Transformation of Corporeality and Gender Performativity in the Visual Discourse of the 20th–21st Centuries

Abstract

Purpose. The article aims to to provide a comprehensive theoretical substantiation of the mechanisms of gender deconstruction of the human image in the artistic culture of modernism and postmodernism. The research is aimed at identifying the philosophical and aesthetic factors of the transformation of the subject’s visuality. Methods. An interdisciplinary approach is applied, integrating art-historical analysis, semiotics, and gender studies. The genealogical method of M. Foucault, the deconstructive approach of J. Butler, and the semiotics of J. Kristeva are employed. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the logic of the transition from the modernist search for “universal embodiment” to the postmodern strategy of “gender performativity” in visual art is comprehensively reconstructed. The role of modernist formal experiments is clarified as a necessary stage of desomatization (the rejection of biological determinism) that prepared the ground for the contemporary conceptualization of the body as a semiotic construct. The understanding of the “posthuman condition” in art has been further developed through the prism of digital patterns and the virtualization of identity. Conclusions. Gender deconstruction has transformed art from a mirror of social reality into a laboratory of new anthropological possibilities. Modernist formal experiments prepared the ground for the postmodern subversion of patriarchal hierarchies and the “male gaze”. In the twenty-first century, the expansion of virtuality and digital patterns, as noted by N. Katherine Hayles, indicates that the physical body is increasingly perceived as an obsolete data format. Contemporary artistic practices embody Jean-François Lyotard’s predictions regarding the “decline of metanarratives,” in which identity ceases to be a coherent story and becomes a mosaic of local, situational performances. The results open new perspectives for the study of “metamodern sincerity” and the impact of artificial intelligence on the further evolution of gender identity in visual art.