Neįbūtinta būtis. Lytinio tapatumo problema dailėje

ENIn the discourse of Lithuanian art criticism, the question on the identity of sexes is by no means under an extensive study. In tackling painters’ creation, the aspects of their nature are frequently omitted. Such approach is characteristic of the societies with patriarchal structures regarding the peculiarities of the male individual’s outlook as the essential experience common to all human creatures. In the Western culture the phallus — centered ascertainments find their consolidation through the structures of a language which are based upon the binary copulas of the senses. To relate the categories to the opposites is characteristic of the human mind. Yet, the opposites are not merely singled out by the patriarchal mentality but they are also arranged into hierarchy by consolidating one pole and reducing the other within the scope of peripherical senses. Thus, the antinomies of culture/nature, body/mind, activity/passivity, publicity privatness and a vast majority of other ones emerge the counter parts of which are not equivalent. The pair of the opposites, i. e. that of man/woman manifesting itself as a universal category of human thinking, accumulates them. Because of that the space of the feminine subjectivity does not acquire any autonomy in the patriarchal society. It is being distorted by fragmenting the essential female being as well as by forming the negative relationship between herself and her body.By this the female mind and the ability of creative expression are impoverished. However, the stepping over the narrow tracts of binary thinking and the comprehending of the multiplicity of the aspects of mutual interaction between the mind and the body by virtue of which the uniqueness of the psychophysiology of the sexes is brought to light favours the new opportunities for the understanding of the subjectivity. The mind cannot be separated from the body and the latter has always been determined by a nature, race, social and cultural factors. It does not fit to the unanimous frames. The body is not opposite to culture, it itself is being reproduced in it. Therefore, the feminine artistic self-expression should not be analysed by rejecting the peculiarities of her nature and social experience. By ignoring a wide range of manifestations in the female subjectivity the picture of essential human being is made impoverished. Yet, it can be repainted by transmigrating constructively the formalistic statements of evaluating the creation and by concentrating the attention on the problem of mutual interaction between the expression and the content.