Until 17 June 2018, Palazzo Magnani in Reggio Emilia hosts the exhibition SEX & REVOLUTION! Imaginary, utopia, liberation (1960-1977) which investigates the genesis of the transformations in the way of conceiving and experiencing sexuality between the 60s and 70s, through over 300 period exhibits: film sequences, photographs, comics, magazines, books, film posters, musical pieces, multimedia installations, settings with design objects, music and much more.
The review, curated by Pier Giorgio Carizzoni, under the scientific direction of Pietro Adamo, professor at the University of Turin, promoted and organized by the Palazzo Magnani Foundation together with the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, in collaboration with the Dioniso Cultural Association, is one of the main appointments of the XIII edition of European Photography, which this year revolves around the theme REVOLUTIONS – Rebellions, changes, utopias.
The exhibition opens with an analysis of the philosophical and cultural sphere in which the sexual revolution was born and developed: from Freudian studies at the end of the XNUMXth century to the researches of Wilhelm Reich, whose orgonometer will be presented, measuring that particular form of energy, known as 'orgonics', discovered by Reich himself in the XNUMXs, at the first research into sexology by authors such as Alfred Kinsey, founder of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, Albert Ellis, Frank Caprio, to the studies of Herbert Marcuse, who paved the way for important political and cultural battles which, since the middle of the last century, have been the prelude to the drafting of literary, cinematographic and artistic works.
An important role is entrusted to the deepening of the relationship between sex and literature through fundamental novels such as Ulysses by James Joyce, Lady Chatterley's lover by David Herbert Lawrence, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, I will spit on your graves Boris Vian, and the paths of censorship and trials that affected authors such as the aforementioned Lawrence and Miller, but also William Burroughs and our own Vitaliano Brancati.
The first section closes with an illustration of some social practices that characterized the sexual revolution: the legitimization of contraception and abortion; the spread of free love, swinging, open dating and nudism; the progressive social acceptance of male and female homosexuality; the proliferation of pornography.
The changes in costume triggered by these cultural processes – between the 1953s and XNUMXs – favored the creation of highly innovative cinematographic and editorial products. On display are the first covers of international magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse, their Italian counterparts Playmen and Le Ore, but also the volumes of Olympia Press, the American publishing house founded in XNUMX with headquarters in Paris, which has published, without censorship, some erotic novels of the Beat generation. Also on display are rare Italian editions of audacious classics of the past, sometimes in a semi-clandestine version, as well as clips of films with the appearance of the first nudes on the big screen. Sequences of famous films and documentaries directed by masters of the seventh art such as Bergman, Kazan, Wilder, Antonioni are proposed from these same years as clear signs of the changes taking place.
During the XNUMXs student protests, feminists and homosexual liberation movements, the writers of the Beat generation and the counterculture brought the themes of the liberation of the body, the joyful function of eroticism, into the media, into daily life and into the collective consciousness, of a more balanced man-woman relationship, spreading alternative lifestyles and overcoming the resistance of conservative legislators and associations committed to safeguarding morality.
An interesting section on clothing is inserted here through the display of some iconic garments such as the miniskirt, represented by images of its creator Mary Quant.
One of the cultural impact effects was the advent of progressively legalized mass pornography. From the experiences of the first full nudes, we gradually move on to hard core products, which find space in widely circulated magazines, but also in the world of comics and above all in cinema.
In the early seventies there was a boom in sex on the big screen with the opening and diffusion of red light cinemas showing films with hard content; this season the exhibition offers a rich documentation that includes the first hard Scandinavian magazines, super 8 films, the Italian publications in the transition from soft to hard, the most famous porn books of the period as well as a reasoned montage of the first porn films most successful.
However, the affirmation of pornography has highlighted the major criticalities of the sexual revolution and its outcomes: a sexuality oriented towards the male eye, the persistence of hierarchies of roles, the prevailing emphasis on the consumption of the materials proposed at the expense of life experience.
Through audio-video stations, photographs, original posters, books and magazines, the exhibition analyzes how sexuality, finally liberated, has influenced a large part of culture and society. Music, with songs with an explicit tone and lyrics such as Je t'aime… moi non plus by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, or Love to love you babe by Donna Summer, or the repeated No no no by Sabina Ciuffini. The theatre, with the musicals Hair, Oh Calcutta, The Rocky Horror Show. Arthouse cinema, which moves towards explicit sex, with excerpts from Borowczyk's The Beast, Lattuada's I'll be your father, Bertolucci's Novecento, Oshima's Empire of the Senses and others. The comic, featuring Sukia, Jacula and numerous others. Italian television, with the 'scandalous' performance by Ike and Tina Turner at Studio Uno, the censored divorce scene in the television adaptation of David Copperfield, the report on the Crazy Horse in Paris in the Odeon programme, the first documentary on a rape trial broadcast by RAI. Literature, with authors such as Philip Roth, Alberto Moravia, or literary cases such as the best-sellers Pigs with wings and Fear of flying. Photography, with archival images of some of the most significant protagonists of those great changes and with original works such as those of Paola Mattioli and Angelo Frontoni.
THE EXHIBITION SECTIONS
Section I – Sexology and philosophy
At the Origins of the Sexual Revolution: Wilhelm Reich - The Impact of the New Sexology - Sex and Literature - The Erotic Novel on Trial - The Theorists: Herbert Marcuse and Norman Brown - The Authors and Themes of the Sexual Revolution - The New Social Practices
Section II – Publishing and culture between the Fifties and Sixties
Playboy and the others – The adventures of the Olympia Press – Erotic publishing comes out of hiding – Pop sexology – Cinema: nudes, censorship, trials – Documentaries and investigations
Section III – The underground
The Beats and Free Love – The Counterculture Press – Dressing and Undressing the Body: The Miniskirt and Its Colleagues – Sex Drugs Rock'n Roll – The Sexual Revolution in the Theater – Feminists and Gay Liberation Movements
Section IV – Pornography
The legitimacy of pornography in Scandinavia - Publishing discovers the hard: from science to literature - From super 8 to cinema - The invasion of paper porn - The Golden Age of red lights in cinema - Criticisms: from the sexual revolution to 'hard core, and vice versa
Section V - The sexual revolution: victory or defeat?
Censorship fails … but not always – Arthouse cinema towards the explicit: 1974-1977 – Literature and the sexual revolution – Italian TV between censorship and audacity – The sexual revolution under accusation
Image: Alice and Ellen Kessler, 1975 © Angelo Frontoni / Cineteca Nazionale–Museo Nazionale del Cinema
