di corrispondenza’ in Fondo Suzanne Santoro. Rome, Archivia, Casa Internazionale delle Donne.

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37 Arndt Jennifer, ‘Suzanne Santoro in Rome’, Women Artist News (September–October 1978): 9. 38 Germano Celant, Carla Accardi (Milan: Charta, 2001), xxxiii. 39 Anne Marie Sauzeau, ‘Le finestre senza la casa’, DATA 27 (1977): 32. 40 Sauzeau, ‘Le finestre senza la casa’, 32. 41 Manuela Fraire, ‘Donne nuove: le ragazze degli anni settanta’ in Bertilotti and Scattigno, eds, Il femminismo degli anni settanta, 72–3. 42 See Teresa Kittler’s chapter in this volume. 43 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 254. 44 Monti, Alberti, Bond, Núñez, Cuman, Matioli, Truppi, eds, Ci vediamo mercoledì, 54–5. 45 Around this time, Colucci identified herself with a new artistic persona named Ma prem Samagra, who blurred performance art and Indian religious beliefs. See Ma Prem Samagra, Accade, Mostra ambienti anni ’60 e ’80 (Bari: Speciale, 1985). 46 Colucci also emphasized the struggle to reconcile maternity with work. She did not want me to record an interview but she preferred to chat with me. This information is gleaned from the notes I have taken from many conversations with the artist since November 2008. 47 Barbara Godard, ‘Theorizing Feminist Discourse/Translation’, Tessera 6 (1989): 42–53. 48 I have been able to reconstruct the installation from a description published in the review ‘232 fossili’, Paese Sera, 10 November (1977), 14. 49 Ousler describes her experience in the psychiatric hospital in the pages of her exhibition catalogue: Romana Loda, ed., Stephanie Oursler e il segreto del padiglione d’oro (Brescia: Ferroni, 1979). 50 Interestingly, the feminist association with the sea in women’s art is also acknowledged by Assumpta Bassas in some Spanish artists as Mari Chordà, Fina Miralles and Eugenia Balcells. Assumpta Bassas Vila, ‘Femminismo y arte en Cataluña en las décadas de los sesenta y setenta. Escenas abiertas y esferas de reflexión’ in Patricia Mayayo, Juan Vicente Aliaga, Genealogías Feministas en el arte español: 1960–2010 (Madrid: This Side Up, 2013), 224. 51 See Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). 52 Personal interview with Anna Maria Colucci in Sant’Oreste, November 2008. 53 Accardi quoted in: Ivana Mulatero and Lisa Parola, Rrragazze (Turin: Franco Masoero Edizioni d’Arte, 1996), 74. 54 Personal interview with Leonilde Carabba in Milan, 2008. 55 I would like to express my gratitude towards Milli Toja who helped with the reconstruction of Silvia Truppi’s biography. 56 Hal Foster, ‘Postmodernism: a preface’ in The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern culture (Washington: Bay Press, 1983), xi–xii. 57 Maria Antonietta Trasforini, ‘Decostruzioniste ante litteram’, in Sabrina Spinazzè and Laura Iamurri, eds, L’ arte delle donne nell’Italia del Novecento (Rome: Meltemi, 2001), 183. 58 Helena Reckitt, ‘Forgotten Relations: Feminist Artist and Relational Aesthetics’, in Angela Dimitrakaki and Lara Perry, eds, Politics in a Glass. Feminism, exhibition cultures and curatorial transgressions (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 131–56. 59 I have discussed this subject at the international panel ‘All Women Art Spaces as Heterotopia’, in the Fourth Biennial Conference of the European Network for Avant-

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Garde and Modernism Studies, University of Helsinki, 2014. See Agata Jakubowska and Katy Deepwell, All-Women Art Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017). 60 Donatella Franchi, Matrice. Pensiero delle donne e pratiche artistiche (Milan: Libreria delle donne, 2004), 20.

References Almerini, K. (2018), ‘Women’s Art Spaces: Two Mediterranean Case Studies’, in K. Deepwell, ed., All-Women Art Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 189–228. Almerini, K. (2008), Arte e femminismo nell’Italia degli anni ’70. Il caso della Cooperativa Beato Angelico, MA diss (Università Roma Tre). Arndt, J. (1978), ‘Suzanne Santoro in Rome’, Women Artist News (September–October): 9. Bassas Vila, A. (2013), ‘Femminismo y arte en Cataluña en las décadas de los sesenta y setenta. Escenas abiertas y esferas de reflexión’ in P. Mayayo and J. V. Aliaga, eds, Genealogías Feministas en el arte español: 1960–2010, Madrid: This Side Up, 211–36. Blixen, K. (1957), ‘The Blank Page’, in Last Tales, London: Putnam, 99–105. Bracke, M. A. (2014), Women and the Reinvention of the Political. Feminism in Italy, 1968–1983, New York and London: Routledge. Celant, G. (2001), Carla Accardi, Milan: Charta. de Zegher, C. ed. (1997), Inside the Visible. An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Editorial (1976), ‘Co-Ops New & Forming: Roman Women’, Women Artists, Newsletter 2: 4 (September–October): 6. Fedi, F. (1986) Collettivi e gruppi artistici a Milano. Ideologia e percorsi 1968/1985, Milano: Endas. Foster, H. (1983), The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern culture, Washington: Bay Press. Fraire, M. (2005), ‘Donne nuove: le ragazze degli anni settanta’ in T. Bertolotti and A. Scattigno, Il femminismo degli anni Settanta, Rome: Viella, 69–79. Franchi, D. (2004), Matrice. Pensiero delle donne e pratiche artistiche, Milan: Libreria delle donne. Godard, B. (1989), ‘Theorizing Feminist Discourse/Translation’, Tessera 6: 42–53. Guerra, E. (2005), ‘Una nuova soggettività: femminismo e femminismi nel passaggio degli anni settanta’, in T. Bertolotti and A. Scattigno, Il femminismo degli anni Settanta, Rome: Viella, 25–67. Iamurri, L. (2006), ‘“Un mesitere fasullo”: Note su Autoritratto di Carla Lonzi’, in M. A. Trasforini, ed., Donne d’arte. Storie e generazioni, Rome: Meltemi, 113–32. Irigaray, L. (1985), Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian Gill, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kelly, M. (1996) Imaging Desire, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Loda, R. (1979), Stephanie Oursler e il segreto del padiglione d’oro/Stephanie Oursler and the Secret of the Golden Pavilion, Brescia: Multimedia Edizioni. Loda, R. (1975), Magma: Rassegna Internazionale di donne artiste, Rome: Editrice Magma. Loda, R. (1974), Coazione a Mostrare, exhib. cat. Brescia, 21 September–12 October, Comune di Erbusco.

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Lonzi, C. (2013), ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ [1971], in Sputiamo su Hegel e altri scritti, Milano: et al./Edizioni, 61–113. Lonzi, C. ([1969] 2010), Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lonzi, C. (1984), ‘Catalogo di una mostra a Torino’, in M. Bandini, ed., Pinot Gallizio. 1955–1964: Alba del Piemonte, Turin: Umberto Allemandi, n.p. Ma Prem Samagra (1985), Accade, Mostra ambienti anni ’60 e ’80, Bari: Speciale. Mulatero, I. and Parola, L. (1996), Rrragazze, Turin: Franco Masoero Edizioni d’Arte. Parker, R. and Pollock, G. ([1981] 2013), Old Mistressses: Women, Art and Ideology, London: I.B. Tauris. Reckitt, H. (2013), ‘Forgotten Relations: Feminist Artist and Relational Aesthetics’ in Politics in a Glass. Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions, eds, A. Dimitrakaki and L. Perry, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 131–56. Rossi-Doria, A. (2005), ‘Ipotesi per una storia che verrà’ in T. Bartilotti and A. Scattigno, eds, Il femminismo degli anni Settanta, Rome: Viella, 1–23. Santoro, S. (1974), Towards New Expression, Rome: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile. Sauzeau, A. M. (1977), ‘Le finestre senza la casa’, DATA 27: 32–7. Sauzeau Boetti, A. M. (1976), ‘Il Mistero Svelato/L.H.O.O.Q’, DATA 20: 21. Sauzeau Boetti, A. M. (1975), ‘L’ altra creatività’, DATA 16-17: 54–9. Schloss, E. (1976), ‘Around European Galleries’, The International Herald Tribune, May 22. Trasforini, M. A. (2001), ‘Decostruzioniste ante litteram’, in S. Spinazzè and L. Iamurri, eds, L’ arte delle donne nell’Italia del Novecento, Rome: Meltemi, 181–99. Truppi, S. (1978), ‘Potere magico’, in A. Monti, B. Alberti, D. Bond, E. Núñez, M. Cuman, P. Matioli, and S. Truppi, eds, Ci vediamo mercoledì gli altri giorni ci immaginiamo, Milan: Mazzotta, 46–7. Vergine, L. (1988), ‘Chi sa leggere il futuro sulle finestre delle case di fronte’, in L’ arte in gioco. La funzione del critico e il ruolo dell’artsta, Milan: Garzanti, 142–5. Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi. Un’ arte della vita, Rome: DeriveApprodi.

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Part Four

Genealogies and resonances

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Free escape Elisabeth Lebovici

When the French translation of Autoritratto (Self-portrait) was published, the work of Carla Lonzi swiftly became a model for me.1 It became a model, first and foremost, owing to the series of utterly astounding shifts which it proposes throughout the course – the white, male course, naturally – of the long and undisturbed river that is art criticism. Among these shifts we may count that of the book’s production, which was undertaken somewhere outside of the Italian linguistic context. It was in the United States – specifically in Minneapolis – that the book was composed before its repatriation to Italy and to that Italian tradition of writing known as the ‘banquet’. Moreover, and more evidently, we may count the shift that is operated in the confrontation of the content – both text and iconography – with the title, linking this content to a representation of the self. The title implies a reflexive movement which is also a movement of exteriorization, constructing a fundamental unfamiliarity (should we not say, in fact, that in painting the technique of the self-portrait requires a mirror, an imaginary formation of an I which can only ever be known to us from its surface, its external skin?). Carla Lonzi’s recorded voices, which she fashions into a unique montage to construct her form of self-portraiture, declare a new hypothesis in which criticism and creation are not separate. This is not because, or not only because, the work has a critical function but also because it situates itself in a montage of plural voices, diffracting by this very procedure, the assigned place of subjectivity in writing. Furthermore, between the art of writing and the writings of what we traditionally call the visual arts, sharing is in operation. We have come to know this sharing retroactively as a result of contemporary shifts between reading and writing by the ‘artists of the book’ (such as Moyra Davey, Gregg Bordowitz, Julie Ault) or by those who ‘extrapolate literature’ (Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster), or even, from ‘duographies’ which replace the single voice (Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, for instance). And all of these practices have come to confirm, retrospectively, the contemporaneity of Autoritratto. The place of self-portraiture, and specifically of Autoritratto, within the chronology of Lonzi’s work is also surprising and of special significance. Far from being seen as an inaugural event, its publication marks the final chapter in the history of her writing activity – writing art criticism – from which she was to break away in order to enter fully ‘into feminism’. This moment of Autoritratto as a radical gesture of leaving art, and

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not only the art world, is of key importance. Such a fork – a ‘bifurcation’ as Giovanna Zapperi has described it – articulates a question which appears to be crucial, providing as it does a link between art and feminism.2 As it happens, in this case it is actually the opposite; a passage, a transition of a threshold to be crossed. But is it necessary to exit one in order to enter the other ? In other words, are these two terms incompatible? I am not a specialist in Carla Lonzi, nor do I claim specialist knowledge of Rivolta Femminile or the artistic history of Italian feminism. In what follows I would like therefore to try to explore in a rather free manner the polarity between these two focal points which are also held in mutual tension.

Inside In May 1968, Carla Lonzi wrote a text jointly with Luciano Fabro in response to the occupation of the Milan Triennale, at the very same time that Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero e Boetti, Mario Merz, Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, Gilberto Zorio and Fabro himself had been invited to exhibit at the Triennale, only for its occupation by students to result in their exhibitions being cancelled.3 In a passage of Autoritratto, Lonzi recalls that moment and claims: There is no criteria which allows for the definition of an artist in a systematic manner. This is because while a worker or a student can be defined by their belonging to a category of activity, the qualification (or quality?) of an artist does not necessarily embrace all of those who operate in painting or sculpture and does not correspond with membership to a union.4

In other words, art is not the profession of the ‘artist’ or the craft of the ‘critic’: there is something at work here, which will re-present itself at a later stage, perhaps in that sexual difference feminism, which Lonzi goes on to embody and to defend. For her, at the time of Autoritratto, to be an artist is to disavow culture. To be an artist is a ‘disposition’, perhaps even a ‘disposition to rupture’; it is experimentation, a series of ‘personal’ experiences, those of a ‘free person’; it is a creative disposition. The task of criticism is to share it, to give it to others.5 In this self-portrait, within which different voices interlace, issuing from different enunciators, a text is woven whose sole unifier is Carla Lonzi’s writing. The fabric that she weaves is a ‘rewriting’ of all these voices in conversation with each other within the text. A cannibalistic representation is articulated here, accommodating manifold voices and incorporating them into the flux of conversation. Lonzi specifies in Autoritratto that she had not intended the interviews for a book, but that this collection and the montage of interviews came to respond to her growing feeling of perplexity towards the role of the critic, being extraneous to the artistic fact while at the same time exercising a discriminating power over the artists. It is therefore from this position of exteriority and ignorance of a critic reduced to the ‘mirror stage’ in order to create an I that Lonzi is trying to break away. If, instead of being the emissary of society, the critic must become the emissary of the artist – as she proposes – then her place is articulated

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through working from the inside of the text. This is effected through the use of the activity of collage and re-assembling of the different speeches of artists, in order to produce what might be called interior voices. Lonzi organizes these conversations by composing, with them, a stream of consciousness. Further on in the book, Lonzi writes: It seems to me that there is something that springs from the specificity of art work, which is not the work of an ‘art professional’, and does not emerge from culture as the latter is ‘subjected’ to the system. You need to stand ‘inside’, not at the door.6

These artist interviews have nothing of the exteriority of a round table of the sort frequently seen in museums, on television or in magazines, and which so often convey a ‘professional’ tone and subject (such round tables on the subject of the market, on art and feminism; dossiers on the contemporary, as have recently featured in the publications Grey Room, Artforum, and October may serve as fitting examples).7 Here it is necessary, rather, to imagine a sort of ‘relational fabric’ which is translated through this montage of interviews interspersed with small album photos. Both the catalogue for the exhibition Wack! Art and Feminism and the French publication of Autoritratto point out that the front cover was supposed to feature a photograph of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux used by Giulio Paolini for a 1969 work, and that the Italian editors switched it with a reproduction of a work by Fontana – a more traditionally modernist and less relational iconography.8

Stream of consciousness What we find then is an attempt to erase the canonical notions of stylistic unity and authority which constitute the ‘I’ of an author – be they artist or critic – as a ‘subject supposed-to-know’.9 If this erasure operates in parallel to that which we call ‘Informal Art’, we can then perhaps say that Carla Lonzi in some way invents informal criticism, which, like a flux, is interior and can never be grasped and pinned down. In this collage-montage-textual collaboration to which we have since become accustomed thanks to so many artists inspired by feminism, a refusal of exteriority is effectively produced. Separating oneself from artistic work to write it and describe it from the outside also entails adopting the overhanging – ‘bird’s-eye’ – position of the critic, established from a position of power. Lonzi defies such a stereotypical role of patriarchal criticism. Marguerite Duras, in a 1974 interview, described it thus with the following words: What I would like you to break – you for example – is a certain habit of interrogation, which is somewhat pre-arranged - somewhat mechanical. ‘What was your intention in?’; ‘what do you understand by … ?’; ‘would you like to speak a little about?’ As though one could speak a little. One speaks or one doesn’t. Destruction, for me, is in the interior. Besides, you know this’.10

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The tape recorder The technique of recording constitutes a first step in such an undertaking. In explaining what attracts her to tape recording, Lonzi describes something quite fundamental; ‘passing from sounds to punctuation, as from a gaseous to a liquid state’.11 Such a description cannot fail to elicit the interest of any ‘critic with a tape recorder’, which all critics today are obliged to be in recording artists for the purpose of producing their texts. More importantly however, the 1960s are, by far, the years which truly use and think the potential of recording, specifically radio and television. This perspective – which I highlight not simply for questions of temporal concurrence but because it sheds light on the possibility of recording as a means of bypassing exteriority to the creative process – is informed by my research on the activities of the Service de la Recherche de la RTF (French Radio and Television Research Department) over this period.12 This multi- and trans-disciplinary research department, spanning both sound and visual creations at the time of the televisual medium and of the emerging discipline of media studies, was in fact miraculously initiated by the state apparatus and brought under the wing of French public television from 1960 to 1974. Its musician director Pierre Schaeffer repeatedly placed the stress on recorded material. Schaeffer, who, by 1963, believed that ‘radio and television have changed social relations’, was also responsible for taking recording techniques as the basis for a mode of production of a radiophonic model of television. At the Service de la Recherche, audiovisual production was established from the beginning as an archive, a corpus of recordings, as though it had immediately been understood that television thrived on citation, repetition and re-usage. The Service de la Recherche also immediately posed the question of the ‘collective’ author. During this period each act of production was discussed collectively, and the discussion itself was also recorded. Even if a producer was commissioned, for example, to film images in Egypt (as was the case for the filmmaker Jacques Brissot, in 1963), it was ‘the Service’, with the assistance of an Egyptologist, a writer and producers, who would together consider the most appropriate assembly, and these discussions would also be submitted to audiovisual record (À propos d’Egypte, produced by Paule Truffert, 1963). The act of criticism was in this way incorporated into the creation.

Les parleuses (or woman to woman) Carla Lonzi expressed her wish for a ‘divagating’ book, rebutting the constraints of critics’ time. This is a kind of time which Carla Accardi describes as subjected to speed: ‘the life of the critic depends absolutely on his understanding, and the faster this is, the greater his right to life.’13 However, it is not without significance that Italian female critics such as Lonzi, but also Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti or Lea Vergine, encouraged ‘direct transcription’ and discursive practice in artistic expression: speech will become the central element in the experience of feminism, whether it involves ‘speaking,’ or even the ‘feminine voice’ in its ‘simple seed,’ or consciousness-raising, also known also as self-awareness raising. In feminism there are ‘les parleuses,’ women speaking to each other ‘woman to woman’ as in the case of the eponymous title of the work by Xavière

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Gauthier and Marguerite Duras, which is a re-transcription of a long conversation published in 1974.14 In a house, behind a window, two women are speaking. We listen. They speak slowly, between long silences, search for their words, find them or don’t find them, fall silent again, try other words, contradict each other, cut each other off, forget the tape recorder, try to remember, try to speak, advance, get lost, find themselves, get lost again, but advance still, without a model, or a plan, or prudence, and, for the first time perhaps, without fear of the CENSOR. How is it possible that these words have come to be published in their raw state? That they should be submitted without any corrections? That someone would dare to offer readers this incoherence, this disorder, this confusion, this opacity, these repetitions, these stumbling words? How is it possible that words that have not been written down, rearranged, shaped, elucidated, can be this fascinating? That something which was not created for the reader can grip the reader? What is the mystery of this writing-down of speech? Is it because it is, at last, that of woman? The writing which is to come?15

Silence Returning once more to Autoritratto, it is apposite here to remark upon the deafening silence which also features in the work, and which Lonzi insisted upon integrating into the text: the silence of Cy Twombly. When, in 1962, she interviewed the Italy-based American artist, her highly sophisticated questions received no answer. Or rather, Twombly responded with his silence. I would also like to ‘overdetermine’ this silence, out of a desire to separate Twombly from the chorus of artists – for the most part male – included in Carla Lonzi’s book; as though Twombly’s silence expressed a rejection of an obligatory heterosexuality in this fabric of artists’ voices.

Making silence A silence of rupture, of the act of dropping out, constitutes the common horizon – as well as the source of anxiety – for those we call creators. This is as true for the literary as for the artistic field.16 Rossini, who ceased composition, and then, thirty-four years following his withdrawal, composed the Petite Messe Solennelle, offers an example. Many artists, critics and dealers have been known to quit the art world, to the extent that the art historian–turned–gallery owner Alexander Koch created a site called Kunst Verlassen gathering information on these departures from art.17 Charlotte Posenenske constitutes a case study. From the start she was interested in the reproductive possibilities of her work, in their industrial production, in the simplicity of forms.18 Using cardboard – a packaging material suggestive of both moving houses and the circulation of products – Posenenske entitled one of her exhibitions All these, little darling, will one day be yours (Paul Maenz Gallery, 1967). Visitors were invited to endlessly construct and reconstruct the pieces. In 1968 she

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declared: ‘Art is a commodity of transient contemporary significance, yet, the market is minute, and prestige and prices rise the less topical the supply is. It is difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that art can contribute nothing to solving urgent social problems.’19 She ceased to make art and turned to studying sociology, becoming a sociologist and then working in this field until 1985.

Strike Considered today more in the fluidity of its different aspects rather than through dissection into phases, periods and materials, the ‘Life-Art’ of Lee Lozano does not truly distinguish between what arises from the personal, the autobiographical and the ‘professional’, from painting and entitled textual pieces (Language Piece), or from notation and display.20 A number of writers have emphasized the impossibility of understanding what in Lee Lozano’s notebooks derived from intimate journals, from instructions to herself, from the compulsion to consign everything to writing or from the utterance of a conceptual piece. They have not truly been able to decide to whom this or that fragment of text in capital letters on graph paper was addressed, or not addressed.21 This remarkable endeavour, which confuses the ends, the beginnings and the processes, is reflected in her statement (intended for a publication commemorating a meeting of the Arts Workers Coalition) in 1969–70: for me there can be no art revolution that is separate from a science revolution, a political revolution, an education revolution, a drug revolution, a sex revolution or a personal revolution. I cannot consider a program of museum reforms without equal attention to gallery reforms and art magazine reforms which would aim to eliminate stables of artists and writers. I will not call myself an art worker but an art dreamer and I will participate only in a total revolution simultaneously personal and public.22

Such revolutionary simultaneity can be found in the permanent present of her pieces: Lee Lozano’s dream, whatever task she may be assigning herself, does not have a time period or frame. As with dream work, the work of Lee Lozano is always conjugating itself in the present; it is always now; it is always, as she says ‘ongoing’. Dialogue Piece, which was commenced on the 21st of April 1969, formalizes under the title of a piece a ‘social’ activity which seems nonetheless necessary for the life of artists.23 It consists of asking to telephone, to speak to and to write to interlocutors, inviting them to the studio, to discuss work in a shared conversation. The names of participants are meticulously noted down: James Lee Byars, Claire Copley, Agnes Denes, Dan Graham, Brice Marden, Robert Morris (nicknamed ‘Moose’), Alan Saret, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson (nicknamed ‘Smitty’), the curator Marcia Tucker and documented by Lee Lozano.24 These notes, however, are presented in a form as enigmatic and as difficult to ‘share’ as the following: ‘MAY 30, 1969: DAN GRAHAM AND I HAVE AN IMPORTANT CONVERSATION IN THAT DEFINITE CHANGES WERE IMMEDIATELY EFFECTED BECAUSE OF IT.’25 In other words, contrary to the

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Parleuses mentioned above, or to Carla Lonzi’s tape-recorded interviews, the content of the dialogue is never divulged. Lee Lozano keeps for herself, in her possession, the subject of the discussion. As the art historian Helen Molesworth writes: Dialogue Piece also typifies what I see as the primary thrust of Lozano’s work: the desire to use art to live a highly examined, and hence thoughtful life. If one of art’s traditional roles has been to consolidate and focus attention and perception on an object, then Lozano used art to train her attention on the public and private functions of herself as an artist.26

The place and time of the studio, where the permanent fluctuation between room of one’s own (open to dream and to thought) and space of exchange and commerce is negotiated, are therefore the framework for a dialogue which neither wishes nor needs to pronounce itself in its particularities in order to exist. Silence (or elision), here, is also a refusal to commodify this quality of being ‘under way’ of dialogue, this present which Lozano refuses to render past in her ‘simultaneous studio’ (atelier simultané), to borrow a 1920s term from Sonia Delaunay. Lee Lozano’s withdrawal began perhaps with this dream of a kind of telepathic art, stripped of any materialization (a utopia, to which all ‘masculine’ conceptual art issues a screaming refutation); a materialization which the artist would assimilate to commodification, to ‘delay’ in the permanent present of the intersubjective relation. It manifests nonetheless in a more explicit fashion through several textual pieces. General Strike Piece (8th of February 1969) begins with: ‘WITHDRAWAL FROM A 3-MAN SHOW COMPILED BY RICHARD BELLAMY, GOLDOWSKY GALLERY, 1078 MADISON AVE’ and the decision to: gradually but determinedly avoid being present at official or public ‘uptown’ functions or gatherings related to the ‘art world’ in order to pursue investigation of total personal & public revolution, exhibit in public only pieces which further sharing of ideas & information related to total personal & public revolution.27

With Dropout (Piece), whose notes begin around 1970, Lozano cut the tie which bound her to all public appearances; she abandoned all notion of a career, any vague inclination to exhibit, any self-performance, any search for identity. Her eviction from her studio, in December 1971, finalized this renunciation: ‘I WILL RENOUNCE THE ARTIST’S EGO (…) I WILL BE HUMAN FIRST, ARTIST SECOND. I WILL NOT SEEK FAME, PUBLICITY, OR SUCCESS.’28 It was accompanied by a withdrawal from writing and a renunciation of her own name, first transformed into ‘Lee Free’, then, progressively into ‘E’. ‘E’ would leave for Dallas in 1982, after a decade during which, of no fixed abode, she remained nonetheless in New York and joined the punk scene, which was much younger and more vibrant than that of her counterparts in the art world, remaining all the while up-to-date with the latter, visiting exhibitions, and frequenting the New York art bookshop Jaap Rietman. Lozano’s withdrawal from the art world, which she undertook between 1969 and 1972, also included her political activities with the Art Workers Coalition. She also

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retreated from the coalition’s subcommittee of women, which gathered in the loft of the art critic Lucy Lippard:29 1st week august, 71: decide to boycott women. throw lucy lippard’s 2nd letter on defunct pile, unanswered. do not greet rochelle bass in store. 2nd wk august, 71: paula ravins calls aug 11. tell her i am boycotting women as an experiment thru abt sept. & that after that ‘communication will be better than ever.’

According to Barry Rosen, from the Lee Lozano Estate, this boycott extended to restaurants or shops, where Lozano refused to allow women to serve her. A feminist reading associates the coexistence of Lozano’s withdrawal from the commercial world and her boycott of women: ‘two refusals, two very powerful parameters of her identity’, which run across her refusal to be viewed, and defined, by society.30 It is not insignificant that she grounds her activity in dialogue and then refuses to speak, with an intentionally implacable separation of gender as formulated by the patriarchy. Rejection of the patriarchy and rejection of the art world converge in Lozano in her refusal of the two canons, two systems which in reality are one.

Disavowals Twenty years after Lee Lozano, Cady Noland threw herself into ‘active denial’ and she left the art world. She also disavowed her works through her written declarations. For instance, the declaration in which, in 2011, she disclaimed Cowboys Milking (1990), just prior to its sale at auction. Invoking the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, she declared that minor damage completely invalidated the work. For the same reasons, in 2015 she disavowed her installation Log Cabin Blank With Screw Eyes and Cafe Door (1990), on the pretext that it had been restored without her permission. Further procedures ensued. Noland’s work, which developed over the 1980s, gained greatest attention at the very beginning of 1990, following its exhibition at the American Fine Arts Gallery (1989) in New York, her participation in the Whitney Biennial (1991), and in Documenta (1992), where her installation Towards a Metalanguage of Evil, presenting her colleagues, from Sherry Levine to Steven Parrino, expounded on the strategies of the psychopath, including the manipulation of information. But after her first solo exhibition at Paula Cooper in 1994, Noland exiled herself from the art world and cut all ties with the market. The 1999 exhibition MONO, which she shared with Olivier Mosset at Zurich’s Migros Museum for Contemporary Art, may be considered her last. From this point, her ghostly presence roamed, controlling her exhibitions and publications with an invisible hand, rarefying to the utmost the display of her sculptures as well as the reproductions of her work; for example, to this day no monograph has ever been published. For her many fans, Cady Noland’s artistic heroism is down to her disappearance even. In 2003, she agreed to respond to a questionnaire by Bruce Hainley and John Waters, Nine Sex Questions.31 She seized the opportunity to speak, violently sexualizing the artistic relationship (‘Artists get “screwed” by their dealers’;

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‘studio visits: “It’ll be a one-night stand” ’; ‘Art work and artist also begin with virginity but may have deflowerments by art world professionals’32 … ). And then she exclaims: ‘why are New York museums so ssssexxxxist?????’33 Forming a community does not only mean including; it also means, as Leo Bersani so rightly points out, excluding.34 A similar dynamic of exclusion would push artists such as Lee Lozano or Cady Noland, and perhaps also such as Carla Lonzi, to this limit, where one is forced to recognize the difficulty and undoubtedly the impossibility of a life beyond these social categorizations and the gendered projections that they provoke. Rejecting the space of culture, and rejecting it in a gendered manner, also serve to show how systems are embedded. In order to demonstrate this, Helen Molesworth cites Virginia Woolf ’s Three Guineas (1938) in which the writer wrestles with three letters: one a request for funds for an educational establishment for women, another in aid of a women’s professional society and one for aiding the preservation of culture and thereby the end of the war. Woolf, then, draws a connection between cultural philanthropy, ‘women’s causes’ and the strategies of opposition to the war; she identifies their interconnectedness.35 This is also what Carla Lonzi does by separating herself from the art critic, and then from art: she recognizes the interaction between masculine creativity and patriarchal sovereignty.

Separatism Somewhere in the middle of Autoritratto, Lonzi explains that when there are more female artists, they will not have the same relation to ‘sublimation’; this is to say the relation to renunciation of procreation, in which men engage their creativity. What is sketched out here is the logic of a sexual difference feminism in which Lonzi participates, which does away with the notion of equality as a ‘legal principle’ and poses difference as an ‘existential principle’ concerning modes of being human. These are the terms of the philosopher Teresa de Lauretis in her analysis of Italian feminism – and, more precisely, of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Group – setting out that ‘relations between women are the subject of our political thought’.36 These relations were judged necessary when, following May 1968 and the student revolts across the West, women saw the necessity of gathering into a movement separately from men, because men took up all of the space of speech. As Joan Wallach Scott has argued: The political notion of equality includes, indeed depends on, an acknowledgment of the existence of difference. Demands for equality have rested on implicit and usually unrecognized arguments from difference; if individuals or groups were identical or the same there would be no need to ask for equality. Equality might well be defined as deliberate indifference to specified differences.37

Sexual difference feminism, then, produces a break which emphasizes the relation of a woman to other women, by constituting an ‘entrustment’, a becoming-trust, an alliance, which recognizes social and personal disparities.

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The separation of Carla Lonzi the feminist from Carla Lonzi the art historian and art critic, and her dispute with feminist companion artists such as Carla Accardi, allow additionally, I believe, for a new interrogation of this historic separation – in France, Italy, as elsewhere – between ‘political feminism’, the activism of the women’s movement and the ‘cultural feminism’ of literary, artistic and other productions. It would seem, in France at least, that political feminism has ‘separated’ from cultural feminism – ‘French feminism’ as it came to be designated, which broke away from the very notion of feminism to consider a cultural femininity specific to women.

A French anecdote France has not produced, unlike the United States, a ‘feminist art programme’ such as at Cal Arts in California, or a feminist cooperative gallery such as A.I.R. in New York. The Centre d’études féminines (Centre of Women’s Studies), founded at the University of Vincennes in 1974 by Hélène Cixous, was contemporary to Women’s Studies programmes in the United States, and in France it remains one of the rare centres of academic research authorized to issue degrees in this field.38 It is from the perspective of literature and psychoanalysis that such a programme, later coined French Feminism, has arisen from several attributed starting points: the anthology La Venue à l’écriture by Annie Leclerc, Madeleine Gagnon and Hélène Cixous, along with The Laugh of the Medusa by Hélène Cixous, and the writings of Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva.39 The demand for a territory of the ‘feminine,’ along with the notion, more or less shared, of a feminine writing, was swiftly deployed to the brutal end of ‘rejecting feminism and all words ending in -ism’ as stated by the publishers des femmes (founded in 1974). This publishing house, financed by the philanthropist Silvina Boissonas, was connected to the Psych et Po (Psychoanalysis and Politics) current assembled around the psychoanalyst Antoinette Fouque. Fouque opposed Simone de Beauvoir’s egalitarian feminism which, in her view, denied the fundamental difference of the sexes. In a demonstration on 6 October 1979, Psych et Po militants hoisted an incredible banner proclaiming: ‘The factory belongs to the workers. The uterus belongs to women. The production of life belongs to us.’ These examples go some way to explaining the growing animosity displayed towards Psych et Po at the end of the 1970s by the political currents in the women’s movement and by women leading the anti-patriarchal struggle – a struggle as urgent (more so, even) than the anti-capitalist struggle.40 The outcome is well known:41 in 1979, Psych et Po seized the name ‘Mouvement de libération des femmes’ (women’s liberation movement) – an informal movement without permanent structures, which relied only on bi-monthly assemblies held at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris – filing the copyright for the acronym MLF as its exclusive and private property. Compared to the anonymity of political feminists, the (fictitious) identity of a ‘French Feminism’ had the effect of inscribing in the cultural debate the symbolic domination of a conflation of ‘women’ with ‘the feminine’ and conversely, of ‘men’ with the ‘masculine;’ (…) the positing of a ‘sexual difference’ between women and men,

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which includes morphological differences, functional differences in reproduction and psychological differences; (…) the belief that sexual attraction between people is the desire for ‘difference;’ the belief that the only significant difference between people is ‘sexual difference;’ the belief that sexual difference is and should be the basis of psychic, emotional, cultural and social organization, although the word ‘social’ only gets through the pens of French Feminists with some difficulty.42

This barring of feminism by the feminine seems to have re-emerged recently – more precisely during the Strauss-Kahn affair and with the controversy over ‘French-style feminism’ – engaging historians such as Mona Ozouf, who had already, in 1995, compared the ‘moderation of French Feminism’ against the ‘noisy’ radicalism from America; and the sociologist Irène Théry who, in an editorial, similarly boasted of a French-style feminism which represented ‘a certain way of living not only of thinking, which rejects the dead ends of political correctness, wants equal rights between the sexes, and the asymmetric pleasures of seduction, the absolute respect of consent, and the delicious surprise of stolen kisses’.43 Aside from ruthless heterosexism, could it not be said that this asymmetric feminine talent sworn to seduction (of men) was a means of eradicating women, as a group and as a class, from socio-economic power relations?

‘Literary construction site’ Thus it seems, and may be argued, that the growing interest in the writings of Carla Lonzi and in her life can be read rather less in concomitance with this kind of national identification, than with a radical separatism become, or once more, the object of a certain fascination.44 It seems to me, effectively, that the ‘Lonzi moment’ that we have been experiencing for a few years now constitutes itself in parallel with the resurgence of a ‘Wittig moment’. An early activist in the Mouvement de libération des femmes (one of those who, on the 26th of August 1970, placed flowers at the Arc de Triomphe for the wife of the unknown soldier, a founding event of feminism in France) Monique Wittig was obliged to separate from ‘Paris-la-politique’. Besieged by all the essentialisms, and after a long period of roaming, she settled in Tucson (Arizona). More than ten years after her death, in January 2003, she is the subject of endless studies, colloquia, public readings and tributes.45 ‘Re-reading Wittig’ is, effectively, taking a step towards the radicalism of an experience where the very words of man and, above all, of woman – the binary isolating women as a group and men as a group – become ideological productions. They are the naturalized fabrications of a heterocentrism which makes the categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’ (‘masculine’ and ‘feminine,’ ‘male’ and ‘female’ as well) appear because it establishes relations between them.46 In this way, the category of sex is a political category which establishes as natural the heterosexuality through which women are subjected to a heterosexual economy. What is woman? Panic, general alarm for an active defence. Frankly it is a problem that lesbians do not have because of a change of perspective, and it would be

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incorrect to say that lesbians associate, make love, live with women, for ‘woman’ has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual economic systems. Lesbians are not women.47

It is in her literary work, notably The Opoponax (1964), Les Guérillères (1969) and Lesbian Body (1973), as much as in her essays, that Monique Wittig opens up a hitherto unthought-of ‘virtual conceptual space’ as noted by Teresa de Lauretis.48 Wittig does not deconstruct the binary nature of gender categories; she proposes an aesthetic programme. The literary project is the site of reconstruction of a language, serving to create ‘peoples’ who will live outside of this separation. The ‘literary construction site’ is a ‘war factory’ against tired old forms, including defectors to our class. ‘For in literature, history, I believe, intervenes at the individual and subjective level and manifests itself in the particular point of view of the writer. It is then one of the most vital and strategic parts of the writer’s task to universalise this point of view.’49 This political construction site, which Wittig aims to carry out in literature, undergoes a revision of the structures of enunciation, and more specifically the marks of gender which are at work in the narrative voices. In French, these marks are everywhere in language – in the slightest agreement – and consequently, the strategy required here consists in opting for the choice of a personal pronoun which runs across the writing from beginning to the end of the narration and imposes its grammar. The ‘on’ (‘we,’ ‘you,’ and ‘one’ together) which is central to her novel L’Opoponax, the slashed ‘j/e’ (translated as ‘I’) of Le Corps Lesbien and the ‘elles’ (severely mistranslated as ‘the women’) of Les Guérillères.50 This is how Wittig ‘provides a revolutionary grammar that structures a poetic world with a political mind’.51 In this battle to liberate discourse from these categories, it is equally necessary to compose a new body of language. This is where, in my view, Carla Lonzi and Monique Wittig find their meeting point. Translated from French by Maya Sawmi

Notes Carla Lonzi, Autoportrait, ed. Giovanna Zapperi, trans. fr. Marie-Ange MaireVigueur (Paris: PRP Ringier, 2012). The following quotes are from Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto (Milan: et al./Edizioni), 2010. 2 Giovanna Zapperi, ‘Carla Lonzi, Art Critic and Feminist. Introductory Remarks’, unpublished paper given at the conference Carla Lonzi: Art Critic and Feminist, La Maison Rouge, Paris, 11 January 2013. 3 The text was later published in Autoritratto. See Lonzi, Autoritratto, 176. See also Giovanna Zapperi’s chapter in this book. 4 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 176. 5 Ibid., 177. 6 Ibid., 199. 7 See Rosalyn Deutsche et al, ‘Feminist Time: A Conversation’, Grey Room 31 (Spring, 2008): 32–67; Hal Foster, ed., ‘Questionnaire on the Contemporary’, October 130 (Fall, 2009): 3–124; Art and Money, a special issue of Artforum (April 2008). 1

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8 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 228 9 To paraphrase Lacan’s ‘sujet supposé savoir’ (subject supposed-to-know). See Jacques Lacan, The Seminar. Book XI. The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, Jacques Alain Miller, ed., trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 235. 10 Jean Louis Ezine, ‘Marguerite Duras: ce que parler ne veut pas dire’, Les Nouvelles littéraires (April, 1974); Reprinted in Sophie Bogaert, ed. Marguerite Duras. Le dernier des métiers. Entretiens 1962–1991 (Paris: Seuil, 2016), 189. 11 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 29. 12 RTF: Radio Télévision Française (French Radio and Television service), the national television broadcast agency created in 1949, which in 1964 became ORTF: Office de la Radio Télévision Française (French Radio and Television Office), until its dismantling in 1974. Both were under the strict control of the French government. 13 Lonzi, Autoritratto, 21. 14 Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier, Les Parleuses (Paris: Les éditions de Minuit, 1974), trans. Katharine A. Jensen, Woman to Woman (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). 15 M. D. ‘Summary’, in Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier, Les Parleuses. Available online: http://www.leseditionsdeminuit.fr/livre-Les_Parleuses-2884-1-1-0-1.html. (accessed 4 October 2019). 16 For instance, the writer Christine Angot, during a discussion with Professor Elisabeth Ladenson at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, on 26 September 2015, explained: ‘The question of my next book is always a source of worry for me: there won’t be a next book, I’m not going to manage it.’ 17 See http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/rohrpost-0205/msg00091.html. (accessed 4 October 2019). 18 See Jessica Morgan and Alexis Lowry, eds, Charlotte Posenenske, Work in Progress (New York: Dia Art Foundation and London: Koenig books, 2019). 19 Charlotte Posenenske, ‘Statement’ [Manifesto], Art International 5 (May 1968): 50. 20 See Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Lee Lozano: Dropout Piece (London: MIT Press, 2014). 21 A compilation of Lozano’s ‘laboratory’ notebooks has been published (New York: Primary Information, 2010) with the permission of her estate at Hauser & Wirth. In addition to the laboratory notebooks, marked ‘One through Three’, Lozano conserved eleven smaller notebooks (1968–70) on spiral-bound memopads which were also numbered and labelled ‘private’. The artist edited the entire set of her private notebooks in January 1972. Some of her write-ups were also distributed to friends in the form of xerox or carbon copies. For a recent discussion of Lozano’s language pieces, see Jo Applin, Lee Lozano. Not Working (London: Yale University Press, 2018); and additionally Fiona Bradley, ed., Lee Lozano: Slip Slide Splice (Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2018); Elizabeth McLean, ed., Lee Lozano. Language Pieces (Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery with Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018) 22 Art Workers Coalition, An Open Hearing on the Subject: What Should Be the Program of the Art Workers Regarding Museum Reform and to Establish the Program of an Open Art Workers Coalition (New York, 1970), 38. 23 An abridged version appeared in July 1969, in an issue of the magazine 0 to 9, edited by Bernadette Mayer and Vito Acconci. 24 In order to complete the list, see Lehrer-Graiwer, Lee Lozano, 32–3. Here, the author notes that Lee Lozano implicitly ‘nods’ to the piece ‘12 Dialogues’, 1962–63, coauthored by two men close to her: Carl Andre and Hollis Frampton. 25 Lee Lozano, Lee Lozano: Notebooks 1967–70 (New York: Primary Information, 2010).

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26 Helen Molesworth, ‘Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out: The Rejection of Lee Lozano’, Art Journal 61, no. 4 (2002): 66. 27 Cited by Bruce Hainley, ‘On: “E”’, Frieze 102 (October 2006): 245 28 Lee Lozano, ‘Untitled (8 Sept 1971)’, in Adam Smymczyk, ed., Lee Lozano, Win First Don’t Last Win Last Don’t Care (Eindhoven: Schwabe AG, 2006), 194. 29 Molesworth, ‘Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out’, 68. The relationship between Lippard and Lozano was brief but significant: Lippard included Lozano’s Piece, her first exhibited conceptual work, in Art/Peace, an anti-war event at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in 1969. 30 Molesworth, ‘Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out’, 70. 31 Bruce Hainley and John Waters, ‘Nine Sex Questions. Cady Noland’, in John Waters Bruce Hainley, ed., Art-A Sex Book (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 195–7. Reprinted in Rhea Anastas and Michael Brenson, eds, Witness to Her Art, Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker; Daniela Rossell and Eau de Cologne (Annandale on Hudson: Bard College, 2007), 160–1. 32 Hainley and Waters, ‘Nine Sex Questions’, 160. 33 Ibid., 161. 34 Leo Bersani, ‘Is the Rectum a Grave?’, October 43, special issue on AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (Winter, 1987): 197–222. 35 Molesworth, ‘Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out’, 71. 36 Teresa de Lauretis, ‘The Practice of Sexual Difference and Feminist Thought in Italy: An Introductory Essay’, in Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 37–56. 37 Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism’, Feminist Studies 14, no. 1 (1988): 32–50. 38 Before recently developing into the Centre d’études féminines et d’études de genre (Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies) University of Paris 8. 39 Hélène Cixous, Madeleine Gagnon, and Annie Leclerc, La venue à l’écriture? (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1977). 40 See Christine Delphy, ‘L’Ennemi principal’, Partisans 54–5 (July-October, 1970): 157–72. For radical, separatist feminists, it was a question of an anti-patriarchal struggle, which took priority over the anti-capitalist struggle. These priorities were inverted for the ‘class struggle’ current of feminism. 41 During a demonstration, the 20th arrondissement section of the Paris branch of the women’s movement held up their own banner in response ‘Va te faire Fouque’ (‘Go Fouque Yourself ’). 42 Christine Delphy, ‘The Invention of French Feminism: An Essential Move’, Yale French Studies 87 (1995): 198. 43 Irène Théry, ‘La femme de chambre et le financier’, Lemonde.fr, 23 May 2011. Available online: http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/05/23/la-femme-dechambre-et-le-financier_1525953_3232.html. (accessed 14 August 2017). 44 The title of this paragraph is the translation of the posthumous publication of Wittig’s dissertation ‘Le Chantier Littéraire’, partly translated by Catherine Temerson and Sande Zeig, ‘The Literrary Workshop’, GLQ 13, no. 4 (2007): 543–51. 45 See Namascar Shaktini, ed., On Monique Wittig, Theoretical, Political, and Literary Essays (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005); Arthur F. Tang, Monique Wittig and the Queer Theory Movement: Descendents and Disputes, MA Diss (Florida Atlantic University, 2005); Bradley S. Epps and Jonathan Katz, eds, Monique Wittig: At the Crossroads of Criticism, special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and

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Gay Studies 12, no. 3 (2007); Colloquium Lire Monique Wittig aujourd’hui, Lyon 26–27, November 2007; Tang, Wittig en lecture Paris, Montréal, Tucson, Berlin, Toulouse 2013; Reading of l’Opoponax with the winners of the Prix Médicis, Maison de la Poésie, 27 November 2014; Conference Beauvoir, Leduc, Wittig. Feminism Abject Selves, Columbia University, 17–18 April, 2015. 46 ‘The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual. In this way, it is not a question of being but of relations (because “women” and “men” are the result of relations). The category of sex is the category which establishes as “natural” the relation which is the basis of (heterosexual) society and across which half the population – women – are “rendered heterosexual” […] and submitted to a heterosexual economy.’ Monique Wittig, ‘The Category of Sex’ [1982], in The Straight Mind (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 5–6. 47 Wittig, ‘The Category of Sex’, 32. When the journal Questions Féministes published this text in French, even the most radical feminists insisted upon a note being added to ‘soften’ the conclusion. 48 Shaktini, On Monique Wittig, 53. 49 Monique Wittig, ‘The Trojan Horse’ [1984], in The Straight Mind, 74. 50 Laure Murat, ‘Monique Wittig and the Revolution of Pronouns’, GLQ 13, no. 4 (2007): 600–2. 51 Murat, ‘Monique Wittig and the Revolution of Pronouns’, 601.

References Anastas R. and Brenson, M. eds (2007), Witness to Her Art, Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker; Daniela Rossell and Eau de Cologne, Annandale on Hudson: Bard College. Applin, J. (2018), Lee Lozano. Not Working, London: Yale University Press. Art Workers Coalition (1969), ‘An Open Hearing on the Subject: What Should Be the Program of the Art Workers Regarding Museum Reform and to Establish the Program of an Open Art Workers Coalition’. Available online: http://primaryinformation.org/files/ FOH.pdf. (accessed 2 December 2019). Arthur F. Tang, Monique Wittig and the Queer Theory Movement: Descendents and Disputes, MA Diss (Florida Atlantic University, 2005) Bersani, L. (1987), ‘Is the Rectum a Grave?’, October 43, special issue on AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (Winter): 197–222. Bogaert, S. ed (2016), Marguerite Duras. Le dernier des métiers. Entretiens 1962-1991 Paris: Seuil. Bradley, F. ed. (2018), Lee Lozano: Slip Slide Splice, Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery. Bradley, S. Epps and Jonathan Katz, eds, Monique Wittig: At the Crossroads of Criticism, special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 3 (2007). Cixous, H., Gagnon, M. and Leclerc, A. (1977), La venue à l’écriture?, Paris: Union généraled’ éditions. de Lauretis, T. (1990), ‘The Practice of Sexual Difference and Feminist Thought in Italy: An Introductory Essay’ in Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 37–56. Delphy, C. (1995), ‘The Invention of French Feminism: An Essential Move’, Yale French Studies 87 (1995).

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Delphy, C. (1970), ‘L’Ennemi principal’, Partisans 54–5 (July–October): 157–72. Delphy, C. (1995), ‘The Invention of French Feminism: An Essential Move’, Yale French Studies 87 (1995): 190–221. Deutsche, R. et al. (2008), ‘Feminist Time: A Conversation’, Grey Room 31 (Spring): 32–67 Duras, M. and Gauthier, X. ([1974] 2004), Woman to Woman, trans. Katharine A. Jensen, Omaha: University of Nebraska Press. Foster, H. ed. (2009), ‘Questionnaire on the Contemporary’, October 130 (Fall): 3–124; Art and Money, a special issue of Artforum (April 2008). Hainley, B. (2006), ‘On: “E”’, Frieze 102 (October): 245. Hainley B. and Waters, J. (2003), ‘Nine Sex Questions. Cady Noland’, in B. Hainley and J. Waters, eds, Art-A Sex Book,. London: Thames & Hudson. Lacan, J. (1977), The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Jacques Alain Miller, ed., trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: W. W. Norton. Lehrer-Graiwer, S. (2014), Lee Lozano: Dropout Piece, London: MIT Press. Lonzi, C. (2012), Autoportrait, ed. Giovanna Zapperi, French trans. M. A. Maire-Vigueur, Paris: PRP Ringier. Lonzi, C. ([1969] 2010), Autoritratto: Accardi, Alviani, Castellani, Consagra, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Nigro, Paolini, Pascali, Rotella, Scarpitta, Turcato, Twombly, Milan: et al./Edizioni. Lozano, L. (2010), Lee Lozano: Notebooks 1967–70, New York: Primary Information. Molesworth, H. (2002), ‘Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out: The Rejection of Lee Lozano’, Art Journal 61, no. 4: 64–71. McLean, E. ed. (2018), Lee Lozano. Language Pieces, Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery with Hauser & Wirth Publishers. M. D. ‘Summary’ (n.d.), in M. Duras and X. Gauthier, Les Parleuses. Available online: http://www.leseditionsdeminuit.fr/livre-Les_Parleuses-2884-1-1-0-1.html. (accessed 4 October 2019). Morgan, Jessica and Lowry, Alexis eds (2019), Charlotte Posenenske, Work in Progress, New York: Dia Art Foundation and London: Koenig books. Murat, L. (2007), ‘Monique Wittig and the Revolution of Pronouns’, GLQ 13, no. 4: 600–2. Posenenske, C. (1968), ‘Statement’ [Manifesto], Art International 5 (May): 50. Shaktini, N. ed. (2005), On Monique Wittig, Theoretical, Political, and Literary Essays, Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Smymczyk, A. ed. (2006), Lee Lozano, Win First Don’t Last Win Last Don’t Care, Eindhoven: Schwabe AG. Théry, I. (2011), ‘La femme de chambre et le financier’, Lemonde.fr, 23 May. Available online: http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/05/23/la-femme-de-chambre-et-lefinancier_1525953_3232.html. (accessed 14 August 2017). Wallach Scott, J. (1988), ‘Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism’, Feminist Studies 14, no. 1: 32–50. Wittig, M. (2007), ‘The Literrary Workshop’, trans. C. Temerson and S. Zeig, GLQ 13, no. 4: 543–51. Wittig, M. (1992), The Straight Mind, Boston: Beacon Press.

11

Feminism and art c. 1970: Writing (art) otherwise Griselda Pollock

 

As of the date, c. 1970, I would represent ‘feminist art’, or ‘feminist art history’, by the following images. Blank. The encounter of art and feminism had not yet happened. The discursive and ideological structures of Art History had not yet been challenged. What happened c. 1970 is as strange to me, a witness to these events then, as it is to me now as an art historian examining the fractured traces through memories as much as archives and publications. What I ‘remember’ is different from what might be documented as ‘knowledge’; yet it is part of the feminist/art encounter to endow with significance the understanding that arises from affected memories, flashes of vivid scenes and experienced spaces, and, of course, scars of wounding conflicts and exciting battles. If we allowed ourselves the confident retrospect of the typical art historical narrative, we might attempt to craft a story that would, of course, have to have a beginning, a site

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of origin, initiators and thence an unfolding. From its beginnings, it would follow a path identifying the founders and followers, with main and branch lines, with centres, satellites and peripheries. Inevitably a politics of geopolitical and linguistic hegemony would pre-shape such a story as much as would the typical protocols of art history itself: nation, period, style, movement, master, oeuvre. What if, instead, we desire and need to see history as something other than a story whose unfolding pacifies us into a sense of inevitability and knowability? What if we desire the Benjaminian flash or shock of non-recognition, of the dialectical image that might teach us about the difference of our present because we cannot recognize the recent past when we look at it again, differently? It is, therefore, equally important to stress that the encounter c. 1970 of art and feminism was an event as much in the history of feminism as it was in the history of art (the field as distinct from Art History, the discipline). It was only in the last third of the twentieth century that the very long and worldwide history of feminism (a challenge to patriarchal society and its symbolic order) – which dates back millennia and certainly in the European West to the fifteenth century – met the visual arts and media and was changed by that meeting while feminism changed the visual arts in turn.1 Before the later twentieth century, feminist thought and practice had neither confronted the politics of representation nor elaborated the politics of subjectivity. The body had not become identified topic or issue.2 Nor had the politics of knowledge been systematically challenged from a theoretical feminist perspective. Theology, philosophy, literature, political theory and practice, urban planning and many other areas were certainly impacted by feminist consciousness at different points in this long history, and notably during the nineteenth century in the wake of black and white women’s social and political activism.3 What is unique in the period after 1970 is precisely an articulated encounter between the visual arts and feminism in terms of both artistic practice and art historical or theoretical analysis.4 We need also to emphasize the flux that was unsettling and transforming art at the same moment because the dominant paradigm, modernism, was being subjected to the radical rethink we now name conceptual art, a condition of art rather than a style which renders all art now, post-conceptual. This breach – or expansion in Kraussian terminology – in the field of art was simultaneously a rupture in the discursive formation of Art History. At a simple level, Hegelian art historical models established during the nation-building nineteenth century for producing knowledge of art would be challenged by art practices that both claimed art as a system of knowledge that in turn used art to question the very notion of knowledge systems. At a more complex level, forces from beyond the domain of art and Art History would erupt into it once again endowing ‘representation’ and ‘culture’ with political significance through the emphasis on ideology in ways that replaced the classic trio of artist-oeuvre-image. Gender, Race, Sexuality intersected with questions of power and difference to unsettle the very terms of a discourse on art and its history that placed both beyond the claims of difference. Social history of art invaded the field with questions of class. Questions of sexuality were also being articulated by Audre Lorde and Angela Davis at the very interface of race and desire. By the late 1970s, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak would effectively declare the project of postcolonial critique.5

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In what follows I will identify certain aspects of the process of feminist ‘becoming’ c. 1970 that interrupts the art historical retrospect in which something called ‘feminism’ already existed to make ‘feminist art’ or write ‘feminist criticism or art history’. By doing so, I hope to situate Carla Lonzi’s initiative in the context of other contemporary writings that began to shape the possibility of what I prefer to name feminist-inflected research and intervention into the pluralized terrain of art’s histories. This involved a ‘writing’ about art that was necessarily a ‘writing otherwise’ if it were not only to effect the entry of certain artist-women and their practices into visibility and legibility but also to challenge the very premises of Art History and art criticism that had consistently rendered them invisible. For the discourses of Art History and criticism had also to be exposed as what Italian feminist theorist Teresa de Lauretis has usefully defined as ‘technologies of gender’; these discursive and cultural practices imaginatively and symbolically produce and sustain the asymmetrical phallocentric hierarchy of difference and value on the basis of projections of sexual and other differences.6 I want to offer, therefore, a critical re-visioning of the moment c. 1970 as the point at which ‘art’ had not yet met ‘feminism’ and when the Women’s Movement – in the Anglophone world, we did not name our project as feminism at that point – had neither grasped nor created a new space for a feminist-inflected practice and thought in the visual arts. Drawing on French-Italian writer and curator Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti and her very prescient early use of Julia Kristeva’s study of the semiotics of revolution and sexual difference to forge her feminist intervention in art criticism, and on the way in which American art writers Lucy Lippard and Cindy Nemser used the interview in their critical writing on contemporary artist-women, and finally, on British author Rozsika Parker’s mode of art writing that braided literary, psychoanalytical and art historical insights into a distinctive analytical plait, my aim is to further interrupt feminist historiography by creating a comparative and politically diversified landscape in place of a linear narrative. By revealing a more varied political and theoretical field and insisting on the ambition of the challenges posed by these writers and the artists about whom they wrote, the moment of encounter c. 1970 can re-emerge in its still unharvested potential to supplement or redirect tired, and in some cases, destructive narratives of a feminist past. I am perhaps offering a perverse approach to our study of the significance of Carla Lonzi as part of the expanded histories of feminist thought and artistic practice. If the year 1970 marks Lonzi’s turn away from the practice of art criticism and the formulation of a radical theorization of feminine subjection and feminist subjectivity, it also ironically marks an inception of the possibility of articulating art writing and art making with radical theorization of feminine subjection and feminist subjectivity. In her profound study and critical reinterpretation of the writings of Carla Lonzi across the moment of apparent rupture in 1970, Giovanna Zapperi has revealed the significant theoretical continuities between Lonzi’s art critical and feminist stances.7 She has shown us that Lonzi’s feminist work offered a specific direction for feminist analysis of the power of patriarchy to invade and shape women’s consciousness against which a long period of work by women with women on women was needed.8 The

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focus in this branch of Italian feminism after 1970 on consciousness raising and the practice of solidarity between women is the contribution of Italian feminism to the international field.9 In other countries, cultural practices – art, literature, film – became very significant sites of feminist investigation and creativity. Yet the danger was always that of failing to identify the structures that remained in place, institutionally and discursively, that would ultimately mute, silence and exhaust the feminist project.

Not quite a blank in the page but a proto-feminist decade The meeting of art and feminism neither evolved smoothly in the manner in which teleological art historical narratives typically expect (models of descent via influence) nor did it unfold as a seamless process of becoming as some retrospective feminist narratives imply.10 Admittedly, once this strange encounter of art and feminism had taken shape across many countries and in a myriad of forms, initiatives, organizations, journals, exhibitions, debates, conferences and ultimately publications, it became both possible and necessary to discern its pre-history notably during what we might name a proto-feminist decade – 1960s – by collecting the traces of actions, works and statements that had precipitated its very possibility in the practices by artists who later allied themselves with the term ‘feminism’, or who have been subsequently claimed for ‘feminism’ by the methods, developed after the mid-1970s, for analysing artistic practices by artists who are women (henceforward named artist-women). For instance, we should have known and seen the feminist potential of the single gesture, folded terracotta sculptures and the comparable shapes in laundry lint made by the American artist Hannah Wilke (1940–93) that were created during the 1960s, predating the art historical narrative of the creation of such a sculptural evocation of female sexuality in ceramics for The Dinner Party (1974–79) by Judy Chicago (b.1939) by many years. Of her work throughout that decade, Wilke wrote in 1976: Since 1960, I have been concerned with the creation of a formal imagery that is specifically female, a new language that fuses mind and body into erotic objects that are namable and at the same time quite abstract. Its content has always related to my own body and feelings, reflecting pleasure as well as pain, the ambiguity and complexity of emotions. Human gestures, multi-layered metaphysical symbols below the gut level translated into an art close to laughter, making love, shaking hands … Eating fortune cookies instead of signing them, chewing gum into androgynous objects … Delicate definitions … Rearranging the touch of sensuality with a residual magic made from laundry lint or latex loosely laid out like love vulnerably exposed … continually exposing myself to whatever situation occurs … gamboling as well as gambling.11

Equally, research into the work of North American–based artists during the 1960s such as Nancy Spero (1926–2009), Yayoi Kusama (b.1929), Faith Ringgold (b.1930), Marisol (1930–2016),Yoko Ono (b.1933),Yvonne Rainer (b.1934),Nasreem Mohammedi (1936–90), Eva Hesse (1936–70), Trisha Brown (1936–2017), Carolee

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Schneemann (b.1939), Martha Rosler (b.1943), Adrian Piper (b.1948) or those in Eastern Europe and France such as Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) Alina Szapocznikow (1926–73) or in India such as Nalini Malani (b.1946) – to name but a very few – reveals how their initiatives toward an aesthetic engagement with sexed, raced and differenced,  geopolitically diverse, subjectivities and embodiment were being made – but in the absence of a supporting critical discourse that could articulate their engagements with bodies, desires, affects, prejudice, censorship, stereotype and violence as ‘feminist’ projects. A classic example of the paradox of the 1960s as both a pre-feminist and a protofeminist decade would be the work of Polish Jewish artist based in Paris, Alina Szapocznikow (b.1926), who died prematurely from cancer aged forty-seven in 1973 and was swiftly forgotten. In the catalogue for an exhibition attempting to reinstate Szapocznikow’s work that took place in Warsaw’s Zacheta Museum of Modern Art in 1998, art historian Anda Rottenberg argued that the ‘auotelic and linguistic’ turn in art during the 1960s, dominated by minimalism and early conceptual art (itself dominated in art history’s recording by white men) ‘did not accord with the carnality and drama’ of Szapocznikow’s fearless engagement with ‘the body and … social, cultural and existential themes’.12 After forty years, I still find myself in situations in museums where the knowledge of artists who are women in all ages, periods and cultures systematically produced by feminist research remains entirely unknown and unrecognized, and where the terms of feminist analysis of the ideological underpinnings of concepts of art and artist are unchallenged. For a recent example, in March 2017, I was on a panel at a major British museum where both senior and junior curators formally stated that there were no women of note in American art during the 1950s and 1960s, notably in Pop Art (hence had never heard of Marisol, Pauline Boty, Alina Szapocznikow), and that women artists emerged (and were exhibited in their show) only after the impact of feminism c. 1970. On the other hand, a sometimes limiting, partial assimilation of work by artistwomen as ‘feminist art’ becomes a permitted inclusion that is deadly since it creates a subcategory of the existing models of the art of groups, periods, styles or in the case of feminism, iconography. It is this context of questioning modes of retrospective writing the history of the encounters of art with feminism and vice versa that it becomes important to note that c. 2007, that is roughly three decades on from 1970, several museal or curatorial attempts were made to lay out the feminist art story by those for whom making sense of a history they had in a sense missed was an urgent and political exercise in memory and art historical institutionalization.13 Initiated in the United States, WACK! Art and Feminist Revolution (LA MoCA) chose to create a period vision locating the coming of the ‘feminist revolution in art’ between the dates 1965 and 1980 with the performance work of Yoko Ono, Cut Piece (1965) as the opening act. Another project in 2009, in Paris, was not a single one-off exhibition but a two-year installation of the permanent collection with a specific angle: all the artists would be women. Elles@CentrePompidou, curated by Camille Morineau, located her ‘beginning’ in the work titled TIRS (Shooting Paintings) by French artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) in 1961, while having a tiny section (caused by the poverty of the collection itself) of ‘pioneers’ from the

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mid-twentieth century as a prelude to this explosive moment within a French art history. Morineau created a time-line for her exhibition which significantly failed to record the specific contributions to the history she laid out of what we might name the British episode in this saga, while at the same time the exhibition included much more work from those parts of the Arab, North African and Middle Eastern world with which France had once been in colonial relations. Earlier, in 2006–07, an exhibition in Sweden had tracked its own history of Konstfeminism: Artfeminism. The project was based on decades of feminist scholarship of Barbro Werkmaester, who wrote in her essay for the catalogue that she can date the exact moment – in February 1971 – that feminism met art history for her. Werkmaester also dates the breakthrough ‘feminist’ art event in Sweden as the exhibition by Anna Sjödahl, Everydaylife: My Alternative which took place March to April 1973, a process that culminated in 1980 with a major collective exhibition We Work for Life at Liljevachs Gallery, Stockholm. In the Netherlands, Mirjam Westen curated Rebelle: Art & Feminism 1969–2009 which not only included a different European centre of feminist art practices – the Netherlands – but the exhibition insisted on a truly international perspective both historically and including the immediate moment of the exhibition which ensured a richer representation from the many countries of the African continent and in the Arab world. Queering the feminist project was a key element of two major shows in Spain: Kiss Kis Bang Bang: 45 Years of Art and Feminism (Bilbao, 2007) curated by Xavier Arakistain (Arakis) and Gender Battles curated by Juan Vicente Aliaga (Galician Center for Contemporary Art, 2007); the impact of Feminism in Eastern Europe was tracked by a multi-centre initiative directed by Bojana Peijic: Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (Vienna and Warsaw, 2009–10). I should add this to intense moment of retrospect the intervention of Ruth Noack, co-curator for Documenta 12 in 2007. This was an interesting project in so far as her research into art made by women in the 1960s and notably in Eastern Europe revealed a whole new body of modernist practices while there was clearly a major reorientation when she included what are now canonical works and artists who emerged in not only the English-speaking world in the 1970s such as Jo Spence, Martha Rosler, Mary Kelly and Sanja Ivekovic, Trisha Brown. By asking if ‘Modernity is our antiquity’ and marking the break between modernist creativity and post-1970s feminist-conceptual criticality, a much deeper shift was made visible without the necessity to plot a line of development.14

Women of the World Unite! The politics of language Against the background of these problematic gestures of writing a linear art history for feminist art, or feminism and art, I want now to deepen my argument about the encounter between ‘art’ – itself c. 1970 a destabilized and shifting set of practices being radically changed overall by the conceptual turn in art and by the expanded resources of performance, installation, photography and moving image – and a radical moment in the long history of the emergence of women as subjects of political action. This involves linguistic precision with regard to words such as women, gender and feminism.

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Women: We are now steeped in the legacies of feminist theoretical work in which not only has the very concept ‘women’ ceased to be the driving political force it once was, it has even become a liability in the hegemonic theoretical field of queer and transgender studies. It is vital to pause, therefore, and ponder why the initiating public gestures, such as the 50,000-strong North American women’s march down Fifth Avenue, New York City, on 26 August 1970 (to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States into law, giving adult women the vote) took place under the slogan ‘WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE!’ or why an International Women’s Year was launched by the United Nations in 1975 and why the UN declared a Decade for Women from 1976 to 1985.15 I hear an immediate criticism: which women? Are there such beings as women? Does not the very term normalize the racial, cultural, sexual and geopolitical predominance of the privileged versions of these divisive and agonistic fracture lines that render ‘gender’ alone a deeply problematic category of analysis? We need to think historically and hear the momentary significance of summoning this political collectivity, women of the world, onto the stage of history in that name at that date. This phrasing was a feminist appropriation of Marx’s famous call to the ‘workers of the world’ from The Communist Manifesto (1848); it performatively enacted an important political move in that revolutionary tradition. Paralleling workers and women effectively instated women in political discourse as a ‘class’, which was, in this case, being created linguistically as well as politically as a gender-based collective suffering exploitation and oppression, in whose own uprising against both lay their ‘liberation’ as a revolutionary struggle for freedom. If eighteenth-century feminist thinking had demanded rights to thought on behalf a femininity rendered stupid and frivolous by lack of access to education (for instance, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759–97), and nineteenth-century bourgeois feminist thinking had demanded the right to be a citizen so as to participate in existing political determinations, and nineteenthcentury socialist feminist thinking had demanded the right to work on equal but also decent terms (Louise Michel, 1830–1905) for instance, and nineteenth-century black feminist thinking had demanded the right to be considered both human and a woman (Sojourner Truth, d.1883), the twentieth-century instance that sought to include all these constituencies defined its demands in terms of oppression and exploitation, using a Marxist and revolutionary vocabulary. Inflecting that framing, the concept of liberation inscribed a relation to the struggles for decolonization (National Liberation struggles), with its associated notions of the transformation of consciousness of the subjected, colonized subject (Frantz Fanon comes to mind here.) The resonance of that invocation of women of the world to unite might be missed today if we do not recognize that the possibility of a women’s movement was formed during the preceding decade of the 1960s, the decade of many new social movements such as movements for civil rights, lesbian and gay rights, Black Power, and youth and student movements. Such initiatives cut across national boundaries, creating transnational and sub-national political identities whose political energy exceeded existing political theories of who were key political agents. Marxist internationalism, halted by ‘socialism in one country’ policies in post revolutionary societies, now offered a framework for what Julia Kristeva defined as ‘supra-national, socio-cultural

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ensembles within even larger entities’. This comment appears in her important paper, ‘Women’s Time’ (1979), which adds to the Marxist focus on history as the history of production (key social relation being that of class) the factor of ‘reproduction and its representations’ through which ‘the biological species is connected to its humanity, which is a tributary of time: as well as a certain fragility as a result of the fact that, through its universality, the symbolic common denominator is necessarily echoed in the corresponding common denominator of another socio-cultural ensemble’.16 Kristeva was addressing ‘Europe’ which she defines as an ensemble not solely defined by economic unities. She argues that once we introduce into such unities a ‘symbolic common denominator’ we find two co-existing time systems with three forms of time: linear, cursive and monumental time. It is with the latter temporality that Kristeva notes the appearance on the stage of history (c.1979) of social groups defined by age, youth for instance, or by sexual divisions, namely women, who have relations to each other that cut across, or run diagonally across, other divisions such as nation or even class. Thus while being French or Chinese, European or Latin American, young people, queer people and women ‘echo in a most specific way the universal traits of their structural place in reproduction and its representations’.17 Kristeva’s terms identify the different temporality of the structural conditions of specific groups who transcend the categories produced in linear, national history. That this related to ‘reproduction and its representations’ does not tie it to heteronormativity. In one of the founding texts of feminist anthropology from 1975, queer feminist theorist Gayle Rubin powerfully argued that the suppression of homosexuality and the construction of obligatory heterosexuality on the basis of installing a rigid sex-gender system were intimately connected and that a feminist revolution would of necessity be a challenge to heteronormative sexing of subjectivity.18 Kristeva’s emphasis on ‘reproduction and its representations’ echoes that which Hannah Arendt brought from theology via Heidegger into political theory: natality (St Augustine) and ‘being and time’ (Heidegger). According to Arendt, the specificity of the human condition is not just being or life. Being born – natality – signifies the character of the human condition as that of constant beginnings which are what produce as equally important elements of the human condition: plurality and spontaneity. These signal change and creativity. Women, Youth, Queer are socio-cultural ensembles determined by a structural relation to a symbolic ordering to human time: sequence yes, but also succession, transmission and transformation. Far from being considered an issue of the family, Kristeva, following Arendt, identifies life at the heart of the political. As a culmination of fragments of a radical emergence onto the stage of history, the women’s movement, alongside other new social movements of the 1960s, would be the movement that acted in the name of what that movement would also theorize as one of the most complex and ‘vital’ (in all senses of the word) questions. ‘Women of the World Unite’ is not a statement. It is a call to action. It is thus a performative but also a pre-formative imagining that is symptomatic of a historical situation its actors did not yet have the means to understand. The women’s movement qua movement would call forth its own self-theorization as ‘feminism’ and generate the field we now know as feminist theory spread across every field of knowledge but also of creative practice as supplementary form of knowledge.

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On the other hand, in the case of the United Nations and their use of the term women, elements of a Marxist vocabulary may have infiltrated from already existing radical movements throughout the world. In the largely liberal vocabulary of the UN, however, the term women was clearly being articulated as a political and economic group in need, not so much of liberation, as of the gentle top-down amelioration of conditions, as we can see from the first declaration of The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Liberation from oppression is a very different matter from freedom from discrimination. The latter does not attack the structural conditions in the manner in which liberation talk does. The moment of renewed but transformed politicization of women c. 1970 was given different names in the many countries in which it simultaneously erupted in the later 1960s: Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain and the United States, Rivolta Femminile in Italy, Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF) in France, Group 8 in Sweden, uman ribu (woman lib) in Japan.19 The call was definitely being made in the name of women. At what point did the victims of oppression who sought to be the subjects of revolutionary change denominate themselves as such and when, and with what effects, did their movement become feminism? Should we not distinguish the moments of movement from the longer-term project questioning of patriarchal culture and its phallocentric symbolic order? When did feminist become an adjective that could designate more than the political agitation indexed by terms such as liberation, movement, oppression, exploitation? Or was it always much wider in its implications and we have had to retrieve it from specifically political connotation and, more recently, from a political association that led it to be submerged in socialist theory? The term feminism originates in France in the early nineteenth century in the writings of the utopian political writer Charles Fourier who coined féminisme at the intersection of his search for equality in both socio-economic and subjective-sexual dimensions of life. By its later adoption at the end of the century into English language usage, it had lost its radicalism and became associated with advocacy for women and their issues: hence meaning ‘of women’. Fourier’s legacy places the issue of women on the agenda but in the evolution of socialist thought, the condition of women did not attain its own theoretical visibility. In her analysis of this tradition and writing in 1966, one of early leftist feminist writers, Juliet Mitchell sought to explain the impasse in socialist thinking when confronted with the condition of women. Feminist thought, she states: ‘will mean rejecting the idea that woman’s condition can be deduced derivatively from the economy or equated symbolically with society. Rather it must be seen as a specific structure, which is a unity of different elements’.20 The different elements are then identified and elaborated by Mitchell as follows: Production, Reproduction, Sex and Socialization of Children. Mitchell anticipates Marx’s brilliant analysis of a complex unity laid out in his speculative text, Grundrisse (1858), which was translated into English only in 1973, and which would become a key text for the social and social-feminist histories of art in Britain. What Marx offered in this pre-Capital theoretical reflection was a non-reductive (everything stems from production in a causal chain) and non-totalizing (all social and cultural forms are reflections of the mode of production) way of thinking complex interactions between

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distinct dimensions of a complex socio-economic-cultural formation. If we replace the singular mode of production with a concept of a mode or reproduction, i.e. life, bodies, desires, as well as labour and social relations of power and powerlessness, we also have to allocate levels of determination to dimensions not imagined as social or economic by Marx such as sex, reproduction and socialization of the young (cultural transmission, care for the vulnerable, education, psychological sustenance). She thus locates the issues confronting women and defining woman’s condition in a four-sided structure, each of which has its own determinations and place in determining the others. The concrete combination of these produces the ‘complex unity’ of her position; but each separate structure may have reached a different ‘moment’ at any given historical time. Each must be examined separately in order to see what the present unity is and how it might be changed.21

This analysis also allows for one dimension of the complex unity to have strategic capacities in altering the unity. Issues of bodies and desire cease to be ‘superstructural’ in classic economistic Marxist terms; they may be critical transformatives precisely in so far as they have come into theoretical and political visibility as ‘structural’ dimensions of lived conditions of individual and societies.22

The complex unity: Theory If, c. 1970, the legacies of traditions of political action and revolutionary theory converged on the term women, after c. 1970 the inherited signifier feminist was enriched with new signifieds based on the notion of the ‘complex unity of many determinations and relations’. This meant not treating women only as a social group, a class or social minority but rather a question hitherto never fully posed to any of the discourses that might illuminate the condition – of difference that would strike deep into the heart of social being, life-making, pleasure, desire, ethics and psychic life as well as conventionally, male-defined notions of politics and economics. What distinguishes the moment c. 1970 is its double structure as both inheritor and critique of earlier instances of the radicalization of women that in effect produced ‘women’ as a political rather than a theological – Eve – or an ideological – Woman – and social category, the latter subject to regulations by the other two in addition to structural economic and sexual exploitation. C. 1970 was a moment of reawakening of women’s radical political consciousness and a critique of the inadequacy of a purely political, economic or social analysis of women’s condition. Given the only text Mitchell can draw on is philosophical, de Beauvoir’s, it is clear that major theoretical work was needed at that level of questioning. This is perhaps a fascinating link with Carla Lonzi. In terms of feminist history, abandoning the daily practice of art criticism for consciousness raising and philosophical investigation in the structures of Western phallocentric thought places her in alignment with this historical moment of feminism

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encountering a radicalization of thought per se. The dividing up of feminist art, feminist literature, feminist museology, feminist art history must, therefore, be resisted as a symptom of an incomplete feminist analysis. The starting point has to be theoretical analysis of the structuring of sexual difference across every field of knowledge. Feministinflected practices in art and Art History are of necessity profoundly theoretical. This then makes art and its histories sites of theoretical research. What I call the study of ‘inscriptions in, of and from the feminine’ is analytical not narrative. While there could be no political subjectivity for women without citizenship, acknowledged at least by the right to vote, only once that ambition had been partially achieved in some modernist nations could its inadequacy be exposed and thus reveal the necessity for deeper levels of analysis. This analysis would not only be ‘for women’. It would address an entire system that produced the differentiation of human kind on the grounds of – and now a new term would be needed – gender. Once there was a Women’s Movement, Woman becomes a new kind of signifier rather than a signified in ideological pronouncements. In this new feminist vocabulary, woman is a signifier of a system producing sexual difference, itself traversing the full gamut from sexual embodiment to psychic life, from social experience to creativity become a field of political analysis. The very concept of the political was thereby transformed to breach the divisions between the political, social, sexual, cultural and psychological. It was in such a context that art, in its own state of flux at that very same moment, in a condition of becoming and exploration at the very limits of what hitherto counted as knowledge, encountered this novel phenomenon feminism and this becoming-feminism encountered art in the process of its own radical deconstruction and dematerialization: conceptual practices, performance, use of photomechanical and moving images. These new forms of art making structurally shifted the terms of artist-genius-initiator to allow for displacing agency, dispersing creativity, involving space, time and above all the participation of the receiving, viewing, affected subject. Hence art writing of this new kind of art itself had to become analytical of how meaning was being produced, structurally in terms of signs and gazes. It is vital to hold on to the political framing that still determined our activism, the frame being the Women’s (Liberation) Movement. The creation of a conceptual field, and notably a theoretical arm for the Women’s Movement which has since been named feminism, was a process whose mixed, uncertain, contested, joyous and agonistic becoming we will distort if we impose upon the moment c. 1970 the retrospective representation of its being already ‘feminism’. In her 1975 manifesto ‘Pour un matérialisme féminste’, French political and materialist-feminist theorist Christine Delphy declares ‘feminism’ to be a social movement and hence a movement of revolt. To revolt is to imagine change and thus to challenge the nature of things, a naturalized order, one of which, in hegemonic parlance, is ‘the feminine condition’ rather than what feminism names ‘the situation of women.’ What Delphy names materialist feminism is what will make the revolt possible; thus she adds to existing socio-political thought the struggle for knowledge. ‘In the same way that feminism-as-a-movement aims at the revolution of social reality, so feminism-as-a-theory (and each is indispensable to the other) must aim at a revolution of knowledge.’23

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It is at this point that we can grasp the process by which pressures for a means to analyse the specificity of the gross condition of half the human population – given that the prevailing discourses were inadequate to the task – were themselves propelled by the worldwide social movement into the elaboration of the political-intellectual resources to understand its own complexity. Thus we can see how and why not merely culture but the visual arts come to be part of that elaboration. So far I have stressed a necessary destabilization of key terms, notably feminism, by emphasizing the political charge of the name, women, under which c. 1970 feminist thought and practice took on new forms. In this final section I want to focus on the specificity of one area of practice foregone by Carla Lonzi c. 1970 but critical to the emergence of feminist-inflections of the discourses on art – the interview – because its dialogical form epitomizes a crisis of knowing and a feminist resistance to hegemonic methods in art history that installed and sustained the very cult of artist and of art against which Carla Lonzi reacted so critically in her turn away from art criticism, but which she had already unsettled in the very form she had created in her Autoritratto.

The interview On 29 May 1970 the Hamburg-born Jewish American artist Eva Hesse died aged thirtyfour. A series of interviews had been undertaken with her, during her last illness, by the art critic Cindy Nemser as part of a project of interviewing artists who are women. Her interviews were published in Arts Magazine, Art in America and Art Journal, all of which would be collected to form her landmark publication Art Talk: Conversations with 12 Women Artists (New York: Scribener, 1975). The interview with Hesse was hurried out and was published in Art Forum just before the artist’s death on 29 May 1970. It was not until 1975 that I learned more about Eva Hesse through reading this interview in Art Talk and Lucy Lippard’s monograph, published a year later in 1976. The first retrospective exhibition of Hesse’s work in the UK was at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London (4 May–17 June 1979) curated by Nicholas Serota. I knew enough by 1975 to challenge a colleague, Fred Orton, who was one of the very first art historians to devise a course (module we would call it now) on American art in the 1950s–60s (not yet acknowledged as possible within the conventional art historical model) because I found that his planned lectures included no artist-women. His response was that he knew of none. If I wanted to introduce them, I would have to do the research, write and deliver the lectures myself. He gave me three slots. I agreed and worked on Russian-born American sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899–1998), New York painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) and Eva Hesse (1926–70). What, however, did I know – a graduate student studying nineteenth-century European art and writing a doctoral thesis on Van Gogh – about modernism, about art in New York in the 1950s and then what was happening in the 1960s? Frankly nothing. But this was 1975. I was at the time also a co-founder of the Women’s Art History Collective, and we had a mission to make the fact that women made and were making art known, specifically to young women in art schools. How would I bring together

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the normative modes of art history, into which I was being inducted at the Courtauld Institute of Art, when approaching a period or an entity such as American Art or The New York School that were not yet art historically recognized? How could I deal with a discourse and its practices – modernism – whose contours and substance were not yet known as such, because modernism was still happening and was only being critically theorized by Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg in articles not yet collected in anthologies and certainly not known enough to form a canon of texts that must be read? I had enough information about Eva Hesse to propose a lecture. This was in part because her death at the age of thirty-four had propelled an artist hardly known outside limited circles in New York c. 1970 into a Van Gogh–like legend of tragedy. Nemser’s interview and the cover of that issue of Art Forum were going to make a big impression. My question was this. What constituted an approach, based on art historical ignorance and relative absence of an art history of this artistic moment, that might be considered feminist, beyond saying that she was an artist and she was a woman? The result of this research found its way into my book co-authored with Roziska Parker and completed in 1979, although not published until 1981, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology. I was enabled to write at all by Lucy Lippard’s monograph, which was her first attempt at feminist writing of this order. She had known Eva Hesse but during the 1960s she had been blind to the work of women artists, ignoring women artists as wives and girlfriends of the real ones, the men. By the mid-1970s, Lippard’s own consciousness raising about gender and art enabled writers like me to have access to an understanding of both the formal and material innovations of Eva Hesse’s work alongside the analysis of her own reflections on being an artist and a woman. Eva Hesse’s diaries had been made available to Lucy Lippard, giving her and her readers access not only to the inner life of an artist as a key to understanding the work but to an astute, psychoanalytically self-aware woman-subject reflecting on the challenges of art making in a pre-feminist decade. Thus the anguish of ambition tortured by selfdoubt, creative daring and unsupported experimentation coupled with disconcertingly erotic, viscerally corporeal and willfully absurd works forced upon any art historian the necessity for create a new model for art writing. This involves an issue still vitally debated in art historical theory: what is the status of biography, the life, in relation to the analysis of the work? Carla Lonzi herself had explored this experimentally with her insertion of childhood images of the machomen artists with whom she placed herself in dialogue through the formatting of the interviews. The early feminist project spontaneously but also purposefully rewrote the Vasarian concept of the Vite: that artists live artistic lives as distinct kinds of psychological subjects but rearticulating the relations of between creativity and forms of social and psychological living. I do not think we have finally sorted out the terms for the ways in which the Lives of Great Artists are part and parcel of the adulatory discourse of Art History on the artist-man – Freud clearly asserted it in this suggestion that the ordinary person is always more interested in the biography of the artist as a kind of ideal or heroic figure – while the effects of biography on artist-women are usually negative; ‘life’ becomes a reductive explanatory source for an art that never transcends its biographical causes.24

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In 1978 I tried this provisional resolution of the conundrum: Artmaking was for her a life-long process of exploration of art and self that took place not only in the objects she made but in her writings, which subjected the notion of the artist and art to intense investigation. Her notes and diaries are an integral part of her work. Her diaries, however, show that, for her, formal concerns were a means to break with art conventions and preconceptions and to find something completely new.25

This was followed by a quotation from the interview with Cindy Nemser: ‘I am interested in solving the unknown factor of art and the unknown factor of life.’26 The diaries revealed that Eva Hesse had been reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (probably in the poor English translation only of the second volume which focuses on women’s lived experiences that appeared in 1953). Once again this text surfaces as a resource in the absence of any other discourse through which to articulate what was experienced individually as a tension between the expectations of being an artist and those confining what women were expected to be: erotically desirable, domestically skilled, submissive, secondary and so forth. For me the questions that Nemser posed were very important as a feminist proposal for new knowledge about the concrete practices and social conditions of being an artist. She was investigating what shaped the artist differently according to gender and its social connotations: education, family background and support, encounters with the art world, its institutions and personnel, views on the social, economic and cultural infrastructures of being an artist. These were her questions which then framed the discussions of the specific materials and procedures for making art and the purposes of the artist. Thus the often suppressed or hidden reality of art as a social profession and a material practice was disclosed by situating the women in networks of supportive and perhaps repressive relations that had their own materiality and effects. Nemser’s social focus was never allowed to displace the specificity of art practice, but it yielded a different picture of the relations between social conditions and aesthetic performances. The study of the artists interviewed by Cindy Nemser threw up the varied ways in which creative women from Barbara Hepworth and Sonia Delaunay to Lee Krasner and Marisol had negotiated such contradictions in the modernist era. Some adamantly denied or ignored their gender as an issue and thus embraced a universalist concept of the artist which involved absolutely disowning ‘femininity’ and gender identity. Others, like Eva Hesse, working in the 1960s alongside so many artists who are now celebrated within feminist studies, felt the pressures more intensely, and symptomatically lived out, and made art from a recognition, although a still incoherent consciousness, that there was a tension, which was potentially interesting and even important. By 1975–76, two further publications shaped the possibility for the Anglophone world of a feminist discourse on contemporary art: the overtly feminist autobiography of an artist in complete revolt against suffering the tension in silence (or via a diary), namely a memoir, Through the Flower by Judy Chicago and, secondly, Lucy Lippard’s collection of writings on artists who are women: From the Centre: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art (1976), which was prefaced by an autobiographical essay on how her

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consciousness was raised and she became aware of her own contradiction as a woman art writing ignoring and undervaluing the work of women. This density (four books!) of American writing was not matched in Europe, or specifically Britain, where only one small-circulation feminist magazine, Spare Rib, carried the beginnings of a very different feminist foray into art writing in the voice of Rozsika Parker (1945–2010), with whom I would later collaborate on three feminist writing projects. As a journalist trained in art history, Rozsika Parker favoured and pioneered the interview with the artist as a means of discovering the complex configurations of life and work whose relations can be identified as central to the feminist deconstruction of hegemonic art historical discourse. In 1974 she published an interview with the British artist Margaret Priest (b.1944), ‘Still out of Breath in Arizona’ and Other Pictures (Spare Rib 24, June 1974). The interview with the artist was then a relatively new form, indicative of the intense individualization of the modern artist. We find it in exhibition catalogues of work by living artists from the 1950s. In 2001, British art critic David Sylvester published a collection of his interviews starting in 1960 with American artists, all but two are men.27 Rozsika Parker, like Nemser, would use the interview to explore gender, ethnic and class specific aspects of women’s access to art making, and the role of socio-personal formation in the art practice itself. Rozsika Parker starts asking a simple question about Margaret Priest’s background – not to draw out the usual legendary tropes that prevail in masculine narratives of the artist’s childhood (Kris & Kurz, 1981) – but to draw a feminist-attuned portrait of a physically fragile child and a sometimes insecure, yet self-directing, woman and a picture of a working-class woman, with intellectual ability to move into the professions via university who, against the grain of both her parents’ class expectations and those of her bourgeois peers, went to art school. RP: I am surprised you had the courage and confidence to persist. MP: It’s not courage, it’s effrontery–there is terrific effrontery to become an artist … RP: Were you encouraged at school to go on to art college? MP: No, because the area in which I lived–Dagenham–was a cultural wilderness. I went to the only grammar school in the area. And once you prove yourself to be clever, everybody expected you to go onto university. I just had this terrible thing that I had to escape, I didn’t know what from, but just where I’d be valued, and I didn’t feel valued there.28

Through this almost analytically prompted conversation, major themes emerge through the personal lens of Margaret Priest’s experience: pressure on women to conform to currently desirable body types. Yet if they do present themselves fashionably, they are deemed to lack the intensity necessary to be an artist. The insight into anguished fantasies about one’s body and the spectacularization of femininity emerge from a concrete life story while also leading to wider theorization. Directed to graphic design, Priest rebelled and became a painter only to reject the obligatory female impersonation of the great male painter working in oil on a vast scale. She turned to delicate and precision drawings in pencil, risking a new range of stereotypes that turned her exquisite vision and precise craft skills into a frigid sign of feminine deficiency. Margaret

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Priest defines her own contradictory relation to mimicking the impersonal perfection of media reproduction while using a craft-based practice as a ‘vehicle for emotion’.29 Crucially the artist herself brings back the relation between craft and affect to the body: she is asthmatic and the drawing of the article’s title is about a dream of going where American asthmatics are sent for therapy, Arizona, but arriving, ‘still out of breath’. The interview has been shaped to move through childhood formation, encounters with the art institution, negotiating social attitudes and gendered stereotypes to the intimacy between process and effect, all mediated by the sexed, classed and physically as well as psychically vulnerable body.30 A second interview was with Judy Clark (b.1949), who studied fine art at Portsmouth Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art, after which she emerged onto the London art scene with a series of exhibitions called Issues. Her show Body Works in 1974 led to an interview by Rozsika Parker. Judy Clark did not identify with nascent feminism. Her work – based on collecting and beautifully framing in grids and boxes, remnants and traces of the body from blood-stained plasters to menstrual blood, semen-stained tissues to body hair accumulated over a week of sleep, from bodily fluids to weekly collections of dust from everyday living – was informed anthropologically by Mary Douglas’ work on taboos around dirt and the purity rituals that function as symbolic forms of control over the threatening chaos of the uncertain boundaries between life and death.31 Rozsika Parker’s questions engage with the artist at the intersection of the manner of the artwork’s handling of its bodily materials and the socio-psychic imaginary that underpins taboo and enforced invisibility, the relations of things ‘out of place’ and the fear of structural disorder in the social and symbolic universe. The elegance with which the considerable intellectual charge of Clark’s conceptual art project about time, rhythms, cycles and sexual as well as gendered embodiment is integrated with respect for the artist’s working process and non-gendered ‘curiosity’ about how we function as bodies generating and living amongst waste creates, in this article, a monument to both the artist and her work and to the subtlety and erudition of the interdisciplinary interviewer who supports the theoretical space in which the artist’s project acquires its significance that cannot be reduced to the gender of the artist, the intentions of the artist or the content of the work. The interview produces a feminist effect as an ethos of investigation and exchange.

Towards a feminist aesthetic theory I did not know of Carla Lonzi either as an art critic or as a feminist. I had heard of Carla Accardi, however, the only artist-woman in her Autoritratto. I owe my education in the first place to Francesco Ventrella and Giovanna Zapperi who introduced me to Carla Lonzi and the fascinating relation between her work as an art critic and the founder of Rivolta Femminile in Italy. I was, however, aware early in my own formation as a feminist and art historian, of Italian/French feminist writing on art in the form of an influential essay by Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti that was translated and published in the British art magazine Studio International in 1976. Indeed for Rozsika Parker and me, her theoretically sophisticated article on ‘Negative Capability’ was pivotal. Anne

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Marie Sauzeau Boetti, who died in 2014, wrote that many women artists in Italy deny any kind of difference in art.32 According to Sauzeau Boetti art for that generation was a neutral absolute and the only obstacle to inclusion in this sexless sphere must be, therefore, women’s backwardness. Countering this misapprehension, Sauzeau Boetti noted tendencies in the art of contemporary women in Italy that touched on issues that were becoming iconic and mythicized – dangerously so in her opinion – in California. She is referring to the body and to the direction associated above all with the work of Judy Chicago. She also notices what she calls a ‘creative obsession with women’s ancestral nature’. Conventional to be sure, women seemed bound by bonds of affection and identification with a world of women through work, craft and family. She reserves her most elaborated theoretical reflections, however, for ‘activities that demand the greatest mobilization of the abstracting and sublimating faculties (abstract art in the 1950s, programmed and optical art in the 1960s and conceptual art in the 1970s)’ and she wrote: Now, when the woman artist lives profoundly as a woman in her profession and strongly enough in her mastery of the means she is managing, it is my belief that a gradual differentiation from this ‘father’ art occurs … Her relationship with the technique and the artistic fields she deals with, her very language changes when she reaches the point of exercising her ability to symbolize areas of life which have been historically unexpressed and sheltered. In this case she enters the double space of INCONGRUENCE, by which I means she can still be read and appreciated through the cultural criteria of the avant-garde, formal quality and so on. BUT also through another criterion, as a landmark of an ALIEN culture with reference to other values and mind schemes.33

Sauzeau Boetti openly critiques self-conscious ‘feminist art’, which, in accusation and vindication of the abuse of women, enters only the space of the legible as militancy soothed by its own ideology. It furthermore betrays the negativity and otherness of women’s hitherto unarticulated experience. She refutes the quality of art resulting from such a motivated art movement, a collectivity rather than the labyrinth of a single mind that is the sole locus of creativity. Thus Sauzeau Boetti cites the nineteenth-century British poet Keats and the twentieth-century French-American artist Marcel Duchamp to propose that ‘the creative project of woman as subject involves BETRAYING the expressive mechanisms of culture in order to express herself through the break, in the gaps between the systematic spaces of artistic language’ and ‘because the subject to be entered into meaning is already scattered, in the negative accessible beyond a horizon that is not simply to be altered.’34 Sauzeau Boetti thus introduced into the sphere of art writing the major thesis on the revolution of poetic language enunciated by Bulgarian-French literary theorist Julia Kristeva in her doctoral thesis, published as La révolution du langage poétique (1974), in which a resource – negativity combined with heteronomy – ceaselessly works at renewal and even revolution of the very systems that order both the social and the subjective. This negativity, which is not to be confused with negation but that is both the condition of language and subjectivity and what is not admitted to or admissible by the symbolic order, is identified as feminine. Kristeva commentator John Lechte gives an account of this contribution to feminist thought that is critical of feminist thought.

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To avoid psychosis, the feminine element (in men and women) needs to be inscribed within the symbolic order. According to Kristeva the feminine semiotic may be potentially disruptive of an overly rigid form of the symbolic but it cannot humanly exist independently of it. By way of this more refined framework, a feminist politics was able to see that all social movements (of which feminism was one) were the outcome of a division more fundamental than one based on ideology, a division produced within the frame of reproduction— namely, sexual difference as psychoanalysis outlines it. To put it simply: the social sphere signified by the Name-of-the-Father is itself complicit with a patriarchy that makes the independent existence of the feminine impossible.35

Problematic for radical feminist as much as socialist feminist theory is Kristeva’s adamant refusal to posit masculine and feminine solely in the symbolic realm, with feminism as a negation of the phallocentric order of men. Her argument locates the issue of sexual difference in the very substance of subjectivity and language which is inherently patriarchal but also structurally subject to the feminine as its creative negativity, its heteronomy, its signifiance as opposed to its fixed significations. Sauzeau Boetti thus addresses Kristeva’s radical semiotics to contemporary art to identify feminist effects, namely the creative working of avant-garde feminine negativity in material, process and form, and not feminism as content or intent (on the part of the artist). In this very Kristevan way, Sauzeau Boetti endorses in the practices of artists such as Carla Accardi, Marisa Merz and Ketty La Rocca, already discussed under the other headings in her article, who thus acquire their aesthetic and cultural potential through ‘TRANSGRESSION–Not a positive avant-garde subversion but a process of differentiation. Not a process of fixing meanings but of breaking them up and multiplying them’.36 Presented under an epigraph from a pre-feminist Julia Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language: ‘I would call the “feminine” the moment of rupture and negativity which conditions the newness of any practice’, Sauzeau Boetti introduced me to influential the potential of French literary theory that would subsequently enable me to read artistic practices by artist-women as inscriptions in, of and from the feminine. Le féminin is a concept available to French speakers, with its masculine gender and formal status as a noun that differs from the adjectival femminile and feminine or weiblich in Italian, English or German. These non-French words are, however, burdened by associations hateful to many feminists and, are, thus repudiated, while that territory of difference and otherness of which Sauzeau Boetti speaks drawing on Kristeva’s Hegelian feminist psychoanalytically transformed post-structuralism is critical if we are to examine the tensions between different moments and projects of feminist engagements with the aesthetic in terms of a creative transgression of the phallocentric symbolic order and the language in which it imprisons us. Thus the discovery of Carla Lonzi and her conception of the artist that was prefeminist, and was then abandoned for feminist activism, consciousness raising, the discovery of women through communication between women and the assault on the major figures of Western philosophical phallocratism, such as Hegel, reminded me of the complex forms of negotiation I personally experienced when the tide of the

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Women’s Movement carried me into activism in the early 1970s but also forced me to rethink my intellectual and academic commitments in Art History in order to forge, from the conflict, a place from which to become a feminist not only politically but critically through intellectual, theoretical and cultural research and writing. Thus I disown the label feminist art historian because in that phrase feminist is reduced to an adjectival qualifier of Art History, placing me and my work safely in a sub-category of the unchallenged disciplinary formation. Thinking as a feminist means putting Art History, the discipline itself, under critical erasure and reformulation as part of an expanded sense of feminist practice that had to encompass all institutions and fields of human praxis including aesthetic and theoretical creativity. This implies rethinking the relations between content and form. What fascinated me, therefore, about Carla Lonzi’s Autoritratto was its transgressive form. The norm of the interview is a questioner and a respondent. This structures or even delimits the possibility of the replies because they are prompted by questions posed by the interviewer who will also edit the answers. By interweaving of reconfigured elements from many interviews into a fiction of a continuous conversation, the interviewer herself became a speaker in a manner that placed her as a perpetual interlocutor rather than as an interviewer in the binary form of question and answer. Even in presenting the silence of Cy Twombly the questions become registers of her thinking with his work. The text creates its own space of exchange and of movement that intimates an unsettlement of fixed positions, authoritative statement and a fluidly fashioned outcome. Carla Lonzi was not talking to women as artists. In a sense she is talking to artists at a moment at which she is developing as an intellectual in relation to a moment of Italian cultural practice whose contours she is bringing into view by means of personal conversation with other intellectuals engaged, however, in a specific aesthetic formulation of their concerns about a world endangered by lack of imagination and understanding of the creative act. While Nemser’s project is already politically feminist in the sense of seeking out artists who are women to ask them questions about living the discrimination and differentiations imposed upon them when they want simply to be artists, and recognized as part of the creative community, Lonzi’s project is not masculinist just for the fact of speaking to men apart from Carla Accardi. Yet it belongs in a moment in which the extent of the invisibilization of women as participants in the refashioning of the world through modernity and modernisms had not risen to the surface of consciousness. That awakening was inevitably an angry one forging a women’s movement that was initially and necessarily oppositional. Lucy Lippard needs to come back here into this conversation. Her famous introduction to the publication of her first essays on women’s art in 1976 affirms the impact of the women’s movement on her life. ‘Looking back, I get impatient with the slow and laborious development of my feminism and its application to aesthetics and politics … The women’s movement changed by life in many ways, not least in my approach to criticism’.37 This is critical because the change in understanding of aesthetics and sexual difference, of art and gender, did not arise spontaneously through the contradictions of the art world. Indeed as Sauzeau Boetti argued in Italy and the interviews with artists reproduced in the American collection edited by Thomas Hess

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and Elizabeth Baker, Art & Sexual Politics (1973), with leading women painters like Bridget Riley demonstrated (‘Women need feminism like they need a hole in the head’ is her famous comment), there was passionate resistance on the part of women artists to the raising of the repressed question of gender.38 Art was art and they wanted to be artists. The women’s movement changed the thinker, the critic, the art historian and the artist who, by becoming a part of a movement of women worldwide, were transformed in their consciousness by a new kind of practice, political, organizational, consciousness raising, activist, personal. That this then rebounded on any professional practice in which we were engaged was secondary to the experience of collective political transformation and action as women, an identity that hitherto was private or incidental, and in general had no place in the self-description of anyone with professional or academic aspirations. In the case of Lonzi, that encounter rendered art writing irrelevant and impenetrable. In my own case, it became possible due to my meeting with Rozsika Parker. Like Carla Lonzi, Rosie tragically died young in 2010. Her death caused me to revisit the years of our collaboration from 1973 to 1987, during which we wrote Old Mistresses and compiled Framing Feminism and introduced a new edition of the Journal of Marie Bashkirstseff. I have written elsewhere about Rozsika Parker as a key figure in making possible a feminist discourse on art in the Britain.39 Using the encounter with Carla Lonzi as a frame and a provocation, I can now see that in our collaboration we performed something of that to which Lonzi turned from writing about art: namely consciousness raising, communication between women in our Collective, ourselves and all those women whom we studied, researched, analysed and discussed. In belonging to a movement with its elaborating theoretical analyses, feminist theory as well as feminist-inflected artworks that demanded new ways of reading them, we could find resources with which both to analyse the phallocentric structures and to read, against its silencing grain, the already vivid and newly created inscriptions in, of and from the feminine. No longer was it the initiating gesture: ‘women of the world unite’ but we were calling ourselves to ‘think and create feminist effects!’

Notes 1

2 3

A prehistory in the West would inevitably include individuals such as philosopher Diotima, poet Sappho, political leaders Cleopatra and Theodora, for instance, but for an articulated formulation we might need to wait for the Italian-French writer Christine de Pizan’s (1364–1430) Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405). Major landmarks then are the rise of Protestantism, the Italian debates in the seventeenth century, eighteenth-century political philosophy associated with the issues or rights, and nineteenth-century address to education, economic independence, the vote, the abolition of enslavement and women’s freedom from domestic violence as well equality in labour. On the specificity of the body, see Rosalind Delmar, ‘What Is Feminism?’ in Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley, eds, What Is Feminism? (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 8–33. In Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), Lisa Tickner brings a

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contemporary feminist analysis to the visual imagery used in the campaigns in Britain for the vote, including a propaganda, media vilification and the use of parades and other spectacle. These indicate that the campaign and its opposition took place across various new forms of media, the illustrated press, cartooning and the use of public space reported on by the press. Using art historical and feminist analysis Tickner analyses the space or rather the ‘battleground of representation’ and for the first time made visible the degree to which public space and media were implicated in the ideological struggle. Nonetheless, this arena was not the visual arts formally or institutionally, and there was no concurrent form of analysis of the realm of the image and meaning. As far as I can trace in terms of languages I can study there is a short bibliography of writings that acknowledge women as artists and document the more recent changes in their numbers. I list them below: Pliny the Elder. Natural History Book 35: Chapter XL. Bocaccio. Famous Women, trans. Virginia Brown (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Giorgio Vasari. The Lives of the Artists. trans. Julia Conway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–93) Felsina pittrice, vite de’ pittori bolognesi (Bolgna, 1678). Ernst von Guhl, Die Frauen in die Kunstgeschichte (Berlin: Verlag von J. Guttentag, 1858). Elisabeth F. Ellet, Women Artists in All Countries and Ages (London: Richard Bentley 1859). Ellen C. Clayton, English Female Artists 2 vols (London: Tinsely Brothers, 1876). Walter Shaw Sparrow, Women Painters of the World from Caterina Vigri (1413–63) to the Present Day (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1905). Clara Erskine Clement, Women in the Fine Arts from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. (Cambridge, MA: Hought Mifflin & Co., 1904). Laura M. Ragg, Women Artists of Bologna (London: Methuen & Co.), 1904. Claire Richter Sherman, Holcomb, Adele M. Sherman, Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts 1820–1979 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981). From the point of view of protofeminist cultural analysis of gender and art, see Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion [1911] (London: Merlin Press, 1963) and Helen Rosenau, Woman in Art: From Type to Personality (London: Isomorph, 1944). I am preparing a republication with critical introduction to this latter landmark book. Audre Lorde, ‘Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference’ [1980] in Sister Outsiders: Essays and Speeches (Trumansburg and New York: The Crossing Press, 1984); Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York: Random House,1981/London: The Women’s Press, 1982). Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books,1978); Gayatri Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1987) Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) Giovanna Zapperi, Carla Lonzi: Un’ arte della vita (Milan: DeriveApprodi, 2017). An important text to emerge from this moment and process in Italian feminism can be found in Laura Passerini Autoritratto di Gruppo: Italy 1968 [1988], trans. by Lisa Erdberg, Autobiography of a Generation: Italy 1968 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1996). Passerini calls it the generation of 1968, which serves as a pointer such as c. 1970 does in the essay. On this practice in Italy, see Adriana Cavarero with Elisabetta Bertolino, ‘Beyond Ontology and Sexual Difference: An Interview with Italian Feminist Philosopher Adriana Cavarero’, Differences: A Journal Feminist Cultural Studies 19, no. 1

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10 11

12

13

14

Feminism and Art in Postwar Italy (2008), 128–67. The term was first used in English in 1964, see Kathie Sarachild, ‘Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon’, in Kathie Sarachild, Carol Hanisch, Faye Levine, Barbara Leon, and Colette Price, eds, Feminist Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978), 144–50. Sarachild introduced A Program for Feminist Consciousness Raising, to the US First National Women’s Liberation Conference in Chicago in November 1968. It was also used by Juliet Mitchell in her key article ‘Women: The Longest Revolution’, New Left Review 40 (December 1966), 11–37. This article in a leading journal of the political left begins: ‘The situation of women is different from that of any other social group. This is because they are not one of a number of isolable units, but half a totality: the human species. Women are essential and irreplaceable; they cannot therefore be exploited in the same way as other social groups can. They are fundamental to the human condition, yet in their economic, social and political roles, they are marginal. It is precisely this combination— fundamental and marginal at one and the same time—that has been fatal to them. Within the world of men their position is comparable to that of an oppressed minority: but they also exist outside the world of men.’ See, for instance, Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movenent of the 1970s: History and Impact (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996). Excerpts from complete text originally written for Guggenheim Foundation Grant, 1976; text used in Intercourse with … videotape performance and lecture, 1977. Published in Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective (Columbia: University of Missouri Press), 1989. Anda Rottenberg, Alina Szapocznikow 1926–1973 (Warsaw: Gallery Zachenta, 1998), 9. Even this exhibition did not effect the reclamation of the contemporary of Eva Hesse, Niki de St Phalle and Louise Bourgeois. Major exhibitions took place only in Brussels, Los Angeles and New York in 2012–13. See Griselda Pollock, ‘Traumatic Inscription: the sculptural dissolutions of Alina Szapocznikow’, in After-affects/Afterimages: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2013), 165–222. Hilary Robinson, ‘Feminism Meets the Big Exhibition: Museum Survey Shows Since 2005’, On Curating, 29 May 2016, 29–40. http://www.on-curating.org/issue29-reader/feminism-meets-the-big-exhibition-museum-survey-shows-since-2005. html#.WZm1CMcsWV8. (accessed 6 June 2018). At the Association of Art Historians Annual Conference in 2008, Alison Rowley and I chaired a panel on ‘The Year is 2007’ which focussed on Wack! And the feminist dimensions of Documenta 12 (2007) curated by Ruth Noack and Roger Buergel, inviting Indian feminist critic and art historian Geeta Kapur to explore the presence of Nareen Mohammedi and Shelagh Gowda in that exhibition. I should also mention Sammlung Verbund in Vienna, which, along with the Generali Gallery, Vienna under the direction of Sabine Breitwieser and the curatorial initiatives of Sylvia Eibelmayr at the Gallery im Taxipalais, Innsbruck, have curated in Austria major shows of feminist-inflected art from the 1970s (Mary Kelly, Valie Export, Martha Rosler) as well as their modernist predecessors such as Carol Rama, Alina Szapocznikow and Charlotte Salomon. Sammlung Verbund is directed by Gabriele Schor who has created this collection since 2004 under the specific rubric of a ‘feminist avant-garde’, a phrasing Schor took from an essay by the art critic Lawrence Alloway writing on ‘Women’s art in the 1970s’ in Art in America in 1975: ‘the women’s movement in art can be considered as an avant-garde because its members are united by a desire to

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19 20 21 22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29

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change the existing social forms of the artworld.’ Two of her key artists are Birgit Jürgenssen and Annegret Soltau. The initiating conference was held in Mexico City (19–2 July 1975), with conferences following in Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985). Julia Kristeva, ‘Women’s Time’, in Toril Moi, ed., The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 189. Kristeva: ‘Women’s Time’, 190. Gayle Rubin, ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex’ in Raina R. Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 157–210. Rubin’s position has changed since this early text. See Anne Emmanuelle Berger, The Queer Turn in Feminism: Identities, Sexualities, and the Theater of Gender (New York: Fordham Press, 2013). Joyce Gelb, Feminism and Politics: A Comparative Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). Juliet Mitchell, ‘Women: The Longest Revolution’, New Left Review 40 (December 1966), 11–37. Ibid., 17 By referencing Mitchell’s significant text in New Left Review, I want to stress the different histories of the emergence of feminist thought and practice. The British context was deeply inflected by both the alliance and the contest with new left socialist thinking, which incidentally would bring the issues of culture into the analysis of contemporary capitalism in profoundly important ways. The New Left was the home to the emergence of key figures in cultural studies such as Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams. What I find so interesting, however, in Mitchell’s initiating text is the absence of any other potentially feminist literature apart from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (French: 1949; Partial English translation, 1953) that specifically takes the question of women as its topic. Much of the great work of nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminist thinkers had been erased even within living memory. Her essay would ultimately evolve into her book Women’s Estate, published in 1971. The title adds to classical political theory of the three estates (Church, Monarchy and the Third Estate, the people), women as an entity of that order, and thus more than a class. C[hristine] D[elphy’, ‘Pour un matérialisme féministe’, L’ Arc, 61 (1975), trans. Elaine Marks in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds, New French Feminisms: An Anthology (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981), 197. On Freud, see Sarah Kofman, The Childhood of Art; an Interpretation of Freud’s Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) and Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (London: Routledge, 1999). Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistressses: Women, Art and Ideology (London: Routledge, 1981; reprinted as Pandora Books, and now I.B. Tauris, 2013), 154, New edition in Bloomsbury’s Revelations series in 2020. Cindy Nemser, ‘Eva Hesse’, in Art Talk: Conversations with Twelve Women Artists (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 201–29. David Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists (London: Chatto and Windus, 2001). Rozsika Parker, ‘Body Works’, Spare Rib (23 May 1974), 38. Ibid., 40.

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30 Margaret Priest left Britain in 1976 and has since lived in Canada, now being Emerita Professor of Fine Art at University of Guelph. 31 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966). 32 Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti ‘Negative Capability as Practice in Women’s Art’, Studio International 191, no. 979 (1976), 24–7, reprinted in Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, eds, Framing Feminsm: Art & The Women’s Movement (London: Pandora Books, 1987), 278–9. 33 Sauzeau Boetti, ‘Negative Capability’, 279. 34 Ibid. 35 John Lechte, Julia Kristeva (London: Routledge, 1990), 201–2. 36 Sauzeau Boetti, ‘Negative Capability’, 279. 37 Lucy Lippard, ‘Introduction: Changing since Changing’, in From the Centre: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1976), 1–2. 38 Thomas Hess and Elizabeth Baker, Art & Sexual Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1973). 39 Griselda Pollock, ‘Writing from the Heart’, in Jackie Stacey and Janet Wolff, eds, Writing Otherwise: Experiments in Cultural Criticism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 19–33.

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Sauzeau Boetti, A. M. (1979), ‘Negative Capability as Practice in Women’s Art’, Studio International 191, 979: 24–7. Sauzeau Boetti, A. M. (1979 [1987]), ‘Negative Capability as Practice in Women’s Art’, in R. Parker and G. Pollock, eds, Framing Feminsm: Art & The Women’s Movement (London: Pandora Books, 1987), 278–9. Shaw Sparrow, W. (1905), Women Painters of the World from Caterina Vigri (1413–63) to the Present Day, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Spivak, G. (1987), In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, London and New York: Routledge. Sylvester, D. (2001), Interviews with American Artists, London: Chatto and Windus. Vasari, G. (1991), The Lives of the Artists, trans. J. Conway Bondanella and. Bondanella, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. von Guhl, E. (1858), Die Frauen in die Kunstgeschichte, Berlin: Verlag von J. Guttentag. Wilke, H., Kochneiser, T. H., and Frueh, J. (1989), Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective, Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Zapperi, G. (2017), Carla Lonzi: Un’ arte della vita, Rome: DeriveApprodi.

Index Accardi, Carla 1, 7–9, 12, 23, 32, 46, 52–4, 56, 58, 78, 81–3 and Cooperativa Beato Angelico 209, 211, 213–15, 217–19, 223 exchange of ideas with Lonzi 159–65 feminist and artistic practices 121–3 in Morocco 120–1 Origine 217–18 Rivolta Femminile 116–17, 160 Sette Lenzuoli exhibition 165–6 Superiore e inferiore 162 Triplice tenda 121–2 Almerini, Katia 13, 209–24 Alviani, Getulio 53 Arcangeli, Francesco 25, 32 Argan, Carlo, Giulio 6, 32, 55, 196 art. See also Italy; United States and feminism 1–2, 4, 11–13 initiatives in Milan 213–14 in Rome and Milan during the 1970s 212–14 art criticism. See also Lonzi, Carla, Autoritratto anti-hermeneutic implication 12, 75–6 artist’s role 6, 10, 90–5 division of creative labour 55, 76 institutional framework and languages 2 interview format 78–9 Lonzi’s archives 111–15, 119, 161 male role 103 post-normative debate 12, 75–6, 80, 83 spectator’s role 10–11 speech act 78, 80–2 Arte Povera 2, 7–8, 12, 63, 92, 119, 183–4, 211 art history academic 57 contemporary 137 feminist 2, 149, 212, 216, 223–4, 249–51, 253–4, 259–61, 263, 267

male canon 80 postwar era 4 art writing audio recording 52, 54, 62 feminine subjection 251, 259, 265 Lonzi’s legacy 11–14, 102, 114 male canon 1–4, 9–11, 49, 55–8, 60, 64–5, 80, 83, 89 new forms 7, 261 non-binary relation 78, 80 polymorphous 76, 78, 83 traditional forms 58, 78 Ashton, Dore 137 Atkinson, Paul 47 autocoscienza 3, 11–13, 37, 50, 60, 65, 114–15 collective making 101, 105 Cooperativa Beato Angelico 148–9, 211, 215–17, 224 deculturation practice 119 idea of resonance 112 1970s Rome and Milan 212–13 race/sex analogy 115–16 Banotti, Elvira 1, 23, 116–18, 122–3, 159 Banti, Anna 5, 27 Barilli, Renato, Nuovi Nuovi 223 Battisti, Eugenio 6, 29, 57 Bemberg, Maria Luisa 124–5, 127 Bentivoglio, Mirella 3, 9 Bo, Carlo 5 Boccia, Maria Luisa 3, 174 Bochner, Mel 137 Bonito Oliva, Achille Mappa’72 art festival 214 Transavanguardia 223 Bourriaud, Nicolas 224 Buchmann, Sabeth 75–83 Calvera, Leonor 125 Calvesi, Maurizio 32

276

Index

Cambria, Adele 39 Carabba, LeoNilde 210, 213, 215, 222–3 and Cooperativa Beato Angelico 210, 213, 215, 222–3 Per mare e per cielo 222 Caruso, Vana 150 Castellani, Enrico 45, 81, 95, 108, 181, 192–4 Cavarero, Adriana 54 Cecchi, Emilio 5 Celant, Germano 7, 62–4 ‘Per una critica acritica’ (For an acritical criticism) 91 Chicago, Judy, Through the Flower 262 Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn 7–8, 174 Ci vediamo il mercoledì gli altri giorni ci immaginiamo 3, 213 Claire Fontaine 80 Cold War 24, 26, 126 Colucci, Anna Maria 141, 210–11, 214–15, 219–21, 223 Caos Caso Cosa 220 La donna oggetto 220 Osservazioni sulla realtà 220 Congress of Verrucchio 55 Consagra, Pietro 13, 23, 32–3, 35–8, 51, 62, 78, 81, 95–6, 100, 138–9, 141, 159–62, 164–73, 181, 183, 192–4, 200 conversation with Lonzi 168–9 Vita mia (My Life) 170 Conte, Lara 24 Cooperativa Beato Angelico 3, 209–10, 213–16 Accardi, Carla 209, 211, 213–15, 217–19, 223 autocoscienza 224 Carabba, Leonilde 210, 213, 215, 222–3 events 215–22 Gentileschi, Artemisia 215–16 members 210 Oursler, Stephanie 210–11, 213, 215, 219, 221 reconstruction 214–16 Cozzi, Leslie 13, 159–74 Croce, Benedetto 25 Davidson, Michael 55 de Beauvoir, Simone 25 egalitarian feminism 125, 242, 258

The Second Sex 123, 262, 271 n.22 Debord, Guy 61–2 de Cecco, Emanuela 13 de la Torre, Raùl, Cronica de una senora (Chronicle of a Lady) 125 de Lauretis, Teresa 241, 244, 251 Delphy, Christine 259 Dempsey, Mary Jane 116 de Zegher, Catherine 212 di Cori, Paola 13, 50, 65 Diderot, Denis Rameau’s Nephew 82 Donna Arte Società (Woman Art Society) 9, 213 Donne/Immagine/Creatività 3 Dorazio, Piero 190–1 Dorfles, Gillo 6, 32 Douglas, Mary 264 Duras, Marguerite ‘les parleuses’ 236–7 Effe (magazine) 9, 64–5 Ellena, Liliana 12, 99, 111–28 Ellwood, David 24 Equilibrismi 213 exhibition catalogues 58, 77, 182, 198 Fabro, Luciano 24, 36, 46, 54, 58, 81, 95–7, 112–13, 181, 189, 192–3, 195, 234 feminism, Lonzi’s view authenticity 89–95, 97–8, 102, 104 autonomy 89–90, 93–105 clitoral and vaginal woman 102–5, 114–15 on conquest of power 99–101, 118 deculturizzazione (deculturation) 102–4, 111, 115, 119, 123 mythicized male roles 103 new vocabulary 89–90 raison d’être 94 soggetto imprevisto (unexpected subject), notion of 105 subjectivity 89–105, 112, 115 turbulent archives 111–19, 123–8 feminist movement 1, 9, 23, 48, 50, 65 in Argentina 123–6 in France 242–3 postmodernism and art historiography 223–4 of 1970s 50, 212–14

Index second wave 2, 63, 159, 209, 212, 224 women-only exhibitions 213 Fiorino, Vinzia 118 Flores, Valeria, Escupamos sobre la diversidad 123 Fontana, Luciano 24, 35, 78, 146, 181, 198, 235 Fortin Olmos Cooperative 124 Foster, Hal 24 Foucault, Michel 77, 81 Franchi, Donatella 10, 10, 224 Friedan, Betty 125 La mística de la feminidad (The Feminine Mystique) 123 Fried, Michael 81 From Here to Eternity (film) 27 Fronte Nuovo artists 25 Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin 28 Galleria Notizie, Turin 23, 28–9, 31, 181–2 Gentileschi, Artemisia 27, 148–9, 215–16 Golub, Leon 137 Gramsci, Antonio 25, 27 Greenberg, Clement 30, 33, 81, 261 Hayles, N. Katherine 49–50 Hayward Annual Exhibition 8 Hesse, Eva 137, 139, 252, 260–2 Hess, Thomas 267 Holub, Renata 39 Iamurri, Laura 5, 24, 58, 63, 194, 214 international women’s movement 80 Italy. See also Cooperativa Beato Angelico anti-American campaign 24 artistic practices of 1970s 3, 212–14 neo-avant-garde art 6, 28 postwar art 2–3, 8, 31, 200, 209 Jaquinta, Anna 124 Johns, Jasper, Target with Plaster Casts 30 Jorn, Asger 29 Kelly, Mary 92, 254 King, Philip 8 Kirshner, Judith Russi 12, 23–39 Kittler, Teresa 13, 181–201 Klee, Paul 27, 31 Koch, Alexander, Kunst Verlassen 237

277

Koedt, Ann 118 ‘Myth of Vaginal Orgasm’ 117–18 Kooning, Willem de 25–6 Kounellis, Jannis 58, 78, 81, 119–20, 181, 190–2, 195–7, 234 Kramer, Hilton 81 Kranz, Kurt 46 Capire l’arte moderna 46 Kraus, Chris 12, 76, 78, 250 Kristeva, Julia 13, 241–2, 251, 255–6, 265–6 Künstlerinnen International 213 Laboratorio sperimentale of the Mouvement internationale pour une Bauhaus imaginiste 29 La femme 5 L’Approdo 5–6, 23, 56–7 L’Atelier gallery, Rabat 121 Latour, Bruno 75–8, 83 actor-network theory 75 Laura, Maria Rosa 126–7 Lebovici, Elisabeth 13, 233–44 Lechte, John 265–6 Les parleuses 236–7 Lippard, Lucy 2, 8, 12, 63, 77, 81, 115, 141, 240, 251, 260–2, 267 From the Centre: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art 262 Loda, Romana 3 Longhi, Roberto 4–5, 24–5, 27–8, 32, 56 ‘Sinopia per le arti figurative’ 57 Lonzi, Carla Accardi 36 Alviani 36 on art criticism vs. artistic creation 62–3 art reviews for Il Paese 4 audio recording 6, 46, 48–50, 52–5, 61–2 Autoritratto 1–2, 6–8, 10, 12–13, 23–4, 35–6, 39, 46–9, 51–6, 63–5, 76–8, 80–2, 89–105, 116–17, 119–20, 151, 159–62, 167, 214, 217–18 candid photographs 186–96 Castellani 36 ‘Clitoral woman and vaginal woman’ 102, 105, 115, 117–18, 125, 142 Consagra 36

278

Index

cultural writing 23–4 Dictionnaire de sociologie phalanstérienne 112–13 domestic setting, projection of 196–201 editing method 46 essays and reviews 23 family album 181–201 farewell/withdrawal to art criticism 75, 89–90, 98, 100–4, 151, 200, 213–14, 237–40 feminist discussions 2–4, 8–9, 11–14, 31–2, 48, 50, 58, 64–6, 82–3 Fontana 36 interview, audio-recorded 46, 48–9, 55 Kounellis 36 ‘La critica è potere’ 23, 64, 113 ‘La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale’ 216 ‘La solitudine del critico’ 6, 99 Le Douanier, book on 198 ‘Let’s Spit on Hegel’ 58, 64, 123 L’Incontro di Torino: Pittori d’America, Europa e Giappone 181 magnetophone, use of 50–2, 55, 57, 61–2 Nigro 36 Opere scelte di artisti americani 31 Paolini 36 Pascali 36 radical feminism 1, 127 Rapporti tra la scena e le arti figurative dalla fine dell’ ‘800’ 4, 29 rapporto, notion of 171, 173–4 responses to American art 12, 23–5, 27–37 Rotella 36 Sputiamo su Hegel 23, 39, 90 Taci, anzi parla 159, 161–2, 182, 185, 200 tape recorder, use of 6, 12, 48–58, 60–2, 65–6 Turcato 36 in Turin 5, 23, 28–9, 37 25 anni di pittura americana, dal 1933 al 1958 30 Twombly 36 Vai pure 13, 98, 159, 161, 166, 173 voice inscription 48–9, 54–8, 60–2, 64 writing for radio broadcast 5, 56–7

Lonzi, Marta 124 Lorde, Audre 250 Louis, Morris 33 magnetic recording machine 50–5 Philips Company advertisement 51–2 male culture 4, 10–11, 49, 60, 65 Manzoni, Piero 78, 150 Maraini, Toni 119–22 marcatré (magazine) 6–7, 23, 29, 57–8 Martini, Vanessa 5, 24 Mathieu, Georges 31 Mazières, Pauline Chéréméteff-de 121 Menzio, Eva 148–9, 210, 215–16 Milan gallery Azimuth 30 Milan Women’s bookstore 213 Millet, Kate, Sexual Politics 138 Mitchell, Juliet 257–8, 269–70 n.9 Molesworth, Helen 239 montage technique 7, 60, 78, 81–2, 112–13, 146, 182, 216, 233–5 Montanelli, Indro 122 Montemaggiori, Teresa 210, 215, 222 NAC (Notiziario Arte Contemporanea) 91 Nemser, Cindy 251, 260, 262–3 Neo-Dada 7, 185 network-based system art criticism, impact on 75 Nevelson, Louise 6, 23, 31, 38, 260 Nigro, Mario 45, 78, 181, 186–7 Noland, Kenneth 33 orality 49, 78 Orton, Fred 260 Oursler, Stephanie 210–11, 213, 215, 219, 221 Album of Violence 221 on Cooperativa Beato Angelico 210–11, 213, 215, 219, 221 Happy New Year 221 Il Segreto del Padiglione D’oro 213 Times Rites 221 232 fossils+wall scratchings 221 Ozouf, Mona 243 Paoli, Arturo 124, 126 Paolini, Giulio 24, 36, 45–7, 54, 96, 181, 192, 196, 198–9, 235

Index Self-Portrait 198 Paragone (magazine) 23, 25, 27–8 Parati, Graziella 39 Parker, Roszika 147, 150, 261, 263–4, 268 ‘Still out of Breath in Arizona’ and Other Pictures 263 Pascali, Pino 7, 45, 58, 92, 96, 120, 181, 186, 196–8 Passerini, Luisa 94, 114, 269 n.8 patriarchal culture 4, 9–11, 28–9, 49, 58, 64 Picasso, Pablo 30 Pinot-Gallizio, Giuseppe 29, 32, 61, 181, 196 La Gibigianna series 181 Pistoi, Luciano 23, 28, 37, 148–50, 181–2, 198 Pistoletto, Michelangelo 92, 183–4 Pollock, Griselda 8, 13, 23, 25, 29–31, 34, 38, 47, 249–68 Pollock, Jackson 23, 25, 29–31, 34, 38, 47 Pop Art 7, 32–3, 185 Portelli, Alessandro 48 Rauschenberg, Robert 7, 30, 32 Reckitt, Helena 224 Ricciardi, Cloti 64–5 Expertise: Conferma di identità 214 Ricoeur, Paul 76 Riopelle, Jean-Paul 6 Rivolta Femminile 1–3, 8–12, 23, 39, 49, 60, 64, 66 ‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della cultura maschile’ 10–11 Manifesto di Rivolta Femminile 112, 114, 116, 199 transnational connections 125–6 Rogoff, Irit 79–80, 127 Roncoroni Christeller, Gabriella 123–6 Rosenblum, Robert 33 Rossi-Doria, Anna 209 Rotella, Mimmo 80, 181, 190–1, 193 Rothko, Mark 30–1, 137–8 Rottenberg, Anda 253 Rubin, Gayle 256, 271 n.18 Said, Edward 250 Santoro, Suzanne 2, 9, 12, 210 Adriana’s letter 146

279

Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition 148–9, 215–16, 225 n.6 Black Mirrors 217 Cooperativa Beato Angelico 148–50 Drawing in and out 153 feminism 144, 146, 150–1 interview 137–53 Lonzi, Carla and 141–8 Lonzi’s ‘The clitoral and the vaginal woman’ 142 Mount of Venus 142, 144, 146, 148 Opere exhibition 217 Rivolta Femminile 138–9, 143, 145–6, 148, 153 Specchi Neri 151 Towards New Expression 140–2, 144, 146, 152, 216–17 Untitled (The Family) 151 Sauzeau-Boetti, Anne-Marie 3, 92, 150, 212, 217, 236, 251, 264–7 Scarpitta, Salvatore 54, 137–9, 142, 181, 187, 189 School of Visual Arts, New York 137–8 Second World War 24, 50, 123 Shahn, Ben 23, 25–8, 30, 34 Liberation 26 The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti 26 The Red Stairway 26–7 Rodman’s biography on 27 Spring 26–7 Shiraga, Kazuo 6 Silverman, David 47 Simondo, Piero 29 soggetto imprevisto 105 Sontag, Susan 12, 76–7, 82 ‘The Aesthetics of Silence’ 82 avant-garde discourse 82–3 Against Interpretation 33, 76, 82 Spare Rib (magazine) 263 Spivak, Gayatri 250 Sylvester, David 263 Szapocznikow, Alina 13 Tapié, Michel 5, 28–9 Un Art autre 25 Tobey, Mark 30–1 Trasforini, Maria Antonietta 224 Truppi, Silvia 211, 213, 215, 219, 223 Frammenti 219

280 Turcato, Giulio 45, 95, 150, 181 Twombly, Cy 23, 30, 32, 36, 37, 46, 78, 181 Ulrich, Alberto 29, 181 Ungaretti, Giuseppe 5 Unión Feminista Argentina 123–5 collective publications 125 United States. See also specific artists Abstract Expressionism 29–31 art writers 221, 237, 240, 243, 251–3, 255 avant-garde art 25–6 curatorial ideology 28 feminism 39, 215, 221, 237 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 26, 29–30, 34 post-war expressions, art 34 relationship with Europe 34 women’s movement 117 Vasari, Giorgio 54–5, 57, 261 Venice Biennale 6, 9, 30, 32, 95–7, 191, 193–4 international artistic exchanges 25 Ventrella, Francesco 1–14, 45–66, 107, 112, 137–53, 264 Venturi, Lionello 25

Index Vergine, Lea 6, 213, 236 visual arts 5, 46, 48, 57 Volpi, Marisa 5, 23–4, 26–9 Wakoski, Diane, ‘The Mechanic’ 137 Warhol, Andy 33, 47, 79–80 Weisser, Annette 76 Wilke, Hannah 252 Wittig, Monique 13, 243 Lesbian Body 244 Les Guérillères 244 Opoponax, The 244 ‘Paris-la-politique’ 243 women art exhibitions 9 artists 8, 10, 269 n.4 (see also specific artists) empowerment 101, 151, 212–13, 223 position in history 1, 8–9, 58–9, 209–24 (see also Cooperativa Beato Angelico) Wood, Grant, American Gothic 34 Zapperi, Giovanna 1–14, 48, 82, 89–105, 114, 137–53, 234, 251, 264