| Summary: | The treatment of female body in the paintings of Zora Petrovic anticipate the
feminist theories that originated during the 70’s and 80’s of the 20th
century, which suggested androcentrism and absence of the female perspective
and the necessity of re-evaluation on the concept of body. Through the
expression of female body, in the traditional painter’s act, Zora Petrovic
flirts with the social constructions of body and gender, intuitively pushing
the boundaries towards the spiritual realm while treating body not only as an
physical object but also as the bearer of the subjectivism and the point
where personal and sexual identity, cultural and social stereotypes and
relations between power and domination interconnect. The Act (1956/1957)
represents an artistic deliberation on the social position of female body in
the patriarchal capitalism with the elements of her own fictitious
projections in search of the artist’s personal female and artistic identity,
including her own intuitive artistic indication and conjecture on the
feminist theories that had followed. The painting of this act depicts an act
of self-identification, while the object of observation becomes the
perspective of beholder who detaches the perspective of an observer while
rendering his (male) absolute power ineffective. The naked body brings
disarray by an indication of an erotic promise while dismissing an illusion
of the absolute capitulation. The developed artistic form of ambiguous
sexualised body that is revealed to the male voyeuristic observation
transitions into the sensual dreaming of the model about own erotic and
exhibitionistic body seductiveness which is, in fact, a provocation to the
observer by its revealing eroticised position while encouraging a voyeuristic
enjoyment that becomes an outcome of creation and observation of self-admired
body, and in the process transposing the artist and the model into the
voyeuristic roles. The innate understanding of eroticism, in the process of
development of a new form of female act, in Zora Petrovic’s paintings, faces
us with an array of ideological presumptions and stereotypes that are
conceptualised around the perception of body as an object and as a bearer of
subjectivism while allowing an opportunity to question own interpretations
and boundaries of personal and social discourse on the subjects of body,
gender and sensuality. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. br.
46017: Interdisciplinarno istraživanje kulturnog i jezičkog nasleđa Srbije.
Izrada multimedijalnog internet portala "Pojmovnik srpske kulture"]
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