Thread by @DrWatson_writer

**Sardinia's DEPICTIONS in art**

Thread about the representations of Sardinia in art, literature and movies from the 19th century to the 'colonial' view, the ethnic body and the counter-reaction of Sardinian artists.

📸 Biasi

This thread covers a rather complex topic, that I don't mean to analyse in all the details. What makes it difficult is not only the way non-Sardinians saw the Island, but also the way the locals used these views to create a (false) unified, single identity, taking to the-

-extremes what was actually true. This discussion will therefore follow both the external and internal points of view.

This analysis begins from the 19th century, when the current of Positivism aroused a general interest towards different cultures. Often (if not always) this-

-was accompanied by the sense of cultural superiority of a certain European elite. This has been done to extra-European peoples and cultures, but it has also been applied inside the lands of Europe, as is the case of Sardinia.

Starting from the 18/19th centuries, Sardinia-

-became one of the most visited lands in Europe, with travellers coming from Britain or France to write their own travel diaries. Some of these are more accurate than others, and some wrote plain lies just to satisfy the people's fantasies. Sardinia was regarded as a land-

-of magic, secret rituals and backward culture, accompanied by the "savage nature" of its inhabitants. This myth (based on ancient and known stereotypes) fed into the trope of the "good savage", the person who belongs to a lesser culture but still acts generously. It is clear-

-how Sardinian proverbial hospitality and the backwardness of the agricultural methods of the most inner parts of the Island gave rise to these myths, which have then been exasperated and exploited.

The most famous example is that of Honoré de Balzac, who in his letters to-

-his wife tells of his dangerous trips among the forests, and how the inhabitants went around dressed with only loincloths (?!), lie told to excite the sexual fantasies of the French elite. It is nice to remind in this period the Kingdom of Sardinia included the territories of-

-Piedmont, Nice and Savoy and was well-integrated into the European context.

This view of Sardinia as a kind of Arcadia of happiness and pastoral feasts is also represented into the works of native painters. Not only they reflect the European taste in the depictions of people's-

-attitudes, poses (lacking what later on is called ethnic body), but also give a sense of joy and prosperity that didn't belong to most of the population. People are portrayed having fun in local festivals, with flowing dresses which seem made of silk and not the actual heavy -

-wool.

We know instead from pictures of the end of the century and afterwards that people lived in rather poor conditions, with clothes falling apart but still retaining the attitude of seriousness and elegance.

Some travel diaries of this period are those of Valery and Smith-

-but we also find faithful records from La Marmora, for example, who actually lived in Sardinia for 20 years in total and gave a more realistic depiction (also accusing Valery of giving false information 😆).

From here, it evolved towards more exasperated depictions, based on-

-the rising stereotypes of the period. Sardinia became the "exotic land next door", a place to "discover", where "strange" people lived. It was associated to the other "exotic" peoples of the period, like the Natives of America, Australia, South Asian and Arabs. The works of-

-this period are oriented towards a form of "othering" of Sardinians, portraying them as belonging to a lesser culture, "the only ones in Europe who didn't evolve", as a way to raise the writer's own culture and society above our own. This is visible in the works of Edwardes-

-(even if it is still entertaining to read) and especially in DH Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia, which I really would just throw in the fire. The man didn't even bother reading something about our history before declaring "This place has no history."

This view only worsened with -

-the creation of the Kingdom of Italy, which exploited the North/South differences to incite the view of a "lesser" South. Sardinia was included in the South even if it was the original Kingdom of Sardinia, and not Southern.

This view also exploited the works of Sardinian-

-storytellers, like Grazia Deledda who wrote about the society of Nuoro. The depiction of Sardinia as made of bandits and people in fancy dresses was extended to the whole Island, erasing the existence of the coastal areas, traditionally closer to the Continent. The societies-

-of Cagliari, Sassari, Olbia and Iglesias were in strict contact with the European taste, from the clothes to the architecture, and this is true for all the centuries before.

The external point of view reduced Sardinia to a stereotype of the inner lands, a view that was -

-embraced by the locals with the invention of the "archaic body", in opposition to the ethnic body. The second implies the typical poses and attitudes by people who wear a determined identity dress, often due to the limitations of the clothes themselves. We see this in pictures-

-and it is still required in folk parades. The archaic body is its exasperation, shown in the too rigid representations of the body of local artists (and somehow still present in the too strict rules of folklorist events, which effectively erase the fluidity of the society).

This was done as a way to create a single Sardinian identity with nationalist aims. Sardinians often struggle with this because there isn't actually a uniform or single Sardinian identity, but there are many, depending on the geographical area and history.

📸 Biasi

This attempt of recovering one's own culture often ended up in the ridicule of the culture and dresses themselves, starting from vignettes to sculpture, to the sexualisation and infantilism of the clothes. This happened to the coif of Desulo, to the fur-wearing men of the south-

-and many others. We are now well inside the 20th century.

The exploitation of the Sardinian image was done also from the outside, with the creation of touristic cards filled with random nuraghes in the background and women posing in traditional clothes just for the sake of-

-othering, without any active role in the representation. An example of this, is the movie Cainé, of Italian (non-Sardinian) production of the 50s'. Not only the pictures insist on portraying Sardinians in traditional festivals, with nuraghes here and there, sheep here and there,

-with the addition of explaining sentences, but the main character who longs to escape the society doesn't even manage and is forced to get back, eventually dying, symbol of the impossibility to "escape" the "backward" Sardinian society. All this portrayed as a documentary-

-with an external point of view, aiming to show how Sardinians were different from the others, outside the society, and resisting on their own (implicitly backward) culture. Sardinia was still seen as a strange land to discover, which needed subtitles to be understood by the rest

-of Italians.

This tendency is still not over and unluckily we can still find it in certain works by not only non Sardinians, but Sardinians themselves, who insist on details and in the culture of the "different" to cut out a collective identity that doesn't exist.