Non-normative models: some considerations on the male nude in performance art contexts in Italy (1968-1974)

The essay analyzes some examples of the use of the male nude in photographic and performance works made in Italy between 1968 and 1974, starting from the hypothesis that merely departing from the norm – represented by the female nude – is already a noteworthy fact. Although, in some cases, the thematization of the androgyne resorts to the mythological and allegorical filter, the use of the male nude contributes in various ways to shaking gender clichés and traditional heterosexual binarism. What emerges is a potential area of tangency and overlap between the affirmative postures of the homosexual movement and a certain tendency to rethink masculinity, which is also being challenged in parallel by feminism.