‘…Another example would be the reaction of the Arts Council of Great Britain to Suzanne’s Santoro’s artist’s book, Towards New Expression.

In the short textin this image-based work, Santoro’s words resonate with Irigaray’s slightly later comments on the excision of women’s genitals from the scene of representation in phallocentric ‘art’. The text first discusses a graffito on a wall in Rome of a penis, a vulva and drops of semen being collected in a cup: The penis and the semen were drawn with force and the cup for the care and preservation of the semen was given great importance. On the other hand there was the subordinate and mystified presence of the female genitals, the usual crack-hole. […] When I saw how this subject had been treated in the past, I realized that even in diverse historical representation it had been annulled, smoothed down and in the end, idealized. […] We can no longer see ourselves as if we live in a dream or as an imitation of something that just does not reflect the realty of our lives. […] The substance of expression is unlimited and has no established form. Self expression is a necessity. Expression begins with self assertion and with the awareness of the differences between ourselves and others. (Santoro 1974, ‘Towards New Expression’, Rivolta Femminile, Rome, Italy.)


note: Ce sexe was first published in France in 1977, but other similar comments appeared in Speculum in France in 1974. I do not wish to suggest any direct influence one way or the other, Santoro’s full text is reprinted in Hilary Robinson (ed.), Feminism-Art-Theory 1968-2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 277,278.

Santoro’s aim through the bookwork is (as the title suggests) to begin to work towards what

we might call a syntax appropriate to women. She does this through the delicate and space selection, editing and juxtaposing of photographic images in this intimately scaled book (each page is approximately 16cm x 11cm). The images are of the vulva; the labia; the clitoris; of women’s genitals seen from the front, with the outer and inner lips visible above the ‘Y’ formed by the tops of the thighs; of shells; of flowers; of Greek statues; and of the ‘Y’ as represented by artists such Cranach and Raphael, missing the representation of the lips, in the same fashion as the triangle mentioned earlier as presenting the mother goddess omitted the line indicating them also. Santoro makes explicit her aim of encouraging women towards expression through an appropriate significatory system: The placing of the Greek figures, the flowers and the conch shell near the clitoris is a means of understanding the structure of the female genitals.

It is also an invitation for the sexual self expression that has been denied to women till now, and it does not intend to attribute specific qualities to one sex or the other. (Santoro 1974)