Lucia Marcucci: Visual Poetry Against Social Violence

Abstract

The article offers an original close reading of some of Marcucci's most famous works between the early 60s and late 70s, chosen as examples of a situated gendered specificity of the artist's poetics. Despite the self-declared distance from neo-feminist stances, Marcucci shines for originality and controversy in the themes and practices of creation in her contemporary landscape, mostly dominated by male artists. On the one hand, we observe Marcucci’s artistic and cultural operation in Italy amid an economic boom but still suffered from the retrograde nature of the still deviously dominant fascist thinking, in conjunction with the bigotry of the catholic church, concerning women’s emancipation. On the other hand, we also observe Marcucci’s productive singularity in the context of her contemporary counterculture, which had not freed itself at all — although preaching it — from sexist power dynamics. The article aims to present a feminist lens (from male gaze to self-objectification) not as the absolute and only way of interpreting Marcucci’s verbal-visual poems, but as useful in highlighting the specific qualities of Marcucci’s research and poetics. Through the analysis of “Il Fidanzato in Fuga” (The Runaway Bride; 1964), “Noxin” (1970), “AH!” (1972), “Aa Bb Cc” (1977), and “Culturae” (1978), an attempt will be made to offer a viable course of inquiry that does not isolate Marcucci’s work from that of her male contemporaries but considers its situated specificity as a necessary stand.