Feminist art and the persistence of patriarchy in Italy

Anna Detheridge reflects on the enduring relevance of feminist art criticism more than fifty years after the foundational writings of Betty Friedan, Juliet Mitchell, Germaine Greer, and Linda Nochlin. She argues that patriarchal culture still dominates both high and popular culture, and that the language of art often excludes female subjectivity. The article traces how body art in the 1960s—by artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Hanna Wilke, and Jenny Saville—challenged the male gaze and the convention of the passive female nude. Lea Vergine's 1974 essay on body art is cited as a key text that foregrounded intersubjectivity and the performative body. Detheridge also discusses the work of Carla Lonzi, whose 1969 book "Autoritratto" gave voice to artists and broke with the fiction of a universal male subject. The article notes that in Italy, feminist discourse remains marginalized, and women artists have been historically overshadowed by the archetype of the mater dolorosa. Statistical data from the Global Gender Gap Report 2023, the World Economic Forum, and artnet are provided to illustrate persistent gender inequalities: Italy ranks 79th out of 146 countries in gender pay gap; gender parity is projected for 2154; only 2% of global auction revenues between 2008 and 2019 came from works by women artists; and the highest auction price for a living female artist (Jenny Saville's "Propped" at $12.4 million) is dwarfed by Jeff Koons' "Rabbit" at $91.1 million.