n.paradoxa

Rama and Sita

2012-02-14T21:30:00.000-08:00

By Suzanne MacNevin - February 15th 2012.

Its really early in the morning the night after Valentines... and I am reading poetry.

Not because I am lonely (although I am), but because THIS is a really kewl poem. And although this poem is about relationships, it has a strong feminist slant. Read and see why.

I added the artwork for fun since some of you will be expecting artwork...

Rama and Sita

So sayeth Valmiki...

In Ancient India, in times of old
In the land of Aydohya, lived Rama the Bold
Rama was the perfect son, living by the rules of Dharma
Ever dutiful and responsible, he was blessed with good Karma

Prince Rama was the oldest, but his stepmother was a schemer
She sought for her son Bharata, wanting him to be the next leader
Having saved the king from illness, she sought out the king for a favour
Anything sayeth the king, not knowing the price of her desire

"I wish for you to banish Rama, make Bharata your heir."
Nothing could have wounded the king more, for Rama was most fair
Bound by his word the King obeyed, disliking his wife's demand
Rama heard his father's edict, "I gladly obey father's command."

Rama was married to Sita, whose purity was like a lotus blossom
Sita begged to go with Rama, their two hearts beating like one drum
"As shadow to substance, so is wife to husband."
"Let me walk ahead of you, clear your passage through the land."

Rama agreed to his wife's request, taking her deep into the forest
His brother Lakshmana went too, making Rama's flight his quest
Bharata sought to deny the throne, forsaking his mother's grace
He placed Rama's sandals on the seat, acting as regent in Rama's place

Deep in the forests lived monks, but they were plagued by Rakshasa monsters
Rama's arrows were true, his aim was unsurpassed amongst archers
Wherever Rama went the demons died in hordes
His bow string hummed like a sitar with its chords

To the south on the island of Lanka was the demon king Ravana
An incredible wise man Ravana's ten heads was a match for Rama
He spied Sita and seized her while Rama was chasing a deer
Taking her back to Lanka Ravana had no worries or fear

Across the sea Ravana fled, Sita over his shoulder
Sita wept for Rama but was wiser than her kidnapper
From her arms and neck she dropped her bracelets and jewelry
Sayeth Sita: "Take me back to Rama, stop this foolery!"

Sayeth Ravana: "Sita, I will make you my wife."
"You will come to me willingly and I shall spare your life."
Sayeth Sita: "I love only Rama. I cannot love another."
"I belong to Rama like the ground belongs to the earth mother."

Sayeth Ravana: "Nonsense, what does Rama have that I do not?"
"I will have you for my wife Sita as surely as the sun is hot!"
Sayeth Sita: "Rama is powerful, you would be foolish not to run!"
"I belong to Rama like the rays belongs to the sun!"

In the forest Rama met the monkey king Hanuman
Together they searched for Sita and came up with a plan
Hanuman found Sita's jewelry on the shores of the sea
Across the water lay the island of Lanka and he knew where Sita must be

Hanuman went to Lanka and saw Sita in the garden
She had gracefully refused to enter Ravana's home or den
Ravana did not force her, he left her alone to her prayers
Hanuman went to her and tried to soothe her tears

Sayeth Hanuman: "Never fear dear Sita, Hanuman is here."
"Come with me back to Rama and we shall disappear!"
Sayeth Sita: "Ravana's demons are many, even now they come."
"You must run Hanuman, don't you hear their drum?!"

The Rakshasa demons seized Hanuman and set fire to his tail
But Hanuman leapt away, jumping on the palace wall and leaving a fiery trail
The Rakshasa demons chased him but Hanuman left only ruins in his wake
Ravana's palace was burned down and he swore at his demons for their mistake

Hanuman returned to Rama and told him where Sita was held
He told Rama everything he saw, touched and smelled
Rama called upon Hanuman to raise the monkey warriors
Hanuman did as he was bid, by the tens of scores

Rama and his monkey army built a causeway to Lanka
They toiled day and night to reach the island and Sita
When they arrived the monkeys slew all the Rakshasa demons
Rama himself slew Ravana and all of his sons

Sita wept with love, proud that her husband was so bold
But when he came near her he began acting cold
Sita professed her love and thanking him for his actions
She knew in her heart she would bear Rama's sons

Sayeth Rama: "You have stayed in another man's house."
"I have done my duty to rescue you but I cannot be your spouse."
Sayeth Sita: "If I had known this would happen I would have killed myself."
"Build me a funeral pyre so you may see my purity yourself."

Rama and Hanuman built a funeral pyre as they were commanded
Sita walked amongst the flames untouched, true to her marriage bed
Rama forgave her, his love and loyalty for her renewed
They flew back to Ayodhya in a Pushpaka with the end of their feud

Rama was crowned king, the happy couple began their reign
Everything was joyous again but Rama overheard one man complain
Sayeth the man to his wife: "Do you think I am like Rama?"
"You have slept with another man, I don't need your lies or drama."

Sayeth Sita: "Husband I have really great news."
"Our bed has been fruitful, someday your sons will fill your shoes."
Sayeth Rama: "I cannot keep you my dearest."
"My people don't respect me even though you passed the test."

Rama sent Sita away, craving the respect of his people
Sita went obediently, residing instead in a temple
She met there the poet Valmiki and told him her story
Her tale told of Rama in all his greatness and glory

Sita gave birth to two sons with eyes like Rama's
But Sita was still sad, remembering everything that once was
Valmiki helped to raise the two boys, teaching them songs of trust
"Rama is great, Rama is just, Rama does what Rama must."

One day Rama went for a stroll and heard the two boys singing
"My sons!" sayeth Rama. "You must come live in Ayodhya with your king."
But then Rama noticed Sita and realized she must come too
"Perhaps a trial by water, such a trick should not be too difficult for you."

Sayeth Sita: "I will prove my love to you dearest Rama."
"If I have always been true to you, from Lanka to Ayodhya."
"If I have always been the perfect bride to the perfect groom."
"Then may mother earth please take me back into her womb."

Fini.

Ahem...

The poem itself was written by Toronto poet Charles Moffat, but I think the story gives a very strong feminist message. Sita gets sucked back into Mother Earth and Rama loses his perfect bride whom had been loyal to him all this time.

Just desserts in my opinion. He didn't deserve her. Rama was a jerk and only cared about his dharma (duty / honour).

The original story, the Ramayana, is a 26,000 couplet poem by the poet Valmiki. This version is much shorter and gives Sita more attention.

Mapping Rape: Cartography and Feminist Art

2012-01-28T15:17:00.000-08:00

Cartography isn't a normal medium for feminist art, but when it comes to mapping rape reports it does.

In 1977, Los Angeles was called the USA rape capital. Nearly 2,400 rapes were reported to police that year alone. Less than 10% of the rapes were reported to police. In 2011 LA’s reported rape count stands at 683.

Suzanne Lacy's "Three Weeks in May" from May 1977 mapped rape reports in L.A. county. It was one of the most important examples of feminist art from California during the 1970s.

Below: In 2012 Suzanne Lacy created "Three Weeks in January", a redux of her original show from 1977. The map is on display outside of LAPD Headquarters in downtown LA until February 1st 2012.

La Lutxona

2012-01-28T15:00:00.000-08:00

Blanca Amezkua, La Lutxona, 2007; embroidery on cotton fabric and crochet, 30 x 31,”.

Body Gesture

2012-01-28T14:54:00.000-08:00

Body Gesture: A Group Exhibition of Feminist Art is at Elizabeth Leach Gallery. 10:30 am-5:30 pm Tuesday-Saturday. Closes January 28th 2012 (today, sorry for the late post).

The feminist art show features thoughtful and provocative artwork as it explores feminist themes such as body image, gender polarization and a woman’s right to choose. The artwork is by 17 artists who hail from the feminist art movement’s heyday in the 1960s and ’70s, but several younger artists rode in on feminism’s second and third waves.

Below: Nicole Eisenman's "Brillo".

Rachel Kneebone's The Descent

2012-01-28T14:44:00.000-08:00

Rachel Kneebone's sculptural women are perched on pedestals, their torsos deformed and twisted, their arms intertwined with flowers and plants creating abstract shapes in a hellscape.

Kneebone's most ambitious work includes "The Descent," from 2008.

"The Descent" is a 11½-by-5-foot porcelain caldron filled with hundreds of tiny human forms being pulled into a hellish pit. Kneebone's figures become more abstract the deeper they fall into hell. She notes, to "the loss of the individual, of self" amid chaos.

Kneebone says her inspiration was Rodin's magnum opus, "The Gates of Hell" (1880-1917), a pair of monumental doors illustrating Dante's "Divine Comedy".

Catherine Morris, the curator of the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, says there is a striking resemblance between the feminist art of Rachel Kneebone and Auguste Rodin.

Rodin was famous for affairs with his models, but instead it was often "personal, sensual, physical," she says. "Rachel takes that same notion and feminizes it."

Rachel Kneebone, 38, studied at the Royal College of Art in London where porcelain caught her interest early on. "Porcelain is a very definite material," she says. "It has boundaries within its possibilities and I work with or against them, depending on what I am asking in the work."

"Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin" runs through August 12th 2012 at the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Feminist Abstract Art

2011-08-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

Today we're going to talk about Canadian abstract artist Laura Warburton... if you Google her name you will find she is one of the top 5 abstract artists currently living in Canada.

But what is more her work deals with a variety of topics, including female sexuality and how we're treated by men. In particular I want to speak about her 'Yellow, Red and Blue' (untitled) paintings which use newspaper clippings of ads for sex workers as the 'skin' of the female figures.

Thought provoking? I think so. Its really about the sexualization and commodification of the female body.

But more so it proves that abstract art can also be feminist art. Way to go Laura Warburton!

YELLOW: Emotion of Optimism

RED: Emotion of Desire

BLUE: Emotion of Dreams

Sita Sings the Blues

2011-08-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Below is the animated film "Sita Sings the Blues" which tells the Indian tale of the goddess Sita (the wife of Rama)... [Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Hare Rama Hare Rama... you know it!]... and splices it together with a modern story about marriage disharmony.

And better yet its free and you will see by the ending it has a strong feminist message about independence.

SPOILER ALERT!

The film was created by Nina Paley, an anti-copyright activist and feminist. Her film has sparked protests amongst some Hindus because Rama ends up ditching a pregnant Sita and treating her like dirt, but she outsmarts him in the end. (Which is completely accurate to the story, so why the heck are they protesting part of their own culture?! Silliness.)

!Women Art Revolution in Detroit

2011-08-23T07:56:00.000-07:00

Miranda July, Yoko Ono and the Guerilla Girls are just a few of the artists featured in "!Women Art Revolution". The new documentary, playing this weekend at the Detroit Film Theatre, is a collection of interviews with female artists done over 40 years by filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson.

Leeson, a multimedia artist, began interviewing artist friends in her Berkeley, Calif., living room around 1966. The women weigh in on everything from gender politics to the finer points of their works in very different genres.

Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts, 5200 Woodward, Detroit. 313-833-4005 or dia.org/dft. $7.50; $6.50 students, seniors.

If you are not in Detroit then check out your local listings for !Women Art Revolution to see when it is showing near you.

Check out Pussy Casting Art

2011-08-06T13:57:00.001-07:00

You will probably enjoy this post:

The Truth about Pussy Casting

Ylva Maria Thompson is a Swedish artist who specializes in Pussy Casting.... :)

Feminist Art at the Subliminal Projects Gallery

2011-08-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

Posted by Suzanne MacNevin.

Above: "The Creation" painting by Judy Chicago, 1985. One of the works on display at Subliminal Projects through August 20 2011.

The new exhibition showcases the legacy of feminist art with works by Judy Chicago, Mary Beth Edelson and more.

Katherine B. Cone, director of Subliminal Projects Gallery, has put together its newest exhibition, "Eve." From July 23 through Aug. 20, the gallery, created by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey in 1995, will show a diverse collection of works by nine revolutionary female artists, including pioneers of the feminist art movement such as Chicago and Mary Beth Edelson, and others expanding the legacy today, such as Alex Prager and Swoon.

Shirin Neshat

2011-08-06T13:04:00.000-07:00

Posted by Suzanne MacNevin.

Shirin Neshat شیرین نشاط (born March 26, 1957 in Qazvin, Iran) is an Iranian feminist artist who lives in New York. She is known primarily for her work in film, video and photography.

Feminist Art Books

2011-07-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

Carrie Mae Weems

2011-07-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

FEMINIST ART

"My responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the rooftops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specificity of our historical moment." --Carrie Mae Weems

In 1981 Weems was graduating from California Institute of the Arts and moving on to an MFA from the University of California-San Diego.

She was part of a political artist group that was pairing text with photographs. The above piece is a great example of that form.

Below is a sample from The Kitchen Table Series (1990):

When you look at these photos you might be reminded of the complex relationships among women; the different roles we play-mother, daughter, sister, friend. The emotions we inflict on our loved ones and even when we try to love sometimes it comes across as shame. We think about the desire to please those we care about. The bonds that don't break dispite immense tension.

The documentary style is raw and beautiful.

Carolee Schneemann

2011-07-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

FEMINIST ART - Artist Carolee Schneemann gives new meaning to feminist art. She's more of a punk artist than anything else.

She is probably most known for her performance art piece entitled Interior Scroll (1975). From the accounts others have written it seems she would peel off her clothing, cover herself in mud (or paint?), and then extract a scroll from her vagina and read it. The image I have posted to the right is from the Tate website and apparently the writing on the side is from the vaginal scroll. How daring is that?! Love it or hate it.

She says of this piece: "I thought of the vagina in many ways-- physically, conceptually: as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the sources of sacred knowledge, ecstasy, birth passage, transformation. I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model: enlivened by it's passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiraled coil ringed with the shape of desire and generative mysteries, attributes of both female and male sexual power. This source of interior knowledge would be symbolized as the primary index unifying spirit and flesh in Goddess worship."

Among many in your face installations/performances/films (she was also a painter among other things) another one of note is Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions (1963). Here Schneemann covers herself in her environment while Icelandic artist Erró photographs. She says:

"I wanted my actual body to be combined with the work as an integral material-- a further dimension of the construction... I am both image-maker and image. The body may remain erotic, sexual, desired, desiring, but it is as well votive: marked, written over in a text of stroke and gesture discovered by my creative female will."

Unfortunately she was "pigeon holed" and typecasted as an "erotic artist". She was unhappy with this because she wanted not to be this delicate female erotic image but hardcore, ugly, in your face, I don't fuck around sexuality: a quality that more die hard feminists appreciate

Carolee Schneemann's collaborative art includes the performance piece Meat Joy (1964). In her words:

"Meat Joy has the character of an erotic rite: excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, rope brushes, paper scrap. It's propulsion is toward the ecstatic-- shifting and turning between tenderness, wilderness, precision, abandon: qualities which could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent."

Womanhouse (1973)

2011-07-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

Between the dates of January 3oth and February 28th an amazing installation was created by a group of women at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in the Feminist Art Program. Judy Chicago & Miriam Schapiro both co-founders of the program worked with their students and the community to create the unflinching and under appriatiated art experience called WOMANHOUSE.

Together they took over a building and each artist constructed a room that showed without apology there interpretation of the (middle class white) female experience. The bathroom was done by Judy Chicago and titled Menstruation Bathroom. A waste basket overflows with dirty bloody pads and feminine hygiene products scattered about.

Sandra Orgel created Linen Closet which shows a women trapped inside a linen closet with neatly folded towels and her head in what appears almost like a guillotine. One leg is outside as if she is free but not free from the female experience we are taught to embrace and feel stuck inside.

Sadly it is hard to come by images of all the rooms in the house. According to Wikipidia these were the rooms:

Beth Bachenheimer (Shoe Closet)
Sherry Brody (Lingerie Pillows)
Faith Wilding (Womb Room)
Kathy Huberland (Bridal Staircase)
Sandra Orgel (Linen Closet)
Camille Grey (Lipstick Bathroom)
Robin Weltsch and Vicki Hodgetts (Nurturant Kitchen)
Miriam Schapiro (Doll’s House)
Judy Chicago (Menstruation Bathroom).

Johanna Demetrakas filmed the performance pieces: Faith Wilding (Waiting), Sandra Orgel (Ironing), Judy Chicago (Cock and Cunt Play, performed by Faith Wilding and Janice Lester), Karen LeCocq (Leah's Room).

It is amazing that a group of women came together and formed a community and through art shared their female experience. It is visceral and yet sad. There was a film made about this installation that can be purchased for an expensive price ($250 for a DVD).

Info from the Women Make Movies site:
A film by Johanna Demetrakas
1974, 47 minutes, Color, VHS/DVD
http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c324.shtml

There needs to be more collaborative work among women!

Feminism in American Comic Books

2011-07-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

ENTERTAINMENT - Like She-Hulk and Wonder Woman?

Check out the following video montage, its basically a history of women in American comic books. True, it shows a lot of skin, but latex tights is par for the course for superheroes... Spider-Man's suit for example seems to be 'extra tight'.

The Role of Feminist Art in Marketing

2011-06-23T17:41:00.001-07:00

FEMINIST ART - I found the following image below on a website for IT staff in Toronto.

And it got me thinking...

Thinking about the role feminism plays in marketing and advertising.

Let me put it this way... approx. 70% of all new cars in North America and Europe are purchased by women. (If only the same was true of truck sales.)

Automakers have learned from this and when designing cars and marketing cars, they are now primarily designed with women in mind... and its done so often in a duality.

#1. To appeal to women.

#2. To appeal to men trying to attract women.

The BMW Z3 is a good historical example of this. Normally BMW cars are boxy and boring, appealing to Toronto accountants, lawyers and businessmen... very stale. But in the BMW Z3's case what happened was BMW did a lot of marketing research and decided to market the car more to women when they realized women are more likely to buy new cars and more importantly women have specific tastes when picking a car... namely women prefer cars with curves. So says the market research.

And to take care of both items #1 and #2 above, they paid big bucks to have the car featured in the first James Bond movie starring Pierce Brosnan... who, small surprise, stars opposite a Russian amazon hacker with beauty and brains.

But I think the most important part of that film was not the hacker femme fatale... it was the introduction of the new M, played by Dame Judy Dench. A class act and a smart move on part of the whole James Bond franchise. This was no doubt deliberate and an attempt by the producers to make the new James Bond more friendly to women and feminists alike (as opposed the ol' Sean Connery James Bond who frequently slapped women around and twisted their arms behind their backs, threatening to break them).

Next lets talk about another cultural phenomenon... women buying shoes. Its true, women do buy a lot of shoes. We just do. Just do it. Don't blame Nike, they only clued in on this a long time and Nike has been marketing heavily to women ever since. The ad below of a woman doing yoga whilst wearing Nike shoes (and other Nike clothing) is an excellent example of Nike using feminist art to get their message across.

Next lets talk about the mother of all marketing campaigns... the TOBACCO INDUSTRY. You know, those horrible bastards who tricked people into starting smoking because it helps "keep you thin".

The example on the right is just that, an example. One of MANY cigarette advertisements marketed towards women using feminism and freedom as a ploy to sell cancer.

The image below from Virginia Slims is another prime example... you've come along way baby is just sleazy and condescending.

Can I have more patriarchy in my advertising please? *sarcasm*

The point I am trying to make here is that feminism (as opposed to the classic "sex sells") is also used to sell products to women. Marketing is often a blunt tool.

We don't mind it so much when feminism is used to sell us plain things like Nike shoes and what not... but when we're being sold cigarettes and breast implants its annoying and we get the itch to throw rocks at the advertising industry.

Take the photo below from a website which sells sunrooms. No big deal. Who WOULDN'T want a sunroom? (I think conceptually sunrooms appeal more to women. Men probably wouldn't see the purpose in having a room you can relax and enjoy the sun in, without pesky insects buzzing around.) The woman in the photo looks athletic. Determined. As if she is looking at the sun and getting ready to go running around like an amazon doing all sorts of exercises.

Next on my list is an image from an Ottawa windows manufacturer. No feminism here. Just a smiling blonde apparently overjoyed by her new windows. Huzzah for capitalism. So which is better? Feminist looking out the window, or happy homemaker enjoying her new windows? I think the feminist image is more provocative. That image makes me think there is an exciting story behind it. The happy homemaker in contrast looks like she is about to go bake cookies and maybe tickle a toddler (no offense to mothers out there, you go girls, but I hope you are getting my point here).

So yeah, don't mind a little feminism in the regular advertising. Nike, you go girl. Just do it.

But I'd argue the best use of feminist art is promoting something with an actual purpose beyond capitalism and commercialism. Like the "Because I Am A Girl" campaign. Women doing athletic and intelligent things for a good cause. More of that please.

!WAR: Women Art Revolution

2011-05-31T09:27:00.000-07:00

FEMINIST ART / ENTERTAINMENT

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s new documentary about feminist art of the 1960s, "!Women Art Revolution", will make its theatrical debut tomorrow (June 1st) at NYC’s IFC Center, followed by showings across the USA via Zeitgeist Films. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2010, and also screened at Sundance and Berlin.

Lynn Hershman Leeson says the film “exposes the previously obscured and often indiscernible limits of access and voice that were imposed on a selected group of artists,” and shows “how presumed restrictions to freedom of expression were triumphantly surmounted.”

“Comprehensive and vibrant…a must for university arts archives and other artistic institutions. !Women Art Revolution smartly mixes the dynamics of the emerging feminist movement of the late ‘60s with the prevailing male chauvinism of the arts world at the time.” - THR.

According to Lynn Hershman Leeson:

"This film has had the very rare honor of being included in the official selections of Toronto, Sundance, Berlin, Human Rights Watch, S.F. International and several other major festivals. It has had sold out screenings with standing ovations at nearly every screening. I was heartened and amazed by the remarkable response, from both women and men, many of whom were moved to tears to discover this history and others who remembered when. There has been no prior platform to disclose the embedded issues."

"It is a complicated issue. Why does discrimination exist? Who benefits from it? What has been the historical trajectory of power and how does that affect how history is constructed? Who survives into legacy? In the 1960s, when the Feminist Art Movement emerged, it was fueled by the rhetoric and power of the Black Panther Movement. Female artists needed to become politicized in order to understand the nuanced complexities of gender, race, class and sexuality, and to make art that was uniquely their own. These artists made groundbreaking contributions and insisted on exposing inequality. The Guerilla Girls, became the conscience of the art world and held galleries and museums accountable for discrimination. Female artists, critics, and curators, struggled to re invent themselves and introduced the first concepts of social protest, collaboration and public art, which addressed directly the political imperatives of social justice and civil rights."

"There is a growing community of enlightened philanthropists, many of whom are female, who are insisting on change. It is a mandate essential for their support. This is evidenced in the number of women being hired as curators, and the growing insertion of important women artists to collections and a correction to the policies of omission that formerly dominated selection processes. It is rather thrilling to see this happen in such a cohesive, proactive and concrete way…[However] There are many examples of subtle resistance which is reflected in how and where work is seen, who is exhibited, how work is reviewed, collected, or placed and what future creative opportunities are available. Having a strong, original voice can be personally exhilarating but often treacherous in its’ uniqueness when it does not fit into a pre existing expectation."

"Of course I think it has positive connotations for intelligent women and men. But there is still an existing fear of the word itself, as well as miscommunicated baggage of what it represents. This needs revision. Feminism is about cultural values and equality. The young women I am in contact with are grateful to learn about this history. They devour the information. It is, after all, their legacy."

"Women have been, very often, the out takes of history, so very little information exists. This is why I wanted to make a film that had NO out takes and worked with Stanford University to put the entire footage that was shot, along with the transcriptions and information about the artists online. It is an extended history that expands the narrative. The partnership with Stanford University Libraries (SULAIR) houses the !Women Art Revolution Collection in a publicly accessible online archive for study and research. The retrievability of this information subverts traditional notions of filmmaking. In the 60’s, women used slides sent around the country as a kind of underground railway. Now, we have the internet. I think the next generation has access to very exciting technologies that will extend even more the reach into new communities."

"As Marcia Tucker reminds us,“humor is the single most important weapon we have!” I think audiences will be inspired by the courage, sense of humor and tenaciousness of the artists who courageously and constantly reinvented themselves and in doing so dynamically revised existing exclusionary policies of their culture."

"We invented RAW/WAR* as an extension of the film into the future. It is an interactive, community-curated media archive and an accompanying installation that provides a forum for users to collaboratively contribute to the history. The site is a democratic community space where users can post links to images and video. RAW/WAR opens up this dialogue to a global audience, using geotags to connect histories worldwide."

NOTE: RAWWAR is a collaboration between Lynn Hershman Leeson, Alexandra Chowaniec, Brian Chrils, Gian Pablo Villamil, Paul Paradiso and Stacey Duda.

Women Artists in Britain during WWII

2011-04-29T13:06:00.001-07:00

Please check out: British Women Artists during WWII.

'The Queue at the Fish-Shop' (1944) by Evelyn Dunbar

'The Nuremberg Trial' (1946) by Dame Laura Knight

'Christmas Day in the London Bridge YMCA Canteen' (1920) by Clare Atwood

'Human Laundry' (1945) by Doris Zinkeisen

Feminist Posters + Photography

2011-03-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

FEMINIST ART

Boycott Nestle by Rachael Romero, 1978

Poster by the Guerrilla Girls

Untitled Image by Carrie Mae Weems

Seduction by Lynn Hershman

Feminist Art at Villanova UAG

2011-02-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

Women Collared for Work: Anecdotal Art

For over two decades Judith Schwab wanted to do a feminist art exhibit about “20th century women and the obstacles they had to overcome.” Such a solo exhibit would take a lot of time to accomplish. Now the exhibit is finally here, and its on tour.

Schwab asked seven “tremendously creative and inspiring artists” she knew to collaborate with her. It took 10 years to do but their tour de force traveling art exhibit is now hitting the road.

The next stop on that road is the Villanova University Art Gallery (depending on when you read this we recommend researching when the exhibit is coming to a gallery near you). The free public reception is on Friday, January 14th, from 5 to 7 pm in the Villanova UAG (so take your Valentine date with you!), which is located in the Connelly Center on the Villanova campus.

The show continues to February 17.

Margo Allman

Allman's calligraphic paintings honor the unsung Japanese-American women who without trial were forcibly taken from their homes by the U.S. Government during World War II and interred in guarded military compounds. A painter, sculptor and printmaker for more than 55 years, Allman is a distinguished alumni of The Moore College of Art and Design and is listed in Who's Who in American Art and Who's Who in America. Her work is held in museums and private collections worldwide.

Bernice Davidson

A leader in international art exchanges for peace and environmental stewardship, Davidson brings to the exhibit life-sized figurative weavings in reed of early 20th century suffragettes jailed for their non-violent campaign to gain the right to vote for American women. Her life-sized Native American figure speaks to Native children forcibly removed from family and culture to attend distant government boarding schools, and to one child who successfully escaped and returned home.

Maria Keane

Mixed media monoprint collages by artist/professor Maria Keane pay tribute to the professional women illustrators of the Howard Pyle School, such as Olive Rush, Elenore Abbott, and Anna Whelan Betts and Ethel Franklin Betts, whose work lit up the Golden Age of American Illustration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and expanded career opportunities for women in art. Keane has been adjunct professor of fine arts at Wilmington (Del.) University since 1986.

Rosemary Lane

Working with cast paper over wood, Rosemary Lane presents three-dimensional human-form relief pieces honoring artists who inspired her and a new generation of artists in the 1980s. Her role models include leading American feminist artist Judy Chicago and abstract expressionist Louise Nevelson, a pioneer of environmental sculpture. A retired University of Delaware art professor, Lane's work has been exhibited in over 150 national invitational and juried shows.

Judith Schwab

Schwab offers 1940s' images hearkening to “Rosie the Riveter”, wartime food rationing, and the bib collar, and 1950s' art, fashion (e.g., the Peter Pan collar), and the deepening civil rights struggle. She has been a leader in international art exchange for the promotion of peace. In 2009 Schwab was awarded a Broward Cultural Council Award from the Broward County Board of County Commissioners, Florida, and a Delaware Division of the Arts Emerging Artist Fellowship in 1986-'87, and an Established Artist Fellowship 1993-'94.

Wilma B. Siegel, MD

The costumed soft sculptures created by Siegel represent “Flower Children Grown Up”, women who have made significant contributions to their communities. An award-winning artist, Siegel's psychological portraits of AIDS victims and survivors, the changing faces of AIDS, breast cancer survivors, the homeless, and the elderly have gained national recognition. A distinguished oncologist, she was a pioneer in the hospice movement, opening one of the first hospices to accept AIDS patients.

Ann Stein

Stein presents a rich visual appreciation of the accomplishments of Frances Perkins, America's first woman Cabinet member. Each of Stein's period items and drawings stands as a symbol of Perkins and the ground-breaking labor laws and other social advances she championed as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor. A sculptor, Stein's work is archived in the National Museum of Women in the Arts and exhibited in the Corcoran Gallery and the Art Museum of the Americas.

Deborah Stelling

Incorporating photographs, metal, and wood stitched to an acrylic background, the five mixed media paintings by Stelling pay tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt and Georgia O'Keeffe, including some pithy quotes by them. Stelling has won fellowships and grants from the University of Delaware, the Delaware Division of the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, the oldest artists' colony in the United States. She is founder of SYNE, a group of artists who have exhibited in Europe and Scandinavia.

The Villanova University Art Gallery is open weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm.

Telephone the Art Gallery at (610) 519-4612 or visit their website at artgallery.villanova.edu.

Model's Revenge by Alexis Hunter

2011-01-21T06:19:00.000-08:00

"Dear friends

I am showing the 1974-77 series the Model's Revenge at the London Art Fair at the Richard Saltoun Gallery, along with the feminist photographer Jo Spence's work. We both showed together at the Hayward Gallery in 1979, and I am delighted to tell you that both Jo's and my work has been well received.

Alexis Hunter"

Stand 34
The London Art Fair
19 - 23 January at Islington's Business Design Centre (map)
52 Upper St | City of London | N1 0QH

The Dinner Party finds a home

2010-12-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

FEMINIST ART - It took decades for the iconic "The Dinner Party" installation to find a home in an art gallery or museum. Truth is, nobody was willing to take it. It was shunned.

No longer.

The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized.

The Dinner Party is comprised of a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored.

The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Herstory Gallery exhibitions relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table.

However a lot of bitterness remains about the monumental piece. Judy Chicago, the woman who organized it all, didn't pay the artists who contributed their time and skill to the project. And if you watch documentaries of the process used to make it you realize she wasn't a very nice person to all the workers/artists who helped with the project. She took all the glory for herself, hence the bitterness. (Sure it was "for a good cause", but Judy Chicago could be making more of an effort to share the credit.)

And on top of that, does The Dinner Party really deserve all the attention? Certainly it is one of biggest, most well-known feminist art installations of the 1970s, but there are other artists who probably deserve more attention.

To make matters worse Judy Chicago has been an 'one hit wonder'. She has been coasting on her laurels ever since. It is perhaps no surprise that it took so long for The Dinner Party to finally find a home.

Rozsika Parker, feminist art historian

2010-12-14T10:20:00.000-08:00

ART HISTORY - Check out this blog post about Rozsika Parker, a feminist art historian.

And while you're at it check out this post about the cartoon Cathy. Ack!

And also Black Womanhood in Art.

And finally What Women have done to Art.

Enjoy!

In other news we are looking for feminist art about Christmas and/or other holidays. Send your JPGs to suzannemacnevin(atsymbol)gmail.com.

Feminist Art by Men

2010-10-15T19:36:00.000-07:00

FEMINIST ART - Sometimes men make feminist art.

Its a little unexpected when it happens, but some of it is surprisingly good. Many of the paintings by political artist Charles Moffat for example.

Another example is the untitled piece by Cuban artist José Gómez Fresquet (Frémez) below, done circa 1970.

Fresquet made the poster (silkscreen on paper 18 3/8 x 24 1/8 inches) around 1970 as an antiwar statement in solidarity with Vietnamese women. The poster’s minimalist approach (a la Che Guevara posters) makes the connection between the objectification of women and violence against women, while also bringing up race and class issues.

The poster later was popularized and reprinted in the United States by the Chicago Women’s Graphic Collective.

So its an important piece about a feminist issue. It doesn't matter if its done by a man. All that proves is that at least some men are on the right track. Its progress.

Cult Sisters 5

2010-06-30T08:14:00.000-07:00

FEMINIST ART - The Cult Sisters 5 may not be the Group of Seven, if anything they're the furthest from the long dead Canadian group of artists. The five artists are:

J.M. Culver
Kara Hendershot
Louisa Greenstock
Gina Louise
Erin Sayer

What binds them together is they're all female and proud of it... and they've opened their own gallery, the Cult Status Gallery in Minneapolis. In 2009 Sayer met Hendershot as she was painting “this awesome portrait of Conan O’Brien on the wall.” The rest of the group met through Facebook.

“We are five emerging female artists, and our work makes a strong statement,” says Culver. “I think that’s what connects us all together.”

“We’ve done like everything through Facebook,” admits Sayers.

“You wouldn’t necessarily look at our work and say, 'Oh, a woman did that,'” explains Culver about their conflicting artistic styles. Culver dredges up childhood memories using charcoal/acrylics, Louise uses mixed media and poetry, Sayer and Greenstock's works drip with rock star sexuality... some of its rather unlady-like.

“Maybe it’s because we don’t draw vaginas and flowers,” laughs Sayer. “The society is still a little patriarchal,” she says. “I think people for some reason still trust men more.”

Their new gallery will be focused on young artists, but there will be healthy dose of art by both genders.

Kate-Christine Miller

2010-06-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

FEMINIST ART - Feminist art is making a comeback, so says Kate-Christine Miller.

The 25-year-old multi-media artist and University of Guelph student is one of the organizers of Ladyfest Toronto, an annual feminist festival.

According to Kate-Christine Miller there’s long been a stigma around feminist art (both in universities and in art world in general), despite the success of high-profile feminist artists like Allyson Mitchell and Shary Boyle. Miller discovered her professors weren't that interested in feminist art. (She should have tried York University in Toronto instead, where there is an abundance of professors who enjoy the topic and a whole 6-credit class on feminist art.)

“You could tell that the professors had seen the same 20-year-old girls making the same thing over and over again, but that’s because we hadn’t learned about it,” explains Miller. “It was really hard to reflect on this giant body of feminist work and contribute something new because we thought we were the first person ever to think of it.”

According to Miller however feminism is a growing phenomenon in Canada's art galleries. There are more feminist artists at The Power Plant (a contemporary gallery in Toronto), and a recent issue of the Toronto-based arts quarterly, C Magazine, was devoted entirely to feminist art.

As an artist herself Miller explores the history of feminist art, but doesn't restrict herself even if 'its been done before'. She grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario, and her parents shared the duties of parenting and domestic life. “The idea of gender equality was very much a part of my life,” she says.

She also contributed to the book "Saturday Night: Untold Stories of Sexual Assault", an anthology of anonymous stories of women. Recently Miller started a new job as the administrator for the Association for Women’s Rights in Development in Toronto.

Miller says she is worried “about the hysteria over young girls everywhere in the world.”

“It’s just ultimately setting them up for failure to teach people not to stand up for themselves, and that they are just victims of some sort of hyper-sexual machine,” she says. “I don’t think that freaking out about young girls is helping them.”

Girls today need to be reassured their own decisions are the right ones and only they can determine what is best for themselves, believes Miller.

(We were unable to display Miller's art on here, which is mostly in video and textile.)

Feminist Art Vs. Peter Nygard

2010-04-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

Peter Nygard is a Canadian fashion guru who makes women's clothing. In one of his factories in Jordan 1,200 women from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India are being held captive, forced to make women's pants until they pay off their "debt".

Its not just a sweatshop. Its slavery.

The women aren't allowed to leave. They are locked in bed bug infested dormitories, given very little food and water and if they make mistakes they are beaten and/or raped by their Jordanian masters.

Meanwhile in the Bahamas Peter Nygard has his huge island estate with hundreds of servants and a net worth of $800 million USD. Even there he treats his workers like slaves. They're not allowed to leave and he frequently deducts from their wages.

There is even a CBC documentary about Peter Nygard, exposing how he treats the workers on his estate. The documentary was made before the U.S.-based National Labor Committee (NLC) released a report revealing that Peter Nygard was also involved in human trafficking and slavery in Jordan.

Peter Nygard and his lawyers of course deny any knowledge of human trafficking and slavery at his overseas factories... but then again his former employees in North America having been suing him for years now over labour violations, sexual abuse and there's even a rumoured rape/murder of a 16-year-old girl from the Dominican Republic.

So here's the deal... we're going to have a Feminist Art Contest. The theme is Peter Nygard / His Enslavement of Women.

The prize? There is no prize. Why should anyone get a prize? We're talking about a man who enslaves women in foreign countries just so he can sell clothing to rich yuppies and in turn make himself richer.

Submit your art via JPEG (it could also be a YouTube video) to the Facebook group mentioned below. There's no deadline either. Any and all submissions will be reposted on this blog. Its a purely honourific contest, the goal isn't money or fame, its sending a message that people like Peter Nygard are filth.

Consider it a chance to make a difference in the world and make your voice heard. In the meantime please join the Facebook Group: Boycotting Peter Nygard and let the world know that a man who treats women like slaves doesn't deserve to make money selling women's clothing.

UPDATE! THE OLD BOYCOTT PAGE WAS DELETED NO THANKS TO NYGARD'S LAWYERS: Please join the new group at Boycott Nygard's Brands

A Plethora of Feminist Art

2010-01-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

The following is a plethora of different feminist art by various artists.

Jess Larson - Defensive (from the Look and Learn, Little Girl series) - circa 2009

Larson has an upcoming show at the Humanities Fine Arts Gallery at the University of Minnesota. The reception is Thursday January 21st, 2010 at 7 PM. The show runs until Friday March 12th, 2010.

Viktor Freso - Martina - 2007

Viktor Freso is male, but he's known for tackling interesting subjects. I especially like his "Onion is Healthy" time-based art piece from 2006 when he placed hundreds of onions outside a public building along with a sign saying "Onion is Healthy" and watched as hundreds of people stole the onions. Male feminist artists are not unheard of, check out the following interview with Charles Moffat.

Viktor's works will be in Chicago at the Open Concept Gallery until Feb. 25th, 2010.

Elke Krystufek - Proper Use - 2005

Elke Krystufek's series "Less Male Art" will be showing at the Kestner Gallery (kestnergesellschaft) until July 2nd 2010 in Hanover Germany.

Kirsten Justesen

2010-01-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

FEMINIST ART - Kirsten Justesen was born in 1943. She currently lives and works in Copenhagen and New York. She studied at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen 1975.

Her activities comprise a wide range of genres, from body art and performance art, to sculptures and installation. Justesen was part of the avant-garde scene of the 1960s, where she became a pioneering figure within the three-dimensional modes of art that incorporate the artist's own body as artistic material. These experiments led her in the direction of the so-called feminist art which challenged traditional value systems during the 1970s. Her later works constitute broader investigations of relationships between body, space, and language.

Justesen has created a series of exhibitions, events, museum installations, performances, and mural work in Denmark and the rest of world since the mid-60s. And received number of awards including a life-long grant from The Danish Arts Foundation. Justesen has been a visiting professor and lecturer at art academies in Scandinavia, the U.S., and the Middle East.

The 1970s were especially dedicated to an investigation into the feminine gaze at a time where Justesen’s studio was located between the kitchen and the nursery. Justesen is continuously fighting for women artists’ rights and influence in the art world at many levels--from her work on various boards and positions in foundations, to co-organizing seminars concerning women artists’ positions in society.

Justesen has designed sets for a number of theatres since 1967. The co-operations in the 1990s were mainly with ballet companies. This included libretto and production design with the Randi Patterson Company as well as the building up education for set designers at The Danish National School of Theatre from 1985-90.

Justesen's artwork is represented in private and public collections, worldwide, including Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Kors Drag was published 1999; it comprises a collection of 200 images and 100 lines of words, rewritten by international female artists. Meltingtime # 11 is a retrospective catalogue published in 2003, documenting the melting times presented since 1980. Meltingtime # 16 will take place in Venice in October 2007.

Feminist Artist Statement

"….. Duchamp couldn’t think of anything new.
But for us women artists there was a lot to discover!

To a woman artist wanting everything, society seemed pretty narrow in the 1960s. A battle started in order to conquer breathing space, action space and language space in the world--which, from my point of view, includes having children, a career, and access to means of production in that postwar, welfare and increasingly global environment.

From this simple wish sprang various strategies towards society, strategies which I considered art work--and thank you Mr. Duchamp for deleting the border lines. The revolution was that women artists did this together and insisted on surviving all kinds of bloodshed.

This was done to perceive visual images from a female point of view. Unfold the invisible. Not that easy when you have been educated in a classical sculpture department. What does it look like? My studio was for a long time an inspiring threshold between the nursery and the kitchen.

The images which I have chosen for this feminist art base are part of that struggle. Sculpture # 2, 1968 is a more formal sculptural investigation, as is the last one shown from 1980, Ice Bride # 3 (conquering an iceberg-- melting time!). It refers to three-dimensional investigations that still challenge me.

I have used my own body in most of my work, in order not to get lost.

I take part in this feminist art base as evidence of an ongoing female strategy."

Art, Education, Censorship & Copyright Laws

2010-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

ART HISTORY - I have an ongoing feud with this crazy woman over the difference between educational usage and the breaking of copyright laws.

Her argument is she wrote it, therefore its hers to distribute.

I however believe that anyone should be able to distribute educational material, in this case pertaining to art history. My argument is that as long as its for educational purposes it falls into the realm of Fair Use, and indeed if I ignored the chance to spread such educational material it would essentially be censorship.

"Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. The term "fair use" originated in the United States, but a similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright."

So in essence I am correct as far as the law goes, but she refuses to understand the principle of it. Some jurisdictions use the Fair Dealing law which is more strict about usage, but when it comes to things posted on the internet pretty everything is fair game because it falls under international laws.

Here's what happened. Years ago we came across a website that was poorly designed and hadn't been updated in a long time. Our immediate assumption was that this website was defunct... but a lot of the articles we thought were valuable for art history education purposes, so we copied the articles and placed them on several active/popular websites so more people could read them, appreciate them and learn from them.

It should be noted at this point we did try contacting the owner of the defunct website, asking for their permission to reproduce (it is only polite after all). They never responded, confirming our conclusion that their website was defunct and no longer in use.

Several YEARS passed and this crazy woman emailed us asking the articles to be removed. According to her the original website is still active (despite looking otherwise). Yada yada yada, we eventually did, but it was a big long argument and we really only did it because she was super annoying and not because of any legal reasons.

What we did was place all the articles on a blog... which qualifies as a news zone. So not only is it educational, buts its also considered a news item. Whenever there is more news on that particular topic we can post more articles... and because it qualifies as both an educational and news website it is CLEARLY exempt from copyright laws.

And frankly what artist doesn't want free promotion and their paintings listed on lots of art history websites? Doesn't every artist want their painting to be as popular as the Mona Lisa some day?

These days we have her blocked, but occasionally she manages to send us a message somehow and we have to find a new way to block her. Whenever she does that however it INSPIRES us to write another article about the importance of education over censorship/copyright. Like today.

Hey crazy lady, stick that up your arse and rotate.

With respect to art (and anything on the internet) the topic of Fair Use comes up frequently. Many artists, notably Andy Warhol, have become known for their usage of other people's works in an effort to create something.

Thus artists, writers, bloggers, educators, feminists, activists and anybody with a bone to pick will always be usurping old material, showing it over again, sometimes changing it, sometimes leaving it as is... and they will always be protected by the laws of Fair Use.

THE ABOVE IMAGES WERE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION. :)

Guerrilla Girls

2008-11-24T21:27:00.000-08:00

FEMINIST ART - They are a secret society whose names, faces and number of members remain unknown. But their message is heard loud and clear, as in overseas-in-other-countries “loud” and billboard-sized “clear.” They are the Guerrilla Girls and they threaten to be anywhere at anytime. Their upcoming visit to Albuquerque, however, is no secret.

Co-founders of the Guerilla Girls, Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz (adopting the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms is part of the group’s shtick) will give a presentation at the Kimo Theatre promising to “educate, infuriate and entertain.” The feminist art group has been rocking the boat since 1985, admonishing institutions in the art and film world that perpetuate sexism and racism. Despite their trademark gorilla masks, these are women who should be taken quite seriously.
The Guerrilla Girls have produced posters, books, billboards and entire exhibits displaying the cold, hard facts about the low percentage of women and minority artists represented in art and film. One poster produced by the group is aimed at the film industry and touts facts such as “No woman has ever won an Oscar for direction, cinematography or sound,” “94 percent of writing awards have gone to men” and “In 1987, 2.4 percent of major films were directed by women. By 1999, that number rose to a whopping 4 percent.” Other examples of the group’s work include the White House receiving a gift of estrogen pills courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls and a slew of informative coasters found their way into bars in Europe.

Museums and libraries have collected entire portfolios of Guerrilla Girl posters and after 20 years of raising their own unique brand of hell, it is not uncommon for their name to pop up in art history and women’s studies classes.

What started as a way to vent frustration by tacking up posters in New York City in the dark of night has blossomed into an activist group manifesting a noticeable change in American culture. But despite these inroads, there is still a lot of work to do, as Kollwitz explained recently in an interview with Local iQ. Though seemingly intimidating with their hairy masks and black attire, this group is much less judgmental than one would expect. Kollwitz is somewhat understanding of why people are hesitant to associate themselves with the word “feminism.”

“(It) has been demonized for so long,” she said of the common feminist stereotype as humorless, dour, bitchy and ugly. “I can’t tell people what to call themselves ... the labels aren’t super important. But to me it’s important to call myself a feminist. It’s a whole new way of looking at the world.”

As intimidating as feminism can be for some, part of the Girls’ ammunition is humor and wit, hence the gorilla masks. Kollwitz noted that the group believes feminism could use a little humor and it certainly helps to spread their message to those who may not initially be convinced.

“We aren’t just interested in talking to people who agree with us,” Kollwitz explained, adding that when addressing people who may find their messages abrasive, a little humor goes a long way. “It lets you sneak in and surprise and disarm them.”

516 Arts invited the Guerrilla Girls to speak in Albuquerque as part of their Speak Out: Art, Design & Politics exhibition, which is on display through December 20. The co-sponsor of the visit, Through the Flower, is a local non-profit art organization founded by accomplished artist, Judy Chicago.

Susannah Rodee, executive director of Through the Flower, described her excitement about the event in a recent interview, saying that the efforts of the Guerrilla Girls, “Are directly related to the mission of Through the Flower, which is to educate the public about the importance of art and its power in countering the erasure of women’s achievements.”

In addition to their presentation, the Guerrilla Girls will also facilitate a workshop. After the masked avengers explain their philosophy on political art, workshop participants will be given the opportunity to work on their own political art pieces in small groups.

“Great projects have come out of these workshops,” Kollwitz said. “We get out of town and then the people (from the workshops) go and raise hell.”

Though the group has at times been in serious danger chased, threatened, etc., Kollwitz noted that not all Guerrilla Girls adversaries tend to react in such an inciting way.

“A lot of discrimination is unconscious, people just perpetuating the status quo,” she said.
Kollwitz added that the Guerrilla Girls has often received letters of apologies and thanks. Most importantly, the group’s unique and unparalleled work has prompted well-known museums to increase their displays of works by minorities and women. But the Guerrilla Girls aren’t relaxing one bit and will continue to roam the world, reinventing the “F” word along the way.

Ed Fox

2008-11-24T21:24:00.000-08:00

FEMINIST ART - By Ed Fox.

"In the early days I just wanted to be given a chance. I got rejected numerous times by the fashion and adult industries, photo reps, and advertising agencies. I have kept every rejection letter and every fan mail I have ever received. The Art Center College of Design and the rest of the people that tried to put me down really held me back. I felt like Rocky taking a pounding. I knew that the harder I got beat, the greater the reward would be—that there would be more of an impact when I would finally get up.

While studying at the Art Center I was told numerous times I was wasting my talent by creating erotic imagery. I followed my dream, and on my way up with my head down, ten years had passed. Comments on my photography went from “You are stunting yourself” to “You are in the beam of the light.” I used to be the little boy flipping anxiously through the pages of adult magazines, and now I’m the one making them—I still can’t believe it.

My fascination with the female form and appreciation for light is what inspired me to become a photographer. I create to satisfy the need to see a better image than the last, and there is ample gratification if at least one other person values my work. I would rather be famous than rich. The fans validate my vision and inspire me to create more.

The most tempting part of a woman’s body is her feet. Feet are a woman’s second body, one I can enjoy without her being offended or even aware. I began noticing painted toenails at the age of 14 and slowly fine-tuned the fetish into my life. Never would I have imaged that my “little secret” would attract so many people.

I originally wanted to become a photographer so I could shoot for Playboy. Since I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I started focusing more on the type of imagery I secretly desired to make. I believe now that I will ultimately be appreciated more by shooting what I really want and for being published by Taschen. I am so grateful for the chance they have given me. I saved myself for Taschen because I wanted my first and possibly only book to be the best it possibly could. It’s printed documentation that I exist—I have finally left my mark. I want to be remembered as an esthete who made a difference in the adult world."

Need some professional head shots? Want to capture the moment beautifully? Need to hire the perfect Albany NY Photographer? Look no further than Genine Gullickson Photography. It can be difficult to find the right Albany photographer for your New York event. With affordable rates that don't compromise quality look no further than Genine Gullickson Photography.

Hasisi Park

2008-11-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

FEMINIST ART - By Hasisi Park.

We assume that artists are of a different category to normal people, and they live a special life. As an artist and photographer, I’ve been trying to put myself in a general category of normal life. I create projects and series out of intimate life through my relationships or the roles I have to fulfill, and all the discordances between my circumstances and I. I’m female after all, so often my works speak for women. For example, being a femme fatal in The Housemaid (a series of work, homage to a filmmaker Kim Ki Young), trying to be a member of a whole new family in The Family (a series of work from Japan), and making a small funeral for bloody panties. I role-play a certain character in an absurd situation, or exaggerate trivial events of everyday life to give women a chance to reconsider their dejected viewpoint toward the world and themselves.

As a lazy and weird-looking Hikikomori (a Japanese term referring to the phenomenon of reclusive individuals who have chosen to withdraw from social life), which may explain why I don’t use pretty models in my work. I prefer to appear in front of a camera. Being a Hikikomori is certainly related to my attitude and perception of art because it limits what I can get from outside. Rather than being a spectator, I choose to be objectified by frightened women, including myself. When you first look at my photographs, it seems difficult to identify with the character because she plays out what most women can’t present in normal life. But it unconsciously arouses desires of becoming one of the characters in the image. By merging gratification of deviation and satisfaction of aspiration, my works could be classified as feminist art.

People who only believe what they see are easily cheated. Lacan once said, “Cynics believed in their eyes miss effectiveness of symbolic fabrication even though the fabrication is realities which compose our life.” I’d like to stimulate people with indirect seduction, which could be a total lie, meaning fictional. On the assumption that the lie itself makes people uncomfortable and insulted, the symbolic fabrication of the image affects people, and they automatically find a connection to their memories or experiences. That is the most important aspect of producing art for me. I don’t have the answer to what I should keep focusing on to awaken people or satisfy them. But I know I want to develop the relationship between audience and artist, and a genuine way exists through an interaction. I will keep providing interesting clues and narratives to make viewers click on their own memory so that they can create a brand new story of themselves.

Melanie Manchot

2008-11-12T16:13:00.000-08:00

FEMINIST ART - Right: Melanie Manchot. Emma & Charlie I, 2001.

'Emma & Charlie I' is the first image in a triptych which belongs to the 'Fontainbleau Series', consisting of four such triptychs in total. The series takes as its starting point the well known anonymous image in the Louvre of Gabrielle d'Estree and her sister in the bath. Throughout its existence this work has over and again caught people's curiosity and attention and has recurred as reference for artists across generations.

Drawn to the very ambiguity of the gesture as well as to the contrast between the intimacy of the touch and the blankness of the protagonists expression I set out to work with different sets of women restaging the situation. The invited women have different types of relationships to each other and how this manifests across the three images is a process of discussion, collaboration and experimentation. In each case I ask the two women to first restage the image itself and to then continue to find gestures and moments of touch while remaining constrained within the confines of the bath.

A Victory for Obama is a Victory for Women

2008-11-04T22:30:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Barack Obama, the new president of the USA. A victory for Obama is a victory for men and women around the world.

Let all the world sing and dance in celebration!

Black Womanhood

2008-10-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center

Right: DOUBLE FUSE: Wangechi Mutu’s playful razzmatazz makes reference to the past but lives in the present.

“Black Womanhood,” the exhibit at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center, must have seemed like a sharp idea when it was being put together. It examines the ways in which “contemporary artists are challenging historic and often stereotypical images that present black women as the alluringly beautiful Other, the erotic fantasy, or the super-maternal mammy.” By now this is familiar, if still urgent, stuff; what makes this outing special is that it gathers more than 100 objects — traditional African art, Western colonial photos and postcards, and contemporary art — that connect today’s dissectors with the origins of the ugly stereotypes they’re working to take apart.

Barbara Thompson, who organized the show for Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire, does a good job of mapping the territory. But it’s an uneven show with a dour vision that leaves a mediciny taste in your mouth — and, I think, offers signs of a generation gap among curators.

The art of African women was traditionally pottery, beadwork, basketry, textiles, and the decoration of their own bodies (tattoos, scarification, hairstyles, body paint). But Westerners collected primarily African sculpture, masks, and costumes — which tended to be made by and for African men. The women’s portrayal of themselves was more abstracted, less obvious than their men’s literal, if stylized, depictions of women. The show presents women-made pots with bumps and patterns that make reference to women’s physiques and body scarification. The women’s pieces emerge directly from their work and their rituals — like a leather skirt beaded by an adolescent girl in her seclusion as she made the traditional passage into womanhood.

The most charged part of the show surveys early-20th-century Western photos and postcards of African women. Western attitudes are apparent in images that treated the women as curious ethnographic specimens and pin-ups — either untamed, sexually available African primitives or Oriental harem girls. Photographers tailored their shots to different audiences by photographing the same models elaborately garbed or in various states of undress. A postcard of a young topless Temne woman lounging on a rug was published around 1910 as “Timnie Girl, Sierra Leone.” When it was republished in the 1920s, the caption read, “Just you and me. Sierra Leone.” These postcards could be the foundation of an electrifying stand-alone exhibit.

Right: HOT-EN-TOT: More of the contemporary work should have Renée Cox’s crackle and swagger.

But “Black Womanhood” — primarily work by black women, with some contributions by men and whites — deflates as it moves to the art of today. Sokari Douglas Camp’s 1995 sculpture Gelede from Top to Toe is an African woman turned into an armored tank of steel and chicken wire with wooden breasts that jut out like battering rams. In Renée Cox’s giant 2001 photo self-portrait Baby Back, she imitates Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s 1814 painting La grande odalisque by reclining, with nothing hiding her brown skin except for red heels, on a gold chaise longue. Cox asks how race colors our notions of beauty, and she teases black-white, male-female hierarchies. Ingres’s naked white lady is an imagined harem girl holding a fan; Cox has a whip.

More of the contemporary work should have Cox’s crackle and swagger. It should sadden, celebrate, anger. You’d think Kara Walker’s bawdy, violent versions of ante-bellum paper-cut silhouettes would be just what this show needs, but the 1997 pop-up book that’s here is too tiny to convey the fierce beauty of her best work.

The then-and-now focus favors artists whose work is built on looking back — but many artists seem hemmed in by their historical references. And the theme pigeonholes art that is more expansive, like María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s 1994 self-portrait When I Am Not Here/Estoy Allá. The photo shows her naked body from her chin to her belly, everything painted with blue waves. Slung over her shoulders and hanging over her breasts are a pair of baby bottles. Milk seems to drip from the bottles and her breasts into a simple wooden boat that she cradles. A black Cuban native who lives in Brookline with her white husband and their son, Campos-Pons often makes reference to the African diaspora and traditional African art. But her explorations of motherhood, race, and much else have their own rich mysterious symbols, and they’re planted in the present by her sculptural and symbolic use of hair extensions and beads.

These are highlights among contemporary works that are mostly dull, didactic, and rote — like a 1990-’91 photo from Carla Williams’s How To Read Character series that pairs a diagram of the parts of a cow with a photo of the nude artist. It’s art focused more on being good for you than on engaging you. “Global Feminisms,” a survey of recent international feminist art that was organized by the Brooklyn Museum and appeared at the Davis last fall, was similarly full of dour art. This eat-your-broccoli didacticism seems at least a decade behind the times.

In “Black Womanhood,” that’s partly because much of the newish work is at least 10 years old. But it also seems to represent a generation gap among curators who haven’t picked up on the changes in this area of art over the past decade or so. These curators know black and feminist art of ’80s and ’90s, which often took the form of pared-down didactic critiques. What they’ve missed is emerging women artists and artists of color who while continuing to berate the straight white guys who’ve kept their people down also create exuberant visions of what the future can hold. And they’ve embraced lavish beauty — often for its own sake. Among younger black artists, this trend tends to show up as vivid psychedelic colors, glitter, and patterns and fabrics that make reference to traditional African art as well as ’60s and ’70s Afro soul. These artists remain engaged with the past, but in terms of the themes and styles of their childhoods, when the transformations of the civil-rights movement, feminism, and post-colonialism began to be felt.

The single example of all that here is Wangechi Mutu’s 2003 collage and ink drawing Double Fuse. It depicts weird futuristic glam twins with hands made of motorcycle parts and glittering skin-tight outfits with blond hair as epaulets. The patterns recall African art, but the goofy, cheeky, playful razzamatazz is more about beauty than a comment on the past.

Where are Chris Olifi, Mickalene Thomas, Lorna Williams, Laylah Ali, Saya Woolfalk, Yinka Shonibare, El Anatsui, and the Chicago artist Nick Cave? The show would benefit from flashbacks to Betye Saar’s acid 1972 assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, which gave the icon a broom in one hand and a rifle in the other. Or cartoonist Robert Crumb’s notorious ’60s caricature Angelfood McSpade, which was inspired by racist comics of the 1920s and ’30s.

And though it doesn’t fit the show’s then-and-now focus, I wish “Black Womanhood” had a place for pseudonymous Chicago artist Lo (see www.livingoprah.com), who is spending this year following, as closely as she can, the advice Oprah Winfrey gives on her television show and her Web site and in her magazines. If that doesn’t tell us something deep about black womanhood today, what does?

Open Letter to Anti-Abortionists

2008-06-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

Open Letter to Anti-Abortionists

"IF ANTI-ABORTIONISTS SPENT HALF AS MUCH TIME GETTING RID OF POVERTY AS THEY SPEND TRYING TO GET RID OF ABORTION POOR WOMEN WOULDN'T NEED ABORTIONS AS OFTEN ANYWAY."

73% of women who have abortions are living below the poverty level (earning $9,570 or less per year).

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Feminists Censoring Feminist Art

2008-04-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

One of the things that really bothers me is the great divide between feminists. There are after all liberal feminists and conservative feminists, moderates, pro-choice, pro-topless, anti-porn, pro-porn, whatever.

So what happens frequently is that even feminists don't get along with each other and don't understand or appreciate the viewpoint of the feminist next to them.

Lets take an issue like nudity in art for example.

One feminist could use nudity to make a profound statement about the history of art and how there are a lot of nudes in art galleries, and most of them are women (see the Guerrilla Girls poster to the right).

But another feminist (who gets upset easily at the sight of nudity and anything remotely sexual) will make a fuss about it and try to have it censored, afraid that children won't understand it properly or their little minds will get warped somehow.

Totally besides the point that children don't seem to care. (See the painting to the right: Changing Times by Charles Moffat.)

It all comes down to difference of opinion, but with one fatal difference. When its written or spoken people have Freedom of Speech. When it is an image suddenly its an issue of obscenity.

If I say the words breast and penis there's no fuss, but if I painted a she-male with breasts and a penis suddenly there would be a controversy.

It really just illustrates that we have one set of standards for words and another set for images, and for artists I think that is extremely unfair.

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International Women's Day at the Brooklyn Museum

2008-04-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin drive the bulls and bears on Wall Street, Evening Telegram, February 18, 1870.

Today marks International Women's Day; in 1908 more than 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights (IWD didn't officially begin until 1911). 100 years after the march, women are not only voting, but they're running for president.

Hillary Clinton isn't the first woman to run, Victoria Woodhull (also the first female Wall Street broker) ran for the position in 1872. The Brooklyn Museum has now put the spotlight on her, and all women, with their Votes for Women exhibit (running through November).

The exhibit is housed in their fairly new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and "examines the methods and tactics used throughout the generations of the suffrage movement with more than sixty objects and images from the days of Susan B. Anthony’s leadership of the movement, to the increased activism after her death in 1906, to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920." Suffragette newsletters, a copy of The Women's Bible, recorded excerpts from speeches delivered during the suffrage movement, engravings, photographs, campaign buttons and more will all be on display.

As for Woodhull, Time Out NY talked to the exhibit's curator, who said, “Despite being such an important figure, Woodhull was pretty much written out of history, even from within the movement. Her presentation was seen as just too radical.”

Yarn art an old woman's tale

2008-04-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

It looks like a psychedelic spider web.

It's made of three cargo nets, hundreds of shoelaces, a bungee cord, string and yarn.

Artist Colby Brewer called it a three-dimensional drawing. His former teacher Sheila Pepe called it a type of feminist art strategy inspired by the New York school of abstract expressionism.

"You can tie knots and do as many as you want with as much string as you want," said 7-year-old Vance Larsgard.

Virginia Catherall, Utah Museum of Fine Arts curator of education, called it a massive piece of installation art to be created by everyone who comes to see it. Brewer, an art teacher at the Waterford School in Sandy, came up with the idea as a way to get people excited about art and to have a work in progress that anyone could add to however they choose. On Saturday, the museum opened its doors for free and provided tubs of scissors, yarn and string of all colors for the community to see and add to the sculpture.

"We got people having a great time in the museum," Catherall said.

Norah Johnston, 11, came with her family and decided to make a ball of yarn to add because she was inspired by the "undodgeable" dodge ball in the movie "Mr. Magorium's Magic Emporium."

Brewer studied sculpture at the Pratt Institute in New York where Pepe teaches. Pepe has experience participating in large-scale art projects where a professional gets it started and then anyone from the community can come and participate. When Brewer got her to come to the Waterford School as a guest teacher, he contacted the museum and organized the event. In one of the open galleries Brewer connected and hung cargo nets from the top of one wall to the bottom of an opposite wall. Pepe then crocheted shoelaces together and hung them over, under and through the nets to create a second "layer." The public then began hanging or stringing their pieces to and through the nets and web, creating a colorful third layer.

"This idea is about bringing people from different locations together to participate in an idea of collaboration, an idea of tying and connecting, and having points of connection," Brewer said.

String was chosen as the medium because Pepe's own art is almost completely crocheted. She uses yarn, shoelaces and large rubber bands in her work because she likes the idea of mixing and mirroring a domestic craft technique into a higher creation. Her large pieces mix domestic and industrial themes.

"It's taking bits and pieces of life and putting them together to say, 'This is how I see the world,"' she said.

Higher profile for D.C. women's museum

2008-04-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Washington, D.C. -- For almost 20 years, Susan Fisher Sterling has watched visitors come into the National Museum of Women in the Arts to study the works of Frida Kahlo, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe and Elizabeth Catlett.

Last week, she took charge of the country's only museum dedicated to female artists. Sterling, 52, was named director of the downtown Washington facility, which often does groundbreaking work but is just as often overlooked among Washington museums.

Sterling said that her vision for the 20-year-old museum, which has 50 full-time employees and an annual budget of $10.5 million, includes ensuring that it stands out from others in Washington and the world.

"We are very proud of our permanent collection. We are this jewel box of a building with great work in it. I want us to blow our horn louder," she said. In January, the museum was one of 20 museums and libraries that received a medal from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services for its commitment to public service.

Sterling joined the staff in 1988, a year after the museum opened. The institution, founded by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, started with 500 works; it now has almost 3,000 by more than 800 artists. The museum drew record crowds to its shows on folk artist Grandma Moses in 2000 and theater and film director Julie Taymor in 2000 and 2001. But yearly attendance remains a problem, averaging about 140,000.

As a curator, Sterling organized surveys of photographer Carrie Mae Weems and painters Sarah Charlesworth, Romaine Brooks and Alice Neel, as well as two rare retrospectives of Brazilian art. In addition, as the curator of contemporary art, she brought more photography, abstract painting and feminist art into the archives.

She declined to reveal her favorite shows. "Like an artist, I believe the last work I have done is the best," Sterling said.

Governor General's Awards honour feminist artist

2008-04-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

Ottawa, March 25, 2008 – The Canada Council for the Arts today announced the names of the eight winners of the 2008 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts.

Kenojuak Ashevak, Serge Giguère, Michel Goulet, Alex Janvier,
Tanya Mars and Eric Metcalfe will receive awards for artistic achievement; Chantal Gilbert will receive the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in the fine crafts, while Shirley Thomson will receive the outstanding contribution award for her work as a cultural administrator, gallery director and arts advocate.

Tanya Mars

Considered one of Canada's most innovative multidisciplinary artists, Tanya Mars has been active in the Canadian alternative art scene since the early 1970s. Her dramatic, humorous and satirical works–ranging from performance through to sculpture and video–have influenced an entire generation of artists over some 30 years. An admirer of Dada and Surrealism, among other art movements, she is equally attracted to cheerleading and vaudeville. Her work is witty, entertaining and at times bawdy; it is inspired by feminist and utopian perspectives. Tanya Mars is a mentor to many emerging artists as an artist, teacher, curator and editor. She is a member of the curatorial collective that organizes Toronto's 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art. She helped found Powerhouse in Montreal in 1973, one of the first feminist art collectives in Canada. She edited Parallelogramme from 1976 to 1989 and co-edited (with Johanna Householder) the definitive Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (2005). She has taught and given workshops at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD University) and currently teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Tanya Mars lives in Toronto.

Susan Fisher Sterling Named Director of National Museum of Women in the Arts

2008-04-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

March 7th 2008

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) announced today that Susan Fisher Sterling, the museum's longstanding and highly regarded chief curator and deputy director, has been named director effective March 7, 2008.

"We are thrilled to begin NMWA's third decade by announcing our new director," said NMWA Board President Mary V. Mochary. "Susan is a creative and energetic leader with the capacity and wisdom to shape a compelling vision for the museum's future. She has earned the confidence of the Board of Trustees over many years and we look forward to working with her to bring the museum forward to the next level."

"Certainly, no one knows the museum and its workings better than Susan," said Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, founder and chair of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. "Her taste, scholarship, and innovation have been instrumental in the museum's success almost since the beginning."

Sterling has been with NMWA more than 19 years and is credited with helping to shape much of the museum's artistic direction over its twenty-year history. Sterling holds a Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University. She joined the staff of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 1988 as associate curator, was promoted to curator of modern and contemporary art in 1990, chief curator in 1994, and was appointed deputy director in 2001. She is an alumna of the Museum Leadership Institute at the Getty (2004), and has received the Royal Order of Merit from the government of Norway and the Order de Rio Branco from the Republic of Brazil for her cultural diplomacy.

Among the major modern and contemporary exhibitions she has curated and/or organized for travel are the first surveys of Carrie Mae Weems (1994), Sarah Charlesworth (1997); two groundbreaking exhibitions of Brazilian art -- Ultramodern (1993) and Virgin Territory (2001); The Magic of Remedios Varo (2000), Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks (2000), Alice Neel's Women (2005); and the upcoming Fall 2008 Role Models: Feminine Identity in Contemporary American Photography; as well as a host of projects in the museum's acclaimed contemporary Forefront series. She also has enhanced the museum's reputation by bringing significant traveling exhibitions to NMWA such as A History of Women Photographers (1997), Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art (1997), Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire (2000), and most recently, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007).

Sterling also has significantly expanded NMWA's holdings in contemporary photography and photo-based art, abstract painting and sculpture since 1960, and feminist art.

As deputy director she has been charged with supervising programs and staff in the curatorial, education, and registrar's departments, as well as the museum's renowned library and research center, and directly oversaw the budget for these departments.

The museum, which announced the completion of its first endowment campaign, raised more than $40 million in pledges, cash, and planned giving during its 20th Anniversary in 2007, creating a newfound financial stability upon which to build its programs.

"I am truly energized and honored to assume the directorship at this special moment in the museum's history. Working in concert with NMWA's dedicated board and staff, we will build upon our strong twenty-year foundation through imaginative approaches to programming and cultural partnerships," said Sterling. "I am confident that our future is bright as NMWA continues to build its audiences and carry the message of equity for women artists to a new generation."

The National Museum of Women in the Arts, founded in 1981 and opened in 1987, is the only museum dedicated solely to celebrating the achievements of women in the visual, performing, and literary arts. Its permanent collection contains works by more than 800 artists. The Museum maintains a Library and Research Center accessible to the public by appointment. The Museum is located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, in a landmark building near the White House. For information, visit the Museum's website at http://www.nmwa.org/.

The Venus of Long Island City

2008-04-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

Tee Corinne - Cunt Coloring Book - 1975.

Much of the art in “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” is fully experimental, made by the seat of its jeans and pleats of its skirts. In fact, the best way to look at the show is as a walk-in catalogue, a consciousness- raising session, and a class reunion. It’s devoted to the artistic soldiers of the women’s movement from 1965 to 1980, and it’s all here, the good and the bad: cringe-inducing off-the-wall goddess worship, icky dirty-hippie art, lighter-than-air pattern-and-decoration painting, porn as art, breast-beating, bra-burning, the joys and sorrows of second-wave sex, man-hating, woman-loving, bushy hair, aviator glasses, and the revolutionary power of women’s laughter and anger. Nearly every trope in favor today—from photography-based painting to performance, appropriation, scatter art, process art, endurance art, “Relational Aesthetics,” and institutional critique—was either invented or extended back then. This P.S. 1 show is loaded with DIY ingenuity, passion, and literal blood and guts.

There’s so much to be knocked out by: Joan Semmel’s photorealistic paintings of herself having sex seen from her point of view, Shigeko Kubota painting with a brush stuck to her crotch, Cosey Fanni Tutti posing in porn magazines, Eleanor Antin documenting herself on a diet, and Carolee Schneemann pulling a scroll from her vagina and reading it. It’s a rush of old memories and the lust for life.

Let one example suffice for all. Compare Tee Corinne’s explicit little pencil drawing of female genitalia, from her Cunt Coloring Book, to the most famous rendition of the subject in all of art, Courbet’s Origin of the World, which is on view right now at the Met. Courbet’s magnificent eye-peeling, psyche-challenging spread-eagle essentially depicts the dark mystery of female sexuality, the vagina as void. Everything in the painting simultaneously hits you in the face and pulls you into the shadowy cleft. Corinne’s drawing is nowhere near as powerful, but it is far more anatomically detailed and infused with feeling. Instead of obdurateness she gives us labial interface, clitoral hood, flesh, texture, wrinkles, different thicknesses of skin, and so on. Courbet’s painting is one vagina as all vaginas, a source-of-the-Nile Ur-vagina. Corinne’s is about specificity, sensation, vulnerability, and voluptuousness. If Courbet’s work is woman as Venus flytrap, Corinne’s is more like woman as Delta of Venus. Most interesting, however, she also subtly transfers the idea of male sexual power through phallic visibility to the female sex organ.

Expertly organized by the Museum of Modern Art’s chief drawings curator, Connie Butler, “WACK!” is also an occasion to ask yet again about female representation in the art world, an issue that I’ve discussed here before. In 1972 it was hard for women to get their work into galleries and museums. Yet it was impossible to be in the art world then and not be totally aware of the form-changing dynamism of women’s art. Today, museums love the art of the period. They do massive survey exhibitions of Smithson and Serra. Where are the surveys of Lynda Benglis, Dorothea Rockburne, Adrian Piper, and Sturtevant? By my count, totaling up the shows and projects at the Guggenheim since 2000, only 24 percent are by women. MoMA and the Whitney are a few percent better. The gallery scene is even worse: One Saturday three weeks ago, I checked out every show in every ground-floor gallery in Chelsea from 18th Street to 26th Street. Of 74 solos, only 16 percent were by women. The art in “WACK!” may have changed the way art looks—but it didn’t quite change the way it works.

Women artists need chutzpah

2008-04-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

"For a woman to be a success, she needs chutzpah, like red legs and high-heeled shoes," says photographer Ruth Oren, who catches the sexy, confident, on-the-go side of modern womanhood in a work entitled, "Red Feet" at a Tel Aviv exhibition marking International Women's Day (March 8).

Oren's photograph of the lower part of "Woman," a life-sized Joan Miro metal sculpture (1.30 m high) on the terrace of the eponymous museum in Barcelona, is one of 64 works by an equal number of artists in "The Faces of Eve." The exhibition by and about women ran until April 4 at the Bible Museum (also known as Dizengoff House) on Tel Aviv's bustling, regentrified Rothschild Boulevard.

The show reveals "the incredible richness of women's roles in our society," says curator Zina Bercovici. "It is an eclectic exhibit of a variety of themes and media with works by primarily Israeli artists, who have contributed one work apiece." Topping the list of themes is woman as mother: nursing, joyous, grieving and pregnant. Woman is also depicted as angel, bride, clown, dancer, Eve, gypsy, mermaid, musician, queen, sphinx and temptress. One genre, however, is conspicuous by its absence: the nude. Bercovici explains, "Nudes are for men's eyes and delight. Our goal is to show how women see themselves."

Males are also largely absent as subject matter, with the exception of several sculptures of men and women dancing. Says Bercovici, "The exhibition is not about man versus woman or even the two in harmony. It is instead about how a woman artist perceives herself when she is not in the glare of a male gaze." If "feminism" can be defined as a movement that concerns itself with gender inequalities, the art in this exhibition would be more accurately described as female, not feminist art.

Do women have a different approach than men when creating or portraying women in art? Exhibition-goer Dina Levy, a 63-year-old housewife from Tel Aviv, believes that subjects like childbirth and breastfeeding are more authentically portrayed by women. Moshe Katz, an Israeli artist who has worked in Paris and Chicago, disagrees, saying that those subjects are "banal, lacking depth, even kitschy," and that an artist of either gender can paint a woman breastfeeding. It isn't the subject itself but the treatment that is significant, says Katz, adding: "I would prefer to see a female artist take on something serious, like the Oedipus complex." Katz was also offended that only women were invited to the opening.

"Imagine the outcry if it had been 'for men only.' Men have something valid to say about women," he adds.

Artist Liliana Livneh, who came to Israel from Argentina in 1977, concurs. She believes that men have special insight into women, sometimes even better than a woman herself, citing the cinematic works of Spaniard Pedro Almodovar. Livneh's work "Faces" depicts a woman as a caryatid (a sculpted female figure in the shape of a column or a pillar serving as an architectural support). "First you see the external beauty, the usual way we approach a woman," Livneh explains. "Then we notice that she is hard at work supporting the architecture. The capital above her head represents her responsibility both as a mother and professional."

Another exhibitor Marlen Ferrer, a 55-year-old painter and environmental artist from Tivon, who came to Israel from South Africa in 1978, says she treats a figure of a woman gently, using gold leaf to show a jewel-like quality in her "Eve and Apple." Ferrer's working method is to begin with tar applied to the canvas, and through rubbing, to watch a shape begin to form. "This is the strength of women, from the dark sticky tar, a gentle soul arises," she says.

Bercovici, 50, a freelance curator from Haifa, initiated the project, which was supported by Bank Hapoalim and the German Embassy in Tel Aviv, after noticing that Israel's response to International Women's Day was minimal. "When I started to work, I was the only person preparing an exhibition." (Subsequently, Beit Ahoti, a gallery in south Tel Aviv mounted "The Silence of the Butterflies," by Hanan Abu Husein, a female Israeli-Arab artist from Umm el-Fahm in the north of Israel, who deals with the plight of Arab women in Palestinian and Israeli society). The city of Holon also joined the festivities (see box on page 39).

Bercovici, who emigrated from Bucharest, Romania, in 1983, says she was fortunate to have had a muse to guide her on this mission. Advising her both on the importance of Jewish women's artistic achievements as well as where to find them was Hedwig Brenner, who has recently completed the final tome of her three-volume opus on "Jewish Female Artists in the Visual Arts" (Hartung-Gorre Publishers, 1998-2007). It features comprehensive biographies of 1,030 artists and their work from Israel, the United States, England and Western Europe.

Like Bercovici, Brenner is a Haifaite who arrived from Romania, in 1982, following a career as a physiotherapist. She began her research on female artists in 1987. Now 89 years old, she is a vivacious, multilingual and outspoken champion of female artists, especially Jewish ones. Brenner, who studied art history at the University of Vienna until the Anschluss (Nazi takeover) of 1938, believes that female artists are more attuned to creativity than their male counterparts because they are closer to nature and its cycles. "Women are more sensitive to love, nature, flowers, children, animals. Men cannot be so near to children as women," she contends.

Brenner is passionate about female artists. She supports them not only because of their artistic talent but because they were shunned in the art world, and frequently not taken seriously once their gender was revealed. "Many times they had to exhibit work anonymously or under their husbands' names," she said during a speech on the opening night of the exhibition, going on to note that women suffer the extra burdens of marriage, home and children.

"Many female artists had to relinquish or seriously curtail their ambitions to suit their husbands' careers; or if they were married to artists, to stand in their shadows," she told The Report in her Haifa home, singling out artist Lee Krasner and her better-known husband Jackson Pollack, who were both American abstract expressionists; and sculptor and graphic artist Camille Claudel, model, confidante and lover of French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

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Wack! Art And The Feminist Revolution

2008-04-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

Helena Almeida, Pintura Habitada, 1975, 11 black and white photographs with acrylic paint, 19 x 23 inches, Collection Banco Privado.

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art. Organized by MOCA Ahmanson Curatorial Fellow Connie Butler for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, WACK! focuses on the crucial period of the 1970s, during which the majority of feminist activism and artmaking occurred internationally. Praising the exhibition, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Director Alanna Heiss notes: "In addition to exploring international occurrences of feminist art, the show emphasizes New York's role in the movement, as well as its relationship with each artist involved. This is a particularly happy coincidence for P.S.1, as Connie Butler, the curator of WACK! in Los Angeles, has since last year joined the staff at the Museum of Modern Art, and will work on the very special installation of the exhibition with P.S.1 Director of Operations and Exhibitions Design Antoine Guerrero". This exhibition will be displayed on the entire First and Second Floors, and in the Third Floor Main Gallery through May 12, 2008.

The exhibition spans the period of 1965 to 1980 and includes 120 artists and artist groups from the United States, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. WACK! includes work by women who operated within the political structure of feminism as well as women who did not necessarily embrace feminism as part of their practice, but were impacted by the movement. Comprising work in a broad range of media—including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance art—the exhibition is organized around themes based on media, geography, formal concerns, collective aesthetic, and political impulses. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

A series of performances and panel discussions presented in the Third Floor Main Gallery will connect featured artists with younger generations inspired by feminism. WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

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Art Of And By Women

2008-04-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

"Earth Birth" is among works by Judy Chicago in a show that features her and eight other feminist artists at Central Connecticut State University's Art Galleries beginning Thursday. (JUDY CHICAGO / March 6, 2008)

Judy Chicago once said she was challenging the notion of what art was supposed to be about by looking at human experience from a female perspective.

Her most famous work, "The Dinner Party," on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum, suggested that art had left the history of women unexplored.

And "The Birth Project" explored a transcendent aspect of the human experience that serious art had all but ignored.

More than 25 years of Chicago's art is represented in a show at Central Connecticut State University's Art Galleries beginning Thursday.

Aside from more than 20 works by Chicago ("The Dinner Party" is not among them), "Female Forms and Facets: Artwork by Women from 1975 to the Present," includes pieces by some of the most famous names in the feminist art movement.

New Britain's Penny Arcade, who was a teenage superstar in Andy Warhol's Factory and began working on her own shows in the 1980s, opens the show Thursday with a live performance created for the exhibit.

Some of Arcade's more famous performances, which draw on her Italian American working-class background, will be screened throughout the exhibition.

The exhibit is the brainchild of curator Robert Diamond. He was exploring feminist themes in his own art and hit upon the idea of a retrospective featuring the legends of the feminist art movement.

He began making calls and found the artists receptive to the idea.

"The idea was to focus on the representation of women by women," Diamond says. "You would normally have to go to New York or San Francisco or Los Angeles to see the work of these artists, but this show brings them together right here."

The roster of talent is impressive.

Carolee Schneemann offers two works created more than 20 years apart. Both "Interior Scroll" from 1975 and "Vulva's Morphia" from 1995 challenge taboos and the antiseptic manner in which male artists (and the men who dominate Madison Avenue marketing campaigns) gaze at the female form.

Unlike Chicago, whose work seems most concerned with aspects of the female experience that have been too long ignored, Schneemann offers a fresh look at subjects that have dominated art for centuries.

She rejects the male version of an idyllic female form and offers a more natural interest in a real woman's body.

The notion that women for centuries have been under the scrutiny of the male stare is a major theme of this exhibition.

Lisa Yuskavage contributes a small painting done in the style of the Dutch genre painters, which might be easy to overlook amid the larger works in the show.

The difference is that the women in the Dutch paintings aren't topless. Yuskavage's painting is both sensual but also a reminder of how women have been sexualized in art for centuries.

Such scrutiny takes a sinister turn in the work of Sara Risk, who died in 1998, at the age of 33, after creating a series of works illustrating her struggle with her own body image and with eating disorders.

The honesty of Risk's self-examination is powerful and poignant and should inspire viewers to make connections with other works in the exhibit.

The space at Central is intimate enough that one should be able to return to a work for further examination.

One theme certain to emerge is the way these artists re-examine the world.

Candice Raquel Lee reinterprets mythological subjects through the eyes of a 21st-century woman.

"My treatment of myth invites viewers to reassess initial impressions grounded in a conventional male eye," she writes in her artist's statement.

She says that the male eye perceives female bodies as passive and sexual.

Judy Fox also delves into mythology with "Venus," which refers to both the Earth Goddess and the idealized notions of the female figure represented by the Venus of Willendorf statuettes.

Janine Antoni examines another area overlooked in the sweep of art history as she explores the connection between mothers and daughters.

But the dominating force in the show is Chicago, who offered a new form of female-centered erotica and shook the foundation of a world accustomed to staring at woman instead of attempting to understand them.

FEMALE FORMS AND FACETS: ARTWORK BY WOMEN FROM 1975 TO THE PRESENT opens Thursday and runs through April 18 at the Central Connecticut State University Art Galleries.There is an opening reception Thursday from 4:30 to 8 p.m. featuring a live performance by Penny Arcade, as well as a chance to meet some of the artists.

The gallery is in Maloney Hall at 1615 Stanley St. on the CCSU campus. Admission is free. Hours are Monday through Friday, 1 to 4 p.m.

Turning Stereotypes Into Artistic Strengths

2008-04-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

“More, please” has been the critical response to “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” the survey of pioneering feminist art currently installed at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center. The Bronx Museum of the Arts anticipated the demand with “Making It Together: Women’s Collaborative Art and Community,” which focuses on the groups and collectives that linked feminist art to a larger social context.

Organized by the critic Carey Lovelace, “Making It Together” occupies part of the lobby and a small adjacent gallery. Conventional art objects are few and far between: pink-painted walls display archival photographs, manifestoes and other ephemera. The show is much smaller than “WACK!” but includes a wealth of historical material, much of which would be better served by a book or documentary film.

The theme is timely, at least; the current Whitney Biennial is rife with collaborative projects. For female artists of the ’70s and ’80s, collective practice had several advantages. In keeping with the anti-authoritarian spirit of the times, it played down the roles of the individual artist and the marketable artwork. It also turned the stereotype of women as inherently conciliatory and cooperative into a source of strength.

The consciousness-raising session generated ideas for artworks like the “Womanhouse” (1972), an installation created in a rundown Hollywood mansion by students of Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro at California Institute of the Arts. Documentation of the “Womanhouse” in “Making It Together” includes a photograph of Faith Wilding’s wall of crocheted spider webs (a recreated version can be seen in “WACK!”).

Art, especially performance art, was inseparable from activism. Leslie Labowitz and Suzanne Lacy’s “Three Weeks in May” (1977), a series of events including self-defense workshops and a performance on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall, raised awareness of sexual violence. “Making It Together” includes an installation documenting Ms. Labowitz and Ms. Lacy’s project, in which the word “RAPE,” stenciled in bold red letters, figures prominently.

Later groups used humor and satire to get the message across. The Waitresses and Mother Art staged performances in diners and Laundromats. The gorilla-masked Guerrilla Girls, represented by the poster “Guerrilla Girls Review the Whitney” (1987), continue to take museums to task for underrepresenting women in their collections. (The group’s Web site, guerrillagirls.com, currently features a letter to the California developer and art collector Eli Broad about the representation of women and artists of color in his collection.)

“Making It Together” includes in its definition of feminist art several community mural projects. A model of the “Great Wall of Los Angeles,” a collaboration between the artist Judy Baca and young Angelenos referred to her by the criminal justice system, is on display along with photographs of similar projects by Cityarts in New York.

The museum has even commissioned its own collaborative mural, “Activism Is Never Over,” by the graffiti artists Lady Pink, Doña, Muck and Toofly. Overlooking the lobby, it injects some much-needed color into the exhibition. The painting spells out the names of notable women from Betty Friedan to Nina Simone in a riot of different fonts, and quotes liberally from writers, activists and artists (including Jenny Holzer, who collaborated with Lady Pink in the ’80s).

All of this is more interesting as social history than as art history. “Making It Together” is an instructive supplement to “WACK!,” however, and a reminder that feminists could raise hell as well as consciousness.

“Making It Together: Women’s Collaborative Art and Community” is on view through Aug. 4 at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, at 165th Street, Morrisania; (718) 681-6000, bronxmuseum.org.

Smile Gallery exhibits feminist art

2008-04-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

Tucked around the corner of 22nd Street and Arch Street in Philadelphia lies a small art gallery hosting an exhibit with heavy subject matter and large artistic range. The Smile Gallery, also a café, is holding a show this month in honor of Women's History Month that is not overtly feminist but covers narrative and aesthetic works focusing on women's views of the world.

Everything from religious ideas to past memories of childhood are displayed in this show focusing on local women artists. Curator and Rowan professor Dr. Debra Miller chose this accumulation of artists because she had worked with them before and knew that each would add more variety and impact to the whole exhibit.

The show is not meant to be feminist in a political sense but in the idea that the works created are a woman's response to her world, according to Miller.

The gallery, which is reminiscent of the top of a small house, is composed of two main rooms and a narrow hallway. It is tight and enclosed, yet airy and bright.

"I chose this space because it is deceptively small and it allows things to flow together and the works draw your eye around the space," said Miller at the opening reception on March 14.

The front room opens up, exposing three artists' works that correlate with and complement one another. The first collection that immediately draws your attention is Lilliana Didovic's "My Journey." It is a vibrant and dynamic narrative of Didovic's life and journey from Yugoslavia to America, and primarily Philadelphia.

Expressive in execution and lively with color, Didovic's works are a celebration of life and her personal adventure.

"The work is not necessarily feminine," said Philadelphia resident Herb Sharp while observing Didovic's work at the reception. "They are just thought of a female looking back over their life."

The next group of works in the front room, which then lead to the small hallway of the gallery, is Betsy Alexander's art entitled "The Joy of Light." Using photography and reflective found objects to create crosses, Alexander focuses her work on the study and exploration of light and the images light can create. Right next to Alexander's bright and impacting photography is Madelen Warhola's "Slovakian Pop," which blends fine art and pop art influenced by her uncle Andy Warhol and folk art inspired by her grandmother. Creating silk-screened t-shirts and practicing pysanki, which is a Slovakian way of meticulously decorating eggs, Warhola has created a way to blend two very different and important parts of her family into one cohesive group of art.

Moving down the hall you will encounter little stuffed dolls, entitled "The Lost Souls Collection" by Francine Strauss. Combining cloth, buttons, lace and other found objects, Strauss creates the angelic dolls in representation of memories and the
people who have come before us.

In the back room you will find two more artists' works. To the left you will encounter expressive, colorful mixed media creations hanging from the wall. Rachel Citrino's collection entitled "Fecundita" could almost be the show stealer, incorporating emotion, power, and her inventive nature. Citrino depicts wonderful Italian landscapes with a childlike quality, using intense color and powerful lines.

"The colors are spectacular," said Philadelphia artist Michael Diprinzio. "Rachel's work gives a sense of Matisse's works."

This collection was created from Citrino's time spent in a painting studio in a little town located in Abruzzo, Italy, the birthplace of all four of her grandparents. The quiet town with only about 70 residents and medieval battle walls covering the whole exterior forced Citrino to look to the hills, a fertile lush landscape. Her works are renderings of a living nature and a beautiful world full of memories and history, including her own.

Following around to the right side of the room, Liz Nicklus' Reliquaries leaves the viewer with a final summary of what this show is all about. Nicklus, an artist for as long as she can remember, has created what seem to be treasure boxes of memories. Using old objects that she could never find reason to part with, Nicklus combines all media into small wooden boxes. They are autobiographical narratives of haunting and happy memories. Each box represents Nicklus' childhood observation of the women and absent father in her life. According to Nicklus, they are about the people who shape any woman's perspective on life and the standard that woman have to seemingly live up to.

This show is about the ideas of memories and life and how they influence women, the past and the present. The works are autobiographical. The ideas become essential by showing that all options are open to women today and that we have reached a place in time where a woman can become, create and experience any thing she chooses.

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