Women and Art - Marina Abramovic
Marina Abramovic
1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia: lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands
When Marina Abramovic and her partner Ulay arrived in the Chinese city of Er Lag Shan on June 27, 1988, they had traveled 2,000 kilometers—the entire length of the Great Wall —in 90 days for this meeting at the edge of the world. It was also their last collaborative work as artists and as a couple. With this performance, titled The Lovers , Abramovic and Ulay transformed the personal experience of the end of their shared journey into a simple performance staged in a real geographical location. They had walked toward each other from opposite ends of the Great Wall only to separate again, forever. Interpreted as a geometry of love, the painful separation of their biographies appears as an inevitable result of a law of life.
Since 1976, Abramovic and Ulay had collaborated on works in which their symbolic relationship was assumed as the basis of existential experiences: in the performance Breaking In/Breaking Out (1977), with their nostrils blocked by cigarette butts, they exchanged breath until they ran out of oxygen; in Interruption Space (1977), they took a run-up to repeatedly crash into a wall until they were exhausted; in Light/Dark (1977), they slapped each other until one of them stopped. The aim of these exercises was to subject the body to extreme physical states and test its limits. The audience's reaction was a key component of this physical self-experience, whether in the form of mental attention or concrete intervention, as in the case of the performance Incision (1978), during which Abramovic was attacked by a spectator.
For the Nightsea Crossing performance series, 1981–86, however, the participants were carefully selected. Marina Abramovic was primarily interested in the intersection of political and individual history, so she and Ulay used their shared birthday as the occasion for a performance— Communist Body—Fascist Body . On November 30, 1979, they invited some friends to their apartment to celebrate; the guests found Abramovic and Ulay lying on a mattress, sleeping or pretending to be asleep, with two tables set beside them, set with dishes, champagne, and caviar from their respective countries of origin. The performance illustrated the details of two biographies unwittingly marked by a dictatorship: Marina's birth certificate bore an official stamp with a red star, Ulay's with a swastika.
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“Da Vienna a Roma. Le meraviglie degli Asburgo dal Kunsthistorisches Museum” al Museo del Corso
L'esposizione, curata da Cäcilia Bischoff, non è solo una sfilata di capolavori, ma un'indagine sul collezionismo come strumento politico e diplomatico. Il percorso ricostruisce come gli Asburgo abbiano costruito la propria immagine imperiale attraverso il mecenatismo, trasformando il Kunsthistorisches Museum in un archivio del sapere europeo. Nella prima sala ci accolgono Sissi e Franz sotto forma del loro doppio ritratto. Sono loro che hanno finalizzato la costruzione dell’odierno Museo, chiamando gli artisti più importanti dell’epoca, tra cui anche Klimt. La prima sala, infatti, non mostra solo in una mappa interattiva quali siano stati gli spostamenti dei più grandi artisti presenti in collezione, ma presenta anche i legami architettonici precisi che uniscono Palazzo Cipolla al palazzo viennese, spiegandone la storia anche attraverso installazioni video nelle quali "tornano in vita" i loro architetti: Gottfried Semper, Carl Hasenauer e Antonio Cipolla. Dopo l’introduzione, il percorso si suddivide in contesti geografici diversi che invitano a scoprire gli artisti di corte di vari Paesi e le caratteristiche che li accomunano. Per godersi appieno la visita bisogna lasciarsi alle spalle il concetto di mostra tematica o cronologica: ogni sezione presenta oggetti diversificati, ma ogni singolo pezzo è un capolavoro assoluto. Un percorso breve che può essere considerato quasi un buffet di eccellenze, tra le quali si fa fatica a scegliere. Già la prima sezione presenta opere di Van Dyck, Rubens, Pourbus e Brueghel il Giovane. Spaziamo tra miti, allegorie, ritratti, scene di genere e nature morte. Tanti frammenti preziosi, ognuno mirabile a modo suo, che permettono di comprendere la vastità dei soggetti fiamminghi: dalla minuzia assoluta nella resa del dettaglio lenticolare alla pennellata veloce e liquida che si sfalda, muovendo l'animo dell’effigie. Si prosegue con una Wunderkammer in miniatura, che espone una mela marcia in marmo e una testa di piccole dimensioni che allude al decadimento umano, con metà volto giovanile e l’altro ridotto a teschio e consumato dai serpenti. Sono presenti lussuose coppe realizzate con conchiglie di Nautilus e pietre dure, oggetti che all’epoca venivano esposti nei banchetti come simboli di ricchezza e potere e che oggi sono sempre meno noti.La sezione degli olandesi spazia dai precursori delle scene di genere, come Pieter Aertsen, ad autori come Frans Hals, caratterizzato da una ritrattistica sciolta, ma sobria e d’impatto. La sezione dei tedeschi presenta invece opere di Cranach — tra cui una delle molte versioni di Adamo ed Eva — e lavori “iperrealisti” che comprendono non solo nature morte, ma anche uno dei più famosi trompe l’oeil di Sebastian Stoskopfs: una tela che sembra accogliere l’incisione di una Galatea. Si narra che, quando l’opera fu' presentata per la prima volta, l’imperatore cercò di afferrare la carta prima di capire l’inganno e scoppiare a ridere. Le ultime sezioni sono nuovamente una corsa tra capolavori: parliamo di opere di Arcimboldo, Velázquez, Veronese, Tintoretto, Moroni e dei lavori, che forse più mi hanno colpito, come la Morte di Cleopatra di Guido Cagnacci e il Riposo durante la fuga in Egitto di Orazio Gentileschi.Il fulcro concettuale della mostra, infine, è l’Incoronazione di spine di Caravaggio, a cui viene dedicata una stanza intera. Il volto morbido e pallido del Cristo, rassegnato ma forte, si staglia tra le figure che lo circondano: i carnefici con la pelle consumata dal sole, le mani forti e le unghie sporche. È una lezione sull’analisi cruda della realtà, l'ingresso prepotente del quotidiano nell’arte sacra che segnerà la pittura per sempre. Difficile dare un giudizio univoco su questa mostra, che spazia tra temi, nazioni e corti. È un percorso che racconta il meglio che l’epoca ebbe da offrire, cercando di districare le motivazioni per cui proprio questi generi e questi artisti ebbero così tanta fortuna presso le principali corti del continente. Ogni opera a sé stante è un capolavoro; non ci sono oscillazioni di qualità. A "spizzichi e bocconi" veniamo introdotti a ciò che alimentava la reputazione imperiale: doni principeschi e pittori desiderati, costantemente in viaggio per soddisfare i più importanti collezionisti. È certamente un’occasione unica per ammirare queste eccellenze senza prendere un volo per Vienna, ma forse è anche lo stimolo ideale per fare i bagagli e scoprire quali altre meraviglie abbia da offrire il museo viennese.
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The female body in art
In Western art, the narrative of the female body has long remained dominated by men, and furthermore, its representation is rare and marginalized in older art. It's no coincidence that when Artificial Intelligence is asked to create a portrait based on the canons of modern art, the result is a white, middle-class man, the fruit of the selection and subsequent elaboration of as many as fifteen thousand portraits created between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries. This is what has been codified for years in the art world. The female body was initially relegated almost exclusively to sacred figures and devotees; later, mythology and noble portraits were added. Only in the nineteenth century did the female body no longer require narrative justification for its representation, but instead became a fully-fledged artistic repertoire on a grand scale, decontextualized from sacred or profane narrative and embraced as a subject in its own right. As recently as 1989, the art collective Guerrilla Girls (note that the feminine version of the term does not exist) asked: "Do women have to be naked to enter the Met Museum? Less than 4% of the artists in the modern art section are women, yet 76% of the nudes are female." This article, however brief, aims to provide a brief glimpse into the female body in art, especially in the last century. We will browse, in the form of slides, some of its most dramatic interpretations, because a more comprehensive analysis would require a book. However, we will look at some iconic moments that codified a new vision of women and ushered in new freedoms, making women part of the discussion, exposing themselves directly to interrogate political and social issues. Probably the painting that most opens the world to a new vision of the female body is Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World. With an almost photographic realism, it depicts a female vulva in close-up and from a foreshortened angle. The allegory is supported by the title: it is therefore not an erotic painting, but a factual reality narrated in a raw manner, leaving room for the power of the body to generate life, in a hymn to fertility, life, and even sex. Previously, to paint a female nude, a pretext was needed; only later does it become a concrete body, immersed in the reality of everyday life. One of the first women of the twentieth century to use her own body as a model, not for social affirmation but to atone for her physical and mental pain, was Frida Kahlo. After the accident in which she was impaled by a pole, she spent long periods confined to bed in a corset. Her imagination was not only transferred to canvas, in her dreamlike bodies and disturbing visions, but she also painted the corset itself, attempting to atone for her pain with the power of color. A decisive turning point came with performance art, arguably the greatest turning point. Artists like Valie Export, Gina Pane, and Marina Abramović didn't create works depicting bodies; rather, the body itself became a canvas, a form of expression, communication, and scandal. Valie Export, with works such as Tap and Touch Cinema (1968), brings reflections into the realm of desire and the gaze. Wearing a box that leaves her breasts exposed, she invites passersby to touch, reversing the traditional dynamics of cinema and vision. The body is no longer a distant, two-dimensional image, but a presence capable of responding and destabilizing. Export denounces media objectification and restores control of her own exposure to women. In 1974, in Rhythm 0, Abramović offers herself to the audience as a passive object, providing seventy-two tools, including a loaded pistol. The experiment reveals how quickly the gaze can turn violent when the female body is perceived as available. The artist does not represent vulnerability: she lives it, exposes it, forcing the viewer to confront their own responsibility. Years later, in The Artist Is Present, the still and silent body instead becomes a space of connection, emotional intensity, and resistance, especially in the encounter with Ulay, who had long been her companion in life and art. Through actions like Azione sentimentale, Gina Pane uses cuts and wounds as symbolic tools. Her performances, often characterized by small acts of controlled self-harm, are not gestures to spectacularize pain, but rather attempts to make collective suffering visible. Blood becomes a sign, the body a political surface. Pane removes the wound from the private sphere and places it in the public realm, transforming sacrifice into language. These practices pave the way for many contemporary artists. Consider Shirin Neshat, who, through photography and video art, addresses issues related to female identity in the Islamic context, political repression, and war. Often, her own face becomes the spokesperson for writing and resistance. The body becomes a narrative surface, an archive of memory, and a means of protest. Female artists no longer demand inclusion in a pre-existing narrative, but construct a new one, bringing their physical presence into play. The transition from idealization to concreteness is not merely aesthetic, but much more. The female body becomes autonomous, a depicted subject or a means of communication; a woman's reclamation of her own body and its perception. She takes possession of her own space, seeking to free herself from a narrative to which she has been subjugated for too long, to finally find her own voice.
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What does it mean to archive a work of art?
You may have already heard of archives, foundations, and artist associations. These constantly growing bodies were created to protect the intellectual legacy of the greatest artists of our time. While for ancient art, it is essential to seek the opinion of experts specialized in a specific geographical and temporal context, for painters of the twentieth century and beyond, specific institutes have been established to collect information on artists. This means we are dealing with a group of experts, sometimes even family members, who possess almost all of an artist's documentary material (diaries, letters, papers, receipts) and bibliographical material and have dedicated their lives to studying their work in all its phases. Archiving is a legal requirement for anyone intending to sell a work by an artist with a reference archive, but it is also much more. It is an act of cataloging, protection, and valorization. It's not a wasted investment, but the opportunity to officially return a work to its creator. Cataloging, in the art world, is indispensable because it allows us to reconstruct the entirety of a painter's artistic expressions, study even the lesser-known phases, and determine a series of elements intrinsic to the evolution of a figurative language. However, it is also a form of protection. If a painting were forged, the authentication (which must always accompany the work) would provide further proof of the original. If a work were stolen, the Archives have the documentation to certify that it belongs to a specific museum or private individual (since transfers of ownership are usually also traced) and help provide the documents needed for its identification and recovery. If a work were destroyed, the Archives preserve photographs that can restore its image to the scholarly community, even in the absence of the original. Archiving is also a way to enhance the value of the painting. What informed collector would ever buy a work at a high price without a document certifying its authenticity? The established collector is someone who has built up a solid understanding and market awareness and will not make the mistake of purchasing and investing large sums of money without adequate certainty: he or she will always do his or her due diligence. Because, until a work is accompanied by its certificate, it is worth nothing. It may have ethical value, but it will have no market value because it is not marketable. And this is where we also come to the legal issue. There are three main laws that regulate the art market: Article 64 of the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape and Articles 648 and 712 of the Criminal Code. What do these laws tell us? The art market has specific rules to protect transparency and legality. Article 64 of the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape Article 64 of the Cultural Heritage Code requires art sellers to provide buyers with documentation certifying their authenticity, attribution, and provenance, or a declaration with all available information. On the criminal front, Article 648 of the Criminal Code punishes receiving stolen goods, that is, the purchase or concealment of goods originating from crime for profit; those acting in the exercise of their professional activity risk more severe penalties. Finally, Article 712 of the Criminal Code concerns reckless purchasing: anyone who purchases suspect goods without verifying their legitimate provenance is punishable. In short, those operating in the sector must always guarantee traceability, accuracy, and verification of the origin of the works. In other words, if a work, whether original or not, that has a reference archive, is not accompanied by an authentication, it is not recognized by the market. It is not handled by professionals in the sector, because they would be acting in violation of the law: this poses a risk for the intermediary, seller, and buyer due to possible charges of receiving stolen goods and reckless purchasing. An unarchived painting remains a wall painting: it shouldn't leave the home; it remains anonymous and unknown. Of course, some perceive archiving as a risk, but what are the alternatives? The alternative is to expose oneself to the law and take risks, as we find confirmation online. In Ravenna, for example, a private individual attempted to sell a Schifano, which was declared a fake by the Mario Schifano Archive. The result? The work was seized by the Carabinieri of the Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and a lawsuit was initiated, at the end of which the owner risks five years in prison and a €10,000 fine. Of course, submitting the work for archiving carries a certain risk: it involves an "authenticity check," and the outcome is not guaranteed. But the only alternative is to enjoy the work privately, forgotten by the broader art scene, and deny potentially authentic works the recognition they deserve. Art. 64.1: Anyone who engages in the business of selling to the public, exhibiting for commercial purposes, or acting as an intermediary for the sale of paintings, sculptures, graphic works, or objects of antiquity or historical or archaeological interest, or who habitually sells such works or objects, is required to provide the purchaser with documentation certifying their authenticity, or at least their probable attribution, and provenance; or, failing that, to issue, in the manner established by the laws and regulations governing administrative documentation, a declaration containing all available information regarding their authenticity, or probable attribution, and provenance. This declaration, where possible given the nature of the work or object, is attached to a photographic copy. Art. 648: Outside the cases of complicity in the crime, whoever, in order to procure a profit for himself or others(2), purchases, receives or conceals money or things deriving from any crime, or in any case interferes in having them purchased, received or concealed(3), is punished with imprisonment from two to eight years and with a fine from 516 to 10,329 euros [709, 712]. The penalty is increased when the act concerns money or things deriving from the crime of aggravated robbery pursuant to article 628, third paragraph, aggravated extortion pursuant to article 629, second paragraph, or aggravated theft pursuant to article 625, first paragraph, n. 7 bis. The penalty is imprisonment from one to four years and a fine from 300 to 6,000 Euro when the act concerns money or things originating from a contravention punishable by arrest of a maximum of one year or a minimum of six months(4). The penalty is increased if the act is committed in the exercise of a professional activity(4). If the act is of particular triviality, the penalty is imprisonment of up to six years and a fine of up to 1,000 Euro in the case of money or things originating from a crime and the penalty is imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of up to 800 Euro in the case of money or things originating from a contravention(5). The provisions of this article also apply when the perpetrator of the crime from which the money or things originate is not imputable [85] or is not punishable [379, 649, 712] or when a condition of prosecution relating to such crime is missing. Art. 712: Anyone who, without having first ascertained their legitimate origin, purchases or receives for any reason whatsoever things which, due to their quality or the condition of the person offering them or the amount of the price(1), there is reason to suspect that they come from a crime(2), shall be punished with imprisonment of up to six months or with a fine of not less than 10 Euro. Anyone who arranges for the purchase or receipt for any reason whatsoever of the above-mentioned things, without having first ascertained their legitimate origin, shall be subject to the same penalty.
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