Although misogyny was omnipresent within the greater part of the historical avant-gardes, the artistic responses to this attitude by female avant-garde artists were very diverse. I chose to focus in this article on the particular situation of female Futurist artists Valentine de Saint-Point, Mina Loy and Giannina Censi, and Dadaist artists Sophie Taeuber and Emmy Hennings. After outlining the complex and much-debated terminology of the ‘historical avant-gardes’, I will then zoom in on the particular contexts in which Futurism and Dadaism emerged. Subsequently, the problematic reception of these female pioneers of the historical avant-gardes will serve as the background in order to interpret my case studies’ artistic strategies of my case-studies of protesting the ongoing misogyny.

When speaking of the ‘historical avant-gardes’, a melting pot of different artistic movements roughly between 1905 and 1935 is intended (Bru 1). A term with an interesting etymology, the ‘avant-garde’ in ‘historical avant-garde’ initially was used within a military context, to describe a group of soldiers sent out to explore potentially hostile territory (215). In 1825, the French philosopher Claude Henri de Saint-Simon was the first to detach the term from its original reference to warfare, applying it within an artistic context (216). In his utopian plan for a socialist nation, he expected artists to lead the socio-economic revolution he envisaged by means of experimental, ‘avant-garde’ art. While de Saint-Simon roughly considered all avant-garde art experimental, the term gradually evolved to become something much more radical and greatly opposed to what was considered to be traditional art. Later, critics including Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1962) and Peter Bürger (1974) coined the term ‘historical avant-garde’ in order to avoid confusion with post-war movements (e.g., Neo-Dada) (218).

However, the ‘historical avant-garde’ was (and still is) subject to critical debate among scholars, more specifically when it comes to outlining the shared artistic project of the different movements that are considered part of this ‘historical avant-garde.’ Peter Bürger (author of the iconic Theorie der Avantgarde) concluded that the historical avant-gardes altogether aimed to unify art and life by attacking the concept of art as an institution. In doing so, they heavily contradicted the modernist project of creating an autonomous and self-reflexive art (Bürger 2010, 696). This statement was contested among (many) others by Susan Manning in her research on the revolutionary dances of Mary Wigman. Manning saw in the genre of the Ausdruckstanz (German Expressionist dance) not only a tendency towards uniting art and life, but also a drive to the creation of an autonomous form of art (a goal that was considered ‘modernist’ by Bürger). As such, Mannings questioned the strict applicability of Bürger’s definition of the ‘historical avant-garde’ to the field of dance and performance (Manning 7). Finally, while Bürger mainly focused on the overall project of unifying art and life, other scholars (e.g., Clement Greenberg) interpreted the avant-gardes in terms of their contradiction to mass consumption and mass production (Bru 220). I adopt the view that the term covers many difficulties, especially in the field of dance and performance (see also Manning). Rather than untangling this debate, I focus on two movements within the avant-garde period: Futurism and Dadaism, and the particular artistic strategies that female pioneers developed within these realms.

Futurism was founded by main representative Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. His controversial and energetic body of thought was internationally spread through the publication of his iconic The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro in 1909) (Rainey 1). Originating in Italy, at a time marked by great changes caused by upcoming Modernity, Futurism aimed at installing a radical and new culture that incorporated the glorification of the machine, the beauty of warfare as “the only hygiene of the world” (Marinetti 1911, 84) and the language of speed. While Futurism initially started as a literary movement, it soon embraced a variety of artistic genres and media: visual arts, poetry, theatre, music, architecture, and even cooking. Central to the movement was the creation of sensory experiences that involved all of the senses of the participating spectator (Greene 21): “Painters have shown us the objects and the people placed before us. We shall put the spectator in the center of the picture” (Balla 1910, 65). The objective of merging art and life was best achieved through the organization of different Futurist Serate’s (evening performances). These evenings exploited the Futurist love of war, shock, violence and aggression in a programme that consisted of performances, concerts and exhibitions (Berghaus 90). In a later stage, Futurism became deeply involved with Fascism (Rainey 1).

While Futurism rooted in Italy and was very engaged in politics, Dadaism originated in neutral Zurich. Founded on the 5th of February 1916 by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings (accompanied by Hans Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, Marcel Janco and Tristan Tzara) (Amrein 7), Dadaism also aimed at unifying art and life (28). Still, the indirect confrontation with the horrors of World War I led to a disillusioned and dismissive stance towards war and violence: “While the cannon rumbled in the distance, we pasted, recited, versified, we sang with all our soul. We sought an elementary art, which, we thought, would save men from the curious madness of these times. We aspired to a new order which might restore the balance between heaven and hell” (Arp qtd. in Jones 67). The arrival of a great deal of immigrants of different backgrounds in Zurich granted Dadaism its international character and its multilingual and diverse cross-pollination of different styles and contents: Marinetti’s Futurist texts were published in Dada periodicals (Salaris 39), Expressionist dancers performed on the Dada stages, artists of the German Werkbund attended the Dada Soirées, etc. Finally, “Dadaism belonged to the stage” (Huelsenbeck qtd. in Amrein 10) as realized through the many Dadaist Soirées that brought together music, dance, poetry and the visual arts in a context that installed a renewed attention to the human body (11).

“I was also around”
The problematic reception of female pioneers of the historical avant-gardes

Art history at times creates the illusion that the historical avant-gardes consisted of a heroic group of white men bravely fighting bourgeois art standards (think of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, etc.) (Jones 19). More often than not, equally engaged female artists such as Emmy Hennings who co-founded Dadaism with Hugo Ball in 1916, were reduced to passive ‘others,’ ‘wives of’, or trivial attendees.

However, a great number of female pioneers (e.g., Suzanne Perrottet, Nelly van Doesburg, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Suzanne Duchamp, Hannah Höch, Meret Oppenheim, Benedetta, Claude Cahun and many more) were heavily involved in the founding and the development of eminent artistic movements (Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc.) within the historical avant-gardes. Reducing the historical avant-garde to a ‘men-only club’ is not only a historical misconception, it also erases a vast amount of the diversity and complexity inherent in these movements. Rather problematically, it simply understates the importance of concepts such as gender and identity in the artistic work of both men and women going through great social, political and philosophical changes. Only in the eighties (Dech 1989), culminating in the nineties of the twentieth century, did historians start to rewrite avant-gardist art history from a feminist point of view, hence allowing avant-garde women to be recognized as active “innovators” rather than as passive “followers of male examples” (Deepwell 5). Valuable historical studies on Mina Loy and Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, for example, and the more recent publications on ‘the gender of Modernity’ (Felski 1995, De Zegher 1996, Sawelson-Gorse 1998, etc.) were written. Nevertheless, these historical studies remained mainly biographical or descriptive studies. It is only now that art histories are uncovering the manifold artistic strategies of these female pioneers.

Before exploring the artistic strategies of some of these female pioneers, I ask myself the following questions: Why is it that these female pioneers of the historical avant-gardes were underexposed in art history for so long? How do we understand the practice of silencing their artistic contributions and at times even denying their existence outright?

First, a number of culturally defined circumstances and prejudices contributed to the marginalization of the female avant-garde artist in society. As most of the avant-garde movements originated in cities and at venues where women were often not welcome if unaccompanied by men, they were often prevented from actively participating (Bru 107). Moreover, their position as a female ‘other’ directly affected their financial status, which often forced them to look for alternative sources of income as well as encouraging them to operate anonymously within the avant-gardes. Dadaist Emmy Hennings, for example, had to turn to prostitution to compensate for her unpaid artistic activities: “the poor girl gets too little sleep. Everybody wants to sleep with her, and since she is so accommodating, she never gets any rest. Until 3 a.m.; she has to be at Kathi’s place, where she is taken horrible advantage of, and by 9 a.m. she is already at art class” (Erich Mühsam qtd. in Hemus 2009, 21). Emmy Henning’s Dadaist colleague and friend, Sophie Taeuber, had no other choice than to sign the Dada manifesto with the pseudonym G. Thauber, while also dancing the Dada stages anonymously (wearing concealing masks and costumes) out of fear of losing her income as an art teacher (Bolliger 33). Futurist Mina Loy similarly employed a certain “pseudonymania” (Conover xviii) and even enjoyed the advantages of the appealing and mysterious aura it bestowed on her (Lusty 245). In the same tradition, fellow Futurist Valentine de Saint-Point, officially named Valentine de Anne-Jeanne-Valentine-Marianne Desglans de Cessiat-Vercell Saint Point, amused herself by combining and re-combining parts of her name in a confusing way while boasting of various extraordinary blood-relations (Satin 2).

Second, the commonplace derogatory and belittling attitude of male colleagues condemned female avant-garde artists to being outsiders, “alien, as woman and as human being” (said Hans Richter about Emmy Hennings qtd. in Hemus 2009, 19-20). The many statements of Dada artists bear witness to this phenomenon, including Suzanne Perrottet’s lamentation “I was also around” (Kamenisch 10), Sophie Taeuber’s request “Why can’t I also be a Dadaist” (Boesch 109) and Hania Routchine’s “I hope you will do me the honour of listening” (Ingram 18). All too often it seemed as if men were the ones actually creating art whereas female artists, at best, passed as “gifted amateurs” (Dadaist Hannah Höch qtd. in Boesch 2). Furthermore, as soon as they succeeded “too well” in terms of “male standards,” they were blamed for “denying their female nature” (Orenstein 33). In the case of dance and performance specifically, their artistic qualities were played down in favour of the sensational effect they were expected to produce (Hemus 2009, 28). Some fellow Dadaists saw nothing more than a “pleasurable visual spectacle for the men in the audience” in the Dada dancers (Hemus 2007, 97).

This practice of gazing resembles what feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey called ‘the male gaze’. In her much-discussed essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema”, Mulvey turns to psychoanalysis to analyse the overall present ‘male gaze’ that constituted classic Hollywood cinema. This ‘male gaze’ installed a way of looking at a woman (as portrayed on the screen) that reduced her to a passive object of pleasure, one that the spectator could only desire and never identify with (Mulvey 63). I will not go into too much detail with regard to the debate around Mulvey’s theory, but it is clear that in reading the many romanticizing reviews of female Dada performances, in which the appeal of the performers’ bodies overshadowed the technicality of their movements, this concept of the ‘male gaze’ is also at stake: “her dance patterns are full of romantic desire, grotesque and enraptured,” Hugo Ball observed (Hemus 2007, 98). A description of Belgian Surrealist Jane Graverol’s paintings as products of “a very feminine extravagance,” further illustrates the objectifying ‘male gaze’ in describing women’s art (René de Solier qtd. in Orenstein 49). Not only were these pioneers as such romanticized, they were also often overtly described as sexual bait for a mainly male audience who responded to their alluring sexual presence (Hemus 2009, 22). Dadaist Emmy Hennings, for example, was considered “the cosmopolitan mixture of god and brothel” (Tristan Tzara qtd. in Hemus 2009, 28) rather than being praised for her virtuous capacities as a versatile singer, writer and actress (19).

Both the difficult position of avant-garde women in society, as well as the derogatory attitude of colleagues and critics, contributed to the fact that women artists were never fully accepted as autonomous creators. Rather, they were considered to be passive muses for the creative potential of their male colleagues. In addition, the rigid classification and prioritization of certain media and materials through art history contributed to the unjust exclusion of many avant-garde women (Buckley 3). “Feminine” media (embroidery, fashion, dance) and materials (wood, textile, the body) were generally considered inferior in the established art world and were only judged according to their utility, whereas men’s art (written texts, sculpture, paintings) was unquestioningly accepted into the market economy (5). As an example, art educator Hugo Weber in his Catalogue Raisonné (1948), neglected a great deal of Sophie Taeuber’s embroidery, tapestry and jewellery in favor of her work as a visual artist (Bargues 103) because of these pejorative connotations. Still, as Taeuber tried to prove and as her husband and colleague Jean Arp noted: “Art can just as easily express itself in wool, paper, ivory, ceramics, or glass as in painting, stone, wood or clay” (103-104).

In the case of dance and performance, not only this inferior status, but also the limited sustainability of the media led to a “disciplinary blindness towards its (dance’s) cultural and historical significance” (Andrew 17). Moreover, the short-lived and volatile status of these art forms, leaving us with nothing more than a few photographs and testimonies, makes it particularly challenging to bring to life female avant-garde performance. This has consequences right up to the present day. In visual culture studies, for example, Hal Foster (in his article “Dada Mime” (2003) reduced the iconic image of Sophie Taeuber dancing at the opening of Cabaret Voltaire / Galerie Dada (1916/17) to a mere illustration of the mask she was wearing, “leaving her a stand-in for any masked Dadaist” (Andrew 17, see also Foster 170). By separating the mask from the dancing body moving with it, Taeuber’s bodily presence as a dancer is painfully denied. Not only did this lead to a misconception of Taeuber’s iconic dance performance(s), it also undermined the enchanting influence of masks upon the moving Dada body (see Doutreligne and Stalpaert 2019) informed by the different brochures announcing Dada events from 1916 on, dancing and moving with masks played an important role in the arrangement of every single Soirée. Moreover, the masks, “reminiscent of the Japanese or ancient Greek theatre, yet […] wholly modern” had a compelling and dialogical effect (Ball 64) upon the performing body. In Ball’s celebrated Dada diary, this particular effect is described extensively:

We were all there when Janco arrived with his masks, and everyone immediately put one on. Then something strange happened. Not only did the mask immediately call for a costume; it also demanded a quite definite, passionate gesture, bordering on madness. Although we could not have imagined it five minutes earlier, we were walking around with the most bizarre movements, festooned and draped with impossible objects, each one of us trying to outdo the other in inventiveness. The motive power of these masks was irresistibly conveyed to us. All at once we realized the significance of such a mask for mime and for the theatre. The masks simply demanded that their wearers start to move in a tragic-absurd dance. (64)

Both attitudes of contemporaries (resembling Mulvey’s descriptions of the ‘male gaze’) and subsequent patriarchal stance of traditional art history, rendered female avant-garde artists silent and invisible. However, it was precisely through their specific interventions through well-chosen media as well as materials that these artists strongly criticized and deconstructed reigning concepts of logic, language, and gender. Starting from their marginalized position (both as women and as a members of the avant-gardes) the female Futurists and Dadaists that I will discuss next reinvented themselves while radically claiming their right to exist in two crucial ways. First of all, by critically addressing the misogynist cult of Futurism in its own familiar tongue: constructing a verbal alternative, a ‘female gaze’, in the form of a “feminist” manifesto. Second, by literally embodying the bankruptcy of the traditional concept of binary gender that was complicit in the conviction of my case-studies (both the Futurists as well as the Dadaists) as ‘outcasts.’

Establishing a female gaze: “Feminist” Futurist avant-garde manifestos

The manifesto was a popular and efficient artistic genre as well as a means of communication to launch and spread the intentions of different avant-garde movements internationally. Quite symbolically, it functioned as a “flag to alert to others that something new had started,” that a “virgin territory in the arts had been claimed” (Bru 9). When it comes to Futurism, the manifesto listed bold statements in which traditional art conventions were destroyed: “We intend to destroy museums, libraries, academies of every sort, and to fight against moralism, feminism, and every utilitarian or opportunistic cowardice” (Marinetti 1909, 51). Moreover, these manifestos were written in a direct and aggressive tone, mining an explicit and often warlike vocabulary, while engaging a collective ‘us’ against inferior ‘other(s).’

However textual (literally bound to the page) this genre might initially seem, there was more to it than meets the eye. The manifesto was meant to act not only as a textual, but also, and even more importantly, as a performative gesture. A theatrical action that was challenging the limits of language itself, demanding an engagement of all of our senses. Furthermore, the Futurist manifesto referred frequently to womanhood in terms of submission and domination: “Yes, our nerves demand war and disdain women, because we fear that supplicating arms will entangle our knees in the morning of departure!... What do they want – women, sedentary people, invalids, the sick, and all counsellors of prudence?” (Marinetti 1909, 54), “we male Futurists have felt ourselves abruptly detached from women, who have suddenly become too earthly or, better yet, have become a mere symbol of the earth that we ought to abandon” (Marinetti 1915, 89). And even: “the heat of a piece of wood or iron is in fact more passionate, for us, than the laughter or tears of a woman” (Marinetti 1912, 122).

Several female Futurist artists engaged with the particularly masculine format of the manifesto in order to deal with the narrow-minded and stereotypical imagery of their time. Despite the fact that the feminist ideal of the “New Woman” (together with the important struggles of the Suffragettes for example) emerged and gained importance throughout Europe and America at the beginning of the twentieth century (“And out of houses that were once reigned over by little doll-women have sprung new women (their hair drawn up at the nape of their necks and if necessary wearing trousers instead of skirts), women workers, women tram drivers, women street sweepers, women nurses (…))” (Futurluce 251), this radical shift in traditional gender roles was mostly met with fear and scepticism.

As such, female Futurists saw in the manifesto a medium through which they could address their male colleagues in the disguise of a familiar tongue, while taking the opportunity to critically question and denounce their subordinate position. The manifesto thus functioned as a literary safe space in which suggestions for improving the social and artistic status of women could be expressed.

Without wanting to confine the movement of Futurism solely to its openly misogynist character (a concern rightfully pointed out by Ré Lucia in her article about Futurist artist Mina Loy), it is essential here to take into consideration how Futurist women reacted to this derogatory attitude and contesting of their radical statements on gender constructions in society. Futurist writer, poet and dancer Valentine de Saint-Point was the first to call attention to her marginalized position. Through her lectures she investigated and exposed the gendered inequalities through history. Her reading on the Theatre of Women for example, outlined the problematic depiction of women by playwrights throughout history leaving women and their sexualities unrepresented (Berghaus 28).

Furthermore, her militant feminist Manifesto of the Futurist Woman (1912) was a direct attack on Marinetti’s misogynist statement at the beginning of his manifesto: “we will glorify war – the world’s only hygiene – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and contempt for woman” (Marinetti 1909, 51). In her powerful reaction (first recited 3 June 1912 in Galerie Giroux in Brussels and later on 27 June in Salle Gaveau in Paris (Berghaus 29)), de Saint-Point not only claimed equality between men and women (“both merit the same disdain”) but also called for an incorporation of both femininity and masculinity in every human being: “It’s absurd to divide humanity into women and men; it is composed only of femininity and masculinity” (de Saint-Point 109).

In leaving behind traditional notions of men being ‘masculine’ and women being ‘feminine,’ de Saint-Point effectively succeeded in liberating biological sex from gender constructions. Moreover, her progressive text introduced a radically different version of the “new man” envisioned by the Futurists: an androgynous and sexually liberated human being. As an alternative to the passive and exclusively ‘feminine’ images of women (for example the traditional image of woman as a mother), de Saint-Point introduced her idea of “women warriors” (Satin 4). Inspired by the “Amazons”, the “Joan of Arcs” and the “Cleopatras”, these androgynous warriors could even “fight more ferociously than men” (de Saint-Point 111). Although her stance on the incompatibility of the roles of lover and mother liberated women in an ambiguous way, at the same time it “condemned them to nurture and support male heroes by engendering or desiring them without sentimentality or passionate involvement” (Franko 22).

Another critical voice not afraid to speak up was Futurist writer, poet, and painter Mina Loy. Although curiously ignored by the majority of poets and critics of her own generation (Conover xxvii), as well as initially overlooked by historians of the avant-garde (xxxiv), Loy can be considered a pioneer of free verse (xxvii). Her poetry stigmatized Futurist misogyny and mocked Marinetti’s macho cult, “making in fact a kind of poetic reputation for herself out of repeated (and well-deserved) Marinetti-bashings” (Re 2009, 811). Inspired by the energy, movement, and wittiness of Futurism as a movement while at the same time multiplying the ‘I’ in her poetry, she soon learned to turn the Futurists’ own weapons against them (806).

Her visionary literary critique on the misogynist nature of Futurism will be discussed through Aphorisms on Futurism (1914) and Feminist Manifesto (1914). Aphorisms on Futurism (1914) was first published in Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work (803) and ambiguously combined an aggressive and emotionless style with a more personal, almost intimate subject matter. This can be seen in the way that while all of the aphorisms start in capital letters, and many of them seem to incite commands: “UNSCREW your capability of absorption and grasp the elements of Life – Whole” (Loy 274), Loy nonetheless managed to install a sensitive undertone to the seemingly rational and emotionless cover of style and typography. More specifically, as well as some general aphorisms such as: “MAN is a slave only to his own mental lethargy,” she included statements that seemed to aim for the more intimate project of self-fulfilment: “CEASE to build up your personality with the ejections of irrelevant minds” and “MAKING place for whatever you are brave enough, beautiful enough to draw out of the realized self” (ibid). That her controversial composition of content and style was radical, even for contemporaries, was informed by the unsettled reaction of Alfred Kreymborg to her work: “if she could dress like a lady, why couldn’t she write like one?” (Lusty 249). Aphorisms on Futurism enabled Loy to break free from all restrictions and expectations, both as a woman and as a writer (Pozorski 43).

Further, her Feminist Manifesto (written in 1914 but only published posthumously) forcefully accused socio-cultural institutions of their inadequacy in enabling women to express their own individuality and subjectivity (Lusty 252). Less rhythmical in composition and typography than Aphorisms on Futurism, the manifesto introduced the literary genre of the free verse (Re 2009, 811) and combined it with a content that was even more radical. Unlike Valentine de Saint Point, Loy problematically forced the solution of overcoming gendered inequities upon the female body itself. In proposing an “unconditional surgical destruction of virginity throughout the female population at puberty” (Loy 270), Loy hoped that manipulating – thus controlling – the female body would allow the construction of a female subjectivity (Walter 667). Even if it was felt this feminist goal could justify the means, it remains difficult – impossible even – to accept that the social construct of gender can only be changed by violating the female sex.

Her claim that women’s path to sexual autonomy can only be realized by “demolishing the division of women into two classes: the mistress and the mother. Every well-balanced and developed woman knows that no such division exists, that Nature has endowed the Complete Woman with a faculty for expressing herself through all her functions” (Loy 269-270), led some critics into reading her manifesto as a counterbalance to that of de Saint Point (Re 2009, 811). Still, “her allusion to parasitism and marriage as a kind of glorified prostitution was entirely in tune with Futurist vocabulary.” What was new was “her proud affirmation of female sexuality and maternity” (813). Her most revolutionary thoughts were “not in the transcendence of sexuality through mechanized man, but in the transformation of sexual codes: ending the false opposition of the ‘feminine’ body versus the ‘masculine’ mind” (ibid).

In comparing the feminist manifestos of Loy and de Saint-Point, the quest for equality between the sexes is realized in two radically different ways. De Saint-Point detaches biological sex from gender, claiming that both men and women must incorporate both masculinity as femininity, whereas Loy refuses to accept biological difference and believes in the outright manipulation of the female body. In this, it is important to state what kind of feminism each of these artists supported. First of all, both of them directly attacked feminism as a movement. De Saint-Point stated that “feminism is a political error,” (de Saint-Point 111) while Loy claimed that “The Feminist Movement as instituted at present is INADEQUATE” (Loy 269). Still, when analysing the content of their manifestos, their attitude is deeply feminist. The exception to this is Loy’s problematic proposal of “a surgical destruction of virginity” and her ideas on constructing a master race in which women were seen as the patriotic “reproducers of the nation” (Sica 349).

Transformative genderplay

Another artistic strategy dealing with the marginalization of the female ‘other’ was the playful performance of gender confusion. Already in Romanticism, an explicit tendency towards a so-called “androgyne imagination” (Rado 1) had emerged. Male writers had looked for, and experimented with, their own “feminine” qualities, intuitions, and sensitivities. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the feminist ideal of ‘New Woman’ further challenged rigid gender identities based on biological grounds alone (12). As most men were called to the front to serve in the war, women were now fulfilling traditionally assigned “masculine” roles, working as factory workers, drivers, railway guards, etc. This eventually also led to new, empowering, and androgynous notions of identity, followed by customized female fashion. ‘New woman,’ as presented on billboards, in literature, fashion, and the visual arts, thus communicated a crisis in the concept of the binary opposition of male and female, while on the other hand articulating dreams, desires, and possible futures of emancipation and empowerment.

The idea of ‘New woman’ fully infiltrated the historical avant-gardes (see Virgina Woolf’s novel Orlando, Futurluce’s (Elda Norchi’s pseudonym (Sica 154)) descriptions of new women with “drawn up hair” and “trousers instead of skirts,” the appearance of the “femme homme” in Dadaism, etc.). While we saw Futurist artists turning to the format of the “feminist” manifesto, we will now discuss how female Futurists as well as Dadaists turned to their own bodies to incorporate their revolutionary ideas about gender. As an archive of socio-cultural experiences, the female body absorbs the masculine expectations of it, while at the same time radically resisting the ongoing objectification of the male gaze. As such, the artists that will be discussed, resubmit themselves in patriarchal discourse, making visible what was supposed to remain invisible. A strategy that mimetically reproduces existing social gender codes, while also “playfully crossing” (Irigaray 76) the traditional gender boundaries, thereby exposing their problematic and outdated nature (119).

This strategy of genderplay will first be investigated within the movement of Futurism, and more specifically within the field of dance. Despite the fact that Futurism as a movement welcomed a very broad range of artistic disciplines, ceramics, visual arts, sculpture, music (noise art), etc., it never really managed to establish a solid base in order to develop Futurist dance as a full-fledged practice in the same way as music, the visual arts and theatre (Veroli 227). A series of questions comes to the fore: was there a lack of interest in the field of dance? Were there simply no artists wanting to translate or even reinvent Marinetti’s manifestos on dance? What influence did Marinetti’s “contempt for women” (Marinetti 1909, 51) have within this field? While we can only guess at the exact reasons for the Futurist under-exploration of dance, we do know for certain that there were two exceptions to this rule: Valentine de Saint-Point (already discussed through her meaningful manifestos) and Futurist dancer Giannini Censi (Veroli 227).

A year after having written her progressive feminist manifesto, de Saint-Point performed her Métachories for the first time at the Comédie des Champs Elysées (Paris) (Berghaus 30). Only a handful of pictures remain and inform us about the different outfits de Saint-Point wore during these performances. The art historian Günter Berghaus has divided the costumes stylistically in three categories: “Greek modelled drapery in bright colours, oriental clothes with rich textures and martial looking medieval outfits” (31). It is striking that in all of her costumes her face is covered with fabric, leaving no trace of facial expressivity or a possibility of identification. The only bare skin that can be perceived is through the occasional exposure of an arm, foot and knee. Her dances, introduced by an explanatory text and guided through recited poems written by de Saint-Point, consisted of four sections: Poèmes d’amour, Poèmes d’atmosphère, Poèmes pantheistes and Poèmes de guerre (ibid).