Chapter II
A networker and/or an outsider?
Senza titolo, 1947−1953 (Detailed view)
““I was always an outsider, going against the grain;
I never fitted in.”
Carol Rama
Against
all Norms
Censored for obscenity? Supposedly tipped off by the Vatican, the police are said to have closed down Carol Rama’s first exhibition in 1945 before it could open.
According to the artist, the impetus for this came from a series of watercolors which were produced between 1936 and 1946 as a direct response to incisive events in her early life. The series bears the title “Appassionata” (En. The Passionate Woman) or “I due pini” (En. The Two Pines), with the latter referring to the name of a psychiatric institution in Turin where her mother, Marta Rama, was treated in 1933. The watercolors primarily feature nude, female figures in sexually suggestive poses. Many are lacking limbs or are reduced to torsos. The works are captivating in their unsparing directness and active embrace of taboo subjects. At their core, the watercolors deal with social issues of freedom and oppression, of boundaries in society, and their transgression. These themes were crucial for both Rama and the avant-garde movements as a whole.
“Madness is not something that is alien to us.
Being overly certain that you’re on the right side is also madness.”
Carol Rama
A naked woman squats with her back turned to the observer and defecates in the center of the lower half of the image. Looking over her shoulder – her face in profile and her head adorned with a wreath – she sticks out her tongue impishly. In another watercolor, a naked female figure sits in a wheelchair. The multiple, superfluous wheels seem to imprison the figure. Only at a second glance does one see that her legs have been amputated and that the red pumps have been placed vestigially on the footrests of the wheelchair. In another work, a wreath-crowned woman lies on a metal bed with restraining belts hanging from the frame in a cell-like room. A cage-like lattice of stacked bedframes hangs from the ceiling.
Figures from mythology
Although Carol Rama’s watercolors break with convention, they also reflect her experience of Italian, bourgeois education. The female figures in the watercolors frequently wear wreaths in their hair, which is a reference to maenads. In Greco-Roman mythology, maenads are the female followers of Dionysus, the god of wine, intoxication, madness, and ecstasy. Their name is derived from the Greek word “μανία/mania” (En. frenzy, madness).
By linking them to classical antiquity, Rama exalts her supposedly “badly” behaving figures out of the framework of “illness” and elevates them to the level of mythology.
These radical, striking watercolors are often read through a feminist lens.
As an act of self-empowerment, they break away from the artistic tradition that assigns women the position of being observed and men the roll of observers. By transgressing these artistic conventions, the works question male-dominated systems of representation. By highlighting the common mechanisms of oppression, Rama’s art gives women their bodies and self-determination back.
“The outstretched tongue
is the object of desire.”
Carol Rama
Casa
Carol Rama
Das Wohnatelier in Turin.
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Amabile, 1939
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Bricolage, 1966
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La mucca pazza, 1996
The motif of the tongue plays a prominent role throughout Carol Rama’s oeuvre. Many figures in her early works stick theirs out provocatively. In the “bricolage” series, disembodied tongues appear alongside buttock prints and dolls’ eyes. The tongue is featured in the mixed-media series “La mucca pazza” (En. The Mad Cow), which was inspired by the BSE outbreak.
Once again, Rama’s artworks hover between the realms of lustful eroticism and uninhibited madness.
The erotic connotations of the tongue can be read in two ways. On one hand, it has clear similarities with the penis. It is an elongated appendage engorged with blood that can penetrate another person’s body. On the other hand, the unnaturally pointed tongues Rama painted suggest an association with female genitalia, especially the clitoris. Additionally, the tongues can be interpreted as a symbolic appropriation of the phallus in an act of female empowerment.
Thus, the tongues symbolize a vehemently affirmative and remarkably permissive relationship to the female body and a self-determined expression of pleasure – currently referred to as “sex positivity”.
Intellectual circles
and international networks
In interviews, Carol Rama repeatedly emphasized her artistic autonomy, yet she was by no means an isolated outsider. She surrounded herself with a circle of like-minded intellectuals.
Carol Rama regularly attended exhibitions and events in Turin and frequently hosted prominent figures from the cultural scene. She always kept up to date with artistic developments, politics, and current events both locally and internationally.
At a time when the Italian intellectual scene was dominated by men, Rama was one of the few women who succeeded in building a substantial network in the fields of literature, music, design and art.
She cultivated a particularly close connection with her lifelong friend Edoardo Sanguineti, one of the most important innovators in Italian literature. Rama’s circle of friends also included the renowned Turin painter Felice Casorati – her first supporter and advocate – and his wife Daphne Maugham Casorati. Rama also had close friends among local intellectuals, including musicologist and anti-fascist Massimo Mila; art historian, painter, and philosopher Albino Galvano; architect and designer Carlo Mollino; and architect, author, and artist Corrado Levi. Her circle also included composer Luciano Berio; the writers Italo Calvino and Cesare Pavese; and last but not least, surrealist artist Man Ray.
Corrado Levi is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and architect, and was a lecturer in the architecture department at the Politecnico di Milano. While working as a curator during the 1970s and 1980s, he fostered a greater exchange between the US and the Italian art scenes. He helped numerous Italian artists achieve greater international visibility, including Carol Rama. At the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993, Levi designed the exhibition architecture for Rama’s solo presentation in one of the rooms of the Italian pavilion.
Man Ray was one of the most prominent Modern artists. He is also regarded as one of the most influential artists of the Surrealist movement. He and Rama were in regular contact from the early 1970s on. During this time, she traveled to many destinations – including Paris, New York, and Saint-Tropez – and was often accompanied by Man Ray. They both inspired each other, and she dedicated several of her works to Ray.
Carol Rama forged a friendship with Turin architect, author, and designer Carlo Mollino over many decades. With his furniture designs, he made important contributions to “organic design”, which is based on natural forms and characterized by freely curved lines. Many of his designs also have erotic components. Located diagonally opposite the “Casa Studio Carol Rama”, the apartment he designed as a Gesamtkunstwerk is now open to the public as a private museum.
In the 1970s, Rama met the internationally renowned gallery owner and art collector Alexander Iolas. After working as a professional ballet dancer, Iolas changed careers in the 1930s and began to run galleries in New York, Paris, Milan, and other cities. He had an extensive, international network and successfully represented some of the most high-profile artists including René Magritte, Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, and Andy Warhol. Carol Rama was added to this esteemed list in the mid-1970s.
In 1980, Carol Rama’s works were presented in Milan in the groundbreaking group exhibition “L’altra metà dell’avanguardia 1910–1940” (En. The Other Half of the Avant-garde 1910−1940), curated by Lea Vergine.
This survey exhibition shed light on the contribution female artists made to the Avant-garde for the first time and highlighted Rama’s artistic significance. Via the subsequent stations of the exhibition in Rome and Stockholm, Rama’s work was finally accessible to a broader audience. In 2003, Rama finally received the “Golden Lion” for her life’s work at the 50th Venice Biennale at the age of 85.
