Artists Refusing to Work: Aesthetics Practices in 1970s Italy (original) (raw)
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Solidarity and Social Engaged Art in 1970s Italy
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Nineteen sixty-eight has long been heralded as a, if not the, pivotal moment of the post-World War II decades. Following the assassinations of Malcolm X and both Kennedys, the erection of the Berlin Wall, the war in Vietnam, the first manned space flights, the Second Vatican Council and the invasion of technology throughout Europe, that single year was perhaps the most powerful and techtonic paradigm shift of the many that the decade already had witnessed. The student uprisings in Paris, the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the invasion of Prague by Warsaw Pact troops all exacerbated what had been a markedly violent period, quelling the optimism that had marked much of the decade and setting the tone for the coming malaise of the 1970s.
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Deeply linked to the Catholic culture, the Italian society is often characterized as macho, giving only anecdotal space and visibility to women in the public sphere. Such phenomenon is to be equally found in the art world as proven by the quasi-elimination of women artists from the Italian art history, especially in the contemporary period, in spite of attempts lead from the 1970s by feminist artists and scholars to go against this tendency, after the apparition of strong feminist movements in art internationally. This paper aims at identifying the way(s) the Italian feminist art movement tackled the problematic situation of female art in the Italian society and in its institutions, and at defining its success and aporia.