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Home , Anita Steckel, Feminist art, Linda Nochlin, Louise Fishman, Sylvia Sleigh

social identity, proves that in an world increasingly dominated by the capitalist market, authentically critical content can still be monumentally celebrated. This is work that would once have been called "avant-garde," a specter that these women rebelled overtly against when they realized that its group structures, To! purportedly so critical of the mainstream o society, profoundly internalized everyday . I raise this specter of the revolutionary avant-gardes of the early twentieth century to observe that, as the exhibition's title signals, this work belongs in that canon, even if or perhaps because the classic avant-garde Oedipal drama of the young artist symbolically killing her artistic and political fathers might be a fresh and productive way to acknowledge the profound radicality of this impulse, and raise new questions Fig. 1. Wack) Art and the Feminist Revolution, installation view. In the foreground, Lorraine about where ithas led us today. O'Grady, Mile Bourgeoise Noire (1980). Photo by Matthew Septimus. Courtesy P.S.1 In the catalogue, Butler lays out the Contemporary Art Center. main goal of the exhibition, to foreground the central role of in pioneer- ing techniques and media fundamental to Wack! Art and the Feminist those eties, and to give substantial weight to the work of contemporary artists: Revolution those areas would have made it a differ- explicitly drawing on feminist , edited by Cornelia Butler and ent show.' Along with Global , like and Andrea Zittel, and Lisa Gabrielle Mark the 2007 Museum exhibition those more spectacularly "successful" Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Maura Reilly and Linda ones whose debt to it has gone unac- and MIT Press, 2007 Nochlin, and the "Feminist Futures" sym- knowledged, like . The posium at MoMA in January of the same catalogue opens with hundreds of color Reviewed by Karen Kurczynski year, "Wack!" ushered in what has been plates, grouped thematically and docu- referred to as a landmark "year of institu- menting works by more than 120 artists. 2 Alandmark exhibition, "Wack!" was tional consciousness-raising." The excite- A biographical section in the center of the .1tXthe first of its kind to present not just ment it generated was justified overall, as catalogue, with entries on each artist, the spectrum of what has become canoni- it included an astonishing array of makes a strong feminist statement in cal second-wave feminist art-itself never groundbreaking works never before seen itself, insisting literally on the centrality of comprehensively presented in a single by many younger feminists, but it ran into personal stories in a professional context. exhibition before-but also to update that minor snags in marketing (the odd title The texts provide detailed information history by including an international and controversial cover image choice for and references on many artists for whom selection of who made the catalogue). little is available in English. The final cat- more or less explicitly feminist work start- The range of media was truly alogue essay, "The Feminist Nomad: The ing in the late 1960s. The exhibition astounding. It conveyed a dear message All- Group Show," by Jenni spanned the period of 1965 to 1980 and that this women's work laid the Sorkin, provides a critical overview of the included artists and groups from the groundwork for a broad spectrum of all-women exhibitions and periodicals , Central and Eastern contemporary art, as and produced worldwide as organs of femi- Europe, Latin America, Asia, Canada, catalogue editor Cornelia Butler nist activism, and a useful discussion of Australia, and New Zealand. It was not a productively argues in her text (17). the cultural/radical split within femi- truly global show, lacking a significant Equally important, it proved that nism. The catalogue doses with an equal- number of contributions from Africa and deliberately reaching beyond the bounds ly valuable chronology of all-women Asia, and in that sense it maintained the of mainstream art to work that is overtly group exhibitions from 1943-83, a sort of Western definition of as an experimental and directly challenging to art-activist checklist preceding the exhibi- explicitly Euro-American movement, the social precepts of high art, in this case tion checklist itself. This conception of feminism remains attacking not only the hierarchy, Ten more catalogue essays investigate extremely fraught in non-Western soci- but all sorts of other exclusions based on particular aspects of feminist art in a

0 WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL broad range of perspectives. Marsha women artists like and essay raises significant questions about Meskimmon's "Chronology Through Friedl Kubelka who investigated their the role of female critics as advocates of Cartography: Mapping 1970s Feminist own image by means of conceptual and feminist artists, the general shifts in the Art Globally" makes an admirable body art practices conducted systematic role of the in the 1960s and 1970s, attempt at a "conceptual decolonization" interrogations of the complex operations and the complex political identifications of (325) of the standard imperialist story of of identification, rather than re-playing feminists and women who sympathized feminism as an Anglo-American initiative the essentialist notion of identity with . It identifies the only subsequently taken up or waiting to subsequently attributed to them. Peggy restricted critical landscape developed as be taken up in non-western contexts. Phelan provides a concise but a result of male critics like Germano Meskimmon's arguments are sound for substantial account of feminist Celant and Achille Bonito Oliva market- examining feminist interventions spatial- and the politics of touch ing exclusive groups of male artists ly in the context of global cultures rather in "The Returns of Touch: Feminist internationally as the greatest contribu- than in a temporal framework maintain- Performances, 1960-80," which tions of Italian contemporary art. ing the old center-periphery or pioneer/ highlights work by primarily non- Although the writing of the essay shares a influence models. Her examples, howev- American artists, from Atsuko Tanaka's certain lack of structural clarity with some er, require greater detail to flesh out these Electric Dress (1956) to 's of the writers which are its subjects, it observations. The juxtaposition of Tapp und Tastkino (1968). Richard makes significant steps toward piecing Anglophone feminist projects from the Meyer's essay, "Hard Targets: Male together international historical threads U.S., Britain, and Australia-Martha Bodies, Feminist Art, and the Force of such as the parallels between Vergine's Rosler's Bringing the War Back Home col- Censorship in the 1970s," expands the groundbreaking retrospective catalogue lage series (1967-72) placed in relation to definition of feminist art by addressing of women artists in the European avant- Rita Donagh's Evening Papers(Ulster 1974) artists and issues not foregrounded in garde and the efforts of critics like Linda (1974) and Joan Brassil's Can It Be that the the exhibition, all relating to depictions Nochlin and in the Everlasting Is Everchanging (1978)-does of the male body by a gaze that is female, U.S.,3 or the impact of French feminist the- not explain the works in any depth or heterosexual, and feminist. Artists like ory on understudied women artists like their necessary connections. The Brassil , , Eunice Carla Accardi or . In her brief piece, which refers to indigenous Golden, Sylvia Sleigh, Hannah Wilke, essay "Abundant Evidence: Black Women Australian cosmological beliefs in a and , herself founder in Artists of the 1960s and '70s," Valerie gallery installation, also operates in prim- 1973 of the Fight Censorship group of Smith situates the stories of prominent itivist terms, seemingly within the very women activist-artists, established the black women artists like colonialist paradigm that Meskimmon feminist view of the explicit male body and within the broad- argues so powerfully against. Her discus- as sexual and political object, a subject er context of black feminist organizing. sion of works dealing with sexuality and censored and marginalized in both Nelly Richard's article, "Fugitive the body connects the more explicitly con- mainstream art and accounts of Identities and Dissenting Code-Systems: ceptually related work of Sonja Ivekovic, feminism. Meyer's article revisits a little- Women Artists During the Military , , Rebecca known chapter in the history of early Dictatorship in Chile," provides a similar Horn, and Senga Nengudi, all key artists 1970s feminist art. His eloquent account account of several Chilean artists' prac- with work prominently displayed in the of the censorship of artworks actively tices, from Virginia Errizuriz's dispersed exhibition. Yet the new terms she mobi- phallic imagery for feminist installations of everyday objects to lizes to frame these works, "an embodied desire and critique provides a much- Catalina Parra's use of stitching and female sexuality and an 'enworlded' needed counter to the dominance of embroidery to signify the gaps and sub- sexed subjectivity" (331) seem unchanged central-core imagery during those years. texts concealed by the pro-dictatorship except in theoretical jargon from the very Catalogue contributors Judith Russi jargon of the daily paper El Mercurio. Anglo-American concepts of sexuality Kirshner, Valerie Smith, and Nelly Helen Molesworth contributes a valu- and the body which she aims to decenter. Richard also expand the discourse of fem- able discussion of the fraught possibilities The essay struggles to fully incorporate inism toward greater cosmopolitanism, of signifying feminist content in contem- the artistic implications of such necessary writing about feminism in Italy, in porary in "Painting with rewritings of the relationship between African-American culture, and in the Ambivalence." The essay is notable for its feminism and colonialism. struggle against Chilean dictatorship, insights into the ways abstraction and Abigail Solomon Godeau writes of respectively. All three essays examine feminism as apparently exclusive cate- early feminist artists and photographic issues broader than the exhibition of his- gories have occluded our understanding self-portraiture in "The Woman Who torical women artists' work. Kirshner's of these works, but also for the way it Never Was: Self-Representation, text, "Voices and Images of Italian examines two white and one African- Photography, and First-Wave Feminist Feminism," focuses on the work of three American artist in terms of comparative Art." She provides a valuable reminder critics with varying relationships to femi- aspects of their work, rather than address- of the real complexity of feminist nist activism: Lea Vergine, Annemarie ing the biographical commonalities of the practices in the 1970s, arguing that Sauzeau Boetti, and Carla Lonzi. Her artists' social identities, as in the previous

FALL/ WINTER 2008 0 three essays. Catherine Lord's "Their tion allowed works to hang partially in approaches and media at the time. The Memory is Playing Tricks on Her: Notes one room and partially in another, for exhibition also highlighted feminism's Toward a Calligraphy of Rage" discusses example displaying Mierle Laderman conjunction of art and activism, giving 's series, the Angry Ukeles's famous "Maintenance Art" man- weight to manifestos and documentation (1973), reunited for the first time ifesto in a white-box gallery while the of work developed out of collective organ- in the exhibition. Lord's powerful prose photos of her doing the performances izing, such as 's Prostitution opens the essay by declaring Carolee remained in the hall, thus connecting con- Notes (1974), alongside more monumental Schneemann's Interior Scroll (1975) voluted spaces to each other in a way that artworks. "expansively and stubbornly queer" (441) seemed overtly social. The sprawling The lack of consideration for film and for its specifically vaginal rawness. The exhibition, with its various sections flow- video was a real loss in what was essay examines the impossibility of visual- ing into each other across the network of otherwise such a rich exhibition. Just a izing lesbianism in the public sphere, and rooms and hallways of the schoolhouse- few moving image pieces were singled describes Fishman's radical exterioriza- museum, evoked a genuine space of out for full-screen projection, and the rest tion of volatile emotion in sloppily scrib- experimentation and collective explo- were shown on small monitors bled painted words, a profound epiphany ration, even learning, that characterized throughout the gallery. It was difficult to and turning point in her work. When I the work of these artists, some of whom see so many of these works in one visit. saw them hanging in a room with Senga were only marginally connected to the Including a DVD with a selection of these Nengudi's stocking , paintings mainstream art world. works in the catalogue could have by Joan Snyder and Mary Heilmann, and Feelings of invigoration and inspira- improved the chances not only of seeing a large latex floor piece tion marked my experience of old but also teaching this work. from 1969, they looked less artistic than favorites that I had never before seen in "Wack!" had many puzzlements, some painfully literal in their violent emotional person. Joan Semmel's bodily distortions of which have been noted elsewhere. It registerings, although Paula Cooper noted were delightfully vivid, 's included artists who were opposed or of the series in 1973, "They're art, but I iconic still-life Marilyn (Vanitas) of 1977 indifferent to feminism like, respectively, don't know what else they are" (448). It was powerful in its unexpected scale, and Jay DeFeo and Lygia Clark, and works was Lord's eloquent text that enabled me the two examples of 's that had no dear relationship to feminism to understand them as art (even if they "Ox" paintings produced a graphic such as Ketty La Rocca's text piece were immediately contextualizable in impact. Lorraine O'Grady's glove dress Verbum, Parola, Mot, Word (1967). The visual terms as feminist foreshadowings for Mile Bourgeoise Noire (1980; Fig. 1) was exhibition also deliberately sidelined or of contemporary gallery-friendly bad-boy intriguing, shown in combination with the reworked major themes of 1970s feminist painting by artists like Josh Smith). Yet series of photos of the performance (usu- art, namely Goddess imagery, femmage, their challenge to my own aesthetic ally represented by only one shot taken and the ongoing question of eco-femi- assumptions in the end was much more out of context). I was engrossed by nism. While I welcomed the redefinition valuable than the canonization of safely 's pillowy of Goddess imagery to include works that pioneering works of "quality" feminist Hunkertime (1979-80), fascinated by were more critical and secular than mysti- art-a problematic also directly addressed Rebecca Horm's projected videos of herself cal and celebratory, such as O'Grady's in Molesworth's essay. The resistance of performing in sculptural prosthetics Mlle Bourgeoise Noire performance artifacts the Angry Paintings to art historical cate- (1970-73), and amazed by Judy Baca's and Ulrika Rosenbach's video Don't gorization and their radical heterogeneity iconic mural Uprising of the Mujeres (1979). Believe I'm an Amazon (1975), the almost from all the other objects in the show sum- The show did an excellent job of juxtapos- total omission of works related to the marizes the historic and aesthetic contri- ing well-known feminist works with Pattern and Decoration movement of the butions of the exhibition as a whole. As an works by those notoriously excluded from late 1970s and Miriam Schapiro's "fem- erratic archive of lesbian personal and cul- mainstream discourses at the time, like the mage" seems like an oversight, particular- tural connections driven equally by poli- black women's collective "," ly in a contemporary context rife with tics and desire, their presence was the represented by a series of historical returns to decoration and craft. The revenge of a repressed subculture, one of posters (c. 1980), and artists working out- absence of a deliberate investigation of many at last given their due in Wack!, from side the U.S. whose work is little known eco-feminism,4 a term with critical impli- a twenty-first-century point of view at here, like Maria Lassnig, Kirsten Justesen, cations today whose various definitions once experimental and retrospective. and Sanja Ivekovic. The "Where We At" usually invoke the work of For a show that has been accused of posters hung on the wall between Judy and Bonnie Sherk, both included in the being both didactic and chaotic, the exhi- Baca's mural and a set of mixed-media show, seems equally unfortunate. bition foregrounded the visceral impact documents of Bonnie Sherk's The Farm The title was also notoriously anom- of the works to an extraordinary degree. (1974-80), a multipurpose community alous. "Wack!" implies a nonexistent With such an extensive catalogue at hand, garden and art space making use of sever- acronym, which makes an ambiguous I welcomed the lack of heavily didactic al bits of unused land beneath a freeway statement about the wealth of feminist wall text that characterizes the exhibitions overpass. Such juxtapositions effectively organizations formed in the 1970s and of P.S.1's Manhattan branch. The installa- made visible the radical heterogeneity of 1980s and their relative dearth today. Its

WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL male sexual connotations are provocative and challenging today as it did thirty years the meeting co-chairs, includes an index, in conjunction with the cover image of ago. It is a sign of renewed engagement biographies of contributors, and eighteen 's 1966-72 collage Hot with the ongoing feminist struggles to black and white illustrations. Its wide- House, or Harem, from the Body Beautiful, which this art continues to speak. 0 ranging topics and perspectives are or Beauty Knows No Pain series, a paper divided into four sections: Leadership, collage of variously tanned and artificially Karen Kurczynski is a Visiting Assistant Criticism, Collaboration, and The Work. posed 1960s Playboy models multiplied to Professor of contemporary art and critical Each includes essays on the subject a grotesque and ridiculously synthetic theory at Massachusetts College of Art, history and on practices and issues profusion of female bodies.' More puz- and co-president of the Radical Art currently being debated among feminists. zling, the title appropriates a negative Caucus of the College Art Association. The first section, Leadership, indudes slang term (if I said "'Wack!' wasn't several fascinating essays on the history wack!" would you roll your eyes?). The NOTES of the WCA (founded 1972), on the controversy over the catalogue cover art 1. See, for example, the Joan Kee's article recipients of its Lifetime Achievement was warranted. A catalogue cover "What Is Feminist About Contemporary Awards (with a useful list in the inevitably becomes iconic. To choose such Asian Women's Art?" in : appendix), and even a history of feminist an overt pastiche-a notoriously elusive, New Directions in Contemporary Art, ed. art journals that includes the WAJ (the Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin (: deliberately imitative but satirical poetic /Merrell, 2007). only survivor) written by current co- form-for this significant role becomes a editor Joan 2. Phoebe Hoban, "We're Finally Infiltrating, Marter. The essays in confusing statement precisely because of ArtNews (February, 2007), available online at Criticism, the second section, critique the sophisticated subtext of the artwork. A http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id such things as the institutional exclusion work that depicts the female body as an =2215. Accessed July 17, 2008. of Latina and Chicana artists, the active agent or as grotesque, a video still 3. Lea Virgine, L'altra met6 dell'avanguardia, appearance and disappearance of the by Lynda Benglis or Anna Maria 1910-1940: Pittrici e scultrici nei movimenti , public art, and blogs as sites for Maiolino, for example, would have made delle avanguardie storiche (Milan: II feminist activities. Next, Collaboration an unequivocal cover statement, rejecting Saggiatore, 2005), originally published 1980; Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda offers discussions of the various ways the female body as spectade. Rosler's col- Nochlin, Women Artists 1550-1950 (Los women have collaborated on art projects, lage, while part of a critical series of early Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of how they have mentored each other, and works by the artist, is less effective as an Art/Knopf, 1977). even -daughter art making. The advertisement for the show than many 4. The French term 6cofeminisme was coined final section deals with specific works of other works in the exhibition. Mary Beth in 1974 by Frangoise d'Eaubonne in Le art from both the artists' and the critics' Edelson's response, a second version of f6minisme ou la mort (Paris: Pierre Horay, perspective. 1974), the collage with the faces of famous but it was popularized in the U.S. by Mary Daly in her book Gyn/Ecology: The The editors invited all of the writers to women artists (including Rosler) plas- Metaethics of (Boston: think about where their evolving work tered onto the Playboy bodies, was a droll Beacon Press, 1978). fits into the . This is an souvenir available in the PS.1 giftshop, 5. See the discussion of the title and cover art issue most dearly stated in two essays- but could not make up for a missed by Richard Meyer, "Feminism Uncovered," Dena Muller's "The Burden of Inclusivity: opportunity. Artforum 45, no. 10 (Summer 2007): 211-12. Second-Wave Feminism and the Third- Overall, the Wack! exhibition was a Wave Era," and Maria Elena Buszek's landmark event and the catalogue an "Perma-Wave: Bridging Feminism's invaluable resource for its scholarly exam- Generation Gap." The "discourse" in the inations, biographical information, and Blaze, Discourse on Art, title of the book seems to be most clearly wealth of visual material. It allows for a Women and Feminism played out in the reflections offered by broader and more complex understanding these two younger feminists. Muller was edited by Karen Frostig and of the relationship between feminism and part of a panel discussion in 2003 that was Kathy A. Halamka art than previously possible. Its critical per- sponsored by Veteran Feminists of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007 spectives provide a welcome complement America. As the director of the A. I. R. to the first-person artist perspectives often Gallery, Muller had looked forward to Reviewed by Pamela H. Simpson foregrounded in discussions of feminism. meeting some of the superstars she had Perhaps most importantly, the catalogue learned about in her women's studies firmly situates feminism in the plural, as a [hI's impressive collection of thirty-two classes. But as one of the few women cross-cultural debate entwined with paral- 'essays, first presented as part of the under forty in attendance, she grew lel struggles for the rights of lesbians, Women's Caucus for Art (WCA) national dispirited by repeated references to the minorities, children, sex workers, , meeting in Boston in 2006, is an excellent "lack of interest, involvement, knowl- immigrants, and other marginalized iden- introduction to contemporary second- edge, and respect" supposedly evident in tities, which may or may not include and third-wave feminist artists', critics', younger women (103). Finally, the panel's artists. The rich range of feminist material and historians' points of view. The hard- organizer called on Muller to speak to the production appears as alternately exciting bound, 417 page book, edited by two of issue. She says she decided to play with

FALL / WINTER 2008 0 COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: [Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution] SOURCE: Woman’s Art J 29 no2 Fall/Wint 2008

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