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Welcome to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. I am Elizabeth Sackler.
It is a pleasure to be here. I hope you all had a wonderful summer. I did. This autumnal
weather, I think we're in Indian Summer. This is our first program of the season that I've
had an opportunity to come and introduce our speaker. I'm particularly excited about that
today. As many of you know, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, is an
exhibition space with a permanent house of the diner party by Judy Chicago. We are an
education facility dedicated to feminist art. Our mission for three and a half years now
has been to raise awareness of feminism's cultural contributions. We host lectures,
discussions on feminist art, feminist theory, and feminist activism. Since our inception
we've hosted scores, I think we must be going on hundreds at this point, of excellent and
wideranging programming. Today is the first lecture as I said that I've had the pleasure
to introduce my friend, my very good friend, Mary Beckinsale. I met Mary in Florence in
Italy, obviously, in 2004. We were randomly seated as luncheon partners in a room that
held more than 40 people. We immediately discovered our shared passion about the then contemporary
political heirs, our rage at unethical behavior, and our tendencies for provocative social
activism. And, of course, our love of all things, feminist, and of art. Our relationship
has grown and deepened over the years. I am an enormous fan of Mary Beckinsale, and of
my painting mistro, her husband, Jules Maidoff, and their wonderful institution in Florence,
the Studio Art Centers International. Mary and I have been discussing what makes, what
means feminist art for a couple of years now. There is no one better equipped I would call
her Encyclopedia Beckinsale to reinterpret major works of art throughout history by identifying
their feminist content. This is what she has taken on for this lecture. She's moving beyond
traditional analysis and recasting these works in this new and in this scholarly light. There
are only a handful of people with the knowledge and brilliance of mind this requires. Mary
is in the company of our beloved Linda Lochmann and Lucy Lippard. Let me read you a brief
bio which does not include a myriad of things. Mary Beckinsale, internationally recognized
art educator and art historian, is President of Studio Art Centers International. Since
1993 SACI has been affiliated with Bowling Green State University in one of the premier
studyabroad institutions in Italy and worldwide. Under Dr. Beckinsale's leadership in Rome
and has grown to over 100 to 200 students each semester, with 80 percent of SACI students
coming from American universities. The program draws upon the rich past of Florence plus
its resources in museums, architecture art specialists and wide cultural offerings, while
concurrently presenting contemporary developments in Italian art and culture. I would like to
say also that when I met Mary and Jules it was as if, I don't know... our molecules immediately
wed. Since I am trying to think what year we started at but there is Elizabeth A. Sackler
SACI scholarship, which provides a young woman student artists to come and supports her at
SACI in Florence, which has been a wonderful thing. I am delighted to have done that. Mary
received the degree in art history from Cambridge University and the Master's degree in Philosophy
from the Warburg institute in London in 1968, with the thesis on the conquest of Mexico.
It was in those years that she had the good fortune to study with some of the greatest
intellectuals of the last century including Michael Jaffe, Ernst Gombrich, Michael is
it Baxandall, probably I should know who this is, so that's an embarrassment to me and Otto
Kurz. Later she received a twoyear Leverhulme scholarship to continue her research in Spain.
But, those were the years of Franco's dictatorship and that experience changed her life. On returning
to England she wanted to help social justice and taught in high schools in the North of
England. These were the years of feminism and social change. Oxford and Cambridge colleges
opened their doors to women and women began to win greater social rights. I think Mary
will tell you. I will ask her to tell you how many men there were when she was there
and how many women. So maybe you could just include that little piece of historic information
because it tells those who might not be aware of what we have accomplished over the last
40 years, 'what' we have accomplished over the last 40 years. She later moved to Florence
where she became Dean at SACI, working with Jules Maidoff, the painterartist who founded
SACI in 1975 and whom she married. In August 2010, this past August, Mary Beckinsale was
awarded an honorary degree from BGSU. So it is a wonderful opportunity. It is a real pleasure
for me to welcome Mary to this side of the Atlantic, and to thank her for coming to point
out how we have been trained to see art, and to suggest how we can refresh our personal
lenses as we approach art in whatever physical context we see it, whether it's museums, galleries,
or other. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Mary Beckinsale. Well I hope I live up to
that extremely enchanting introduction. And obviously, first of all, I want to thank Elizabeth
for inviting me to talk at the center, but also the Brooklyn Museum for giving me this
possibility of talking to you. This lecture grew out of a discussion that I had over two
years with Elizabeth, which is "What is feminist art?" Is it art that is produced by women?
Or is it actually the content of the work that should be feminist or not feminist? And
on that challenge, I thought as an art historian, as a trained art historian, I'm going to look
back into the past, into the iconic pieces that we know from the past, and say which
of these are actually indisputably feminist. And there are a lot of pieces that you can
argue one way or the other. A piece like the "Judith of Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi,
you can't completely take that with you. So I decided I would select four and see what
happens selecting four. So it's a sort of experiment that I went through. And if any
of you are art historians or teachers, it's an experiment you might try for yourselves.
To actually look back over the work you love and see if any of them are actually feminist
in content. Do come and sit down. There's lots of seats. So that's where I started from.
But before I actually go through the four pieces that I selected and worked on, I have
to say that in this instance, my definition of feminism is the simplest one. It's the
idea that a work of art could portray the power, independence, quality, dignity, and
identity of women. Before actually starting on those four I want to go through a few other
images just to put you in a sort of context. The oldest artworks that have been found anywhere
in the world are these artworks that come from the Paleolithic or the Neolithic and
they're so called Venuses. They actually date from as far back as 35,000 years ago. The
first Venus of this kind was found in the Dordogne over a century ago. It's related
to the artwork of the CroMagnon. More than 100 of these pieces have been found and steadily
more are being dug up. They range from very tiny charms that you'd wear on a necklace
to actually the Willendorf Venus that was found in 2009. This is the one they just recently
found. And when they found it, it was broken into six pieces. It was found in the headwaters
of the Danube last year. They restored it and put it back together. It must have taken
hundreds of hours to carve this piece, which was made out of mammoth tusks. There are Venuses
like this that are usually painted red. They were put in sacred places in the dwellings
that people lived in. They range over time from 35,000 years ago to about 3,500, such
as this one from Malta, which is more recent and comes from 3,600 years ago. These pieces
are found all over Europe and from Siberia to Irkutsk. Strangely enough none have been
found on the Iberian Peninsula, which is Spain. They may have found one in Morocco but this
is the only area where they are found. It's the extended Western Europe that these pieces
keep turning up. They seem to show the appreciation of women as a symbol of fertility, and plenty,
and a source of life. They represent the idea of women as the earth goddess or of abundance.
Since the time that I studied archeology in the late 1960s in the 1960s there was this
idea of that certainly in the Neolithic period, society was matrilineal and matriarchal. It's
now being deeply challenged this idea. All sorts of different patriarchal systems have
been suggested. But, if you have ever visited Malta, and Malta, just in case you don't know
is an island that is 120 miles off Tunisia, and 90 miles off Sicily, so it's sort of a
key strategic place in the middle of the Mediterranean. It's the place where the knights of Malta,
when they lost Rhoades, they were put on this barren island to try and defend Christendom
from the might of Islam as it was spreading across the Mediterranean. They have lived
there ever since. But what is extraordinary about Malta, is that it was originally attached
to the mainland when the sea was less deep, as was Sicily. It had an extraordinary flora
and fauna which they're now digging out. For example, it had miniature hippopotamuses,
and miniature elephants, and then it had giant swans, and what makes it sound even more like
"Alice in Wonderland,� is it had giant dormice. It had this bizarre sort of different type
of flora and fauna, and what they found on Malta are these extraordinary temples with
these figures, and it seems as though they had a cult of the Goddess or of twin Goddesses.
They seemed to have been involved in a trance or dreamlike cult of rebirth about the ongoing
cycle of birth and death. Now the idea of the cult of rebirth on Malta was first explored
by a female scholar called Maria Gimbutas between 1921 and 1994. It's now been more
recognized that her work seems to be correct. Fairly recently in 1902, they discovered something
called the Hypogeum on Malta, which is a temple that dates from 4,000 BC. It has three levels
and an oracle chamber. In it they discovered the sleeping lady on the left, which is not
by Botero, it is actually these large, happy ladies, OK? These are some of the temples
that they have found. Now, they estimate that there were over 40 temples of this kind on
Malta. Now there are remains of 20 of them, and six of them are in major state of preservation.
?gantija, on the temples on Gozo, which is a tiny island just next to Malta, is thought
to be the oldest freestanding structure in the world. It dates from 3,600 BC. It's built
of these massive; I mean enormous limestone blocks, alternating in grand pink. They're
often called the mother and the daughter temple. You have to remember that these temples were
built before proper tools. So that the tools that they were shipping in, obsidian tools,
were coming in from these tiny islands off Malta called Lick Perry and Pantalaria. These
temples have walls that are six feet high and blocks that weigh over 50 tons. They are
in clover form or circular shapes and they seem to be very female and womb like. You
can clearly see where the places were where there were curtains, where there were libations
and there were sanctuaries and they're decorated with beautiful geometrical decorations. Inside
these you find these extraordinary figures, like these, what we could fore call fat ladies
basically. It seems fairly clear that this was a cult, a female cult about fertility
and so on. There is another work that I want to include before I start on my four pieces,
which I think is another great example of work that is certainly about women and that
is the Villa of the Mysteries. If you know the Villa of the Mysteries, it's a villa that
was buried when Vesuvius erupted. It was buried in ash and it wasn't found until the last
century. But, because it had been buried in ash, it was preserved in the most beautiful
state of preservation. And these frescos are done by an extraordinary artist. I mean they're
absolutely outstanding. What it represents is a female cult, a Dionysian Greek cult,
which was probably initialing girls into the secrets of marriage and sexuality. It was
hidden inside a villa, probably belonging to Julia the wife of Claudius, but perhaps
one of her servants. It's still all being worked on. It dates from 186 B.C. And because
it is a secret cult where men were not admitted, it is very possible and probable, that these
frescos were painted by women. The best discussion on this work is by this extraordinary scholar,
a woman called Bice Benvenuto. She wrote a book called Concerning the Rites of Psychoanalysis
or the Villa of the Mysteries. If you look at some of these frescos, for example, the
figure running in in a state of terror is the initiate, who is terrified by what she's
going to find. It's quite complicated, there she is. This figure on the left is Dominia,
the matron of the Dionysian rituals. They take you through the punishment that is actually
delightful, and the unveiling of the phallus. It's a very complicated and deeply profound
ritual. This is what she says about it. In many ways, what she says about it is better
than what I can say. "The frescoes lead you through the terror of initiation to enjoyment,
knowledge of ecstasy and shame, but not of guilt. This is too complicated a subject to
really go into depth here, but it needs to be noted as a major feminist work. It shows
a work that deals with reality, representation, reason and experience, being and nonbeing.
It shows that the real is neither rational nor is it truth, and that reality as perceived
by our senses deceives us and drives us out of our senses." Basically, it shows the female
unconscious. It's really worth looking at this work and seeing what she writes about
it, because it's very extraordinary. She ends up with this wonderful conclusion, which is,
"Beecher ironically notes that women marry hoping to find a god, but are disappointed
to find a man." After this introduction, I want to go on to the four works that I have
chosen today. All four are sculpture, and they all four reproduce female figures. The
first is the "Great Frieze" of the Pantheon off in Berlin. That's the one at the bottom.
It's a very complicated piece, so I'm not doing the top and I'm not doing the top frieze.
I'm talking about the bottom frieze, which is extraordinary. It was cut in marble between
197 and 156 BC, and it was built in the Greek city of Pergamon. Now, it's called Bergama
in today's Turkey in northwest Anatolia. This temple was connected with the great library
of Pergamon, which was second only to that of Alexandria. It was built to outmatch the
Athenian temple of the Acropolis in Athens. It was a challenge. It was saying this better
and bigger and larger than Athens. And it's to Athena. It's mentioned in the Bible in
the book of Revelations. It actually says, "In Pergamon, where Satan has his throne."
And in Ampelius, in the "Libra Memorialis," it talks about a "large marble altar, 40 feet
high, with a great many sculptures, among which is a battle of the giants." The altar
is now in Berlin on the Museum Island. It was shipped there from Turkey between 1879
to 1904, and it was first displayed in 1910. The Russians took it for war reparations,
and it wasn't returned to Berlin until 1956 by Khrushchev, so you couldn't actually see
it until 1956. The Gigantomachia that's this battle with the giants, which I'm about to
speak about it's 371 feet long, or it's 113 meters. Although the Greeks didn't use those
measurements, the interesting thing is, it doesn't matter how you measure this. The measurements
always come out as prime numbers. That's quite peculiar. The frieze is composed of a sequence
of isolated and tightly knit and selfcontained groups and figures. Each group was assigned
to one workshop. What happened was that these large blocks of marble were cut, and they
were sent. One would be sent to Mykonos. One would be sent to another place in Greece.
They would carve their particular figures, and then they put them all together. Quite
extraordinary. They must have had some way of communicating. Perhaps they had a huge
drawing or something. The different blocks were being done by different parts of the
Greek empire, as it was then, to show their loyalty. They went to different studios all
over the area. We know this because the workshop, the signatures, and the city names are often
carved on the blocks, so we know where some of them came from. We equally know some of
the names of the gods and goddesses because they're still legible. Some of the sculptures
could have been carved by women, because more and more they're discovering, the archaeologists,
that female sculptors did exist in Greece, and were working with male sculptors in these
different areas. The blocks come from a marble quarry in Marmara, and they consist of 380
tons of high quality marble. The sequences have been read as, East, the Olympians; (now
I'll go on a bit) West, the earth and water gods and goddesses; South, the celestial and
light deities; North, the gods and goddesses of night and constellations. Obviously, the
one on the left are the water gods, so you can identify the different groups. But it
can also be seen as showing the descendants of the Titans or the Olympians, and that the
whole altar could be an ancestral record of the Attalid kings. That's the later Greek
kings. The temple can be seen as an offering from Eumenes II to the gods, stressing his
divine inheritance and giving thanks to the fact that he just survived an assassination
attempt when he was in Delphi. The frieze consists of 100 figures. 28 of them are animals.
59 are giants. The giants are being wiped out. You can see they're having a very tough
time. They are definitely crumbling, there. There are 20 gods, and there are 34 goddesses.
Now, I want to repeat that. There are 20 gods. And there are 34 goddesses that's 14 more
female figures than male figures. The goddesses are warlike and victorious, and they're just
as strong as their male counterparts. Look at her she's getting him. They are confident,
unruffled, and physically competent, showing an easy power. They are carefully and with
graceful force killing the giants, who represent unreason and the unnatural. They are totally
equal to the gods. This is a stunning and powerful work. If you've never seen it, it
is worth going. You stand in the middle of this frieze, which is shown inside. Originally,
it would have been on the outside of the building, but you're in the middle of it. As a woman,
you are suddenly aware of the fact that you are surrounded by these powerful women, bashing
a jar of snakes over a man's head or skewering him with a... You have never seen anything
like this before. It is quite extraordinary. It really is like nothing else. It's worth
going and having a look. I'm now going to jump from the Pergamon Altar. I'm going to
jump 1,700 years, which is quite a long time. The works I've picked tend to be in Italy
because I live in Italy, and they tend to be in Florence. Normally, for my students,
I can say you can go and see this, but you're going to have to come to Florence to see these.
I'm jumping ahead to a work that is in the Bargello Museum in Florence. It's a work that
talks about female identity. It's Bernini's great portrait of Costanza Bonarelli. Since
Roman times, it is perhaps the first great portrait of a woman that shows who she was,
psychologically, spiritually, intellectually as a woman. It's the first great portrait.
When Bernini carved this sculpture... He was perhaps the greatest marble sculptor who has
ever lived. I was just going to show you. Look at the carving of that from a piece of
marble, OK? Imagine carving that, and how extraordinary this man is. He was deeply and
passionately in love with Costanza. That passion for her whole being, her person and her mind,
is contained in this work. It is surely one of the great female portraits. Bernini lived
from 1598 to 1686. He carved Costanza between 1636 and seven when he was in his late 30s,
when he was, as he put it, "fieramente innamorato.� I mean, desperately in love with her. He tried
to breathe life into this work, so he shows her with her wild hair, her loose clothes,
and her half glance. Her mouth's open, talking. It's cut in pink marble and it's completely
lifelike. Normally, you left the back of the sculpture in those days because it's so much
hard work cutting marble. You left the back. He's cut it all the way around, the tiny bits
of her hair at the back When he first cut it, he painted the irises of her eyes black.
They've since been cleaned off, because they didn't understand that was actually his intention
when he did it. No one's dared to put her eyes back in, but he painted her pupils black
when he actually first cut her. Now, the idea has gone down in art history that Costanza
who was the wife of one of his assistants, was a common ***. The true story is something
quite different, but I'll start with the story. The story is that when Lorenzo discovered
that his brother, Luigi, was coming out of her house, he suspected the worst. He attacked
Luigi with an iron bar and broke two of his ribs. Luigi rushed off, hid in a church, and
slammed the church door. The Reverend Mother had to come and drive away Lorenzo, who was
trying to kill his brother for having had a *** relationship with his girlfriend.
Bernini tried to kick the door down, insulted the Reverend Mother, and then the nastiest
thing you can imagine, really. He sent his servant round with two bottles of wine as
a present to Costanza. When he presented her with the wine, he slashed her face with a
razor. This beautiful woman that he loved so much is actually the person he attacked.
At this point, the Pope, Urban VII, for whom Bernini was working, intervened. I have to
say, Urban VII is not my favorite pope. He's the one that condemned Galileo. He also condemned
sneezing because he said it was too close to the *** act. And he banned tobacco.
So, he is not my favorite pope. Anyway, at this point, the Pope intervened and sent Luigi
away to Bologna for safety on the urging of Bernini's mother. Costanza was put in prison
for adultery. The servant was put in prison for slashing her face. But Bernini got off
with a small fine, and was told by the Pope that if he settled down and married a good
woman, all would be forgiven. Bernini was then married off to the daughter of a rich
lawyer, Caterina Tezio whom the Pope selected for him in 1639 and with whom he went on to
have 11 children. Now, I want to go back to Costanza. Who, actually, was Costanza? The
idea is, and it's put out by people like Vico, very responsible art historians, that Costanza
was a common painter's ***. But she was not. Costanza was probably from the Piccolomini
family, which was one of the great papal families from Viterbo. And her mother was probably
a poetess and a friend of Vittoria Colonna, who had actually married a servant, a courtier
at court and so beneath her. It was almost certain, also, that Costanza is related to
the lady of... If you've read "The Duchess of Malfi" by Webster, which is a terrible
tragedy, she was either her aunt or her grandmother. They were a family that were disinherited,
and lost their land and their power because of the deaths of husbands and sons. The women
couldn't hold onto the land. She came from a very interesting family. That still has
got to be researched, so if anyone is an archivist and a good researcher, please come and do
this. Our Costanza was in her own right, however, a considerable art collector and an art dealer.
She married this assistant of Bernini, who was called Matteo Bonarelli. He came from
Lucca, and he probably came from the lower branch of the della Rovere family, which was
another papal family. He was a sculptor and a major bronze caster in his own right. Now,
let me see where we go from here. This is a work by Matteo Bonarelli, her husband, and
it's of the visitation. That is the moment when Mary and Elizabeth meet and tell each
other that they're both pregnant. It's a moment of friendship between women. If you go into
almost any Italian church, you will find there is one altar that either shows you the birth
of Christ with the ***, or the visitation. It's the altar where women will go to pray
for safe delivery and childbirths. It's a very feminist and strong theme. This was cut
by Matteo. He actually invited Lorenzo to come and help him cut it in Savona, and they
became friends there. After that, Lorenzo invited Matteo to come to Rome and work with
him as an assistant. Matteo Bonarelli was not just an assistant of Bernini; he was a
very major figure in his own right. When Vel�zquez, the great painter, who had come to Rome to
begin to decorate the great castle of the kings of Spain, which was called the Alc�zar...
Now, you can't see this anymore because it was burnt down they rebuilt it with the royal
palace, the Palacio Real but originally, this was the greatest palace in Christendom. It
was the palace of the kings of Spain who were dominating the world. It's the great fortress
that was built by Mohammed the First of Cordoba. It's a Moorish building from the 800s or the
year 1000 that the kings of Spain began to transform into this extraordinary palace.
They used Vel�zquez. He was sent to Rome and he was said, "Find this artist. Copy Roman
statues. Bring them to us. Let us reform this collection." Matteo cast, for example, these
two great lions. He cast 12 of those, and took them to Spain for the king of Spain.
Most of them were lost in the fire. That's the best slide I can get of it. I'm sorry,
I did my best. The other thing he was asked to do, he was asked to cast the "Hermaphrodite,"
which is now in the Prado in front of Las Meninas. These hermaphrodites in Rome they
actually managed to dig up five of them, eventually it was a very common subject, because the
Romans believed that it was the height of love. It was the unity of the male with the
female. It was perfect consummation. They very frequently had these figures in their
garden. You can see one in the Uffizi. They turn it round so you have no idea it's a hermaphrodite.
This one is in the Louvre. The actual figure, as you can see, is there, but the bed was
cut by Bernini to actually give it... That was taken and it's in the Louvre. There are
others. There are two in Rome. There are two in the Doria Pamphili and one in the National
Museum of Rome. Matteo was asked to cast the "Hermaphrodite," and that's his work. These
are major commissions. This is not just any old assistant. All right, I'll come back to
that in a minute. When he was in Spain, he made over 100 copies of many of the main antiquities
of Rome for the emperor. When this palace finally burnt down, fortunately, it caught
on fire on Christmas Day when everyone was out. What is left of the great collection
is in the Prado. But in the fire, there were at least 500 of the greatest paintings were
burned the greatest Vel�zquez, the greatest Leonardos, Raphaels, Van ***, Tintoretto,
Veronese, Rubens, the list goes on and on. One of the thing one needs to do as an art
historian is actually work out what were the lost paintings of the Al Kauthar. Anyway,
let's go back to Costanza. An interest scholar called Sarah McPhee has recently done remarkable
work on Constaza and it was published in 2006, in a book called "Costanza Bonarelli: Biography
Versus Archive." She shows that Constanza was a wealthy collector and a freeliving woman.
Perhaps we would have called her a courtesan. She was well educated with a very clear identity
and she found her will. In the will, the will lists the contents of her extensive house.
Leaving twothirds of her wealth to Olympia Caterina, her daughter, and onethird was left
to a convent. The Pope had set up a system, by which, if you confessed and were deeply
sorry and you gave a third of your estate to a particular convent in Rome, you were
forgiven all your acts and sins of your life, so you could go to heaven. But it also meant
that her daughter could be absolved of her mother's shame in a certain sense. In the
will she also lists a remarkable collection of sculptures and sculptural fragments, some
probably from classical pieces from Rome. Fragments of legs, arms, feet and hands. But
also her picture collection which consisted of over 108 paintings, mostly landscape paintings,
and a copy of the Poussin that she had sold to Richelieu. It's the Plague of Ashdod now
in the Louvre. But the list also contains, amongst over things, three paintings of bacchanals,
they're their like ***, all right? And pictures of St. Mary Magdalene, who is this
penitent female sinner, usually very sexy, and St. Mary of Egypt. They were two woman
saints who were reformed prostitutes. There was also a portrait of herself. The top floor
was designed in blue leather, but the main floor was decorated in red leather, and with
red leather chairs and covered walls. It had this portrait of herself hanging in the main
position, which was probably one of the portraits that Bernini had done of her. Perhaps Constanza
repented her prior life because she asked for this special pardon by giving her money
to the convent or the convertiti. But it may just be that she was maneuvering in a male
world and used to doing that. She was clearly wealthy, educated and a real connoisseur.
She was anything but a Roman commoner or a ***. There is one clause in the will which
scholars have missed amongst the many masses that she paid for her soul to go through purgatory.
Of course there's a mass that she pays for at the time of her death. She also specifies
that the day after she dies that a mass must be said in one of the seven key Pilgrimage
Churches of Rome, which is San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. It's obvious it's her last mass to
Lorenzo, her great love of her life. Just in passing, this is a Caravaggio which shows
Fillide; this was his model and his great love in Rome. They've just discovered Fillide's
will and the extraordinary thing is she describes her main sitting room, which is in red leather
with red chairs in the Spanish style and it has bacchanals, and it has Mary Magdalene,
and it has Mary of Egypt, and it has a portrait by Caravaggio of her. So perhaps these courtesans
in Rome actually had their own interior design. They actually had a sort of floating world
where they could show to customers or to their friends what their life was. But this is a
new document that's just been discovered in all the research that's going on on Caravaggio,
so there's a lot more to do. Obviously, one of the things that it was very difficult for
the church to acknowledge, particularly at the time of the Counter Reformation, was that
there was a community of women of this type living in Rome who seemed to have their own
real identity and way of life, which is quite interesting. Now, I'm now going to go on to
another artist completely. I'm now going to talk about a work that is in Florence in the
Pitti Gallery in the modern art gallery. This one here is called "The Mother" or "Maternity"
and it's done by Adriano Cecioni. He lived from 1836 to 1886. He was the main sculptor
of the movement of the Macchiaioli. He shocked the art world when he exhibited, as his entry
in an exhibition in Paris, a defecating dog that was cast in bronze. You weren't supposed
to cast in bronze things of that kind. He was a Macchiaioli painting. The Macchiaioli
painters were these revolutionary painters. You must understand that Italy is a very,
very new country. It started becoming united from 1848, and it didn't actually pull itself
together fully as a nation until 1870. All these young painters actually fought against
the Bourbons in the South, and the Habsburgs in the North, for a united Italy. Whenever
there was a ceasefire, and the lines were redrawn, the place they fled to was Tuscany
because it was the only republic, and a place where they could be safe. So they gathered
in Florence, and they met in a particular cafe on Via Cavour, and they discussed the
liberation of Italy. But they also discussed, what is the new art that we are going to make,
in the new country that we are going to make, in the new built Italy? This is a picture
that Adriano did of them sitting in their cafe in Via Cavour, discussing the art of
the future. Just to mention an aside, the guy with the enormously tall hat in the back,
which is almost as tall as Abraham Lincoln's hat, isn't it? He was actually an artist called
Silvestro Lega. Inside of his hat, he kept rolled up posters, a pot of glue, and a brush.
Whenever he was in a street where there were no police, he whipped out his posters and
glued them up on the wall, calling for the independence of Italy. So in that hat is a
glue pot. [laughter] But just to go on. What they were discussing was the new art of Italy.
It very much came from the idea of Mazzini, and it goes on into Baudelaire, and into the
French, and into the Impressionists. It begins in Italy, this idea of a new art that reflects
the reality of our times, the actual things. Instead of going back to neoclassicism, and
the Greeks and the Romans, to actually paint the women, and the peasantry, and the fields,
and the ordinary things of Italy. To fight against the oppression of women, of peasantry,
of Jews, of Protestants. This work may not immediately strike you as particularly revolutionary,
but if you look at it, it is a peasant woman. It's not just a woman, it is a peasant woman.
She's in her milking shoes. She's just finished breastfeeding her baby, and it is that extraordinary
moment in breastfeeding. As mothers you probably know this. When the baby's had enough, and
it reaches back and gives you a smile, you know, it says, thank you. This is an extraordinary
smile between the mother and the baby. There's almost, you can almost hear the laughter between
these two figures. Now, nothing like this had ever been caught before or shown before.
A peasant woman breastfeeding, showing her humanity and maternity. This is something
absolutely extraordinary and it won a prize in the Cherin Exhibition of 1880. Unfortunately,
no one ever came up with the money to cut it in marble so it's still in gesso so it's
pretty fragile. Now, from this work he became really quite famous and he did the portraits
of two of the great poets or revolutionary poets. One was Carducci and the other was
Leopardi. Those two portrait busts also exist in Florence. Carducci was so moved by this
work that he actually wrote a poem to it which was called "Santa Natura.� The unique thing
really, it's a seminal work. It's a work where all the modern painters and sculptors that
have followed this work have done two things. One is mother, Boccioni, Balla and so on have
done mothers. And the other is they have done the laugh. And again you find whole series
of entire paintings of people painting people laughing. But it's in this work you have the
two together, which is really rather extraordinary. The other thing about Adriano Cecioni which
is so interesting is he's one of the first people who cared very deeply about the family
and about women. But he also cared about children. And he produced his extraordinary pictures,
which I cannot get copies of, I can't get photographs of, showing the exploitation of
working children in factories and working on benches. But he also did these pictures
of his own children, and they're the first pictures of children that are not sweet little
Robin in his suit, but actually being children. They're a thorough nuisance, they're in his
studio and dressing up and being a real nuisance, and looking silly. And they're hanging out
in the kitchen and picking their nose and doing all the things children do. They're
actual children in real places. And these are extraordinary pictures, and really sort
of cut through in a way that is very remarkable I think. Going back to "Maternity" or "La
madre," whichever way you want to call it, it is timeless in its femininity and it's
dangerous beauty. And Cecioni tried to show the beauty of the ordinary or the ugly, challenging
the bourgeoisie canons of beauty and aesthetics. I think he succeeds. It's an extraordinary
work. OK, now we come on to another work, the last one. It's a work about Anita Garibaldi.
It's a sculpture that was made to honor her, and it's on one of the hills of Rome called
the Gianicolo. Giuseppe Garibaldi is also on a horse in Rome, and he's on the Pincio.
They're on different hills, and she's on the Gianicolo. It's a work of propaganda that
was very much orchestrated by Fascist propaganda. Despite this, it still has a very great power.
Anita Garibaldi, whose real name was Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro da Silva di Garibaldi, lived
from 1821 to 49, and was a great revolutionary heroine of the Risorgimento. She was Brazilian,
from a Portuguese family from the Azores. Garibaldi was the military arm of the Risorgimento.
The Risorgimento, the freeing of Italy, was made by three men. It was made by Mazzini,
who was a Republican; by Cavour, who worked for the kings of Piedmont and eventually brought
the whole of Italy into a monarchy. And Giuseppe Garibaldi, who as a military expert, who had
worked as a guerrilla fighter in South America, came and actually raised the troops and defeated
the different military opponents in the south of Italy, and moved up Italy, liberating Italy.
Garibaldi actually met Anita in South America. They were to marry, and she bore him four
children, dying pregnant with the fifth on the retreat from Rome in 1849. She died on
the Guiccioli farm in the marshes, trying to reach the coast near Ravenna. She had been
married very young to an abusive older husband. She ran off with Garibaldi, who is reported
to have whispered to her the first time he met her, "You must be mine." This is the description
that Garibaldi wrote of Anita. "She was an amalgam of the two elemental forces the strength
and courage of a man, and the charm and tenderness of a woman manifested by the daring and vigor
with which she had brandished her sword, and the beautiful oval of her face that framed
the softness of her extraordinary eyes." They were married in 1842, shortly before returning
to Italy. They were deeply in love. She never left him, going with him on all his campaigns
in South America, later returning with him to Italy, and following him from Sicily through
the southern campaigns. Let's find a picture of her. This is what I'm talking about, the
one on the right. Eventually, it was decided that she must be honored, as well as Garibaldi.
They selected from her history a moment in Garibaldi's early biography, when he did not
return from a battle in Uruguay. Anita, who had just very recently given birth to a child
who was called Menotti, took her baby in her arms, got on her horse, and took a gun. She
searched the battlefield, she found the wounded Garibaldi, and she hauled him onto her horse,
thereby saving his life. This particular statue, that is now on the Gianicolo, was made by
Mario Rutelli in 1932. He's a sculptor who you probably have never heard of, but he did
make a monument for sailors that is an obelisk within Wales. The monument was inaugurated
by Mussolini on June the first. It's really an example of how myth and memory, and even
the family of Garibaldi, were manipulated and used for political ends by Mussolini.
It is a heroic and powerful monument. If you think of monuments to women, how many monuments,
this is the only one I know that shows a woman in full action. Now, part of it is a bit silly.
You couldn't possibly have stayed on your horse riding sidesaddle, and you certainly
couldn't ride a horse sidesaddle holding a baby and firing a pistol in the air. But it
is fairly inspirational. However, if you get back, the original friends of Garibaldi had
actually commissioned this work. This is the one they wanted, which is much closer to the
truth, in a sense. She's got her rifle stuck in the back of her saddle. This was commissioned
in 1928 by someone called Antonio Sciortino. The only thing we have are these photographs
of the first clay of the monument. You can see, unfortunately, why Fascists prefer the
other more heroic one. I prefer this one. I like the way that Anita is going out purposefully,
with her hat and her baby, and her gun in the back, rather like going shopping off to
the battlefield to find Garibaldi. It's just part of the constant metamorphosis of monuments
that goes on in Italy. There's recently been a book published, called "Italy's Divided
Memory." And Italy is the only country in Europe where you don't just get two plaques
in one place contradicting each other. You go to a site and one plaque says, "This town
was bombed by the Allies," and the other one says, "This town was bombed by the Germans"
and they're next to each other. And you even get to the point where there is actually one
place, which is called Piazza Fontana, where there are three contradictory versions of
what happened on that piazza. And so, there is this constant movement of monument and
interpretation that is going on even today. And it's a really political hot potato, this
thing of monuments. And Anita did quite well to only go through two versions, in a sense.
And just to sum up, the one of Anita is the one in action. And the one of Garibaldi, so
extraordinary, is the one that is passive and still, and he is surveying the city of
Rome which he never succeeded in taking. They had to add Rome very much later on to the
independent Italy. He never succeeded in actually completing the unification of Italy. But this
is a very extraordinary and actually inspirational monument for all its problems. Now to sum
up quickly, those are the four works I chose. And I found that there were works of art that
I'd already looked at or that came from the iconic work that you study when you study
art history that I truly believe are feminist in content. And it's rather strange. And we
know from the work that the National Museum of Women and the Arts has done that there
were over 3,000 women artists. And you get something like the Frederick Hart textbook
that we use in Florence on the Renaissance, for example, and until 15 years ago, there
wasn't a mention of a single woman in the book. I mean not a single female artist was
mentioned, yet there are all these female artists. And if you really begin to look at
the works of art, they actually are female in content as well. So why is it we haven't
seen them? What is going on that we don't see these works and actually understand that
they are feminist? And that led me to another thought because one of the things that my
old professor told me, when I was in the Warburg, was that one of the curious things, for example,
is the Greeks did not know how a beehive was structured. They thought the bees just buzzed
in and out. It was only when somebody postulated the idea that there might be a queen that
they found the queen bee, and they realized that the hive was structured. I think what
is happening is, we have not got the eyes to see the female artists or the feminist
works, because we have been so conditioned. If you, yourselves, go home and sit down and
say, "What are the four feminist works for me?" See if you find your own four, and see
if they exist already. Yet we are not seeing them in a way where we can understand that.
I end it by saying, it is as though there is a lack of memory or reporting, but not
a lack of presence. It is as though the prohibitions of the "Villa of the Mysteries" still cover
the sacred nature of art. In a certain sense, I found this a very intriguing journey, as
an art historian. I want to actually open it to you and say, please, you begin to look
and reinterpret what you're seeing. OK? I'm very, very happy to answer questions. Could
you do it with the microphone? Yes. Did you say it was, when you were talking about the
5,000 female artists... 3,000 is what I... 3,000. Did you say it was 50 years ago that
they weren't mentioned? 15. One five? One five, yes. I was checking the editions of
Frederick Hart, and I found it was 15 years ago. He did not have a single female artist
in the book, which is really quite interesting. Yes. I was in Rome last summer looking for
female imagery, and I went to the Villa Borzheezee... BorGAYzay, yeah. Borghese. Yeah, sorry. One
of the statues... What's in there, the statue of Anita...? I don't think I saw it there,
but where is it? The Bernini, the Apollo and Daphne, is in the Villa Borghese, and indeed
the Pluto, which I used to show the fine cutting of the marble, is in the Villa Borghese. The
Anita is on the top of the hill behind the Vatican. You have to go up the road behind
the Vatican, and she's up there. What's the name of the building? It's on the top of the
hill, and it's called the Gianicolo. How do you spell that? Wait a minute, I'll look it
up, so that I don't get it wrong. Wait a minute. It's GIANICOLO. But there are a lot of other
works that I was halfthinking of talking about, like Artemisia Gentileschi and Judith and
Holofernes, but some of them you can give more than one interpretation to. What I wanted
to do with this was take indisputable examples of what I thought you really could not argue
that this was not feminist in its actual content. But there are many, many others out there
which probably are, but you've got to really make certain you really question what is going
on. For example, Botticelli's Birth of Venus, would you see that as an indication of a feminist
vision? I am afraid I don't think I would. I think it is much more a male vision. I think
it is much more a work of pleasure for the Medici. There is a lot of painting of women
that is mild ***, it is ***. A lot of art was painted and made for the *** market,
and still is. It does not mean it is an evil market, because sexuality is a part of where
we all live, particularly in our private homes. There is no reason not to have art that appeals
also to different senses. I am not saying that in a way of putting it down. I believe
that work belongs to that category. Can you think of a work that is explicitly ***
in nature, made by a male artist, and is feminist? I think the closest you get is perhaps Goya's
"La maja desnuda." He did two versions of the clothed and naked women. The extraordinary
nature of that is that she is not a beautiful elegant lady of the court. She is actually
a maja, a peasant gypsy girl and he treats her with enormous respect and he likes her
style. It is *** but it is extremely respectful to her and who she is and the fun of who she
is. Because she is enjoying it, it is not something that is imposed upon her. I quote
that as showing that you can do it. It doesn't have to be oppressive. Yes. The Bust of Costanza,
there are very visible striations in her face, and color is showing. Now, what is the chronology
of that? That isn't... That's not often. He used a very pink marble. He picked a piece
of pink marble that looks like flesh. It's probably a pretty bad slide, sort of photograph,
so excuse me. But no, we don't know what her face was like afterwards. But we do know that
she lived a very prosperous and successful life, and left a good inheritance to her daughter.
And that she appears to have remained married to her husband, who continued to work as a
very notable sculptor. But it must have been a huge scandal, the whole thing. Yes? Do you
mind sharing where that piece is now? It's in Bargello, in Florence. And people go around
the Bargello, and they walk straight past Costanza. She's usually right next to the
box office, I mean the place you buy the tickets. And everyone walks straight past, they take
no notice of her whatsoever. And she is certainly one of the greatest sculptures of all time.
I mean it makes me very sad. She was recently exhibited in an exhibition they had on the
Baroque Portraits as a central piece. But she is really remarkable. And you know, the
way her dress is opening with a button, you can almost see inside, and the bits of hair.
I mean, it is the most extraordinary piece of carving and of portraiture. If they put
it under a plastic box, people would look at it. Isn't that sad? But he also painted
portraits of himself with her. And then when they quarreled, he cut off her side and ripped
it off, and we only have his portrait and we don't know where she has gone. So he tried
to really obliterate her.And he got rid of her portrait bust, he gave it away to be further
humiliating, in a sense to dismiss it. But it is one of the alltime pieces. Yeah? What
is the concept, in which that sculpture was created? I don't think he... Love. Well, he
created it for himself, right? He created it for himself in total passion. It's as though
this was someone that was so important to him that he had to immortalize her forever
exactly as close to her being alive as he could make her. And you can feel that when
you see it. It's like a huge statement of love. Did he consider it one of his best sculptures
as well? Because he didn't destroy it. He didn't destroy it. You know, he did so much
for the Pope that was so public. And he must have seen something like the Apollo and Daphne
as an absolute quintessential highest point of marble cutting. Because you know, you have
these transparent olive leaves and so on. So probably, in his terminology, the absolute
masterpieces are Apollo and Daphne and Pluto. In terms of psychological containment, spirituality
of the piece, the real piece is Costanza, nothing matches it. I missed the name you
mentioned concerning the rights of psychoanalysis? It's Bice Benvenuto and it is about the Villa
of the Mysteries. The rest of the title is the Villa of the Mysteries. Do you suggest
that the museums and the galleries and the art world were to have a biennial of feminist
art and artists and something that concerns the interests of women. Perhaps. Perhaps it
would be possible. Do repeat what she suggested. Well her suggestion was, would it be possible
to curate an exhibition of pieces that are feminist in content? I think it could be.
I think it would be quite complicated. It might open a lot of debate. Certainly it's
time that we went around museums thinking what is being said in this piece. Is it chauvinist,
is it sexist, is it feminist. Women can also paint chauvinist painting. It isn't that a
woman automatically paints a feminist picture. They may be worse than their male counterpart.
Surely what we've been looking at with feminism is the content. What is being expressed. We
always see art that encourages brainstorming and discussing what is actually happening
in society. Looking at some instances in the Middle East what has been happening to women.
We do have artist from these areas that experience brutal actions against women. I do not see
the western hemisphere to bring up these women's work to create discussions like this. I do
see very few people. I am coming from Baltimore, Maryland to listen to you, and I see only
500 people here and I don't see much support somehow. I personally like my audience, welcome.
[laughs] I just wish we were more. But I think one of the interesting things if you look
at sculptures that are in public display in Florence, you have these sculptures of "The
*** of Persephone.� You'll have the cutting off of the head of Medusa, you know?It is
very welcome to have a sculpture which is showing women in power, without being ***
or having their heads cut off, OK? I know that's a very simplistic way of saying it,
but I do think it is worth actually focusing on these ones that really are inspirational
for women. Please ask a question, a man. I'd love to have a question from a man as well.
Looking very uncomfortable. Yes? Actually it's a bit of a jump in time and location,
but I wondered what you thought of those preRaphaelite woman?
What was the question? What do I think of those preRaphaelite women? OK, I'm really
going to take this on. Because you have to understand that when William Morris and Rossetti
married working class women, and they were both from shop girls, they could never sit
down again at table with their friends from the bourgeoisie. So they had to invent a medieval
alternative world in which they could be safe and superior. And the same was with Macchiaioli.
So the great critic of the Macchiaioli, Diego Martelli, he married the *** that he
fell in love with. And from that moment on he could never be accepted in any society
in Florence. So he lived on his estates outside Florence, and the only people who would talk
to him were artists, because artists are very odd people. And the same with the PreRaphaelites.
They created these worlds against the social barriers. So the first thing is, the PreRaphaelites
were very brave to marry those two ladies. And those two ladies were very extraordinary
women. Particularly Mrs. Morris, who lived six months of the year with Rossetti and six
months with William Morris, because she couldn't work out who she preferred. And they accepted
the situation. So in a sense, they were really pushing the boundaries of Victorian marriage.
So I think both the women and their artist companions who created these alternative worlds
are real revolutionaries. Not only in their production of the work they produced that
changed taste, but in the way they lived and the way that they dared actually break those
conventions and marry shop girls. OK? If anyone's looking for a good thesis topic, one of the
things that somebody needs to study is Theresa, who was the wife of Diego Martelli, who was
an extraordinary woman, quite clearly. He met first when he was initiated into sexuality,
as all men were, by going to the bordello. He fell in love with her and married her.
She was obviously quite a remarkable woman. Yes. I have a question about the capability
of both female and male artists to work with feminist themes, to present the feminist theme.
Are they equally capable, or do you think there's any edge, in either direction, at
this current time in history or any other? I don't know, because one of the problems
with art is that very often the subject does not necessarily reflect what actually happens.
That subjects escape from the artists themselves, that what is expressed is for sociological,
psychological, whatever reasons. You can take a work that is supposed to be saying this,
and it's actually saying the opposite. I don't think that it's necessarily consciously done
by male or female. I hope I'm answering your question. I think that we still have a long
way to go to show the power of women. Perhaps neither one sufficiently appreciates that
power? Perhaps that's the problem? Perhaps. The work that was glorying in the maternity,
the fertility, the prophecy from dreams... Those are powers of women. I don't want to
go into some sort of hippy dream world. But there are elements to what has been shown
in the past that really show a force to the internal power that that women should be expressing,
that I'm not sure that present day work is expressing. Yes. I haven't been able to articulate
this within this context, but there is this theme going around in my head, of course over
the last 30 years we've argued more and more and more about human arts. Right now it's
usually to have Rob Kushner hanging in the back of the show. That's an improvement. What
I'm trying to say is basically it's still the strategy. I think it encourages males,
people, to express their feminist tendencies. I have never met a male who admits to being
a feminist, and yet there are plenty of them. They show they are sensitive, but I think
we need to award a male feminist, to be feminist. They just don't know what to call themselves.
You have to meet the director of this museum, Arnold Lehman. Yes, I do know that, and he
does admit to it, of course. An artist, for example, who might be tempted to do what we
would call a feminist piece, might also be insecure about his reception, because he might
be viewed as a whole... I think if other people agree, I don't know if they do, that males
more we have that, there should be a companion in numbers. This way you're not limited just
to those of us who have been along to come in line somehow. I agree. I couldn't put it
better. All I can say is yes. [ Yes? I'm just so curious about your perspective of a very
contemporary artist. Which one? Audience Member : Well, it's not that contemporary. I'm thinking
specifically of the Cindy Sherman Film Stills and how you perceive them as feminist or not?
Is that a fair question? Yes. I think that anyone who is exploring gender, and I think
what she's doing is exploring gender and identity, because of the nature of feminism at the moment,
that is part of the discourse, and therefore it is feminist. I'm not sure if it's timeless,
it may be a passing discourse. Because what she's doing is looking at "Could I be this?
Could I be that? Might I have been this?" That exploration of who I am and what is my
sexuality and what am I. That may just be something that is a fashion, we'll have to
wait and see. But in the contemporary context, it certainly is feminist. It may be nothing
in the future. I think one of the things I was concerned about with the four pieces I
picked was that they should be timeless, and they should be qualities that belong for all
women for all time. Anything else? Yes? I just wanted to ask one last thing, because
I've been thinking for the past 30 years that women's issues are a part of the world. In
the 1980s a lot of things were happening and women were showing a face that was cut off,
and I just remember that is what I saw. From that point on, I was working on my thesis,
which I was doing something else, and completely changed direction and went forward with art.
What you just mentioned about her question about finding one's self, what you are, who
you are, where you are going and all of that...there were sudden changes in society where we were
just looking at the history of women, what they have gone through, and what you have
mentioned about conditioning and how we as women are conditioned by men's understanding
of the world and our rules and how to be, and we are really given the path by men. Even
our politics, for example, our leaders and societies are all run by men and they actually
designate for us how to think, what we feel, what to do, what not to do. I look at the
past paintings and I can't even bring anything else unless you just see the faces, the women
are painted and are having to paint faces with all the feelings in it. And I know I've
been pushed away because you can see through the eyes of these women. One of the most extraordinary
things, as I did this piece, as I said to Elizabeth, I picked these pieces, and then
what came out as I did the research was to discover that it reflected so much of the
oppression that has been done to women. I mean, cutting their faces, imprisoning them
for adultery, marrying them young to abusive husbands, dying in childbirth. I felt as though
these pieces that I had picked just by accident as art pieces reflected the enormous oppression
of women. I thought that that was very extraordinary, that it came out even in these four. That
is why I wish that there were more art galleries or museums in France, even now we hear of
stoning of women. Well fortunately we have this one. I feel so happy you are all here,
and we are giving support to this that is so important and so unique. Where are you
from? I am sorry to ask you. I was born in Iran, but I came to study. I heard what had
gone wrong about women and so on. And even maybe [indiscernible 01:26:29]...*** to
death. I think that, as a society, women have been suppressed in western thinking, western
religion, and also bondage. I read a book by Slammerkin, which is a nonfiction book,
but she was the daughter of a pastor. One day she realized how her religion put up men
to a pedestal and women were seen as sinners. Just almost they're [inaudible 01:27:21].
And just all western religions, Judaism, probably, Christianity and Muslim have a patriarchal
spin for them, and I think until we can find a new way that this is what our society. I
have to say, as a woman, a work that speaks to me as a feminist and is in the peace work.
I don't know the meaning of the painting because I'm not an art historian, but it's of women
dancing in a circle... ...of the dancers. Yes, the dancers. And I always feel, as a
woman, it captures the joy of a friendship. Beautiful, beautiful piece, and also it, again,
doesn't have guilt. It's a pagan innocence of the dance. One of the reasons I think I
picked some pieces from antiquity was because in both the Pergamon Altar and the Villa of
the Mysteries, there is not that sense of sin attached, which you so often get, to nakedness
in western art. I want to thank Mary again. This was a really superb, wonderful lecture.
I'm so proud. I see that she's here. Thank you all for coming. It's very exciting for
me. We're growing into our fourth year. The dialogues that have emerged in this room over
this period of time have become much richer, much stronger. I feel that the center is doing
its work. I hope that there will be many more, and that each of you in your own ways, when
you go out into your worlds, will bring some of what has happened here with you. Thank
you very much for coming.