The Looking Glass, from the Other Side

The relationship between the categories of ‘feminism’ and ‘the feminine’ has long been a subject of considerable contention. This is not only because these terms are often misconstrued as being mutually exclusive, but also because multiple definitions, interpretations and indeed also stigmas are attached to them. In her attempt to engage with this tension as early as 1979, Luce Irigaray argued that historically, the feminine has never been defined except as the inverse, indeed the underside, of the masculine. So for woman it is not a matter of installing herself within this lack, this negative, even by denouncing it, nor of reversing the economy of sameness by turning the feminine into the standard for ‘sexual difference’; it is rather a matter of trying to practice that difference.1

Though tempting in its conviction, it is difficult to know how to apply Irigaray’s imperative in practical terms. How does a person practise a difference without constantly comparing themselves with what they differ from and questioning that difference?

The work of Giosetta Fioroni (b. 1932), to which this publication and its associated exhibition are dedicated, presents one possible strategy for addressing this challenge. Fioroni is considered one of the most important figures in Italian painting of the postwar era. Her work is commonly associated with the advent of Pop art in Italy, and more specifically with the male-dominated group known as the Scuola di Piazza del Popolo, which included artists such as Mario Schifano, Tano Festa and Franco Angeli (fig.1). Yet Fioroni’s practice differs from those of her immediate contemporaries as well as from the overarching notion of Pop as it has come to be understood in the English-speaking world. The distinction is most clearly pronounced in her persistent exploration of the feminine as the category has been delineated in popular culture and as understood by Fioroni in relation to her personal experience. ‘I have worked a lot, not on feminism but on femininity’, she has explained. ‘I would like to maintain a distinction. In a period of lively feminism, I was interested in the look, in the atmosphere tied to femininity.’2

Fioroni’s portraits of women from the 1960s, which form the main subject of this book, focus on the familiar expressions of interpersonal exchange characteristic of the photographic representation of young actresses and models in the mass media. While many of these portraits

Hans Ulrich Obrist: I’d like to start with your childhood, to find out how it all started. You were born at Christmas in 1932. Giosetta Fioroni: Yes, on the 24th, Christmas Eve.

HUO: And art was there from the very beginning, wasn’t it? Your father was a sculptor, and your mother made marionettes for the theatre. GF: Very much so. I made a lot of ceramics as a child, from very early on. My father’s studio and his presence made a big impression on me.

HUO: You’ve said before that your work is closely connected with your memories of your childhood home, the creative chaos of your father’s studio and the fantastical world of your mother’s marionettes. The theme of childhood is undoubtedly very present in your practice, so I’m curious to hear more about this connection.

GF: I was an only child, born after ten years of marriage and failed attempts to conceive. My parents thought they wouldn’t be able to have children, so when I arrived it was a revelation. As a result I was raised with this idea that my survival was already the greatest achievement, and perhaps because of that I became a somewhat fearful person. But I had the full attention of both of my parents and I immediately became part of my father’s studio. My mother would give these marionette performances for me, fairy tales, using the gramophone for music. And I continued my engagement with this world of hers as I began to make little ceramic theatres myself – teatrini. I made so many of them, including a series dedicated to Shakespeare. Twelve little theatres dedicated to different works of his, with figures such as Hamlet, Falstaff, Edgar …

HUO: In a way these are a synthesis of your father’s world and that of your mother.

GF: Very much so.

HUO: And this is also reflected in your formative years at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where you chose to study set design under the tutelage of the extraordinary Toti Scialoja, who was teaching there at the time.

GF: My experience at the Accademia di Belle Arti was mixed. In my first year there I found the level of teaching to be low and unsatisfying, and by the end of the year I was thinking of leaving – that maybe the academy wasn’t for me. But then one morning I was walking around