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Home , Anita Steckel, Eroticism

r e v i e w s 105 in other words, make visible the extent to decried them as opportunistic publicity which Britain’s unspoken colonial legacy stunts. Writing in 1967, Lucy Lippard typified continues to inform attitudes and actions in the predominantly figurative work in these the present. Before this work can begin, it exhibitions as ‘third rate Pop and warmed- is necessary to treat histories of photography over neo-Surrealism’, advocating instead for and their contexts reflexively. It is necessary, the abstract approaches to corporeality that in other words, not to look again through she had showcased in ‘Eccentric Abstraction’ Graham’s frame but to look beyond it, to a at the Fischbach Gallery the year before.1 moment when social documentary promised Still, other commentators read the eclecticism something more than a fleeting jaunt up the of the ‘new eroticism’ as a welcome assault A1. on the supposedly disinterested of formalist .2 Following this line 1 Allan Sekula, ‘Dismantling Modernism, of argument, in Radical Eroticism: Women, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the Politics of Representation)’, in The Massachusetts Review, vol. and Sex in the 1960s, Rachel Middleman 19, no. 4, 1978, pp. 859-883, p. 862. shows that a handful of women managed to 2 Emily Thornberry, ‘Image from #Rochester’, infiltrate such exhibitions with Trojan horse- 20 November 2014, https://twitter.com/​emily​ thornberry/status/535450556199075840?lang=en like offerings, with which they reimagined (Accessed 8 December 2018). the sexual body from a distinctly feminist 3 Steve Edwards, ‘Disastrous Documents’, in Ten:8, perspective. vol. 15, 1984, pp. 12-23, p. 15. The book is structured around close Stephanie King readings of works made by five artists during the 1960s, which provide a cross- section of media and styles. They include: ’s diaristic exploration HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.14324/111.2396-9008.038 of female sexual pleasure through film and Rachel Middleman, Radical Eroticism: performance, Marjorie Strider’s and Hannah Women, Art and Sex in the 1960s, University Wilke’s sensuous abstract , Martha of California Press, Berkeley, 2018, 265 Edelheit’s lyrical depictions of sexual fantasies pages, hardback, ISBN 9780520294585, and Anita Steckel’s parodic photo-montages. $65. The juxtaposition of such disparate practices is one of the book’s strengths, placing the In the mid-1960s, a swell of ‘’ work of well-known artists like Schneemann exhibitions swept across the American art and Wilke in a new context while also scene. With titles such as ‘First International shedding light on the lesser known practices Girlie Exhibit’ (Pace Gallery, New York, of Strider, Edelheit and Steckel. Across its 1964), ‘The Arena of Love’ (Dwan Gallery, richly illustrated pages, one can see how an Los Angeles, 1965) and ‘Erotic Art ‘66’ amorphous concept of flesh progressively (Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, 1966), replaced the defined contours of the these shows succeeded in attracting both idealised body. This is apparent in Edelheit’s public controversy and huge crowds. The watercolour study for her Female Flesh Wall critical response was overwhelmingly (1964–65); Steckel’s photo-montage of a negative, however, and many reviewers woman’s body pierced by the Empire State 106 o b j e c t

Building’s spire, from her Giant Women on self-determination as sexual subjects. On the New York series (1969–74); and Strider’s foam other, that it could be equally read through secretions of the late 60s. But Middleman is a feminist and masculinist lens suggests that less interested in tracing continuities across its explicit subject matter overshadowed the these artists’ practices than she is in studying critical and formal vocabularies developed how they each placed the question of sexual by these artists. Middleman’s close attention politics at the centre of art discourse. As a to the specificity of each of these artists’ result, these artists often attracted criticism practices is therefore welcome. Her focus from both conservative and liberal critics: on the years before they firmly stepped the former protesting the obscenity of their into the spotlight, in particular, allows for a imagery, the latter the commodification of more nuanced analysis of the ways in which the female body (even if the male body was their representation of sexuality tested both just as often their ‘hard target’).3 In this way, societal and artistic norms beyond flashpoints the practices discussed in Radical Eroticism of public controversy. When Edelheit’s anticipate the debates on the representation watercolours depicting S-M sexual fantasies of sexuality that emerged in feminist theory were exhibited at the Byron Gallery in and activism in the 1970s, and which would 1966, for example, reviewers ambiguously eventually split the movement along sex- attributed their discomfort to the ’ positive and anti- camps. ‘lack of ’.4 Their failure to discuss the It is fitting, then, that Middleman’s account works’ sexual content is as telling of the concludes with the formation of the Fight societal blindness to women’s sexual desire as Censorship Group in 1972, which advocated the overt threats of censorship riddling these for sexually explicit art made by women. artists’ careers. Steckel founded the group in the wake of Perhaps one of the reasons that Edelheit’s the uproar caused by her solo exhibition watercolours were not the object of the same ‘The of Sexual Politics’ in vicious attacks as Steckel’s photo-montages is 1972, which featured a photo-montage of because they were rendered in a figurative erect penises towering above Manhattan’s idiom that critics could at least read in terms skyscrapers. Comprising Edelheit and of draughtsmanship. As Middleman notes, Wilke, along with other artists such as one of the challenges presented by sexually and , the explicit art in the 1960s was the clash between group contributed to the dissemination high and low culture. Given that the sexual of many of these artists’ work in radical revolution that provided the backdrop feminist publications, men’s magazines and to these practices was, in many ways, mainstream tabloids alike during the mid- spearheaded by the mass media, the critical 1970s. Middleman argues that the diversity work that remains to be done is situating of outlets interested in the is women’s erotic art within the broader sexual symptomatic of the politically ambivalent culture of the 1960s. To this end, this book claims placed on ‘erotic art’ in this period. On might best be read alongside two recent the one hand, that such work was perceived contributions to the study of sexuality in as a novelty shows the extent to which American film culture during this period, eroticism had historically excluded women’s such as Ara Osterweil’s Flesh Cinema: The r e v i e w s 107

Corporeal Turn in American Avant-Garde Film Evergreen Review, vol. 12, no.58, September 1968, pp. (Manchester, 2014) and Elena Gorfinkel’s 49–83, pp.49–54 and 79–83. 3 Richard Meyer, ‘Hard Targets: Male Bodies, Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in Feminist Art, and the Force of Censorship in the the 1960s (Minneapolis, 2017). 1970s’, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, exh. cat., Los Angeles, 2007, pp. 362–383. 1 Lucy Lippard, ‘ Presumptive’, in The Hudson 4 J. W., ‘The Galleries: ’, New York Review, vol. 20, no.1, Spring 1967, pp. 91-99, Herald Tribune, 23 April 1966, n.p. p. 91. 2 Douglas M. Davis, ‘The New Eroticism’, in The Helena Vilalta