Donne Tempo - For Art's Sake - Whack! Art and the Feminist Revolution
Whack! Art and the Feminist Revolution
by Terre Jenkins, Donne Tempo
Washington, DC —You have only a few weeks left to take in the exhibit Whack! Art and the Feminist Revolution, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts Museum (NMWA), in Washington, D.C. The show includes more than 300 works by 118 women artists from around the world and is a multifaceted retrospective that illuminates the impact the women’s movement had on contemporary art from the 1960’s through 1980.
For
those of you unfamiliar with NMWA, the museum is
located a short distance from the National Mall in
D.C., on the corner of New York Avenue and 13th
Street, NW.
Founded in 1987 by the generous contribution of art and funds by Wilhemina Cole Holiday, the museum’s mission is to make women’s art more visible and respected and to address the previously held notion that there were no great women artists (for more information on NMWA, visit their Web site). With thousands of works by women in the permanent collection and several landmark shows to its credit it is therefore fitting that NMWA host a retrospective dedicated to feminist art.
It is difficult to describe this show simply. That is because the works produced by women artists during the 60’s and 70’s encompassed not only body politics but also equal rights, the politics of war and the civil rights movement.
The works range from the introspective and personal to the intensely confrontational. All stem from the belief that gender as well as race and sexual orientation are key factors in organizing culture. A belief reinforced by the struggle of women artists against a system that excluded them from shows in traditional museums and galleries. Even with the sheer volume of work that comprises’ this show, it is difficult to fully capture the anger, outrage and disparate feelings brought about by the feminist movement. Suffice it to say you will not come away with a coherent definition of feminist art but rather more a sense of its pluralistic reaction to social restrictions.
by Terre Jenkins, Donne Tempo
Washington, DC —You have only a few weeks left to take in the exhibit Whack! Art and the Feminist Revolution, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts Museum (NMWA), in Washington, D.C. The show includes more than 300 works by 118 women artists from around the world and is a multifaceted retrospective that illuminates the impact the women’s movement had on contemporary art from the 1960’s through 1980.
Founded in 1987 by the generous contribution of art and funds by Wilhemina Cole Holiday, the museum’s mission is to make women’s art more visible and respected and to address the previously held notion that there were no great women artists (for more information on NMWA, visit their Web site). With thousands of works by women in the permanent collection and several landmark shows to its credit it is therefore fitting that NMWA host a retrospective dedicated to feminist art.
It is difficult to describe this show simply. That is because the works produced by women artists during the 60’s and 70’s encompassed not only body politics but also equal rights, the politics of war and the civil rights movement.
The works range from the introspective and personal to the intensely confrontational. All stem from the belief that gender as well as race and sexual orientation are key factors in organizing culture. A belief reinforced by the struggle of women artists against a system that excluded them from shows in traditional museums and galleries. Even with the sheer volume of work that comprises’ this show, it is difficult to fully capture the anger, outrage and disparate feelings brought about by the feminist movement. Suffice it to say you will not come away with a coherent definition of feminist art but rather more a sense of its pluralistic reaction to social restrictions.
Continued in two parts below
(part one) As I mentioned ...
As I mentioned, there are more than 300 works:
paintings, photographs sculptures, textiles,
collages, and a lot of film and video pieces.
The show is housed on two floors of the museum
and I would recommend if you have the time, to
take in one floor then take a break before
viewing the second. There is a lot to take in,
a lot to consider about the work.
This
is not your ordinary retrospective collection.
The work can be challenging. There are pieces
that require a lot of reading and the film and
video works alone can take up an afternoon.
Don’t be dissuaded by this. I mention this only
to advise you to pace yourself. And take
someone with you if you can. I tried to get my
teenaged daughter to go with me to find out
whether she felt the work was relevant to
women’s issues today. I ended up taking my
boyfriend instead. He provided equally
interesting and thought provoking insights
about the work, despite having a penis.
Some of his favorite pieces were by Judy Chicago. It is heartening to listen to Judy Chicago on the free audio guide, describe “Though the Flower” as the result of her shedding “the male drag”. She describes how her early minimalist works reflect a denial of her femaleness and that she was painting “as if she were male.” “Though the Flower” was the breakthrough where Chicago was finally able to show a formal aesthetic that included female centered images. This is an important key to understanding the many works in this show. It also helps explain that while there were other women producing art during this period their work would not be considered a reflection of a feminist aesthetic and therefore would not fit in this show.
One of my favorite pieces is by Harmony Hammand, called Hunkertime, a sculptural piece consisting of several ladder-like objects wrapped with bits of found cloth and covered with a thin coating of latex. I appreciate the physical manipulation of materials and how the form of each separate ladder has a personality, and its own uniqueness. In her audio description, Hammand explains the ladders are stand-ins for women, “comfortable with their softness, lumps and bumps, leaning on each other, supporting each other, waiting for their moment of activism.” She continues by describing the significance of interior thought and exterior presentation and uses the feminist phase “the personal is political”. This phase embodies the context for this show and why, given that personal experience and perception is so varied, there is no single aesthetic that can used to view feminist art.
Some of his favorite pieces were by Judy Chicago. It is heartening to listen to Judy Chicago on the free audio guide, describe “Though the Flower” as the result of her shedding “the male drag”. She describes how her early minimalist works reflect a denial of her femaleness and that she was painting “as if she were male.” “Though the Flower” was the breakthrough where Chicago was finally able to show a formal aesthetic that included female centered images. This is an important key to understanding the many works in this show. It also helps explain that while there were other women producing art during this period their work would not be considered a reflection of a feminist aesthetic and therefore would not fit in this show.
One of my favorite pieces is by Harmony Hammand, called Hunkertime, a sculptural piece consisting of several ladder-like objects wrapped with bits of found cloth and covered with a thin coating of latex. I appreciate the physical manipulation of materials and how the form of each separate ladder has a personality, and its own uniqueness. In her audio description, Hammand explains the ladders are stand-ins for women, “comfortable with their softness, lumps and bumps, leaning on each other, supporting each other, waiting for their moment of activism.” She continues by describing the significance of interior thought and exterior presentation and uses the feminist phase “the personal is political”. This phase embodies the context for this show and why, given that personal experience and perception is so varied, there is no single aesthetic that can used to view feminist art.
(part two) “The personal is political” is why ...
“The personal is political” is why Whack! is
such a powerful show. It encompasses the range
of women’s personal experiences and presents
them with affirmation and challenge. It gives
us approachable works like Hammand’s along with
edgier, perhaps less comfortable works like
Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll, a folded
paper scroll removed from Schneemann’s vagina
during a performance.
The women represented in this show were not afraid to reclaim the objectified image of women and address issues of strength and community along with vulnerability, victimhood, misogynistic aggression, and degradation at the hands of men.
These
ideas may be subtle as with the video by Yoko
Ono who in her performance “Cut Piece” invites
audience members to cut off her clothes with
scissors or much more aggressive as with the
work of the artist who called herself Cosey
Fanni Tutti.
You will find her work in a room of its own owing to the hard-core pornographic nature of the work. The room is filled with photographs documenting her work as a porn star and the modeling she did for low-end hard-core magazines. The images are startling and degrading and left me feeling uncomfortable. But then that was an appropriate response given the subject matter. This body of work spurred a long conversation between my boyfriend and I. He challenged the assumption that a man would find the images titillating and confessed his own discomfort with the work. A question becomes then if it is shocking to see images taken by men of a naked woman and her female parts in what way are we to embrace the female image as portrayed by women? Can you divorce an image from its politics it you are unaware of its intent? This brings up some interesting ideas that perhaps should be the subject of a later article or forum in this space.
What we do have are with Whack! is a wealth of information, like a time capsule, that shows us the profound impact of feminism on the art world. Feminist art challenged the culturally pervasive idea of art-for-art-sake. It asserted that the message was as important as the medium. It used art as a powerful political tool. It provided a visual voice for women to say they refused to be dismissed or denigrated any longer.
I had one enduring question as I left the show: What impact does this work have on the women image-makers of this generation? As women and artists, where are we now? I hope together we can continue to search for answers to this and other questions on art. I hope you will have a chance to catch Whack! Before it closes on December 16th. If you should miss it here in Washington it will open next at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island (February 2008) and then move to the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia (summer 2008).
The women represented in this show were not afraid to reclaim the objectified image of women and address issues of strength and community along with vulnerability, victimhood, misogynistic aggression, and degradation at the hands of men.
You will find her work in a room of its own owing to the hard-core pornographic nature of the work. The room is filled with photographs documenting her work as a porn star and the modeling she did for low-end hard-core magazines. The images are startling and degrading and left me feeling uncomfortable. But then that was an appropriate response given the subject matter. This body of work spurred a long conversation between my boyfriend and I. He challenged the assumption that a man would find the images titillating and confessed his own discomfort with the work. A question becomes then if it is shocking to see images taken by men of a naked woman and her female parts in what way are we to embrace the female image as portrayed by women? Can you divorce an image from its politics it you are unaware of its intent? This brings up some interesting ideas that perhaps should be the subject of a later article or forum in this space.
What we do have are with Whack! is a wealth of information, like a time capsule, that shows us the profound impact of feminism on the art world. Feminist art challenged the culturally pervasive idea of art-for-art-sake. It asserted that the message was as important as the medium. It used art as a powerful political tool. It provided a visual voice for women to say they refused to be dismissed or denigrated any longer.
I had one enduring question as I left the show: What impact does this work have on the women image-makers of this generation? As women and artists, where are we now? I hope together we can continue to search for answers to this and other questions on art. I hope you will have a chance to catch Whack! Before it closes on December 16th. If you should miss it here in Washington it will open next at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island (February 2008) and then move to the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia (summer 2008).