Vol. 1 No. 1 w6mar[art Summer 1976

There are currently too few publications which provide literary discussion o f the work o f women artists. The public’s unawareness o f the scope and diversity of this half o f the art world has robbed it of the aesthetic contribution of women to our cultural heritage. X12: Feminist artists first show together Womanart Magazine is an effort directed at by Vemita Nemec page 4 correcting this situation, through reportage and analysis of the work of contemporary Where is Edmonia Lewis? Where is Henry O. Tanner? women artists and discussion o f women’s art Artists protest Whitney Bicentennial show in history. This will include feature articles and by May Stevens page 8 interviews, gallery reviews, and reports on events o f particular interest, such as lectures, The American Memorial Picture: A ‘Feminine’ Art panels, and special projects. by LaVerne M uto page 10 Womanart would like to aid the develop­ ment o f ideas regarding art by women, their Erasing Sexism from MOMA dissemination, and their exchange among by Joanne Stamerra page 12 women artists and between artists and critics. We welcome contributions and wish to Pat Adams: Microcosms for Contemplating the Universe encourage writing by women artists, in order by April K ingsley page 14 to obtain most directly their thoughts on current aesthetic questions, as imagery, SoHo 20 Women’s Cooperative Gallery symbolism, and media, as well as on current by Ellen Lubell page 16 problems, as feminism, discrimination, sepa­ Gertrude Stein and the Making of Modem Art ratism, and alternatives to the gallery system. by Corinne Robins page 20 This is our first issue. We ask fo r comments, criticism, suggestions—feedback, to help us Notes in the First Person determine our future, and for support to help by Lawrence Alloway page 22 us reach it. Gallery R eview s page 24 — The Editors R ep orts page 31

Cover photograph: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Mother and Child, 1935. Marble, 34” h. Courtesy The Whitney Museum o f American Art. One o f the works in the 200 Years o f American Sculpture Bicentennial exhibit at the museum. The announcement o f another Bicentennial show, scheduled fo r later this year, led to demonstrations by artists. See page 8. Editor: Ellen Lubell Associate Editor: Vemita Nemec Art Director: Gy orgy Beke Distribution: Cynthia Mailman

Contributors: Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Cavaliere, Donna Lee Goldberg, April Kingsley, La Verne Muto, Gloria Feman Orenstein, Corinne Robins, Robert Sievert, Joanne Stamerra, May Stevens, Judith Tannenbaum, Sharon Wybrants. Womanart is published bimonthly, October, December, February, April, June by Womanart Enterprises, 161 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, New York 11215. Editorial submissions and all inquiries should be sent to P.O. Box 3358, Grand Central Station, New York, N. Y. 10017. Subscription rate, seepage 13. A ll opinions expressed are those o f the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those o f the editors. Permission to reprint must be secured in writing from the publishers. Copyright © Womanart Enterprises, 1976. A ll rights reserved.

3 One of the first off-shoots of the contemporary women’s art movement was an exhibit by 12 women artists at Museum, A Project for Living Artists, | X in February, 1970:

by Vertiita Nemec testing, and structuring their own alterna­ movement, I discover that in the U.S., the It’s so hard to remember that time, so tives to the existing museum/gallery last all women’s exhibition up to that time painful. Cindy Nemser called X n the structure. Protest groups such as Art was in 1965, entitled Women Artists of first openly feminist exhibition. Well, she Workers Coalition, Women Artists in America 1707-1964, at the Newark came to a few of the meetings to hear us Revolution, and the Ad Hoc Women’s Museum, and before that, in 1962, Mount rap, cry, confess, argue, share, bitch, Committee formed to take action against Holyoke Celebrating the Coming of Age question, so maybe from her point of political injustices in both the art world of Women as Creative Artists, and the view it’s true. When artist Carolyn and society at large. Alternative structures Women’s International. I wish I had seen Mazzello and I first conceived the idea for such as Museum, A Project for Living those shows, but I was in Ohio_ then, having an all women’s show, we were not Artists, were created to provide meeting trying to get my painting teacher to really consciously making a political, feminist and exhibition space, as well as to publish look into my work, not knowing how to gesture. We wanted to show our work, writings in periodicals like Magazine. defend myself when he accused me of. and the idea of having a show of only We used to go to AWC meetings and being too serious about my art. Little did women artists was to make the point that share our own frustrations and fears with I or my art history professors know that making art is not a sex-linked character­ other artists, until we came to the reali­ women had been having exhibitions istic, but a matter of individual ability. zation that it was doing us no good to excluding men since 1893: women’s only The climate of the late sixties was one commiserate with other womeh artists means of compensating for their exclu­ of much political fervor and protest. We about how we had been ignored, sions. Maybe if our art history (or history, were horrified at the atrocities of the Viet overlooked, put down, reassured and in general) had included more about Nam war. It was a time of consciousness patronized if we were not willing to take women artists, we would have been more raising, and the beginning of the feminist some action. Our decision to organize an conscious of our political and feminist movement. We were angry enough to all women’s group show, a phenomenon motivations, but that had not been part of speak up and to stand up against that we had not witnessed in our our education. No, Carolyn and I were authorities to whom we had previously professional art lives, came very much out really concerned at the time with showing acquiesed. Artists were meeting, pro- of the same spirit that created AWC, our work and thought that the idea of women banding together, rather than Vernita Nemec is a sculptor living and working WAR, Ad Hoc, and Museum. in New York City. She is currently writing the Today in researching information hiding behind an initial and trying to be fourth volume of her journal. about the history of the women’s art one of the boys, made a strong theme for 4 a group show. We wanted to tip the scales effective than well-made sophisticated in our favor and hence excluded men for We are on the threshold o f the art.” In the New York Post, Emily that reason. In fact, when we were unknown quantity in us, o f the Genauer asked, “ who’d criticize artists deciding how to select artists, we made sex equation yet to be discovered like for facing a hostile milieu together? Who the only criterion for inclusion. It seemed Einstein’s E = me2 that split the wouldn’t be pleased when an exhibition to us that those women artists who were atom and changed everything. presents, as in the present instance, some willing to take the chance of showing with We do not deny our true very promising talents?” other female artists, as well as letting the femininity whatever it may be. We We received a great deal of press and public know that they were women, were accept it, we will rejoice in it. We media coverage, and the press release (in very serious and determined, or just plain affirm all the vital values, Health, many ways more than the art) created a naive. Beauty, Creativity, Courage, great deal of controversy for its boldness The night that I announced the show Sensitivity, Strength, Feeling, En­ and assertiveness. Bob Levin in Changes and said that we would take the first 10 ergy. Between the fully liberated wrote, “The artists’ gender unannounced, women who committed themselves is man and woman there will be no audiences would have come anticipating a foggy in my memory. I didn’t expect such difference but biology. collection of work by men. The work... a strong response; we turned away those The old game is dead. We begin has few peculiarly ‘feminine’ characteris­ who hesitated, and the days following, again. tics and has, I think, considerable weight our phones buzzed with calls from more We are here. This is what we do. by any criteria...To discover after viewing women artists, such as Agnes Denes, who We paint. We sculpt. We present the show that it was authored by women had thought it over and wanted to risk a new form , an art event in mixed would, I thought, create the desired turn coming out with us. media: bodies, materials, time, of consciousness far more effectively.” The meetings were terrible and won­ space. We come together as artists He went on to say, with greater derful. They became consciousness rais­ to exhibit. We have paid our dues understanding than anyone who wrote ing sessions where we not only talked in today’s art world first as artists, about the show in terms of us as artists about our problems related to making and doubly as women. and in terms of our purpose, that “but if showing art, but our men problems, our X is the unknown quantity in an the style of the press release was children problems. For some of us, our equation yet to be resolved. ostensibly intended to alert the public to lives began to revolve around those an emergent feminine force in the art meetings. I think I still feel that way. world... the...declaration had a more Now, rereading the press release Lil Picard, in the East Village Other, immediate purpose...writing it was an act Silvianna, maybe the most political of us, called the opening of the show “the first of self-assertion, of achieving leverage, in wrote, I feel that it says very well what we coming out party of WAR.” Cindy preparation for their entrance into a felt, what I felt then about being both a Nemser, writing in Arts Magazine, called reality of being artists and fully acknowl­ woman and an artist. the show a “ potpourri of excitement. The edging themselves as artists. A self-con­ We are 12 women artists who diversity of technique, style, and subject scious feminism, moreover, was the come together to show: our logo is matter decided for this reviewer that the psychic dynamism which could give them X n case for masculine as opposed to feminine the trust to transcend the limitations of X is the unknown quantity in an art is closed.” Lawrence Alloway, in a possibility which social conditions had equation yet to be resolved. review in Nation, said, “ intensity of pre-imposed upon their aesthetic ambi­ X is exploration. assertion is art’s function for most of tions.” X is crossed out, disposed of, as these artists...compared to the technology Nanette Ranone of WBAI’s “Woman­ we have been fo r so many of the establishment, convulsively hand­ kind” program did an interview with four centuries. crafted objects acquire an expressive of the 12 entitled “ Redefining the Roles” . X marks the spot. This is where it function. A naive sense of the sacred, of It was an appropriate title for the times. is at. the conviction of mission insists that this Previously, we had listened to our fathers, work is more passionate and more our husbands, potential dealers, male art

Installation view. Sculpture and paintings by Mary Ann Gillies. Photo Mirrored relief sculpture installed in bathroom, by Alida Walsh. Photo courtesy o f the artist. courtesy Mary Ann Gillies.

5 teachers, critics, and other male artists. ser, more specifically, described and neutral. Being a female artist is easier and Now we were unconsciously setting the categorized the art. She said of Lois di more acceptable today. What was a precedent of doing something for our­ Cosola’s paintings, “ fields of color stigma in 1969 is a distinction today. We selves. studded with stunning insets of brilliantly have come a long way with two women’s We were positive and supportive of pigmented plexiglass.” She also spoke of cooperatives that are highly selective each other until the hanging of the show. “ Carolyn Mazzello’s poetic, ever-shifting in their memberships, at least two women The pressure of exposure was incredible. conglomerations of homosote and chip­ artists’ groups with open membership, The very needs, pressures, and emotions board” , and “ Helene Gross’ delicately and a slide registry for women artists. that had brought us together almost blew textured fiberglas rods” . She goes on: There are so many women’s group shows us apart when we were faced with the need “ Iris Crump presents a broad gentle view that it is becoming difficult to find for compromise in order to hang a of human beings engaged in communal enough good women artists. cohesive show. There were five sculptors, activities. She incorporates lights and We had chosen the first 10 women who five painters, and two performance mirrors into her contemporary settings. were willing to extend themselves, to take artists. For some of us, who had not D. Holmes has conceived of a medieval the chance of doing it themselves, of shown professionally in New York environment, complete with dance and showing their work without the aid of before, the decision to go public affected song, that is designed to remind the outside judgments. We had not looked at our work a great deal. viewer of the human qualities that have slides, there was no curator to tell us if the Today, I find it very difficult to talk been sifted out of today’s surroundings.” art was good. We had only the trust and about the art itself, to even remember it “Inverna Lockpez delineates primitive belief that an artist, whether male or clearly. I think that the art was not as gods and feverish lovers by means of female, must judge him/herself and know important as our need to show, the fact of Munchlike rhythmic lines, while Alida when his/her art is ready to be public. showing with other women and publicly Walsh, with the aid of mirrors, music That was our challenge. We had to trust identifying ourselves as artists who are cabinets, polyester, and resin produces each other: letting the group down was women. demonic delights.” Lil Picard described letting ourselves down. The togetherness The 12 women in the show were Lois di my work as “doll puppets hanging from and closeness we felt during our meetings, Cosola, Iris Crump, Mary Ann Gillies, the ceiling in grotesque pillow shapes the anger and hostility during the hanging Helene Gross, Doloris Holmes, Inverna covered with fine line drawings and of the show, seen in the crying, screaming Lockpez, Arline Lederman, Carolyn backed by metallic shimmering icons and threats of quitting, and finally the Mazzello, myself, Doris O’Kane, Silvian- attached to the wall.” surprise of the fine appearance of the na, and Alida Walsh. Rather than give my At the time of the show, many of the show, I think was a measure of the fear description of the work, I’d like to quote critics’ reactions sounded angry to us and we felt and the unconscious realization of further from the critics who saw the show. in turn, they regarded us as angry. Today, the precedent we were setting. Emily Genauer called Alida Walsh, the reviews and all the writing and quotes What has happened to the X 12 artists? Silvianna, Inverna Lockpez, and Iris about the show, the art, the artists, the Silvianna has moved from her early Crump “promising talents” . Cindy Nem- act, sound much calmer to me, and more destruction happenings to filmmaking.

X 11 artists. Left to right: Carolyn Mazzello, Arline Lederman, Lois di Cosola, Silvianna Goldsmith, Vemita Nemec, Inverna Lockpez, Iris Crump, Alida Walsh, Helene Gross, Doloris Holmes, Mary Ann Gillies. Missing: Doris O ’Kane. Photo courtesy o f the author.

6 Her films have been shown international­ ly at the Graz Museum in Austria, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and the Cultural Center in New York. Alida Walsh has moved from sculpture into filmmaking and has shown her films internationally. She received a CAPS grant in 1974. Doloris Holmes has moved from creating environments into an interest in art as process. She has performed and presented her plays and films at the SoHo 20 and Second Story Spring Street Society galleries. In addi­ tion, she is the director of the White Mask Theater, a rehearsal and performance space for artists, dancers, playwrights. Inverna Lockpez recently had a show at Artists Space gallery. Her work has evolved into delicate pencil drawings made directly on the wall. I found myself hesitating to contact the other 11 members of the 12. Since the show ended we’ve all gone in many directions and though we occasionally cross paths, the intensity of that experience I think still weighs heavily among us. I find it painful sometimes to meet someone again from my past. A certain awkwardness has emerged with the distance that has grown between us with the time passed, with the divergences of our lives since then, with our successes and failures. We were brought together by accident and shared an experience that took its toll or left its mark on us in different ways. Some remember it as a turning point, a beginning, and others as an ending. Some of us, I think, want to forget the experience, in part because it reminds us of a profound struggle, and others want to hold onto the dream that was engendered. Personally, I feel that for the time being the need for open group shows limited to only female artists has diminished consid­ erably in NewYork. Opportunities exist CON GffA TU L ATI ONS TO on all levels for women’s art to be seen v / o i^Ai ^ A R T OAJ T H & iR and there are enough of us who have had exposure, who have demanded that their PffeMieRo. issue work be taken seriously, that we can now risk being very selective and competitive. The important thing is to maintain the ground we have gained. We must be persistently conscious of the proportion of existing professional female artists to those who have opportunities for recog­ nition and be sure that it matches the opportunities that male artists enjoy. The so-called alternative structures we have created, such as co-op galleries, are no longer alternative structures. We have, by standing up for ourselves, created our place in the art world and must hold onto it until it feels so natural and is so secure that we can let go of that struggle and concentrate on doing our art. We have participated in a necessary stage which 7i Qrh640 ST has allowed women to come into prominence in a basically male world. Let YX. us now move on to merging art history and art herstory into an art past. 2 2 6 1 8 7 3 • WHITNEY PROTESTS: W hettjg EdmOtlia Lewis?

Where is Henry O. Tanner? by May Stevens

On January 3,1976, 60 artists picketed held on February 26 both at the Whitney Brooks or Florine Stettheimer in this the Whitney Museum of American Art to and at Rockefeller Center. Artists Meet­ survey of American art? The John D. protest the scheduled exhibition of the ing for Cultural Change, sponsor of the Rockefeller collection perpetuates the John D. Rockefeller collection under the two pickets, is now discussing counter stereotype of an all-white and an all-male title Three Centuries of American Art as shows and counter catalogs. American art. Many of those who one of its major Bicentennial exhibitions. The artists object to the Whitney’s use marched on the picket line have worked A letter signed by Benny Andrews (Black of a private collection as a major part of hard over the past few years to bring to Emergency Cultural Coalition), Rudolf its Bicentennial celebration and to the consciousness the excluded artists, both Baranik (Artists and Writers Protest), and ceding of control indicated by the current and historical. The Whitney’s Lucy Lippard (W.E.B. and Women’s acceptance of a packaged show that plans continue a view that is neither Slide Registry) had asked for a meeting represents one woman (Susan MacDowell American nor historical, nor, any longer, with Thomas N. Armstrong, the muse­ Eakins) and no blacks. Where are safe. The financial dilemma of museums um’s director, to discuss the strong Edmonia Lewis and Henry O. Tanner? does explain the wooing of wealthy objections felt by many artists. The Where is Horace Pippin, Augusta Savage patrons; it does not excuse inadequate meeting was held, views expressed and an and Jacob Lawrence? Why are there no responses to the disciplines of art history impasse reached. Armstrong saw no Peale sisters, no Cecelia Beaux, no Mary and museology. We need museum reason to meet again. A second picket was Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Romaine directors and curators with the courage and vision of Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris who are ransacking Europe’s provincial museums to put together a survey of women artists from 1550 to 1950 for a December 1976 opening at the Los Angeles County Museum.

Artists Meeting for Cultural Change is a large, loose, open coalition of marxists of many stripes including Art and Language people (many of whom write for and/or edit The Fox), feminists, anarchists and others. The differences are raging, but discontent with museums, galleries, and current art world practice provide common ground. Meetings are divided between plans for action, like the Whitney protest, and theoretical discus­ sion.

May Stevens is a New York painter who is represented in the permanent collection o f the Whitney Museum. At a recent meeting, papers on feminism were read. Only women were allowed to respond for the first half-hour. The paper prepared by Ginny Reath and Elizabeth Hess proposed that the group examine its own practice and face the fact that many members have a sense of Figurative Painting in SoHo powerful male voices vying for domi­ nance; that nearly all women and most men are excluded from the discussions. Someone said that men were the most damaged by sexist modes of behavior. Someone else asked why change could only be validated by emphasizing that men have a stake in that change. Gree/vi */A\ / Wountain Throughout the discussion, a young woman sat cross-legged on a chair, 135GREENE ST-NEW YORK, N Y 10012 embroidering a denim jacket. An extra (212)-674-23 90 needle was stuck in her jersey in the timeless fashion of women. On the floor next to her lay a plastic bag full of bright thread. Her face under a mass of curls registered deep involvement in whatever was said; she smiled and nodded approval during the reading of the papers. When she spoke it was about the value of starting from the personal and evolving new forms based on the specific character of the group. When she said she was a SOHO 20 writer, or at least she was writing something at the moment, that she had GALLERY INC. divorced her husband two weeks after joining the women’s movement, that she had a seven-year-old son and that she loved a man who didn’t love her, that she wanted to make coffee for him and that she was trying to put all these things Elena Borstein together—the whole room laughed, was Noreen Bumby touched and applauded a show of courage and honesty rarely found in mixed male Diane Churchill and female meetings. Maureen Connor The next evening I went to A.I.R. Mary Ann Gillies Gallery to hear Helen Harrison talk about Joan Glueckman 7 American Women: The Depression Eunice Golden Decade, an exhibition at Vassar curated by Harrison and Karal Ann Marling. Shirley Gorelick Harrison spoke of the seven women as Susan Hoeltzel typical of the artists of the thirties in that Cynthia Mailman they looked out at the world and were not Vemita Nemec content to record their inner world only. Carol Feck She quoted Elizabeth McCausland writing Marion Ranyak in 1937 on Elizabeth Olds whose lithograph of chorus girls and their Kate Resek bald-headed admirers is the show’s Rachel Rolon de Clet fiercest image: Halina Rusak That the artist has appreciated not Lucy Sallick only the poetry, romance and Morgan Sanders beauty o f these themes but also Rosalind Shaffer their dynamic social implications Eileen Spikol is indeed good news fo r art, Sharon Wybrants ...Here is a person (the sex, one believes, is more incidental than esoteric critics have led us to think) looking outward at life and recording what she sees, with a fine sense o f design and a simple, 99 Spring Street direct objectivity. New York, N.Y. 10012 For me, and for many other women, the sex, unfortunately, is not yet incidental, Hours: Tues. —Sat. 12:00 — 6:00 p.m. but the looking outward is important. •

9 The cAmeticati ^ M e m o ria l

- A ‘FEMININE’ ART

by LaVerne Muto

A medium which American women During the period in which memorial church, the withering or flowering oak folk artists made exclusively their own picture-making flourished, these “ family tree, pine trees, villages, seas, ships, was the memorial picture. At no place and mortuary pieces” hung on almost every angels in the sky, flowers and garlands at no time before did women in art work parlor or bedroom wall. The conventional and occasionally birds. A balance is at art in such great numbers as in the late composition of this commemoration of usually achieved between the placement eighteenth and the first half of the the dead consisted basically of a of the church and the tree and monument. nineteenth century in the eastern and mourning figure standing over a tomb­ There appears to be a basic feeling for southern states of America in producing stone in a tree-filled landscape. The visual design and symmetry in all of these these pictures. The majority of these representation of mourners at the tomb­ organizations. The various components amateur artists wfere young girls learning stone of the dead can be traced back into of the representations are taken from a to paint as one of the requirements of a the history of art to scenes like those of stock repertory, and symbolic meanings genteel education. A typical portfolio of women and children depicted at the grave can be attached to them. In the culture of their works might include pencil sketches, on the Lekythoi Tomb of the fifth century the period the interpretations most readily watercolors and embroideries of land­ B.C. in Greece. assigned to these symbols are the scapes, and biblical scenes or still lifes, The nineteenth century feeling towards following: the willow identified with but it was the memorial picture which the death reflected in these paintings is that of sadness, the church with faith and hope, young women artists adopted as their a relatively realistic acceptance of death. the withering oak tree with transitory life, own. Because of the high mortality rate of the house with the earthly home, the pine Private schools in the early nineteenth young children at this time, some tree with everlasting life, the sea with century taught, in addition to reading, interpreters feel that the memorials reflect tears, and the ship with departure. writing, arithmetic, natural history and an all-pervasive nineteenth century preoc­ The characters represented in the moral philosophy, “extras” such as fancy cupation with the thought of death. picture are female or male and either work, drawing, watercolor painting, and American memorials were directly adult or child. There is no representation painting on glass ana velvet. These extras based on eighteenth century English and of old age and the person is idealized were considered essential elements of a French prototypes. The iconographic rather than individually characterized. young lady’s refined education. It is models from these imported sources Most often a woman appears alone. interesting to note that despite breaking contain the standard elements' of the Sometimes there are pairs or groups of her ties with England politically, America composition. By 1800 the amount of women, women and men, or women, men continued to emulate her mother country individuality that finally came to be and children. A man never appears alone. in other ways. In England in this same expressed as definitively American was The vestment worn is either classic or of period it was de rigueur for a young lady accomplished by means of selecting and the period. Men and boys always appear to be accomplished in needlework and combining these conventional elements in black, while women appear in black, painting. Miss Sophia Wackles advertised and adding a number of other motifs, all white, and light colors. Handkerchiefs me these as several duties of instruction at her rendered in an essentially two-dimen­ commonly carried in one hand or held in “Ladies Seminary” in Charles Dickens’ sional style. front of the face. The gesture of sorrow The Old Curiosity Shop. The series of selected motifs which accounts for the individuality of the A slightly different version o f this article will LaVerne Muto is an artist and a writer. American memorial picture includes the appear in the summer ’76 College Art Journal.

10 French prototype. Artist unknown. Watercolor on paper. Washington Memoriam Embroidery Picture. Artist unknown. 24'Ax30". Courtesy Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc., New York. performed by the characters comes down liquid colors in bottles that were gradually became town supported as the from antiquity as a classic expression of previously available. general population began to take more mourning. The posture of grief is Eventually watercolor painting began interest in the education of their children expressed most often by the mourner to replace needlework, but needlework and supported greater school taxation. leaning one elbow on the monument, remained the inspiration for the painter Many of the private schools formed the hand to face. Another typical pose, who continued to imitate embroidery nucleus of the high school movement. assumed mostly by men, is that of facing stitches with short precise brushstrokes. Simultaneously with the birth of the front, and looking straight out of the Many watercolor paintings also simulated public school system the products of picture. needlework by a roughened surface of the photography and lithography provided In the young ladies’ academies the paper accomplished by a technique of inexpensive substitutes for the earlier curriculum in art instruction was dedi­ pricking holes with a pin. The schoolgirl handiwork. Many versions of the conven­ cated to copying from examples. Copying watercolorist painted in a direct manner. tional mourning scene were published by was the accepted method in many areas of She used a stencil or engraving to outline several lithography firms. Two of the learning in the nineteenth century. The her design and then filled it in with bold most popular firms issuing these inexpen­ average person was not encouraged to colors in even washes. In the transitional sive prints were Currier & Ives and D.W. paint “ from nature” . Bits and pieces of period when the young ladies used the Kellog & Co.. Sometimes these litho­ former compositions were selectively watercolor medium on silk the favored graphs were used as a design source by a combined to build new ones. The size of the memorial painting was, as young lady who continued to paint her examples or patterns used by the when done in needlework, approximately own memorial. Eventually they were schoolgirl artists followed two basic 19”x23” . However, as more and more purchased merely to replace the hand­ forms-stencils and engravings. The use of memorials were painted on paper, the worked memorial completely. The curric­ patterns resulted in a close integration sizes varied from those done as small as ulum in the public schools responded to between the technical process and the 6”xl0” to those as large as 22”x29” . this shift to mechanical processes and the repetitive motifs of the mourning picture. There were several factors that played a art of “free expression” declined and Various media were employed in the part in the demise of the mourning died. making of the memorial picture. Al­ picture’s popularity as a schoolgirl When one examines the actual person though in some years several media were accomplishment. By the end of the 1830’s who is mourned, it begins to appear that it being used simultaneously, one can detect the private academies that survived was the Romantic movement in literature a chronological developement of the with its extravagances of feelings and different media used. Needlework had utterances-so foreign to our present been considered a desirable accomplish­ modes of thought and expression-that ment for young ladies from the earliest was the greatest inspiration to the young days of this country. It is difficult to date American schoolgirl in adopting the the earliest memorial embroidery pictures memorial picture. George Washington, in America but the vogue appears to occur Goethe’s Werther (from The Suffering of toward the end of the eighteenth century. Young Werther), and other sentimental Though needlework persisted in the subjects inspired many memorials. nineteenth century, painting in watercolor Perhaps the most significant reason for became increasingly fashionable. For a the crumbling of the tradition of the while embroidery and painting on silk mourning picture was the ending of the were often combined. The scenes were Romantic movement itself. Romanticism done in needlework with the sky and face in literature reached its peak during the often painted in watercolor. The increas­ early years of the nineteenth century, and ing popularity of watercolor painting was the 1830’s and the death of Byron saw a due largely to the convenience of working reaction set in. As so much of the with the newly developed watercolors in sensibility of schoolgirl art seems clearly solid form. These solid watercolors in related to this movement, it inevitably small boxes contained an increase in the followed that the memorial picture’s range of colors and were easier to use Rebecca Gookin, Sacred to the Memory of favor drew to a close. than the hand ground pigments that Richard Gookin, 1826. Watercolor. 20xl4'A needed to be mixed with water or the Courtesy Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York.

11 Sexism from MOMA

by Joanne Stamerra

Joanne Stamerra tops work in MOMA's Drawing Now with eraser stamped “Erase sexism from MOMA ” during protest. Photo: Jan Van Raay.

I always read The SoHo Weekly News thought we had decided to stop playing represented. There is a Judith, and a and The Village Voice in the toilet, and in those silly male sexist, elitist, Bicentennial Vivian, and a Mary Beth and a Blythe and a particular January issue I noticed a games. And Bicentennial is another a Laurace and an Agnes and more, and review of “ The Drawing Now” show at thing—with all these American people their work should be presented in these MOMA and the “20th Century American doing cultural American things, they are important shows. Drawing” show at the Guggenheim. Since bound to end up in a museum or two and While I was getting hot and bothered, the newspapers only come out once a come out thinking that all “ draw” ers are Nancy Spero was organizing the MOMA week I was able to read the articles more men, and that the Georgia on the label and Guggenheim Ad Hoc Protest Com­ than once. It was probably the second was misspelled and should have been mittee. composed of women artists also time I went through the newspaper that I George. Well as a woman artist, I didn’t concerned with this issue. At a strategy noticed no women were mentioned in want America thinking this. There are meeting a unanimous vote was passed, either show. Shit, and shit upon. I women artists and their work should be calling for demonstrations outside the two museums. On February 27 and the following Thursday, a group of about 15 women artists and two male artists carried signs and shouted out our objections. Grace Glueck of The New York Times and Mary Alice Williams of NBC/TV news covered the demonstrations. While the demonstrators were pick­ eting, I paid the admission fee to MOMA, and with the photographer Jan Van Raay documenting my actions, I proceeded to place pink erasers stamped “ erase sexism from MOMA” throughout the museum. A s e coND Joanne Stamerra erasing sexism from MOMA erasing Rauschenberg erasing oft/MdiiJG- 5 H6U} DeKooning. In our press release, handed to passers-by outside the museum and mailed to museum trustees, our objec­ tions were stated:

Joanne Stamerra is an artist active in the women’s movement and is currently working on a photographic essay on New York Artists picketing in front o f museum. Photo: Mary Ellen Andrews. architecture.

12 1. Blatant sexism in overlooking both black and white women artists. 2. Insensitivity in selecting from a limited number of powerful galleries. 3. By billing these exhibitions “.Drawing Now” and ”20th Century American Drawing”, which represent work well estab­ lished during the sixties and misrepresent drawing now, these museums are guilty o f over­ PAUL TSCHINKEL’S looking the community of artists and of playing an obsolete game o f elitism. ARTIFACTS We demand that: 1. We be given concrete assurances o f the planning and execution o f a Sundays 10:30 p.m second ‘‘Drawing Now” exhibi­ Cable Channel J tion and a second ‘‘20th Century American Drawing” exhibition that will include 50% women and be responsive to the art com­ munity as a whole. 2. The title for the second drawing show be: Drawings We Have Not Seen”. 3. These two museums meet with us to discuss the above issues and plans. CINEMABOOK As quoted by Grace Glueck in The A NEW FILM QUARTERLY Times, Bernice Rose, curator of drawings and organizer of the show said, “When articles on I do an art exhibition I can’t plan it on the Syberberg, Schrader, McGuane, basis of quotas, and I can’t consider work on the basis of whether it was done by a Mizoguchi, Straub and others... man or a woman. I just have to look at the work as work.” But Bernice, face facts and don’t make on sale at major bookstores and newsstands excuses for your selection. You obviously hadn’t looked hard enough if you only in May came up with five women artists out of 46. If you were looking for a particular style of work, I am sure that half of your selections could have been by women artists doing that sort of work, of equal quality and originality. Your main SUBSCRIBE TO WOMANART problem, Ms. Rose, may arise from the Starting October, newsstand price will be $1.50/copy fact that your selection of drawings came Subscription rate: $7.00/year from galleries such as Castelli and Marlborough which present work pri­ marily by male artists. If one gallery Wear a woman art t-shirt for only $3.95 dealer shows you only the blue drawings how are you going to know about the pink drawings? It is your responsibility as a curator to find other galleries which do Enclosed is my check/money order for show and support women artists, and to □ Woman art subscription—$7.00/year look at women’s art in the studios. There □ Woman art T-shirt—$3.95 ea. □ Roth subscription and T-shirt—$9.95 is a tremendous amount of art work quantity...... Size □ small □ medium □ large contributed by women which cannot be overlooked. As women it is our responsi­ bility to make museums and powerful N am e...... galleries aware of our work, whether it is Address...... drawing, painting, sculpture, photogra­ phy, performance or any other kind of City/State/Zip...... art. Mail to: WOMANART, P.O. Box 3358, Grand Central Sta., N.Y., N. Y. 10017 •

13 Pat Microcosms for Adams Contemplating the Universe

by April Kingsley

Immersing oneself in one of Pat Adams’ paintings is a richly complex optical, tactile, and kinesthetic experi­ ence. She is a miniaturist at heart, condensing vast territories into micro­ cosms for you to explore. She gives you parts, rarely whole entities, and you must fill them out imaginatively in all dimensions. You weigh densities and readjust focus from area to area while your eye is repeatedly being led out of the field only to be caught again by some ex­ quisite detail you’d failed to notice Pat Adams, Sun and Beginnings, 1960. 4x10”. Destroyed. before and brought back inside. The artist said it very well herself some years ago changes for critics to grab onto. She’s we can no longer recognize it. We can when she wrote, “One stares into these always been sort of an outsider, it’s true, only sense it allusively, the way you sense paintings as into a face one loves, and she’s had a lot of non-art concerns a woman’s been in the room after she’s watching close up intently details at draining her energies. But I think the gone by the faint scent of her perfume left unaccustomed range, so close as to nearly basic reason is the intense intimacy of her lingering in the air. mix, merge, and beyond the intimacy to painting style. Paul Klee and Mark Her influences have been many and wonder how it holds, by what one is Tobey, each in his different way, shared varied, from nature to the Book of held.” her problem. One might, of course, blame Kells-wave patterns in sand, splatters of Pat Adams has been painting for forty the situation on the plight of the rain drops on a dry surface, plain stones years; she started when she was eight “feminine style” (if there is such a and variegated-color rocks, crystals, years old. After her B.A. at Berkeley she definable thing) being invisible to eyes milk-weed seeds, connective tissue, rain­ took up residence in Florence for a few trained in looking at male art and bows, the edge of the sea on a moonlit years, and by 1956 she’d been in New therefore going unappreciated. I don’t, night, sand dunes, constellations of York long enough to have her first though, see it that way. myriad stars. She has studied pre-historic one-person exhibition at the Zabriskie Though her paintings are often small, rock engravings, Irish illuminated manu­ Gallery, where she’s been showing opulently, obviously beautiful, and per­ scripts, Persian miniatures, architecture regularly ever since. She’s had two fectly legible, they are difficult. They and scripts, and Jackson Pollock for ideas marriages, raised two children, and has resist intellectual comprehension and about line. She may find inspiration for held down a full-time teaching job at demand instead a physical and emotional the all-over, jewelled spotting of her Bennington in Vermont where she’s been involvement on the part of the viewer. surface in Seurat as much as in Flemish living since 1964. In all her many years of Her motifs imply specificity but are painting (Bosch and Breughel in particu­ active involvement as a painter, she’s actually coded formal messages that lar), but her sumptuous color seems to be never been part of a movement or group, successfully elude deciphering. A device equally at home in the worlds of Rothko, never received much critical attention, in the Lindesfarne Gospels or an Islamic Turner, Renoir and mid-sixties Olitski. and has never been at the forefront of the tile may have triggered her mind Recent emphasis on geometry can be art scene. Why? Her work has evolved originally, but by the time she’s distilled it traced to her interest in Burgoyne Diller, slowly with no great leaps or major and transformed it into her own property Stuart Davis and Suprematism in the same generalized way that the halo-effects in her early work can be attributed to her involvement with Arthur Dove’s paint­ ings. Intention’s Eye of 1956 is fairly typical of her early mid-fifties style. In it, soft globules of color shuffle across the canvas enveloped in thick atmospheric haze. The forms in the early work remind one of lights in a heavy fog, cellular tissue, or micro-organisms viewed through a mi­ croscope. Weights and transparencies were subtly adjusted for maximum ambiguity. As the fifties progressed, her edges hardened and the backgrounds, or the interstices between forms, began to be April Kingsley has a weekly column in the SoHo Weekly News and teaches art history at the School o f Visual Arts. 14 more gesturally articulated. This created more of an all-over situation which was usually halted short of at least one side by an edge of some sort, setting as a plane. (Jules Olitski’s corners are a somewhat similar device.) During the early sixties in paintings like Sun and Beginnings (1960), a few globular units were selected for enlargement and emphasis. The feeling is that we’re looking at the same forms as before but under a higher-power microscope. The linear activity of the interstices became stronger in direction and rhythmic flow, cutting now completely across the field. A few years later a single furry circular form might predominate. She developed a way of working with monoprinting techniques to achieve greater distance from the image. By 1965 the softness of these watery-looking surfaces began to be decisively cut by the sharp outlines of forms that resembled geodes seen in section. Only parts of a section, though, for by now we seem to have zoomed in so closely to the subject/object that we nearly lose sight of its gestalt. We have begun to have to complete the shapes in Pat Adams’ working method is accre­ middle right. Below its juncture with the our minds’ eyes. tive. She will work on 20 or more small left edge, three kinds of lines spring forth. In the late sixties the object is gone. paintings on paper over a period of one or A blue-edged wavy white line arcs like a Lines pass through, implying they are the two years. Starting perhaps with a few stretched spring all the way to the top edges of things, but neither color nor scribbles or geometric doodlings, a few edge. It passes beneath a taut yellow line texture gives a clue to what those things blots or washes of watered-down acrylic, moving right, and a supple bit of looped might be. Sometimes scalloping, arches, rubbings or a monoprint-type of non- calligraphy in red and white heading in or uprights create the impression that the handmade looking pictorial element, she the same direction. But it passes over the inspiration was architectural; sometimes explores what she’s got, picking out strong diagonal, pushing it back in space. the patterns of the various textures imply implied geometries, outlining planes, All this happens on a warm white surface something organic, but we cannot be sure. adding layers of color to cover some areas speckled unevenly with blottings of red, Surface to Occupy (1966), as the title and stress others. She seems to work from blue and brown that looks like an aerial suggests, is a place for us to fill with ideas all sides with a peripheral vision that view of sparse desert topography. of our own—the edge of the earth as seen scatters or spins out from the center. Adams usually incorporates the ground from the moon, a tree trunk in section, She’ll echo a geometric shape in a itself, or a color or texture similar to the fields cut by a two-lane highway, the edge calligraphic facsimile, then perhaps, echo ground within her bands, thereby cancel­ of the sea, perhaps. it again softly in a vague, cloudy passage ling their absolute readings as figure on in the colored ground. In Sweet Lowering ground. The device parallels figure- At this point Adams had a wide range (1976), for example, one side of the ground alternations in oriental rugs and of techniques at her disposal for getting triangular unit moving in from (or off and decoration. She tends to link most of her pigment down automatically, yet with a out of) the left is paralleled by the forms to an edge, as if for support, but clear precise look to it. She utilizes many strongest linear element in the picture, a also to indicate their theoretical extension different media-acrylic, gouache, water­ multiple-stripe band running straight outside the limits of the picture in the color, pencil, ball-point pen-and layers across the picture from lower left to upper Neo-plastic manner. A marvellous natural them in a given work. She began to colorist, she establishes a strong hue to manipulate focus more and more deliber­ hold the field together as a plane and then ately so that the eye had to adjust, as if to plays brilliantly colored lines or incident real distances, when crossing boundaries againgst it to make it vibrate optically. between areas. The bands comprising Though a few of her new paintings have those crossover points began to take on open, whitish or pale grounds, most of the character of planes or objects with her work is still characterized by rich, their own focus or location in space. densely-packed surfaces that seem worked Linear activity in the early seventies was up in many layers. For the Moment is the either ornamental, calligraphic, geomet­ brightest-colored new painting, with its ric, or a combination. It was read against saturated turquoise ground contrasting a dense, amorphous ground. Even when with the warm dark brown and blue blobs there were strong vertical accents to give a in the lower half. (This particular painting painting a sense of orientation to the wall, is unusual in the context of the rest of the there was still a dizzying, gyroscopic new work because it contains these large effect. To get an idea of what I mean, furry-edged forms reminiscent of earlier think of spinning around in place work.) The device used here, of swinging somewhere inside the Alhambra while the outermost band of a right-angle unit staring at a single decorative floor tile or off to become an autonomous line going at a spot where a multi-lobed (scalloped) its own way, is a recurrent one in many of archway cuts out an area of mosaiced wall Pat Adams, Some Comes Later, 1975. the new paintings. behind it or the pierced stonework of the Gouache, 18 5/8xl53A. All photos courtesy dome above. Zabriskie Gallery. continued on page 30

15 SoHo 20, a New York women artists’ nesswoman and friend of Glueckman’s, cooperative gallery, opened in October got together to form the new gallery. They 1973 with two one-artist shows by Sylvia chose the co-op structure, new at that Sleigh and Maureen Connor. Though the time, as they did not have the financial gallery since then has had arguably some means for any other structure, and it of the best shows in SoHo, it remains afforded the opportunity for the women relatively obscure, a name but not a place to achieve something for themselves and ...The diversity and aesthetic ext to the media and most gallery go-ers. to spread knowledge and information to demonstrate the value of th< As a reviewer for Arts Magazine, I have other women. Raymond was given the written often about the exhibitions at the business end, while the other two women gallery since its inception, and have gotten were responsible for gathering the art. She to know many of the members. The relieved the artists of financial and women, currently 21 in number, are warm practical tasks, by finding the gallery joined, and the search for a suitable loft and supportive, turning out in full force space, arranging for electricians, etc.. space began. Halina Rusak, Marion for each other’s openings, and transmit a Meanwhile, Glueckman and Gillies, Ranyak, Elena Borstein, Barbara Cole­ firm sense of unity, despite the wide working on the feminist theory that man, Eileen Spikol, Sharon Wybrants, diversity of their work. women are able to fend for themselves Suzanne Weisberg, Morgan Sanders, and Two of the members, Mary Ann Gillies without becoming “ victims of commer­ Eunice Golden joined, and formed the and Joan Glueckman, are responsible for cial galleries like men” , were searching gallery’s initial membership. Cynthia SoHo 20’s formation. They had met at for women artists to join them. Denes Mailman and Tania joined during the first meetings of Women Artists in Revolu­ gave them names of likely prospects. In season; Shirley Gorelick, Kate Resek, and tion, at which they also met Agnes Denes, May-June they advertised in The Village Susan Hoeltzel joined in 1974. Vernita who in August of 1972 told them of the Voice for women who were “financially Nemec, Carol Peck, Diane Churchill, and plans for the soon-to-open A.I.R. co-op able and had time” to join the “feminist Noreen Bumby joined at the beginning of gallery. Denes suggested formation of co-op gallery.” In addition, the two the current season. Of these women, another co-op, citing “much need for artists searched through the Women’s Sleigh, Stevens, Helenchild, Weisberg, women’s galleries” , and also suggested Slide Registry. By July, 1973, Sylvia Coleman, and Tania have since left the they maintain a loose structure for Sleigh, May Stevens, Marge Helenchild, gallery. Raymond remained “ president” flexibility. In March, 1973, Glueckman, Rachel Rolon de Clet, Maureen Connor, of the co-op until 1974. Gillies, and Marilyn Raymond, a busi­ Lucy Sallick, and Rosalind Shaffer had The criterion for membership was and

Sylvia Sleigh, SoHo 20 Gallery, 1974. Oil on canvas, diptych, each 72x96". Left panel: standing, left to right: Rachel Rolon de Clet, Halina Rusak, Mary Ann Gillies, Suzanne Weisberg. Seated: Marilyn Raymond, Barbara Coleman, Eileen Spikol, Sharon Wybrants, Elena Borstein, Joan Glueckman. objective, i.e., an intensification of the heightened by the views in the qualities of the particular objects the automobile mirrors, generally included in artists produce. One has the impression the compositions, that reflect the scene that the artists work very hard at the behind the point of view of the unseen crafts of making paintings and sculptures; onlooker. Present and passed are com­ 20 they command a strong physical presence. bined. Morgan Sanders combines paint­ ithin this women’s co-op gallery The work can be divided into three ing and photo-collage to create portraits :ive in today’s art system... broad categories: painting, sculpture, and of old buildings on Manhattan’s Upper work in various media displayed in the West Side. One sees a combination of ell formats of painting and sculpture. Ten of details large and small, and though the 12 painters are involved in representa­ lacking an overall view, receives an almost tional images. Whether painting figures, impressionistic report of the ambience is quality work. The initial core group places, or objects, they are concerned and era of each particular building. Susan chose the new work, and as they joined, with the content of their images, and Hoeltzel isolates small, everyday objects the newer members became part of the strive as hard for the descriptive/narrative on canvases with pale gray-brown washes. selection process. In order to show aspects of the images as for the formal Her subjects are the only sites of intense enough of the artists in a season, two aspects. color and activity in each work. They solo shows at a time became the Many of the subject images are based appear singly, or, if combined in one exhibition format. There are now no on transformations of the observed. composition, are compartmentalized and directors or leaders; committees execute Elena Borstein’s paintings isolate portions separated. The objects grow in intensity the various tasks. Slides of other artists of Mediterranean structures and spaces; and three-dimensionality through her are viewed continuously during the she keeps their feel but alters their treatment, which includes writing, notes season. A studio committee visits promis­ appearance to increase the expressiveness referring to the painting or to her ing applicants and chooses new members (of a particular aspect) of the scene. environment at the time of the painting. for the group. Cynthia Mailman’s landscapes, seen Lucy Sallick’s approach to her still lifes The committee looks for work that through car windows, are comprised of also results in their intensification. She would add to the diversity of the group, in flat areas of color in which the places her colorful studio objects on white addition to quality. Aesthetically, the descriptiveness is provided by the color floors: no horizon line and no other group is wide-ranging, with a common and the silhouette outline of their shapes. colors compete for attention. Her denominator in an emphasis of the The space and the mood of the sites are approach also forces our attention on to

Right panel: top row: Sylvia Sleigh, Maureen Connor, Marge Helenchild, Lucy Sallick, May Stevens. Bottom row: Eunice Golden, Cynthia Mailman, Rosalind Shaffer, Marion Ranyak. Founding member Sleigh first displayed this painting at her inaugural exhibition on joining A.I.R. Gallery in 1974. Courtesy A .I.R . Gallery. 17 1BBSI

Noreen Bumby Diane Churchill Elena Borstein Maureen Connor

the compositions of the sketches and straddles painting and sculpture. It watercolors that are parts of the larger consists of standing wooden cut-outs of still life compositions. We see two aspects groups of figures, conceived and painted of the art and artist at once, and see flatly, like paintings. A large painting subject matter serve doubly as object. serves as backdrop for the scene created Eunice Golden, Shirley Gorelick, and by the figures. Sharon Wybrants create figurative paint­ The six sculptors are a widely divergent ings that zero in on their subjects through group. Noreen Bumby’s sculptures fea­ framing and color. Golden paints only the ture groupings of monofilaments, thin, lower torso of her male subjects, focusing almost transparent threads. In her debut on the genitals, her subject for many show at the gallery, she created a single years. Gorelick’s larger-than-life portraits large sculpture of the filaments that tell little about the subjects, but much occupied the entire space, and trans­ about composing and painting the figure. formed it with new spaces and shadows Wybrants’ analytical use of intense color created by the threads. Maureen Connor’s and expressionistic use of detail adds an sculptures, of netting and ribbons almost fierce dynamism to her subjects. bunched and suspended high overhead Two of the realist painters use their near the walls, are about the drawings on recognizable images to create fantastic the walls created by the shadows of the scenes. Rachel Rolon de Clet places nudes elements. The sculptures are the means. against backgrounds that are amalgams Mary Ann Gillies’ work combines fiber of thoughts, time, and space, creating with welded metal rods (not always seen), scenes of inchoate remembrances. Halina and take the form of wall hangings as well Rusak’s paintings border on the abstract. as of free-standing pieces. The fibers are Her patterns combine to form what would often connected using such “feminine” be called flowers, land, sun/moon, but methods as knitting, crocheting, and Eunice Golden are none that could have been observed. knotting. Vernita Nemec also uses The remaining two painters show abstract materials and methods traditionally clas­ compositions. Diane Churchill’s canvases sed as those belonging to women. Her are shaped like an Earth flattened at the sculptures are of sewn and stuffed pieces poles. Her rectangular paintings contain of satin, tafetta, and lace. Whether the same shape. The compositions combined into hanging landscape compo­ experiment with stripings, shadings, sitions, or combined into abstract wall color, and texture. Kate Resek’s canvases pieces, the works transcend the frilly and of crushed chalk and acrylic stain are feminine connotations of the materials, fields of gestures and markings combined which remain lush and expressive. Marion with irregular grids that compete for Ranyak’s cement sandcastings are reliefs

■> dominance. Rosalind Shaffer’s work formed by the impressions of various

Susan Hoeltzel

Morgan Sanders Cynthia Mailman Kate Resek

18 Carol Peck Shirley Gorelick Mary Ann Gillies objects, and are hung on the wall, like “no shows and a closet full of paintings” sculptural paintings. Eileen Spikol’s to having 20 years of exhibitions behind mixed media sculptures, including both them. The norm was a history of less than wall and leaning pieces, are like trans­ 10 years of exhibitions in group shows formed anthropological finds. The casts outside of New York City. In response to of man- and ape-like faces, with other the question, “Why did you join SoHo rough, pseudo-artifacts create the look of 20?” several women mentioned their need unearthed relics. to escape their isolated circumstances. The remaining two members, Joan One reported she had been “discouraged Glueckman and Carol Peck, create and isolated in the suburbs with three neither paintings nor sculpture, but little kids” while another suburbanite felt Marion Ranyak different kinds of work presented as “isolation from the mainstream” of the framed and hung on the walls. Glueck- art world (though she already belonged to man’s needlepoint compositions extend a women’s co-op and had been painting for us the possibilities of the medium for 20 years). All felt SoHo 20 was an beyond the homey and the cute; she opportunity to become part of the art displays a mastery of texture and color world and to simultaneously gain the achieved through the manipulation of the support of the group of women. A stitches. Peck makes color copier repro­ number of artists expressed dissatisfac­ ductions of small pieces of printed matter, tion with commercial galleries. An artist most often comic strips, and combines the who had previously been represented by square-shaped originals and copies in four commercial galleries found most of gridded compositions. She uses color, them “stultifying and unreliable” , while image, and repetition to turn the another artist did not want to show her component “ real” images into abstract slides to these galleries. Of course, there totals. were many women who joined simply Rachel Rolon de Clet because the opportunity afforded itself, I have saved the description of the but most preferred the women’s co-op women of SoHo 20 for last. Prior to structure. writing this piece I distributed a question­ When questioned about the advantages naire to the members of the gallery in and disadvantages of membership in a order to get a direct, personal relation of women’s co-op, most of the artists why they had joined and where they had complained of the amounts of time and come from. The answers were in some money required of them, the difficulties ways unexpected, and in others, demon­ of group decision-making, and the lack of strative of the value of a cooperative sales and publicity representation. The gallery in general as well as of SoHo 20. advantages described, however, seemed to Before joining the gallery, the member artists reported they ranged in status from continued on page 30

Halina Rusak

Rosalind Shaffer Lucy Sallick Sharon Wybrants Gertrude Stein and the Making of Modern Art

by Corinne Robins

Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, 1906. Oil on canvas, 39V*x32". Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum o f Art, Bequest o f Gertrude Stein, 1946.

“Each of us in our own way are bound portraits of them. There were many good of the show had finally proved Gertrude to express what the world in which we are writers also, some of them Stein’s wrong. The fact of the show and the living is doing,” she said. And Gertrude ex-friends, who didn’t like it either. After paintings themselves rather bear witness Stein, unlike Proust and Joyce, occupies all, she called Hemingway “ yellow” , and to the truth of Stein’s remark. Gertrude two of our worlds, the world of plastic described Pound as “ a village explainer.” Stein and her artists have long ceased to arts and the world of writing. I remember Her point of view was omnipresent. With be modern. They are classics. “ And what reading the Autobiography of Alice B. Alice as narrator, Gertrude could and did is the characteristic quality of a classic,” Toklas, 20 years ago now, and gobbling objectively present herself as her own she once asked, and answered, “ The up Stein’s wonderful fairytale of when the heroine. For me, the book was first an quality of a classic is that it is century was young and 20th century introduction to Gertrude Stein’s work, beautiful. Those who are creating the giants Picasso, Matisse and Gris all had and, second, a glittering tale that wove modern composition authentically are their beginnings. The Autobiography of together all the paintings that hung on the naturally only of importance when they Alice B. Toklas is a series of stories, third floor of the Museum of Modern are dead,” she wrote, “because by that anecdotes about artists and writers in Art. The Heroic age of cubism, Rous­ time the modern composition having Paris with Gertrude Stein at the center seau’s Sleeping Gypsy, Les Demoiselles become past is classified and the and Gertrude telling all about it in the D ’Avignon and Matisse’s Music Lesson description of it is classical.” And now voice of Alice. A cat can look at a king could never afterwards become the her artists are classics, Gertrude Stein and Alice via Gertrude saw all the art province of art scholars, could never go herself is historical and the classification kings and sympathized with their mistres­ dry. It wasn’t, though, until four years of her own works will begin. ses and wives who were a great deal less ago that we—everybody—saw part of If you can learn about art outside of than queens in that time and place. The Gertrude Stein’s own personal collection looking at it—in the afterwards, thinking voice is that of a tough-minded lady who resurrected in the show at New York’s and talking and reading about it, can characterize via idiosyncrasies. The Museum of Modern Art. And of course Gertrude Stein is one of the few writers I Paris art world of the thirties didn’t like she would have liked that-because she have ever found who can be trusted to tell Gertrude Stein’s way of discussing their always wanted to be historical. And here you more than just the history of when a youth and didn’t like the book. It again, Gertrude Stein was spanning her painting was made and bought. “Every­ substituted her myth for theirs, tarnishing two worlds. body has to like something..someone is godheads in the process. Matisse and a “You can be a museum or you can be almost sure to really like something number of other French painters made a modern, but you can’t be both,” Stein outside of their real occupation. .The only move toward suing Stein for her libelous once told a former Modern Museum thing funnily enough that I never get tired director. John Hightower quotes this Corinne Robins is an art critic and a fiction of doing is looking at pictures,” she writer who has been interested in Gertrude remark in his foreword to the catalog that begins a lecture entitled “Pictures” that Stein fo r many years. accompanied the Stein show, as if the fact she gave on a tour to America after the

20 success of the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Stein was 58 years old with a lifetime of buying and looking at art behind her when she began talking about art. Before this, she had used artists as subject matter for her own kind of writing, and we have her portraits of Matisse, Gris, and Picasso from this period. The last 15 years of her life, however, she was concerned with the problem of narration, of telling about things rather than presenting or creating them. And it is during this period she produces Lectures in America, Narration, What are Master-pieces, Picasso, and Paris, France-her writings about art and literature. At long last, Gertrude Stein has an American audience and, more impor­ tant, an American publisher. She no longer has to sell off a painting to underwrite the cost of publishing her books. The American audience wants to hear about her, wants to hear about art. Gertrude Stein writes out her lectures and reads them “because talking has nothing Marie Laurencin, Group o f Artists, 1908. Oil on canvas, 243Ax31Vt. Photo courtesy o f The to do with creation.” Each lecture is an Baltimore Museum o f Art. Gertrude Stein is seated at center. essay, meditated upon and thought about before it is written and every one of them always keeps a careful check on herself talking of herself as an audience to is a record of Stein’s thinking, of her when dealing with abstractions about painting to her young college student discoveries arrived at by beginning at the paintings, abstractions which in many audience. She is speaking about knowing beginning and beginning again with each cases add up to her own personal and appreciating a work. And she is far new idea. discoveries. Listen: “ A painter’s literary too canny to presume to tell other writers She doesn’t know why looking at idea always consists not in the action but and painters how to go about the job of pictures holds her attention, but it is in the distortion of the form. That could making their art. something she likes to do. Her criteria: never be a writer’s literary idea. Then a In 1938, four years later, she publishes “ Anything once it is made has its own painter’s idea of action always has to do her book on Picasso, which places the existence and it is because of that that with something moving rather than the artist and the cubist movement squarely in anything holds somebody’s attention. The center of the picture. This is just the relation to the outside world. There were question always is about that anything, opposite of the writer’s idea, everything three reasons for the making of cubism, how much vitality has it and do you like else can be quiet except the central thing she explains. “ First. The composition, to look at it.” This stance sweeps away a which has to move. All this is very because the way of living had changed the lot, leaves the viewer and the picture in a important,” she concludes, “it is impor­ composition of living had extended and one-to-one relationship which Stein is tant not for the painter or for the writer each thing was as important as any other careful to maintain, bringing in art but for those who like to look at paintings thing. Secondly, the faith in what the eyes history-her own experience with looking and who like to know what an oil painting were seeing, that is to say the belief in the at pictures and especially 19th century is and who like to know what bothers reality of science, commenced to dimin­ French painting-when she sees corre­ them in what an oil painting is.” Here, ish. To be sure science has discovered spondences and differences that highlight from the lecture “Pictures”, Stein is many things, she would continue to the problems of her own painters. And discover things, but the principle of all they were hers in the sense that she this was completely understood, the joy maintained the triple role of collector, of discovery was almost over.” Finally: friend and fellow-artist with many of “ Thirdly, the framing of life, the need them over a 20 year period. “ I naturally that a picture exist in its frame, remain in did not talk to painters about what they its frame, was over. A picture remaining painted in their oil paintings,” she in its frame was a thing that always had explains, “ but I told about how every existed and now pictures commenced to picture affected me. And in a way that is want to leave their frames and this also what I can say.” It is also the first and the created the necessity for cubism.” last thing any person looking (including Gertrude Stein here is approaching art critics and fellow-artists) must deal with. from a philosophical stance, searching for A fashionable style of art criticism during underlying causes. In this approach, she the 1960’s was to disguise one’s immedi­ was almost unique, and art writers ate and personal reactions under the guise (including myself, Barbara Rose in her of describing what the artist was doing on distinguished essay “ ABC Art” and many the canvas, the size of his stretcher bars, others) have been living off her work ever etc.. Criticism of intention, of perfor­ since. Stein, the genius of the pertinent mance via comparison, interpretations generalization, has now become the omitting the lament of the person seeing mother of contemporary art criticism as the work, led to a curious kind of well as the grandmother of 20th century pseudo-art language remote from Stein’s art. simple-seeming repetitions which never Jo Davidson, Gertrude Stein, 1920, cast in lose sight either of the subject or of the 1954. Bronze, 31'A” h. Courtesy The Whitney (Part II o f this article will appear in the second person doing the looking. Gertrude Stein Museum o f American Art. issue o f womanart, October, 1976.)

21 the argument were there; and on the other hand, she was a realist painter which NOTES IN THE FIRST PERSON... made it impossible for me to adopt a “modernist” aesthetic which would have excluded her art. Living with a realist, combined with my tendency to a Dada-ist anti-exclusiveness, led me to an aesthetic of diversity, of multiple styles. The idea of diversity originally functioned to preserve realism as an option in the pro-Abstract milieu in which I lived. As the women’s movement developed in the ’70s and as I had contact with it through Sylvia Sleigh, diversity became a political as well as a stylistic principle. This is roughly the background to the art criticism that I began to write in 1972. I reviewed 13 Women Artists, a cooperative group formed for the purpose of putting on a single show (The Nation, March 27, 1972). At the time, I knew none of the artists. As the art critic who had shown most interest in the show, the group invited me to write a catalogue for its successor at the State University of New York at Albany, New York Women Artists. During the summer, I visited most of the artists’ studios. At the time, I recognized that such writing on women artists was part of an increasing interest in the politics of art. This took the form not of indignation but of analytical and descriptive pieces of a skeptical nature. The women’s movement was the positive aspect of an increased ideological aware­ ness. In 1973 I wrote an essay for the catalogue of Suzanne Delehanty’s Agnes Martin exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Philadelphia, re­ printed in a revised form in ' Art forum (April, 1973). This was not a specifically feminist piece, but I did venture to suggest that Martin’s grids, with Lucy Lippard as LAWRENCE ALLOW AY traces his involvement a relay station, may have influenced some with women’s art through his writings. of the numerous women who used grids. Letters from artists Loretta Dunkelman, Brenda Miller, Mary Miss, Michelle Stuart, and Paula Tavins refuted this I seem to have felt less resistance to the which was interesting to me as it raised the speculation (Artforum , September, 1973). Feminist Movement than, say, Max question: is it art? (The question Still, the fact that I was into such detail Kozloff and to have found it more incidentally was settled by H. W. Janson indicates the deep interest I now had in interesting than Carter Ratcliff, to judge who has pointed out that the keeper who women’s art. from a panel at the A.I.R. co-op gallery chooses when to pull the drawings from last year at which we all discussed the the cage, is the artist.) As a result of all An early project of mine that did not matter. There is probably more than one this I can say that I was not much get published, at least in a form that I reason for this. One, which may not be attached to the theories of high art which worked on, confirms my involvement. I understood at first, is my leaning towards inhibit some critics. The notion of had proposed to Artforum that I prepare a Dada aesthetic. This did not show itself women’s art was part of a situation that I a bibliography on women artists. John in the study of any particular Dadaists, could respond to with “why not?” Coplans, the editor, accepted the idea and though I like Picabia a great deal, but in However my first encounter with a Sylvia Sleigh announced the project at a lack of qualms about what can be specifically feminist show was riot a meetings of the Women’s Ad Hoc considered art. Hollywood movies, comic tribute to my permissiveness or insight. It Committee and Women in the Arts and books, science fiction have taken a lot of was X to the Twelfth Power, and I asked women with rare or ephemeral my time and I have always supposed they rejected it unconditionally. So the ques­ documents to contact me. Lucy Lippard were art. In London, before I came to the tion arises: what led me to the support of of Ad Hoc offered her cooperation at U.S., I arranged an exhibition of art by feminism in my subsequent criticism? once, but the idea was opposed in the monkeys, one British, one American, Sylvia Sleigh, my wife, was influential WIA: why should a man do a women’s in two ways (of course, in writing it all bibliography? Actually I was taken with Lawrence Alloway is an art critic and professor sounds much more neat and tidy than it the idea of doing it because it was a o f art history at S. U.N. Y. Stony Brook. His really was). On one hand she was a reversal of all those catalogues in which book Topics in American Art Since 1945 has premature feminist and although it took male curators are serviced by female just been published by W. W. Norton. me a long time to respond, the values and bibliographers, but the irony was lost on

22 the WIA. (The bibliography, done by a woman, appeared in A rt forum , June, 1972.) From 1972 on, women’s art was a recurrent topic of much more than occasional interest to me. This is not the place for a bibliography, but there is some reason to mention a few pieces. I wrote twice about the Philadelphia Focus on Women exhibition (The Nation, April 20, May 18, 1974), the first regarding the censorship of artist Judith Bernstein’s drawing, the second reviewing the exhibi­ tions. Joan Vita Miller invited me to write the catalogue of New York Eleven at the C. W. Post Center Art Gallery; it was an all-woman show and I sketched a chronology of developing self-awareness Judith Bernstein, Horizontal, 1973. Charcoal/paper, 108x150”. “The sexual metaphor is among women artists. In addition, I certainly present in Bernstein, but so are other things: those who saw her show at A .I.R . in wrote two articles for Artforum (January, 1974 will remember its robust architectural character no less than its allusions. ” The Nation, April 20, 1974. May, 1974) in a format designed by Coplans to accomodate newer artists. I wrote on Michelle Stuart and Cecile Abish r — - (and again on Stuart in 1975 for the State ' t ' r ' University of New York at Oneonta when Jerry Clapsaddle was director of the gallery). Other pieces in this format are on Nancy Spero (May, 1976) and Rosemary Mayer (June, 1976). I wrote catalogues on Lucy Sallick (Edward Williams College at Fairleigh Dickinson University) and Helene Aylon (Betty Parsons Gallery), both in 1975. Although none of these pieces is outwardly programmatic they are like parts of a mosaic. They are the result of a decision to write about women artists when the opportunity presented itself and in some cases the projects originated with me. I felt that women artists were under-discussed by male critics and inadequately discussed by many women critics. What I wanted to do was apply the same techniques of argument and evi­ Helene Aylon, Four Times, 1974. Bleach and oil stained through paper under plexiglass, dence to women artists that could be 100”x24’. "These images are part o f the universal repertoire o f morphology, but it would be a found in monographic articles on any­ mistake to think o f A ylon’s art simply as an evocative kind o f abstract painting. The physical body else. process by which the painting is formed, its evident structure, is her prime concern. ” Helene Most of the articles listed so far have Aylon, exhibition catalogue at Susan Caldwell/Betty Parsons Galleries, 1975. been monographic. I felt that I should concentrate on the discussion of individu­ al artists and leave broader-based articles to women writers. The response to my Martin-Lippard influence suggestion in­ dicates the problem. However, I remained aware of a disparity between the range and intensity of women’s art and the comparative poverty of the theoretical response. The prompting of Donald Kuspit, who insisted that I could not hide behind the monograph forever, led me to write a more general article. This is “ Women’s Art of the 1970s” (Art in Am erica, May/June, 1976) which attempts a synoptic view of the art and theory generated by the women’s move­ ment. I see the article as in some degree a complement to Gloria Orenstein’s review essay on Art History in Signs (I, 2, 1975). We both feel, I think, the necessity to Lucy Sallick, Studio Floor Still Life #6, 1975. Oil on canvas, 46x59”. "The tilting o f the make a record of recent events before they picture plane has the effect o f making a partial parallelism between the surface o f the picture are blurred and while the origins of and the space o f the world which gives an allusive materiality to the empty passages around the various ideas are still easily consultable. objects. ’’Lucy Sallick exhibition catalogue at Edward Williams College, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1975.

23 reviews finds that the mass-media tidbits contain a wealth of personal data on the artist ings” , three boldly colored panels, each a woven into the fabric of colorful news Lil Picard Works: 1943-1976 single, sweeping circle whose V-shaped scraps. A red ink inscription in one corner swashes of paint suggest the corners of asks who remembers Nude Descending a (Goethe House, Mar.lO-Apr.2) The Lil paper which protrude in Window into Staircase, making the Duchampian refer­ Picard retrospective was a bombastic Space, a collage of 1960 whose thick and ence explicit. review of this high-spirited, multi-talented rich whites look forward to the magical Interesting textures, biting shades of artist-writer, now 76 years old, but still tactility of the relief tablets of the next brown, and overtones of destruction brand new. It wouldn’t be hard to fill a few years. The materiality of the surface coalesce in Burnt Silk Neckties (1968), lengthy book with lively anecdotes from of the canvas worked its way into these one of three related works hung on the the life of this volatile German-born works in a mixture of clay, plastic way up the winding staircase. Five of woman, but her multi-media works by medium, acrylic paint, glue, and marble these symbols of male convention are themselves are palpable evidence of her dust which she invented. Using the point singed, scorched and scalded in varying persistent vigor and venturesome sense of of an awl, she digs into the coarse surface, degrees to produce rather disturbing yet humor. It should be pointed out that her inscribing words, poetry, or sometimes beautiful imagery. The works of the innovative performance pieces of the past quotations: a great one from Garcia seventies have become more overtly decade constitute a major part of her Lorca, for instance, others of a more political; there are some photo-collages of work which cannot be retained for a cryptic and personal origin. In Under the Warhol and of a number of women gallery wall. Balcony (1962), a smaller tablet hangs artists. An ink sketch relates to work in But regarding what can be, Goethe beneath that hung on the wall carrying the one of her concurrently-held shows, House provided a difficult layout for message: Are we safe under the balcony? disposable “Napkinian Portraits” at effective display and forced some regret­ The wall embraces the light above a Holly Solomon Gallery. Picard’s “Politi­ table overcrowding. However once one dream furor storm and ambush are cal Dematerializations” of Watergate got over the rack of brochures on imprisoned The crystal white canopy figures were exhibited at Feldman Gallery Germany, the fireplaces, elaborate archi­ above the shelter cradle a haven Lovers at the same time; they start with a photo tectural elements, and, most of all, the are waiting and time passes. The brittle and reduce it in a step by step negation of mint green drapes, the energetic power stacked-up layers of the medium are the image using fewer and fewer dots in and exciting mobility of the art took over. fragile; they appear about to crumble; the process. These gutsy portraits of the The title is a bit misleading; the main Picard related that the substance was a inequities of life constitute a central body of work starts in the late fifties. serious risk to her health, producing portion of her expansive involvements. Only a couple of landscapes of the forties symptoms like swollen eyelids and crying. Revelatory in a more traditional aspect appeared, although Picard executed many This factor may have added to the lure of are her sketches, in Pelikan ink and more at the time and found them to have the material which produced some of her fountain pen (as she points out readily), much saleability; they are easily over­ most awesome works. A Song, a reminding the by-now-bemused viewer of looked, but important in showing her seven-part mural of 1961, is among the a less obvious fact. She has proclaimed beginnings. A number of painted collages strongest in the exhibition; figures like that the secret of her whole life from 1939 making extensive use of corrugated paper primitive effigies stand taughtly, lie until the present lies in her continual habit and heavily expressionistic paint were prone, hover askew, while every second of sketching her observations, in Spain, present;some like Collage on White (1959) panel incorporates key words like song, France, wherever she travels, renewing leave large white areas and express more living, dead. The sixth panel suggests the her contacts with the world. Lil Picard concentrated motion through space. purpose of the ritual with its scratched out has proven herself to be more than a Breaking Through (1959) suggests the message: To poets artists writers dreamers phenomenal personality; her art speaks color and imagery of Miro, though they dancers lovers seers seekers To all the for itself. are in no way derivative. Paintings of this children o f this earth a hymn an elegy a —Barbara Cavaliere time include a series called “ Large dedication. The hazardous nature of this Strasbourg Cathedral Window Paint­ expressive medium has unfortunately forced Picard to give it up. l4, • 'iM&r-x -iv** During the early to mid-sixties, she American Impressionism ‘pkV* .\JU&'klV* created her cosmetic assemblages in a lighter mood. SuperMag Dance II is a {Hirschl and Adler, Mar. 9-27) The recent witty mixture of items such as Revlon view of American Impressionism at liquid rouge, lipstick tube, hair net, Hirschl and Adler, though understand­ barrette, tooth brush, soap dish, and ably far from comprehensive, was a curious plastic toy figures, all sort of worthwhile and enlightening experience. dancing around and playfully protruding There were, however, some problems; the from the painted surface. In Cosmetic decorative hanging, for instance, often Tower (1965), phallic lipsticks stand like interfered with the opportunity for a more guards over nine heavily painted white cohesive look at each artist’s works, and bottles lined up in three tight rows, raising the distractingly oversized Chase titled their dispensers like long-necked flamin­ The Tenth Street Studio was out of place, gos. appearing deceptively “ modern” in its Five inventive tent, tower, temple, unfinished state. Works by such out­ house objects (1960-1971) rest as part of standing and often underrated painters as an ensemble on a large collage of J. Alden Weir, Theodore Robinson, newspaper and magazine clippings, and Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, front-center is a stiffly crinkled gown and John Singer Sargent (regrettably only made of similar literature. The word one tiny gem) were a pleasure to see. Lil Picard, Part two o f seven part mural, The “ Messages” is scrawled around at Dispersed among these, was a sampling of Song, 1961-62. Relief paintings, mixed media. random in red ink; on closer examination the art of three women of the group Photo courtesy the artist. (it would take a whole day to read), one whose inclusion offered a tempting

24 chance for further commentary and for in this exhibition. Tucked away on the pushed back in a severe knot, she is a assessment of their contributions along­ ground floor was La Petite Angele, a figure of repose and dignity. As in the side those of their more familiar male Dutch genre-type portrait painted at case of Peterson, Hirschl and Adler contemporaries. Giverny in 1889, the year Perry met participated in a retrospective of Perry’s Mary Cassatt is by far the most Monet, an artist who was to become an work (1969), a significant step towards familiar, having received her due amount important influence on her art. Two the recognition of this painter-poet. of recognition in recent years; four floors up, one found her Normandy —Barbara Cavaliere portraits represent her on the first floor of Landscape (undated like many of her the plush gallery. Although far from her works), an admirable display of plein- most outstanding, they do adequately airism in dotty textures of impressionist Marjorie Strider demonstrate her consistently fine skill and colored shadows. But it was the three singular abilities for successful portrai­ remaining paintings which made the (The Clocktower and City University ture. The best among them is an oil called strongest impression; they transmit a Center Mall, March) In Marjorie La Lecture depicting two intense young certain poignant quality which reveals a Strider’s work, control is a central theme. women thoughtfully sharing one book; personal sympathy between artist and She plays highly defined and explicitly masterful color and finish combine with model and an inherent capacity to capture referential images against ones which are comprehension of mood in this typical that particular state of emotion. Difficult extremely open-ended. Her sensibility is example of Cassatt’s remarkable insight to see, but worth the effort, was a 1911 cool, as opposed to a more expressionist into the personalities of her subjects. portrait of one of Perry’s favorite intensity, and it refers directly to pop On the second floor, there were two Bostonian models, Hildegarde, called imagery. She is immersed in the female lovely painterly landscapes by Jane Cherry Blossoms', even with the gallery experience as the thrust of her art. For Peterson whose pictures of daily life in the secretary’s desk in-between, the elegant some other women artists, expressionist United States were highly acclaimed simplicity and fine finish of the work was angst is brought home in terms of feminist about 50 years ago, but almost forgotten noticeable. It is a profile view of the consciousness. Instead of immersing us in by 1965 when she was still working at the pouting little girl of fair complexion this particular female brand of internal age of 88. Harbor at Gloucester, dressed in pastel hues of pink and warm suffering, Strider presents us with a Massachusetts employs her rich palette of white tones. She peers reflectively at a detached overview of the spectacle of our light, but vivid, flesh-pinks, yellow-greens sprig of blossoms in a lovingly rendered modern feminine experience, replete with and tan-whites and retains a freshness of Japanese vase resting on an oval all the icons of consumerism. Her two vision within a structured and well- mahogany table. The background is an concurrent exhibitions in March added planned composition. Her lively brush­ unobtrusive yet strikingly contrasting up to a truly virtuoso performance. strokes have an expressionist intensity and chiaroscuro of rich brown textures. I read the exhibition at the Clocktower an almost Fauve color. She was born in Perry’s near brushes with sweetness as one piece reflecting the artist’s current Illinois in 1876, trained at the Art avoid excess through her powers of interests, whereas the exhibition at the Students’ League, travelled extensively selectivity and painterly finesse. In The City University Center Mall was more of abroad for further study, and returned to Tea Party, Hildegarde is engaged in a a retrospective, offering a glimpse of her New York to teach at the Art Students’ tete-a-tete with a ruddy complexioned artistic origins. At The Clocktower, she League and various other schools outside friend whose piled up hair is an innocent controlled that very ethereal, temple-like the city. She was also an influential effort at sophistication. Marie at the space, keeping it hushed and awesome, member of a number of art organizations Window, Autumn, of 1921 portrays a and yet injecting it with a decidedly and worked with Hassam, Sloan, and more mature and stately woman, Perry’s temporal dose of sensuality. Her Sky Luks during the first World War. Hirschl housekeeper, seated in front of a brightly Piece, of urethane foam, can at first be and Adler gave her a much deserved patterned drape. To the left is a window; seen as a feminine nightmare: the washing retrospective in 1970, and the catalogue the full play of autumn color outside machine overflows with soapsuds spilling contains more pertinent information and sharpens the delicacy of the pale pastels tumultuously down the spiral staircase, in a more thorough look at the work for and whites in the subject’s dress and a crescendo of multi-hued blue waves. those who wish further data. apron. Marie’s hands are busy with Watching it, however, the tide began to Five paintings illustrative of the oeuvre mending, but her eyes reveal more slow, and instead of rushing, the effect of Lilia Cabot Perry are also incorporated profound thoughts. With her dark hair was of an oozing mass, still completely

L.C. Perry, Cherry Blossoms, 1911. Oil on canvas, 3 1 /ix 2 5 '/iP h o to courtesy Hirschl & Adler Galleries. Marjorie Strider, Sky Piece, 1976. Urethane foam. Photo courtesy the artist.

25 out of control, knowing no boundaries, Walls have been with us forever. Street Wall, part two. Buchanan, who not confined in any integral way, Symbolizing a city, showing a boundary, studied with Norman Lewis at the Art completely free to seek its own form. The and staking a claim for civilization are Students League, says she finished her only containment imposed upon this among the duties of the wall. These walls training there with more determination to slow-moving mass was the relatively have stirred painter Beverly Buchanan’s paint. Now she calls the viewer to look at delicate structure of the support, the imagination, and the result is her Tom her surroundings with more determina­ staircase itself, which certainly looked Wall series. tion and a new perspective. impotent in its formal timidity, in its Buchanan’s work is part of a two- —Donna Lee Goldberg rigidity and structural predictability. The woman show called City Walls, on staircase seemed in fact embarrassed to be exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum forced into the position of supporting in New Jersey. Joining the painter is Mary such an outlandish gesture. Sky Piece Ann Reppa, a Metropolitan Opera Judy Joa reads as the essence of unbridled sensual­ Company scene designer who has de­ ity, of an unbounded pouring forth. signed Cityscape, a series of sculptures. (Green Mountain Gallery, Mar. 5 — 25) At City University Center Mall, Strider In a palette pleasing to the eye, Judy Joa paints intimate scenes of people, showed a great number of pieces from Buchanan paints a statement about our objects, and bits of northern landscape. different periods in her work. Red On cities that shows a powerhouse of talent. She compresses her vision into a narrow Blue, from 1965, is a wall piece in high It demands the viewer’s concentration. range of color and tone, and by this tech­ relief of beets, whose bulbous forms Buchanan claims there’s a lot of anger nique her work gains admirable intensity. protrude aggressively into our space, with inside her, but the viewer would never It all seems to have been painted, wiped, spiny points poking out of them. Spilled know it. Her paintings are filled with scraped, and then redone in some order of Berries, of 1975, is much more whimsical lyrical color. Oranges and pinks don’t the above. This produces a softness of than the beets, but has the same pop fight with one another--they play in North vision and form in which the artist freely color. This piece, consisting of three- with black outlines to sharpen their operates. dimensional strawberries falling out of a images. Subdued reds in North ease into Among the many paintings and draw­ box anchored to the wall, offers a gentle pink. Even in the murky grays and ings that make up this show there are a spilling out, quite different from the oranges of Afterglow, which some have number of compelling pictures. Most of beets’ spiny thrusting out. Spilled Berries called her most serious or solemn work, the work exhibited is under 9x12” and is self-assured and comfortable with its there’s light shining through. there seemed to be as many drawings as own sensuality, its own delicacy, less A color impressionist by her own paintings on view. needy of proving its assertiveness than the description, Buchanan works in acrylics There are no great contrasts in the beets. on wall-size canvases to capture the city as paintings, but what is accomplished quite Reviewing Strider’s seemingly shotgun she sees it. In choosing her tools she picks often is an interior light that seems to approach to motif, it becomes clear that the more demanding-the brush, not the glow from the pictures. In Roses, this is she is indeed describing the trappings of pen, brushes, not rollers. The result is most evident. A small vase of roses sits the modern woman’s role as consumer. beautiful. inside an amber twilight which turns the Her subjects include flowershop flowers, Although at first one might question bright red roses a somber deep shade. In supermarket fruit, a washing machine’s how these painterly works could represent Empty House, hosts of evergreen trees overflow, clouds and moon as seen a wall, the more one looks at them, the march in and out of a grey northern mist through a window, domesticated, section­ more it becomes apparent they “are” that is settling about a small deserted ed into chunks, as if to be sold by the walls. The consistent imagery of ragged house. Joa captures the poetry of the pound, and containerized for our con­ forms are the fragments of a demolished situation and delivers it with accuracy. sumption. building, or the light and shadows on a Steven Painting is a picture of an artist —Sharon Wybrants wall at sunset. It’s something we’ve all before his easel. Beyond him, the picture seen, but she forces us to really look at it. opens out into planes of softly modulated Born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, color that imply a scale much beyond the Beverly Buchanan-City Walls Buchanan now lives and works in East small canvas itself. Orange, New Jersey, the home of the The soft renderings of the paintings are (Montclair Art Museum, Apr. 18-June 20) subjects for Brick Church and Lincoln left behind in the drawings. Here, a sharp

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Beverly Buchanan, Washington Street Wall Part Two, 1975-76. Acrylic Judy Joa, Empty House, 1974. Oil on board, 7'AxlO”. Photo courtesy o f on canvas, 80x70”. Photo courtesy o f the author. Green Mountain Gallery. classical pencil clearly defines funky Female sexual symbols abound in his ness and create tactile illusions. There is sidewalk scenes, drawing room romance, motifs. There are many powerful goddes­ something very literary in the experience and exacting portraits. While she is not on ses. Containers and cauldrons of every of relating the titles to the drawings them­ target every moment, Judy Joa is an artist size and description appear. His animals selves. The drawings as visual art are very who uses reduced means to produce an art have female genitalia. Consistently his low key. Confronted with a whole room that is special in its expression of the compositions center around caves or of them, one must recognize the fragile, poetic nature of life. other womb-like enclosures. Uniting all seriousness and intent of the artist, but —Robert Sievert these evocative elements are voluptuous one can only assume that the strict rhythmic folds created of repeated linear limitations this artist imposes upon her patterns, with each line etched as though work serves an aesthetic that values in his own skin with a tattoo needle, and performance and formal intellect above each ridge threatening to burst its path of visual impact. Martin Ramirez confinement. Ramirez created a highly —Robert Sievert sophisticated form for examining his pain (Phyllis Kind Gallery, Feb. 14-Mar. 13) and articulating his anger. It has Martin Ramirez’s huge collage-drawings successfully thwarted the determination offered an excursion into our collective Gretna Campbell subconscious. He was a paranoid schizo­ of society to isolate and confine one whom it considered deviant. phrenic, institutionalized for the last 25 (Ingber Gallery, Mar. 9-27) Gretna years of his life, mute as well, and his —Sharon Wybrants Campbell continually proves that painting drawings illustrate the severe effect of directly from nature can still produce extreme isolation on an artist. Although strong and vital results. In her personal produced by a male, this work may come encounters with the uncultivated land­ from many of the same psychological Blythe Bohnen scapes of the Maine shore and the New sources as the women’s art that focuses Jersey woods, she perceives the corporal- directly on the female experience. He (A.I.R. Gallery, March 27-April 21) ity of place, and out of this raw material, operated in a cultural void painfully Holding a graphite stick on its side and she extracts the essence and transforms it similar to the isolation of so many women moving it sometimes to the left, some­ into a visual metaphor with aplomb and artists in our society. The compulsiveness times to the right, sometimes twisting it daring. The sense of the rhythms and which drove him into literally piecing about, moving on and finding a new patterns of the wilderness blends with together the fragments of his fragile formal position from which to try one of relish with the materiality of paint, paint world, is reminiscent of the autobio­ these moves again is the way in which laid on in broad, swashbuckling strokes graphical nature of much of the art of Blythe Bohnen produces her drawings, and worked up into dense textures of women that is now surfacing. actually records of her movements. Her brilliant color. A certain river in Maine, a There is no machismo in Ramirez’s work on view at A.I.R. was a series of specific valley in state of thaw, the burst statement or approach. He was groping to drawings made with graphite on large of spring blossoms in a meadow, the state articulate his pain, his alienation, and in sheets of white drawing paper. Each of her surroundings at such moments of the process created a profoundly personal drawing is a series of manipulations that beauty; Campbell manages to draw out of iconography. We see his pictorial space are placed on the page in very formal such romantic subject matter convincing representing his inner space, with womb- positions. Series of movements are seen works which both represent and abstract. tunnels, and stage-like boxes, and paths overlapping in the center of the page, or Viewed close-up, they reveal a tussle with or arteries or channels. He constructed his individual movements are done one next surface; farther back the tension and pull collage-drawings from scraps of trash, to and above another. She entitles these of the elements in various directions glueing the bits together with an invented drawings by, the manipulations she has becomes more evident; finally, at a adhesive, and hiding these fragile exten­ gone through in order to produce them— substantial distance, the scraped and sions of his soul for safety from the One Movement Left, etc. The resultant bruised paint and the impact of direction­ world. Understandably, he built his own images are of overlapping gossamer al strain in relationships separate into alternative reality with great care and planes that have a silk stocking elegance. stream, tree, rock, foliage. Often one precision, so his images have the feel of The shapes formed by her almost finds the incorporation of some slight patiently worked pieces of crocheting. mechanical activity take on a sensuous­ evidence of humanity-a simple boat,

Martin Ramirez, Untitled (Immaculate Con­ Blythe Bohnen, Motion Touching Five Points, Gretna Campbell, Stream Autumn, 1975. Oil ception), ca.1953. Mixed media on paper, 1974. Graphite stick on paper, 22x28”. Photo on canvas, 52x50”. Photo courtesy Ingber 44x32”. Photo courtesy Phyllis Kind Gallery. courtesy A .I.R . Gallery. Gallery.

27 small footbridge or country cottage. and halfness created a ghost-like, very Every corner of the canvas (which has eerie, ethereal feeling. Recent Portraits of Sari Dienes recently become larger and more squar­ Guerra seems to like women, and ish) is full of activity, implying the appreciates them in a friendly way on (Buecker and Harpsichords, Mar. 6 — possibilities of expansion beyond the canvas. His paintings, with the exception Apr. 24) Sari Dienes is an artist whose immediate periphery of the working field. of the latter, appear to be composed of experience touches just about every Stream Autumn is an outstanding friends, painted from life and fantasy, corner of the art world. Born in Europe, picture in a more limited palette than and are accessible, spacious, and warm. she was acquainted with the modern most; it bears an affinity with Cezanne’s masters and was a student of Ozenfant. vision of like scenes as well as a certain —Barbara Cavaliere During the turmoil of the late thirties, she recollection of some of Courbet’s densely came to America, where she has been an painted countrysides. In essence, how­ art world figure for the last 35 years. She ever, Campbell’s distillations of nature Jean Cohen has had many shows and professional remain independently personal in feeling honors. Now she is the subject of a group (.Landmark Gallery, Mar. 13 — Apr. 1) and reveal unusual productivity with no show at Buecker and Harpsichords, in Jean Cohen’s paintings are large abstrac­ loss of refinement. which many artists have contributed tions which all have simplicity at heart. —Barbara Cavaliere portraits of her in a great variety of The pictures are made up of less than a media. dozen elements, each one seen singularly Among the painters, perhaps the most and separately. Four or five ovoid shapes Art Guerra accurate in her observations is Alice Neel. bounce and cavort through a very simple Her painting shows Sari seated in the now pictorial space that is little more than a (Rabinovitch & Guerra Gallery, Apr.9- familiar striped chair, dressed in a long ground and sky. Each shape is painted May 1) Guerra’s paintings were of polka-dotted dress. There is a clown-like flatly with no modeling or interior women alone and in groups, posed very quality to the figure, but the face radiates activity. In several pictures, these simple naturally (loose and relaxed), or in openness and warmth. shapes are broken into, but there are athletic, dance-like positions. The wom­ Robert DeNiro shows one large paint­ never more than one or two simple en’s eyes were ringed by color, in an ing and three charcoal drawings. None of divisions interrupting each. The color is extreme exaggeration of cosmetics, but this work is very descriptive, but there is also very simple. Bright primary reds, litle else about them was exaggerated. the feeling the DeNiro is matching the life yellows, and blues are set against blacks. The artist kept his colors-usually blacks, force he senses in Dienes with his open, Fiery pinks and oranges balance each blues, reds-at the same intensity within a lively style. Lil Picard’s Dematerialization other out. single composition, bringing all areas of o f Sari Dienes is a presentation of A large triptych, Cloudy Sky, domi­ the same colors to the same distance from drawings, xeroxes, and colored photo­ nates the show. In this work, the shape the picture plane, flattening and distort­ graphs in a unified piece of work. takes on an animation and the picture ing the representational aspects of the Surrounding a large color photo is a series achieves a scale that is quite impressive. compositions. In Four Dancers, the of 5x6” cards on which an accurate woman closest to the viewer holds half of One is reminded of Miro’s late murals characterization is slowly, card by card, in the playfulness and inventiveness that her dance skirt up, revealing her nude disintegrated into an abstract design. This seem to pulsate through the work. In East body beneath. The flesh and black areas is taken further into collage and narrative of her body, and the two opposing o f the Sun, a sense of landscape is deve­ realms. loped by the piling up of flat shapes, and quadrants of her blue skirt formed a Marcia Marcus shows a subdued, diamond pattern, creating an abstract by the architecture in the top half of the elegant painting, while Diana Kurz painting. This removes the work from the dynamism in a somewhat dynamic figure. exhibits a picture exceptional for its flair abstract and takes it into the realm of Dead Woman was a large, black, and color. Pat Mainardi contributes a fantastic landscape. Cohen’s work seems unstretched canvas tacked directly to the moody violet watercolor with Sari seen in to be reaching in several different wall. Near the bottom, positioned hori­ profile against a window. Roy Moyer directions, but it is all held in place by a zontally, was the translucent top half of presents Sari Dienes as the oriental firm painting style. the reclining corpse. The mask-like goddess Kali in traditional mandala form; —Robert Sievert quality of the face, and its translucence Edward Power Jones’ paper sculpture is a

Art Guerra, Las Hermanitas, 1975-76. Mixed Jean Cohen, Cloudy Sky Triptych, detail- Edward Power Jones, Sari Dienes, 1976. Mixed media, 7x4'A’. Photo courtesy Rabinovitch & center panel. Oil on canvas, 72x72”. Photo media, 35” h. Photo courtesy Buecker & Guerra Gallery. courtesy Landmark Gallery. Harpsichords Gallery.

28 witty and inventive likeness. cool (boy’s color), white = anxiety.” in 1974 and situated in Wakefield, Rhode This show was organised when Dienes Mom’s Just Out There Tryin’ to Break Island. The two co-ops arranged exchange mentioned to gallery director Robert That Grid, the largest work in the show shows of the galleries’ works; SoHo 20’s Buecker that she was sitting for a number (6x12’), is an allegory of the confronta­ show opened at Hera during the course of of artists. Buecker picked up on the tion of the female sensibility with the the show in New York. The 17 women information and put the show together. male, or main-line art historical sensibi­ from Rhode Island were represented by While the exhibit as a whole is a tribute lity. A large white mass (“ white = work in many media: paintings, drawings, to Sari Dienes, it must be mentioned that anxiety”) with bandaleros stuck into it, sculpture, box works, constructions, most of the works are also individual comes crashing down diagonally from the photographs, and wall-hangings. tributes. She is always represented as a upper left to the center, spewing bridal Two artists were examples of the spirited and generous woman. lace and gold finery in all directions and diversity of the group. Donna Croteau’s —Robert Sievert culminating in a huge, erotically charged sculpture was about enclosures. Small opening with explicit female references. wooden picket fences formed three sides This form is wounded at the tip, where it of concentric squares. The fences grow in Joan Snyder explodes in a chaotic tumble of quasi­ height as they approach the center; an geometric shapes of color—the remnants open side of each faces a closed side, (Carl Solway Gallery, Feb. 7 — Mar. 13) of the grid that got all broken up. It seems creating a simple maze. The outer fence “The politics are at once separated and that the rigid structure of the grid could was the lowest, but the only complete integrated. If there is a female sensibility, not hold its own against the overwhelming enclosure. The sensibility forming this language, art emerging, how can an force of that driving white wedge of sculpture was totally different than that all-male faculty at Douglass choose- female sexuality. The painting also opens governing the sculptures by Patsy Norvell select-judge women artists who apply? itself to less politicized readings, as for seen in her most recent show at A.I.R., in They can’t, they didn’t, they only chose 4 example, of passion’s assault on reason. which fences were made of materials alien in 20 in two years. They would protest— This makes it accessible to a broader to those composing “real” boundaries. of course.” With this statement scrawled interest group, but I do not think it is Croteau’s was rather simple, and remind­ on a three-panel painting called Small presumptuous, in light of this entire body ed one of graveyards, or churches. Symphony for Women, Snyder opens her of work, to assume that Snyder is One of Martha Cooper Guthrie’s black case. What follows is the evidence, as directing her statement primarily to and white photographs of a tattooist and presented in her recent exhibition of women. his subjects was of a kneeling Oriental paintings at Carl Solway. With this body Snyder’s is a particularly brutal and woman, clothing around waist, whose of work, she goes way beyond attacking raw form of Abstract Expressionism, but back was covered with a tattoo of an sexism in academia to prove the very her savage slashes into the canvas, wild Oriental woman kneeling, with flowers in existence and power of the female dripping and smearing of paint, rampant hand. The soft roundness of the woman, sensibility in art. In the most recent use of impure collage elements, and other soft window light, and graceful design painting in this group, Untitled Triptych, seemingly primitive and haphazard produced a visually quiet moment. she has written that “The painting gestures, are repeated ritualistically to Though there is not enough room to hauntingly precedes the life - - -And create a personal iconography which can discuss all of the work, it is interesting to follows it.” This is why her work is so be clearly read. This high degree of note that the entire body of work looked powerful. The struggles, the pain, the control of the seemingly automatic different somehow, raising, perhaps, the self-awareness, the awakened conscious­ gesture is further informed by a sophis­ question of a “ New York sensibility” . How the work differed is hard to ness of her life as a woman are enmeshed ticated conceptualist integration of the pinpoint; there was a relaxed quality to it, in the grid of her structure as a painter. I written sign into the visual symbol. and an air of experimentation that see this as the major contribution of the —Sharon Wybrants revealed a confidence in the taking of the female sensibility to the art of our time. chance, regardless of the outcome. Untitled Triptych presents us with a key Exchanges of New York work with that to employ in our decodification of the HERA at SoHo 20 of other out-of-town galleries and groups political/emotional/perceptual symbol­ of women artists might prove very ism throughout her work: “ Yellow = (SoHo 20 Gallery, Apr.24-May 19) Hera revealing. Just as exposure to the whole is a women’s cooperative gallery founded rage, red = passion (girl’s color), blue = body of women’s work was needed, now perhaps we need to examine different parts of it more closely, and discover the variety of sensibilities at work.

—Barbara Cavaliere

Bonnie Sklarski

(Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, Feb. 1 7 - Mar. 13). Bonnie Sklarski’s first one- woman show in New York included carefully observed and meticulously pain­ ted landscapes of southern Indiana and several large, primeval outdoor scenes inhabited by male and female nudes. Working with equal precision and deli­ cacy in watercolors and in oils, Sklarski Joan Snyder, Mom‘s Just Out There Tryin ‘ to Break that Grid, 1975. Mixed media on canvas, realistically paints serene, expansive 6x12’. Photo courtesy Carl Solway Gallery. visions of specific canyons, creeks, and

29 continued from preceding page SOHO 20 cont’d from pg. 19 PAT ADAMS cont’d from pg. 15 waterfalls which recall the romantic, pastoral works of the nineteenth century outweigh these disadvantages. The gal­ According to the Day is a smashing Hudson River school. The artist focuses lery’s pursuit of self-criticism and quality little painting. A blue/gray ground, that on rugged motifs, but the mood they work was generally praised, as was the looks a bit like marblized end papers, is evoke is gentle and benevolent. In sense of SoHo 20 as a source of interrupted by a red scalloped right angle, contrast to this idyllic calm, the atmos­ information with which other shows and a brilliant rainbow of green, yellow and phere in the ambitious compositions that projects could be obtained. In addition, blue bands, and a solid triangular slab of incorporate archetypal figures—for many expressed, in one way or another, a pinkish tan cutting off the left side. example, Earth, Air, Water (1976)— is feeling of self-confidence achieved by Beneath this element is another corner more dramatic and harsher. The mythical running an art gallery for and by device filled with small geometric forms in nudes may seem stiff and unnatural in themselves, one of the aims of the brilliant colors. (These right angles these landscape settings where soft founders. remind me of picture frame samples the outdoor light and warm tones have After reading the questionnaire re­ framer puts around the corners Of a yielded to stronger studio contrasts. sponses, one feels that many of these picture to see what it will look like.) Shiny Sklarski’s characteristically fine, control­ women “came out” into the art world spots sparkle unevenly over the whole led draftsmanship is preeminent through­ with SoHo 20. As exhibiting members of surface. The increasing size, firmness, out the show, which includes works a New York gallery, their attitudes and and unitary quality of her geometric dating from 1969 to the present. In careers seem to have taken on new shapes is epitomized by Rose with its huge addition to the extensive timeless land­ definitions and goals, as if the rigors and plane of connected triangles and a scapes, there are very careful and accurate realities of their memberships have made rhombus. She floats complete squares, plant studies and two sanguine figure them aware of what they are able to do, as circle segments, rectangles, and triangles drawings, as well as several small oil artists and as women. Over the past three with less and less temerity all the time. sketches. The latter are pastel-like sky years, I have watched the gallery as a Her lines seem tauter, more like spring studies executed in a looser and softer whole improve in physical appearance steel, less malleable and calligraphic over technique. and in functioning. More importantly, I all. —Judith Tannenbaum have seen the work of the individual The recent emphasis on the geometric members undergo changes which have brings a new clarity to Adams’ content. almost always been for the better. I have It’s a break with the more hermetic seen styles change, compositions tighten, attitude that seemed to dominate before. Helen Quat ideas clarified in the work of most, if not The new paintings look less like enlarged all, of the artists. It is a gratifying, details and more like enormities contrac­ (Alonzo Gallery, Mar. 9-Apr. 3) The first wonderful aesthetic experience to watch ted to manageable size. They have so one-woman exhibition of Helen Quat’s “young” artists develop and progress much built-in scale and formality they work in Manhattan reveals this artist’s with the gallery. could be any size. She has always known polished draughtsmanship and technical The detailing of the SoHo 20 experience that she needed to keep the handmade virtuosity within the etching medium. Her by its members leads me to conclude that look out of her pictures to separate them method is color viscosity, a means, she women’s cooperatives are vitally needed, from the beautifully designed, well explains in her demonstrations, by which as both alternatives to the male-domi­ crafted appearance of manuscript illumi­ intaglio and surface colors can be printed nated commercial gallery system, and as nation or Oriental miniatures. That’s why on one plate and in a single printing sources of communication and support she developed her arsenal of automatic without blending. The results achieved by for women “ out of the mainstream” who techniques 'for applying paint. On the her skillful manipulation of color and require exposure and education in order other hand, she has studiously avoided surface on the deftly-worked plate are to establish themselves in the art world. the gesture or the calligraphic line as a rather stunning and almost science-fiction SoHo 20 has served, and continues to “ seismograph of the soul” the way Mark like evocations of the metamorphosis of serve, these functions, providing a strong Tobey used it, for instance. She’s not organic forms—rocks, shells, coral glide image to follow, and showing the art interested in the obsessive repeat, the tiny and roll in space like luminaries on an world that one need not be a victim of the mark or the emotional line. She gives even astral plane. These are in part derived system in order to be successful within it. her looping lines, the most easy-going from such natural objects which she part of any of her paintings, the snap of brings to the surface during scuba diving being intended and of having some excursions on vacation. definite place to go. Their meanderings In a surreal vein, she is obsessed with never seem purposeless or accidental, but the swirling motion of a large flower-coral carefully planned instead. form which seems affected by wind, WOMANART It is a narrow path she treads between water, fire in its nomadic wanderings. Her was printed at these two essentially contradictory modes. imagery is suggestive of the associations A similar duality occurs in her surfaces, of many levels of nature from the flight of which she wants to be supple and INTERNATIONAL PRINTING a bird to intimate parts of feminine malleable but not soft or penetrable. She anatomy. Titles such as Cosmic Encoun­ Industries needs to make them exert maximal optical ter, Fire Dance, Peaks and Valleys and haptic pressure (to feel full) without conjure up such symbolic overtones which 482 Stuyvesant Avenue becoming closed or jewel-like. It is a accord well with her complex working of Lyndhurst, New Jersey desire for the deeply intimate experience the etching medium. of miniature painting without its small­ Although the etchings are the most ness of ambition. As she says, “ What I inventive and successful, the show also want for most of my work is a ranging includes a number of delicate and accuracy, yet a locus where everything is accomplished silverpoint drawings ren­ than a primary concern so far. For the brought to bear; it has to do with a close dered with great finesse. Paintings present, it is her astuteness in the print hugging of the contour of reality. And by continue similar imagery; the tondos are shop which stands out. reality I mean a very complex experiential strikingly like planetarium views of the density. Painting, then, is my report on twisted surface of some strange planet. —Barbara Cavaliere that reality.” But they are rather more of an extension

30 reports— meeting of the Woman’s Salon in New with strong, physical bases or elements. York. The salon, a literary forum for Among these were one of Michelle women writers, co-founded by writers Stuart’s long graphite drawings, a field Sister Chapel Marilyn Coffey, Erika Duncan, Karen full of markings and gestures (#4), two Malpede, Gloria Orenstein and Carole drawings by Blythe Bohnen, records of The Sister Chapel, a traveling exhibi­ Rosenthal, celebrated the successful body gestures, and two monochrome tion in celebration of the emergence of a conclusion of its first season’s events on paintings by Barbara Coleman, in which new womanspirit in art, is now being May 8th with readings and talks by poet her aggressive surfaces are aided by the elaborated by eleven feminist painters and Adrienne Rich, critics Catharine Stimp- mixture of gravel with the paint. one environmental sculptor. The chapel, son and Gloria Orenstein, and writer Though the sexual themes of the artists composed of eleven panels and a ceiling, Barbara Deming. This gathering together shown in the third category, subject will be a collapsible,transportable pavil- of women in the visual and literary arts in matter, were pointed out, there was lion intended to tour the country. It was a concerted effort to mobilize their virtually no outright, genital imagery. Ilise Greenstein’s vision of a female talents towards the launching of a new Perhaps the strongest images here were response to the Sistine Chapel. The artists image of womankind past, present, and Juanita McNeely’s, her nude female involved in the project, June Blum, future, lends additional momentum to the figure displaying a “ clit athleticism” in Maureen Connor, Martha Edelheit, Elsa ongoing manifestation of the strength of flying poses not really possible. These Goldsmith, Ilise Greenstein, Shirley Gore- the women’s movement in the contemp­ highly energized images of release were lick, Betty Holiday, Cynthia Mailman, orary arts. used by Alloway to illustrate the Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh, May Stevens, —Gloria Feman Orenstein “ revision” of what subject matter women and Sharon Wybrants, will each contri­ could not formerly (due to societal dis­ bute a 5’x9’ painting that will float approval), but could now paint and against a panel backdrop, suspended by a display. thin metal frame. The architectural form Women Artists of the ’70s Realism, the next topic, encompassed of the chapel, whose eleven panels will —A lecture by Lawrence Alloway, portraiture, still lifes, landscapes. Lucy compose a space of twenty-five feet in given March 21, 1976 at the Sallick’s Studio Floor Still Life and diameter, is now being designed by Metropolitan Museum o f Art. Audrey Flack’s Jolie Madame were used Maureen Connor, the group’s environ­ to illustrate the personalization of the still mental artist. The chapel will be Offering an “introduction to the life currently evident in the work of many constructed of aluminum tubing covered density, diversity, and excellence of artists. Sallick’s compositions of paints, with canvas and will have a lighting women’s art,” Alloway discussed and brushes, cans, and sketches were looks at system incorporated into its basic struct­ displayed via slides the works of approx­ how her paintings came into being, while ural components. The ceiling by Ilise imately 30 women artists. He noted the Flack’s dressing table composition, Greenstein will be a large, round abstract production of “such a convincing body of named for her favorite perfume, showed a painting with a mirror embedded in the work” that has brought a new level of different side, “ symbolizing an aspect of center so that women visiting the exhibit recognition about the work from the women’s life via possessions.” will find their images reflected in the women themselves as well as from others. Women’s viewpoint was the final chapel’s dome. The critic, noted for his involvement (in subject, in which the points of view were Each of the eleven panels will portray a print as well as behind-the-scenes) in shown to encompass a variety of subjects. female heroine, either real or archetypal, women’s art, gave a brief history of Jane Kogan’s Interiorized Self-Portrait conveying a spiritual rather than religious women’s art in terms of earlier periods of and Tomar Levine’s In My Studio were conception of woman’s identity and a recognition, and subsequent patronage specialized self-portraits. Two of Joan sense of her unique creative destiny. and distribution. Semmel’s paintings were examples of Projected panels of historical and artistic The artists discussed were drawn overt eroticism, Levine’s Night Bedroom heroines include June Blum’s portrait of primarily from the A.I.R. and SoHo 20 a depiction of a man in terms of desire, Betty Friedan, Elsa Goldsmith’s Joan o f cooperative galleries. Their work was and Sylvia Sleigh’s Double Image (Paul Arc, May Steven’s Artemesia Gentileschi, divided into five categories based on type Rosano) an example of a man painted and Shirley Gorelick’s Frida Kahlo. A of work and subject, arranged so that from an attitude of love and admiration, variety of new images created specifically they led to an exploration of self-images without overt eroticism. Nancy Spero’s to reenergize the positive aspects of the of the artists and their positions and The Hours of the Night was noted for, Archetypal Feminine are Sylvia Sleigh’s attitudes regarding their subject matter. among other things, its implicit political Lilith as a Male/Female Figure, Cynthia Each of the examples within the references. Mailman’s God as Female, Sharon sections was shown to make a specific Alloway concluded by pointing out that Wybrants’ Self-Portrait as Superwoman, point, providing a dense, informative there is a lot of women’s art, and that it Betty Holiday’s Middle-Aged Nurse and lecture. Starting with artists involved in meets any standard of excellence. He also Alice Neel’s Pregnant Woman with Child. large, often environmental works, Allo­ noted an abatement in women’s feeling With International Woman’s Year and way discussed the scale of, and the that the art world is run by men—not the American Bicentennial marking its encompassing and use of large spaces. because the men have abdicated, but conception, the spirit of the Sister Chapel Athena Tacha’s plans for altering a because of the “energizing effect” of the is dedicated to the realization of the portion of the banks of the Charles River recognition, mentioned earlier, of the heroic female principle in art and life. (Charles River Step Sculpture) was one of quality and diversity of the work they Each portrayal of woman included in the the grandest works in scope, while an have produced. The lecture was a show is an individual tribute to an A.I.R. installation of Judith Bernstein’s personalized sampling, omitting, for enlarged collective ideal that embraces a enormous drawings, and Anne Healy’s example, many of the more prominent multiplicity of aesthetic and visionary Lion Gate sculpture, installed outdoors at women artists. As a sampling, it provided definitions of womanhood within a Hammarskjold Plaza, illustrated other a rather concentrated look at the work of non-hierarchical, non-doctrinaire mon­ aspects of the use of large spaces and the artists who represent a number of aspects ographic framework. creation of environments. of women’s work, and who also represent Artists participating in the creation of The second category treated was that of a determination to make their presence in the Sister Chapel will make a presentation modules and fields in abstract works. the art world felt, and permanent. of their ideas and plans at the May Many of his examples here were of works 31 ■