It’s not about sexism but aesthetics

by time news

twelve o’clock, September 29, 2021 – 08:17

from Eduardo Cicelyn

really a matter of ass? Progressive women disdain that femininity is taken for the backside. And they have reasons for it. We males, however, struggle to understand. Or let’s pretend. I would like to know the one among the declared heterosexuals who does not evaluate at first glance (but also at the second and third glance) certain attributes when well defined by the carrier category. Then our tribe is divided between those who have only this in mind and those who have many other things to think about. And women don’t know or don’t want to tell the difference. Categories, attributes and thought are cultural constructions but, since world world, philosophy teaches that underneath nature has its imperturbable movements. Therefore, the protests against the Gleaner of Sapri, a bronze sculpture, accused of exhibiting a conspicuous butt for the use and consumption of the old and obtuse male chauvinist imagination are not convincing.

Emanuele Stifano, the author, defends himself by showing off his artistic desire to conceive the human being as naked as possible, as the supreme ideal of beauty. And he takes as an example his other public effort, a Palinuro two meters tall, beautiful and muscular, located in the eponymous town a few kilometers from Sapri. Indeed, one might wonder why Laura Boldrini and Monica Cirinn, the two iconoclastic furies of democratic militancy, did not at the time ask for the removal of that helmsman Aeneas, whose bronze athletic power certainly also sexualizes the male body. Stifano a very popular sculptor in those Cilento districts, where he buys up public orders, beating no one knows what competition. The Grande Lucania Foundation, a financing body, has great esteem for the artist. And his inspiration. The president Franco Castiello, also senator M5S, on the disputed Gleaner has in fact declared with stentorian competence as an anthropologist that only those born too many kilometers above the parallel of Sapri do not know what the physical features of southern women are. Here you can also hear the noise of a small controversy in the Giallorossi house in the distance, perhaps amplified by the much photographed presence of Giuseppe Conte at the inauguration of the statue. Had the ceremony taken place without national celebrities, perhaps no one other than the Garigliano would have debated the gleaner’s butt in one way or another. So, even if it is a little embarrassing to seriously deal with such a local and squalid issue, a minimum of general reflection on art and politics might be asked. And perhaps, precisely because of art and politics in this story we only see the slightly vulgar reflections of an Italian comedy, we can finally talk about it in a cruder and more explicit way. If art, any form of art, free, not bound to moral and political judgments and prejudices, how should we understand the arguments of Boldrini and Cirinn? Naive question, perhaps wrongly posed. By chance, then, would you want to agree with the Renzian mayor of Sapri, a certain Antonio Gentile, who falling from the clouds speaks instead of the artist’s mastery and impeccable interpretation? When too much too much. We venture a hasty but honest analysis. Emanuele Stifano has a certain reputation. If you browse a bit of local literature, defined by his fellow countrymen the Michelangelo of Cilento. The politicians of the district are proud of it as a glory of their own. As he does the portraits, just as he is, with superfine technical expertise that not even those sculptors acclaimed by the market run by foreigners will never be able to reach, an entirely Cilentan source of pride, of a land that has always had an exasperating consideration for itself . Stifano’s defense is not even political. Let’s say, in short, that a geopolitical petition. In Naples, in recent times, we are experiencing something like this with the famous Iago. Neighborhood sculptor, acclaimed at the Sanit, he too, like the new Michelalengelo, the author of the big Christmas baby in Piazza Plebiscito, today the creator of a horrendous Piet to be placed soon in Rome under the protection of Pope Francis, certainly not worse and not better than the good Stifano. They both have a cartoonish and prosperous imagery. In order for the naïve to be induced to exchange unproven manual skill with an artistic ability never seen before, both suggest that they are carving with their prodigious hands objects that only the computer can actually make. If we were in a country in some normal latitude, in the South, in the Center or in the North, we would agree in a single instant that, looking at them one by one, they are very ugly objects not at all art. The stuff of presumptuous amateurs. In short, Stifano’s Gleaner and Iago’s Piet should be canceled from the scene because they are outrageous due to the unfortunately uncommon sense of aesthetics. On the other hand, indignation appears laughable, completely out of place politically correct of democratic parliamentarians. As Italian citizens they should be offended by the ugliness of this alleged art, if they had culture at heart and knew the history of our country. Throwing it on sexism, to me, remaining on the subject, seems to be the attitude of paraculous politicians. A fluid intellectual deformation, once masculine, today without gender identity.


29 September 2021 | 08:17

© Time.News


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