Language / Image / Object: The Work of Mirella Bentivoglio

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Woman's Art Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Woman's Art Journal.On April 29, 1984, a major earthquake rocked central Italy. Its epicenter was located in Mount Cucco, near the medieval town of Gubbio in Umbria. Some of the townspeople blamed Mirella Bentivoglio, an artist, poet, and critic from Rome, for the quake. Two years earlier, in a project entitled "Orpheus Operation," she had placed a large concrete egg in one of the many underground caverns within the mountain. She photographed the egg in situ. She then removed it and awaited official permission to fix it in the cavern permanently. The permission arrived but other commitments have prevented her from returning the egg. According to Bentivoglio: "Gubbio people say now that the earth is angry with me, because I made it mother and woman just for an hour. So the people want me to go back into Mount Cucco and fix it."' While the quake caused centuries-old belltowers to fall, an egg she had composed in 1976 of about two tons of stones and placed in a Gubbio town square did not fall (Fig. 1). For Bentivoglio, the survival of this egg and the destruction of the towers were a lesson in the relative permanence of female versus male forms. Indeed, much of her work deals explicitly with the dynamic between male and female, The Egg of Gubbio being only one example.Born in Klagenfurt, Austria, in 1922, Mirella spent part of her early life in Milan in northern Italy. Her father, Ernesto Bertarelli, was a scientist and researcher at the nearby University of Pavia and, according to his daughter, "a man of large cultural interests." He was founder of the scientific journal Sapere, president of the Hoepli publishing house, and an avid collector of books. Her mother, Margherita Cavalli Bertarelli, while also talented and creative, had little opportunity to develop her talents outside the role of mother and housewife. The mother's frustrations left a strong mark on the daughter who, many years later, would discover in feminist theory an explanation for what she viewed at the time as an unnecessary waste of talent and invention. The activities of her mother and father also had an effect on Bentivoglio's attitude toward literature, art, and knowledge:The scene of my childhood is books. The walls were covered with books. I think this influenced me. I refused to accept the idea that knowledge was this scene; On April 29, 1984, a major earthquake rocked central Italy. Its epicenter was located in Mount Cucco, near the medieval town of Gubbio in Umbria. Some of the townspeople blamed Mirella Bentivoglio, an artist, poet, and critic from Rome, for the quake. Two years earlier, in a project entitled "Orpheus...

Correções, interrogatórios e políticas de intercâmbio local/global na crítica de arte feminista

“…New scholarship on Carla Lonzi, for example, has pointed to how feminism transformed her writing in 1970, moving her away from an art criticism of dialogue, encounter and conversation to political activism (VENTRELLA and ZAPPERI, 2022). Her critic/curator peers, Romana Loda (MASOERO, 2020), Anne Marie Sauzeau-Boetti (1976) and Mirella Bentivoglio (POHL, 1985) each found a different basis for feminist writing and organisation of exhibitions for women artists in the early 1970s, emphasising minimalism, abstraction/ conceptualism and women's subjectivity. Or one could consider the emergence of Monica Mayer's critical practice in Mexico after 1975 in relation to her commitment to public teaching and performances, as well as her decision to travel to the US to join Chicago's feminist art class (MAYER, 2001;GIUNTA, 2013).…”

Embracing poetry in unexpected places

“…Art historian Pohl (1985) suggests that Bentivoglio uses the egg to temper the power of the book, and to create a connection between nature and culture, procreation, and law. Bentivoglio (1999) herself says, ''My work is now based upon the dual symbology of encounter, clash, exchange, and the reciprocal assimilation of egg and stone tablet'' (p. 12), contrasting culture and nature, which has been one of her continuing themes.…”