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Deculturalisation? Feminisms, Exhibitions and the Return of Carla Lonzi

2021; OpenEdition Journals; Volume: 56; Linguagem: Inglês

10.4000/critiquedart.76254

2265-9404

Maria Antonietta Trasforini,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

Since the 1970s, gender studies have stated that the differences between men and women are cultural rather than biological; but the recent return of Carla Lonzi (1931-1982) on the Italian and international art scene, for its part, has unfolded in the name of deculturalisation, a term as elusive as it is charged with ambiguous and radical fascination.Feminism, separatism and consciousness-raising were the paths Carla Lonzi chose for herself from 1970 onwards, when she left her brilliant career as an art critic, which had been culminated in 1969 with the publication of Autoritratto.In one of her essays, Sputiamo su Hegel, published in 1974, Carla Lonzi proclaimed, using the apodictic language of a real manifesto: "the deculturalisation we have chosen is our action.This is not a cultural revolution that could follow and integrate the structural revolution.[...] Challenging culture means challenging the evaluation of facts from the viewpoint of power." 1 According to Lonzi, culture is the most organised form of colonisation, and art is its most sophisticated field.Female artists, seeking their social identity in the art world, are the ideal colonised persons, the most refined -and therefore the most despicable -products of patriarchal culture.Lonzi's anathema is final: "I avoid feminist artists (and vice versa): with the excuse of reinforcing female expression, they benefit from the existential points of women in the only field where profit reigns -that is, male culture -thus betraying their companions who do not agree to sell themselves in exchange for a social identity." 2 Her path is very different from the one Linda Nochlin 3 chose in the English-speaking world during the same period.In the subtitle of her best-known work (Implications of the Women's Lib movement for art history and for the contemporary art scene), she applies cultural deconstruction to the art world.The impact of feminism was so strong that it allowed the reformulation of the categories of art history, stating that the unattainable myth of creativity and (male) artistry was cultural and therefore socially constructed.