Notes on the Index, Continued: Italian Feminism and the Art of Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca
Precipitated by the advent of organized Italian feminism, the 1970s saw the Italian art world transformed as more and more women joined its ranks, many of whom were fascinated by the expressive potential of language, and whose demands for inclusion, I will argue, were figured within their art. Many...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/cei, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Anglais |
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Cahiers d’études italiennes
2013
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| Témata: | |
| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | Precipitated by the advent of organized Italian feminism, the 1970s saw the Italian art world transformed as more and more women joined its ranks, many of whom were fascinated by the expressive potential of language, and whose demands for inclusion, I will argue, were figured within their art. Many of these artists have received scant scholarly mention, although their work contributed to both a widespread international fascination with language in the visual sphere and the more specific discourse of Italian feminism. While histories of Italian feminism tend to focus on political or philosophical developments, this essay instead engages with language as a means of understanding gendered self-presentation and subverting patriarchal discourse. In particular, this paper examines the Visual Poetry of two Italian women artists active during this transformational decade: Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca. I apply a structuralist approach pioneered by Rosalind Krauss to works that share a common fascination with the linguistic shifter and the indexical sign. I suggest that La Rocca and Bentivoglio’s self-referential strategies pointed to the expanding presence of women in the art world while simultaneously underscoring their prior absence. |
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