Transfigurations.'Documents and lmagesfrom ContemporaryFeminist Art frorn NYFAIReflections Exhibit, 1985 October14, 1996to January16, 1gg7 SpecialCollections and UniversityArchives Gallery ArchibaldStevens Alexander Library Introduction Transfigurations:Documents antl Image.rfrom ContemporatyFeminisi Art is one of three exhibitions celebratingthe twenty-fifth anniversaryof the Mary H. Dana Women Ariists Series at tlre Mabel Smith DouglassLibrary. It is being held in conjunctionwith Twent,v-JiveYears of Feminism, TwenN-fiveYears of lt/omen'sArt, a retrospectiveof works by the artists who have shown in the series,at the Mason GrossSchool of the Arts Galleries,and an exhibition of the arfists' portraits and statementsat the Mabel Smith DouglassLibrary. Contemporaryfeminist art originatedin about1970, inspired by the Women'sl,iberation N{ovementwhich was sweepingthe country at this time. Women artistsbegan to focus on the fact that so ferv women were representedin gallery and museum shows, not to mention the exclusionof rvomenartists from the art history canon. Furthermore,very felv women taught on the facultiesof art schools,in spiteof the fact thatthe majorityof art studentswere women. In the early 1970s,women artistsand acti,ristsaddressed these issues through demonstrations at muserunsand exposingthe practicesof galleriesand art schools.Originally dcminated by white women,the movementeventually encompassed the concernsof African-American,Hispanic and otherminoriry rvomenartists, Feministartists sought more, however, than equal representation. They believedthat their art could help bring aboutsocial and politicalchange. The porverof art to changethe self and societyis the tansfigurationto which the exhibition'stitle refers. Feministartists introduced both new subject matter and formats in their work, which, unlike the critically-validated Modernistart of the period,was heavily content-based.Although feministart was extremelv diverse,certain broad themes are apparent,the most universalbeing the use of autobiography. Among the themesr,vhich are illustratedin this exhibitionare: women's sexuality,violence againstwomen, spirituality, the body, the environment, multiculruralism. beau[v, and doinesticity. The exhibition also illustratesfeminist arfists' experimentationwith new media, such as perfcrmanceart and craft techniques. Feministartists shared a concernwith documentation,probably because of their historic invisibility. in the early 1970s,art critic and activist Lucy Lippard started the New York Women's Art Registry,the purposcof which was to collect slides,resurnes and addressesof women artists,in order to maketheir lvork availablewhile bypassrngthe gallery system. As women artistsgained more opportunitiesto showtheir work, the collectionwas augmentedby flyers and cardsadvertising shows, exhibit catalogs,articles, and publicationsabout women artists. Since 1992,tne Women'sArt Registryhas been maintained at SpecialCollections and UniversityArchives. This exhibitionfeatures many iiems from this collection,as well as from the recordsof the Women's Caucusfor Art, the New York FeministArt Institute and the HeresiesCollective. inc. While this exhibirionfocuses on feministart of the 1970s,many of theseartists continued producing work utilizing feminist themesin the 1980sand 1990s. Documentedworks from this laier period have been inciudedwhere appropriate,as well as a few examplesof recentwork by young feminist artistswho generouslyloaned pieces for the exhibition. When I fust cameto SpecialCollections and University Archives in I 992,my fust task was to inventory the records of the New York Feminist Art Institute and the Women's Art Registry. Since discoveringthe richnessand variety of thesecollections, I had hopedthat some day I would be given a chanceto exhibit them. This exhibition could not have come about, however, without the supportof Ronald L. Becker,Head of SpecialCollections and University Archives; RutgersUniversity Libraries;the Mabel Smith DouglassLibrary; and Ferris Olin and MarianneFicarra, the curatorsof the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series. I have also received invaluablehelp from my colleaguesat SpecialCollections and University Archives, particularly intern Amy Eawson for help selectingitems, Exhibitions Curator Ruth Simmons,'who was largely responsiblefor the arrangementof the exhibition,Janice Levin, JanetRiemer and Maria Pisano for mounting the items and captions,and CatherineKeim for her hard work on the catalogue. I hope this exhibition will be as enlighteningfor othersas it has been for me. FernandaPerrone Curator Considering the Feminist Art Movement in the United States,circa 1970-79 Laura Cottingharn . Writing in 1980, American ferninist art's primary ally, Lucy R. Lippard, reflected that "perhaps the movement'sgreatest coniribution has been its lack of contributionto Modernism."r in the sameyear, America's foremostconservative art critic, Hilton Kramer, rhetorically asked "influence whether the of the women's movement[hadn't] contributedto an erosionof critical standardsin art?".2'By 1980,the Women'sLiberation Movement and its sisterart movementhad ceasedto exist as massmovements. But feministart's chief defenderand oue of its staunchest antagonistsbasicaily agreedupon the natureof its influence:The Feminist Art Movement had been antitheticalto the aims of Euro-AmericanModernism. An assauiton Modernism surfaceddefiantly within the Feminist Art Movement of the '70s: its explorationswere led rvithoutserious regard for the most fundamentaiprerequisites of what comprisesart and artistic value within the Euro-Arnericantradition. At the sanietime. the "nelv" Movement was in no senseanti-art; rather, its participantswanted a art, one inspired by ihe transformativepossibilities they investedin radicalfeminism. A looselyamalgamated group of women artistsand critics linked through sharednewsletters, slide registies, independent publications,cooperative galleries and ideologicalcommitment, the Movementwas far from a unifieci front. At the same time, its diverse activities were complimentary, if not always harmonious.The Feminist Art Movement refused a formalist imperative,insisted on the importanceof content,contested the absolutenessof history, favored collectiveproduction, asserteda piacefor the autobiographical,reclaimed craft, prioritized process and performance, and,perhaps mosi radically,refuted the ideathat art is evereither neutrai or universal.That art, like "ttrepersonal," is political. The Movement'sparticipants were, for the mostpart, academically trained artists on the margins cf the visual art cornmunity--thatis, like other graduatesof American art schools,they rverervhite anCior middle class,and unlike nearly all successfulliving artistsin 1970,they rvere wornen.As artistsengaged in activismagainst tl-re systemic exclusion of rvomenfrom muser-rm exhibitions and art schoolprofessorships, they irreversiblyaltered rhe position of rvornenwithin '70s, American visual culture.During the thousandsof American artiststhroughout the country picketed and sued arts institutions to end discriminatoryhiring practicesand other forms of systemic prejudice against women involved with art. Without the feminist agitation aud '70s, idecllogicaltransformations of the the American women artists who have risen to '80s '90s internationalacciaim during the and couldnot havehad the samesubject matter, critical support,or eventhe .zerymaterial possibility of high level commercialrecognition.r As artistsengaged in an ideologicaland artistictransformation of the lr4odernistlegacy rvh.ichthey inheritedas Americans,but from which they were excludedas women and as non- a- rvhitewomen, the Feminist Art Movement so completelychallenged the underlyingpremises of what constitutesart that neither art, nor the criticaliry'that sun'oundsand informs art, has been the same since. While it would be possibieto argue that any number of subsequentartistic developmentsin the United Statesowe their existenceto the strategiesand aims of the '70s Feminist A-rt Movement, the most enduringlegacy is really one thing: feminism. While Minimalism was the most critically and commerciallyrespected art in the United '60s '70s, Statesduring the late and early the Feminist Art Movement generally had more in colrunon with the other activist-basedvisual art practicesthat took place in the United States during that sameperiod. Although SecondWave Feminisminspired the only large-scaleart movement,the other politicalmobilizations, including the ChicanoRights Movement, the anti- War movement, the Black Power Movement and the Gay Rights Movement, all had both immediateand lastingeffects on art'sproduction and reception in the UnitedStates. The insights and demandsof 160sactivism, especially those of Black Power,Women's Liberation and Gay Rights, continueto heaviiy form and inform the directionof American social,political and culrurallife. '68, It was within the generaiizedactivism of the tJnited Statescirca and againstthe overdeterminationof American art history by the commercialmarket, that the Feminist Art ivlovementhad its genesisand, in consequence,its generaiizederasure from most cunent understandingsof Americanart of the recentpast and the present.The Movementoccurred duringan economicrecession in the UnitedStates and at a low level of art coliecting;many of its mostsignificant gestures occurred in noncommercialvenues or wereotherwise ephemeral. The artistsknew at the time that as women and as feministstheir activitieswere autoraatically marginalizedby