This catalogue is published on the occasion of You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture, organized by members of the Fall 2018 Museum Stud- ies Workshop class: Chloe Champion, Andrea Ortiz Galdamez, Walker Guinnee, Julianna P. Lopez, Dorothea Moerman, Amelia Ravitz-Dworkin, Cassidy Schmitt, and Golnaz Shariatzadeh. The exhibition was presented at Mills College Art Museum, December 5, 2018 through June 2, 2019. Copyright 2018 Mills College Art Museum, 5000 MacArthur Boulevard, California, 94613, mcam.mills.edu. All rights reserved. No part of this publi- cation may be reproduced in any manner without permission. The Mills College Art Museum is a forum for exploring art and ideas and a laboratory for contemporary art practices. As a teaching museum at a dynamic liberal arts college for undergraduate women and co-ed graduate studies, the museum is dedicated to engaging and inspiring the intellectual and creative life of Mills students through innovative exhibitions, programs and collections. You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture 3 INTRODUCTION Dr. Stephanie Hanor 5 RED FLAG: A CONTEMPLATIVE WARNING Chloe Champion 11 CARMEN LOMAS GARZA: STORYTELLING AND FRAGMENTATION OF IDENTITY Andrea Ortiz Galdamez 19 MONA HATOUM’S MEASURES OF DISTANCE Walker Guinnee 25 WHAT IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE: A STUDY OF PAPO COLO Julianna P. Lopez 31 FRED WILSON: MALCOLM X, MADAME X, AND THE MUSEUM Dorothea Moerman 39 BECOMING OUR OWN CURATORS: A VISUAL ANALYSIS OF DAYDREAM Amelia Ravitz-Dworkin 45 RUTH BERNHARD: EXPLORATIONS OF BEAUTY AND FORM Cassidy Schmitt 53 SURREALIST INFLUENCES IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER Golnaz Shariatzadeh 59 WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION 72 EXHIBITION CHECKLIST 1 2 INTRODUCTION Dr. Stephanie Hanor You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture explores the role artists have played in help- ing us understand institutional authority and how choices are made regarding what we see in art museums. Using the progressive feminist art work of the Guerrilla Girls as a touchstone, the exhibition features both contemporary and historical works from MCAM’s collection that surface complex dialogues around representations of gender, race, and sexuality. Taking its title from the 1989 Guerrilla Girls poster You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture Without the Vision of Women Artists and Artists of Color, the exhibition questions the lack of diverse narra- tives in cultural institutions by foregrounding the work of traditionally underrepresented artists. Some of the featured artists, such as Fred Wilson, Bonnie O’Connell, and Faith Ring- gold, blur the lines between activism and art by making politically charged work that is directly engaged with the underlying power dynamics of display practices. Other works by Ruth Bern- hard, Elizabeth Ginno Winkler, and Shi Tou can be read as more covert reflections on self-de- termined identities and art as social commentary. Whether overtly activist or stealthily subver- sive, the work in the exhibition demonstrates the myriad ways artists can expose us to multiple points of view by challenging curatorial authority and reprioritizing whose work is represented in museums. The exhibition showcases pieces from MCAM’s unique holdings including works by Ruth Bernhard, Judy Chicago, Papo Colo, Imogen Cunningham, Carmen Lomas Garza, the Guerrilla Girls, Mona Hatoum, Yolanda Lopez, Sarah McEneaney, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simp- son, Shi Tou, Carrie Mae Weems, Fred Wilson, and Elizabeth Ginno Winkler, and work by Bonnie O’Connell on loan from the Special Collections at the F. W. Olin Library. You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture is curated by students in the Fall 2018 Museum Studies Workshop: Chloe Champion, Andrea Ortiz Galdamez, Walker Guinnee, Julianna P. Lopez, Dorothea Moerman, Amelia Ravitz-Dworkin, Cassidy Schmitt, Golnaz Shariatzadeh. Their research is featured in this exhibition catalogue. Guerrilla Girls The Token Times Classified, 1995 3 Judy Chicago Red Flag, 1971 4 RED FLAG: A CONTEMPLATIVE WARNING Chloe Champion Transgressive, in your face, and controversial—there’s no doubt that Judy Chicago was a pivotal trailblazer during the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Although she is most popularly known for her 1974-79 installation The Dinner Party, Chicago’s work traverses many modes of execution and material, consistently focusing on her idea of central-core imagery and the visibility of the “female” experience. Her work aligns with an essentialist ideology of gender based on biological sex, commonly affiliated with white, middle class, heterosexual feminism of the 1970s. Issues of institutional critique, confrontation of power dynamics, and subversive repre- sentations of identity are all at the heart of You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture. Chica- go’s work that is included in this exhibition, Red Flag, touches on all of these powerful themes. This photolithograph depicts a figure—a close up of a woman’s crotch with a hand pulling a bright red blood-blotched tampon from themselves—as the main focal point of the piece. This vaginal focal point comes as no surprise, as central-core imagery and essentialism are key to Chicago’s work of this time. Chicago and her contemporary Miriam Schapiro elaborated on this idea of central-core imagery in their collaborative essay “Female Imagery,” by stating, “. we are suggesting that women artists have used the central cavity which defines them as women as the framework for an imagery which allows for the complete reversal of the way in which women are seen by the culture.” They continue on to explain how this kind of imagery is intended to work by asserting that the reclamation of the vagina as a hallmark of the movement’s iconography was intended to “establish a vehicle by which to state the truth and beauty of her identity.”1 Despite the im- portance of this reclamation, it is divisive and lacks any room for a more intersectional “female” experience. Adhering to a definition of identity that is based on strict biological terms is incred- ibly limiting and exclusionary. The evolution of Chicago’s art practice is an interesting one. Chicago moved to Los Angeles in 1957 to attend the art program at UCLA. She arrived in perfect time to get swept away in the Finish Fetish movement, a form of California minimalism that was overtaking Los Angeles at this time. The work was hard, shiny, clean, and most importantly, devoid of any sign of human touch. Chicago had to negotiate her path in an environment that rewarded techno- logical know-how, formal mastery of materials, and an attitude of cool machismo.2 As the 1 Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, “Female Imagery,” Womanspace Journal (1973). 2 Laura Meyer, “From Finish Fetish to Feminism: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in California Art History,” in Amelia Jones, ed., Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s ‘Dinner Party’ in Feminist Art History (Berkeley, CA: University of Cali- 5 feminist movement took off in the late 60s and early 70s, a major shift occurred in Chicago’s work. The personal become political and women begin speaking out, making work that represented their experiences. Chicago describes this process of coming to her consciousness as a feminist artist, “I peeled back my coded imagery and finally broke through to the begin- ning to new imagery.”3 Most important in relation to Red Flag is the time period when Chicago was part of the collective Womanhouse, an installation space created for the CalArts Feminist Art Program in 1972. During this time Chicago and others involved with Womanhouse made various works which highlighted the ex- perience of menstruation. Blood is an incredibly symbolically charged and provoking material. In Chicago’s installation Men- struation Bathroom at Womanhouse, the bathroom’s pristine shelves are overflowing with various commercial products that are designed to conceal the “embarrassing” signs of menstru- ation, but these products prove powerless to stop the flow of blood that spills angrily from a nearby basket of blood-stained pads.4 The male gaze is subsequently subverted through this act of nonconformity. By laying bare imagery that does not fornia Press, 1996), 52. 3 Jones, Sexual Politics, 95. Judy Chicago 4 Meyer, 58. The Dinner Party, 1974-79 6 align with the patriarchal image of what a woman Judy Chicago Menstruation Bathroom, 1972 7 should or should not show, Chicago creates an image that is by a woman for women. This work does not shy away, it is not embarrassed to be on display. Red Flag is like a snapshot of the installation Menstruation Bathroom. This type of imagery becomes a powerful tool that peels away the veil that shrouds the domestic sphere in mystery, and invisibility is destroyed by this type of work which refuses to hide. Historically the representation of women’s bodies in art has been dictated by men. The image of the female nude has persisted through time, and persistently, through time, men are the one’s creating these images. In a poster by the Guer- rilla Girls, this sentiment is succinctly stated: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” The follow up to this comment is a statistic in which the viewer is informed that less than five percent of the artists in the modern art sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York are women, but eighty-five percent of the nudes are female. Although this work by the Guerrilla Girls was created some time after Chi- cago’s Red Flag, it is clear that Chicago was thinking about these issues of representation and nudity in all of her work. The reclamation of the representation of women’s bodies in art is meant to deconstruct the preordained code of regulations for the making and judging of art, which is derived from men’s sense of what is or is not significant.5 The function of an image of a nude female form is radically changed depending on the maker of the image.