The Gendering of Men: Masculinity and Countercultures in the Work of Sottsass, Baruchello and Echaurren

Since the mid-1990s, scholars active in North America and the United Kingdom have pioneered the integration of masculinity studies into the art history of the twentieth century. In Italy, the exploration of the male gender from an art historical perspective has taken longer to gain purchase in academia. This article seeks to remedy this lacuna. It concentrates on the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s as a social space that, for all its unresolved contradictions, allowed for a collective critique of what sociologist Raewyn Connell has defined as “hegemonic masculinities”. Conceptual tools derived from gender and masculinity studies are here deployed to shed light on the work of two artists influenced by 1970’s countercultural milieus, Gianfranco Baruchello and Pablo Echaurren, as well as the architect/ designer Ettore Sottsass, who shared with them an interest in, and a sustained dialogue with, countercultural groups, especially in the 1960s. Through a focus on the motif of domesticity (in its material and imaginary dimensions) and a careful examination of the visual, medial and intellectual environments within which these three men operated – from 1977 fanzines to Rosso and from the Beat generation to the gay movement – this research will highlight semantic strategies, intellectual shifts, differences and similarities in the work of three artists whose production partly responded to the powerful and unsettling emergence of the second wave of feminism.