Tools and Magic Wands Rochelle Steiner Every work must be a meditation. Consistent threads include her profound fascination with —SARAH CHARLESWORTH (CA. 1993–95)1 photography—as a subject of study, as a visual theme in her art, and as an evolving medium, particularly as it was changing Despite Sarah Charlesworth’s profound and undeniable influence radically at the end of the twentieth century and beginning on contemporary photography and image culture, during her of the twenty-first. Charlesworth explored photography formally, lifetime her work was presented in only one early survey, at The conceptually, and historically while fine-tuning her relationship Clocktower in New York in 1984, and one traveling mid-career to the medium as it unfolded during the course of her practice. survey, organized by SITE Santa Fe, in 1997–99.2 These shows— Also revealed is her visual vocabulary of interconnected plus the posthumous exhibition at the New Museum in New York in subject matter, themes, and compositional choices that stretches 2015, presented again at the Los Angeles County Museum Art through series and across more than four decades of work. in 2017—provided opportunities to see her art from various series This includes cultural and political iconography (the news and and time periods in relation to each other and to evaluate the world events, fashion, media culture, and historical constructs), ways she worked over her forty-year career.3 imagery from the natural world (the moon, lightning, animals), More frequently, Charlesworth’s work has been seen within and formal considerations (color, lighting, composition). the framework of tightly divided series—which at times the artist subdivided and redivided—conceived for concise and separate Art is not defined by the medium it employs, but rather by the gallery exhibitions. As she described: “My work takes the form of questions that it asks, the propositions that it makes regarding ‘series,’ each of which extends usually over a two to three year period. its own nature as well as the nature of its world. Works of a given series are similar in subject and treatment and —SARAH CHARLESWORTH (1983)7 comprise a relatively extensive exploration of a set of related ideas and images.”4 Each series and, in turn, show was focused around Born in 1947 in East Orange, New Jersey, Charlesworth lived most a theme, consisting of a well-considered selection and arrangement of her life in the Tri-State area. According to family mythology, of works designed to fit together conceptually and formally. she knew she wanted to be an artist at age four, when she visited She did not create single or one-off pieces,5 but rather individually the circus for the first time. Captivated by the wild atmosphere— unique works that, when taken together, result in a cohesive a departure from her “conservative Anglican upbringing”8—she was statement about an idea she was exploring at the time. Because inspired to make a drawing that same year, in 1951, which, as the well-defined divisions between bodies of work have been she later noted in a “joke bio,” won an award of “Special Recognition” reinforced by critics, curators, and art historians,6 there have been from her mother.9 This whimsical résumé also lists a 1954 first few opportunities to consider the fluidity with which she ap- prize for “Most Imaginative Halloween Costume (fairy with battery proached ideas and imagery over many decades and the resulting powered wand)” and her design of the fifth-grade section of her interconnections among works from different time periods. school yearbook, on the theme “A trip to The Moon.” Charlesworth is known to have been rigorous in her thinking and When she wrote this around the end of 1975, as she was beginning meticulous in her methodology. However, the organization of her to establish herself as an artist and critical thinker, many threads work into tight series belies the often lengthy evolution of her ideas of her ongoing interests were already in play: her enthusiasm for and the frequency with which she returned to key themes and fairy wands and, by extension, magic of various forms; a fascination imagery that act as overarching through lines within her practice. with the moon and outer space; an awareness of being both an Examination of her career as a whole—augmented by unprecedented artist and a photographer; and an interest in writing and publishing. access to her archive, including her notebooks, sketchbooks, Her early feminist perspective is evident in this bio in the way she unpublished writings, exhibition checklists in progress, details of makes a point of the gender bias when in 1962 she “served as the development of collaborative projects, diaries, studio logs, and chairman (sic)” of an art committee at her junior high school. She test prints—reveals her thought processes over time and their would later recount having a book called The Artist in His Studio, expression within and across her career. filled with photographs by Alexander Liberman, and realizing opposite “Eclipse / Lightning / Milky Way” contact sheet of images rephotographed by Sarah Charlesworth, ca. 1979–81 9 that there hadn’t been any women artists to provide her with a role embarking on a freelance career; it is also possible, however, that model—though she would end up taking on that role for so many she was attempting to keep this activity separate from what would others who followed her.10 become her artistic practice, particularly in that era when Charlesworth’s ideas about art and photography were the result distinctions between commercial and fine art photography were of her lifelong education and keen interest in seeing the more deeply drawn than they are today. In any event, it is clear world around her, particularly as it was represented through images. from her appointment books and tax records that her paid activity Beginning in high school, which she attended in Oklahoma, from freelance endeavors was limited, more a collection of Charlesworth gravitated to art classes, where she mostly painted temporary jobs than an early career as a commercial photographer.16 and drew. She was exposed to conceptual art as a student at By 1969 Charlesworth was going to see contemporary art Bradford Junior College in Massachusetts (1965–67), where she exhibitions in New York, including the groundbreaking January 5–31, studied with Douglas Huebler. Trained as a painter, he was 1969 exhibition at the McLendon Building, curated by Seth making minimal sculpture during his years at Bradford, before going Siegelaub. It included conceptual work by Huebler, who encouraged on to develop a conceptually based practice around 1968 that her to attend (see page 74, fig. 2), as well as by Robert Barry, Joseph involved documenting everyday activities through drawings, maps, Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner.17 In March 1969 she met Siegelaub, and photographs. After graduating from Bradford with an associate’s Lucy Lippard, and Joseph Kosuth, and became romantically degree, Charlesworth attended Barnard College in Manhattan involved with Kosuth shortly thereafter.18 So began her crash course from 1967 to 1969, where she was an art history major, writing papers into the evolving ideas of conceptual art, including the radical dema- on Kandinsky, Dadaism, Italian Renaissance art, Northern terialization of the art object, whereby artistic endeavors expanded Renaissance art, and the architecture of Marcel Breuer’s Whitney beyond the traditions of painting and sculpture to include text, Museum of American Art (now the Met Breuer). photographs, documents, sites, and other nontraditional forms. In While at Bradford and Barnard, respectively, she made two short addition to extending the possibilities for artistic practice, conceptual films—Apples (ca. 1967) and Hands (ca. 1968–69)—and for her artists of the late 1960s and 1970s were examining the under- senior thesis in art history at Barnard, instead of writing the customary pinnings of representation and signification through image- and paper, she presented a visual essay in the form of a group of black- language-based systems. and-white photographs she had taken of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Through her relationship with Kosuth, around 1973 Charlesworth Museum, dry mounted onto boards and installed in the department’s was introduced to Art & Language, a British collective that challenged hallway. This entrée into photography in part sparked her interest the conventions of modern art and criticism. The associated members in the medium, and after graduating she began to see it as a potential published the journal Art-Language, for which Kosuth had become career path and means of financial support, though at the end of the the US editor in 1970; this engagement influenced Charlesworth, 1960s she was still searching for what it meant to be an “artist.”11 whose ideas during the early to mid-1970s were steeped in theoretical After achieving her bachelor’s degree, she traveled to Europe— and conceptual debates about the relationship between art and once with her sister Agnes (Nancy) in the summer of 1969, and then politics, as well as theory and practice. A subset of artists involved again in summer/fall 1970 and spring 1971 with boyfriend Ray with the New York branch of Art & Language, including Charlesworth, Sundlin, a graduate student at New York University. During these broke off to create a new journal: The Fox, which published three trips Charlesworth shot numerous photographs of buildings issues in 1975 and 1976, before disbanding in 1976 (see page 76, and architectural sites, including Antoni Gaudí architecture in Spain. fig. 3a–c).19 Charlesworth wrote a number of texts for these Between and after these trips, she sought various jobs, ranging from journals and participated in lively debates about art and politics as babysitting to selling to slide libraries her architectural pictures one of the editors of The Fox.