Giosetta Fioroni’s Ragazza TV

Esen, Ayse Nazli

Item

Giosetta Fioroni’s Ragazza TV

Esen, Ayse Nazli

Abstract

Giosetta Fioroni, a prominent figure of Italian Pop Art, generated a storm in the 1960s as a woman artist when she exhibited silver-painted portraits of women appropriated from the mass media. Her choice of iconography, namely, her focus on female figures, distinguished her art from that of her male peers and engaged critical attention. One of these silver portraits was her anonymous idol figure, Ragazza TV. Ragazza TV is greatly understudied, yet it provides insight into the sixties’ perception of womanhood and women artists’ concern about the representation of women, in Italy in particular. While some research has been carried out on the female subjects of Fioroni’s silver paintings, no single study has focused on Ragazza TV from the dual perspective of Italian feminism in the ‘60s and ‘70s and consumer critique. This thesis asks: Is it possible to discuss Fioroni’s Ragazza TV from a feminist perspective through a critique of mass consumerism and mass media? Fioroni’s works with female figures have been commonly regarded as “feminine” or having a “feminine essence.” What is “feminine essence” in the context of the ‘60s and ‘70s Rome? How was it part of a larger, very public debate on feminism? Thus, this thesis aims to provide a better understanding of potential feminist readings of the artwork by focusing on the viewer’s and subject’s gazes and by investigating Fioroni’s view on consumerism that emerged in Italy in the post-war era. It develops a hypothesis about the female experience in the ‘60s in Italy that Fioroni sought to convey through a comprehensive analysis of the artwork