U UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date: May 1, 2009 I, Ivey Ford , hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of: MA in Art History It is entitled: "Mythologies: Sarah Charlesworth's Photography, 1977-1988" Ivey Ford Student Signature: This work and its defense approved by: Committee Chair: Dr. Kim Paice Dr. Mikiko Hirayama Dr. Teresa Pac Approval of the electronic document: I have reviewed the Thesis/Dissertation in its final electronic format and certify that it is an accurate copy of the document reviewed and approved by the committee. Committee Chair signature: Dr. Kim Paice “Mythologies: Sarah Charlesworth’s Photography, 1977-1988” A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Art History Committee Members: Dr. Kimberly Paice (chair) Dr. Teresa Pac Dr. Mikiko Hirayama May 2009 by: Ivey Ford B.A. May 2005, Middle Tennessee State University ABSTRACT This study focuses on the works of contemporary photographer Sarah Charlesworth (b.1947) from 1977 to 1988. The series I discuss include selected photographs from Modern History, Stills, Tabula Rasa and Object of Desire. Beginning in 1977, Charlesworth was making art that was informed by conceptual models as defined by first-generation conceptual artists such as Joseph Kosuth (b. 1945) and Douglas Huebler (1924-1997). However, soon after her first series Modern History, her work began to expand upon conceptual models explored and subsequently answered some questions posed by conceptualism, more generally. By the mid-1980s, Charlesworth had distinguished herself as a postmodern photographer, which has in retrospective, led her work to be in the “Pictures Generation.” Charlesworth’s work shares a number of similarities with her fellow “Pictures” artists, such as Cindy Sherman (b. 1954), Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) and Laurie Simmons (b. 1949), but her work also greatly differs from them. This study clarifies how with each series in her career, Charlesworth’s photography has consistently allowed for the possibility of a “third meaning” to emerge as defined by Roland Barthes (1915-1980) or a “third term” as theorized by Jacque Lacan (1901-1981), and has therefore fostered meanings. This study investigates Charlesworth’s photographs from 1977 to 1988 in order to gain both a better understanding of the role of appropriation in her art and her work’s move from fine art photography and shifting between conceptual and postmodern matrices of photography via psychoanalytic, Marxist and semiotic theories of signification. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are a number of people that have made this project possible. First, I would like to thank my advisor and friend Dr. Kim Paice for all of your help on getting me here. I have learned so much from you over the past two years, and I am truly thankful to have had the chance to study under such incredible person. I also want to thank Dr. Mikiko Hirayama and Dr. Teresa Pac for serving on my committee. Your suggestions and careful reading of my thesis really improved the clarity and quality of my final work. I would also like to recognize and thank the support of my friends and family in this endeavor. To Mom, Dad, Cody Ford, and Whitney Johnson – I love you guys and am so grateful to have had you to listen to me and help me work out my thoughts. It was difficult to be away from you, and I will never forget your love and support. I want to thank Abhi Nadgir who has been my rock for the past two years in graduate school. Without you there to ground me every once in awhile on my thesis and life in general, there is no way I could have survived this challenge. Also, I want to thank the friends I have made here in Cincinnati. I have never felt so welcomed into a new environment and your support and encouragement during the creation and development of this project and my graduate experience overall will never be forgotten. In particular, I want to thank Annie Schorgl who has been there every step and every moment of this endeavor. You are such an amazing friend, and I will cherish the friendship that blossomed here. I cannot wait to see what the future brings. Comrades forever! And finally, I would like to thank Sarah Charlesworth for her support of this project and her work as an artist. Your work is challenging and fascinating, and I have enjoyed this project immensely as a result. CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 2 INTRODUCTION 3 1. Breaking from Conceptual Art: Sarah Charlesworth’s Photography, 1977 to 1982 14 2. Deconstructing Visual and Material Culture: An Analysis of Sarah Charlesworth’s 31 Objects of Desire (1983-1988) 3. Unfixing Meaning in Sarah Charlesworth’s Photography 50 CONCLUSION 63 BIBLIOGRAPHY 67 ILLUSTRATIONS 72 1 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Joseph Kosuth, VI Time (from the series Art as Idea as Idea), newsprint, 1968. Figure 2: Joseph Kosuth, Titled (from the series Art as Idea as Idea), photographic process, 1967. Figures 3: Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, Wood folding chair, mounted photograph of a chair, and photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of "chair," 1965. Figure 4 and 5: Sarah Charlesworth, April 21, 1978 (details from Modern History), one of forty- five black-and-white prints composing one work, 1978. Figure 6: Sarah Charlesworth, Unidentified Woman, Hotel Corona de Aragon, Madrid (from the Stills series), gelatin silver print, wood frame, 1980. Figure 7: Sarah Charlesworth, Tabula Rasa (from the Tabula Rasa series), white on white silkscreen print, 1981. Figure 8: Sarah Charlesworth, Red Scarf (from Objects of Desire I), cibachrome with wood frame, 1983-1984. Figure 9: Sarah Charlesworth, Figures (from Objects of Desire I), cibachrome with wood frame. Diptych, 1983-1984. Figure 10: Sarah Charlesworth, Bull (from Objects of Desire III), cibachrome with wood lacquered frame, 1986. Figure 11: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (I shop therefore I am), photographic silkscreen/ vinyl, 1987. Figure 12: Cindy Sherman, Untitled, #93, color photograph, 1981. Figure 13: Laurie Simmons, Tourism: Parthenon, color photograph, 1984. Figure 14: Sarah Charlesworth, Bowl and Column (from Objects of Desire 111.5), cibachrome with lacquered wood frame, 1986. Figure 15: Sarah Charlesworth, Work (from Objects of Desire IV.5), cibachrome with lacquered wood frame, diptych, 1987. Figure 16: Unidentified Woman, Genesee Hotel (from Stills), black and white mural print, 1980. 2 INTRODUCTION ‘Art as idea’ was once a good idea, but art as idea as art product, alas moves in the world of commodity-products and hardly the realm of ‘idea.’1 –Sarah Charlesworth Sarah Charlesworth (b. 1947) is an artist, writer, art critic and professor who currently lives in New York City. She is best known as a conceptual and postmodern artist and is mainly a color photographer who uses appropriated imagery, but she has also worked in black and white photography and with her own sets. In the late 1970s and 1980s, she mainly photographed imagery from newspapers, magazines and stills, but since the1990s, she has created her own arrangements. Her photography is included in numerous public collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She has widely exhibited both nationally and internationally. Winner of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Award for Visual Art in 1995, she has also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1976, 1980 and 1983. Currently, her work is displayed by the Susan Inglett Gallery in New York, the Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles and the Baldwin Gallery in Aspen, Colorado. Born in East Orange, New Jersey, Charlesworth attended Barnard College in New York City and majored in Art History. In college, she studied under Douglas Huebler (1924-1997) who introduced her to photography and conceptual art. Working as a freelance photographer for seven years after graduating from college in 1969, she began a partnership with Joseph Kosuth 1 Sarah Charlesworth, “Declaration of Dependence,” The Fox l, no. 1 (1975) : 5. 3 (b. 1945) and writing for avant-garde journal, The Fox. Charlesworth and Kosuth also co- founded the group Artists Movement for Cultural Change and participated in the New York- based Art & Language Group in the 1970s which challenged the definitions of art in terms of artist, object, and concept. By the late 1970s, Charlesworth began her professional artistic career with her series Modern History (1977-1979). Photographs of newspaper clippings, the series concerned the factuality of the media and raised questions about the accuracy of historical records as communicated to the masses in international events, such as assassinations and even lunar eclipses. Charlesworth was still working with Kosuth during this series on other collaborations, but this series signals her independent artistic involvement with conceptual art. In 1983, she like many other artists such as Laurie Simmons (b.1949), Cindy Sherman (b. 1954), and Barbara Kruger (b. 1945), who were all associated with what is now known as the “Pictures Generation,” began to examine the hidden codes and signs of the mass media that often included such focuses as gender stereotypes and/ or commodity fetishism.2 Douglas Crimp (b. 1944) coined the term “Pictures” as a way to classify these emerging photography-based artists but did not include Charlesworth. 3 From 1983 to1988, Charlesworth created Objects of Desire, a series of colored photographs in which she selected images from magazines and created various arrangements in her works in order to comment on the state of contemporary culture, which has now in retrospect grouped her as a “Pictures” artist.