12 / THE FEMINIST PRESENT: WOMEN ARTISTS AT MOMA / CORNELIA BUTLER 84 / JODI HAUPTMAN / SONIA DELAUNAY-TERK
88 / JYTTE JENSEN / ASTA NIELSEN
28 / THE MISSING FUTURE: MoMA AND MODERN WOMEN / GRISELDA POLLOCK 92 / ANNE UMLAND / GEORGIA OKEEFFE
96 / JUDITH B. HECKER / SYBIL ANDREWS
56 / FLOAT THE BOAT!: FINDING A PLACE FOR FEMINISM IN THE MUSEUM
100 / ANNE UMLAND / FRIDA KAHLO
/ ARUNA DSOUZA
232 / MIDCENTURY
124 / CROSSING THE LINE: FRANCES BENJAMIN JOHNSTON
370 / CONTEMPORARY
AND GERTRUDE KSEBIER AS PROFESSIONALS AND ARTISTS
/ SARAH HERMANSON MEISTER
523 / INDEX
158 / A COLLECTIVE AND ITS INDIVIDUALS: THE BAUHAUS AND ITS WOMEN
234 / ANNE MORRA / IDA LUPINO 372 / ESTHER ADLER / ADRIAN PIPER
238 / EMILY TALBOT / ELIZABETH CATLETT 376 / NORA LAWRENCE / LYNDA BENGLIS
242 / ROMY SILVER / AGNES MARTIN 380 / CHRISTOPHE CHERIX / HANNE DARBOVEN
246 / LILIAN TONE / LEE BONTECOU 384 / EVA RESPINI / NAN GOLDIN
250 / SAMANTHA FRIEDMAN / ANNE TRUITT 388 / ESTHER ADLER / ANA MENDIETA
254 / JENNIFER FIELD / BRIDGET RILEY 392 / ANDRES LEPIK / ZAHA HADID
258 / ANN TEMKIN / EVA HESSE 396 / CHRISTIAN RATTEMEYER / CADY NOLAND
262 / SUSAN KISMARIC / DIANE ARBUS 400 / PAOLA ANTONELLI / IRMA BOOM
266 / PAT KIRKHAM AND YENNA CHAN / DENISE SCOTT BROWN / LELLA VIGNELLI 404 / SARAH SUZUKI / LIN TIANMIAO
270 / LAURENCE KARDISH / AGNS VARDA 408 / PAULINA POBOCHA / JANET CARDIFF and GEORGE BURES MILLER
274 / DEBORAH WYE / LOUISE BOURGEOIS
278 / WOMEN, MoMA, AND MIDCENTURY DESIGN / JULIET KINCHIN 412 / MIND, BODY, SCULPTURE: ALICE AYCOCK, MARY MISS,
JACKIE WINSOR IN THE 1970s / ALEXANDRA SCHWARTZ
300 / MAYA DERENS LEGACY / SALLY BERGER
428 / FUNDAMENTAL TO THE IMAGE: FEMINISM AND ART IN THE 1980s
316 / ABSTRACTION, ORGANISM, APPARATUS: NOTES ON THE PENETRABLE
/ JOHANNA BURTON
STRUCTURE IN THE WORK OF LYGIA CLARK, GEGO, AND MIRA SCHENDEL
/ LUIS PREZ-ORAMAS 444 / RIOT ON THE PAGE: THIRTY YEARS OF ZINES BY WOMEN / GRETCHEN L. WAGNER
334 / PERFORMATIVITY IN THE WORK OF FEMALE JAPANESE ARTISTS 462 / FROM FACE TO MASK: COLLAGE, MONTAGE,
IN THE 1950s1960s AND THE 1990s / YUKO HASEGAWA AND ASSEMBLAGE IN CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITURE / ROXANA MARCOCI
352 / FROM VIDEO TO INTERMEDIA: A PERSONAL HISTORY / BARBARA LONDON 480 / IN THE WAKE OF THE NEGRESS / HUEY COPELAND
This publication celebrates a sustained research effort exploratory process spearheaded by Mary Lea Bandy, To celebrate the publication of this book, a series of on the Museums board of trustees, who lead by example
focused on women artists whose work is in the collection Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator new collection installations will unfold over a six-month through their unflagging commitment and support. In
of The Museum of Modern Art. Their contributions have of Film and Media, a cross-departmental group of curators period in 2010, in the Museums medium-based collection particular I acknowledge the leadership and generosity
shaped not only the history of our institution but also was formed to begin research on women artists in the galleries, its archives, and its theaters. Each curatorial of Jerry I. Speyer, Chairman, and Marie-Jose Kravis,
the history of modernism for which it stands. Museums collection and to develop and lead a series of department has devised a strategy for highlighting its President.
It also bears witness to the many other women public initiatives exploring the subject. In support of this holdings of work by women artists, with the goal of subtly I am deeply grateful to Sarah Peter, whose continued
curators, founders, administrators, philanthropists ongoing project, the Modern Womens Fund was estab- yet assertively increasing the presence of women artists commitment has ensured the completion of this mile-
who have, with these artists, contributed to the formation lished in 2005. Bandy retired, and that year Deborah Wye, throughout the building. The Architecture and Design stone publication and the exhibitions that coincide with
and continuity of the Museum and to the quality of its Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, took over Galleries will feature kitchen design, highlighting the and celebrate it.
collections and exhibitions. as leader of the group, which evolved to include Sally recent acquisition of Margarete Schtte-Lihotzkys
Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Berger, Assistant Curator, Department of Film; Cornelia Frankfurt Kitchen (192627); film exhibitions will focus Glenn D. Lowry
Modern Art represents the culmination of a five-year Butler, Chief Curator of Drawings; Tina di Carlo, Assistant on such figures as Maya Deren, Lillian Gish, and Sally Director, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
initiative known internally as the Modern Womens Curator, and Alexandra Quantrill, Curatorial Assistant, Potter; a major, recently acquired sculpture by Lee
Project. It is our ambition that this unprecedented, insti- Department of Architecture and Design; Susan Kismaric, Bontecou will anchor an in-depth presentation of her
tution-wide effort will ultimately influence the narratives Curator, Department of Photography; Barbara London, work in the Painting and Sculpture Galleries, and works
of modernism the Museum represents by arguing for a Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance by women artists (many recently acquired) will be on
more complex understanding of the art of our time. The Art; Alexandra Schwartz, Curatorial Assistant, Department display in various public spaces throughout the Museum;
title of this volume, Modern Women, immediately maps of Drawings; and Anne Umland, Curator, Department of a collaboration between curators of drawings and prints
the territory of its contents. This is not a history of Painting and Sculpture. In 2007 Butler took over for Wye, and illustrated books will highlight the work of Mona
feminist art or of feminist artists, although a number of and the group gained new members: Leah Dickerman, Hatoum, Yayoi Kusama, Anna Maria Maiolino, and Alina
the artists featured here claim feminisms accomplishments Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture; Juliet Szapocznikow, among others, in an installation exploring
or insist on a feminist discourse to contextualize their Kinchin, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design; the intersection of abstraction, architecture, and the body;
work. With some important exceptions, this is not a group and Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of the Photography Galleries will feature a history of photog-
of artists that coheres beyond the rubric of gender. And, Photography. I am grateful to these colleagues, particularly raphy told through the work of women artists; and the
certainly, it is only a sampling of the work by women Cornelia Butler and Alexandra Schwartz, the editors of Media and Performance Art Galleries will feature Joan
artists in the Museums collection. This publication is, this volume, for their development of a series of initiatives Jonass work Mirage (1976/2003). A retrospective exhibition
in a sense, a work in progress, an artifact of a continuous at the Museum on the subject of women artists and of the performance and media art of Marina Abramovic
effort to research our collection and rethink the consensus modernism, including an international symposium, a will occupy the large, sixth-floor galleries and atrium of
of art history. major publication, educational programs, and exhibitions, the Museum.
This period of particular focus on women artists at and for catalyzing an ongoing and affirmative push for Starting in 1929, with Lillie P. Bliss, Abby Aldrich
the Museum was sparked by Sarah Peter, a philanthropist greater scholarship on the women artists in the collection, Rockefeller, and Mary Quinn Sullivan, the Museums three
and artist. With true generosity of spirit, she approached past, present, and future. Their rigorous and passionate founders, MoMA has benefited from the intelligence,
the institution in 2004 with a broad proposal for the commitment has foregrounded an ongoing discussion generosity, and adventurous spirit of the women who
development of programs to benefit women at MoMA. within the institution around issues of gender and art. have been the backbone of this institution, and I am
After a wide range of possibilities were discussed in an grateful to them. As always I thank the women and men
8 9
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Publications. Kara Kirk, Associate Publisher; Emily Hall, Development, played an important role throughout. Former We warmly thank the staff of the Museum Library and
Art is the product of five years of intensive research and Associate Editor; Rebecca Roberts, Senior Assistant Museum staff members Fereshteh Daftari and David Little Archives, including MacKenzie Bennett, Sheelagh Bevan,
preparation, and we are enormously grateful to the many Editor; Christina Grillo, Production Manager; Hannah also contributed greatly to the project. Throughout, we Michelle Elligott, Michelle Harvey, Milan Hughston, David
people who have been part of that process. Kim, Marketing and Book Development Coordinator; and were aided by numerous researchers and interns; in Senior, and Jenny Tobias, for their invaluable assistance
Our most profound thanks go to Sarah Peter, who in Sam Cate-Gumpert, Carole Kismaric Mikolaycak Intern in particular we extend our thanks to Romy Silver, Research with research; the staff of the Department of Imaging
2005 established the Modern Womens Fund, dedicated to Publishing, were truly heroic, bringing this book to fruition Assistant; interns Jessica Fain, Frances Jacobus-Parker, Services, including Thomas Griesel, Robert Kastler, Erik
research on work by women in the Museums collection. with astonishing skill, care, and grace under enormous Joyce Kuechler, and Julia Monk; and the students in the Landsberg, Jonathan Muzikar, Roberto Rivera, Jennifer
This book is the centerpiece of that initiative, and we are pressure. Christopher Hudson, Publisher; David Frankel, Columbia University art history graduate seminars Sellar, Rosa Smith, and John Wronn, for the huge amount
deeply grateful for her generous support and leadership Editorial Director; and Marc Sapir, Production Director, Women Artists at MoMA (team taught; led by Deborah of new photography undertaken for this book; and the
and her great enthusiasm for this project. She has been devoted huge amounts of time and effort to this project. Wye, spring 2007) and Feminist Practices and Art office of the General Counsel, particularly Nancy Adelson
and will continue to bean inspiration to everyone at We are most grateful for their guidance, wisdom, and Institutions (Cornelia Butler and Alexandra Schwartz, and Dina Sorokina, for advice regarding image rights and
the Museum. expertise. We are no less indebted to Bethany Johns, spring 2008), who provided research assistance and oppor- permissions. Great thanks go also to the staff of the
This book would not exist without the contributions whose impeccable design, tireless work, and terrific tunities for exploration and discussion. Department of Drawings, especially Esther Adler,
of its numerous authors. We are deeply grateful to the patience quite literally made the book. We would like to We are tremendously grateful to our many colleagues Geaninne Gutirrez-Guimares, Ji Hae Kim, and John
following scholars: from outside the Museum, Carol thank the Museums editorial board, which offered helpful at MoMA. We would like particularly to thank Glenn D. Prochilo, for their support and good cheer. Among other
Armstrong, Johanna Burton, Yenna Chan, Beatriz Colomina, advice in formulating the book, as well as Kyle Bentley, Lowry, Director, for his vision and leadership, and Kathy past and present MoMA staff, we would like to particu-
Huey Copeland, Aruna DSouza, Yuko Hasegawa, Pat Kate Norment, and Susan Richmond, whose editorial Halbreich, Associate Director; Michael Margitich, Senior larly thank Carla Bianchi, Caitlin Condell, Sarah Cooper,
Kirkham, Mary McLeod, Helen Molesworth, Griselda contributions were invaluable. We also extend our thanks Deputy Director for External Affairs; Peter Reed, Senior Kathy Curry, Carrie Elliott, Paul Galloway, Whitney
Pollock, Tai Smith, and Sally Stein; and, from inside the to Sharon Gallagher and Avery Lozada of Distributed Art Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs; and Jennifer Gaylord, Alexandra Lee, Erica Papernik, Jennifer Schauer,
Museum, Esther Adler, Paola Antonelli, Sally Berger, Publishers/D.A.P. for their enthusiasm for this project. Russell, Senior Deputy Director for Exhibitions, Collec- Emily Talbot, Lilian Tone, Steve West, and Gillian Young,
Christophe Cherix, Michelle Elligott, Jennifer Field, Starr The book was developed at the Museum by a working tions, and Programs, for their ongoing support. Chief who provided essential help with imaging, captioning,
Figura, Samantha Friedman, Jodi Hauptman, Jenny He, group of curators that was deeply involved at every stage Curators Barry Bergdoll, Klaus Biesenbach, Peter Galassi, and other matters. Many thanks go as well to Carol
Judith B. Hecker, Jytte Jensen, Laurence Kardish, Juliet of its progress. We would like to thank the members Rajendra Roy, Ann Temkin, and Deborah Wye, with Armstrong, Rosalyn Deutsche, Richard Meyer, and
Kinchin, Susan Kismaric, Nora Lawrence, Andres Lepik, of this group: Mary Lea Bandy, former Deputy Director Wendy Woon, Director of Education, offered generous Elisabeth Sussman.
Barbara London, Roxana Marcoci, Sarah Hermanson for Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator of Film and Media; guidance and the full cooperation and assistance of their We are profoundly grateful to the rights holders of
Meister, Anne Morra, Luis Prez-Oramas, Paulina Pobocha, Sally Berger, Assistant Curator, Department of Film; Tina departments. As the book neared completion and an the many works pictured in this book for their generosity
Christian Rattemeyer, Eva Respini, Romy Silver, Sarah di Carlo, Assistant Curator, Juliet Kinchin, Curator, and extensive roster of exhibitions and educational programs in allowing them to be reproduced.
Suzuki, Emily Talbot, Ann Temkin, Lilian Tone, Anne Alexandra Quantrill, Curatorial Assistant, Department celebrating it were planned, numerous other colleagues Finally we must salute the hundreds of artists whose
Umland, Gretchen L. Wagner, and Deborah Wye. Their of Architecture and Design; Leah Dickerman, Curator, became involved in the project, including Laura Beiles, works are highlighted in this book and housed in the
essays speak for themselves, and their research has and Anne Umland, Curator, Department of Painting and Sara Bodinson, Allegra Burnette, Maggie Lederer DErrico, Museums collection. Theirs is a history and production
contributed immeasurably to our ongoing study of the Sculpture; Susan Kismaric, Curator, and Eva Respini, Margaret Doyle, Beth Harris, Jenny He, Pablo Helguera, too profound to be contained within the pages of any
Museums collection. Associate Curator, Department of Photography; Barbara Jytte Jensen, Roxana Marcoci, Sarah Hermanson Meister, volume. It is to them we give our deepest respect
A book of this size and scope is inevitably a complex London, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Kim Mitchell, Anne Morra, Aidan OConnor, Veronica and thanks.
endeavor, and we had the great fortune to work with Performance Art; and Deborah Wye, Chief Curator of Roberts, Daniela Stigh, Sarah Suzuki, Jenny Tobias, and
an extraordinary team in the Museums Department of Prints and Illustrated Books. Lisa Mantone, Director of Leslie Urea, and we extend sincere thanks to them. Cornelia Butler and Alexandra Schwartz
10 11
THE FEMINIST PRESENT:
WOMEN ARTISTS AT MOMA / CORNELIA BUTLER
I would call feminine the moment of rupture and What is remarkable about this text is how ahead of its
negativity which conditions the newness of any practice. time it was. Many women artists still deny the idea of a
Julia Kristeva 1 female art, Sauzeau-Boetti wrote. Art is good or bad, but
has no sex. Speaking from a European point of view, mid-
I dont believe in feminist art since art is a mysterious way through the decade in which second-wave feminism
filtering process which requires the labyrinths of a took hold in the West, she both identified feminisms
single mind, the privacy of alchemy, the possibility of deficiencies while deploying another, unexpected patri-
exception and unorthodoxy rather than rule. mony for womens work in her nod to Duchamp, claiming
Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti 2 for feminism the radical proposal of a fluid, ready-made
artistic identity. She suggested that feminist practice, or
rather the practices of some women artists, launch a pro-
When in 1976 Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti wrote an impor- cess of differentiation. Not the project of fixing meanings
tant but little-known article titled Negative Capability but of breaking them up and multiplying them. 5 Sauzeau-
as Practice in Womens Art, she appropriated for women Boettis understanding of the possibilities of an artistic
artists the notion of the productive space of the margin. practice ignited by negative capability was provocative
What she called, in that article, the double space of in its encouragement of an equal critical playing field for
incongruence is a reworking of an idea first penned by male and female artists. But what might her Keatsian or
John Keats in 1817, in which he described the ideal state of Duchampian model mean for curatorial and museological
mind of the poet or artist as capable of being in uncer- practice in the twenty-first century? Is there a way to
tainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching internalize negative capability in an institution such as
after facts and reason.3 The idea of embracing uncertainty The Museum of Modern Art, whose role in the very
and doubt as a framework for making art (and life) seems construction of Western art history requires persistent
extremely relevant for the current shifting economies and reexamination? What might a feminist presenta history
international discourse of change. Flexing the muscle of set in motion by such examinationlook like at a place
poetic license Sauzeau-Boetti takes Keats a step further. like MoMA?
Claiming his position for the feminine, she knowingly To begin to answer these questions, let us consider
declared in a sly aside that Keats and Marcel Duchamp three examples of disruption, three instances when the
let their own feminine identity bloom quite freely, spirit of a negative capability might be said to have been
referring to Duchamps reinvention of himself as his provocatively and even humorously enacted. In each of
female alter ego in his infamous self-portrait in drag, these cases women artists actively blurred the boundaries
Rrose Slavy (1921).4 of curatorial and artistic praxis, questioning the locus
of power and authorship. Each a product of their respec-
tive historical moment, they include an exhibition as
1. View of the exhibition Projects 70:
conceptual provocation in 1971; exhibition as historical
Janine Antoni, Shahzia Sikander,
Kara Walker (Banners Project, Series recuperation in 1995; and exhibition as intervention
3), The Museum of Modern Art, New in 2000.
York, November 22, 2000March 13,
2001. Photographic Archive. The
Museum of Modern Art Archives,
New York 13
On December 2, 1971, an advertisement ran in the work now in MoMAs collection, Ono has recalled at
Village Voice for a one-woman exhibition, showing an the time feeling compelled to address the absence of her
image manipulated and altered by the artist, Yoko Ono, own representation as an artist; by occupying the sculp-
of The Museum of Modern [F]art, with Ono carrying the ture garden, the sidewalk, and the liminal spaces of the
missing f emblazoned on a shopping bag as she walked viewers attention and response, she infiltrated an institu-
beneath the Museums marquee. A one-hundred-page tional situation to which, as a woman artist, she had no
catalogue, sold for one dollar, would, according to the other access.7
advertisement, document the event. For a period of two As part of MoMAs exhibition series Artists Choice,
weeks visitors encountered, on the sidewalk outside Elizabeth Murray was invited in 1995 to organize an 3. View of the exhibition 4. View of the exhibition Sense
MoMAs entrance, a man wearing a sandwich board bear- exhibition from the collection. Artists Choice had been Artists Choice: Elizabeth and Sensibility: Women Artists
ing a message about flies that had been released into the conceived in 1989 to see the collection of The Museum curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Murray, The Museum and Minimalism in the
of Modern Art, New York, Nineties, The Museum of
Museums sculpture garden carrying the artists perfume. of Modern Art in a new way and functioned as a means of described the exhibition as one that took the viewer into June 19August 22, 1995. Modern Art, New York,
His presence was the only physical evidence of the bringing artists directly into the institutional discourse.8 a different territory, opening onto the sociological histo- Photographic Archive. June 15September 11, 1994.
The Museum of Modern Photographic Archive. The
purported exhibition; visitors were variously amused, Murrays exhibition (no. 3) featured paintings and sculp- ries of modern art and of this Museum, and embracing Art Archives, New York Museum of Modern Art
mystified, or disgusted by the ruse, and the Museums tures solely by women artists, a selection criterion that unresolved debates about the interplay of biological and Archives, New York
box office found it necessary to put a small, handmade was, as she states in her frank introduction in the exhibi- societal factors in an individuals creativity. 10 I was deeply
sign showing the Village Voice ad in its window, stating, tions brochure, the first and only idea that occurred to her affected by that exhibition, which, literally bringing to textual manipulation was subtle, subversive, and openly
THIS IS NOT HERE. 6 A self-proclaimed feminist with as a curatorial premise.9 Kirk Varnedoe, then the chief light many works that had rarely been on view, was a rev- hilarious: MoM, rendered in the same classic Helvetica
elation and profoundly moving. That Murray would have that declares MoMAs cultural authority as much as its
one of the only retrospective exhibitions in the Museums graphic identity, thus performing a sly institutional drag.
history devoted to a woman painterher survey exhibi- Simultaneously an announcement of institutional self-
tion, organized by Robert Storr, opened in 2005, not long criticality, a matriarchy not yet realized, and a critical
before her untimely death in 2007makes her Artists riff on the monolith of modernism, Antonis banner had
Choice selection that much more prescient. In what an uneasy succinctness that resonated with both uniniti-
Varnedoe described as a remaking of ancestry, Murrays ated viewers and art-world insiders, making its own
inclusive curatorial strategy issued a challenge to subse- revisionist case.
quent generations of curators and proposed a kind of And there have been other disruptive moments in
feminist potential for rethinking knowledge production.11 the Museums history.12 In 1988 Barbara Kruger organized
2. But Is It Art? Security
officer Roy Williams pleads By 2000 MoMA, like most museums exposed to a Picturing Greatness, essentially a protoArtists Choice
with nude young men and decade of globalism, was more aggressively attempting to exhibition (no. 5). At the invitation of Susan Kismaric and
women to leave Museum of
Modern Art pool, where redress its history not only with women artists but also the Department of Photography, Kruger selected photo-
Maillols sculpture, Girl with artists from diverse cultural positions. As part of graphic portraits of famous artists in order to explore
Washing Her Hair [sic],
the Projects series, which highlights emerging artists, notions of greatness. For the wall text introducing the
reclines. Impromptu nude-in
was conception of Japanese Fereshteh Daftari, an assistant curator of Painting and exhibition she wrote, Vibrating with inspiration yet impla-
artist Yayoi Kusama (right). Sculpture, selected a trio of artists, Janine Antoni, Shahzia cably well behaved, visceral yet oozing with all manner of
Crowd takes it in stride, New
York Daily News, August 25, Sikander, and Kara Walker, to alter the banners that greet refinement, almost all are male and almost all are white. 13
1969, cover. Archives pedestrians on West Fifty-third Street on the approach to And in the early years of political feminism there was
Pamphlet Files: Sculpture
the Museum (the same block on which visitors would Lucy R. Lippards contribution to Kynaston McShines
Garden. The Museum of
Modern Art Archives, New York have encountered Onos sandwich board) (no. 1). Antonis legendary exhibition Information in 1970, the same year
POLLOCK 31
of wealthy women in culturally enriching activities was an collection of modern art (later donated to MoMA). Kantor
extension of their widespread nineteenth-century role in also points to the impact of the patronage of modern
philanthropy and social service.2 Collecting and museum art by the collector John Quinn, another organizer of
building were, furthermore, social strategies and cultural the Armory Show, whose substantial collection was put
mechanisms for legitimating the very visible forms of up for auction in New York in 1926 and was thus made
social difference and privilege created by both old and visible, for a brief moment, to the small but influential
new wealth in the modern industrial era.3 As modernist groups of collectors, artists, and emerging curators
critic Clement Greenberg, in his most left-wing moment, interested in modern art, for whom the idea of a more
astutely pointed out in 1939, the artistic avant-garde, permanent display was thus stimulated. (Quinn was
while attempting to escape ideological subservience to an indefatigable collector and patron of Gwen John.
the new bourgeoisie by its self-imposed social exile, was In 1971 his sister gave Johns Girl Reading at a Window
nonetheless inevitably, and inescapably, tied to the repre- [1911, no. 5] to the Museum.)
sentatives of social and economic power by an umbilical In addition, Kantor identifies the important work of
cord of gold.4 Without the financial resources of those Katherine Dreier (no. 6), who with Marcel Duchamp and
adventurous and progressive sections of the new moneyed Man Ray founded the Socit Anonyme in 1920, an exper-
class, the independent enterprise of individualist, avant- imental project they called a Museum of Modern Art. The
gardist art-making could not have been sustained. group fostered the exhibiting, collecting, and teaching of
Modernism and modern social processes were thus inex- European and American modernist art, and produced a
tricably, if sometimes contradictorily, aligned. They crossed major show at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926 (no. 7).7 As
most visibly in the formation of The Museum of Modern yet another factor behind the founding of MoMA, Kantor
Art in New York in 1929. notes Museum Work and Museum Problems, an innovative
Legend has it that on a journey to Egypt in the winter curatorial program at Harvard University directed by Paul
of 192829, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller met modernist art Sachs. MoMAs first director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., partici-
collector Lillie P. Bliss. They discussed the project for a pated in the course in 192425, encountering, as would
museum of modern art. On her return crossing Rockefeller other influential museum curators after him, Sachss
traveled with Mary Quinn Sullivan, who became the third method of connoisseurship, which itself was based in
key woman player in the founding of The Museum of that of Bernard Berenson.
Modern Art, which opened in November 1929.5 In her Historical events are always the effect of many
detailed historical account of the varied intellectual origins determinations and relations rather than the product of
of the Museum, Sybil Kantor revises the narrative by individual initiatives. It is, however, the very contradiction
reminding us that the creation of a museum dedicated between the undoubtedly influential role of certain women
to modern art was already being discussed in New York in founding and shaping MoMA and the vision of modern
during the 1920s.6 Conditions for such an initiative had art that the Museum disseminatedwhich radically
been set by the first major exhibition of modern art in disappeared the equally vital and visible role of women
New York: the Armory Show in 1913, organized in part by in making that modernist art, as artiststhat we have
Arthur B. Davies, who also advised Bliss on her pioneering to explore and reframe.
At a panel held in the fall of 2007 at The Museum of in a number of exhibitions, including the 2001 Venice
Modern Art to discuss the institutionalization of femi- Biennale; and its potential relationship to the Museums
nism in a number of exhibitions and conferences that design collection, which would provide for it a context of
had taken place earlier in the yearincluding WACK! Art other industrial and utopian creations. But still, Butler said
and the Feminist Revolution, Global Feminisms, and MoMAs (with some regret), the Museum was unable to take it.
conference The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice The problem was not, as might be surmised, that the
in the Visual Arts, among othersdiscussion turned to boats aesthetic value was too tangential or too much of
Women on Waves, a Dutch activist group.1 Founded by a technicality to consider it a work of legitimate artistic
the physician Rebecca Gomperts in 1999, the organization intervention. Rather, the issue was a double-barreled
commissioned the architect and designer Joop van Lieshout concern over logistics and politics: how could the Woman
to transform a boat into a floating medical clinic (no. 2), on Waves ship possibly be absorbed into the space
which sailed to countries in Europe that ban womens both physical and conceptualof the Museum, especially
access to reproductive procedures, including abortion and considering its status as a usable, and, yes, unwieldy
birth control: Ireland, which it visited in 2001; Poland, in object with meaning derived specifically from its deploy-
2003; and Portugal, in 2004. Located in a boat anchored ment in acts of political activism? In the conversation
twelve miles offshorein international waters and thus that followed, panelists and audience members discussed
subject only to the legal codes of the Netherlands, the what the Museum would have to do to accommodate the
country in which the boat was registeredand claiming Women on Waves boat; a host of suggestions emerged
the protective mantle of artistic free speech when chal- that seemed to hinge on the idea of finding ways to pre-
lenged by local governments for breaking national laws, serve the activist politics that motivated the piece, even
the project fits uncomfortably in the category feminist as it was turned into a historical remainder, a remnant of
art.2 Cornelia Butler, the panels moderator, revealed those interventions. It would not be enough simply to put
that Gomperts had approached her to ask whether The the boat on display; it would be necessary to activate it,
Museum of Modern Art would be interested in absorbing perhaps by continuing to use it as a medical clinic. Float
the boat into its permanent collection, a request that the boat! became the jocular cry of audience members, as
made a certain amount of sense, Butler noted, because we urged MoMA to find a creative solution to what Butler
of its pedigree (designed by van Lieshout, thus conferring presented as an intriguing museological problem.3
a certain artistic legitimacy to a project that might other- This exchange distills many of the problems faced
wise be considered merely by curators and historians seeking a solution for incorpo-
1. Hannah Wilke (American, political); its resonance with rating this loosely and problematically defined category
19401993). Marxism and Art: a range of artistic practices of feminist art into the museum: how to make space,
Beware of Fascist Feminism.
1977. Offset, sheet 11 5/8 x that had emerged in the 1990s physically and conceptually, for such work. Many of the
9 1/16" (29.6 x 23 cm). Publisher: and early 2000s and dwelled scholars, critics, and artists who had taken part in The
the artist, New York. Printer:
on the creation of hybrid Feminist Future, both as speakers and audience members,
unknown. Edition: approx. 25.
The Museum of Modern Art, forms; its previous inclusion seemed critically aware that in order to accommodate the
New York. Gift of Marsie,
Emanuelle, Damon, and
Andrew Scharlatt, Hannah
Wilke Collection and Archive,
Los Angeles 57
contributions of women and feminist artists the Museum womens art and feminist artthe former a term that
needed not to simply make space for that workto include implicitly acknowledges the historical occlusion of certain
women artists as a matter of course in its exhibitions artists from the modernist canon, the latter one that
and gallery rotationsbut rather to reimagine itself as identifies art taking part in a political project that aims
an institution in a very fundamental way, to reorient the to interrogate and dismantle such partialitiesruns the
institution according to the political imperatives of feminist question of what constitutes a proper museological
art itself. Helen Molesworth, in her comments at the sym- response. For some, including Molesworth, the mere
posium, succinctly outlined these two separate but equally addition of women artists into institutions that have
crucial issues. Posing the hypothetical problem of how been structured by their very absence is deeply problem-
she would rehang a museums galleries to include works atic, because their work is often at odds with the main
by women painters, she noted the difficultythe impos- narrative unfolding in institutions galleries and exhibi-
sibility, evenof this task, given the years of institutional tions, so that womens art is thus framed as a thing apart,
and conceptual assumptions that structured the exclusion something separate and distinct, and, inevitably, some-
of women from the narrative of modernism in the first thing less. The ideal would be a restructuring of the
place: Is it a revolution of the deepest order to insert narratives constructed by the Museum so that work by
women artists back into rooms that have in fact been women would be included as a matter of course, as a part
structured by their very absence? What would it mean of a process of already-begun but still much-needed his-
instead perhaps to take this absence as a particular his- torical revision, according to new, historically informed
torical condition, under which the work of women artists standards of quality and significance. We are closer to this
is both produced and understood?4 ideal, certainly, than we were a generation ago. Under a
Molesworths comments (a version of which appear in changing roster of curators with a sense of the multiplicity
her essay in this volume) raise the problem of the relation- of modernisms to have emerged in the twentieth century
ship between the work of women artists and feminism. and of the need for periodic rehanging of the galleries to
Not all women artists were feministsmany of the highlight these competing versions (rather than relying on
most famous, such as Frida Kahlo, Georgia OKeeffe, Lee a relatively fixed, univocal presentation of the permanent
Krasner, and Eva Hesse, predated the advent of second- collection, as has been the tradition at MoMA), women
wave feminism, and many post-1968 female artists focus are gaining greater visibility in the Museum. In What Is
primarily on issues other than gender and difference Painting?, a 2007 show of work from MoMAs collection,
nor are all feminist artists women.5 The mere inclusion for example, an unprecedented number of women (thirty
of women artists is not a sufficient feminist gesture: if percent) were included, a number of them from outside the
feminism requires a focus on work that lies outside the United States, without the curator, Anne Umland, feeling
modernist canon, the bringing into view of that which any particular need to comment on their gender. It was
has been repressed, it also necessitates reconceiving the taken as a given that in order to answer the question posed
institution and its various hierarchies of medium, genre, by the title of the show a number of women (including
and other restrictive classifications, all of which generate Vija Celmins, Lynda Benglis, Beatriz Milhazes, Lee Lozano,
2. Women on Waves ship
docked in Harlingen, the the exclusive ideologies of gender, race, and class that and Atsuko Tanaka) must figure in the answer. Multiplex,
Netherlands, June 16, 2003, marginalized or outright rejected the work of women artists which opened in 2009 under the guidance of Deborah
en route to international
(among others) in the first place. Wye, included twenty-six women out of seventy-two
waters off the coast of
Poland. Atelier Van Lieshout Alongside this question about the distinction between artistsa little over twenty-five percentbut these
(Netherlands, est. 1995)
designed the A-Portable
mobile clinic on deck.
Photograph by Willem
58 FLOAT THE BOAT! Velthoven DSOUZA 59
accounted for a great deal of the shows real estate, with women and feminist artists into its collectionand con- MoMAs collection, one not terribly representative of her in its galleries and storeroomsunacknowledged because
large-scale installations by Louise Bourgeois, Hanne sequently into its influential narrative of modernismit most important work. The artist often posed as Chicagos the conventions of museology and art history favor orga-
Darboven, and Nancy Spero. must confront the obstacle posed by the objects it owns, opposite, the Conceptual artist Mary Kelly, whose Post- nization around single, generative masters and have thus
For those who fear that at this point in history such which were largely amassed under a set of assumptions Partum Document (197379) is another iconic work of been less than effective in dealing with collective practices.
moments of progress are too few and far between, holding that were implicated in (and in fact constitutive of) patri- feminist art, this time rooted in genders construction The most serious consequences of this oversight are in
out for a truly feminist reconception of the institution archal and elitist culture, as Griselda Pollock trenchantly within language and visual sign systems and thus in a the realms of architecture, design, and film, where a single
may seem unreasonable; after all, ghettoization in the gal- observes in her essay in this volume. There are treasures complex network of desire, is entirely absent. work is the result of collaboration among many members
leries is a far better fate for these hidden works by women in the Museums storerooms and in its galleries: the The exclusion of a stream of artistic practice (one of a studio or team. In MoMAs Department of
artists than ghettoization in the storage room. Unwilling presence of certain women artists in thrilling depth (the hesitates to call it a movement) that was, as critic Holland Architecture and Design, for example, the identification
to wait for a moment in which the artists gender does not sculpture, drawings, and print work of Bourgeois, or the Cotter has correctly pointed out, the most significant to of architectural projects by the name of the lead architect
figurepositively or negativelyin curatorial decisions, photographs of Cindy Sherman), as well as the presence emerge in the post-1968 era, is not just an injustice from obscures the activity of many women in the production of
those who embrace this point of view maintain that the of some unexpected figures (the work of Latin American the point of view of equality but a travesty of the historical the masterwork, present in the studios as designers, engi-
work of women artists should at least see the light of day, women artists such as Gego and Amelia Pelez Del Casal project that MoMA has set for itself since its founding: neers, and draftspersons; in the case of Le Corbusier, one
even under imperfect conditions. For curators at the from the 1940s, or of Russian Suprematist, Constructivist, the articulation of the major artistic movements and might cite the particularly important presences of Jane
Centre Pompidou in Paris, a third option emerged: in the and productivist women such as Natalia Goncharova or interventions of the modern period.8 But beyond this Drew (a major contributor to the designs of Chandigarh,
summer of 2009 the museum unveiled a rehanging of the Varvara Stepanova). Some of these works were targeted absence of feminist art within the collection, the lack of the planned capital city of Punjab, India, who was respon-
permanent collection, elles@centrepompidou, exclusively purchases by the Museum, motivated by a sense of histor- works by women artists means that the histories of modern sible for that projects housing designs) and Charlotte
featuring women artists. This new presentation showed ical responsibility, by the research interests or exhibition art generally are left partial and incomplete: as Ann Perriand (who was employed in his Paris office and was
the richness of the collection as well as the gaps; most program of a single curator, or by the collecting interests Temkin, Chief Curator of the Department of Painting and primarily responsible for his furniture designs). This blind
important, according to the lead curator, Camille Morineau, of a particular donor. In other cases the acquisitions were Sculpture, demonstrated in her rehanging in 2009 of the spot can be rectified only by continued research into the
was that such an intervention, by excluding men, would the result of factors even more contingent: the establish- Museums postwar American galleries, the biomorphic collection by museum professionals and academics; this
likely change the way that curatorial decisions were ment of the Inter-American Fund in 1942, linked to the abstraction of Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, and Robert volume is an acknowledgment of that need, and an impor-
henceforth made.6 If an all-male exhibition were to be Museums collaboration with the United States State Motherwell cannot be understood without the inclusion tant step toward fleshing out the historical record of
mounted at the Pompidou in the future, Morineau hoped Departments efforts in Latin America, which facilitated of Bourgeois; the same could be said of Isa Genzkens womens participation in modernism.
that it could not take place without comment: it would the acquisition of works by Latin American artists, some relationship to German art of the 1970s and 1980s, or The richness of MoMAs holdings by women artists
have to be considered an ils@centrepompidou exhibition. by women, and Alfred H. Barr, Jr.s trip to the Soviet Silvia Kolbowskis role in video art of the 1980s, although is most evident, not surprisingly, in the realm of works
Gender, in other words, would not be erased but ascribed Union and Eastern Europe in 192728, which allowed the the Museum is rather less equipped to tell those historical on paperphotographs, drawings, prints, illustrated
to masculinity in the way that it is always ascribed to Museum to acquire works by artists from those regions tales.9 The curators who wish to redress the historical books, and ephemera from the Museums archives, and
femininity: as a term that means something. Eventually, that would have been unattainable in subsequent years, marginalization of work by women artists must then con- thus the archives are a particularly important source of
Morineau predicted, gender would cease to be a meaningful thanks to Cold War politics and Soviet isolationism. tend with doing so in a collection that has serious gaps; work by women. This breadth and history was touched
term because it would no longer encode a set of disadvan- For all these moments of remarkable prescience whatever the Museums current commitment to filling on in Documenting a Feminist Past: Art World Critique,
tages, of negative meanings that posed the other (feminin- on the part of the Museums curators and acquisitions such absences, it is made all the more difficult by the an exhibition drawn from those archives, organized by
ity) as lesser than the norm (masculinity). But that cannot committee, there have been some deeply distressing passage of time, the more prescient collecting strategy of Associate Librarian Jennifer Tobias to coincide with
happen, the new Pompidou hanging implied, without a missteps. Judy Chicago, who created the iconic sculpture other institutions, and the exigencies of the art market, The Feminist Future.10 The greater presence of work by
moment of complete inversion of operative terms.7 The Dinner Party (197479) and whose work epitomizes whose prices now reflect a renewed interest in works by women artists in works on paper and in the archives is a
As the Pompidou exhibition made plain, these revision- a certain type of feminist art to emerge in the 1970s, post-1970s feminist and women artists. consequence, in part, of the ease of purchasing and storing
ist projects are beholden to the collections that curators albeit one whose essentialist position is held in deep The essays in this book give some sense of such pres- them, making the departments housing those mediums
have at their disposal. And so if an institution such as The suspicion by many feminist thinkers of her own and ences and absences in MoMAs collection, but there are more likely to acquire works by a more diverse range
Museum of Modern Art wishes to integrate the work of later generations, has only a single lithographic print in also countless unacknowledged contributions by women of artists compared with those housing, for example,
158 / A COLLECTIVE AND ITS INDIVIDUALS: THE BAUHAUS AND ITS WOMEN
/ TAI SMITH
72 73
This portrait of seventeen-year-old Horace review of Camerons photographs of women though crossing the threshold into adulthood,
Darwin (1868, no. 1), the son of the naturalist reveals that she rarely broke this rule. underscoring the sense of his disdainful
Charles, is the only known print from the Camerons subject was the ninth of or shy vulnerability. The effect is at least
negative. Charles Darwin and his family visited Darwins ten children and would later work partially due to the selective focus of the
the Camerons on the Isle of Wight for a six- as a civil engineer, establish the successful early lens.
week vacation in 1868 and rented a cottage Cambridge Scientific Society, and become The directness of this portrait is modern in
from them. Cameron photographed most of mayor of Cambridge. Here Horace faces the its simplicity and bluntness. The photograph
the family, including Charles; Horaces older camera but does not look at it. His averted relies on Camerons faith in the mediums
brother, Erasmus; and Horace, whom she eyes suggest spontaneity and immediacy, capacity to transform what is before the
particularly liked. She did not, however, qualities such a long sitting would not have camera into a picture. As with all of her photo-
photograph Darwins wife, Emma. As one provided. His head rests on his hand as if he graphs, Cameron indicated her pleasure in
biographer has written, She refused to were lost in thought, but this pose was likely photographys complicated relationship to
photograph Emma, asserting that women taken because it was easier to keep steady. reality when she signed this portrait with the
between the ages of eighteen and seventy Centered in the frame, he is silhouetted in note Taken from Life.
should never be photographed. 3 Indeed, a the darkness from which he emerges as
The life and work of Kthe Kollwitz evolved uprising of weavers in Silesia (today mostly series of war prints, trying them first as etch-
as inseparable arcs during a period that saw Poland) against poor wages and abominable ings and then as transfer lithographs. Her
two world wars and Germany in tumultuous working conditions, which ended in tragedy breakthrough came when she saw the wood-
transition. Born to a middle-class family (and which would later be cited by Karl Marx cuts of Ernst Barlach. The resulting portfolio
in the Prussian city of Knigsberg (now as the birth of a German workers movement). of seven woodcuts, Krieg (War) (192122),
Kaliningrad, Russia), Kollwitz studied and She was so impressed by this story of marks a dramatic shift in Kollwitzs work
later settled in Germany, following the tradi- proletarian revolt that she adopted it as her an abandonment of literary and historical
tional path of marriage and motherhood but new subject, producing a series of etchings themes in favor of more personal and univer-
also forging a formidable career as an artist, and lithographs titled Ein Weberaufstand sal ones. Kollwitz conceived the work not as a
professor, and academy member. Like many (A weavers revolt) (189397). narrative cycle, like Ein Weberaufstand, but
women artists before and after her, from In Weberzug (March of the weavers) (no. 1), as a series of thematically linked images
Mary Cassatt to Louise Bourgeois and a band of workers moves determinedly, if communicating widely comprehensible ideas
Marlene Dumas, she pursued themes of dejectedly, toward the town in which they about war. Apocalyptic and war-themed print
domesticity while also using her work as a will attack their employers homes and cycles have a history in Europe dating back
vehicle for social criticism. warehouses. There seems to be a sense of to the sixteenth century, and Kollwitzs con-
While Kollwitz practiced painting and bleak resignation rather than excitement temporaries, such as Max Beckmann and
sculpture, she is perhaps best known for her or true revolutionary fervor, for while some Otto Dix, made series referring specifically
printmaking. As prints are issued in editions, shout with fists in the air, others look grimly to World War I. She, however, focused not on
they can be distributed more widely than resigned as they march along, axes in hand. the harsh realities of battlefield and military
single artworks, and this possibility of broad Among the group are several women, one of life but on their collateral damage: poverty-
dissemination befitted her artistic concerns whom labors to carry a sleeping child; here stricken families, widowed wives, fatherless
workers rights, war, death, and poverty, the artist compassionately portrays the children, and grieving parents, a role she
particularly as they affected women and myriad duties of women, as she would understood all too well.
children. In the mid-1880s she became throughout her career. Typical of her work Shifting her visual language to match
deeply influenced by the work and writings at the time, the print has a very detailed, these concerns, Kollwitz began producing
of the German artist Max Klinger. While she academic quality, with networks of etched large, iconic images. By removing any chron-
admired the unique combination of allegory lines that give the workers density, conveying ological or geographical details in Die Mtter
and realism in his highly acclaimed print the concreteness of the events we see trans- (The mothers) (192122, no. 3), for instance,
cycles, she was even more taken with his 1891 piring. Even so, the images carry the seeds she made an image that can be understood
treatise, Malerei und Zeichnung (Painting and of universality, which would grow as her by people in any time or place. Here women
drawing), in which he asserted the primacy work progressed. In the title, for instance, band together to form a single, seemingly
of graphic mediums, and black-and-white she has used the article a, rather than immovable object against the blank ground
print cycles in particular, for expressing lifes Hauptmanns the, suggesting an expansion of paper. With terror or sorrow in their eyes,
darker subjects and emotional turmoil. in subject from a specific historical moment they embrace one another and form a
As early as 1888, Kollwitz began making to the general poverty of the working class. protective circle: one clutches an infant to
1. Weberzug (March of studies for her own print cycle. Her prelimi- During the initial years of World War I, her chest and another pushes her hands
the weavers) from Ein nary work on this series was inspired by the Kollwitz met with tragedy: her younger son out as if to keep away any further bad
Weberaufstand (A weavers struggles of French coal miners, as portrayed was killed in combat in Flanders, only news, while several childrens faces peer
revolt). 189397, published
in mile Zolas novel Germinal (1885). In months after volunteering for military out uncomprehendingly. Die Mtter shows
1931. Etching from a portfolio
of three lithographs and three 1893, however, Kollwitz saw one of the service. This wrenching loss deeply affected how far she had traveled philosophically
etchings, sheet 12 5/16 x 17 5/8" first productions of Gerhart Hauptmanns her life from that point forward, and she since advocating armed revolution in
(31.2 x 44.7 cm). Publisher: controversial play Die Weber (The weavers), struggled to find professional satisfaction. Weberzug. As she wrote in June of 1921:
Alexander von der Becke,
a dramatic recounting of the1844 armed She had been grappling for years with a
Berlin. Printer: Otto Felsing,
Berlin. Edition: unknown. The
Museum of Modern Art, New
76 York. The Ralph E. Shikes Fund 77
I have been through a revolution, and I
am convinced that I am no revolutionist.
My childhood dream of dying on the
barricades will hardly be fulfilled, because
I should hardly mount a barricade now
that I know what they are like in reality.
And so I know now what an illusion I
lived for so many years. I thought I was a
revolutionary and I was an evolutionary.1
A movie star since movies began, actress Her charactersput-upon women facing ushered the sisters into a casting session
Lillian Diana de Guiche was born the same tribulations from the injustices of the French for An Unseen Enemy, a one-reeler about
year that Thomas Edison introduced the Revolution (Orphans), the persecution of two sisters fending off a larcenous maid
motion picture to the American public.1 This Puritanical society (The Scarlet Letter), and and her safe-robbing accomplice. Impressed
coincidence, however random, proved fateful the ravages of nature in the American West with their ability to respond to direction,
for Gish, a defining artist of early film history. (The Wind)endured in the face of betrayal, Griffith recast the film with the Gishes, even
Known as the First Lady of the Silent Screen, rape, death, and abandonment. Often char- though he had already begun rehearsals with
Gish made her most significant cinematic acterized as a waif, Gish was a dichotomy of other actresses, and began shooting Lillians
contributions during the silent film era, but fragility and resilience. This was true of her first screen appearance the next day.
the prolific actress enjoyed a career that life offscreen as well as onscreen. Fellow Gish became one of Biographs stock play-
went five decades beyond her last silent film. female film pioneer Frances Marion knew ers and appeared in more than thirty Biograph
Over a seventy-five-year career, Gish made her to be as fragile as a steel rod. 2 films over the next two years, including sig-
more than one hundred films, almost half of Gish was a woman holding her own in the nificant shorts such as The Mothering Heart
which reside in the collection of The Museum early days of Hollywood, and she amassed (1913) and The Battle at Elderbush Gulch
of Modern Art, including landmark works enough clout and influence to call her own (1913). Griffith left Biograph in 1914, joined
such as her first film, An Unseen Enemy (1912, shots. As a vocal proponent of film preser- several other film companiesReliance-
no. 1), and her last silent picture, The Wind vation, she made it her lifelong mission to Majestic, Triangle Film Corporation, Famous
(1928, no. 2). ensure that her work and the work of all film Players-Lasky (Paramount), and United
Gish spent her entire life actingon screen, artists would survive. Art is the most lasting Artiststhen eventually built his own studio
stage, and television. Her persona is one of product of a civilization, Gish said, and the in Mamaroneck, New York. Gish followed him,
Victorian womanhoodgenteel, vulnerable, only lasting aristocracy.3 Gish contributed and under his tutelage she developed her
and innocentoften reflected in Madonna- greatly to the aristocracy of her art, and her acting talents and honed her screen persona.
like characters (The Mothering Heart, The legacy as an iconic figure in film history will G. W. Bitzer, the directors longtime camera-
Battle at Elderbush Gulch, Intolerance, Way also endure. man, recalled that Griffith conditioned [Gish]
Down East, The Scarlet Letter). Her heroines After debuting in a production of In Convicts to the part she was to play, and once she had
are unadulterated in both innocence and Stripes in 1902, Gish began acting in touring the action in mind, she wouldnt forget or
madness, adversity and triumph, as they troupes in New York City. Her tenure in New deviate by so much as a flicker of the eye. Her
deflect wanton men hell-bent on defiling York and on Broadway led to a friendship interpretation would be as directed, without
their virgin characters (The Birth of a Nation, with fellow actress Gladys Smith, who years waste of precious film. 5 Gish practiced
Way Down East, Orphans of the Storm, The later would change Gishs life through a something akin to Method acting (long
Wind). Cast often in melodramas, Gish played chance meeting with film director D. W. Griffith. before the phrase was coined) and studied
characters who tenaciously fought to gain Attending a nickelodeon showing of Lena dance choreography, but her ability to invent
redemption after the violation of their virtue. and the Geese (1912), Gish immediately rec- on the spot, born out of in-the-moment
Gishs doe eyes, button nose, and pixie ognized the actress in the film as her old emotion, meshed perfectly with Griffiths
smile belied a charisma and passion that friend Gladys. Spurred by the star sighting, directorial style. The chemistry between
materialized in front of the camera in her Gish, along with her sister, Dorothy, and their director and actress resulted in some of Gishs
performances. Adept at both comedy and mother, Mary, decided to look up her friend greatest performances, in silent cinema
1. D. W. Griffith (American, tragedy (often in the same film), Gish pos- by visiting the studio that filmed Lena, classics such as The Birth of a Nation (1915),
18751948). An Unseen sessed an emotional range that could alter- American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919),
Enemy. 1912. 35mm film
nate between restrained (Broken Blossoms) located in Union Square. The visit not only and Way Down East (1920). Gish also
(black and white, silent),
14 min. (incomplete). The and grand (Orphans), with everything from reconnected the Gishes with Smith (now matured professionally behind the camera.
Museum of Modern Art, New subtle facial nuances to frenzied body move- Mary Pickford) but also introduced them When Griffith was filming The Love Flower
York. The Biograph Collection; ments in full hysteria in her acting repertoire. to Griffith, who was immediately struck (1920) in Florida, he entrusted the care of his
preserved by The Museum In all her facets she personified endurance. by Lillians exquisite ethereal beauty. 4 He studio to Gish.6 He also encouraged her to
of Modern Art with support
from The Lillian Gish Trust
for Film Preservation
80 Dorothy Gish and Lillian Gish 81
2. Victor Sjstrm (Swedish, 3. D. W. Griffith (American,
18791960). The Wind. 1928. 18751948). Orphans of the
35mm film (black and white, Storm. 1922. 35mm film (black
silent), 72 min. The Museum of and white, silent), 142 min. The
Modern Art, New York. Museum of Modern Art, New
Acquired from MGM York. Acquired from the artist;
Lillian Gish preserved by The Museum of
Modern Art with support from
The Lillian Gish Trust for Film
Preservation
Lillian Gish (on scaffold)
and enjoyed as any other one of the arts In 1954, when actor Charles Laughton set
is studied and enjoyed, with Iris Barry as its out to make his directorial debut, he prepared
inaugural curator.11 Gishs relationship with for The Night of the Hunter by screening
MoMAs Department of Film, like her relation- Griffith films at MoMA. An admirer of Gish
ship with film itself, began at its inception. since Griffiths Broken Blossoms, Laughton
It was through Barry, in the mid-1930s, that sought her out for the pivotal role of Rachel
Gish first heard of the nascent concept of Cooperan evolution of her silent film
film preservation.12 Inspired by Barry and her heroineswho protects two vulnerable yet
own belief in the value of film as an art form, resilient orphans from a soulless preacher
Gish maintained frequent correspondence intent on their destruction. Richard Griffith,
with the department throughout her life in then curator of the Film Library, acted as an
their joint efforts toward film preservation. intermediary between Gish and Laughton
As Eileen Bowser, a former curator in the during their discussions surrounding
make her own feature film, stating that Gish censorship office of the Motion Picture Department of Film, noted, Convinced of the the film.15
knew as much about making pictures as he Producers and Distributors of America due power of film to change the world, Gish was From 1963 to 1980 Gish undertook an film material and preservation methods. In of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on
did, and more about acting.7 to outcry from church and womens groups. a dedicated fighter for every cause associ- ambitious endeavor to tour universities, exchange, Gish took her knowledge to the November 25, 1982, the ceremony was held
Orphans of the Storm (1922, no. 3), the last Undaunted, she took it upon herself to ated with the art of the film.13 Not only was libraries, and museums throughout the world, public and provided the Museums Film at MoMA. The celebration of her devotion
of Gishs collaborations with Griffith, marked secure clearance for the film. No roadblock the actress instrumental in the donation of lecturing on the art of film, concentrating on Preservation Program with resounding and contribution to the art of the motion
a turning point in her career. She convinced was insurmountable for Gish if she believed scripts, films, and funds to the Museum, but the period from 1900 to 1928. In preparation advocacy.16 picture took place at the institution that
Griffith to make the film, based on Adolphe in a project. For her swan song to the silent she also valued the input of its film curators, for these lectures, the actress engaged in con- It was fitting that when Gish became the continues to collect, preserve, study, and
dEnnerys play The Two Orphans (1874) era she chose The Wind, based on a novel with whom she discussed her projects and stant dialogue with the Museum regarding fourteenth life member of the Academy exhibit her work.
although he had intended his next project to by Dorothy Scarborough. The actress hand- from whom she sought advice regarding
be Goethes Faustand to cast her sister as picked her director (Victor Sjstrm) and film preservation.14
Louise (his first choice was Mae Marsh).8 leading man (Lars Hanson) and was asked The acquisition of the D. W. Griffith
During rehearsal for the climactic scene at by MGMs Irving Thalberg to produce. Gishs Collectionone of the first major film 1. Lillian Gish, 99, a Movie Star with Ann Pinchot, Lillian Gish: Scribner, A Lisa Drew Book, Committee on Government Collection, The Museum of
Since Movies Began, Is Dead, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and 2001), p. 153. Relations, transcribed in Modern Art, New York.
the guillotine, in which Gishs Henriette seems career continued over the next sixty years collections to enter the Film Librarymight
New York Times, March 1, 1993, Me (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 9. Gish, with Pinchot, Lillian Hearings Before the Sub- 16. Bowser, letter to Gish, New
to be moments from certain death, Gish her sound work is represented in the not have occurred had it not been for Gishs
p. A1. Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 35. Gish, p. 244. committee on Government York, May 11, 1972. Lillian Gish
disagreed with Griffiths direction and felt Museums collection by films such as Charles intervention. In the summer of 1935 Barry 2. Frances Marion, quoted in 5. G. W. Bitzer, quoted in 10. In 1925, after a fierce bidding Information and Individual Letters, Film Study Center
that the scene required a greater depth of Laughtons The Night of the Hunter (1955) and her husband, John Abbott (then the Film Cari Beauchamp, Without Lying Charles Silver, Lillian Gish (New war to sign the actress, MGM Rights, June 19, 1979, p. 61. Collection, The Museum of
emotion. After rehearsing the scene her way, and her last film, Lindsay Andersons The Librarys director), visited Hollywood in an Down: Frances Marion and York: The Museum of Modern placed Gish under a studio 13. Eileen Bowser, quoted in Modern Art, New York. In this
the Powerful Women of Early Art, 1980), p. 5. contract that gave her script Silver, Lillian Gish, p. 3. letter Bowser provides infor-
Gish recalled, Without a word, he walked up Whales of August (1987)but her legacy attempt to convince directors, actors, and
Hollywood (New York: Scribner, 6. Beauchamp, Without Lying approval. 14. Iris Barry, letter to Gish, mation about films in the
to me, sank to one knee and kissed my hand was long secured by her first sixteen years studios to deposit films with the Museum. A Lisa Drew Book, 1997), p. 119. Down, p. 119. 11. Mary Lea Bandy, Nothing New York, May 18, 1950. Lillian Museums collection to assist
before the company. Thank you, he said. 9 in film. When they approached Griffith, he declined. 3. Lillian Gish, address to 7. Gishs only directorial effort Sacred, in John Elderfield, ed., Gish Letters, Film Study Center Gish in her lectures and thanks
In nine short years, she had evolved from On June 25, 1935, The Museum of Modern In 1938, when D. W. Griffith, Inc., was in Government and the Arts was Remodeling Her Husband Studies in Modern Art 5: The Collection, The Museum of the actor for her support of
session, Centennial Celebration (1920), a film that has been Museum of Modern Art at Mid- Modern Art, New York. MoMAs Film Preservation
ingenue to Hollywood powerhouse.10 Art presented to the public its Film Library receivership and the directors films were
of the American Institute of lost. Silver, Lillian Gish, p. 10. Century: Continuity and Change 15. Richard Griffith, wire to Program.
Gish pressured MGM to make The Scarlet (now the Department of Film), whose mission on the verge of being lost, Gish interceded Architects, Washington, D.C., 8. Charles Affron relates these (New York, The Museum of Charles Laughton, New York,
Letter (1926), based on Nathaniel Hawthornes was to preserve [and] exhibit . . . all types and convinced Griffith to entrust his films May 15, 1957. events in Lillian Gish: Her Modern Art, 1995), p. 82. July 30, 1954. Lillian Gish
book, which had been blacklisted by the of films, so that the film may be studied and legacy to the Museum. 4. D. W. Griffith, quoted in Gish, Legend, Her Life (New York: 12. Gish, testimony to Letters, Film Study Center
82 LILLIAN GISH HE 83
SONIA DELAUNAY-TERK (French, born Russia. 18851979) / JODI HAUPTMAN
Looking back at age ninety-three to her early suede-and-paper housing captured the Delaunay-Terk and Cendrars launched
career, Sonia Delaunay-Terk described how poems sensations.2 themselves into the contemporary debates
her artistic practice worked differently yet Soon after, Cendrars brought Delaunay- on the ownership and meaning of the term
in tandem with that of her husband, Robert Terk a new work, La Prose du Transsibrien et simultaneity that pervaded the avant-
Delaunay. Robert, she wrote, had been de la petite Jehanne de France, an epic text garde movements of the time. From Post-
shooting off rockets in all directionsBack that describes a journey across time and Impressionisms exploration of the optical
on earth I had gathered the falling sparks of space. Cendrarss narrator (and alter ego) effects produced by adjacent hues, Futurist
the fireworks. I tended the more intimate and sets out on the train from Moscow to the artists, for example, exploited small brush-
transient fires of everyday life, while silently Pacific coast accompanied by a young strokes and contrasting colors to reveal
continuing important work.1 This important prostitute. Along the way he encounters simultaneity as the fusion of past and present
workexplorations in an abstract language heartrending visions, from the one thousand and the passage of time, while for artists
of color and contrastwas rooted in the and three bell towers of Moscow to the associated with Cubism simultaneity meant
domestic but evoked life in the city; was con- gaping wounds and amputated limbs of the juxtaposition of different views of a
structed from mere scraps but contemplated the pesthouses.3 He is buffeted in body subject within a single composition. Similar
fragmentation itself as a strategy; was anti- by the violent thrusts of the train, optically differences in conception and approach
monumental but functioned as monuments by a world perceived only as shards, and provoked heated disputes among writers
to her time; was quiet but gave voice to psychically by the repetition, expansion, and like Apollinaire, Jacques Barzun, and
contemporary ideas. Indeed, Delaunay-Terks contraction of time itself. Overwhelmed by Cendrars himself. 6
efforts to combine different worldsfamilial the beauty of the poem, Delaunay-Terk In its form and content, Transsibrien
and metropolitan, theoretical and functional, explained, I undertook to illustrate it. 4 offers its own takea manifesto even
maternal and professionalmay have readied Combining words with images, the authors on simultaneity as a concept, theory, and
her to speak to the defining characteristic completely rethought the appearance, func- strategy. In Cendrarss words, Simultaneous
of her day: the simultaneous experience of tion, and use of the traditional bound volume contrast is depth perceived. . . . Depth is
disparate events, images, and sounds. or the luxurious livre dartiste. The book the new inspiration.7 Along these lines, the
Early on, Delaunay-Terk fused radical comprises a two-meter-long sheet (joined books opening panel offers up flatness and
pictorial thinking and function in a host of together from four smaller ones) that folds in surface as a foil for depth and immersion.
interventions into the household, from half lengthwise and then top to bottom, like The Michelin map printed before the works
curtains and quilts (no. 3) to lamp shades an accordion, into twenty-two panels (no. 1).5 title and text accurately demarcates the
and boxes. These experiments in fabric-and- Images, rendered by pochoir, a stencil tech- trains path from west to east but is a mere
paper collage eventually offered a means nique, run down the left side, and text down graph of the journey. The poem and pictures
of forging relationships beyond her home, the right. The poem is printed in various fonts, that follow provide an immersive experience:
the most important of which was with the type sizes, and colors, with a mix of upper- sights, colors, sounds, smells, textures,
1. La Prose du Transsibrien et writer Blaise Cendrars. The Delaunays met case and lowercase letters, and blocks of tastes. While the maps route is linear and
de la petite Jehanne de France,
Cendrars in early 1913, through their friend text shift in spacing and in justification from progressive, the text is circular and messy;
by Blaise Cendrars. 1913.
Illustrated book with pochoir, and compatriot Guillaume Apollinaire. For left to right to centerall of which creates time and space are impossible to demarcate
sheet 6' 9 5/8" x 14 1/4" (207.4 his first visit to the Delaunays home, Cendrars a reading experience defined by disruption, or define. Delaunay-Terks images provide
x 36.2 cm). Publisher: ditions brought his recently completed poem Les acclimation, and reinterruption, far from the a similar effect. In certain passages, soft-
des Hommes Nouveaux, Paris.
Pques New York. Sonia was so taken with intimacy of a handheld text and the linearity and hard-edged abstract forms respond
Printer: unknown. Edition: 150
announced; 60100 printed. the work that she set out to create a cover of turning one page after another. and connect to the protagonists tale, but
The Museum of Modern Art, and binding for it. Rhythmic and cacopho- Announcing the publication in a promotional in others, shapes and colors float freely,
New York. Purchase nous, balanced and askew, Delaunay-Terks card (no. 2) as the premier livre simultan, unmoored and overlapping like colored
84 85
2. Premier Livre simultan.
1913. Pochoir announcement
for La Prose du Transsibrien
et de la petite Jehanne de
France, by Blaise Cendrars,
sheet 3 13/16 x 13 7/16" (9.7
x 34.2 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York
fabric. The reader is thus drawn in narratively, the authors notion of simultaneity is once Sporting the frocks herself, Delaunay-Terk
optically, and even physically (the act of again conveyed. emblematized the simultaneity of her work
unfolding and folding the book results in Cendrars and Delaunay-Terks simultaneity and her life as she collapsed color and form,
colored hills and valleys that project out into is, most of all, an immersion of one thing into surface and depth, movement and stasis,
the readers space and give the pictures body another: a melding of words and pictures, artist and object in her own body.
and dimension). color and form, reading and seeing, bodies
This notion of immersion is embodied in and cities. This degree of penetration and
the works final and most important image, exchange would have had special appeal
the Eiffel Tower, a symbol of modernity for to Delaunay-Terk. With a child in tow and
the authors generation and a representation a household to run, her art-making was
of their profound ambitions for the book necessarily integrated into her daily tasks,
(it was to be printed in an edition attaining from decorating her apartment to hosting
the height of the Eiffel Tower).8 Although art gatherings to collaborating with poets,
reduced in size and shape to a few strokes printmakers, and industrial designers to
of red pigment, the tower is nonetheless establishing her own textile business, the 1. Sonia Delaunay, Nous irons Les Transplants (1913), and the most complete account of the Aesthetic of Simultaneity, 1992), p. 102.
jusquau soleil (Paris: ditions Guillaume Apollinaires Transsibrien in The Futurist Dada/Surrealism 6 (1976): 8. Perloff, The Futurist Moment,
instantly recognizable. In the neighboring Atelier Simultan. Delaunay-Terk engaged
Robert Laffont, 1978), p. 16; LHrsiarque et Cie (1911). Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant 4658; Monique Chefdor, p. 2. It is interesting that the
text, Cendrars describes Paris: City of the with simultaneity not only as a technique or translated in Sherry A. 3. Translated in Walter Albert, Guerre, and the Language of Blaise Cendrars et le simul- year of the Transsibriens
incomparable Tower of the Rack and the a method but as an attitude, a life practice. Buckberrough, An Art of Selected Writings of Blaise Rupture (Chicago: University tanisme, Europe 566 (June publication, the Eiffel Tower
Wheel. Instead of setting the tower next to This practice can best be seen in what Unexpected Contrasts, in Cendrars (New York: New of Chicago Press, 1986), 1976): 2429; and Apollinaire, transmitted the first time
the Ferris wheel, a view familiar from the she called simultaneous dresses. Pieced Sonia Delaunay: A Retro- Directions, 1966), pp. 67, 93, pp. 243. This text is indebted Simultanisme-librettisme, signal around the world, thus
spective (Buffalo, N.Y.: The 95, and 93. to her brilliant analysis. Les Soires de Paris, June 15, bringing together disparate
1900 Exposition, Delaunay-Terk depicts together from bits of fabric of varying shapes,
Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 4. Dealunay-Terk, quoted in 6. For accounts of simultaneity 1914, pp. 32225. temporalities. Kern, The Culture
the tower piercing the wheel. In this small sizes, and colors, these ambulatory collages 1980), pp. 1023. Sherry A. Buckberrough, A and the debates around it, see 7. Blaise Cendrars, of Time and Space, pp. 1314.
gesture of depthone thing inside another were propositions for new, modern clothing. 2. Delaunay-Terk made covers Biographical Sketch: Eighty Stephen Kern, The Culture of Modernities: Delaunay,
for other poetic works in Years of Creativity, in Sonia Time and Space: 18801918 1919, in Chefdor, ed.,
191314, including Jules Delaunay: A Retrospective, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Modernities and Other Writings
Romainss Puissances de Paris p. 31. University Press, 1983); S. P. by Blaise Cendrars (Lincoln:
(1911), Ricciotto Canudos 5. Marjorie Perloff has written Horrex, Blaise Cendrars and University of Nebraska Press,
Propelled by the enormous popularity of that she could get better parts as a stage In Germany the actress quickly became
her first film, Afgrunden (The Abyss), made in actress. But when the film premiered, the known as Die Asta (The Asta), a category in
her native Denmark, Asta Nielsen came to day after her twenty-ninth birthday, she sud- and of herself. She made her first thirty-two
Germany in 1911. She was met at the train denly had an entirely different career before films with Gad, whom she took with her to
station by thirty thousand adoring Berliners. her, one she would explore to its fullest produce the ideas and framework for the
A quarter of a century later, when she left extent with prodigious talent and an iron will. films, raise money for the Asta brand, and
Germanythe country she had called her Afgrunden already exhibits several of the otherwise leave her to develop her on-screen
second home and where most of her film characteristics that would soon make Asta characters in seemingly intuitive symbiosis
career had taken placeit was also due to Nielsen recognizable, inimitable, and adored: with the camera lens. Asta Nielsen never gave
widespread popularity, but this time her her ability to communicate inner, often tor- much credit to any of the directors with
worldwide fame brought her trouble. It was tured emotions through perfectly controlled whom she worked, not even the more famous
1937, and she had been invited to tea with facial expressions, particularly the uncanny ones such as Carl Froelich, Robert Wiene,
Adolf Hitler, who attempted to coax her back expressiveness of her enormous eyes (so and Ernst Lubitsch, who followed on the
into film acting, which she had left in 1932 to well captured in semiclose-ups, new to heels of Gad. She felt they didnt understand
continue acting on the German stage. As she film); to articulate different emotions within her uniqueness, the special something she
tells it, Hitler argued that he could utter two a scene as well as develop an evolving char- brought to the screen. Consequently, from
thousand words that no one in the interna- acterization in scenes following one another, 1916 on she established her own production
tional arena would understand, whereas she thus taking advantage of the artistic potential companies to exercise artistic control and
could make one gesture and conquer the of multireel films; and to utilize her entire choose projects that would give life to a dis-
world. Her response was: This gesture? as body as an instrument to seduce and control, tinctive gallery of womenyoung and old,
she mocked the Heil Hitler salute.1 After as evidenced in the famously sensual gaucho poor and rich, but always strong and pos-
that she had no future in Germany, and she dance scene. International fame followed sessed of tremendous conviction and pas-
left Berlin to retire in Denmark. Afgrunden, which was lauded for its artfully sion. Die Asta never played the victim, even
Between these two significant points displayed eroticism in the midst of early when her character was one. She developed
lie seventy films and the creative, exciting, cinemas comedic and dramatic-literary a natural acting style appropriate to the
and exhausting life of the first female inter- productions. Thanks to Asta Nielsens per- naturalistic quality of the film medium and
national star, who was not only integral to formance, the film was as much a passion honed it in countless roles, comedic as well
shaping the language of the new cinematic play as an erotic drama, perfectly calibrated as dramatic; she was as committed to find-
art form but also influenced the image of to balance the inner and outer turmoil of ing the right expression for the scheming
womanhood in the twentieth century. her character in a poetic language that teenager (a role she would play successfully
Well into the late 1920s, when movies suited the medium (as well as, miraculously, well into her thirties) as she was for the
were still silent, it was possible for a small allowing the film to slip past the censors in femme fatale or the dying mother. She exerted
country whose language was not widely rec- most countries). her influence on decor, costumes, and even
ognized beyond its borders, but which had a A film diva was born. She made four film promotion to assure the greatest expo-
pioneering spirit, to produce moving pictures more films with Gad within the year, partly sure of her efforts to create film art and to
that would appeal to audiences around the in Denmark and partly in Germany. The popu- connect with all kinds of moviegoers.
world. Denmark had already established an larity of these films convinced her to pursue Her popularity easily crossed barriers of
internationally successful, well-respected her career in Germany, where she was class as well as gender: men adored her (she
film industry when Asta Nielsens first film offered an entire studio exclusively for the was the preferred pinup during World War I
appeared in 1910.2 Afgrunden was intended making of her films.3 Here the possibilities by soldiers on both sides), and women of all
by its first-time writer-director, Urban Gad, were altogether greater, the stakes higher, ages idolized her as an example of the neue
1. Illustration of Asta Nielsen
for an unknown magazine, n.d. to attract attention to his female lead, so than they had been in Denmark. Frau (modern woman).4 The movies helped
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Department of Film
Study Center Files
88 89
One of the first films acquired in 1935 by female lead. In the American version, which 3. G. W. Pabst (Austrian, 1885
Iris Barry, the first director of what was then was heavily edited, that honor went to new- 1967). 1925. Die freudlose
Gasse (The Joyless Street).
called The Museum of Modern Arts Film comer Greta Garbo, a fellow Scandinavian
35mm film (black and white,
Library, was Hamlet (1920, no. 2), starring who would quickly become a star in the US.6 silent), 125 min. The Museum
Asta Nielsen as the Danish prince.5 She had Asta Nielsens performance as an aging of Modern Art, New York
established a production company (Art-Film, streetwalker losing her man to a younger Asta Nielsen
with offices at 27 William Street in New York, woman is characterized by minimal external
as well as Germany) to fulfill her ambition to gestures. When we first encounter her, her
play Hamlet, though not as Shakespeare whole body projects dejection and hurt. As
wrote the part. In this early, radical interpre- she prepares for confrontation, she appears
tation of the play, Hamlet is a woman who still and stiff from the effort of concealing
has been raised as a man in order to inherit her thwarted passions. Entering the room
the throne. The actress brings Hamlet to life with her former lover, she holds her head
by externalizing his masculinity in a swagger; high, but her wide-open eyes darting franti-
a stiff, upright body posture; and sharp, deci- cally around reveal her inner turmoil, soon
sive arm and hand movementsa person to boil over and lead to devastating tragedy.
playing at being male. It is an astonishing The image of the stone-faced prostitute
performance that presents the prince in an being led away, her body drained of life, adds
invigorated, gender-bending modern light, and great depth to the vignette (no matter how
it proved to be Asta Nielsens biggest success the scene was butchered by the censors).
in the United States; in Europe it was, unchar- The characters passion and the actresss
acteristically, panned by the critics. consummate skill at eliciting our compas-
The actress-producers timing was right sion linger long after the scene has ended.
for the US, where the suffragette movement Although Asta Nielsen's first sound film,
had finally triumphed, and the reshaping of Unmgliche Liebe (Crown of Thorns), garnered
this classic text into a protofeminist story a respectable amount of attention in 1932,
beautifully fit a certain American ideal of the she chose to pursue her stage career in the
modern heroic character. The restless energy years before she retired to Denmark in 1937. cinema, in which many of the female stars
and edginess with which Asta Nielsen envi- The art of cinema had changed, and many of were teenagers.
sioned the prince were projected in a com- the mediums technical developments did not No one who has experienced Asta Nielsen
plex symbiosis of maleness and femaleness suit her acting style. Even as early as Rausch on a screen will forget her magic. Her role in
that was absorbed into her dynamic screen (Intoxication), in 1919, she complained that securing a place for cinema as an art form
presence. Compared to American stars of the her scenes were not long enough: Lubitsch, is substantial, and her proper place as The
period, the actress in many of her other roles being a modern director, used montage and Silent Muse was expressed with appropri-
was too odd-looking, too old, too successful, cut more often than she liked.7 The audience ately definitive eloquence by the French poet
and not a little frightening, as she gave life to had changed as well, as movies increasingly Guillaume Apollinaire: She is Everything!
sexual, passionate, intelligent women with became the domain of younger people, espe- She is the Drunkards vision and the lonely
minds of their own. But because as Hamlet cially in the by-now-dominant American Mans Dream.8
she was playing at embodying a mercurial,
intelligent male character, the performance
bring vividly to life the evolving definition of allowed the American public and critical
womens roles throughout the Western world: establishment to fall comfortably under Die 1. Den talende Muse: Samtaler Muse, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: Verso, 2006), p. 40. censored by the Weimar-era 7. Nielsen, Den tiende Muse,
a new feminine ideal that was perhaps espe- Astas spell. med Asta Nielsen (Asta Nielsen: Gyldendal, 194546). 5. STAR database of archival government and in which Asta vol. 2, Filmen, p. 127.
2. Svend Gade (Danish, 1877 cially needed in Germany, a country depressed One of the high points of later silent cinema The Talking Muse), directed 3. Marguerite Engberg, holdings, Department of Film, Nielsens role was drastically 8. Guillaume Apollinaire, quot-
by Torben Skjdt Jensen (Point Filmstjernen Asta Nielsen The Museum of Modern Art, cut. An extensive 1999 restora- ed in Pablo Diaz, Asta Nielsen:
1952). Heinz Schall (German, and demoralized after World War I and eager and perhaps the only genuine filmic master-
1872?). Hamlet. 1920. of No Return Productions (rhus, Denmark: Klim, 1999). New York. tion by the Filmmuseum in Eine Biographie unserer pop-
to establish a new identity. Die Astas aston- piece of Asta Neisens career, Die freudlose
Film (black and white, silent), in collaboration with The 4. Antonia Lant and Ingrid 6. This discussion relates to Munich re-created the films ulren Knstlerin (Berlin: Verlag
ishing range of individualized portraits of Gasse (The Joyless Street) (no. 3) was directed Danish Film Museum and DR- Periz, eds., Red Velvet Seat: the contemporary release ver- complex narrative and restored der Lichtbild-Bhne, 1920), p. 7.
115 min. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York rebellious, passionate, unconventional women by G. W. Pabst in 1925. It is the only one of Documentar, 1996). Womens Writing on the First sion (and the print in MoMAs Asta Nielsen's role as an equal
Asta Nielsen perfectly matched the spirit of the moment. her films in which she did not appear as the 2. Asta Nielsen, Den tiende Fifty Years of Cinema (London: collection), which was heavily costar with Garbo.
92 93
superimposition, that declare OKeeffes gain. It makes a viewer look more closely it is: a work filled with complicated relation-
intimate familiarity with and embrace at the paintings individual components and ships, similarities, and differences, ranging
of the conventions of modern photography, their interesting peculiarities rather than from those between the material and meta-
enlarged, simplified, and abstracted as reduce it to a single, simple, nameable phorical qualities of doors and windows
only she, a painter, could do.14 subject. It pries it loose from a specific asso- to those between modern photography
In the end, neither Lake George Window ciation with a place that OKeeffe had, by the and modern American painting, mirroring
nor Farmhouse Window and Door is entirely end of the 1920s, come to feel increasingly the complex reciprocity between Stieglitzs
satisfying as a title. Opting for the latter ambivalent about. And, most important, achievement and OKeeffes own.15
eliminates an immediate reference to Lake it announces the paintings composite
George, but in the end that seems a positive character, encouraging us to see it for what
1. See Temporary Receipt from 1930, at Stieglitzs New York Peterss discussion of exhibition of OKeeffes work enlightening discussion of
The Museum of Modern Art to gallery, An American Place, as Farmhouse Window and Door, at An American Place in 1930, OKeeffes keen understanding
Alfred Stieglitz, April 20, 1945. Portrait of the Farm House, which she describes as the where Farmhouse Window and of Stieglitzs photographic
Collection files, Department Lake George. most creatively photographic Door was first shown. For an techniques and process in Key
of Painting and Sculpture, 5. For multiple views of the of all her major works. Peters, image of this checklist and for Set, vol. 1, pp. xixiii. For the
The Museum of Modern Art, Lake George farmhouse, see Becoming OKeeffe: The Early installation views of the show, most extensive discussion to
New York. Sarah Greenough, Alfred Years (New York, Abbeville, see Lynes, Catalogue Raisonn, date of OKeeffe in relation to
2. See Minutes from the Stieglitz: The Key Set, vols. 1 1991), p. 302. figs. 3133. modern American photography,
Meeting of the Committee on and 2, The Alfred Stieglitz 7. This observation is indebted 11. For insight into the state of see Peters, Becoming OKeeffe.
the Museum Collections, April Collection of Photographs to Anne Middleton Wagners OKeeffes relationship with 15. On the complex dynamics
26, 1945. Collection binders, (Washington, D.C.: National discussion of the window Stieglitz during the late summer of OKeeffe and Stieglitzs rela-
Department of Painting and Gallery of Art; New York: Harry motif in Eva Hesses pictures, and fall of 1929, see Lisle, tionship, see Wagners chapter
Sculpture, The Museum of N. Abrams, 2002), cats. 777, which she describes as encom- Portrait of an Artist, p. 188; OKeeffes Femininity, in Three
Modern Art, New York. Sweeney 81517, 81920, 1,46566, passing both the desire to see also see letters from OKeeffe Artists, pp. 29103. It is inter-
organized a retrospective of 1,474, 1,54049. For verbal beyond the frame, and the fear to Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lake esting to consider, following
Georgia OKeeffes work for the descriptions, see Sue Davidson of so doing. They alternately George, New York, September Wagners arguments, the ways
Museum in 1946. Lowe, Stieglitz: A Memoir/ indulge that desire and prohibit 1929. Art and Letters, pp. OKeeffes Farmhouse Window
3. For a transcription of this Biography (New York: Farrar, it. Wagner, Three Artists (Three 19699. and Door works to counter
label, see Barbara Buhler Straus and Giroux, 1983), pp. Women): Modernism and the 12. On Stieglitzs use of gelatin the persistent equation of
and presence, transparency and opacity, It seems highly likely that Farmhouse 2. Alfred Stieglitz (American, Lynes, Georgia OKeeffe: 9598. Stieglitzs photographs Art of Hesse, Krasner, and silver prints in the 1920s, see OKeeffes work with the femi-
and a desire to see beyond the frame as well Window and Door was among the first paint- 18641946). House and Grape Catalogue Raisonn, vol. 1 (New in Greenough, The Key Set, OKeeffe (Berkeley and Los Greenough, The Key Set, vol. 1, nine, and with its inevitable
Leaves. 1934. Gelatin silver Haven: Yale University Press; along with the passages in Angeles: University of California p. xiii. It is also interesting to synonyms, the bodily and the
as an aggressive denial of the possibility of ings she completed upon her return.10
print, 9 5/8 x 7 9/16" (24.4 x Washington, D.C.: National Lowe, Stieglitz, make clear that Press, 1996), pp. 26466. consider the paintings palette sexual. Ibid., p. 32.
doing so.7 OKeeffes and Stieglitzs various biogra- 19.2 cm). The Cleveland Gallery of Art; Abiquiu, N.Mex.: it would have been impossible, 8. For the context of OKeeffes in relation to OKeeffes com-
OKeeffe inscribed the date October 1929 phers concur that the autumn months the Museum of Art. Gift of Cary The Georgia OKeeffe in real space, to ever catch departure and return to Lake ment that subdued color was,
on the verso of her canvas, permitting it to couple spent together in 1929 were unusu- Ross, Knoxville, Tennessee Foundation, 1999), cat. 653. a straight-on view of the door George, see Laurie Lisle, Portrait for her, gendered. In response
Also see Temporary Receipt, through one of the windows. of an Artist: A Biography of to her feeling that her work was
be precisely located in terms of the time ally productive and peaceful for both of
3. Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1945. 6. For two examples of super- Georgia OKeeffe (Albuquerque: considered inferior to that of
and place where it was made. From May to them, making the many analogies to camera
18641946). Georgia 4. Dorothy H. Dudley, letter to imposed photographs by University of New Mexico, contemporary male painters,
August 1929 she spent her first extended work found in OKeeffes painting particularly Engelhard. 1920. Gelatin OKeeffe, October 29, 1947, and Stieglitz, see Greenough, The 1986), p. 161 and 187, she remarked, I can paint one
period in Taos, New Mexico, away from poignant.11 The cool tonalities of her palette silver print, 9 5/8 x 7 5/8" OKeeffes undated, handwritten Key Set, cat. 604 (Dorothy True respectively. of those dismal-colored paint-
Stieglitz and from Lake George.8 She evoke those of the gelatin silver prints that (24.4 x 19.4 cm). The Museum reply. Collection files, Depart- [1919]) and cat. 1,464 (Dorothy 9. OKeeffe, letter to Ettie ings like the men. OKeeffe,
of Modern Art, New York. ment of Painting and Sculpture, Norman [1932]). I am tremen- Stettheimer, August 24, 1929. Georgia OKeeffe (New York:
returned to Lake George on August 25, were Stieglitzs medium of choice during the
The Alfred Stieglitz Collection. The Museum of Modern Art, dously grateful to Sarah Georgia OKeeffe: Art and Viking Press, 1976), n.p.
only, as she wrote to her friend Ettie 1920s.12 The gray, scumbled painting within Gift of Miss Georgia OKeeffe New York. For a useful dis- Meister, Curator, Department Letters, eds. Jack Cowart and 13. For a brief but insightful
Stettheimer, because of Stieglitz. If it were a painting that takes the place of the window cussion of the complexities of Photography, The Museum Juan Hamilton, letters selected history of Stieglitzs Equivalent
not for the Stieglitz call I would probably within the farmhouses front door brings involved in assigning titles to of Modern Art, New York, for and annotated by Greenough series, see Greenough, The
OKeeffes works, see Lynes, looking at OKeeffes painting (Washington, D.C.: National Key Set, vol. 1, pp. xliixliv. For
never gobut that is strongso I am on Stieglitzs Equivalents, his atmospherically
Catalogue Raisonn, pp. 1419. with me and discussing it in Gallery of Art, 1987), p. 195. examples of Equivalents from
the way. He has had a bad summer but abstract photographs of clouds, to mind.13 Farmhouse Window and Door relation to conventions of 10. This conjecture is based on 1929, see ibid., vol. 2, cats.
the summers at Lake George are always The close-up view of the farmhouse and the is the title adopted there. The modern photography. I am also the sequence of the checklist 1,253305.
badthat is why I had to spend one away. 9 pronounced cropping are strategies, like painting was first exhibited in indebted to Sarah Whitaker that Stieglitz prepared for an 14. Greenough provides an
The period in Britain between the two world sharp angles were easily and inexpensively municipal workers hoist a massive cable
wars was marked by political and economic achieved. This medium was priced demo- using a manual winch. Emphasizing the
strifewartime scars, escalating unemploy- cratically, to appeal to and educate a broad, strength and dignity of the workers, Andrews
ment, the monarchs abdication. But there uninitiated audience. exaggerated the power of their outstretched
was also progress. New means of mech Andrews had first joined the Grosve- bodies and limbs as they move in unison
anization led to a renewal of the London nor School as its secretary in 1925, at age to raise and unroll the cable. The diagonal
Underground, which in turn improved access twenty-seven. Prior to her move to London, thrust of the composition, enhanced by the
to leisure activities. The role of women and just after finishing secondary school, stepped platform, transforms the otherwise
began to shift away from the sole demands she was involved in the war effort as a welder banal industrial equipment into a monument
of marriage and family life. Artistic tradi- of aircraft parts in Bristol. It was a time of to modern urban life.
tion began to give way to modernism, as the immense activity for workers, reflections Sporting events, particularly horse rac-
short-lived but influential Vorticism move- of which would later surface in Andrewss ing and jumping, provided the subject for
ment captured the machine age through prints. While in Bristol, Andrews began a a number of Andrewss prints. Among her
dynamic representations of movement correspondence course on art and initiated most sweeping compositions, Racing (no. 2)
and geometry. The formal and ideological her own artistic practice. After Bristol she depicts the Epsom Derby in Surrey, one
elements of modernism, in turn, had a moved to Bury St. Edmunds to work as a of the countrys celebrated thoroughbred
profound effect on British printmaking, as teacher, and there she met and studied art horse races. Run on a flat, horseshoe-shaped
artists sought new, simplified, and popular with Powera man twenty-six years her track made of grass and without jumps, the
means of conveying modern life. senior. In 1922 the couple moved to London. Epsom Derby is about sheer speed. Here, the
The medium of linoleum cut, champi- Andrews and Power had a close relation- pace and exhilaration of the race is captured
oned by Sybil Andrews under the tutelage ship, each influencing the other as they through the exaggerated curve of the track
of Claude Flight at the Grosvenor School of lived and worked together in a small London and the aerodynamic, harmonious motion of
Modern Art in London, obtained newfound studio from 1930 to 1938. The two artists horse and jockey. With this scene, Andrews
relevancy in this climate. The linoleum cuts even collaborated, under the signature may be illustrating the famous last segment
ease of execution, directness of image- Andrew Power, on a series of sports posters of the race known as Tattenham Corner, as
making, and relative newness as an artistic designed for the London Passenger Trans- four racers close in on the lead.
medium resonated with a small group of art- port Board from 1929 to 1937, intended to Speedway (no. 3), originally conceived as a
ists at the school.1 Along with Flight and his show passengers how accessible Britains poster commission for the London Passenger
other gifted student, Cyril Power, Andrews sporting venues were by public transport. Transport Board (although never produced),
believed that the technique suited the new But Andrewss work can be singled out for evokes power and speed through the
age of modernity. its gift of capturing movementhuman, abstract simplification of identical motor
For their linoleum cuts they used ordinary animal, and mechanicaland the emotion cyclists curving along a dramatic diagonal.
household linoleum flooring, which was and dignity associated with those move- The bikes appear to burst forth from the
resistant but soft enough to be easily cut ments. She devoted her entire artistic picture plane, their force emphasized by the
with gouges made from umbrella ribs. career to linoleum-cut printing, completing winged airwaves that radiate from the tires,
Images were printedwithout a press or seventy-six prints in all, more than half from while the blur of spectators in the upper left
chemicalsby rubbing a simple wooden 1929 to 1939.4 Among her most exceptional corner underscores the momentum and thrill
1. Giant Cable. 1931. Linoleum
cut, comp. 14 3/8 x 18 7/16" spoon against paper that had been placed prints, Giant Cable, of 1931, and Racing of the race.
(36.5 x 46.9 cm). Publisher over the inked linoleum block.2 and Speedway, of 1934depicting labor- Andrewss life and work are an example
and printer: the artist, London. I was interested in the shapes and ers and racersexemplify the theme, and of the contribution of women artists to the
Edition: 50. The Museum of
rhythms and patterns of things, Andrews drama, of movement. development of British modernism and,
Modern Art, New York. Riva
Castleman Endowment Fund said.3 With linoleum cut, bold areas of color, Giant Cable (no. 1) shows people engaged more specifically, to British modern print-
and Donald B. Marron Fund simplified shapes, sweeping curves, and in heavy physical labor and exertion. Here, making. Andrews may have subordinated
96 97
Opposite:
2. Racing. 1934. Linoleum
cut, comp. 10 5/16 x 13 1/2"
(26.2 x 34.3 cm). Publisher
and printer: the artist, London.
Edition: 60. The Museum
of Modern Art, New York.
Sharon P. Rockefeller Fund
and General Print Fund
her last name in Andrew Power, but she labor. Art schools also started to open up to Andrews was a woman of modest means,
came into her own as conventions of femi- women, although women artists were often with a simple mission: to create prints that
ninity were being challenged. Urban mobility left out of exhibitions. captured the spirit of the modern age. But
1. For the definitive discussion Australia, 1992), p. 2. Color Linocuts (Calgary: 6. The Representation of the 7. Five of the seven principal
gave women independence, which was a key The circle of printmakers at the Grosve- in doing so, she set an example. In her book of this group of artists and their 3. Sybil Andrews, interview, Glenbow Museum, 1982). People Act of 1918 gave women linoleum-cut artists at the
factor in their participation in avant-garde nor School was, in some ways, exceptional. Artists Kitchena kind of recipe book for the works, see Stephen Coppel, October 28, 1985; quoted in 5. For a discussion of the over the age of thirty the right Grosvenor School were women
activities.5 The position of women in society Flights classes were open to students on a making of artAndrews wrote, Before you Linocuts of the Machine Age: Kathleen Niwa, The Shapes female Vorticists, see Jane to vote; ten years later women (and four of those five were
was also influenced by womens suffrage, rolling basis and without entrance require- can be, you must do.8 Claude Flight and the Grosvenor and Rhythms and Patterns of Beckett and Deborah Cherry, over twenty-one were given the international students).
School (Hants, England: Scolar Things: The Linocuts of Sybil Reconceptualizing Vorticism: right. The Sex Disqualification 8. Andrews, Artists Kitchen
along with legislation that increased equality ments, perhaps making them particularly
Press, 1995). Andrews (PhD diss., University Women, Modernity, Modern- (Removal) Act of 1919 removed (London: R. K. Hudson, 1985).
in education and employment.6 Women, inviting to women artists.7 Printmakings 2. Coppel, Claude Flight and His of Victoria, Canada, 1984), p. 2. ism, in Paul Edwards, ed., gender and marital status
after all, had filled thousands of jobs in association with the decorative arts also made Followers: The Colour Linocut 4. For a comprehensive discus- Blast: Vorticism, 19141918 as qualifications for civil and
wartimemany demanding heavy physical it a natural draw for women during this time. Movement between the Wars sion of Andrewss work, see (Farnham, England: Ashgate, judicial professions, among
(Canberra: National Gallery of Peter White, Sybil Andrews: 2001). others.
100 101
In January 1940, probably just prior to of the written sign.15 But at the same time 1. Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., letter to ed. Raquel Tibol (Mexico City: likely familiarity with Man Rays Kahlo (London: Tate, 2005), (January 15, 1943): 14; archived
cutting her hair, Kahlo reported to Muray, they reject it; Kahlo also forced those lines Alfred H. Barr, Jr., February 25, Plaza y Jans, 2004), p. 241. photographs of Duchamp as plate 35 and fig. 102. And when in Press Clipping Volumes,
1943. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers, 7. For the most extensive dis- Rrose Slavy, see ibid., p. 184. Kahlo painted Riveras portrait Peggy Guggenheim Museum,
I have to finish a big painting . . . [for The into mimetic service, into the jobs of descrip-
I.97, The Museum of Modern Art cussion of Autorretrato con For a useful discussion of the set within her own face in Venice. Kahlos Autorretrato con
International Exhibition of Surrealism that tion and self-representation. Archives, New York. pelo cortado to date, including distinction between posing and Autorretrato como tehuana pelo cortado was included in a
opened in Mexico City on January 17, 1940] It is perhaps in this hairy, calligraphic, 2. Barr, draft report on his mention of the earlier attempting to pass, see (Self-Portrait as a Tehuana) show titled Exhibition by 31
and start small things to send to Julien floor-bound realmat a distance from the summer 1942 trip to Mexico Autorretrato con cabello corto Jennifer Blessing, Rrose is a (1943), she rendered him in the Women at Peggy Guggenheims
[Levy].12 It is highly likely that one of the face that has, by now, become so famous and Cuba, undated. Alfred H. y rizado (Self-Portrait with Rrose is a Rrose: Gender same crimson shirt and char- recently opened gallery Art of
Barr, Jr. Papers, 10.A.47, Curly Hair) (1935) and a useful Performance in Photography, coal-gray wide-lapelled suit, This Century, New York, January
small things she subsequently started was that its celebrity makes it difficult to see her
The Museum of Modern Art overview of critical responses in Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: further supporting an associa- 531, 1943. I am indebted to
Autorretrato con pelo cortado. Kahlo always artthat Kahlo the master artist most power- Archives, New York. to the work, see Gannit Ankori, Gender Performance in tion between these garments Robert Storrs suggestion that
insisted on her works documentary character fully emerges, as a figure not only capable 3. Barr, letter to Kaufmann, Imaging Her Selves: Frida Photography (New York: and Rivera. Ibid., plate 42. in Kahlos Autorretrato con pelo
and its intimate relation to real, lived events of wearing her then-more-famous husbands February 4, 1943. Alfred H. Barr, Kahlos Poetics of Identity and Solomon R. Guggenheim 10. See Kahlos letters to Muray, cortado she kills the muse to
Jr. Papers, I.97. The Museum of Fragmentation (Westport, Museum, 1997), p. 23. December 18, 1939, January become the master. Storr,
in her life.13 Among these events, in addition suit with authority but of creating an intimate,
Modern Art Archives, New York. Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002), 9. Ankori argues against identi- 1940, and February 6, 1940, in Frida Kahlo autoportrait aux
to those directly linked to her biographical corporeal, counterlanguage that placed her 2. Diego Rivera (Mexican, 4. For a closer translation see pp. 17587. I am indebted to fying the suit with Diego Rivera Escrituras, pp. 23841, on her cheveux coups, Art Press, no.
circumstances, the brouhaha over Mexico private, personal experiences at the center 18861957). Autorretrato MoMA Highlights: 350 Works her observations throughout, and suggests that Kahlo may determination to rely only on 113 (April 1987): 84.
(The Firestone Self-Portrait). from The Museum of Modern although because she inter- have loosely based the painting her own art for money and for 12. Kahlo, letter to Muray,
Citys Surrealism exhibitionwhich prompted of her public practice, redefining, in terms of
1941. Oil on canvas, 24 x 17" Art, New York (New York: The prets Autorretrato con pelo cor- on a photograph of herself, references to how hard she was January 1940. The big painting
Kahlos sarcastic remark that everybody in a very particular feminine subjectivity, what
(61 x 43.2 cm). Collection Museum of Modern Art, 1999), tado as evidence of what she seated in a similar chair, wear- working in anticipation of a Kahlo referred to is most likely
Mexico has become a surrealist because all can be considered subject matter for the Michael Audain and Yoshiko p. 181: Look, if I loved you it second one-person show at the La mesa herida (The Wounded
seeks to establish as a long- ing pants and a womans em-
are going to take part on [sic] itshould making of serious, universal art. Karasawa, Vancouver, B.C. was because of your hair. Now standing interest on Kahlos broidered Mexican shirt. Ankori, Julien Levy Gallery, New York. Table) (1940), now lost.
also be considered, given the paintings that you are without hair, I dont part in assuming a masculin- Imaging Her Selves, p. 177. It See also Kahlos letters to Levy, 13. See Kahlo, letter to Carlos
numerous, slyly ironic references to Sigmund love you anymore. ized identity, the works anom- can be noted, however, that February 7 and February 28, Chvez, October 1939, in
5. Frida Kahlo, letter to Julien alous status within Kahlos when Rivera painted 1940. Philadelphia Museum of Escrituras, p. 231, for an early,
Freuds theories of fetishism, which were
Levy, February 28, 1940. oeuvre goes unmentioned. Autorretrato (no. 2), commis- Art Archives. The show kept manifestolike description of
widely embraced by the Surrealists yet prob- Philadelphia Museum of Art Kahlo did pose in a mans suit sioned as a pendant to Kahlos being postponed, and Kahlo the intimate relation between
lematically defined women in terms of lack.14 Archives. In this letter Kahlo in 1926, fourteen years earlier, Autorretrato dedicado eventually suggested to Levy her art and her life.
The lyrics Kahlo painstakingly inscribed reports that Kaufmann had for photographs taken by her a Sigmund Firestone (Self- that he offer her February 1941 14. Kahlo, letter to Muray,
recently visited her and had father, Guillermo Kahlo, but Portrait Dedicated to Sigmund slot on the exhibition schedule January 1940.
in flowing, cursive script across the top of
purchased the painting Child Autorretrato con pelo cortado Firestone) (completed by to the photographer Manuel 15. Rosalind Krauss, Magnetic
Autorretrato con pelo cortado sing of some- birth (1932) (now more com- is the only known instance February 15, 1940), he por- Alvarez Bravo. Kahlo, letter to Fields: The Structure, in
one once loved for her hair, which is a classic monly known as Mi nacimiento where she depicted herself trayed himself dressed in a gray Levy, August 30, 1940. Phila Krauss and Margit Rowell,
Freudian fetish object or stand-in. The [My Birth]). as a dandy in masculine attire suit with a crimson shirt just as delphia Museum of Art Joan Mir: Magnetic Fields
suggestively positioned pair of (castrating) 6. Kahlo, letter to Nickolas and short hair. Kahlo does in Autorretrato con Archives. (New York: Solomon R.
Muray, February 6, 1940; 8. On Kahlos close relationship pelo cortado. See Emma Dexter 11. Ben Bindol, Exhibition Guggenheim Foundation,
scissors introduces a performative dimen-
reprinted in Kahlo, Escrituras, with Marcel Duchamp and her and Tanya Barson, eds., Frida by 31 Women, Aufbau 9, no. 3 1972), p. 11.
sion, identifying Kahlo with the act that gave
rise to the eerily animate locks of hair them-
selves. These liberated tendrilsblack and
fluid, like the writingfloat up against the
surface of the painting, refusing to conform
to the dictates of recessional space. It is,
perhaps, in her treatment of the hair that
Kahlo most clearly signals both her engage-
ment with and distance from Surrealism, by
transforming the disengaged, spontaneous
lines of the movements celebrated auto-
matic drawings into an obsessively detailed,
exquisitely painted, deliberately referential
network. The fine lines traced by her brush
recall what art historian Rosalind Krauss
has described as the kind of drawing that
the French call criturea descriptive line
pushed toward the abstract disembodiment
Im Nobody! Who are you? her own love of paper writ much larger than Dickinsons
Are youNobodyToo? tiny, creased, folded-up, sewn-together, stowed-away bits
Then theres a pair of us! of eccentric inscription.4
Dont tell! theyd advertiseyou know! What Dickinson knew, however, was that there were
certain imaginative freedoms that being a nobody granted.
How drearyto beSomebody! There were kinds of largeness that being small made
How publiclike a Frog possible. There were kinds of flight that being encaged
To tell ones namethe livelong June enabled, kinds of enablement that limits could produce,
To an admiring Bog! 1 in the right mind of a somewhat wrong-minded person,
in this case a classic nineteenth-century woman-in-a-
So wrote Emily Dickinson, on a tiny sheet of paper sewn white-dress who lived in private and wrote down her
into one of about forty little fascicles and stowed away passions, her yearnings, her mordant understandings,
in a drawer. It emerged after her death, in 1886, and then and her worms-eye noticings, with the vertiginous
again and again until, in 2007, it was included in Sampler breathlessness of her ejaculatory gasps and dashes and
(no. 1), a collection of her poems illustrated by Kiki Smith, exclamations piercing the written-on whiteness of the
with small stitched images made by piercing sheets of page with the voiced ellipses of an invisible embodiment,
photographic emulsion with an etching needle.2 Thus often erotic in tone. Obviously I dont want to argue for
were sewn together the nineteenth and the twenty-first encagement but only to suggest that being a relative
centuries; photography, writing, and etching; and two nobody, as Dickinson knew, was a condition of possibility
women on paper, in a book that (unfortunately) cleans up and liberty as much as of marginalization and belittlement,
Dickinsons odd punctuation and presents her poetry, her and that becoming a somebody, like that frog in the bog,
name, and her image in the form of a nineteenth-century could bring with it a diminishment of radicality: now that
photograph transformed, by Smiths cross-stitching, for we know Dickinsons name so well, her strange verses
the admiring bog. have become normalized. Good thing for her, in a way,
Being a nobody, like being a somebody, is a relative that her name did not become widely known sooner than
state of being: relative to others of her time, some gifted it did.5
and others less so, Dickinson was indeed more or less a So I want to take this opportunity to look in reverse
1. Kiki Smith (American, born nobody; relative to most writers now, male and female, order through a works-on-paper canon that I have con-
Germany 1954). Sampler. 2007.
past and present, she is definitely a somebody, whose structed of relative nobodies and somebodies whose
Illustrated book with 206
letterpress illustrations and gifts and gentle radicality have long been recognized and names have become known (some better than others)
one supplementary letter- canonized.3 Likewise Smith, a daughter of Minimalist and whose works on paperinscribed, drawn, printed,
press print with ink and foil
additions, sheet 24 x 15 3/4"
sculptor Tony Smith, was a definite somebody, although photographed, and variously pierced and puncturedhave
(61 x 40 cm). Publisher and she might not have been so without the art-world efforts been acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, that great
printer: The Arion Press, San
of the American feminist movement of the 1970s, in mausoleum of somebodies. I want to consider the ways
Francisco. Edition: 40. The
Museum of Modern Art, New whose discursive fields she has roamed ever since, with in which those nobodies and somebodies used their
York. Acquired through the
generosity of Susan Jacoby in
honor of her mother, Marjorie
L. Goldberger and General
104 Print Fund 105
2. Mira Schendel (Brazilian,
born Switzerland. 19191988).
Perfurados III. c. 1970s.
Perforated paper, 12 5/8 x
12 5/8" (32 x 32 cm). The
Museum of Modern Art,
nobodiness and somebodiness to produce paper eccen- which-is-not-one (as Luce Irigaray punningly terms the New York. Purchase
tricities of interest, if not radicality, to us now, and to female sex)associating the mark of drawing with the
somewhat shift off its normal course the direction of the mark of feminine craft and then the mark of the female,
canon that they now inhabit with different degrees of bringing the gentility of the distaff side gently down to
renown. The fact of the femaleness of these nobodies and genitality, earthily down to earththese paired button-
somebodies will enter into the equation, but with some holes also sharpen Dickinsons poetry into the punctum
circumspection. For they all are or were women, although that is always latent within it, piercing the paper that it is
what matters about them is not their gender but what written on and with it the heart of the reader.8
they did on, to, and with the sensuous material of paper. The piercing and puncturing of paper unites the work
Which, since paper is a relatively private medium, they of several other artists in MoMAs collection, from Ellen
did in relative privacy, with less concern than otherwise Gallaghers Watery Ecstatic (2003) to Mira Schendels
for the public, the bog that the frog addressed. Perfurados III (c. 1970s, no. 2) and an untitled work by
Howardena Pindell (1973, no. 3) and back to Hannah Hchs
cut-and-pasted Watched (1925, no. 4) and an untitled work
PIERCED AND PUNCTURED by Lyubov Popova from 1917.9 Gallaghers cut-paper works
literally transform drawing-by-line into drawing-by-cutting,
A Spider sewed at Night evoking less Henri Matisses grand cutouts than a little
Without a Light girls doily-making, as well as the paper scraps left over
Upon an Arc of White. . . . from such efforts; the artist combines clean, intentional
cuts with scored and scarified paper, bringing the materi-
Of Immortality ality of the surface to the fore and making its back side
His Strategy count in the marking of its front side. Not only does this
Was Physiognomy.6 roughen the domestic, childs-play associations of paper-
cutting, and sully and desublimate the clean whiteness of
Sewn next to the nobody poem in Smiths Sampler are the paper ground, it also makes its mark in rather than
two small buttonholes, each the inverse of the other, thus on that ground, transforming the abstract, form-making
introducing the logic of the print and the photograph into gesture of line into an act of cleavage, a splitting of matter. nevertheless evoke cosmic dimensions, stellar skies, and raised off the surface by a grid of sewing-thread lines.
her system of sewing and drawing. That pair is a perfect It makes the paper itself matter and refuses the pure ethereal distances; they are in some sense exercises in the The pen and ink of such works belongs to the previous
little image of nobodiness doubled, as it is in the poem. white abstraction of its planarity and all the figure-ground dematerialization of drawing. At the same time they make surfaces from which the holes were punched. As light as
At the same time it is not fortuitous that they also look distinctions that go with it. For all of its figures are of its the paper of which they are made more materially present the powdered sugar on the top of a mille-feuille confection
like twinned vaginal openings. Appearing elsewhere in the ground, and that ground is sliced, bent, and frayed into than the pricked lines that divide their surfaces, and urge (and, in so being, unlike the artists heavier, more glutinous
Sampler, their vulval character is always noticeable and in double-sidedness. an awareness of the two-sidedness and paper-thickness of paintings made in similar ways), the holes have a doubled
keeping with Smiths habitual introduction of the body Schendels Perfurados, made some thirty years earlier, the paper. Not to mention the constitutive act of pricking, materiality and a delicate earthiness, weaving together
the visceral, internal, animal body rather than the body are more pristine in their pinpricked surfaces: some black of piercing the paper with a sharp instrument. presence and absence, matter and unmatter. These, too,
seen from the outside as an ideal, a whole, or an organized and some white; some creating constellations, clusters, For their part, Pindells paper-punch works, such as make the paper matter and refuse the making-out-of-
gestaltinto the grain, weave, pulp, and layered folios of and spiderwebs of delicate perforations in which light, Untitled (#7), are made of paper holes: the confetti resulting thin-air status usually granted to line and its formative
her paper works.7 Here the buttonholes produce a slighter white wall, or undersurface shine through to make spirals from the punching of holes in other paper works fabricates gestures. They refuse the Athena-from-the-head-of-Zeus
yet more pointed effect: in addition to making the equations or bands; others simply partitioning the space with a the texture of a new one, a pastrylike matter thickened Idea of drawingits Logosand replace it with a material
mark=stitch=genital hair and drawing=sewing=this-sex- perforated dividing line. Modest in size, these works by the intimate flourlike substance of talcum powder and matrix of something- and nothingness, of matter and the
The etchings white-on-white delicacy sharpens the hold circular stains of watercolor that approximate nipples
poignancy, elaborating the combination of the fine and and orifices, gently mocking the body that fits into the
the coarse, the refined and the guttural, that we have seen ideal Vitruvian geometry of the circle and the square. The
elsewhere in this canon of womens works on paper. At grid remains, but it shares company with the stain in such
the other end of the black-and-white spectrum lies Lee a way that it wavers and fades and partially liquefies into
Krasners Obsidian (1962), a tangled web of darkly litho- the image and matter of water on paper. Martins habitual
graphed lines with fine scratches looping through it, minimalist gridsTremolo (1962) and the more delicate
which takes over the whole surface, and in its darkness, Untitled (1960, no. 7)work differently, growing ragged
coarseness, and allover-ness functions as a kind of negative at their edges, unraveling into the warp and woof of
to Hatoums cream-on-cream hair tangles; it, too, under- woven threads that evoke textile and paper and the looms,
lines the materiality not only of the mark but of the paper screens, and scrims on which they are made, thereby
support, caught up in a web of black ink, which in turn is making the pen marks on paper redouble the materiality
a kind of enlarged, self-reflexive image of the web of paper of and in the paper.
matter, white turned into black, mark turned into ground.
One of the things that hair there and every where does
5. Mona Hatoum (British of
is to make an irrational mess of that sign of rationality, Palestinian origin, born
the grid.13 Two other artists in this canon are concerned Lebanon 1952). hair there and
every where. 2004. Two from a
with the grid and with departures from it: Eva Hesse and
portfolio of ten etchings, plate
Agnes Martin. Hesses no title (1966, no. 6) makes the grid 7 7/8 x 6 15/16" (20 x 17.6 cm).
Publisher and printer: Edition
Samuel Jacob, Santa Monica.
Edition: 20. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Carol
110 WOMEN ON PAPER and Morton H. Rapp Fund ARMSTRONG 111
8. Louise Bourgeois (American, 10. Helen Frankenthaler
born France 1911). Les (American, born 1928).
Mollusques (Mollusks), state I. Savage Breeze. 1974.
c. 1948. Etching with ink and Woodcut, sheet 31 1/2 x 27 1/4"
pencil additions, sheet 9 7/8 x (80 x 69.2 cm). Publisher and
6 5/8" (25 x 16.8 cm). Publisher: printer: Universal Limited
unpublished. Printer: the Art Editions, West Islip, New
artist, New York. Edition: York. Edition: 31. The Museum
1 known impression. The of Modern Art, New York.
Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Celeste Bartos
New York. Gift of the artist
dramatizes the materiality of the photo-based image Barthess La Chambre claire (Camera Lucida, 1980): Daniel legs, and cloth making contact
We like a Hairbreadth scape and questions the relationship between the optical trace Boudinets untitled 1979 photograph of a field of blue with the ground and taking up a good half of the photo-
It tingles in the Mind and its literal tactility. For these are photo-based images cloth parting slightly, letting in enough light to show a graph; or with feet, legs, dress cloth, and pregnant belly
Far after Act or Accident that can be felt and that feel something like the hair that bit of a dark room, which wordlessly opens the book by lying on the fabric of a bedspread constituting the whole
Like paragraphs of Wind they represent. At the same time they stress the divide illustrating the way the rents and tears, the wrinkles and of the photograph; or with the wrinkled fabric of a lap,
between the light-made image and the surface made of creases in a material field are caught willy-nilly by the with creased, clasped, and aged hands sunk into its folds,
If we had ventured less felt: the relay between seeing and feeling that refuses the camera in its umbilical cord relation to the physical world taking up all but two corners of the photographall three
The Breeze were not so fine utter joining into oneness of the two. The tonal language it portrays. It is precisely from that field that the famous images take that punctal field as their subject, tying it
That reaches to our utmost Hair of the print tells the eye that it was not the hand that punctum issues.21 to the human bodies that they contain. It is also true of
Its tentacles divine.19 made the image but rather the light-receiving and light- Certain photographic women seem to have been Coney Island (1941, no. 16), a delightful photograph by
tracing eye of the camera. particularly interested in that field, and primary among Arbuss teacher, Lisette Model. This iconic fat woman
The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor
Germany. 18991988). Greta 18961942). Roses, Mexico.
Garbo Poster in Paris Ghetto. 1924. Palladium print, 7 3/8 x
1932. Gelatin silver print, 8 1/2" (18.8 x 21.6 cm). The
8 3/4 x 11" (22.2 x 28.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Edward Weston
York. David H. McAlpin Fund
At the end of the nineteenth century there were three that precipitated a veritable flood of female photographers.3
types of photographers: the professional, the artist, and The profusion of advertisements featuring the Kodak Girl
the amateur.1 The borders between them were distinct, if reflected Eastmans appreciation of the enormous potential
permeable. Professionals relied on photography to make a of the female market and his determination to secure it.4
living, either by operating commercial studios or accept- And despite the prevalent gender biases at the time,
ing assignments from illustrated magazines, and produced artist-photographers were significantly less threatened
unmistakably photographic workrich in detail and by the presence of women in their midst than they were
intimately connected to the real world. Artists, for the by the amateurs and professional studios churning out
most part, sought recognition for photography as a means photographs for an eager and ever-expanding audience.
of personal expression, imitating avant-garde efforts from Alfred Stieglitz was unquestionably the central figure
other mediums with such techniques as soft focus, exten- in photography at the turn of the twentieth centurya
sive darkroom manipulation, and compositional arrange- talented photographer in his own right, but also a tireless
ments derived from Japanese woodcuts, anything to advocate for photography as a means of artistic expression.5
distinguish their work from that of their professional peers. Artist-photographers became known as Pictorialists, and
The amateur photographer emerged with the technical Stieglitz championed their work on the pages of Camera
developments of the 1880s: hoards of self-taught snap- Notes (from 1897 until 1902) and Camera Work (beginning
shooters enticed by George Eastmans advertising campaign in 1903).6 In 1902, characteristically dissatisfied with the
(You Press the Button, We Do the Rest) to take tens of status quo, he invited twelve photographers who shared
thousands of pictures of their children, friends, and vaca- his absolute dedication to the advancement of photo-
tions. To photographers who considered themselves artists graphic art to join him in a new alliance he christened the
the sheer number of pictures produced by amateurs and Photo-Secession.7 Given the zeal with which he sought
professionals was a threat to the consideration of photog- to protect photography from complacency or the taint of
raphy as a fine art.2 It was during this increasingly divided commercialism, it is no wonder that he eventually clashed
era in photographic history that Frances Benjamin Johnston with many of his admirers, particularly those who sought
and Gertrude Ksebier first picked up their cameras. to earn a living making photographs. His approval and
There is ample evidence that women were participating support were critically important for artistically ambitious
in the business and art of photography from its earliest photographers of this era, and Johnston and Ksebier were
days, but it was the availability of commercially prepared no exception. It is remarkable, however, that he gave his
dry-plate glass negatives in the late 1870s, followed by the support to these two photographers who publicly staked
development of rolled negatives on flexible film (which their claim neither as artists nor as commercial profession-
Eastman placed inside his Kodak No. 1 Camera in 1888) als, but as professional artists.
The categories of artist and professional, which
1. Gertrude Ksebier Stieglitz and many of his male contemporaries held to be
(American, 18521934). mutually exclusive, were not perceived as binary for their
Blessed Art Thou Among
Women. 1899. Platinum print, female contemporaries, many of whom were accustomed
9 3/8 x 5 5/8" (23.8 x 14.3 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of Mrs. Hermine
M. Turner
124 125
to transcending societal expectations (for example, definingbeen pleased with her thriving studio and steady stream exhibited at the Camera Club in November 1898, con-
both home and studio as womens spheres). The way in of freelance assignments, but she also remained proud of current with the first Philadelphia Salon.
which Johnston and Ksebier bridged the divide between her artistic training; in 1896, with no little trepidation, The reviews of Johnstons work in Camera Notes con-
art and commerce can help us understand this singularly she submitted three prints to the first (and only) firm her enviable position. In January 1899 her photographs
polarizing issue in the history of photography. Washington Salon.11 All three were accepted, likely and Stieglitzs were described as remarkable in equal
encouraging her to submit work to the first Philadelphia degree.17 And in the following issue: If Miss Johnston
The woman who makes photography profitable Photographic Salon, in 1898, where she would first cross be not endowed with that erratic and uncertain gift called
must have, as to personal qualities, good common paths with Ksebier. genius, her works . . . give evidence at least of the posses-
sense, unlimited patience to carry her through The Philadelphia Photographic Salon marked the sion of a high order of talent.18 This issue contained
endless failures, equally unlimited tact, good taste, first time that a recognized American fine arts institution Johnstons first full-page gravure as well as the magazines
a quick eye, a talent for detail, and a genius for sponsored a photography exhibition.12 The organizers first halftone reproductions of Ksebiers photographs. For
hard work. In addition, she needs training, experience, pride and idealism would soon be tested by the tensions Ksebier this would be the first of many appearances, but
some capital, and a field to exploit. . . . between those who shared Stieglitzs singular vision despite the promise described in these reviews, it would
Any person of average intelligence can produce and those with broader notions of photographic accom- be Johnstons last reproduction or substantive mention.
photographs by the thousand, but to give art value plishment. Stieglitz was one of the salons five jurors, who It was a fast fall from Stieglitzs grace. Within a
to the fixed image of the camera-obscura requires together selected only 259 works for exhibition from more month of this issues publication, when Johnston and
imagination, discriminating taste, and, in fact, than 1,500 submitted.13 Four of Johnstons photographs Ksebier were appointed jurors of the second Philadelphia
all that is implied by a true appreciation of the were chosen, along with ten by Ksebier; only Stieglitz, Photographic Salon (along with F. Holland Day, White,
beautiful. Mathilde Weil, and Clarence H. White were equally and Henry Troth), Stieglitz wrote to Day, I like you as a
Frances Benjamin Johnston 8 well represented. Jurorbut Miss Johnston! And even Troth. Why not Day
Johnston had also received glowing praise in the pages to represent the East, Ksebier the Middle States, and
Frances Benjamin Johnston appeared undaunted by many of Camera Notes, a quarterly magazine Stieglitz had created White the West?19 (The jurors sat together for a tintype
of the gender stereotypes that prevailed at the end of the the previous year from his new position as vice president portrait at a local commercial studio, providing a precious
nineteenth century: she remained unmarried, established of the Camera Club of New York (and, not incidentally, record of their demeanor [no. 2]. For jurors responsible
her own commercial portrait studio, and photographed chair of its publication committee). Stieglitz used Camera for upholding artistic standards of excellence to document
herself with her skirt drawn up, a cigarette in one hand Notes to champion photography as a fine art, to commend their role in such a pedestrian manner would have been by mid-1899 her photography 2. Jurors of the second annual
Philadelphia Photographic
and a beer stein in the othera defiantly improper repre- those practitioners he admired, and to condemn (or, worse, ironic, even deplorable, to Stieglitz.) For the third Salon, had little in common with the
Salon, 1899. Tintype by
sentation. Born in 1864 and trained at the Acadmie Julian, ignore) the rest. On its pages in October 1897 Johnston in 1900, Stieglitz secured a seat for himself on the jury, previous work that Stieglitz had James R. Applegate. Library
in Paris, and the Art Students League, in Washington, was hailed, despite her professional background, as one pleased to have Ksebier by his side and perhaps equally admired. Johnston returned to of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division. Gift of
D. C., Johnston began her career writing and illustrating of the best known American amateurs and an eminent pleased about (if not responsible for) Johnstons absence. the more expository pictorial Frances Benjamin Johnston
magazine articles, often using photographs as the basis name in the field.14 In October 1898 a halftone reproduction By then the rift was growing between Stieglitzs allies, vocabulary she had developed
for her pen-and-ink drawings.9 Around 1890 she turned of one of Johnstons photographs accompanied an article who felt that the modern photographic Salon stands during her years working for Bain
exclusively to photography, which she learned from by Sadakichi Hartmann, which distinguished the work for art and art alone, and a number of members of the and the illustrated pressalthough now inflected with
Thomas Smillie, the Smithsonians first staff photographer, of artistic photographers from the amateur work of Philadelphia Photographic Society, who felt that the selec- the lessons of composition and print quality she had
and a few years later she went to work for George Grantham Kodak fiends, thus aligning Johnston with serious tion criteria were too narrow. Johnston was among the absorbed under Stieglitzs influence. The second reason
Bain, founder of the first news-photography agency, making creative endeavors.15 Shortly thereafter Stieglitz wrote many whose work was excluded because it no longer fit almost certainly stemmed from her refusal to observe the
her the first female photojournalist.10 It was not until to Johnston, Your work is capital, & I shall be glad to Stieglitzs definition of art photography.20 boycotts of salons and exhibitions that Stieglitz led on a
1895, with the opening of her own studio, that she expan- see more of it when you get to New York. 16 These were There were most likely several reasons for Johnstons regular basis or, more fundamentally, from her evident
ded her practice to include portraiture. She must have not empty compliments: Johnstons photographs were falling out of favor. The first and most significant is that rejection of his position that the practical and commercial
Within the complex history of Russian modernism as it riders.2 In addition to individual talent and ambition,
unfolded from 1912 to 1934, two of the most distinguishing their ability to achieve such success has been attributed
aspects were the prominence of so many women artists in part to various social, economic, and cultural factors.3
and the development and proliferation of a radically new Goncharova, Rozanova, Popova, and Stepanova, like many
type of art object, the Russian avant-garde book. Although other Russian women artists who came of age at the turn
these two phenomena are usually discussed separately, of the twentieth century, were from families of at least
several of the eras leading women artists, including modest wealth, and all were well educated and had the
Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova, Lyubov Popova, and opportunity for advanced study at art school. It was a
Varvara Stepanova, were crucial in creating many of the charged and contradictory time in Russian history, as the
most innovative and influential avant-garde books.1 conservative traditions of the old order represented by
And although these women are remembered primarily Czar Nicholas II came up against the progressive ideas
as painters (or, to a lesser extent, as theater, textile, and and innovations of the modern world. The vast majority
clothing designers), many of the works they created in of Russians still lived in undeveloped rural areas within a
book or album format were at least as innovative and daring patriarchal social structure, but within the tiny educated
as their efforts in any other medium. Indeed, many of elite, an emergent intelligentsia supported equality of the
their books stand among the most important monuments sexes.4 And although the literacy rate before 1917 was less
in the graphic arts of this period. The fact that both women than fifty percent, by the mid-nineteenth century educa-
and illustrated books are usually accorded secondary tion had become accessible to women, and by the 1880s
status within art history in relation to men and paintings, the art schools in the cultural centers of St. Petersburg,
respectively, makes this confluence of developments all Moscow, Odessa, and Kiev were attracting a majority of
the more exceptional. female students.5
The position of women at the forefront of the Russian Finishing their studies in the early 1900s, Goncharova,
avant-garde sets this movement apart from any other Rozanova, Popova, and Stepanova emerged in a cultural
in art history to that point. Even the women artists con- atmosphere in Moscow and St. Petersburg that was alive
temporaries were struck by their preeminence. Benedikt with expectations for major innovation in all of the arts,
Livshits, a Russian poet and colleague of the artists, com- including painting, music, literature, theater, and even the
pared them to the legendary women warriors of ancient new art of film. In the first decade of the twentieth century,
Scythia: These were the real Amazons, these Scythian for the first time in history, Russian artists had contact
with the European avant-garde, whose example offered
1. Natalia Goncharova (Russian, them an alternative to their own conservative academic
18811962). Igra v adu (A game traditions. Like their male counterparts, many women
in hell), by Velimir Khlebnikov
and Aleksei Kruchenykh. 1912.
artists, including Goncharova and Popova, traveled to
Cover from an illustrated book France, Italy, and other countries, or were able to learn
with thirteen lithographs, page
about modernist developments in Western Europe, notably
7 3/16 x 5 1/2" (18.3 x 14 cm).
Publisher: G. L. Kuzmin Cubism, Italian Futurism, and Expressionism, through
and S. D. Dolinskii, Moscow.
Printer: unknown. Edition: 300.
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of The Judith
140 Rothschild Foundation 141
2 and 3. Natalia Goncharova
(Russian, 18811962). Igra
v adu (A game in hell), by
Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei
Kruchenykh. 1912. Two pages
from an illustrated book with
thirteen lithographs, page
7 3/16 x 5 1/2" (18.3 x 14 cm). that combined new forms of poetry based on everyday integrity and allowed for a concise but intense kind of
Publisher: G. L. Kuzmin and
low brow subjects; common, sometimes coarse language; aesthetic experience: I really dont like endless works and
S. D. Dolinskii, Moscow.
Printer: unknown. Edition: 300. and an intentionally faulty and playful use of grammar, big booksthey cant be read at a single sitting, and they
The Museum of Modern Art, syntax, and punctuation, with similarly rough and deliber- do not give you any sense of wholeness. Books should be
New York. Gift of The Judith
Rothschild Foundation
ately unrefined illustrations. Many of the Futurist poets, small, but contain no lies; everything is its own, belongs
including Aleksei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov, and to that book, down to the last ink stain.8
Vladimir Mayakovsky, began their careers as painters, so The woman artist who made the earliest contributions
they brought a visual sense to their poetry and were keen to the avant-garde book was Natalia Goncharova. Born
to enlist the contributions of painters for their books. The in 1881, she was the oldest of the Amazons, and her life
books were often published by the poets themselves, or and work served as an inspiration to many of the women
by well-to-do enthusiasts and patrons, usually in editions who came along slightly later. She was born on an estate
of several hundred. Those who purchased these books in the province of Tula, in central Russia, where her family
were also mostly friends, fellow artists, and other members owned a linen mill and was part of the landed nobility.
of the intelligentsia who had a personal interest in art The daughter of a distinguished architect and a great-
and poetry. Within this rarefied world, the books played grandniece of the poet Aleksandr Pushkin, Goncharova
books and magazines, contact with Russian collectors of a fervent commitment to aesthetic revolution and a an important part in publicizing the movement and spent her childhood in the country surrounded by the
European modernism, and in other ways. Radical aesthetics passionate belief in the need to change the world. disseminating its ideas. local peasant life that would eventually become an impor-
and an urgent push for a new, Russian form of modernism As a site for creative experimentation and collabora- The books that began appearing around 1912 were tant subject in her paintings. In 1901 she enrolled in the
exploded in the early 1900s and continued to spread even tion, the avant-garde book was a crucial part of this heady shockingly primitive handmade objects. They were printed Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.
after the Revolution of 1917 and into the 1920s. mix. It emerged and flowered as an important medium using various unorthodox techniques on cheap paper with In the course of her studies she met the young painter
Goncharova, Rozanova, Popova, and Stepanova were for the Russian avant-garde as it evolved from the Neo- unevenly trimmed edges, stapled or minimally stitched Mikhail Larionov, who became her closest artistic ally
all closely associated with important male artists, both Primitivism that characterized much of the work created bindings, and crude hand-lettering, all of which deliber- and lifelong companion.
personally and professionally. While these relationships between 1910 and 1914; to Russian Futurism, or Cubo- ately repudiated the elegant refinement of both Russian Goncharova was prominently included in many of
clearly had an impact on their art, including their books, Futurism, which dominated Russian aesthetics from Symbolist journals and the deluxe livres de peintre that the avant-garde exhibitions organized between 1910 and
they were equal partnerships, and the influence was 1912 to 1916; to Suprematism, which emerged in 1916; flourished in Europe, particularly France, in the late 1914 in Moscow and St. Petersburg. She quickly became
reciprocal. The men and women painted, socialized, and to Constructivism, which prevailed in the wake of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Russian Futurist the most famous woman artist in the Russian avant-garde,
zealously debated issues together. The women participated Revolution in 1917.7 books looked instead to more indigenous visual traditions, not only for her startlingly simplified, conspicuously naive
in the same exhibitions, wrote or cosigned the same Within the prerevolutionary avant-garde, there was such as medieval Russian illuminated manuscripts as Neo-Primitivist paintings, but also for her casual dress,
manifestos, and sought the same type of success and a close, cross-fertilizing relationship between artists and well as the familiar Russian lubok, a popular folk art form her cohabitation with Larionov, her assertive presence at
recognition. Neither subordinates nor disciples, they were poets. Together they participated in the radical artistic that combined simplified woodcut graphics with folkloric Futurist events, and her unabashed disregard for social
as central to the development of Russian modernism as groups and alliances that quickly formed, splintered, narratives. Typically consisting of only twenty or thirty proprieties. In 1913 she wrote, If I clash with society this
any of the men. It is possible that the absence in Russian dissolved, and re-formed as different factions quarreled small pages inside simple paper covers, when held and occurs only because the latter fails to understand the bases
art history of the tradition of the nude made the Russian over which approach was more authentically modern or leafed through, these early avant-garde books impart a of art and not because of my individual peculiarities,
art world a more comfortable place for women.6 The rela- Futurist. They organized raucous public readings where sense of something miraculously intimate, like a letter or which nobody is obliged to understand. 9
tively high social status of many of the women artists in they appeared in outrageous costumes with painted faces manuscript written for a close friend or confidante. For From the fall of 1912 through early 1913 Goncharova
relation to their male colleagues also may have helped level and engaged in riotous diatribes and high jinks that were Kruchenykh, who pioneered this new genre and wrote or and Larionov were involved in an intense collaboration
the playing field. In any event, their male compatriots meant to shock the middle class and bring attention to coauthored more avant-garde books than probably any with Kruchenykh and his frequent coauthor, Khlebnikov,
accepted them as allies and equals. Together they shared their modernist cause. They also collaborated on books other writer, the intimate scale gave the books a certain creating the first Russian Futurist books. During this brief
142 WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE BOOK FIGURA 143
SILO?
a. b. c. d.
period, Goncharova and Larionov each illustrated several lithographic crayon. Goncharovas images of devils and
titles, some individually, some together with a larger sinners, which similarly refer to traditional depictions of
group of artists. These books set a standard for innovation hell in Russian icons, frescoes, and lubok prints, are ren-
and the visual integration of text and images that subse- dered in a coarse Neo-Primitivist style that complements
quent Futurist publications sought to match or surpass. the crude simplicity of the handwritten text. The books
Igra v adu (A game in hell) (1912, nos. 13) was the first title can be seen as an early emblem of the contributors
of these groundbreaking books. A parody of a traditional attitude toward their collaborative endeavors, which was
lubok subject, it tells the story of a card game between to approach them, as Nina Gurianova has suggested, like
SILO?
sinners and devils in hell. Its thirteen leaves contain text an irrepressible game . . . unfettered by the boundaries of
f.
by Kruchenykh, hand-lettered using a lithographic crayon everyday hell.10 This spirit of childlike camaraderie and
in a style that loosely imitates Old Slavic religious manu- improvisation would become one of the hallmarks of the
scripts, and images by Goncharova, also drawn using a Russian avant-garde book.
FIGURA 145
e.
5. Olga Rozanova (Russian,
18861918). Vzorval
(Explodity), second ed., by
Aleksei Kruchenykh. 1913.
Cover from an illustrated book
with seventeen lithographs
The use of lithography in this and many other Russian motif from the Imperial Russian coat of armsfighting high points in Russian avant-garde tremor, an explosion that was expressed not only in the
by various artists, 6 7/8 x 4 5/8"
avant-garde books allowed the artists and poets to achieve the forces of East and West, and the Archangel Michael (17.4 x 11.7 cm). Publisher:art. Rozanovas free, improvisa- structure of phrases and lines, but in the exploded script
several goals, both aesthetic and practical. Whereas in riding through infernal flames and blowing his trumpet tional approach to art-making was
EUY, St. Petersburg. Printer: as well.12 These books incorporate a new form of poetry
unknown. Edition: 450.
traditional illustrated books, images and text were usually to summon forces to battle. In the final plates a timeless, The Museum of Modern Art,
an ideal match for Kruchenykhs that Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov coinvented during this
printed using different techniques and would appear on mystical narrative unfolds, as celestial legions protect New York. Gift of The Judithexplosive imagination. She also period and called zaum, or transrational language. Literally
Rothschild Foundation
separate pages, using lithography for both made printing the Christian army on Earth (c) and battle the forces of pioneered several audacious tech- beyond sense, zaum poetry rejected the conventional
simpler and less expensive. It also forged a stronger visual darkness (d and e). At the end, the victims of war are nical innovations that pushed the notion that words must have a specific meaning. Instead,
and conceptual connection between the two elements. buried in a mass grave (f).11 aesthetic of the avant-garde book in new directions. Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov focused on the sound and
Here, images and text share the same space on the page Misticheskie obrazy voiny marks the end and cul Rozanovas first book projects include the covers and appearance of individual letters and words, and used
and the same autographic, crayon-based aesthetic. And mination of Goncharovas involvement with the Russian single lithographs she contributed to several collaborative, invented or manipulated words. Kruchenykh explained,
whereas the text in traditional books was typically printed avant-garde. In 1915 she and Larionov left Russia to design multiartist books in early 1913, such as Vozropshchem The letter is not a means but a goal in itself. . . . To give
with letterpress, here the elemental, expressive gesture of costumes and stage sets for Sergei Diaghilevs Ballets (Lets grumble), Bukh lesinnyi (Forestly rapid), and Vzorval verbal art complete freedom, we use arbitrary words to
handwriting and the character of the individual letters and Russes as it toured through Europe. In 1919 they settled (Explodity) (no. 5), the titles of which reflect Kruchenykhs liberate ourselves from the subject and study the color,
words were themselves treated as visual elements. Each permanently in Paris, where Goncharova continued her desire to fracture or explode the visual material on the the music of the word, syllables, sounds. 13
page in its totality was a work of art. work in painting and theater design. Although she would pages of his books. As he later recalled, There was a In subsequent projects Rozanova began to pursue
Goncharovas most monumental graphic project was contribute illustrations to books published in Europe possibilities for introducing color to Futurist books.
Misticheskie obrazy voiny. 14 litografii (Mystical images of during these later years, the books were produced along Her first such efforts appeared in Utinoe gnezdyshko . . .
war: 14 lithographs) (no. 4), an album of fourteen litho- mostly conventional lines. Goncharova died in Paris durnykh slov i (A little ducks nest . . . of bad words) (no. 6),
graphs created in response to the outbreak of World War I in 1962. published in December 1913. The book contains one of
in 1914. In a more traditional portfolio format, the litho- At the point at which Goncharovas involvement with Kruchenykhs most autobiographical texts, and Rozanovas
graphs were issued loose inside a paper cover, without any avant-garde books left off, Olga Rozanovas began to flower. lithographs, when not completely abstract, represent
related text, save for the individual titles provided on an Five years younger than Goncharova, Rozanova was born various details of their daily life, such as an interior that
insert sheet. Nevertheless, Goncharova organized the in 1886 in Vladimir Province, east of Moscow, where her resembles the artists favorite cabaret, The Stray Dog,
prints sequentially to create a loose, quasi-theatrical nar- father was a district police officer. She moved to Moscow and a cozy domestic scene at the kitchen table. While
rative. Her tightly framed images, packed with descriptive in 1904 and audited art classes there until 1911, when she the books lithographs essentially follow the example
details, and her use of fluid, densely shaded lithography moved to St. Petersburg and became an active member Goncharova had laid out slightly earlier, Rozanova took
testify to the graphic skills she had acquired working of its burgeoning avant-garde. Her early works leaned another step when she applied watercolor additions to
on the earlier book projects. Drawing on her deep appre toward abstraction, and she explored the interaction of one hundred copies from the total edition of five hundred.
ciation of Russian icon and folk traditions and taking strong colors and angular, rhythmic forms. In 1912 she met The watercolor transforms the black-and-white pages into
a patently patriotic position toward Russias wartime Kruchenykh, and their lives became quickly intertwined, an exquisitely lyrical series of multicolored abstractions.
destiny, she incorporated various national, Christian, both creatively and personally. At the beginning of 1913 Rozanovas softly flickering and shifting panes of color
mythological, and apocalyptic elements into each print. Kruchenykh moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and seem somehow to both fracture and unify the visual logic
Her perspective is evident from the very first print (b), in he began working closely with Rozanova and several other and structure of each page, at one moment suggesting dis-
which St. George, the patron saint of Moscow, is shown artists living there, including Kazimir Malevich and sonance, at another harmony. The liberty that Rozanova
slaying the dragon in a symbolic triumph of good over Nikolai Kulbin, on the next wave of Futurist books. The took in actually coloring over Kruchenykhs words may
evil. Goncharovas composition is obviously modeled on collaborations between Kruchenykh and Rozanova, which be a testament to their close personal relationship. It may
well-known historical icons of the subject, including the consist of no fewer than thirteen books executed between also have been influenced by her knowledge of La Prose
central emblem on the Russian coat of arms. Subsequent 1913 and 1916 (some of them in concert with other artists du Transsibrien et de la petite Jehanne de France (page 84,
plates include a double-headed eagleanother iconic or writers), include some of the most extraordinary no. 1), which was published in Paris in 1913 and exhibited
146 WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE BOOK FIGURA 147
Opposite:
6. Olga Rozanova (Russian,
18861918). Utinoe gnezdyshko . . .
durnykh slov i (A little ducks
nest . . . of bad words), by Aleksei
Kruchenykh. 1913. Cover and
two pages from an illustrated
book with fifteen lithographs
with gouache and/or watercolor
additions, page 7 3/8 x 4 13/16"
(18.8 x 12.2 cm). Publisher:
unknown, St. Petersburg. Printer:
unknown. Edition: 500 (100 with
hand additions). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Gift of The
Judith Rothschild Foundation
at the end of that year in St. Petersburg.14 This poem by technique, hectography, a gelatin-based process that was Rozanovas book was probably modeled loosely on Rozanovas fractured, shifting forms convey a sense of
Blaise Cendrars is enveloped by Sonia Delaunay-Terks a primitive precursor of the mimeograph.15 In Te li le, the Goncharovas war album, which had come out a year earlier. mass confusion and cataclysmic upheaval.
stenciled arcs and blocks of brilliant watercolor. delicate, jewellike colors are absorbed into the paper, giving The format, in terms of both page size and sequential order, From a technical point of view, Voina benefited from
In Te li le (no. 7), which appeared a few months later them a uniquely aqueous texture and luminescence. is strikingly similar. Some of Rozanovas images even all of Rozanovas previous experience designing and illus-
in February 1914, Rozanova achieved an even more seam- Voina (War) (no. 8), executed over six months in 1915 seem to be inspired by specific sheets in Goncharovas trating books. She had used linoleum cut in an earlier
less integration of the painterly and the poetic. The zaum and released in January 1916, was Rozanovas crowning album. For example, the tumbling buildings in Rozanovas book,17 and, as with hectography, she was eager to pioneer
title is made up of alliterative nonsense words, and the achievement in the realm of printed art. With fifteen Destruction of the City are reminiscent of those in a less familiar technique.18 She wrote, Engraving on
book contains transrational poems by Kruchenykh and leaves inside a brown-paper cover, it includes ten full-page Goncharovas Doomed City. The soaring airplanes and linoleum is extraordinarily interesting just now. . . . Its
Khlebnikov extracted from some of their previous books. linoleum cuts on the theme of war, printed alternately falling figure with widespread arms in Rozanovas Airplanes good to be spreading an unusual rather than ordinary
These poems were transcribed onto fourteen leaves, eleven in black, green, and red, and five pages with short verses over the City bear a loose, abstracted resemblance to method of printing. 19 The linoleum-cut aesthetic, like
by Rozanova and three by Kulbin. The two artists also by Kruchenykh printed in large block letters also with elements in Goncharovas Angels and Airplanes. But the woodcut, is based on broad, flat shapes and bold
added abstract designs to their respective sheets. Rozanovas linoleum cut. One of the ten linoleum-cut images also whereas Goncharovas images are dark and heavy and more contrasts. In this series Rozanova merges the primitive
embellishments intermingle with the texts, echo the incorporates collage elements, as does the cover. At approx- obviously steeped in Russian visual and cultural traditions, aesthetic of traditional woodcuts and lubok prints with
jaunty rhythm of the letters, and take on a hieroglyphic imately 16 by 12 inches, Voina is substantially larger than Rozanovas are based on a lighter, more abstract and poetic a modern, Cubistic approach to form and composition.
appearance. Her use of color, with individual words and any of Rozanovas previous book projects. The artist felt approach. They were created a year into the war, when Similarly, her use of text taken from a newspaper report
letters appearing in different hues, suggests an intuitive that the complexity of the war subject and the broad the alluring myth of a culturally and spiritually superior from the front lines in the print titled Excerpt from a
reaction to the poems sounds. To achieve this consonance, graphic lines of the linoleum-cut medium warranted this Russia emerging triumphant from mystical battle was Newspaper Bulletin is based on her knowledge of both
Rozanova turned to a new and rather obscure printing more imposing scale.16 replaced by the reality of the horror and brutality of war. lubok woodcuts, which often incorporated short texts, and
148 WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE BOOK FIGURA 149
the collages incorporating real newspaper clippings made
by the French Cubists and the Italian Futurists. Strictly
modern was Rozanovas use of collage in two other
compositions. During the months that Rozanova was
working on this album, she also began making geometric
abstractions out of cut-and-pasted colored paper. She
was also aware of Malevichs concurrent experiments with
purely abstract geometric painting, which he would call
Suprematism. At the end of 1915, when she was finishing
work on Voina, she became an active member of Malevichs
Supremus group and was creating her own abstract paint-
ings, organized on the basis of color. The Voina cover,
with a collage of geometric elements in black, blue, and
white, is very much a Suprematist composition. And the
page titled Airplanes over the City, which combines
linoleum cut and geometric collage, is a kind of synthesis
of Russian Futurism and Suprematism.
Voina was the last book Rozanova illustrated.20 After
it was finished, she continued to make Suprematist paint-
ings, and then, with the advent of the Russian Revolution
in 1917, she threw herself into various tasks associated
a. b. c. with the shift toward production art in the Communist
era. But the hardships and tumult of the Revolution took
their toll on Rozanovas health, and she died suddenly
from diphtheria in 1918, at the age of thirty-two.
e.
FIGURA 151
d f.
In the revolutionary and postrevolutionary period,
two artists who came to books and graphics for the first
time were Lyubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova. Popova
was born in Ivanovskoe, near Moscow, in 1889. Her father
was a wealthy textile merchant, who encouraged her
interest in art and provided her with the means to travel
widely in Russia and Europe. She studied painting with
several private instructors in Moscow between 1907 and
1909, and in 1912 she went to Paris, where she was tutored
in the principles of Cubism by Jean Metzinger and Henri
Le Fauconnier. She returned to Moscow in 1913, where
she became active in avant-garde circles and was included
in several important Futurist exhibitions. In 1915 she
began the series of abstract paintings she called Painterly
Architectonics, and in 1916 she joined the Supremus
group, which included Malevich, Rozanova, and others.
In 1918 she married Boris von Eding, an art historian who
specialized in ancient Russian architecture; he died from time. Her aim was to create spatial dynamism by layering
typhus the following year. her shapes so they would seem to be continually shifting
Popovas first printed works were a few abstract lino- and rotating. Unlike Malevichs Suprematism, her com-
leum cuts made between 1917 and 1921. While these were positions are not meant as equivalents of spiritual states
mostly small, single prints, she also created a larger album but rather as strictly formal constructions. Large geometric
of six linoleum cuts with a linoleum-cut cover titled 6 planes in bold colorsderived in part from the jewellike
Gravyur (6 prints) (c. 1917, no. 9). Like Goncharovas tones of Russian folk paintingoverlap and interpenetrate.
Misticheskie obrazy voiny and Rozanovas Voina, Popovas Popovas emphatic use of diagonals creates visual move-
album is one of the most definitive statements by any artist ment, causing the layers to look almost as if they are
in a print medium during the early modern period. Popova projecting into three dimensions. This floating and shifting
would certainly have known the two earlier projects. Her is enhanced by the album format; when they are viewed all
choice of medium and her cover, which integrates the title together or side by side, the energy of any one sheet cata-
letters into a Suprematist composition of geometric shapes, lyzes the push and pull in the others. Popovas carefully
seem especially to have been influenced by Rozanovas orchestrated palette of alternately warm and cool colors
example. Like the previous two, this album is a group of also contributes to the sense of pulsing motion.
graphically bold prints on large sheets of paper that sum Slightly younger than Popova, Stepanova was born
9. Lyubov Popova (Russian, Edition: unknown (one of two
up the ambitions and achievements of a particular period in 1894 in Kovno (now Kaunas, Lithuania). The daughter 18891924). 6 Gravyur (6 known complete sets). The
in the artists work. Although Popovas series is not based of a state official, she had a more humble background prints). c. 1917. Portfolio of six Museum of Modern Art,
linoleum cuts with watercolor New York. General Print Fund,
on a narrative theme or text, her images gain power from than those of Popova and Goncharova. From 1910 to 1913 and gouache additions, one Edgar Wachenheim III Fund,
the cumulative impact of viewing them in a sequence. she studied at the Kazan School of Art, where she met with oil additions, and one and Harvey S. Shipley Miller
linoleum-cut title page with Fund and by exchange: Nina
The prints are examples of the painterly architectonics Aleksandr Rodchenko, who would become her lifelong
watercolor and gouache and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest
that Popova was developing in her canvases at the same partner and artistic collaborator. By 1915 she had moved additions, sheet 13 9/16 x and Gift of Victor S. Riesenfeld
10 1/8" (34.5 x 25.7 cm).
Publisher: unpublished.
Printer: the artist, Moscow.
152 WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE BOOK FIGURA 153
10. Varvara Stepanova
(Russian, 18941958). Gaust
chaba. 1919. Three pages
from an illustrated book with
fifteen pages of watercolor
manuscript text on found
to Moscow without completing her studies. She and tioned sideways in the book, so newspaper leaves [this copy
the use of painterly graphics, I am proceeding to a new
Rodchenko began living together, and they soon made that it is not natural or comfort- incomplete], page 10 13/16 x form of creativity. 21
6 3/4" (27.5 x 17.1 cm). Both Popova and Stepanova, along with other col-
contact with Futurist and Suprematist artists, including able to read their texts, and
Publisher: unknown, Moscow.
Popova and Rozanova, as well as others who would Stepanovas poems have been Printer: unknown. Edition: 54. leagues in the Russian avant-garde, welcomed the October
become prominent in the postrevolutionary years. hastily brushed on top in large, The Museum of Modern Art, Revolution of 1917, and in the years that followed they
New York. Gift of The Judith
Between 1917 and 1919 Stepanova produced several commanding letters. On the col- Rothschild Foundation
threw themselves into building the culture of a new
experimental books of her own transrational poetry and lage pages, various plain and Communist society. In 1921 they both stopped painting,
abstract designs. These were some of her earliest and printed papers cut in geometric aligning themselves with the Constructivists in their
most provocative works in any medium. Inspired at least shapes are superimposed over resolve to devote their creative energies to designing and
in part by the works of Kruchenykh and Rozanova (who the printed background. Whereas Kruchenykhs repudia- producing useful objects that would serve the state. As
had herself begun writing zaum toward the end of her life), tion of standardized type had meant its complete absence, part of this effort, both artists worked in theater, costume,
they mark a moment of transition from the handmade Stepanovas rejection was perhaps even more emphatic. and textile design. They also designed numerous covers
aesthetic of Futurism to the more hard-edged, mechanical She seems to have embraced the visual potential of the for books and magazines. Unlike the early Futurist books,
geometry of postrevolutionary Constructivism. Small, printed text while at the same time denying it its proper these volumes were intended for a mass audience. The
highly personal, and elliptical, Gaust chaba (1919, no. 10) is function. Her graffitilike scrawls mock the social order artists adopted the Constructivist geometric style that
a fifteen-page book containing eight watercolored manu- and literary authority represented by the newspaper. was meant to project a new sense of order and rationality
script zaum poems and six collages, all on pages made Explaining these experiments, she wrote, In breaking for art and life.
from sheets of newspaper. The newspaper pages are posi- up the moribund monotony of printed letters through Vals. Pamiati Skriabina (Waltz: in memory of Scriabin)
(1922, no. 11), a letterpress sheet music cover, is a typical
example by Popova. Her lively design uses just two colors
(the classically Constructivist black and red) on an off-
white background. Combining different sizes, weights,
and styles of type in an asymmetrical arrangement, she
approached each word as if it were a geometric building layouts for numerous books 11. Lyubov Popova (Russian,
18891924). Vals. Pamiati
block, balancing each one carefully against the others and herself, and also frequently
Skriabina (Waltz: in memory of
binding them together with strategically placed linear collaborating with Rodchenko, Scriabin), by E. Pavlov. 1922.
elements. The rectilinear regularity of this construction is who, more than any other artist, Sheet music cover with
letterpress typographic design
broken only slightly by a few diagonal elements, but with had taken the lead in defining on front, page 13 x 9 5/16"
these small adjustments she infused the design with a the aesthetic of Russian (33 x 23.7 cm). Publisher:
Gosudarstvennoe muzykalnoe
restrained version of the spatial dynamism she pioneered Constructivist book design.
izdatelstvo, Moscow. Printer:
in her painterly architectonics. Among her strongest designs unknown. Edition: 200. The
Only two years later, Popovas career was cut tragically were those for the cover and Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of The Judith
short when, like Rozanova, she succumbed to disease. In interior of Groznyi smekh. Okna Rothschild Foundation
May 1924 she contracted scarlet fever from her young son ROSTA (A menacing laughter:
and died suddenly, at the age of thirty-five. the ROSTA windows) (1932, no.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s Stepanova became 12), with verses by Mayakovsky commemorating three
one of the most committed champions of Soviet years of revolutionary battle and reproductions of
Constructivism. She applied its principles to the new the placards he made for the Russian Telegraph Agency
look of Soviet books and journals, designing covers and (ROSTA) in the early 1920s. Stepanovas dust jacket
154 WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE BOOK FIGURA 155
1. Among the many Russian (New York: The Museum of does not allow for large print war), and in late 1915 or early
women artists working at this Modern Art, 2002). runs, so Te li le was printed in a 1916 she also began to write
time, others who made books an 8. Aleksei Kruchenykh, quoted relatively small edition of fifty. her own zaum poems, some of
important part of their oeuvre in Kruchenykh, Velimir 16. Olga Rozanova wrote about which were included in hecto-
but who are not discussed Khlebnikov, and Elena Guro, this to Andrei Shemshurin, the graph collections published by
here include Vera Ermolaeva, Troe (The three) (St. Petersburg, publisher of the book, in June Kruchenykh in 1917. See ibid.,
Valentina Kulagina-Klutsis, Russia: Zhuravl, 1913), p. 13; 1915: Since the theme is more pp. 100103.
and Mariia Siniakova. translated in Nina Gurianova, complex technically . . . and 21. Varvara Stepanova, About
2. Benedikt Livshits, The One Exploring Color: Olga Rozanova fine lines cannot be made on the Graphics Exhibited, in the
and a Half-Eyed Archer, trans. and the Early Russian Avant- linoleum, I would like to enlarge catalogue of the 10th State
John E. Bowlt (Newtonville, Garde, 19101918 (Australia: their size to 6 x 7 vershki Exhibition, Nonobjective Art
Mass.: Oriental Research G+B Arts International, 2000), including the margins. Quoted and Suprematism (Moscow,
Partners, 1977), pp. 12829. p. 40. and translated in Gurianova, 1919); translated in Rodchenko/
3. For more on the social and 9. Natalia Goncharova, preface Exploring Color, p. 155. Stepanova: The Future Is Our
cultural circumstances in to catalogue of solo exhibition, 17. Zaumnaia griga Only Goal, Peter Noever, ed.
which the Russian women art- 1913; translated in Russian Art (Transrational boog) was (Munich: Prestel, 1991), p. 161.
ists emerged, see Bowlt and of the Avant-Garde: Theory executed in 1914 and appeared
Matthew Drutt, eds., Amazons and Criticism, 19021934, in 1915. It featured texts by
of the Avant-Garde: Alexandra trans. and ed. Bowlt (New York: Kruchenykh and Roman
Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Thames and Hudson, 1988), Jakobson, writing under the
features her own geometric letters, which, despite their utilized by the new film industry, which was nationalized Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, p. 58. pseudonym Aliagrov, and nine
mechanical appearance, bear some resemblance to her in 1919 and whose techniques often involved eccentric cuts Varvara Stepanova, and 10. Gurianova, A New Aesthetic: linoleum-cut illustrations
Nadezhda Udaltsova (New York: Word and Image in Russian based on playing-card designs
watercolor manuscript letters in Gaust chaba. Her design and rhythmic patterns.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Futurist Books, in Alla by Rozanova.
is highly reductive, yet she introduces a sense of motion In 1934 Stalin decreed that all art except Socialist Foundation, 1999). Rosenfeld, ed., Defining 18. The linoleum cut is a
simply by shifting the letters of the titles first word, Realism was prohibited in the Soviet Union. Over the 4. See Laura Engelstein, Russian Graphic Arts, From twentieth-century variant of
Between Old and New: Russias Diaghilev to Stalin, 18981934 the woodcut technique, in
Groznyi, to a slanted position. Her design for the endpapers ensuing decades until her death in 1958, Stepanova, along- Modern Women, in ibid., (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers which a sheet of linoleum is
features a dramatic photomontage using the repeated side Rodchenko, continued to design books and journals pp. 5973. University Press; London: The carved to create a relief printing
5. See Rebecca Cunningham, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art surface. Although linoleum was
image of a Red Army soldier (cut from a photograph by exalting the Soviet state. But her freedom to experiment
The Russian Women Artist/ Museum, 1999), p. 103. first developed as a floor cover-
B. Ignatovic) against a red background. She included a had ended, and a period of unfettered creativity and Designers of the Avant-Garde, 11. For a more in-depth ing in the 1860s, it was not
short line of text from Mayakovskys poster verses that unprecedented prominence for women artists was Theatre Design & Technology account of the entire series, used as an artistic medium
34, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 3951. see Natalia Shtrimer, Mystical until sometime shortly before
reads, Everyone to arms, Comrades! Photomontage officially over. 6. Jo Anna Isaak makes this Images of the War, in Yevgenia World War I, when artists in
had emerged as a powerful new medium in Russia in the point in Feminism & Contem- Petrova et al., Natalia Germany and England made
porary Art: The Revolutionary Goncharova: The Russian Years the first such prints. Rozanovas
mid-1920s, when it was decided that the Soviet cause
Power of Womens Laughter (St. Petersburg: State Russian linoleum-cut books, Zaumnaia
would be better served by the more factual medium of (London: Routledge, 1996), Museum and Palace Editions, griga (Transrational boog) and
photography than by abstract graphics. With photographic pp. 8084. She also suggests 2002), pp. 22931. Voina (War), also rank among
12. Varvara Stepanova (Russian, that bourgeois notions about 12. Kruchenykh, letter to the earliest examples of the
images, information could be more immediately conveyed feminine domesticity may A. Ostrovskii, 1920s; quoted medium.
18941958). Groznyi smekh. Okna
to a public that was still largely illiterate. Stepanovas ROSTA (A menacing laughter: have been less constricting and translated in Gurianova, 19. Rozanova, letter to
in Russia than in the West. Exploring Color, p. 50. Shemshurin, 1915; quoted
image reflects her familiarity with the montage technique the ROSTA windows), by Vladimir
Mayakovsky. 1932. Letterpress 7. For a more thorough history 13. Kruchenykh, Gamma and translated in Gurianova,
dust jacket and endpapers, page and accounting of the many glasnykh, 1914; quoted and Exploring Color, pp. 15556.
9 7/16 x 8 1/16" (24 x 20.5 cm). books created by the Russian translated in ibid., p. 51. 20. She did, however, advise
Publisher: Khudozhestvennaia avant-garde, see Margit Rowell 14. Gurianova makes this Kruchenykh on his own collage
literatura, Moscow-Leningrad. and Deborah Wye, The Russian connection in ibid., p. 54. illustrations for his book
Printer: unknown. Edition: 3,000. Avant-Garde Book, 19101934 15. The hectography process Vselenskaia voina (Universal
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York. Gift of The Judith Rothschild
Foundation (Boris Kerdimun
Archive)
156 WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE BOOK FIGURA 157
A COLLECTIVE AND ITS INDIVIDUALS:
THE BAUHAUS AND ITS WOMEN / TAI SMITH
PORTRAIT OF A COLLECTIVE its collection (as of 2009) does not exactly parallel the
diverse terrain of the Bauhaus collectives practices.
For The Museum of Modern Arts first Bauhaus exhibition, The Museum owns, for instance, a piece of drapery by
organized by Herbert Bayer and Walter and Ise Gropius Koch-Otte, yet no tapestries by her. Similarly, it does not
in 1938, the accompanying catalogue presents the works of possess a single clay vessel by Otto Lindig, the technical
at least one hundred different Bauhusler.1 Through black- master of the Weimar pottery workshop; it has only one
and-white reproductions of household items in metal or photograph by him. Indeed, the limits, and somewhat
clay, textiles, architectural plans and models, form and arbitrary nature, of the collection are not entirely a matter
color diagrams, and costume designs, the book serves as of genderof male Bauhusler being chosen over female
a window onto a landscape of collective projects. On page ones. Rather, the Museum tends to reflect the modern
after page the reader is met with several big names from hierarchy of mediums, or that it has been in the business
the canon of modern art (Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, of displaying so-called fine artspaintings and drawings
Lszl Moholy-Nagy, and Josef Albers), but she also by, say, Lyonel Feininger, Kandinsky, or Kleerather than
encounters humorous photomontages, tactile exercises applied arts.3 But perhaps most definitive in terms of
made of bark and feathers, and photographs of curricular acquisition is that MoMA, like most museums, upholds
and extracurricular activities: unnamed women and men the primacy of the proper name. Albers, Brandt, and Stlzl
on a beach, on a balcony, on a stage. So while the catalogues have strong representation because they are recognizable
introductory essay by Alexander Dorner portrays the names, whereas Leudesdorff, Koch-Otte, and Berger are
Bauhaus as the brainchild of director-architect Walter more obscure.
Gropius, the objects on display reflect myriad practices The objective of this essay is not, in fact, to bemoan
by a range of (at times anonymous) individuals. the lack of representation of the schools women in the
Yet in spite of the German schools heterogeneity Museum or in historical texts. Instead, different questions
as seen throughout Bayers controlled-yet-diverse graphic need to be asked to help frameand simultaneously
layout, and in the most recent Bauhaus exhibition at dismantlethe monographic element that persists in
MoMAthis essay will distill the collective into three the present work: How does one go about discussing the
exemplary female members: Anni Albers, Marianne Bauhaus collective and its sundry scene (with its large
Brandt, and Gunta Stlzl.2 Perhaps it should be asked why numbers of unaccounted-for women) through objects
these women, but not others, are being considered here. made by only a few of its individuals? And how does
There will be no discussion of Alma Buscher, whose one engage with the anonymous quality of many Bauhaus
designs for childrens furniture were highly influential practices when a monographic approach frames discourse
during the Weimar years; or of Lore Leudesdorff, Benita on the school?
Koch-Otte, and Otti Berger, all of whom have drawings To grasp the complexity of the schools objects, prac-
and weavings that grace the 1938 Bauhaus catalogue. tices, and people, it is important to understand that, as
1. Group portrait of the
The answer is on some level obvious: while MoMA with any groupsay, womenthe Bauhaus was at once
Bauhaus weaving workshop
students, 1927. Photograph by holds several objects by a smattering of Bauhaus figures, bounded and unbounded by the meeting of its members.
Lotte Beese. Included in the
photograph are Gunta Stlzl
(upper right) and Anni Abers
(lower right). Bauhaus-Archiv
158 Berlin 159
2. Gunta Stlzl (Swiss, born 3. Marcel Breuer (American,
Germany. 18971983). Fabric born Hungary. 19021981).
for Tubular Steel Chairs. Club Chair (B3). 192728.
c. 1925. Mercerized cotton Chrome-plated tubular steel
and Eisengarn, 6 1/8 x 4 5/8" and canvas, 28 1/4 x 30 3/4 x
It was not just an entity created by a single mastermind itself was very much divided. The debates surrounding (15.6 x 11.7 cm). The Museum 28" (71.8 x 78.1 x 71.1 cm).
of Modern Art, New York. Manufacturer: attributed to
(Gropius), nor was it a simple function of an additive weaving and its apparent femininity were particularly Phyllis B. Lambert Fund Standard Mbel, Germany. The
principle (the bringing together of those who populated fraught. In 1926 Helene Nonn-Schmidt defined weaving Museum of Modern Art, New
it). The group was, rather, something of a (by)product as the natural inclination of women to see like children York. Gift of Herbert Bayer
of colliding forces. Although its history is often neatly . . . the details instead of the over-all picture, a sign that
divided into distinct phasesdefined, respectively, by woman is counting on her limitations, considering them
expressionism and craft, Constructivism and technology, a great advantage.6 Anni Albers found Nonn-Schmidts
functionalism and the design of prototypes for mass argument so appalling that almost four decades later she
productioneach moment was marked by tremendous would return to it, arguing that weaving was in fact an
conflict.4 architectonic process of structural organization that was
Battles were especially contentious over the roles perhaps closer to the inclination of men than women,
of craft and art at the school. In his 1919 manifesto and at least by modern definitions.7
program for the Bauhaus, located first in Weimar, Such contentious interaction was common at the
Germany, Gropius claimed that the school had leveled Bauhaus, which was, as historian va Forgcs puts it, the Stlzls relationship to the school and her workshop bal-
the traditional hierarchy between the two disciplines, but stage for a clash of personal and group ambitions, con- anced between metonymy (she stood in for the interests
by giving famous international painters privileged posi- flicting beliefs and convictions, political and theoretical and practices of the weavers) and exception (she was the
tions at the school, and by denying the technical (craft) justifications.8 So instead of seeing Albers, Brandt, or Stlzl workshops first female master).
masters representation on the schools Masters Council, as distinct, biographical personaeor, worse, as tokens The range of Stlzls work has come to represent the
he repeatedly demonstrated otherwise. By the time the of the apparently progressive status of female students at workshops various moments of production: from its initial
Bauhaus moved to Dessau, Germany, and attempted to the schoolthis essay calls for a method that accounts pictorial weavings to its work developing industrial and
cohere as a corporate collective in 1925 (when it initially for relationships rather than individuals.9 Each name mass-produced fabrics. In a sense, she represented the
applied for GmbH [corporate] status), the school will be treated as a case study in the different connections workshop to such a degree that most of the pieces
was seemingly unified under the banner of functionalist and issues between the individual and the collective. acquired by MoMA from her Bauhaus years reflect her
design. But conflict remained. As Gropius moved to brand What the three Bauhaus women discussed here reveal is practice not as an individual artist but as a lead member also easy to miss against the strong, iconic form of
the workshops designs as products of this corporate the degree to which the molecular identity of the school of a corporate design team whose works are otherwise Breuers design.11
machine, individual designers fought to retain credit.5 was only ever a function of relational forces of cohesion. anonymous in their lookthat is, lacking any stylistic In keeping with Stlzls role as teacher, even her
Definitions of art and craft and anonymity at the signature. (The Museum owns only one of her individual wall hanging Tapestry (1924, no. 4), an otherwise unique,
Bauhaus often intersected with those of gender. Upon tapestries.) The majority of the objects in the collection pictorial work, reads as an instruction manual in various
distribution of the 1919 pamphlet, the school attracted so GUNTA STLZL: REPRESENTATIVE OF THE that were made during this time are prototypes for modern methods for introducing threads into a woven surface.
many women that Gropius, who had initially encouraged GENDERED COLLECTIVE fabrics, including several swatches of reversible coat Weft threads are brought in at various points using differ-
their application, found himself in the position of limiting material or of upholstery made from rayon, cellophane, ent types of patternssome form chains, others zigzag.
their numbers and supporting the creation of a womens Gunta Stlzl arrived at the Bauhaus with its opening in and cotton. Of these samples, Fabric for Tubular Steel In certain areas we find play with the figure-ground
class. Linked with the weaving workshop, this gendered 1919. While she recognized and was frustrated with gender Chairs (c. 1925, no. 2), which was created for Marcel relationship specific to weaving, as though Stlzl is
collective directed women away from the more masculine inequalities at the school, she quickly advocated having a Breuers initial Club Chair (192728, no. 3), is particularly demonstrating that even a figure or form on the surface
workshops of cabinetry and metalwork, solving initial separate space for its women, and proposed the womens important from a design perspective. The fabric doesnt is an inextricable function of the woven ground and its
problems in programming the curriculum. class the following year. Soon Stlzl became the de facto just act as a surface, as upholstery, but rather as the material. The lack of diagonals or curves and the consistent
Thus the contradictory attitudes toward issues of representative of the weaving workshop (no. 1), serving first primary bearer of weight. Made from mercerized cotton orientation of the tapestrys vertical-horizontal forms
gender, as well as the schools internal hierarchies, come as technical master and finally as the general workshop and Eisengarn (iron yarn), the fabric is flexible and durable to the axis of the woven latticework provide a picture
to the fore in the example of the womens classwhich master from 1927 until 1931.10 Throughout her tenure, enough to hold a seated person comfortably, but it is of the mediumits formal and practical limitations and
For years the coupling of women designers with modern lamented the domestic slavery of mind and body of the
architecture was regarded more often than not as a con- millions with whom rests the immediate care of a home
tradiction in terms. The revered heroes of the European and a family. 2
modern movement were all men: Le Corbusier, Walter As might be expected, women practiced architecture
Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; and so, too, were earlier and in larger numbers in those countries with
most of its noted secondary players, including J. J. P. Oud, the most progressive attitudes toward gender roles: the
Andr Lurat, and Giuseppe Terragni. The very image of United States, England, Germany (during the Weimar era),
the self-assured genius, breaking with conventions and Finland, Sweden, the USSR, and Israel. The enrollment of
academic styles, was invariably male. women in architecture and design schools and the use of
Much contemporary theory, even that written from a architecture competitions to award commissions facilitated
feminist position, reinforces this ingrained perception their participation in the profession. New social mores,
of modernism as maleautonomous, pure, and austere, family patterns, and images of womens identitiesespe-
the privileged realm of male activities.1 In contrast, mass cially that of the emancipated New Womanmade it easier
culture is almost always considered femalecommercial, for women to work in architecture firms, often with
impure, and inferior. However persuasive this argument spouses or lovers. In this regard, the collaborative nature of
might be for literature and other cultural forms, it is only modern architecture further facilitated their involvement,
partially true for architecture. If the machine imagery in especially in the area of housing, where individuals with
Le Corbusiers 1923 manifesto Vers une architecture (Towards expertise in furniture design, kitchens, or working-class
a New Architecture) still perpetuated the masculinist biases social conditions often served as outside consultants to
of modernism, other dimensions of modern architecture architects. Ultimately what attracted women to modern
its emphasis on domesticity, its social agenda, and its architecture was their desire to be part of a movement
formal challenges to traditional gender conventions that promised a new way of living. The thought of making
suggest a more complex story, one that gives women a a new worldone that was freer, more honest, and more
substantial role both as a source of inspiration and as beautifulinvigorated adventuresome young women, eager
creator. As feminist scholarship since the 1970s has to rid themselves of repressive traditions and staid styles.
shown, women were actively engaged in European archi- In the 1920s European critics on both the right and left fre-
tecture between the wars. The focus on domesticity and quently linked the New Woman and new architecture.
housing in modern architecture Women brought an array of interests and skills to the
offered them new opportunities field, whether from personal experience or from previous
1. Margarete Schtte-Lihotzky
(Austrian, 18972000). in the field, and they in turn training in the decorative or fine arts. They tackled design
Frankfurt Kitchen, Am helped shape these concerns; on all scales, particularly in the area of housing, including
Hhenblick Housing Estate,
Ginnheim, Frankfurt. 192627. certainly more than their male household objects and furnishings, kitchen and room
Various materials, approx. peers, women designers were arrangements, and urban configurations of apartment
61' 4 " x 112' 10 5/16" (18.7 x
acutely aware of the need for blocks, a range of practices that is exemplified by the work
34.4 m) in plan. The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. Gift reform. As late as 1939 British of three women: Charlotte Perriand, Margarete (Grete)
of Joan R. Brewster in memory activist Margery Spring Rice Schtte-Lihotzky, and Elizabeth Denby.3
of her husband George W. W.
Brewster, by exchange, and
the Architecture & Design
Purchase Fund 175
THREE CHAIRS: INTERIOR EQUIPMENT FOR DWELLING Longue (nos. 24). Le Corbusier had proclaimed the chair
a machine-for-sitting and had stressed that such
Although male designers still dominated modern furniture machines should accommodate different body positions
design, women were probably more readily accepted in necessary for different tasks, such as working, dining,
the field than in areas involving large-scale construction, conversing, lecturing, and relaxing.7 He hoped to find
since it was seen as an extension of interior decorating generic solutions for these positions that could be indus-
and womens traditional role as homemaker. Design schools trially produced and used in a variety of spaces, whether
admitted women students even before architecture schools in the firms own modernist interiors or in other, more
did, to such an extent that Le Corbusier complained in traditional environments.
1925 that the decorative arts in France risked foundering Perriand described the creative relationship among Le
among young ladies.4 Given this comment, it is all Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret (his partner and cousin), and
the more surprising that he would soon hire one of her as being like three fingers on one hand. 8 She credited
these young ladies, a twenty-four-year-old designer, Le Corbusier for setting the design parameters and for
Charlotte Perriand. suggesting the basic forms of their furniture. She worked
Perriand had studied at the Union Centrale des Arts out with Jeanneret the designs and full-scale details, and
Dcoratifs, a decorative-arts school in Paris for women then she took charge of the execution herself, fabricating
students, where she received, as she put it, the training of the first prototypes in her studio apartment. In 1932
an upholsterer.5 Only two years later, at the 1927 Salon Le Corbusier stated that Perriand had sole responsibility
dAutomne, she exhibited Bar sous le toit (Bar in the attic), for the execution of all our domestic equipment, and
with gleaming aluminum- and nickel-coated surfaces, over the years he regularly acknowledged her role in the
glass shelves, and brightly colored leather cushions; a firms work.9
witty synthesis of casual bohemianism and chic luxury, it Le Corbusier envisioned the Sige dossier basculant
was widely praised in the professional press. Even before as a chair in which to sit for living room conversation.
the exhibitions opening, however, Perriand was no longer Following in his practice of adapting traditional types, it
satisfied with creating stylish images of modernity for a was a reworking of the colonial or British officers chair,
bourgeois elite and was determined to work for with the wooden legs replaced by tubular steel and the
Le Corbusier, who was committed to serial production arm straps now tightly sprung. The idea was that the
and the creation of low-cost housing. When she first frame would remain standard, whereas the fabrics could
approached him in October 1927 for a position, his vary depending on the setting or a clients preference. In
response was hardly encouraging: We dont embroider its separation of structure and body support, in its light-
cushions in my studio.6 But something about the deter- ness and its mechanistic aesthetic, the chair also recalled
mined young woman must have captured his imagination, Breuers 1925 Club Chair (page 161, no. 3), but with nota-
and a month later he visited her stand at the Salon ble differences in scale and elaboration. The dimensions
dAutomne. By December she was working in the atelier. of the Sige dossier basculant suggest a female occupant
One of her first tasks was to develop a series of or a slender man, while it is easy to imagine a big execu-
furniture pieces, an assignment that resulted in the three tive sitting in Breuers wider, more mannered model.
tubular-steel chairs for which the firm is famous: the
Sige dossier basculant (Armchair with a Tilting Back),
2. Le Corbusier (Charles- dossier basculant). 1928.
the Fauteuil grand confort (Easy Chair), and the Chaise douard Jeanneret) (French, Chrome-plated tubular steel and
born Switzerland. 18871965). canvas, 26 1/8 x 25 5/8 x 26" (66.3
Pierre Jeanneret (Swiss, 1896 x 65.1 x 66 cm). Manufacturer:
1967). Charlotte Perriand Thonet Frres, Paris, France. The
(French, 19031999). Armchair Museum of Modern Art, New
176 DOMESTIC REFORM AND EUROPEAN MODERN ARCHITECTURE with a Tilting Back (Sige York. Gift of Thonet Brothers, Inc.
3. Le Corbusier (Charles- 4. Le Corbusier (Charles- In contrast, the designers intended the Fauteuil grand angle of inclination, and since its creation has been widely
douard Jeanneret) (French, douard Jeanneret) (French,
confort to be a machine-for-relaxing. Squat and plush, it praised for its comfort. Its precedents include bentwood
born Switzerland. 18871965). born Switzerland. 18871965).
Pierre Jeanneret (Swiss, 1896 Pierre Jeanneret (Swiss, 1896 was a modern translation of the overstuffed easy chair in rocking chairs, adjustable invalid chairs, Dr. Pascauds pat-
1967). Charlotte Perriand 1967). Charlotte Perriand a club or a gentlemans library. It consisted of five bulging ented Surrepos, the Morris lounge chair, ocean-liner deck
(French, 19031999). Easy (French, 19031999). Chaise
Chair (Fauteuil grand confort). Longue (LC/4). 1928. Chrome-
leather cushions, securedindeed, squeezedby a tubular- chairs, andfundamental to its sensuous qualitythe
1928. Chrome-plated tubular plated steel, fabric, and steel frame. This innovative design, with its exposed sup- earlier Duchesse or Duchesse Brise. Eighteenth-century
steel, horsehair, down, and leather, 26 3/8 x 23 x 62 3/8"
port, inverted the usual relationship between frame and grace and eroticism have their twentieth-century equiva-
leather, overall 26 x 30 x 27 3/4" (67 x 58.4 x 158.4 cm).
(66 x 76.2 x 70.5 cm), seat h. Manufacturer: Thonet Frres, upholstery in traditional easy chairs, while still offering lent in this light, undulating structure poised on four
16" (40.6 cm). Manufacturer: Paris, France. The Museum the essence of luxuriant comfort. The chair was made in points, so beautifully illustrated by the classic image of
Heidi Weber, Zrich. The of Modern Art, New York.
Museum of Modern Art, New Gift of Thonet Industries, Inc.
two sizes, suggesting that both men and women and a wide Perriand relaxing on its stretched-canvas surface (no. 5).
York. Gift of Phyllis B. Lambert range of body types could enjoy its enveloping pleasures. Yet both Perriand and Le Corbusier mentioned a man in
None of the more sachlich European designers had yet their descriptions of the chairs creation: Perriand
successfully dealt with the issue of comfort. Breuer had explained that she thought of a simple soldier, who, when
called his 1925 model a club chair, but, unlike the Fauteuil he is tired lies down on his back, puts his feet up against a
grand confort, it was not a chair one could curl up in. tree, with his knapsack under his head; and Le Corbusier
In the design of the serpentine Chaise Longue, the imagined a cowboy from the Wild West smoking his pipe,
three partners addressed another aspect of relaxation. his feet in the air, above his head, against the chimneypiece:
Their lounge chair permits different reclining positions, complete rest. 10 Nevertheless, the image they both chose
with the weight of the human body fixing the chosen to illustrate the Chaise Longue in use, in their respective
5. Charlotte Perriand on
Chaise Longue (LC/4), 1929.
Photograph by Pierre
Jeanneret. Fondation
Le Corbusier, Paris
to reduce womens labor and ensure physical comfort. out were made, a flexibility made possible by the small the Frankfurt Kitchen as the best solution
She considered the kitchen a step toward womans self- production runs, only thirteen to fifteen units at a time.21 up to that time for those without servants.
development, which, contrary to the pervasive rhetoric of She kept the Type 1 kitchen intentionally compact, However, kitchen reformer Meyer and sociolo-
the time, she placed before the family as a whole.16 But only 1.9 meters by 3.44 meters, so that several tasks could gist Ludwig Neundrfer criticized it for being
she made no mention of womens special nurturing and be completed while sitting on a pivoting stool, simply by too rigid, and too narrow for two people.22
aesthetic roles, unlike Swedish reformer Ellen Key, or even extending one hand. Thus, all the equipment for cooking And although Lihotzkys opening to the dining
of the new pleasures and joyful creativity that Meyer preparation and cleaningdouble sink and drainage area allowed for some social interaction (cer-
believed would ensue with the rationalization of house- board, cold storage box, cutting board, and various uten- tainly more than many bourgeois urban kitch-
work.17 Undoubtedly Lihotzky viewed cooking and clean- silswere grouped together at one end of the kitchen, ens, which were closed off from dining areas),
ing up as necessary chores, ones that in her time were the near the exterior window. Although the technology was in the 1980s a new generation of feminists in
burden of the housewife. To assume otherwise in 1926 kept modest to minimize costs, Lihotzky introduced a Germany would criticize the design for
would have been utopian. In 1921, in Mays magazine series of practical devices, including a removable waste increasing the segregation of women and
Schlesisches Heim (Silesian Home), she had declared, drawer below the cutting board for scraps, a wooden rack not sufficiently accommodating the creative
First, [life] is work, and second, it is relaxing, company, attached to the underside of a cabinet for dishes to drip dimensions of housework. Lihotzky herself
pleasures. 18 The kitchen was for work, the more spacious dry, and a special set of aluminum canister drawers that rejected that assessment, arguing that the
living room for pleasure. Segregating the two would had pouring spouts and measuring bars for easy usage. elimination of labor, regardless of who was
eliminate disturbing noises and smells in spaces used Two other notable features were an insulated cooking box, cooking, was beneficial; she also raised the
for relaxation. which the housewife could use for slow cooking while she issue of whether the dissolution of sex-
As models of efficiency, she looked to professional worked or did other household chores, and a hanging lamp specific practices of role behavior can be
cooking spaces intended for men, such as ships galleys that could be moved along a metal track, depending on expected to result . . . from such an architec-
and railroad kitchens, compact spaces where one or two where the woman was working. tural/spatial transformation. 23
people could cook for hundreds. In addition, she closely Lihotzkys aesthetic choicesthe glass cabinet panes, No matter how one views the kitchen
studied Wittes translation of Fredericks New Housekeeping, aluminum sink and drawers, tiled floor and splashboard, as inadvertently regressive in reinforcing
which Lihotzky later described as her bible.19 However, the linoleum counter surfaceall reinforced this image womens traditional role as housewife, or as
unlike Frederick, Lihotzky also sought to extend rational- of an efficient, hygienic workspace. In the oft-published progressive in allowing women more time
ization to construction. She conceived the kitchen as one photograph of the kitchen (no. 7), the floor and linoleum for other activities, including working outside
unit that would be serially produced to reduce costs, and countertop are black, the Rabitz fabric walls and stove hood the homethe design represented a break
thus be made affordable to as many as possible. To attain are white. The most popular color for the wooden frames with gender stereotypes and traditional images
this goal, Lihotzky worked closely with the industrial of the cabinet doors was a grayish blue, a color specifically of domesticity. Like the domestic-reform movement in and Robert Mallet-Stevens designed kitchens. Although
manufacturer Georg Grumbach and several womens chosen because it repels flies. However, with its enameled general, the Frankfurt Kitchen helped undermine long- there were limits to how much rationalization could
groups. An entire unit cost approximately fifty dollars, wooden cabinetry and framing, this model of modernity standing assumptions that rationality, efficiency, and improve the daily lot of womencertainly it did not
whereas the individual components, if purchased separately, seems modest, almost primitive, compared to kitchens modernization were male values, and inversely that resolve the gender division of labor and womens double
would have cost about ninety dollars.20 designed a few years later, such as the prototype that decoration, emotion, and coziness were essential qualities duty (i.e., running a home as well as working outside
Lihotzky proposed three models of kitchens: two Perriand displayed at the Salon dAutomne in 1929, with of womens spaces. In terms of architecture, Lihotzky of it)the very recognition that household drudgery
larger ones intended to accommodate one or two servants its reflective surfaces, chrome fittings, electric fan, built-in and reformers such as Meyer and Witte can be seen as was oppressive to women and that domestic spaces
and a smaller unit, Type 1the renowned Frankfurt refrigerator, and modular metal-and-glass storage units. extending the domain of architecture itself to include required modernization undoubtedly encouraged a
Kitchen (no. 6)which was the cheapest and most popular Public reaction to the Frankfurt Kitchen was varied. domestic service spaces that had previously been consid- social climate that would later lead to further reform.
of the three. Depending on the housing complex and the Most modern architects and critics praised it, as did many ered unworthy of the architects attention. By the early
orientation of the apartment, minor variations in the lay- housewives; a government report on kitchen design cited 1930s male architects as diverse as Gropius, Hugo Hring,
The orientation in modern womens history toward the whereby the sense of self is coupled with a sense of
peaks of political mobilizationthe First Wave culmi self-as-other.3
nating in 1920 with the victory of womens suffrage, the In the case of photography during the middle decades
Second Wave cresting in the 1970s, arguably the Third of the twentieth century, theres no getting around the
Wave still forming now, if weve gotten beyond post- fact that most women who excelled in the field did
feminismleaves the intervals between looking quite not expressly foreground their concerns as women. The
flat.1 Its tempting to turn a blind eye to those down periods cult of objectivity hardly fostered a distinctly
times as insignificant periods of womens experience, womens point of view. Yet even a cursory review of the
work, and self-expression, not the least in the arts. We biographies of these notable women in photography
need not reject the appeal of dramatic historical moments. reveals the outlines of significant gender-based networks
But paying more attention to womens practices developed in the interwar period. At a time when formal instruction
in the long troughs of less gender-oriented activity in photography was still the exception rather than the
may disclose the residual energy of past waves and the rule, quite a few notable women in photography got their
gathering forceor grounding, as one womens historian start by turning to other women to learn the basics or
has deftly termed itfor later developments.2We then cultivate the sense of purpose to proceed on their own
might start asking more nuanced questions about the photographic path: Ilse Bing resolved to move from
continuities of social as well as individual vision: in the Germany to Paris, where Florence Henri was working,
case of womens visuality between the waves, do we find after seeing the latters photographs exhibited at the
more signs of consolidation, reaction, or incubation? Frankfurt Kunstverein in late 1929; the same year Gisle
Dont expect unequivocal answers. The record is Freund also turned to Henri for her first lessons in
full of ambiguities and ambivalence. Moreover, we still are photography; Lisette Model credited Rogi Andr (Rosza
just beginning to review this period with any sustained Klein, the first wife of Andr Kertsz) for initiating her
attention to the distinctive issues of women, their work, into the mysteries of camera work; and in an unpublished
and the relation of both to modernism as framed by essay on Barbara Morgan, Nancy Newhall credited that
men. But given the opportunity to trawl The Museum of photographer with her earliest exposure to both view-
Modern Arts photography collection with the specific camera practice in the studio and serious darkroom work.4
mandate to concentrate on women in photography during No doubt the greater representation of work by
the interwar period, Im impressed that the glass is at women in MoMAs photography collection compared to
least half full. Theres much to relish in the resolute other mediums results from photographys lingering
1. Anne W. Brigman (American, inventiveness of the photography by womenbut what bastard status as an art. Before the postWorld War II
born Hawaii. 18691950). else would one expect to find in the work collected by incorporation of photographic education into the academy,
Study in Radiation. c. 1924.
Gelatin silver print, MoMA as singular aesthetic achievements? As striking the making of almost any photographer tended to be a
7 3/4 x 9 3/4" (19.7 x 24.7 cm). is the recurring strain of what W. E. B. Du Bois, addressing process of determined self-invention rather than more
The Museum of Modern Art,
the pernicious effect of the color bar, formulated at the formal training, accreditation, and hazing along the way.
New York. Thomas Walther
Collection. Purchase start of the twentieth century as double consciousness, This made it harder to separate rank amateurs and small
192 193
business operatives from those forging an independent especially in Mexico, he just as ardently nurtured her a woman photographer. In his first letter, from mid-1938, male domains) and a final category (or at least incipient
modern vision with the optical machine. Of course the independent potential as a photographer, ultimately he champions Lange for her experience with social cluster) of close studies of details that merge the abject
lack of established distinctions within the field provoked sharing not just equipment but even exhibition venues photography, but in the second letter, written a year later, with the abstract.
the artistically ambitious to form semiexclusive associa with her.7 Dorothea Lange made the transition from perhaps for the sake of geographic practicality he switches Although not numerous, the early photographic
tions. Nevertheless, as Kathleen Pyne has cogently argued, conventional studio portraiture to innovative Depression- his female nomination to New York photographer Berenice landscapes by women are particularly noteworthy, visually
the most aesthetically determined photographic fraternity, era documentary with various forms of strong encourage Abbott, this time specifically annotating that she be as well as historically. Is it a coincidence that just as
the Photo-Secession led by Alfred Stieglitz, was incessantly ment by local photographic innovators Roger Sturtevant, included for the wonams angle [sic].9 Call it token women become enfranchised citizens, we see some of
provoked by the specter of modern womenby the recog- Willard Van Dyke, and Ansel Adams, as well as Bay Area ism,along with poor typing and proofing, but this was not the first efforts by female photographers to enlarge the
nition of their otherness that these men partly envied and arts patron Albert Bender.8 an era that in most professional fields exhibited much scope of their public vision? This raises another coinci
emulated, as well as desired. According to Pyne, women as As for Adams, who retrospectively looms as a camera- interest in the womans angle as such. dence in relation to the Museums collecting history:
much as any other force of innovation served as the seed- wielding Hercules fulfilling an earlier eras appeal for men No such formal advisory committee of photographers just at the start of the twenty-first century, when MoMA
bed for photographic modernism in the first decades of who matched their mountains, we should not overlook was ever assembled. However, Beaumont Newhall in the deaccessioned from its photographic study collection the
the twentieth century.5 Even after that formative period the key points in his career when he sought to share the late 1930s took increasing counsel not only from Adams only known photograph by Brigman with a 1910 verso
of reorienting photography as a modern art, women by photographic stage with women. Long before his repeated but also from his wife, Nancy, even though she was just inscription proclaiming her support for Votes for
no means ceded all agency in the ongoing debate about collaborations with Nancy Newhall during the 1950s and shifting her own interests from painting to photography. Women,the photography department supplanted that
how the camera might be used to see and represent the 1960s, he promoted the perspectives of numerous women And after the founding of the Museums Department of loss with the acquisition of a rare, quite abstract 1920s
world anew. while still establishing his photographic identity. Adamss Photography in 1940, when Beaumont, as inaugural curator landscape by this same California photographer (no. 1).11
Singular female innovators need not be viewed as earliest book, Making a Photograph (1935), constituted the of that department, faced the prospect of military service No matter that the scale of Brigmans Study in Radiation
isolated exceptions, for their example almost invariably first effort to codify the principles and methods of in mid-1942, he and Adams lobbied hard to convince the is small, and that the optics are still softened at the edges
altered the climate of receptivity to womens capacity to post-Pictorial, ultra-Precisionist photography; to demon Museums board to accept Nancy as the best-qualified in the older Pictorialist mode. The seeing is bold and
expand the visual field. A marked openness to womens strate the wide applicability of this method, Adams curatorial replacement for the wars duration. During stripped of the overwrought traces that shrouded her
camera work was especially evident in the modernist illustrated nearly all types of photographylandscapes, the more than three years that Nancy Newhall worked at earlier nudes-in-the-wild. With this picture we recognize
photography bred in the San Francisco Bay Area during still life, portraiture, architecture, and even advertising MoMA as acting curator (at half her husbands former that at least briefly in the 1920s Brigman rejected her
the 1920s and 1930s, with particularly productive results. imagerywith fine reproductions of his own pictures. salary), she not only organized solo exhibitions of photo established figurative repertoire, previously favored by
Thanks to the preeminent position of West Coast However, when it came to the emerging category of graphs by Weston, Paul Strand, and Adams, but additionally Stieglitz, to concentrate on the basic forces of nature that
Pictorialist Anne Brigmanthe only early-twentieth- documentary, though Adams had made a few photographs mounted a small exhibition of Helen Levitts photographs transcend human scale and significance. There is nothing
century California photographer embraced and promoted that arguably fit that bill, he opted instead to feature of children, and included in group shows works by Abbott, extraneous in the interplay she frames between the
by Stieglitz and his associates around Camera Workthe Langes 1933 Bread-line (later known as White Angel Bread Lotte Jacobi, Model, and Morgan.10 blackened triangle of a shadowed cliff, the bright, almost
aspiring postwar modernists of the Bay Area continued Line, San Francisco). Far more impressive than the relative paucity from blinding sea dissolving into misty sky, with just off-center
to laud Brigmans pioneering work and life, which made Nor was this the only occasion when Adams recog that period of exhibitions featuring womens photography a rocky outcropping serving as the source of radiating waves.
no distinction between the personal and the political, nized the importance of not only work by a woman but are the works by women collected by the Museum, both at As Pyne has demonstrated, just when Stieglitzs
the aesthetic and the social, in her quest for freedom. At more categorically womens work in photography. The the time of their production and over subsequent decades. interest shifted in the 1910s from Pictorialism to more
one 1920s gathering, both male and female photographers Newhall correspondence in MoMAs archives contains two In the aggregate, these works remarkable range attests vigorously abstract modern art in a range of mediums,
literally bowed before her as photographic priestess.6 More early letters from Adams to Beaumont Newhall setting to womens decisive exploration of the mediumfrom he also shifted his personal attention from Brigman to
impressive than this ceremonial tribute was the way these forth strategies for developing a department for photogra radical revisions of portraiture (that default genre for the much younger Georgia OKeeffe, while appropriating
same men took quite seriously the potential of their female phy at the Museum by starting with a small committee women photographers, who long had been advised that some of Brigmans earlier dryadic gestures and allusions
associates to advance photography as an art. Edward composed chiefly of photographers. Both letters list the this was where they could best apply their tact and in his photographic stagings of the young female painter
Weston, for example, not only viewed Tina Modotti as an names of people he considered most worthy to serve intuition) to new work in landscape, urban and industrial as fledgling Woman-Child. 12 However much Brigman
exquisitely compelling model for his camera studies, but, as advisors, and each short roster includes the name of studies, social documents (all areas previously treated as regretted the attenuation of Stieglitzs interestto the
5. Rogi Andr (Rozsa Klein) 6. Charlotte (Lotte) Beese 7. Attributed to Leni Riefenstahl 8. Imogen Cunningham
(Hungarian, 19051970). (German, 19031988). (German, 19022003). (American, 18831976).
Florent Fels. 1935. Gelatin Untitled. 1928. Gelatin silver Untitled. 1936. Gelatin silver Helene Mayer. 1936. Gelatin
silver print, 11 1/2 x 7 5/8" (29.2 print, 3 3/8" (8.5 cm) diam., print, 9 3/16 x 11 5/8" (23.4 x silver print, 9 1/8 x 7 1/4"
x 19.4 cm). The Museum of mount 5 13/16 x 5 1/2" (14.7 x 29.5 cm). The Museum of (23.2 x 18.4 cm). The Museum
Modern Art, New York. Gift of 14 cm). The Museum of Modern Modern Art, New York. Thomas of Modern Art, New York.
Frank Crowninshield Art, New York. Thomas Walther Walther Collection. Purchase Gift of Albert M. Bender
Collection. Gift of Thomas
Walther
for the Nazis applied that engineering term, Gleichschaltung, purist, preferring to cycle eclectically between the softly
to all types of social regimentation. Little surprise, then, lyrical and finely detailed formal studies. Likewise, her
that this recently acquired photograph was provisionally portraits ranged from family members, avant-garde
thought to be a rare still shot from this period by the most artists, film stars, and figures encountered on the street to
celebrated Nazi filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl. a series of the very aged made at the end of Cunninghams
We might assume that Riefenstahl or another fascist long life. Within that span, this portrait subject was
created the hypercommanding steel maiden portrait arguably her most unusual: Helene Mayer, the half-Jewish
(1936, no. 8), which makes it that much harder to compre German migr world champion fencer, was at the time
hend as part of the photographic corpus of West Coast of this portrait session a lightning rod for criticism after
bohemian Imogen Cunningham. Already in 1929, ten of she had petitioned the Nazi government to rejoin the
Cunninghams photographs in the sharp modern style German fencing team for the 1936 Olympics. Rebuffing
were included in a vanguard survey mounted in Stuttgart, the entreaties of fellow refugee Thomas Mann and
Film und Foto. However, Cunningham was no absolute progressive US rabbi Stephen S. Wise that she boycott
The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor
Prohibition in the first months of FDRs administration.
To that end, Bing produced a series in the conventional
deep focus style that displayed rows of champagne bottles,
or glasses filled with bubbly, looking modern, interchange- the material basis for this 12. Ilse Bing (American, born
Germany. 18991998).
able, impeccably presentable with the bright glints of image: a heavily frosted win
Champagne Bottles with
commodity appeal.37 But in the course of this work, Bing dowpane with a few melting Spiderwebs. 1933. Gelatin
could not resist making at least one exposure of the areas revealing bare branches silver print, 11 1/8 x 8 3/4" (28.2
x 22.2 cm). The Museum of
far-from-hygienic musty caves in which, presumably with on the other side of the glass. Modern Art, New York. Joseph
very low flashbulb illumination, only the accretion of webs Even after I had deciphered G. Mayer Fund
and the roughly painted numbers marking old vintages those prosaic references, I still
shine forth, almost repulsively. Rather like Modotti, Bing had trouble organizing the scene into simple shapes of
here delights vicariously in natures capacity to undermine opaque and translucent areas. The off-putting thrust of
all efforts toward rationalization and the aesthetics of purity. congealed ice pressing outward like an unexpected orifice
Morgans Solstice similarly defies easy legibility mocks all desire for a predictably flat photographic plane.
(1942, no. 13). The constitutive elements are so hetero While not donated to MoMA by Morgan until 1972,
geneous that one might easily mistake it as a work of this utterly strange image appeared much earlier in
photomontage, which Morgan also made part of her MoMAs exhibition catalogue Art in Progress (1944).39 As
practice. But this is one of her natural photomontages, acting curator of photography, Nancy Newhall must have
a technique she propounded for its close approximation selected it and its position as the concluding photograph
to our consciousness [that] is literally superimposed of that portion of the surveys catalogue devoted to
with jostling images.38 Only with effort could I decipher photography, where it followed reproductions of images
With, and not and, is the way in which women architects Rohes architecture, about the importance of such projects
are more frequently credited alongside men in the official as the Velvet and Silk Caf (no. 1), a collaborative work by
records, if they are credited at all.1 Women are the ghosts Reich and Mies for the 1927 Exposition de la mode (Fashion
of modern architecture, everywhere present, crucial, but exhibition) in Berlin, where draperies in velvet and silk
strangely invisible. Unacknowledged, they are destined hung from metal rods to form the space. Everyone agreed
to haunt the field forever. But correcting the record is not that there was nothing in Miess work prior to his collabo-
just a question of adding a few names or even thousands ration with Reich that would suggest this radical definition
to the history of architecture. It is not just a matter of of space by suspended sensuous surfaces, which would
human justice or historical accuracy but a way to more become his trademark, as exemplified by his Barcelona
fully understand architecture and the complex ways it Pavilion of 1929. And then one of the architects said
is produced. Architecture is deeply collaborative, more something that has stayed with me since: It is like a dirty
like moviemaking than visual art, for example. But unlike little secret that weall architectskeep. Something that
movies, this is hardly ever acknowledged. Until recently, we all know, that we all see, but we dont bring ourselves
it has been a secret carefully guarded. to talk about it.
To better understand the field of architecture would The secrets of modern architecture are like those of
liberate new creative potential. The gap between the words a family. And it is perhaps because of the current cultural
and and with, which institutions so vigilantly guard, fascination with exposing the intimate that they are now
needs to be rethought. With implies a helper, a secondary being unveiled, little by little. If one is to judge by the
source of energy. And implies partnership and equality. publications of recent years, there is increasing interest
What is positive about and is that it feeds on differences, in the ways in which architecture works. It is as if we have
on complexity. And may encourage more nuanced forms become just as concerned with the how as with what.
of production and discourse. And the how is less about structure or building tech-
I will tell you a story. niquesthe interest of earlier generations of historians
About ten years ago, I gave a lecture in Madrid, the city and more about interpersonal relations. The previously
where I was born. The lecture was on the work of Charles marginal details of how things actually happen in archi-
and Ray Eames, and most of the discussion at the dinner tectural practice are now coming to light.
afterward centered on the role of Rayher background The focus is shifting from the architect as a single
as a painter, her sense of color, and so onmuch to my figure, and the building as an object, to architecture
surprise, since I was surrounded by very well-known as collaboration. Attention is starting to be paid to all
Spanish architects, all of them men. Soon we were talking professionals involved in the project: partners, engineers,
about Lilly Reich and what an enormous role she must landscape architects, interior designers, employees, builders.
have played in the development of Ludwig Mies van der Even photographers, graphic designers, critics, curators,
and all of those who produce the work in the media are
1. View of Velvet and Silk Caf
being considered. It is no longer possible to ignore how
by Lilly Reich and Ludwig Mies much of modern architecture is produced both in the
van der Rohe, Exposition de
la mode, Berlin, 1927. The
Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Mies van der Rohe
216 Archive, gift of the architect 217
media and as media. As Richard Neutra said about the Collaboration is the secret life of architects, the 2. Philip Johnson, Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, and
photographer Julius Shulman, His work will survive me. domestic life of architecture. Nowhere is this more emblem- Phyllis Lambert in front of
Film [is] stronger and good glossy prints are easier [to] atic than with architects who live and work together, an image of the model for the
ship than brute concrete, stainless steel, or even ideas. 2 with couples for whom there is complete identification Seagram Building, New York,
1955. Phyllis Lambert Fonds.
Today even the clientswho were previously treated only between home life and office life. Charles and Ray Eames Collection Centre Canadien
as problems for the architect or as witnesses to the (no. 4) in the 1950s provided a model for couplings dArchitecture/Canadian
Centre for Architecture,
effects of the architectureare being considered as the in following generations, in particular for Alison and Peter Montral
active collaborators that they are. Smithson, whose partnership in turn provided a model
The postwar period inaugurated a new kind of collab- for Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and for Enric
orative practice that has become increasingly difficult Miralles and Carme Pins (no. 3) a generation later.
to ignore or to subsume within a heroic conception Couplings raise an enormous level of nervousness and
of an individual figure. The Museum of Modern Art held resentment from all camps (including women). The phallic
an exhibition on the Chicago firm Skidmore, Owings & myth of the solo architect, the isolated genius, is one of
Merrill in 1950, acknowledging for the first time a corpo- the most regressive and reactionary understandings of
rate office. Individuals gave way to a more anonymous col- architecturebut unfortunately still the most pervasive.
lective, but wherever their names did appear, a key woman In this climate there is much to learn from the Smithsons
architect in the firm, Natalie de Blois, was systematically analysis, if only to remind ourselves that it took more
left out. Also during this period, all the great masters than half a century before women architects were on equal
associated with other architects on key projects. Mies footing in partnerships with men. Margaret Macdonald
van der Rohe worked with Philip Johnson on the Seagram collaborated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Reich with
Building (with the crucial intervention of Phyllis Lambert Mies, Charlotte Perriand with Le Corbusier, Aino Aalto
as both patron and young architect) (no. 2). In 1945 Walter with Alvar Aalto . . . but their extraordinary influence
Gropius founded The Architects Collaborative (TAC) was never completely acknowledged. Only with Charles
with a group of younger architects, and in 1963 he collab- and Ray Eames did we have for the first time a firm
orated with the corporate office of Emery Roth & Sons which recognized, at least in its name, the two partners
on the Pan Am Building. Wallace Harrison stole from as equals. And only with the Smithsons did a womans
Le Corbusier the forms for the new headquarters of the name come first, her work fully acknowledged by all.
United Nations in New York. Rem Koolhaas suggests that Of course institutions, particularly East Coast institu-
such partners are always overlooked, even though they tionsThe Museum of Modern Art, the New York Times,
often contribute the more idiosyncratic features of the Harvard Universitywere in denial. A devastated Esther
buildings, the perversions of the masters usual style: McCoy wrote to the Eameses apologizing for the New York
From the 1930s, when he began working with Lilly Timess erasure of Rays name from the article she had
Reich, on, Mies left the theatrical to othersperversion just published about their work:
by proxy. From her silk and velvet to Johnsons chain
mail in the Four Seasons, what is the connection? Who Dear Charles and Ray: The Times story was an
took advantage?3 Once again, it takes an architect and embarrassment to me as it must have been painful
not a critic or historian to point to the obvious, even to you. It was originally (as requested) a 5000 word
3. Carme Pins and Enric
if in fact Reich had been collaborating with Mies since story and was cut at their request to 3500, and Miralles, n.d. Photograph by
the mid-1920s. when Paul Goldberger received it he called and said Marti Catala Pedersen
it was fine. Then he turned me over to the editorial exhibition of their work, a one-man show titled New
assistant, a Barbara Wyden who had endless com- Furniture Designed by Charles Eames (1946).6 Other members
plaints I wont bore you with, but the two things of the Eames office were also not credited for their work,
we settled down in a death struggle were that Rays including Gregory Ain, Harry Bertoia, Herbert Matter, and Opposite:
4. Charles and Ray Eames on
name must be included and that the chaise must Griswald Raetze, all of whom resigned from the office as the steel frame of the Eames
not be called a casting couch. . . . For twenty years I a consequence, ending a particularly fertile period of the House under construction,
Pacific Palisades, California,
have worked peaceably with editors. Now already in Eameses careers.7 The exhibition and catalogue of the
1949. Photograph by John
1973 I have come up against two editors who are Museums Good Design (November 21, 1950January 28, Entenza
unbelievably arrogant, the basis of their complaint 1951) likewise did not credit the work to Ray, who is, how-
5. Charles Eames, Ray Eames,
being that I didnt understand the broad audience. ever, seen in many photographs installing the show next Dorothy Shaver, and Edgar
This is sheer nonsense; the broad audience isnt to the curator, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. (no. 5). Only on the last Kaufmann, Jr., at the exhibition
Good Design, The Museum
titillated by the phrase casting couch nor does it page of the catalogue are there a few lines crediting her
of Modern Art, New York,
object to a woman being credited for work.4 with assistance in preparing the show and the book. 195051. Photograph
Even in 1973 Arthur Drexlers introduction to the exhibi- by Leo Trachtenberg.
Photographic Archive.
MoMA never fully acknowledged Ray Eames either.5 tion Charles Eames: Furniture from the Design Collection did The Museum of Modern
Only Charles was credited in the institutions first not properly credit Ray in the first draft, which mentions Art Archives, New York
demonstrates that the real issue in the genealogies is Corbusier (no. 11), Truus Schrder-Schrder and Gerrit
the family. Rietveld, Reich and Mies, and so on. They are a couple
In these family trees, the emphasis on women surfaces identifying other couples, perhaps identifying themselves
again, in what Peter calls the female line: Much of our with those couples, as when Alison writes, I can see
inheritance reaches us through the female line . . . Truus the part played by Ray Eames in all that they do: . . . the
Schrder-Schrder, Lilly Reich, Charlotte Perriand, Ray perseverance in finding what exactly is wanted; although
Eames. The line continues all the way down to Alison the seeker may not know the exact object until it is finally
Smithson, in what Peter calls a conscious homage to the seen. 20 Or when writing about Mies, Peter suddenly
founding mothers.19 The Smithsons were very sensitive remarks, as if talking to himself, I want to know more
to womens presence in the history of architecture in our about Lilly Reich.21 And, in a footnote to this blunt com-
century, more than any historian or critic of the period. ment, he points to a picture of Mies and Reich in 1933
But the women they identify are always in couples. (no. 8), published in Ludwig Glaesers little silvery book
They refer to Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie on Miess furniture in the collection of The Museum
Mackintosh (nos. 9 and 10), Charlotte Perriand and Le of Modern Art, but says nothing about it.22 It is a picture 10. Charles Rennie Mackintosh incorporating painted panel,
(British, 18681928). Margaret 1901. Pencil and watercolor
Macdonald (British, 1865 on paper, 11 1/2 x 10 3/4"
1933). 3 Lilybank Terrace, (29.2 x 27.3 cm). The Museum
Glasgow, Scotland. Elevation of Modern Art, New York. Gift
224 WITH, OR WITHOUT YOU sketch; design for mantelpiece of Joseph H. Heil, by exchange COLOMINA 225
We have a very spare file called Significant Houses. Jeanneret and Le Corbusier (no. 13), and about what the
In it is the Farnsworth, a few early Rudolf houses, former may have contributed to the latters work.
and very little else. The earliest document is from The 1950s offered many other couplings as well.
the Architects Journal, June 27, 1946. It was this Gwendolyn Wright has shown how Catherine Bauer, a
we rethought of on the death of Pierre Jeanneret. social historian, metamorphosed the practice of the
The house shown there, embodies the sweetest architect William Wurster, whom she met and married in
collaboration with Jean Prouvwho really has 1940, by politicizing him, infusing his domestic designs
been unfortunate in his architect collaborators.24 with her social and political ideas, just as he helped her to
become aware of the needs of middle-class American
The Smithsons pay tribute to Jeanneret by showing families, both in city apartments and suburban homes.25
his house with Prouv. They remove him from Le Bauer, Wright contends, had earlier radically transformed
Corbusiers gigantic shadow only to pair him up again, the work of Lewis Mumford, by spurring him to take
in the sweetest collaboration. In the process, they on the grand themes of technology and community,
introduce the question of Prouvs unhappy marriages which will become the basis of his best-known books,
to a succession of architects, including Tony Garnier, and Mumford, in turn, encouraged Bauer to contemplate
11. Charlotte Perriand, 12. Eileen Gray, Paris, 1926. Marcel Lods, Le Corbusier, and Georges Candilis. But aspects of design that could not be quantified, to broaden
with Le Corbusier holding Photograph by Berenice since the homage is to Jeanneret, bringing up the matter and humanize her definition of housing reform, during
a plate behind her head Abbott. National Museum
like a halo, at her home in of Ireland Collection of partnership raises questions about what is perhaps the the several years of their love affair while he was married
place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, most unexplored partnership of the century, that between to someone else.26
1928. Photograph by Pierre Opposite:
13. Pierre Jeanneret and
Mumford had met Bauer in 1929: We were drawn
Jeanneret
Le Corbusier boxing together by our common interest in modern architecture. . . .
on the beach, c. 1926. From the beginning we were excited by each others
Photographer unknown;
possibly Charlotte Perriand. minds, and plunged and leaped in a sea of ideas like two
Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris dolphins, even before our bodies had time for another. 27
Bauer helped Mumford organize the housing section
of the 1932 MoMA exhibition Modern Architecture:
International Exhibition,28 and he described her as a
challenging mind:
of Mies and Reich on a boat, where they each look at Roquebrune, which is credited to her and Jean Badovici.
in the others direction but their gazes symptomatically Her house in Castellar, France, and her many other house Catherines challenging mind, particularly during
never cross. projects, interiors, and furniture pass unnoticed. the first two years of our intimacy, had a stimulat-
Perhaps the obsession with couples also explains the It is not just heterosexual couples that interest ing and liberating effect upon my whole develop-
surprising absence of Eileen Gray in the Smithsons writ- the Smithsons. When discussing Johannes Duiker in ment. In effect, she played the part of Hilda Wangel
ings. Furniture as architecture was a continuous obsession The Heroic Period of Modern Architecture, Peter writes, in [Henrik] Ibsens play: the voice of the younger
of the Smithsons and a key part of their fascination with It is not for me to deal with the relationship of Duiker generation, bidding the Master Builder to quit
Mackintosh, Rietveld, Mies, and Eames. Gray (no. 12) is and [Bernard] Bijvoet, I speak of them as one emanence.23 building modest, commonplace houses and to
mentioned in the couples essay The Heroic Period of And on the occasion of Pierre Jeannerets death, Alison erect instead an audacious tower, even if, when he
Modern Architecture (1965) only for her house in France, and Peter wrote a moving tribute: had reached the top, he might fall to his death.29
235
3. Ida Lupino on the set of Never
Fear (The Young Lovers) (1950),
Los Angeles, 1949. The Estate
of Ida Lupino
1. William Donati, Ida Lupino: (New York: Continuum in Kuhn, ed., Queen of the Bs: 5. Ibid., p. 146.
A Biography (Lexington: The International Publishing Ida Lupino Behind the Camera 6. Ronnie Scheib, Never Fear
University Press of Kentucky, Group, 1997), p. 74. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger (1950), in Queen of the Bs,
1996), p. 152. 3. Annette Kuhn, Intro- Publishers, 1995), p. 2. p. 54.
2. Collier Young and Ida Lupino 2. Ally Acker, Reel Women duction: Intestinal Fortitude, 4. Donati, Ida Lupino, p. 135. 7. Donati, Ida Lupino, p. 167.
at Cocoanut Grove, Los Angeles,
1949. The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Film Stills Archive
A work of art may be spiritually, emotionally Prints are an ideal conduit for this endeavor; cut from 1952 (no. 2), demonstrates Catletts
or intellectually rewarding, sculptor and they are inexpensive to produce and distrib- adroitness at suggesting a variety of textures,
printmaker Elizabeth Catlett suggested in ute to a wide audience. Catlett first studied such as skin, textile, and straw, using a
1975, especially in the realm of the real/ lithography in 1944, while working with Harry limited range of short, decisive lines. The
ordinary/popular. It does not need revolution Sternberg at the Art Students League, but subject was inspired by the sharecroppers
as its subject in order to be revolutionary . . . her interest in the medium was greatly influ- Catlett saw in North Carolina while visiting
but it can provoke thought and prepare us enced two years later, when she traveled to her grandmother, but here, unlike previous
for change.1 Catlett has been an active Mexico City on a Julius Rosenwald Fellow- versions of the theme, she shifts focus from
proponent of this statement throughout her ship.5 In Mexico Catlett worked as a guest the act of labor to the intimate perspective
career, especially with her graphic art, which artist at El Taller de Grfica Popular (the of the worker herself.7 Seen from below, only
has allowed her to respond to contemporary Peoples Graphic Workshop, or TGP), an artists the womans head and shoulders are depicted,
politics and denounce social injustice while collective and print workshop focused on portrayed in a state of dignified contem-
also engaging in substantial aesthetic making visually accessible art for the public. plation. Although the sharecroppers aging
experimentation. Catlett was inspired by the Tallers project features and threadbare clothing are evident,
Catletts artistic identity was cultivated as Estampas de la Revolucin Mexicana they do not diminish her dignity; instead,
a graduate student at the University of Iowa (1947), a series of eighty-five linoleum cuts Catlett utilizes the tactile evidence of poverty
in the late 1930s, where she was encouraged featuring the everyday heroes of the Mexican to reinforce her subjects strength.
by one of her most influential teachers, painter Revolution. For her Rosenwald project she Catlett became a Mexican citizen in 1962,
Grant Wood, to take as her subject what made a series of fifteen linocuts depicting but she has remained socially and artistically
she knew best.2 Catlett resolved to focus on the black womans experience in America, engaged with African American politics,
the depiction of black women, a subject she including portraits of important historical actively participating in the black art move-
felt was often overlooked or relegated to the figures such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet ment in the 1960s and 1970s. Her color lino-
realm of the exotic in contemporary art.3 Tubman alongside scenes of forced labor, leum cut Malcolm X Speaks for Us (1969, no.
As the granddaughter of slaves, Catlett was social inequality, and violence. Calling the 1) represents the famous activist surrounded
fully aware of the privilege and responsibility portfolio The Negro Woman, Catlett printed by three anonymous female faces, each
of being an artist, a perspective that informed the series on colored tissue paper and printed multiple times in three distinct rows.
her desire to make art for the working classes.4 sold them at book fairs for an affordable Melanie Anne Herzog has suggested that
Participating in artistic communities in three pesos each.6 Catletts design demands inclusion for
the early 1940s, such as the South Side Catlett moved to Mexico permanently in women in a movement reluctant to acknowl-
Community Art Center in Chicago and the Art 1947 and continued working at the TGP for edge them, but it is also a meditation on
Students League and George Washington another twenty years, contributing to projects shape and color.8 To organize her composi-
Carver School in New York, further shaped for various nonprofit organizations and tion, Catlett rearranged the placement of
Catletts vision of art as a tool for teaching, unions as well as the Mexican governments the heads until the image was as effective
motivating, and inspiring people. education campaign. The Taller encouraged as possible:
a graphic approach that employed bold
black-and-white imagery and straight- I had the idea of a lot of women . . .
1. Malcolm X Speaks for Us. forward descriptive techniques to make of different ages around the head
1969. Linoleum cut, sheet the visual message as direct as possible. of Malcolmas though they were
41 5/16 x 30 11/16" (104 x 77.9 cm).
Catletts subjects were well suited to this absorbing from him. . . . I experimented
Publisher and printer: the
artist, Mexico City. Edition: 40. style, and she began experimenting with her with the heads in different ways
The Museum of Modern Art, carved marks to convey rounder forms and repeated one that I had already printed
New York. Gift of the artist intricate shading. Sharecropper, a linoleum someplace else. And I used repetition
239
2. Sharecropper. 1952, 3. Central America Says No!
published 196870. Linoleum 1986. Linoleum cut, sheet
cut, sheet 18 1/2 x 18 15/16" (47 47 9/16 x 31 9/16" (120.8 x 80.1 cm).
x 48.1 cm). Publisher: Taller de Publisher: the artist, Mexico
Grfica Popular and the artist, City. Printer: Jos Sanchez,
Mexico City. Printer: the artist Mexico City. Edition: 10. The
and Jos Sanchez, Mexico Museum of Modern Art, New
City. Edition: artists proof York. The Ralph E. Shikes Fund
outside the edition of 60.
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. The Ralph E. Shikes
Fund and Purchase
When asked if she was friendly with the of detachment and quieting the mind.4 In her The Tree (1964, no. 1) epitomizes the
avant-garde composer John Cage, Agnes early career she moved from representational balance between visibility and invisibility in
Martin answered that she was, But I dont images to biomorphic shapes and eventually Martins use of the grid. Her subtle use of
agree with him.1 When prodded, she offered, to geometry, having been influenced by the color gradations makes the delicate pencil
Well for one thing, he wrote a book called ancient Greeks, who she felt recognized the lines seem almost to disappear. Martins
Silence and in the very first line he said there impossibility of finding perfect circles and self-effacing and spare compositions led
is no such thing as silence. But I think there straight lines in nature but, like her, strove many to view her work within the context of
is. When you walk into a forest there are all for perfection nonetheless.5 Martin blended the emerging Minimalist movement, but her
kinds of sounds but you feel as though you these varied influences into a highly personal interest in metaphysical experience allied
have stepped into silence. I believe that is perspective which informed her work her more with Abstract Expressionisms spir-
silence. This brief analysis speaks volumes throughout her career, especially as she itual ambitions. At the same time, she rejected
about Martins artistic philosophy and her moved toward full abstraction. the self-indulgent, egocentric aspects of
oeuvre. Martins work, which takes the grid Martin took up the grid in 1960, while living Abstract Expressionism, whose practitioners
as its organizing principle, reflects a belief in New York City, in an effort to express her used color, texture, and scale to create
that opposites can simultaneously coexist own emotional experiences, particularly, she emotionally expressive canvases that came
within a whole. Her intricately executed said, abstract conditions like happiness and to stand for American individuality and
paintings and drawings are imbued with a innocence and beauty. 6 Untitled (no. 2), a who were often known for their bravado and
sense of liminality, meaning they exist on drawing from that year, is an early example self-importance. Instead, Martin sought to
a threshold between two states and reflect of the way in which her work employs both express her emotions as experienced when
a position in which ones identity becomes standardization and variation. The undulating our minds are empty of ego and the distrac-
barely perceptible.2 Her work strikes a balance sides contrast with the grids quiet interior, tions of the everyday world. 8 Martins focus
between binaries, between uniformity and creating the appearance that the drawing on egolessness sets her apart from many of
difference, visibility and invisibility, and is measuring something, such as sound or her male peers.9 The somewhat anonymous
materiality and spirituality, which has allowed movement. A strong tension exists between nature of the grid, which reveals nothing
viewers to see what they want in her work the strict regularity of the lines and the indi- about the artists biography, gave her the
and has contributed to her consistently viduality stemming from the artists hand. freedom to succeed without being marginal-
wide appeal. This is evident at the edges of the horizontal ized because of her gender. The often barely
Martins artistic philosophy was shaped by lines, where the ink is often darker, and in perceptible nature of her presence in the
a combination of her Presbyterian upbring- those lines which come so close together work provided her with a shroud of invisibility
ing, particularly her belief in predestination; 3 that they merge. The tiny boxes of the grid, that focused attention on the work itself.
the writings of Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, moreover, vary slightly in height and length. In 1967, frustrated with the distractions
Chinese philosophers associated with Martins interest in such infinitesimal of New York and caught in a confusion that
Taoism who focused on humility; and Zen differences may be explained by her belief, had to be solved, Martin got into her pickup
Buddhism, which teaches the importance inspired in part by Christian theology, that truck, drove across the United States and
one should imagine oneself as a grain of Canada, and settled near the village of Cuba,
sand or a blade of grass; each at first looks New Mexico.10 She stopped making art until
1. The Tree. 1964. Oil and like every other, but in reality they are always 1971, when Parasol Press invited her to create
pencil on canvas, 72 x 72" unique. Like so many other paradoxical posi- a series of prints, which, titled On a Clear Day,
(182.8 x 182.8 cm). The
tions in her work, Martins strict repetition was exhibited at The Museum of Modern
Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Larry Aldrich achieves something totally unexpected, an Art in May 1973. She returned to painting
Foundation Fund almost infinite variety of difference.7 soon thereafter.
242 243
2. Opposite:
Untitled. 1960. Ink on paper,
11 7/8 x 12 1/8" (30.2 x 30.6 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Acquired with
matching funds from The
Lauder Foundation and
the National Endowment
for the Arts
1. Agnes Martin, quoted in 3. Martin once said that American Art, 1992), p. 95. In Drawing: Agnes Martins work, but they sought to
Irving Sandler, You Have to everybody grows up to be the late 1940s Martin attended Infinity, in Carol Armstrong achieve different aims, to do
Do What You Have to Do, in what they were born to be. free lectures by D. T. Suzuki, and Catherine de Zegher, away with emotion completely.
Patricia Bickers and Andrew Holland Cotter, Like Her who is known for bringing the eds., Women Artists at the 10. Haskell, Agnes Martin,
Wilson, eds., Talking Art: Paintings, Quiet, Unchanging teachings of Zen to much Millennium (Cambridge, Mass.: p. 111.
The work Martin made in the next phase suggests both containment and boundless- of the surface, and produce the illusion of Interviews with Artists since and Revered, New York Times, broader audiences in the MIT Press, 2006), pp. 17778. 11. These empty rectangles
of her career, which lasted until her death in ness. Indeed, like the empty rectangles movement. The composition, like her other 1976 (London: Art Monthly, January 19, 1997, Sect. 2, p. 45. United States. 8. Haskell, Agnes Martin, have been called a visual
2004, is marked by horizontal or vertical created between the lines in her earlier grid work from this period, at once suggests Ridinghouse, 2007), p. 423. 4. On Martins study of 5. Ibid., p. 102. p. 93. equivalent to the emptiness
2. On the liminal, see Victor Buddhism, see Barbara 6. Cotter, Like Her Paintings, 9. Like Martin, artists associated of the mind necessary to
bands of translucent color as well as a ten- works, the blank horizontal bands provide a a higher realm and brings us back to our
Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Haskell, Agnes Martin: The Quiet, Unchanging and with the Minimalist movement perceive the absolute. Ibid.,
sion between spirituality and materiality, as quiet space, crucial to meditation.11 At the own bodies, making us aware of ourselves in Aspects of Ndembu Ritual Awareness of Perfection, in Revered, p. 45. often used the grid as well as p. 106.
exemplified by Untitled (1978, no. 3). This same time, the alternating bands of light and relation to the work of art and our physical (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Haskell, ed., Agnes Martin 7. On Martins infinite variety, industrial techniques to efface
drawing, done in watercolor and colored ink, darker orange highlight the soft materiality environment. Press, 1967), pp. 9599. (New York: Whitney Museum of see Briony Fer, Drawing their own individuality in their
Lee Bontecous oeuvre unfolds like an particular in a recurrent archetypal structure in the late 1950s. During this period the
upward-bound spiral, at once expanding in that serves as a conduit between various welded-metal armatures, latent in her previ-
and revolving around mutating motifs that bodies of drawing and sculptural work: a ous, more naturalistic sculpture, began to
appear and reappear in her sculpture, draw- composite armature made of multiple sec- surface and come into the foreground, and
ings, and prints with vigorous assertiveness, tions or facets, forging, perhaps against the this now-visible structure became a distinc-
rendered with breathtaking skill. These odds, an object that alternates between syn- tive, primary element. These armatures were
themes cover a veritable universe: My most thetic wholeness and disjunctive entropy. lightweight frames to which Bontecou
persistently recurring thought, she has said, This structure and its process of construc- secured pieces of canvas with wire, and she
is to work in a scope as far-reaching as pos- tion date back to Bontecous student years. then reinforced the overall construction with
sible; to express a feeling of freedom in all its While in Rome in the mid-1950s, she began rabbit-skin glue. The result, a playful twisting
ramificationsits awe, beauty, magnitude, to experiment extensively with drawings, of the conventions of frame and image,
horror and baseness. This feeling embraces testing innovative techniques and discovering, allowed Bontecou to bring a pictorial, paint-
ancient, present and future worlds; from for example, that by cutting off the oxygen erly quality into her sculpture, inviting the
caves to jet engines, landscapes to outer from my blowtorch tanks and just drawing viewers perception to shift back and forth
space, from visible nature to the inner eye, with the acetylene, I got a beautiful black between the image and the imposing
all encompassed in the cohesiveness of my line. I started making huge soot drawings. concrete quality of her materials. She later
inner world.1 I finally got that dark I wanted, the black I remarked about her fragmented, cumulative
Bontecous sustained career has followed wanted. And a kind of landscape, or a world- practice, I still work in pieces. That way I
both ordinary and unusual paths. Born in scape. 3 A stunning untitled drawing from can extend the surface way beyond what it
Providence, Rhode Island, in 1931, she around 1958 (no. 2) is minutely constructed naturally will do. I get involved with space. 5
attended the Art Students League in New of hatched juxtaposed areas in a manner not In the early 1960s these welded metal-
York from 1952 to 1955, and went to Rome dissimilar from patchworked sculptural and-canvas boxes gained in complexity,
for two years, starting in 1956, on a Fulbright surfaces she had already made and would scale, and suggestiveness, eloquently cul-
scholarship. She was one of few women later make. This drawing also introduces a minating in an untitled sculpture from 1961
artists to achieve extensive critical and circular void that became, in the following (no. 1). Like other works from this period, it
commercial acclaim in the 1960s, but in the years, a pervasive iconographic and structural suggests a range of associations, from cosmic
1970s she deliberately stepped back from element. Identified by critic Dore Ashton as to anthropomorphic, from mechanistic to
the art world, withdrawing her work from central to anything Bontecou undertakes, sexual, reflecting the range of Bontecous
public view.2 with its connotations of sexual imagery interests, including natural forms and space
She has earned the reverence of many and sadistic symbols of destruction, most exploration. Its construction implies a series
women artists who feel she has opened up prominently the mouth of a gun, this motif is of concentric elements that simultaneously
the possibility for work that is at once entirely isolated as the main subject of three untitled advance and retreat in a succession of out-
personal and highly aggressive, but Bontecou drawings from the early 1960s.4 In these, ward and inward movements, an endless
has been reluctant to embrace a feminist the literal opening appears simultaneously process of alternating absorption and expul-
platform or sensibility, emphasizing in her as void and filled, an entity that fluidly sionalluding, perhaps obliquely, to the
statements and interviews her works open- morphs from the identifiablethe bodily operating mechanism of a jet plane. Bontecou
ness and autonomy and the specific thought orifice, the topographic cavity, the watchful incorporated into this work a range of found
and engineering processes that pervade her eyeinto abstract depictions of the hollow materials scavenged from the street and
practice. Her work in the collection of The and the unknown. the laundry below her studio (conveyer belts,
Museum of Modern Art, drawn from more This circular motif is the defining feature heavy-duty canvas mailbags) or purchased
1. Untitled. 1961. Welded steel, than forty years of astonishing output, dis- of an untitled sculpture from 1959 that on nearby Canal Street (grommets, bolts,
canvas, black fabric, copper plays an enthralling internal coherence, in typifies a radical departure Bontecou made washers, spools, tarpaulins). The rough
wire, and soot, 6' 8 1/4" x 7' 5"
x 34 3/4" (203.6 x 226 x 88 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Kay Sage Tanguy
246 Fund 247
And it can go on endlessly. A lot of ships.
A sense of wind. 7
When suspended, these full-blown struc-
tures opened for Bontecou a range of options,
2. Untitled. c. 1958. Soot on
allowing her to work on a variety of scales
paperboard, 30 x 40" (76.2 x and create ever more complex internal spaces.
101.6 cm). The Museum of With each addition of wire and beads she
Modern Art, New York. The created level upon level of architectural
Judith Rothschild Foundation
structures, each level extending the works
Contemporary Drawings
Collection Gift farther into space to remarkable effect:
a scattering of structural elements in a cos-
mological system in which gravity seems
Opposite:
temporarily suspended. Here Bontecou has
3. Untitled. 198098. Welded
steel, porcelain, wire mesh, reinvented once again her practice of amal-
canvas, and wire, 7 x 8 x 6' gamation, bringing her work full circle, as if
(213.4 x 243.8 x 182.9 cm). one of her earlier welded-metal-and-canvas
The Museum of Modern Art, pieces had been captured in perfect stillness
New York. Gift of Philip
as it dramatically burst in space. No matter
Johnson (by exchange)
and the Nina and Gordon how much you think youre doing something
Bunshaft Bequest Fund different, youre repeating yourself, Bontecou
once remarked. Its almost like a spiral.
Hopefully, you go around and come back
again and go up higher if possible. 8 Thus
she invokes the continuous interplay, at
once formal and philosophical, between the
organic and the artificial, in work at once
personal and universal, both firmly grounded
in keen observation of the natural world and
yet deliriously oneiric, transforming what is
seen into what might be.
materiality of these ready-made utilitarian life. An untitled drawing from 1970, featuring in a manner quite distinct from her terra-
objectsand perhaps the new layers of three transparent fish rendered in white cotta sculptures of the mid-1950s, and
meaning that they brought into the work charcoal on black paper, relates directly to subsequently produced a series of delicate
seemed to attract her: Old mailbagsI the vacuum-formed fish that she was making sculptures of irregular spherical porcelain
found them under the mailboxes. I started around that time, echoing the sculptures beads connected with wire. One of the largest 1. Lee Bontecou, quoted in York; the 1963 Corcoran The New Art Scene, with photo- Archive, The Museum of Lee Bontecou, p. 4. Bontecous
cutting up the canvas. And I would get won- translucent materials as well as the exposed, and most spectacular, from 198098 (no. 3), Elizabeth A. T. Smith, Abstract Biennial; Recent American graphs by Ugo Mulas and text Modern Art Archives, New York; light and dark values, as well
derful values with it. I could get depth that intricate method the artist used to assemble is a marvelously intricate display of adjoining Sinister, Art in America 81, no. Sculpture at the Jewish by Alan Solomon (New York: quoted in Lilian Tone, Lee as bulging circular shapes,
9 (September 1993): 87. Museum, New York, in 1964; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Bontecou, exhibition brochure would later resonate, though
was not possible in the regular pieces of them. The forms are naturalistically rendered, diaphanous, saillike planes made of screen
2. By 1966 Bontecou had had and Documenta III in Kassel, 1967), alongside a roster of (New York: The Museum of in greater stylized form, in
canvas. If I did it all in steel or metal, I but their disturbingly fantastic mechano- wire, evocative of eyes and celestial bodies. three solo exhibitions at the Germany, in 1964, where she male artists that includes Modern Art, 2004), p. 2. the drawing Untitled (1967)
wouldnt get the kind of illusion that you morphic features verge on the grotesque. This work is one of several structures that influential Leo Castelli Gallery was one of few woman exhibi- Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper 4. Dore Ashton, Art, Arts & in the Museums collection.
have in painting.6 Similarly hypnagogic images appear in sub- were suspended from the ceiling like a in New York, and had partici- tors. In addition to numerous Johns, Frank Stella, Roy Architecture 80, no. 1 (January 7. Bontecou, Skowhegan
The synergy between nature and fiction sequent drawings of extraordinary waves mobile: I always wanted to move away from pated in a number of major reviews in prominent art Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, 1963): 5. lecture; quoted in Tone, Lee
exhibitions, both nationally and journals, magazines like and Claes Oldenburg. 5. Bontecou, quoted in Eleanor Bontecou, p. 13.
that had characterized Bontecous work and plants, which continuously morph into the wall, so I began hanging the works. I
internationally, including the Cosmopolitan, Life, and 3. Bontecou, lecture, C. Munro, Originals: American 8. Bontecou, Skowhegan lec-
began to transmute in the late 1960s into a progressive variations on the human eye. started small, combining porcelain, different 1961 Bienal de So Paulo; Newsweek dedicated articles Skowhegan School of Painting Women Artists (New York: Simon ture (see n. 3).
more denotative language that directly cor- Toward the end of the 1970s Bontecou clays, and screen wire. The process was Americans 1963 at The to her work. She is the only and Sculpture, Summer 1988. and Schuster, 1979), p. 383.
responded to forms observed in biological went back to working with clay, although getting closer to drawing, which is so free. Museum of Modern Art, New woman featured in New York: The Skowhegan Lecture 6. Bontecou, quoted in Tone,
The east-west-north-south coordinates, lati- art history is not simple.2 She credited the palette, and presence can be seen as an
tude and longitude, of my sculptures exactly Abstract Expressionist canvases of Barnett alchemical distillation of some remembered
reflect my concern with my position in space, Newman and Ad Reinhardt with teaching her architecture, light, and sensation. Her works
my location.This concern, an obsession since the freedom of feeling for once in my life are not depictions of images or events,
earliest childhood, must have been the root enough space, enough color. 3 As a colorist James Meyer has written, but metonyms
of my 1961 decisiontaken unconsciously living in Washington, D.C., friendly with pointing to a complex of associations. 9
in a wave of conviction so total as to have Kenneth Noland and championed by Clement Twining Court I (2001, no. 2), executed
been unchallenged by logicto place my Greenberg, Truitt was often aligned with three years before the artists death, similarly
sculptures on their own feet as I am on mine. the Washington Color School painters. And suggests a site from her past. The title refers
Anne Truitt, Daybook as a sculptor producing massive, geometric to the Washington carriage house studio
abstractions in the early 1960s, she was even that Truitt rented from Noland from 1962
This excerpt from Daybook, the first of more closely associated with Minimalist until 1964, when Truitts husband accepted
three volumes Anne Truitt published from sculptors. Despite the fact that her works a job in Japan, moving the family abroad for
her journals, reveals several of the concerns allusive titles and additive color ran con- several years.10 The viewer cant know exactly
central to this artists singular philosophy trary to the program of Minimalism,4 which what about this columns graceful propor-
and practice.1 Over the four decades of her tended to eschew both referential meaning tions or distinctive colorationsharp reds
mature career, Truitt remained deeply, if and surface composition, the timing and zipping, Newman-like, up a black post
subtly, involved with the issue of placement look of Truitts first solo exhibition, at Andr suggested that studio for Truitt; a certain
in space, aligning her sculptures with both Emmerich Gallery in 1963, linked her to the amount of private meaning is embedded,
real and imagined geographies. The uncon- burgeoning trend.5 like a secret, in her work.11 Nonetheless, the
scious, career-changing decision to abandon Catawba (1962, no. 1), one of the six sculp- subtlety of her formal choices [evokes] a
her figurative clay, cement, and wire work tures included in this debut exhibition, hovers staggering array of associations on the part
of the 1940s and 1950s to make First (1961), characteristically between an expression of the observer.12 The red and black Twining
a wood sculpture resembling a white picket of form and a form of expression. Executed Court I (2001), deep and rich like lacquer-
fence, testifies to the artists respect for during a highly productive streak just one ware, is as dignified as a sentry, sudden as
intuition as the motor behind her production. year after Truitt considered her mature pro- an electric shock. Its De Stijl stripes incise
And in her writings Truitt often draws analo- duction to have begun,6 Catawbas subtle the shaftlike fluting, one critic observed.13
gies between sculptures and people, express- gradations of color emphasize the sculptures Indeed, this sculptures play between physical
ing metaphorical equivalencies between her low horizontality in a marriage of chroma presence and optical surface seems to
creations and her children, or herselfon and structure that could constitute an end encourage such correspondences, calling to
their own feet as I am on mine. These con- in itself. 7 Yet the works title alludes to the mind a body with blood coursing up its life-
cerns point to a tension between abstraction street in Asheville, North Carolina, where the lines, a pillar of rock laced with veins of ore,
and reference at the core of Truitts project, artist lived as a teenager, after a childhood a thermometers vertical measure of temper-
in which personal experience is intrinsically spent on Marylands Eastern Shore. If Truitts atureor the accompanying sensations of
embedded in seemingly pure form. works result from a more or less conscious adrenaline, discovery, heat.
For an artist interested in placement concentration on a particular area of emo- Executed thirty-nine years apart, Catawba
How dependent I am on this kind of psycho- tionally charged personal experiencea and Twining Court I were essentially made
logical and physical knowledge of where I person, say, or a series of events, or a period according to the same technique, a testament
am,she wroteTruitts position within in my life, 8 then Catawbas structure, to the steady consistency of Truitts practice.
1. Catawba. 1962. Painted
wood, 42 1/2 x 60 x 11" (106.6 x
152.4 x 27.9 cm). The Museum
of Modern Art, New York.
250 Given anonymously 251
Her unique process combined the immediacy 3. 30 July 1973. 1973.
of intuition, the remove of prefabrication, and Synthetic polymer paint and
pencil on paper, 21 3/4 x 29 3/4"
the intimacy of laborious handwork. Truitt
(55.2 x 75.6 cm). The Museum
insisted that her sculptures began by simply of Modern Art, New York.
[presenting] themselves somewhere in an Purchase
airy space high up over my head, as if already
whole, real.14 She conveyed these concep-
tions in to-scale drawings, so that the wooden Like her journal entries, Truitts works on
forms could be produced by a cabinetmaker; paper mark time, bearing as titles the dates
many were outfitted with weights, to ground on which they were executed. While 30 July
them, and hollowed with holes so that they 1973 remains foremost an abstraction, an
can breathe in various temperatures.15 Truitt exploration of pure parallels and perpendic-
primed the wood with several coats of gesso ulars, its levels of meaning proliferate in the
and applied successive layers of acrylic context of Truitts art and life. The echo of
paint, sometimes as many as thirty to forty First is present in its fencelike verticals, and
coats, sanding with successively finer sand- the memory of her hometowns clapboard
papers between layers.16 The coats were houses is conjured by its even horizontals.20
alternated vertically and horizontally, with These two modes of meaning meet at a line,
and against the grain of the wood, a meticu- which is bisected by another: directionals of
lous method that both adds depth to the longitude and latitude that underlie this
sculptures surfaces and subtly communi- composition. Its as if the outside world has
cates the sense of longitude and latitude of to match some personal horizontal and verti-
which this artist remained ever-conscious.17 cal axis, Truitt explained. I have to line up
Truitts drawings demonstrate this direc- with it in order to be comfortable. 21
tional concern more plainly, perhaps, than
her sculptures, in whose facture such coordi-
nates are more subtly embedded. An often
overlooked component of her practice, these
compositions in pencil, acrylic, or ink are
autonomous worksrelated to her sculp-
tures but not simply studies for them.18 In 1. Anne Truitt, Daybook: The 5. Truitts sculpture was includ- (Daybook, p. 153), while Walter if not the most, important Whitney Museum of American
Journal of an Artist (Middlesex, ed in such landmark exhibi- Hopps describes the incred- periods of her career. Hopps, Art and The Corcoran Gallery of
30 July 1973 (1973, no. 3), white acrylic is
England: Penguin Books, 1984), tions as the Wadsworth ible outpouring of work during Biographical Sketch, p. 14. Art retrospectives of 197374,
applied solely to the upper left quadrant pp. 11920. Atheneums Black, White and 1962 as consisting of 11. For Newmans influence both organized by Hopps. Their
of the sheet; the medium diffuses fuzzily 2. Ibid., p. 33. Gray (1964) and the Jewish a large number of important on Truitt, see n. 3. absence in her first solo exhibi-
beyond its penciled confines. This drawing 3. Ibid., p. 151. It was directly Museums Primary Structures drawings and 32 pieces of 12. Lance Esplund, Anne Truitt tion undoubtedly contributed
was executed six months before Truitts first after seeing Barnett Newman (1966), and her name appears sculpture. Hopps, Biographi- at Danese, Art in America 91, to the perception of her as
and Ad Reinhardts work at the among the litanies of such cal Sketch, in Anne Truitt: no. 7 (July 2003): 86. exclusively a sculptor.
retrospective exhibition, a time when she
Guggenheim Museums 1961 polemical essays as Barbara Sculpture and Drawings, 1961 13. Ibid. 19. Kristen Hileman, Presence
was facing the re-surfacing of emotional exhibition American Abstract Roses ABC Art (1965) and 1973 (Washington, D.C.: The 14. Truitt, Prospect: The Journey and Abstraction, in Anne Truitt:
experience that had been distilled into her Expressionists and Imagists Clement Greenbergs Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1974), of an Artist (New York: Penguin Perception and Reflection
works.19 It was at this moment that Truitt, that Truitt executed First, her Recentness of Sculpture p. 15. Books, 1996), p. 22. (London: D. Giles, 2009), p. 36.
first mature sculpture. (1967). For a full analysis of her 7. Jane Livingston, introduction 15. Truitt, Turn: The Journal 20. Truitt has acknowledged
overwhelmed by the process of revisiting
4. Robert Morris, Notes on work in relation to Minimalism, to Anne Truitt: Sculpture, 1961 of an Artist (New York: Viking the connection between the
the first twelve years of her mature career, Sculpture, Artforum 4, no. 6 see James Meyer, Truitt at 1991 (New York: Andr Penguin, 1987), p. 56. architectural forms of her
began the journal-writing that would lead to (February 1966): 43; reprinted Andr Emmerich and The Emmerich Gallery, 1991), n.p. 16. Truitt, artist questionnaire, hometown and the language of
three volumes of lucid reflections on art- as Notes on Sculpture, Part 1, Case for Truitt: Minimalism and 8. Truitt, Daybook, p. 93. object file, Painting and her art. See Truitt, Turn, p. 183.
making, motherhood, and, eventually, aging. in Continuous Project Altered Gender, in Minimalism: Art and 9. Meyer, Truitt at Andr Sculpture Study Center, The 21. Truitt, Daybook, p. 34.
Daily: The Writings of Robert Polemics in the Sixties (New Emmerich, p. 72. Museum of Modern Art, New
Morris (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Haven: Yale University Press, 10. Hopps, who organized York.
Press; New York: Solomon R. 2001), pp. 6374, 22228. Truitts first retrospective, 17. Truitt, Prospect, p. 22.
Guggenheim Museum, 1993), 6. Truitt recalls that in 1962, I called the two-year span spent 18. Truitts drawings were not
2. Twining Court I. 2001. p. 4. made thirty-seven sculptures in this studio one of the most, formally exhibited until the
Synthetic polymer paint on
wood, 70 1/4 x 8 x 8" (178.4 x
20.3 x 20.3 cm). The Museum
of Modern Art, New York.
252 ANNE TRUITT Gift of Agnes Gund FRIEDMAN 253
BRIDGET RILEY (British, born 1931) / JENNIFER FIELD
Eva Hesses Repetition Nineteen III (1968, the units of which are about ten inches in The Repetition Nineteen project fueled
no. 1) has long been an anchor of The Museum height and diameter, with rather thick walls Hesses first experiments in latex, and it
of Modern Arts holdings of contemporary and gently curving rims. Dutch Boy paint would perform the same service for fiber-
sculpture. When it was acquired in 1969, it gives them a glossy sheen, and they look glass. This was a material she would consider
was the first work by a member of Hesses neither like functional objects nor like what for the first time after Robert Morris intro-
generation to enter the collectionthe could be surely called sculpture. duced her to Doug Johns, of Aegis Reinforced
Museum did not yet own a sculpture by Hesses second pen-and-ink drawing Plastics in Staten Island, in February 1968.
Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, or Robert specifies a sculpture in metal, fabricated Johns began to work with Hesse on Repetition
Smithson, for instance. But the long-standing at Arco Metals, covered with Sculp-metal or Nineteen III a few months later. By this time
fame of Repetition Nineteen III has obscured sprayed with gloss paint. Here, in contrast Hesse had abandoned the idea of the rubber
its significance as part of a larger, multiwork to the first version, the metal buckets are hoses, and was back to the simple buckets of
series. The Repetition project encompassed uniform in height and diameter, their sides Repetition Nineteen I. Hesse disliked Johnss
the crucial year between the summers of straight, and each includes a gray rubber first buckets, which were uniform and rigid
1967 and 1968, the period during which hose emerging from within. Each bucket has (even though one summer earlier she herself
Hesse entered the final and most celebrated a false bottom, beneath which there is space had envisaged such a format in metal). For
phase of her work. Overall the series exem- to attach the protruding hose. In the pen- the second attempt, Johns has recalled,
plifies the ways in which repetition was a and-ink drawing Hesse notes a sheet metal Hesse brought him nineteen irregularly sized
key artistic strategy for Hessea means divider four inches from the floor but offers and shaped buckets (made, like Repetition
for idiosyncrasy and unpredictability rather an option of varying its height from one to Nineteen I, in papier-mch, but double
than, as it had been for her Minimalist seven inches inside the eight-inch-deep in size), which he and his crew then coated
predecessors, for establishing systems or buckets. This rather tricky detail is studied in with fiberglass and resin.3 The final
logic. The Repetition series, much like each cross section in a pencil drawing on graph result has a translucence that gives it
sculpture within it, represents a set of paper (1967, no. 5), in which the false bottom the effect of extraordinary delicacy and
unique experiments instead of precisely is given a new height of three inches. near-weightlessness.
planned variants. Based in contrastsbetween hard and At some point during 1968 Hesse looked
Repetition Nineteen I (no. 2) dates from soft, rigid and flexiblethis version went no back to Repetition Nineteen I in a beautiful
the summer of 1967, when Hesse was still further than paper. In September 1967, just presentation drawing done in gouache and
working with papier-mch, the material for as Hesse finished sanding and painting the watercolor (Repetition Nineteen I [196768]).4
many of her great sculptures of 1966 and nineteen papier-mch units of Repetition This was the first place Hesse cited the title
1967. The conception of the project is seen in Nineteen I, she went to buy her first supply of as Repetition Nineteen I. In the two 1967
a pair of pen-and-ink drawings that describe liquid rubber, or latex, which she immediately pen-and-ink drawings, as well as the pencil
a first of three versions and a second of recognized as a great media [sic] for me. 2 study on graph paper, she wrote the title as
three versions (nos. 3 and 4).1 The first She excitedly began making latex units for Repeation 19. Hardly a language error, this
shows nineteen empty containerlike forms Repetition Nineteen II. Once Hesse made invention was a typical manifestation of
standing scattered on the floor. Some are what seems to be the instant decision to Hesses keen fascination with words, the art-
closely huddled, some apart, some leaning, abandon metal for latex, the units became ist creating a new noun (adding to repeat the
some uprightas alike and different as a irregular in size and shape, as they had been suffix ion) rather than merely using the estab
gathering of strangers. The quirky feel of the in Repetition Nineteen I. That fall Hesse lished noun forms: repeat or repetition.
drawing is retained in the finished sculpture, made several latex test pieces about three Eventually, however, she rejected this inven-
inches tall, later assigned to the glass pastry tion and opted for using repetition, a deci-
cases in which she displayed such elements. sion she formalized in this newer drawing.5
1. Repetition Nineteen III. She also made some larger latex units, about Repetition Nineteen III was one of eight
1968. Fiberglass and polyester ten inches tall. The full set of these first latex sculptures on view in the artists first (and
resin, nineteen units, each works was not completed, however, and only) one-person exhibition, Eva Hesse: Chain
19 to 20 1/4" (48 to 51 cm) x Repetition Nineteen II was never made. Polymers, at the Fischbach Gallery in New
11 to 12 3/4" (27.8 to 32.2 cm)
diam. The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Gift of Charles
258 and Anita Blatt 259
Top to bottom: Clockwise, from far left:
2. Repetition Nineteen I. 1967. 5. Repetition Nineteen. 1967.
Paint and papier-mch on Pencil on graph paper, 10 7/8
aluminum screening, nineteen x 8 1/2" (27.9 x 21.6 cm). The
units, each 9 1/8 to 10 1/2" Museum of Modern Art, New
(23.2 to 26.6 cm) x 6 1/2 to York. Gift of the Eva Hesse
9 1/8" (16.5 to 23.2 cm) diam. Estate
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. 6. View of the exhibition
Murray Charash Eva Hesse: Chain Polymers,
Fischbach Gallery, New York,
3. Repetition Nineteen, First of November 1968
3 Versions. Summer 1967. Pen
and ink on transparentized 7. Eva Hesse: Chain Polymers
paper, 8 7/8 x 11 7/8" (22.5 x exhibition announcement
30.3 cm). The Museum of (recto and verso), Fischbach
Modern Art, New York. Gift Gallery, New York, November
of the Eva Hesse Estate 1968, showing Repetition
Nineteen I (1967)
4. Repetition Nineteen, Second
of 3 Versions. 1967. Pen and
ink on transparentized paper,
8 7/8 x 11 7/8" (22.5 x 30.3 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of the
Eva Hesse Estate
TEMKIN 261
DIANE ARBUS (American, 19231971) / SUSAN KISMARIC
262 263
2. Albino Sword Swallower 3. A Young Man in Curlers at
at a Carnival, Maryland. 1970. Home on West 20th Street,
Gelatin silver print, printed by New York City. 1966. Gelatin
Neil Selkirk, 14 11/16 x 15 1/16" silver print, 15 1/2 x 14 3/8"
(37.3 x 38.2 cm). The Museum (39.3 x 36.5 cm). The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. of Modern Art, New York.
Purchase Acquired through the
generosity of the International
Program of The Museum of
Modern Art
her nature in conflict with the mores and Museums collection was acquired in 1972,
For reasons of copyright, this strictures of a conventional middle- after the Museum organized a posthumous For reasons of copyright, this
image is unavailable in the digital European heritage. retrospective exhibition of Arbuss work in image is unavailable in the digital
edition of Modern Women. The photograph can also be seen to September of that year. Fifteen other photo- edition of Modern Women.
describe natures betrayal of a man and the graphs by her were acquired at the time,
perfidy of his parents through a toss of the eight of which, along with the one of the
DNA. By situating the family in their home, Jewish giant, were printed by Arbus herself.
a site we like to think provides privacy and This print of Eddie Carmel and his parents
refuge, Arbus feeds our commonly endured was included in the posthumous exhibition.
existential fears. Middle-class life is evident
in the artwork on displaythe oil painting
under a lightand the plastic encasing the
lamp shades. But the bareness of the room,
the wire under the painting, the missing shade
for the sconce, the cracks in the plastered
ceiling and walls (did Carmel cause them?),
the synthetic curtains that dont touch the
floor, the worn rug, and the tissues on the
couch fall short of a reassuring picture of
behind her back emphasize their connection. somewhat strangely (because she only comfort, cleanliness, and normalcy.
The picture is the only one in which Carmel occasionally identified the ethnic origins Finally, after all, dont all parents at some
stands apart from his parents, not touching of her many subjects), calls our attention point during their childrens lives feel a
them. He looms over them in profile with to the familys Jewishness. Perhaps Arbus glimmer of incredulity like what seems to
his cane, conjuring images of both Jack in identified with Carmels minority status as be radiating from the postures and faces
the folktale Jack and the Beanstalk, and a Jew, and also that of the woman in her of Eddies parents? On a grander scale, the
1. Diane Arbus photographed question of how these osten- Diane), February 1972; quoted
Quasimodo, the reviled hunchback of Victor photograph Puerto Rican woman with a picture can be read as a metaphor for those
dwarves, a sword swallower, sibly normal people attain in ibid., p. 141.
Hugos novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunch- beauty mark, N.Y.C. (1965) and the Russians things that had spun out of control in the cross-dressers, nudists, and the magnetic individuality 5. Allan Arbus, interview with
back of Notre Dame) (1831). The father is left in Russian midget friends in a living room country by 1970the Vietnam War and the other people generally consid- they do in her photographs. Doon Arbus, February 17, 1972;
slightly out of the equation. The formality on 100th Street, N.Y.C. (1963), because of nations rebelling children. As a body of work, ered outside accepted society, 2. Arbus, letter to Peter quoted in ibid., p. 141.
but the majority of her photo- Crookston, c. June 1968; quoted 6. Arbus, letter to Crookston,
of his suit in relation to his sons somewhat whatever actual prejudices and slights she Arbuss portraits identify the particulars of
graphs were of everyday people. in Diane Arbus Revelations June 28, 1970; quoted in ibid.,
rumpled shirt and his wifes informal, slightly may have felt as a Jew in postWorld War II a society in upheaval; to some, her photo-
Of the eighty photographs in (New York: Random House, p. 209.
soiled housedress signals a distinct reserve, America. All of ither subjects minority eth- graphs represented the opening of countless the 1972 Aperture monograph 2003), p. 331. 7. The contact sheet is
as does his hand in his pocket, as though he nic status and/or their lives at the edges of Pandoras boxes that had been resting of her work, some thirty-two 3. Arbus, letter to Crookston, reproduced in ibid., p. 209.
were posing for a nineteenth-century studio societymay have reflected and embodied untouched and out of reach for a long time. of them might be regarded January 1969; quoted in
as representing freaks. The Sandra S. Phillips, The
portrait. What is most rewarding about the her feelings of alienation from her conven- The ambition and fearlessness required to
majority of her subjects were Question of Belief, in ibid.,
picture is that it is a photograph of a mother tional, wealthy Park Avenue Jewish family, bring this about are inestimable. people like you and me, and p. 64.
and father with their child. Arbuss explicit which she had separated herself from, out The print of A Jewish Giant at Home with one of the great achievements 4. Lisette Model, interview
caption emphasizes the familial aspect and, of artistic need or as a matter of survival, His Parents in the Bronx, New York in the of her pictures rests on the with Doon Arbus (daughter of
Both Lella Vignelli and Denise Scott Brown Their second child arrived shortly after they and UCLA, where she helped develop an
trained as architects and work in collabora- moved permanently to New York in 1966, but urban planning program. Even so, Venturis
tion with and independently of the architect- Lella managed to continue working: Massimo public profile was far greater. He had
designers to whom they are married: Massimo cofounded, with Ralph Eckerstrom, the achieved celebrity status, in part as author of
Vignelli and Robert Venturi. Each has enjoyed Unimark International design studio, and Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
a long careerVignelli in design and Scott she headed the interiors department. (1966), a publication that drew on many
Brown in architecture and urban planning Realizing they preferred the control afforded ideas shared with Scott Brown, particularly
during which she has experienced being by their own firm, the couple then estab- those validating vernacular design and pop-
considered the lesser partner because she lished Vignelli Associates in 1971. When that ular culture. They married in 1967. She joined
is the wife of a noted architect or designer.1 was getting too large, they started Vignelli the firm that Venturi ran with John Rauch in
One major difference between their Designs in 1978, which focuses on interiors 1968, taking responsibility for urban design
experiences is that the Vignellis began collab- and product design, with Lella as CEO and campus planning, and in 1980 the firm
orating while at university, where the playing a public proclamation of her talents as an became Venturi, Rauch, and Scott Brown.
field was more even, although Massimo independent designer in those fields. None- Meanwhile, the birth of the couples son in
(three years older) began making a name theless, even when not working on joint 1971 brought home to them the difficulties
for himself while Lella was still a student. projects, they serve as sounding board and of juggling child care and work, and the firm
They married in 1957, and the design studio critic for each other. remains innovative on that front, offering
they established four years later bore both Their collaborative designs include Heller staff with children the opportunity to work
their names. Passionate about minimal mod- plastic stacking dinnerware (196770) and part-time without losing out on the more
ernist design, they collaborated on every Heller glass bakeware (1975), with Massimo interesting projects.
project, from prizewinning melamine stack- as lead designer of the former and Lella of Although their main areas of professional
ing dishes to showrooms for Olivetti and the latter. Some of Lellas most elegant responsibility diverge, Scott Brown and
Rank Xerox. The studio was run from their independent designs are in silver, including Venturi occasionally write and work together.
Milan apartment, which gave Lella the flex- a ribbed pitcher (1971, no. 1), a gently undu- Even when her name appears as author or in
ibility of combining work and motherhood lating necklace for the Senza Fine company the captions they send to magazine editors,
after their first child was born, in 1962. She (1985), and a Bauhaus-influenced teapot however, it is often omitted from the discus-
recalls their discovering of their complemen- (1999). Among the collaborative Vignelli sions about their joint work. For example,
tarityMassimo the visionary/dreamer, interiors for which Lella served as lead despite their attempts to correct the record,
Lella the more realisticbut feels that designer is St. Peters Church in New York Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten
broader social attitudes rather than her (1977), wherein adjustable platforms and Symbolism of Architectural Form (1972)
greater practicality fueled expectations that seating create a space flexible enough to a seminal text on the popular material
she would be responsible not only for child hold both concerts and religious services. culture of Las Vegasis frequently credited
care and running the home but also for run- Her European stores for Poltrona Frau only to Venturi, the male star architect,
ning the office. Her close involvement with use light to great expressive effect (2001 when in fact Scott Brown and Steven Izenour
interior design brings a conventionally gen- 07, no. 2). were coauthors, and courses created by
dered division of labor to the partnership, Scott Brown has consistently Scott Brown served as its foundation.
as interior design tends to be considered spoken out about the marginalization of Two collaborative designs reveal their
womens work. This is partially offset, how- women in architecture and her frustration fascination with popular decoration. The
ever, because unlike many women interior with being perceived primarily as Robert porcelain-enameled steel facade panels of
designers, she does not design domestic Venturis wife. When the couple met in the the Best Products showroom in Pennsylvania
interiors; it is also disrupted by her involve- mid-1960s, she had worked in architecture (197379, no. 3) are covered with a floral,
ment with product design, a hugely male- offices in Johannesburg, London, and Rome, domestic-looking pattern blown up to
dominated field. and taught at the University of Pennsylvania billboard size, representing architecture
1. Lella Vignelli (Italian, born
1934). Ribbed Pitcher for
San Lorenzo. 1971. Silver, 7"
266 (17.8 cm) x 3" (7.6 cm) diam. 267
2. Lella Vignelli (Italian, born 3. Robert Venturi (American, 4. Robert Venturi (American,
1934). Showroom Store for born 1925). Denise Scott Brown born 1925). Denise Scott
Poltrona Frau, Milano. (American, born South Africa Brown (American, born South
200107 1931). Facade Panels from Africa 1931). Queen Anne Side
Best Products Showroom, Chair. 1983. Maple plywood
Langhorne, Pennsylvania. and plastic laminate,
197379. Porcelain-enameled 38 1/2 x 26 5/8 x 23 3/4 x 18 5/8"
steel, 7' 8" x 19' 7 3/4" x 13/4" (97.8 x 67.6 x 60.3 x 47.3 cm).
(233.7 cm x 6 m x 4.4 cm). The Manufacturer: Knoll
Museum of Modern Art, New International, Inc., New York.
York. Gift of Carlin McLaughlin, The Museum of Modern Art,
Nalin Patel, Rajnikant Shah, New York. Gift of the
and Gregory Zollner manufacturer
as surface. The idea for the design arose office, and she has served as lead designer as to the opportunities that spousal partner-
while they were selecting wallpaper for on several major campus-planning projects ships can open up for women. Both women
their home, and their molded-plywood-and- in the United States and China. A passionate find collaboration to be a stimulating experi-
plastic-laminate Queen Anne Chair for Knoll advocate, she is well known for engaging ence and enjoy brainstorming at home as
International (1983, no. 4) likewise features in important public debates on various sub- well as at work. Theirs are not the only ways
a rich floral print reminiscent of tablecloths jects, from expanding opportunities for women of being a woman architect or designer, or of
and wallpapers.2 Although Scott Brown in architecture to revitalizing cities, such as working within a husband-wife partnership
helped design the pattern and acted as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. but, like their designs, they remain instructive
project manager, many continue to attribute The careers of Vignelli and Scott Brown and inspiring.
the chair solely to Venturi. attest to the kinds of marginalization experi-
Scott Browns interests have increasingly enced by women designers and architects
affected the type of work undertaken by the working with high-profile spouses, as well
1. Biographical material is Diversity and Difference (New Scott Brown, Room at the Top? Press, 1989). Architecture, Urbanism, Design
from interviews Pat Kirkham Haven: Yale University Press, Sexism and the Star System in 2. David B. Brownlee, Form (Philadelphia: Philadelphia
conducted with the Vignellis in 2000); Andrea Gabor, Einsteins Architecture, in Ellen Perry and Content, in Brownlee, Museum of Art; New Haven,
2000 and 2009 and with Denise Wife: Work and Marriage in the Berkeley and Matilda McQuaid, David G. DeLong, and Kathryn Yale University Press, 2001),
Scott Brown in 2000. See also Lives of Five Great Twentieth- eds., Architecture: A Place for B. Hiesinger, eds., Out of the p. 79.
Kirkham, ed., Women Designers Century Women (New York: Women (Washington, D.C.: Ordinary: Robert Venturi, Denise
in the USA, 19002000: Penguin, 1995); and Denise Smithsonian Institution Scott Brown and Associates:
270 271
those who gleaned, either by necessity or she made La Pointe Courte; beaches in
avocation, and with their judicial advocates. Southern California that she and her late
In the process she turned the camera on husband, the filmmaker Jacques Demy,
herself and mused about what was left of visited while making films in Hollywood;
her body and her life after seventy-two years, the shores of the Seine in Paris; and, most
and found the residue both melancholic and significantly, Noirmoutier in Normandy.
exhilarating. Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse led At low tide Noirmoutier is part of the
Varda directly into a new arena of artistic mainland, and at high tide it becomes an
practice: moving-image installation, which island. It was here where Varda and Demy
has since become a major mode of expres- bought an abandoned windmill, in 1960,
sion for her. and made a home. Noirmoutier inspired her
Diaristic single-screen work and instal- 2006 exhibition at the Cartier Foundation for
lation making has kept Varda in constant Contemporary Art in Paris, the humorously
motion in recent years. Her latest feature- titled Lle et elle (which literally means the
length film, Les Plages dAgns (The Beaches island and her but also plays on il et elle,
of Agns) (2008), described in press material or he and she). In the eight installations
for the film as an auto-bio-filmo-puzzlo inspired by that island, Varda wrote, I tried
self-portrait, is a memoir about the various to capture different aspects of the place, from
watersides that have marked her life, includ- the exuberant flashy color of plastic (objects
ing the Belgium seashore of her early child- of summer, vacation, and camping) to the dark
hood; harbors in the south of France where wandering of fishermens widows along the
beach. Im now a widow too, but my work installation Le Triptyque de Noirmoutier 3. Le Triptyque de Noirmoutier
mostly is to find shapes, images and sounds (The Triptych of Noirmoutier) (2005, no. 3), a (The Triptych of Noirmoutier).
2005. 35mm film transferred
inspired by my own life but not telling it. 3 secular altarpiece with three video screens
to three-channel video
Realizing that she knew more widows than as panels. Viewers can open and close the (color, sound), wooden screen,
widowers, especially on Noirmoutier, Varda side panels at will, but only when they are hinges, and system of pulleys,
photographed and interviewed fourteen of open is the triptych fully revealed. The central 9:58 min., open 41 1/8" x
them, young and old, and placed videos of panel shows an intimate domestic interior, 14' 11 15/16" (104.5 x 457 cm),
closed 41 1/8" x 10' 4 3/8"
these encounters in a rectangle of fourteen a kitchen inhabited by three peoplea
(104.5 x 326 cm). The Museum
monitors around a fifteentha large central man, a woman in modern dress, and an older of Modern Art, New York. Gift
screen occupied by images of the widows woman in regional costume. The flanking of The Hess Foundation,
of Noirmoutier walking on the beach. Varda images are of a beach. The work is silent, and Committee on Media Funds,
and Department of Film Funds
positioned chairs in front of the screens, questions arise as to identities of and rela-
each equipped with headphones so the tionships among the three subjects. Do they
viewer might listen to the widows voices exist in the same time and space? The viewer
separately, one at a time. is uncertain. The Noirmoutier triptych subtly
In the spirit of Les Veuves de Noirmoutier and deeply suggests the passage of time, a
(The Widows of Noirmoutier) (2004), but less subject that has always been near to an artist
explicit and more mysterious, is Vardas who has never feared change or loss.
2. Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond). 1. Agns Varda, in conversation 3. Varda, interview by Laurence
1985. 35mm film (color, with the author, 1997. Kardish, V Magazine, Spring
sound), 105 min. The Museum 2. Ibid. 2008, p. 65.
of Modern Art, New York
Sandrine Bonnaire
In 2002, using fabrics from her past, Louise their histories, became a major sculptural When it came to fashioning imagery for the
Bourgeois constructed a memory book. But preoccupation. Meanwhile, leftover scraps pages of Ode loubli, the process of working
the process she employed had started ear- were accumulating. Her longtime assistant, with the ungainly sewn-together object
lier, in the 1990s. After working for decades Jerry Gorovoy, remembers gathering them proved awkward. In later fabric book projects,
in materials ranging from wood and plaster into bags, separated by color.2 including an editioned version of this one
to latex, marble, bronze, and glass, she Alongside her sculpture, Bourgeois has (2004, no. 3), Bourgeois devised a fastening
turned to her own old clothes as sculptural created a voluminous body of drawings and system for the pages, incorporating ties and
elements. Coats, dresses, nightgowns, and prints, and fabric soon became a backdrop buttonholes that could be unbound.7 But the
slips appeared on various hanging devices, for those mediums as well. Handkerchiefs disadvantages of the sewn binding in her ini-
then occupied the enclosed installations and napkins immediately evoked sheets of tial foray into making a cloth book also led to
she calls cells. Such fabrics soon formed paper, but with an added physicality; such unique qualities for Ode loubli. Rather than
the outer skins of her figural sculptures. materials eventually prompted her to form the planned sequence of pages found later, a
Through these means, the artist was able the pages of a book.3 Bourgeois would go on spontaneous, sketchbook quality exists here.
to mine the remnants of her long life in a to make several such volumes, the first being As she finished with the design of one page
new way. Ode loubli (Ode to forgetting) (2002, no. 1).4 and turned to the nextin a process that
Bourgeois has saved nearly every item of For this work, she chose monogrammed took about six months to completeshe
clothing she wore, just as she has saved linen hand towels of the kind reserved for clearly responded to what came before. But
almost everything else. She is an accumula- guests in refined households. The embroi- every day was a new one, and she might have
tor. But as the artist reached her eighties and dered initials LBG, for Louise Bourgeois an impulse to go off in different directions.
left the house less and less frequently, she Goldwater, are visible on the cover and on The pages became a kind of visual diary, with
no longer needed outfits for various occasions. several pages of the book. These hand kaleidoscopic effects. Ovals begot other ovals;
She finally stopped going out altogether. towels had been part of Bourgeoiss wedding geometry called for a biomorphic response;
While she still enjoyed a particular hat, scarf, trousseau when she married American art one woven plaid gave way to a variation.
or sweater, Bourgeois was not concerned historian Robert Goldwater in 1938, having Whimsical surprises appear, as in a page of
with fashion in the same ways she had been left France to join him in New York. fancy, lacelike netting that follows a checker-
in her younger years. But the garments she Bourgeois folded the rectangular towels board grid. Ghostlike knots and stitches on
chose for her sculpture were rich in associa- across the middle, making each into four the versos of many pages create echolike
tions. You can retell your life and remember pages. She asked the seamstress she works memories of what came before and also act
your life by the shape, weight, color, and with to sew eighteen folded towels together, as foils for their mates on opposite sides of
smell of those clothes in your closet, she with a cover, to form a kind of binding. By this double-page spreads (no. 2). As pages are
said.1 Soon Bourgeois added sheets, towels, time, having worked with fabric for many turned, shifting shapes and patterns create
tablecloths, and napkins to her repertoire. years, Bourgeois relied on a professional a sense of ongoing metamorphosis.
All these fabrics, with textures as varied as seamstress who came to her house daily to Abstraction is the basis of Bourgeoiss
help with these projects. In fact, although the page designs in Ode loubli, and such non-
artist pins fabrics together, and sometimes representational imagery has been integral
does loose basting, she prefers the stitches to the vision she has developed throughout
of a professional.5 According to Gorovoy, she her career.8 While some designs here suggest
also takes a certain pleasure in creating a cellular structures, body parts, or bursting
workshoplike environment, with a skilled stars, others are based on geometry, which
1. Ode loubli (Ode to
forgetting). 2002. Unique artisan, which reminds her of her parents the artist has relied on time and again in
fabric book with embroidery; tapestry-restoration atelier.6 a search for order and rationality. Repetitive
lithographed cover and text,
page 11 3/4 x 13" (29.8 x
33 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York.
274 Gift of the artist 275
2. Ode loubli (see no. 1). 2002
3. Opposite:
Ode loubli (Ode to forgetting).
2004. Editioned fabric book
with lithographs, digital prints,
embroidery, and appliqu
(unbound pages, shown
framed), page 10 5/8 x 13 5/16"
(27 x 33.8 cm). Publisher:
Peter Blum Edition, New York.
Printer and fabricator: Solo
Impression, New York, and
Dyenamix, Inc., New York.
Edition: 25. The Museum
of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of the artist
abstract strokes and shapes have often bright and forceful to muted and gentle. In one, absorbing the order and variety of its 1. Louise Bourgeois, quoted collector of books, particularly William Hayter, Bourgeois The seamstress and sewing
served her as a calming ritual in drawing, heft and in pliability, the volume resembles a designs, but also patting, smoothing, and in Paulo Herkenhoff notes, those with illustrations. In the expressed reverence for the machine reside there as well.
16 Nov. 1995, in Clothes, in late 1950s she opened a short- skills of such experts. Deborah 7. In 2004 Bourgeois issued
and she duplicates that effect here, both comforting pillow on which to lay ones head. straightening out, as the traditional woman-
Frances Morris, ed., Louise lived shop for prints and illus- Wye, A Drama of the Self: the editioned version of Ode
in designs from ready-made fabrics and in It is a poignant object, emitting a sense of of-the-house might put her linens in order. Bourgeois (London: Tate trated books, and she has Louise Bourgeois as Print loubli. The edition comprises
those constructed from scraps. Overall, vulnerability. With many stains and scorch It is clear that each touch brings back Publishing, 2007), p. 82. made many illustrated volumes, maker, in Wye and Carol Smith, twenty-five examples. The tie-
the effect of this compendium of abstract marks, the fabrics evoke their pasts and memories the artist has sublimated and 2. In January 2009 Jerry incorporating her own texts The Prints of Louise Bourgeois and-buttonhole fastening
Gorovoy discussed his recollec- and those of other authors. (New York: The Museum of allows the pages to be unbound
patterns is one of musiclike rhythms rather the evidence of many launderings. Burned contained within this volume. Printed texts
tions of Louise Bourgeois 4. Between 2002 and 2006 Modern Art, 1994), p. 27. and seen as a group (no. 3).
than any preconceived, unfolding narrative, cigarette holes on one page are vivid and on two of the pages, one containing the word
making Ode loubli with the Bourgeois completed eight 6. Bourgeois relates to a few 8. Robert Storrs essay
however abstract. visceral. The resonance of the everyday joins flashback and the other the phrase the author. References to specific books entirely from fabric. master printers in the way Abstraction: LEsprit gom-
But Bourgeoiss Ode loubli functions in Bourgeoiss mesmerizing abstraction. return of the repressed, make that evident. steps she took in constructing 5. Bourgeoiss admiration for she relates to her seamstress. trique, in Louise Bourgeois,
other ways as well. This is not simply pure, In a filmed passage in Brigitte Cornands Ode loubli is both comforting and forgiving. the work come from that the professional seamstress is Printers come and go, with pp. 2135, offers a sustained
conversation. not unlike her deference to the proofs that she amends and analysis of the abstract
otherworldly design. Fine linen, silk, chiffon, 2007 film about Bourgeois, La Rivire gentille, It fulfills one of Bourgeoiss primary goals
3. By this time, Bourgeois had a professional printmaker. As far alters. She also has small aspects of Bourgeoiss art.
netting, tulle, burlap, and synthetic nylons the artist reveals how Ode loubli may since she began making art: to provide long relationship with the book back as the 1940s, when she printing presses installed in
and rayons signal the fingertips: soft, rough, function for her. She is shown slowly turning a tool to conquer and control her emotions. as an art format. Following a worked at the atelier of the the lower level of her house,
smooth, delicate, sturdy. Colors range from its pages, rubbing her hand across each family tradition, she has been a renowned engraver Stanley where proofing can take place.
beige representation of textiles designed by Marianne factors. The emphasis remains on the construction of
Strengell and Dorothy Liebes, for example, betrays no hint space and the shaping of objects rather than the creative
of the riotous colors and glittering yarns they also favored. roles of intermediaries and consumers, so many of them
Likewise, Ray Eamess functioning decoration (arrange- women, who shape the social life of things. Despite the
ments of objects that encouraged an interplay between Museums extensive holdings of 1950s Tupperware, for
craft and machine work) and the folk sources from example, a search through the institutions documentation
which she and many of her female contemporaries drew will reveal no mention of Brownie Wise, who in a sense
inspiration have been edited out of the picture presented invented the product along with Earl Tupper. Arguably,
by MoMA.6 it was Tupperware Home Parties (no. 6)the new sales
Freda Diamond is represented in the collection by a method pioneered by Wisethat revolutionized the
few plain glass tumblers manufactured by Libbey in 1950, use and perception of domestic plastic wares on an
which at best give a limited sense of her creative accom- international scale.8
plishments. The phenomenal success of such glassware Likewise, it is questionable whether the floppy spring
(Life magazine reported in 1954 that more than 25 million brought home by a marine engineer in 1943 to entertain
dozen of her glasses have been sold by Libbey during the his children would have inspired a multimillion-selling
past 12 years) was matched by comparable sales of other toy had it not been identified as a Slinky by his wife,
products like her kitchen canisters by Continental Can Betty James. She collaborated on the prototyping and
and wrought iron furniture by Baumritter. This was in marketing of the toy from the outset, and she continued
part due to her ability to predict and interpret consumer to develop both the product and the company after her
preferences by using market research. Having started her husband left her and their six children in 1960 to join
professional career in retail, she effectively developed a South American religious cult.9 The empirical design
strategies for coordinated merchandising. In the case of knowledge and career trajectories of women like Wise and
Libbey glasses, she designed lively, witty advertisements James demonstrated the porous nature of the boundary
and innovative packaging of sets, the most popular of between amateur and professional, categories that MoMA
them decorated with playful pictures (MoMA has only and the design establishment were keen to demarcate. and furniture design. The persistent decontextualization CREATIVE CURATION AND EXHIBITION DESIGN, 194245
undecorated ones). Designer for Everybody. Millions The nature and extent of the creative collaborations of designed objects in MoMAspotlighted or elevated on
of U.S. Homes Profit by Her Good Taste ran the title of involving women in midcentury design are hidden from platforms within spare white galleriesundermines the Through the selection of works, the design of installations,
the article in Life magazine. Freda Diamond has probably view in the Museums collection and presentation, and value of womens significant engagement with the project and the control of press and marketing, a number of
done more to get simple, well-styled furnishings into can perhaps never be unraveled conclusively. Extricated of modernism. It allows only a partial view of professional women also actively contributed to the perception of mid-
every room of the average U.S. home than any other from the complex machinery of commerce, manufacture, practices that often embraced an innovative blend of century design, both within the context of MoMA and in
designer. 7 Her range of lifestyle products put the consumer and the media, and from patterns of daily use, items handcraft and machine production, or creative achieve- the institutions communication with outside audiences.
at the center of the design process; she professionally designed by women in the design collection all too often ments in business management, marketing, journalism, In the Departments of Architecture and Industrial Design,
nurtured and gave shape to consumers creativity. appear scattered, apparently inconsequential, or supple- education, and exhibition design. But by highlighting the women played a more prominent role as curators than
In the Museum the style of labeling and cataloguing, mental; the many textiles and ceramics by women complex nature of the progressive tendencies in which in other departments of the Museum, making a crucial
based on a hierarchical fine arts model, continues to announce themselves less easily as innovative products midcentury women were involved, we can perhaps enrich contribution to MoMA at a time when the significance
prioritize the individual designer at the expense of other than do attention-seeking, iconic works of architecture MoMAs narrative of modernist design. of design in postwar social reconstruction was being
preparing food was purely incidental.19 Even though Eames, Porset, Anni Albers, and Marguerite Wildenhain
Rudofskys exhibitions resulted in few acquisitions for the have since been the subject of biographies and exhibitions.
collection and failed to alter the Museums exclusion of However, many other less celebrated women also contrib-
areas like fashion, they fueled virulent debates in the uted to the phenomenon of American midcentury modern,
press and helped to broaden the discourse surrounding in the development of which MoMA played such an
feminine areas of design. influential and complex role.
A number of exhibitions in 1946 set the tone for
the design competitions and Good Design series that were
SOFTENING AND DOMESTICATING MODERNISM, 194656 to follow: New Furniture Designed by Charles Eames (pro-
duced collaboratively with his wife, Ray, despite the title),
As reflected in MoMAs competitions, the number of Modern China (works by Hungarian-born Zeisel), Design
women working in the fields of interior architecture, Trends in Unit Furniture, Fabric and Tableware (featuring
engineering, and industrial design remained small, an upholstery and drapery by Liebes and Marli Ehrman),
exception to the rule. But on closer inspection, a large and Modern Handmade Jewelry (including work by Claire
number of women emerge, unsung heroines who were Falkenstein, better known as a sculptor). Above all,
instrumental in subtly modifying and challenging a dog- however, it was the highly publicized series of Good
matic brand of modernism. Paradoxically, and in many Design exhibitions (no. 9), organized by Kaufmann from
ways contrary to the message of Beatons photo, more 1950 to 1955 in association with the Chicago Merchandise
work by women designers was exhibited and acquired by Mart, that channeled design by many women into
MoMA from 1946 to 1956 than at any other time before the collection. This program featured design for the women fell into the domestic and more decorative areas of a designer and partner in the firm Brunschwig & Fils, who
or since. This was not least due to the efforts of Kaufmann, domestic sphere in installations that humanized mod- design conventionally accepted as feminine (i.e., ceramics, had a vested interest in developing textile talent. As an
who became director of the Department of Industrial ernism with a profusion of plants, textiles, and ceramics textiles, and, to a lesser extent, lighting and glassware). incentive she offered to produce the winning designs and
Design in 1946. Study in Vienna and experience with (often handcrafted). There was some skepticism about the Difficulty penetrating the corporate culture of larger com- provide $1,000 in prize money. Eventually, about twenty
retail through both his mothers boutique and the family use value of the selections, but Kaufmann understood panies and continuing a career after marriage drove many stores across the US also became involved, including
department store had attuned Kaufmann to a more the importance of the press and retailers in promoting middle-class women to find outlets for their skills and Kaufmanns in Chicago. The competition generated huge
domesticated and commercially appealing style of mod- modern design. He courted support from The First Lady energy in independent design consultancies, craft studios, interest and the submission of 2,443 designs, many of
ernism than that promoted by Philip Johnson, who was of Retailing, Dorothy Shaver, who presided over Lord & and/or teaching. For such women, frequently working in them from women.20 Notes in the Museum archives
chairman of the Department of Architecture in 193235 Taylor from 1945 to 1959. In collaboration with womens relative isolation, the series of competitions organized by show the care and control Brunschwig exercised over the
and the dominant personality in first the Department magazines and television (he appeared daily for weeks on MoMA from 1946 to 1951 offered valuable opportunities printing of the winning textiles: 1408 First Prize. To
of Architecture and then the Department of Architecture Margaret Arlens Morning Show in 1954), he offered practical for public recognition, contact with manufacturers and be printed on tinted fabric. Please plan for light textured
and Design in 194654. Although he may have adopted advice about household furnishings and equipment to furnishings stores across the US, and access to new cloth, similar to linen, if possibleVERY IMPORTANT.
Pevsnerian rhetoric in the Museum publication What female consumers. An unprecedented number of profes- markets. Participation in the competitions could have Please note that there are gradations in value in the
Is Modern Design? (1950), in practice Kaufmann blurred sional women, including Zeisel, were given a public a far-reaching effect on their careers, even if their work spots and we would like to keep these as they enhance
Johnsons clear-cut demarcation between industrial platform in roundtable conferences sponsored by MoMA, was not given an award or selected for the collection. the design. 21
design and craft, bringing many female practitioners on on topics such as How Good Is Good Design? The initiative for the first printed textiles competition The Cuban-Mexican designer Clara Porsets submis-
board in the process. The majority were North American, It comes as no surprise that the majority of works by and exhibition, in 194647, came from Zelina Brunschwig, sions to the International Competition for Low-Cost
Three identical women sit at a kitchen table, playing When she returned to the States at the age of sixteen
Russian roulette; each tentatively picks up a key and turns in 1933, worldly from her time abroad, she attended
it over, and in the hand of the third woman it becomes a Syracuse University, where she studied journalism and
knife, transforming her into a murderess. This scene takes political science, and after two years she married a fellow
place in Maya Derens Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, no.1), student, the socialist activist Gregory Bardacke. In 1935
the most well-known American experimental film, which they moved to New York, where she worked for the
was groundbreaking in its conceptual and expressive use Young Peoples Socialist League (YPSL) and completed
of nonnarrative structure. Deren was a pioneer in experi- her bachelors degree at New York University. By 1937
mental cinema from the 1940s through the 1950s, one Deren and Bardacke were separated and, soon thereafter,
of a few women working in avant-garde film, influencing divorced. Deren continued her studies, earning a masters
future generations of filmmakers and artists and changing degree in English Literature at Smith College in 1939, with
the direction of moving-image mediums in the twentieth a thesis on symbolism in French and English poetry; back
and twenty-first centuries. in New York City, she worked as an editorial assistant and
Deren investigated the relationship between film form freelance photographer.
and themes of ritual, myth, dance, and the individuals Derens burgeoning interest in dance and anthropology
place in society; she envisioned experimental cinema as led her to seek an introduction to Katherine Dunham, a
an alternative, low-cost, creative, and ethical medium; and pioneering choreographer in American modern dance and
she tirelessly toured, lectured, and distributed her own an anthropologist of Caribbean culture and dance. She
films, establishing a model for independent film production was hired as Dunhams assistant and publicist for nine
that is still used today. Despite harsh criticism of her months in 1941 and traveled with her company to the
films and theories by male critics in the 1940s and 50s, West Coast when Dunham was performing in the musical
many filmmakerswomen directors, in particularhave Cabin in the Sky (1940). Dunhams Caribbean fieldwork
been inspired by her films and artistic integrity.1 Derens inspired Derens own study of Haitian culture, Voudoun
theoretical and practical concepts and the unique shape of mythology, and the dancelike movements of religious
her artistic expression have influenced the artists Carolee possession, which she wrote about in a series of articles
Schneemann, Barbara Hammer, and Su Friedrich, as far for Educational Dance magazine and would later pursue
back as their earliest films. in great depth.2 While in Hollywood Deren met and
Deren was born Elenora Derenkowsky in Kiev in 1917. married Alexander (Sasha) Hammid (born Alexander
Fleeing the Russian Civil War, her family emigrated to Hackenschmied), an accomplished filmmaker who intro-
Syracuse, New York, in 1922. Her mother had studied music duced Deren to the avant-garde film movement. Together
and dance, and, later, language; her father had studied the they made Meshes of the Afternoon.
1. Maya Deren (American, advanced techniques of neurologist Vladimir Bekhterev Set in their Hollywood Hills bungalow, with the
born Ukraine. 19171961). at the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg and directors playing the two protagonists, the silent, black-
Alexander Hammid (American,
became a prominent psychiatrist in Syracuse. As a teenager and-white, fourteen-minute film was shot and completed
born Austria. 19072004).
Meshes of the Afternoon. 1943. Deren, with her mother, lived in Europe and studied at the in two months for a modest budget of $275, using camera
16mm film (black and white, League of Nations International School in Geneva. equipment and lights from Hammids production studio.3
silent; music by Teiji Ito added
1959), 14 min. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York.
300 Purchase from the artist 301
Although made before Derens theories of filmmaking had of mind is given emphasis by handheld-camera shots and and shatters; its shards land not in the house but on the garde filmmakers of the 1930s and 40s, less tied to
been developed or written down, Meshes of the Afternoon a moving, tilted frame that drastically shifts perspective. seashore. He then reenters the cottage to find the womans specific movements. It was more often compared to films
was the first manifestation of her ideas, featuring several Each time she climbs the stairs to the bedroom, her de- body on the chair, covered with seaweed and impaled by such as Luis Buuel and Salvador Dals Un Chien Andalou
of her most influential tropes and techniques, including meanor and actions alter and the camera frame changes, broken glass. (1928) and Jean Cocteaus La Sang dun pote (Blood of
simultaneous realities, protofeminist ideas about identity, showing her world becoming topsy-turvy and increasingly Meshes of the Afternoon makes plain Derens interest a Poet) (1930) than to the films of the Whitney brothers
and filmmaking as time-space manipulation. By visualizing fragmented and menacing. She makes her first ascent with in the extremes of consciousness and was, at least partially, (in the 1940s) and Mary Ellen Bute (from the 1930s to
poetic concepts through film, Deren, at the age of twenty- a graceful and airy bounce; in the second she appears to informed by Gestalt psychologys part-whole relations, the 1960s).12
six, had discovered the key to her artistic expression. It float without gravity; in the third she clings to the walls, which she had studied at Smith, and her research into the Derens subsequent films built on the theories that
was at this same time that she adopted a name befitting which fling her from side to side; and in the final trip she build of emotion in trance possession. Her impulse, she emerged in Meshes of the Afternoon. At Land (1944, no. 2)
her new identity: Maya, the Hindu word for illusion. marches up as if in a trance. Deren noted of these effects said, was to portray the inner realities of an individual is more allegorical and visually minimal. It opens with a
Together, out of their different strengthsDerens that she wanted the inanimate objects of the housethe and the way in which the subconscious will develop, woman, played by Deren, deposited on the seashore by
poetic visual expression and Hammids fluid cinematogra- phone, the knife, and the staircaseto appear to conspire interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual waves. Emerging from the water like a mermaid, she pulls
phya new, imaginative use of the camera emerged. The to disrupt the protagonists intentions. With a handheld incident into a critical emotional experience.9 But Meshes herself up along the roots of a large piece of driftwood and
first scenes of this tightly structured film set up its uncanny camera Deren and Hammid shifted the image frame in the of the Afternoon was widely interpreted, in the years fol- finds herself in another world, at the center of a formal
atmosphere.4 A mannequin arm descends from the sky, opposite direction from the womans movement as she lowing its release, as Surrealist, because of its use of dream dining table surrounded by animated society guests who
places a white poppy on a roadway, and then vanishes. A falls against the walls of the staircase: The movement of imagery and object/symbols, and as a psychological study. are oblivious to her. As she crawls toward a chess player at
womans shadow covers the flower, and she reaches into the frame, in effect, had been transferred to the objects in Deren felt that such readings obscured the works formal the opposite end of the table, her surroundings alternate
her own shadow to pick it up. She runs after a tall, myste- the frame. 5 construction as well as her intent. When James Agee, between the table and an underwater seascape; when she
rious figure that disappears around a distant bend in the To suggest the defiance of normal time . . . and . . . writing for The Nation in 1946, called the film pretentious reaches the end, she lunges after one of the pawns and
road, then she abruptly gives up the chase and turns toward normal space, Deren used a striking editing style that and arty and derided Derens acting as emotionally lack- falls into an abyss that leads back to the seashore, like
a cottage door. She reaches for a key, then fumbles, drops, would influence many filmmakers: multiple shifts of geo- ing and her style as derivative of the European Surrealists, Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole.
and retrieves it, and enters the house. The mechanical arm, graphic location in a single sequence.6 The third dreamer, Deren responded in a letter to the editor: Whereas the These leaps through time and space are frequent and
mysterious figure, black-and-white film, and nonverbal turned murderess, rises from the kitchen table, takes surrealists go to great length to eliminate any conscious organic and taken by her entire body; she is no longer frag-
scenario reinforce a feeling of mystery and doom. several huge steps, dagger drawn, and is transported from censorship from their creative effort, I, on the contrary, mented, as was the protagonist of Meshes of the Afternoon,
As the female protagonist enters the house, we are the house into a natural landscape, landing first in sand, impose as rigid a censorship as I can maintainthe censor- and the disorientation is provided by external sources
brought into her perspective, seeing, as she sees, news- then on grass, then on pavement, and then back in the ship of form. . . . The dramatic-psychological inevitability rather than the subconscious. At Land has little to do
papers spread on the floor, a knife stuck in a loaf of bread house, with the knife pointed toward the sleeping woman. must also be a cinematic inevitabilityor the train will with the internal world of the protagonist, Deren wrote.
on the kitchen table, a telephone on the stairs with its With these four steps she covers what Deren called a jump the tracks, as most surrealistic fantasy does.10 It externalizes the hidden dynamic of the external world,
receiver off the hook. The knife slips onto the table, as if by symbolic statement of the vast psychological distance, Although many scholars and contemporaries responded and here the drama results from the activity of the external
its own will. The woman ascends the stairs to a bedroom which lie between people who may be in close proximity. 7 supportively to Derens films, including George Amberg, a world.13 At one point the protagonist finds herself walk-
and turns off a record player; she returns downstairs and Deren later wrote, What I meant when I planned that curator in the Department of Dance and Theater Design at ing along a country road, in conversation with a male
slips into an armchair near a window, where she sinks into sequence was that you have to come a long wayfrom the The Museum of Modern Art, she also had her detractors. companion; each time she turns to him, he is a different
sleep and begins to dream. As her dream world flows into very beginning of timeto kill yourself, like the first life It was widely reported that MoMAs Film Library director, person, although looking disarmingly similar, played in
the street below, the story begins to circle in upon itself emerging from the primeval waters. Those four strides, Iris Barry, was more supportive of documentary than succession by friends of Deren: poet Philip Lamantia,
and external realities enter her dreaming subconscious. in my intention, span all time.8 The films final scenes of American avant-garde film in general and, like Agee, editor Parker Tyler, composer John Cage, and her then-
The sleeping woman dreams three times that she contain a double denouement that mirrors the films dou- found Meshes of the Afternoon derivative of the French husband, Hammid. Later, once again pursuing the pawn,
chases a figure draped in black robes with a mirrored face bling and intertwining of identities. The seated woman, Surrealists.11 Meshes of the Afternoon did indeed reside she joins two women playing chess on the beach. She
and then reenters the house. Slight but disturbing variations awakened, hurls the knife at the male protagonist, her between the European avant-garde of the late 1920s, based cunningly distracts them with conversation, snatches the
occur each time, and the protagonists deteriorating state lover; his face turns into a mirror, which reflects the ocean in Surrealism and abstraction, and the American avant- white queen, and runs off triumphantly down the shore,
of geographic possibility. Deren used shooting and editing extraordinary grace. Ultimately Estate of Maya Deren
17
histories of lesbian and gay artists and writers. I guess For Optic Nerve (1985) Hammer manipulated documentary
I was looking for company, Hammer has said.33 footage of her grandmother being wheeled into a nursing
From the 1960s through the 1980s structural filmmak- home. The degenerated images and stuttering motion reveal
ing, in which the process of shaping a film and its physical Hammers hesitation and sadness, echoing Derens vertical
cinematic material are foregrounded, became a mainstay investigations and returning some emotion to structural-
of experimental cinema in formal studies by filmmakers ism. The heart had been left behind in these dry analytic
such as Paul Sharits, Hollis Frampton, and Michael Snow. works, Hammer has reflected. I wanted to return feeling
During this time Hammer made films following various to images, while still showing the processes of film. 35
structural concepts, and in Bent Time (1983, no. 8) she A Horse Is Not a Metaphor (2008, no. 9), based on
employed a version of Derens creative geography: Hammers experience of surviving cancer, has echoes of
Ritual in Transfigured Time, flowing from gesture to gesture
I simulated walking across the United States, from and showing a transformative death and rebirth. The film
one high-energy location to another. I began in the evolves over the course of Hammers illness and recovery,
underground passageway of the linear accelerator including footage of chemotherapy and steroid drips, in a
lab at Stanford University, continued through the work akin to Derens documentary of the interior:
mound culture of indigenous Native Americans in
southern Ohio, and ended at the World Trade It was an experiment to start at one edge of the
Center and Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. I canvas, the beginning of the film, and make my
simulated one geographic step in time to be one way, day by day editing and layering, to the end of
frame of film time. The result is a jittery but con- the piece. In the past I have made many densely 9. Barbara Hammer (American,
born 1939). A Horse Is Not a
tinual binding of the nation end to end, held in collaged films, but always I have structured and
Metaphor. 2008. Digital video
place by the first North American calendar discov- restructured until the film was right. In this case, (color and black and white,
ered in the 80s at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.34 the meaning became clear as I worked: the feelings, sound by Meredith Monk),
30 min. The Museum of
the emotional content, the personal intimacy Modern Art, New York.
revealed when health is challenged.36 Purchase
It is possible to trace between 1963 and 1969 in Latin In addition to Hlio Oiticicas Penetrveis (Penetrables),
America the lineage and development of works conceived made from 1960 to the beginning of the 1970s, its worth
to be entered by the spectator, or to resistin spite of mentioning Carlos Cruz-Diezs Cmeras de cromosaturacin
potentially penetrable dimensions and structurebeing (Chromosaturation chambers) from 1965; Jess Rafael
entered.1 The quantity and importance of these works and Sotos own Penetrables (Penetrables), beginning in 1967;
their ambition to be passable, either materially, literally, or and, among other late iterations of penetrable-like works,
potentially, suggests the existence of a movement aimed the first version of Cildo Meireless Desvio para o vermelho
at transforming nonobjective abstraction, conceived within 1: Impregnao (Red shift: impregnation) from 1967.
the framework of pure visibility, into a repertoire of site- Oiticica founded this typology with the unfolding
forms that are besieged, situated, habitable, penetrable.2 abstract forms in his series Metaesquemas (Metaschemes)
A brief account of some exemplary cases sheds light (no. 2) at the end of the 1950s. We should keep in mind
on this repertoires importance, as well as on certain what the term scheme connotes when it is applied to
transformative creations by women artists that constitute the visual arts: Its worth underlining, wrote Louis
both its ultimate conclusion and its historical exhaustion: Marin on the renowned pictorial cycles of Piero della
on Lygia Clarks A casa o corpo: Penetrao, ovulao, Francesca in Arezzo,
germinao, expulso (The house is the body: penetration,
ovulation, germination, expulsion), first made for the the value of the term scheme. We know that scheme
Venice Biennale in 1968; on the first materialization, in signifies a figure of style in the lexicon of ancient
1969, of Reticulrea (Reticularea) (no. 1) by Gego (Gertrude rhetoric. Here we attribute to it . . . the meaning
Goldschmidt), a typology that would become central to of a matrix of possible representations constructed
her work; and on Mira Schendels only work of an environ- in the imagination through regulated operations
mental nature, Ondas paradas de probabilidadeAntigo that obey a set principle. The scheme is then
Testamento, Livro dos Reis, I, 19 (Still waves of probability both a matter of the shape of space and a matter
Old Testament, I Kings 19), created for the 1969 Bienal of understanding as a category. As a mediating
de So Paulo, which formed the conclusion and symbolic operator, the scheme executes the projection of this
closure of the penetrables. one in the shape of that one, determining itself in
The object of this essay is to analyze the conclusive that same operation. It then possesses the value of
function of these sculptures by Clark, Gego, and Schendel an epistemological instrument of description.4
within this Latin American typology of site-specific
works. In order to do so it is necessary to give a brief Oiticicas Metaesquemas paintings represent a return or,
description of the works that precede themand, without strictly speaking, a regression to a practice of symmetry
1. Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt)
a doubt, constitute important chapters in the development that the Neo-Plasticists had disavowed, and thus they
(Venezuelan, born Germany. of the typologywithout exhausting the repertoire in can be understood as historically functioning against Piet
19121994). Reticulrea
an endless list, to which one would also have to add an Mondrian. The vast majority of them are specular images,
(Reticularea). 1997. Site-specific
environment at Galeria de important series of works produced during the 1970s.3 specifically questioning the gap or border, no matter how
Arte Nacional, Caracas. Iron
and steel wires, dimensions
unknown. Coleccin Fundacin
de Museos NacionalesMuseo
316 de Bellas Artes, Caracas 317
disguised or erased, in the unfolding of a symmetrical of place. Schendels Ondas paradas de probabilidade would 2. Hlio Oiticica (Brazilian,
19371980). Metaesquema No.
figure, as one can see in the works belonging to the Srie revisit this possibility of nonplace at the end of the 4066 (Metascheme no. 4066).
branca (White series) (no. 3)white monochromatic decade, implying an atopian point of view that cancels 1958. Gouache on board, 22 7/8
gouaches depicting irregular geometric shapes as well x 21" (58.1 x 53.3 cm). The
or perhaps transcends these possibilities to become a
Museum of Modern Art, New
as three-dimensional white monochromatic shaped situated coordinate. York. Gift of the Oiticica Family
canvasesa direct result of the Metaesquemas. Such experiences were launched with the series of
3. Hlio Oiticica (Brazilian,
The Metaesquemas carry out literally the theoretical Penetrveis that came directly from the Ncleos, and they 19371980). Relevo
project contained in their title: they function as figures achieve their paramount conclusion with the creation of neoconcreto (Neoconcrete
of understandingas conceptual imagesof space and relief). 1960. Oil on wood,
Grande ncleo (Grand nucleus) in 1960: a three-dimensional
37 7/8 x 51 1/4" (96 x 130 cm).
of the shape of space; the operative mediation that Marin apparatus with several Ncleo-like elements hanging The Museum of Modern Art,
attributes to the notion of scheme finds a new material- from the ceiling, which spectators can surround and could New York. Gift of Patricia
Phelps de Cisneros in honor
ization in the unfolding process of the Metaesquemas potentially penetrate, were the piece not enclosed by a of Gary Garrels
being projected in the shape of space, transforming them lisire of white stones, like a monumental Metaesquema
in the various repertoires of three-dimensional objects covering the floor. Despite this transformation, the artist,
produced by Oiticica between 1959 and 1963, known as in his own writings on the Penetrveis, has emphasized the
the Bilaterais (Bilaterals), the Bolides (Fireballs), and the works occurrence in free, open space even more than its
Ncleos (Nuclei). penetrability, thus underlining the need for it to function
Its important to point out the ideal character of these as an idea.5 In the later works Tropiclia (1968) and Edn
volumetric experiences, the artists first, which is empha- (Eden, 1969), works directly related to Oiticicas long dia-
sized by the mirror underneath NC1 Pequeno ncleo no. 01 logue with Clark on existential and aesthetic questions,
(NC1 small nucleus no. 01) (1960, no. 4), onto which the the viewers experience would prevail over the works
sculptures reflection is projected, giving it the shape of a formaction over observationmaking the works mile-
Metaesquema. Our observation of the sculpture is limited stones among the Penetrveis.
to our own point of view outside of the work, a utopian Oiticicas Ncleos were the result of a primarily formal
or perhaps atopian point of view relative to the three- investigation, which the artist described as painting in
dimensional and potentially penetrable Ncleo, a penetra- space.6 So that works in this category, in which flat
bility which its own limitations and structure stand in the pictorial convention unfolds, fractures, or multiplies
way of. In the Metaesquemas first stage, the works imply when projected into actual space (the paintings becoming
two things: they are a representation of space from the objects and then elements of architecture), could be desig-
perspective of a deus ex machina, and as a result of this nated, within the penetrables, formal, and could be set
they annihilate the notion of place with a vision of space against a category designated existential: what prevails
produced from an absolute nonplace. This nonplace in the first category is the sensory ascertainment of the
responds to the intellectual dimension that a schemes forms conversion from pictorial to spatial; in the second,
function satisfies in its depiction of a virtual space: a the body, using its experience as the tactile receptor of its
place, by definition, cant be an idea, and an idea of a place own physical reality and limitations, identifies the work as
isnt exactly a place. The Metaesquemas are at most an a habitable, penetrable form or space. Cruz-Diezs Cmeras
ideation of place, schemes of potential places, and as such de cromosaturacin, Sotos Penetrables, and, perhaps,
they herald, in Oiticicas work yet to come, the transfor- Gegos Reticulrea belong in the first group; Oiticicas
mation of formal categories of abstraction into experiences last Penetrveis, beginning with Tropiclia and Edn, and
Opposite, right:
7. Jess Rafael Soto (Venezuelan,
19232005). Penetrable de Lyon
(Lyon penetrable). 1988. 19' 8 3/16"
x 32' 9 11/16" x 26' 3"(6 x 10 x 8 m).
Muse dart contemporain
de Lyon
Opposite:
13. View of the exhibition
Tangled Alphabets: Len
Ferrari and Mira Schendel,
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, April 5June 15,
2009. Foreground and middle
ground: Mira Schendel
(Brazilian, born Switzerland.
19191988). Ondas paradas
de probabilidadeAntigo
Testamento, Livro dos Reis, I,
19 (Still waves of probability
Old Testament, I Kings 19). 1969
(re-created 2009). Nylon thread
and wall text on acrylic sheet,
installation dimensions vari-
able. Collection Ada Schendel
PREZ-ORAMAS 331
this a long time ago in his famous motto to which all of a home, an apparatus, of origin. This is perhaps the Mercedes Pardo, and Elsa suggests that Venezuelan Warburgs intuition that images quun dispositif?, trans. Martin
Gramcko, contributed to its kineticism gave continuity, can exist in a status of afterlife Rueff (Paris: Payot-Rivages,
artistic naturalism of the West has returned, Physis common thread that runs through these three works: the
complexity. Only Gego, however, albeit in abstract, nonnarrative (Nachleben), through which 2007), pp. 2127.
kruptesthai philei (The being that inhabits life, nature, return to the place, the house, the home, or the instance seemed to have purposefully terms, to a larger history of they survive to their own disso- 33. On the hiding nature or
the emergence that loves to hide).33 whence we camethe fertilizing coitus, the forest and deconstructed its structural Latin American muralism. See lution, taking a different shape. physis, see Leopoldo Iribarren,
underpinnings. Prez-Oramas, Caracas: A See Georges Didi-Huberman, La Nature aime se cacher:
There is meaning, then, to the categorical impenetra- mineral origin of our being, physis, Godand from which 15. Marta Traba, Gego (Caracas: Constructive Stage, in Gabriel La Ressemblance informe, ou le Le Replis du voile, Critique,
bility of Ondas paradas de probabilidade: in spite of our we are categorically excluded; this is the reason we are Museo de Arte Contemporneo, Perez Barreiro, ed., The gai savoir visuel selon Georges no. 695 (April 2005): 273; and
1977), p. 11. Geometry of Hope: Latin Bataille (Paris: Macula, 1995), Jackie Pigeaud, LArt et le vivant
being physically able to penetrate its solid interior limited to life as our destiny, this life, in which there
16. On the critical role of Gego American Abstract Art from the p. 251 n. 1. (Paris: Gallimard, 1995).
how could we be prevented from doing so?in truth are only, in the ancient and beautiful words of Lucretius, in Venezuelan kineticism, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros 28. Gegos biography began in 34. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura,
the work is also about the impossibility of a return, about bodies and void. 34 see Luis Prez-Oramas, Collection (Austin: The Blanton Hamburg, a city known for its 50 B.C., Spanish trans. Abate
Gego: Laocon, Nets and the Museum of Art/University of intellectual significance: it was Marchena (Madrid: Ctedra,
the inaccessibility of origin, about the definitive closure Irresolutions of Things, in Gego: Texas at Austin, 2007), p. 82. in Hamburg that Warburg 1983), I, 420, p. 108; English
Obra completa, 19551990 20. Simon Schama, Landscape established his famous library, translation by the author.
(Caracas: Fundacin Cisneros, and Memory (New York: Alfred which played a conclusive
2003), pp. 395401; and Prez- A. Knopf, 1995), p. 116. role in the modern history of
Oramas, Gego y la escena 21. Tacitus, Germania, 98 A.D., the discipline of art history,
analtica del cinetismo, in trans. M. Hutton (Cambridge, founded by Johann Joachim
Hctor Olea and Mari-Carmen Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, Winckelmann in the late
Ramrez, Heterotopas: Medio 1980), ch. 16, pp. 15455; quot- eighteenth century. It was in
siglo sin lugar, 19181968 ed in Schama, Landscape and Hamburg, and particularly in
(Madrid: Museo Nacional Memory, p. 84. Warburgs library, that intellec-
Centro de Arte Reina Sofa, 22. Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, tuals such as Warburg and
2000), p. 245. Land und Leute (Stuttgart: Goldschmidt, Cassirer and
17. On art imitating nature, Cottascher Verlag, 1861), p. 63; Saxl, Panofsky and Salomon,
see Thomas Aquinas, Summa quoted in Schama, Landscape Ritter and Pauli embodied the
Theologiae, 126573, vol. 15 and Memory, p. 114. last chapter of that history,
(Ia, 110119), The World Order, 23. Schama, Landscape and contributing to a critical ques-
1. The major works by Lygia these three important artists, selves functionally in adjusting Penetrables, see Ariel Jimnez, a tomb six feet long and three trans. M. J. Charlesworth Memory, pp. 22728. tioning of its own foundations.
Clark, Gego, and Mira Schendel some of them illustrated in this themselves to real space. Soto (Caracas: Fundacin feet wide, in the shape of a (Cambridge: Cambridge 24. Ibid., pp. 23637. On Warburgs letter to
discussed in this essay do not essay, such as Gegos drawings 3. For a total understanding Jess Soto, 2007), pp. 8288. pyramid, made with spades, University Press, 2006), q. 117, 25. Ibid., pp. 1023. Goldschmidt, containing his
belong to the collection of The addressing the structural chal- of this repertoire in the 1970s, 8. Clark, quoted in Lygia Clark suddenly we are saddened a. 1, p. 132. 26. See Philippe-Alain outline, see E. H. Gombrich,
Museum of Modern Art. Gegos lenges of reticular fields (nos. we would have to include such (Barcelona: Fundaci Antoni while something murmurs 18. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Michaud, Aby Warburg and the Aby Warburg: An Intellectual
Reticulrea is a permanent 11 and 12) and Schendels works of cardinal importance Tpies, 1998), p. 228. within us: somebody is buried Laocon: An Essay on the Limits Image in Motion, trans. Sophie Biography, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
installation at the Galera de works dealing with the opposi- as Eugenio Espinozas 9. Clark, quoted in Maria Alice here. That is architecture. of Painting and Poetry, 1766, Hawkes (New York: Zone Books, University of Chicago Press,
Arte Nacional in Caracas, and tion of voice and silence, theol- Impenetrable (Impenetrable) Milliet, Lygia Clark: Obra- Rossi, Autobiographie trans. Edward Allen McCormick 2004), p. 251; and Georges Didi- 1986), p. 141. On Warburgs
therefore a site-specific cre- ogy and existential unsettlement (1972), Antonio Diass Flesh trajeto (So Paulo: Editora da Scientifique (Paris: (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, Huberman, LImage survivante: library, see Saxl, The History
ation; the other two works exist (no. 14), notions implied in their Room with Anima (1978), and Universidade de So Paulo, Parenthses, 1988), p. 81. 1962). Histoire de lart et temps de of Warburgs Library (1886
as concepts, safeguarded by major installations discussed Anna Maria Maiolinos Arroz e 1992), p. 118. 11. See Michel de Certeau, The 19. Venezuelan kineticism was fantmes selon Aby Warburg 1944), in ibid., p. 325.
the estates of the artists, and in this essay. feijo (1979), among others. 10. Hubert Damisch recalled Practice of Everyday Life, trans. characterized by works meant (Paris: Minuit, 2002). 29. Henri Focillon, La Vie des
have been seldom reinstalled. 2. Obviously we dont ignore the 4. Louis Marin, Opacit de la that if the labyrinth indeed Steven Rendall (Berkeley and to reconcile the spatial under- 27. By using the word deforma- formes (Paris: Presses
We can argue, therefore, that existence in classic modernism peinture: Essais sur la existed, it would correspond Los Angeles: University of pinnings of modern geometric tion I want to stress that a Universitaires de France, 1943),
the three works conceptually of precedents of these types of reprsentation au Quattrocento less to the building itself than California Press, 1988), p. 117. abstraction with the possibility form can be a hiding and shel- p. 15.
defy both the notion and prac- works, which would perhaps (Paris: Usher, 1989), p. 121; to an endless net without 12. Clark, quoted in Lygia Clark: of time-based visual effects tering device for a distorted 30. Johann Wolfgang von
tice of ownership and the con- point toward a similar process: translation by the author. assignable endings to the itin- Obra-trajeto, p. 123. that give the impression that iteration of another form, which Goethe, Gedenkausgabe der
ventional conditions of art- among them El Lissitzkys 5. Hlio Oiticica, Aspiro ao eraries that could be inscribed 13. Clark, ibid., p. 232. the works move in front of the plays a role in its own geneal- Werke, Briefe und Gesprche,
collecting. Schendels work was three-dimensional Proun Grande labirinto, in Hlio there. Damisch, Le Labyrinthe 14. It is worth noting that beholders eyes. The most ogy. This notion has found a vol. 13, Schriften zur Kunst,
last reinstalled at MoMA in (1923) and Kurt Schwitterss Oiticica (Barcelona: Fundaci dEgypte, in Skyline: La Ville Gego was not the only major accomplished and impressive successful theoretical fortune ed. Ernst Beutler (Zurich:
2009, as a central presence in Merzbau (1923) clearly stand Antoni Tpies, 1992), p. 60. Narcisse (Paris: Seuil, 1996), female figure within the con- of these works took the form of in the twentieth century, fol- Artemis-Verlag, 1954), pp.
the exhibition Tangled out. In both cases, however, the translation by the author. pp. 3857; translation by the stellation of Venezuelan Neo- murallike monumental friezes lowing Sigmund Freuds notion 1920; quoted in Schama,
Alphabets: Len Ferrari and forms of abstraction are totally 6. Ibid., p. 55; translation by author. Aldo Rossi quoted Constructivism. Other important that one looks at as if reading a of Zerrbildthe tearing of Landscape and Memory, p. 237.
Mira Schendel. MoMA owns recognizable as contained the author. Looss famous line: When in a women artists, such as Lya text, moving in front of them an image within the dreaming 31. I Kings 19: 1112.
a consistent core of works by forms and do not dilute them- 7. On Jess Rafael Sotos forest we find ourselves before Bermdez, Aime Battistini, from left to right. This element processand ending with Aby 32. Giorgio Agamben, Quest-ce
This essay considers the work of certain female Japanese that, at least for the artists discussed here, the use of
artists from the standpoint of its performative elements. performance represented an entry point to expression,
The term performativity can refer to a quality inherent providing them with a means of shattering the art worlds
to artistic actions, happenings, or staged performances, glass ceiling?
as well as to the temporal or improvised components of It is interesting to compare how the artists of the first
larger works or to elements that give rise to the active generation reached this threshold of expression through
involvement of others, such as instructions, choreography, performance. Of all of them it was probably Atsuko Tanaka
and direction.1 The artists I will discuss can be divided who maintained the closest metaphorical relationship
into two groups: the first group, which emerged in the between performance and nonperformance work. Tanaka
1950s and 60s and can be described as the first wave of was affiliated with the Kansai-based avant-garde art group
avant-garde Japanese artists, includes Atsuko Tanaka, Gutai, in whose manifesto Jiro Yoshihara, the groups
Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Mieko Shiomi, Shigeko Kubota, leader, spoke of building a new relationship between artistic
and Mako Idemitsu, most of whom lived in the United material and the human spirit: In Gutai art, the human
States at some stage in their careers; the second group, spirit, and the material reach out their hands to each other,
which emerged during or after the late 1990s, consists of even though they are otherwise opposed to each other.
Mariko Mori, Rei Naito, and Tomoko Sawada.2 The material is not absorbed by the spirit. The spirit does
Asian artists tend to excel in temporal arts (film, not force the material into submission. If one leaves the
photography, and performance) rather than in spatial arts material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts
(painting and sculpture); generally speaking, in Asia the to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice.4 As
temporal arts developed ahead of the spatial arts, and part of their search for such a relationship the group staged
venues devoted to the former were built in advance of and performances such as Saburo Murakamis Laceration of
are far more numerous than art museums. However, the Paper (1955), in which the artist passed through a series of
very division of art into spatial and temporal works is papered wooden frames, ripping through the paper as he
unfamiliar for Asians, because embedded in our culture went, and then exhibited the results as sculpture, and
is the notion that change is the essence of all existence.3 Kazuo Shiragas Challenging Mud (1955), in which the artist
For this reason artworks tend not to be viewed as things plunged into mud, wrestled with it, and pronounced the
but as phenomenological events. resulting forms and shapes sculpture and painting. These
How did existing Eastern embodied knowledgethe works were confrontational and expressionistic, many of
experience whereby knowledge and wisdom fuse with the them dealing directly with matter in one form or another.
body through contemplative practicecome into contact Two of Tanakas pieces, Work (Bell) (1955) and Electric
with the expressive language of contemporary art and Dress (1956, no. 2), deal with intangible elementselec-
urge an awakening of human consciousness? Could it be tricity and sound. Work (Bell) consists of twenty bells
attached to a long cord that can be wound throughout a
venue; any spectator can activate the installation, causing
1. Atsuko Tanaka (Japanese,
19322005). Untitled. 1964. the bells to ring automatically in sequence and creating a
Synthetic polymer paint on
canvas, 10' 11 1/4" x 7' 4 3/4"
(333.4 x 225.4 cm). The
Museum of Modern Art, New
York. John G. Powers Fund 335
2. Atsuko Tanaka (Japanese,
19322005). Reproduction of
Electric Dress. 1986 (original
1956). Enamel paint on
lightbulbs, electric cords,
and control console, approx.
chain of sound that recedes and Akira Kanayama, an artist Tanaka met in 1950 at the Kusamas net painting No. F (1959, no. 4) seems ratio-
65 x 31 1/2 x 31 1/2" (165 x
then grows nearer, moving like a
80 x 80 cm). Takamatsu City Art Academy of the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art and nal and Minimalist next to Tanakas automatist circle and
Museum, Japan living creature. Electric Dress took later married, made kinetic, conceptual artwork that relied line works, but it is actually overflowing with all manner
the form of a bodysuit enveloped on mechanical devices. He awakened her sensitivity to auto- of sensibilities and emotions. The meeting on canvas of
in cords hung with tubular lamps and lightbulbs variously matism and to systems inspired by mechanical workings. complex and tactile thick white paint and a thin veil of
coated in enamel paint. The bulbs were programmed to The transformation in Electric Dress from wiring diagram gray paint constitutes a violent collision between presence
flash randomly, as if autonomous, bringing them, like the into paintingTanaka had designed the wiring for the and loss in a space that rejects pictorial depth. The draw-
bells, into a different symbolic and imaginary realm. Art bulbs and cords herselfhas echoes in her nonperformance ings Untitled (1952) and Infinity Nets (1951) are completely
historian Franoise Levaillant has contrasted this effect work, in dates arranged on a canvas and borders drawn covered with net patterns and polka dots, which, rather
with the paper, mud, and other everyday objects used around each number on a calendar, and she continued to than evincing a Minimalist aesthetic, reflect the influence
by the male Gutai artists in their performances, which explore these ideas after Electric Dress. Untitled (1964, no. 1), of the hallucinations with which Kusama has been afflicted
retained their original symbolism: from a series of paintings begun in 1957, was created on an since her childhood, in the form of polka dots and nets
unstretched piece of canvas, which she worked on the floor, that cover the world like curtains. By giving material form
In contrast to the approach of Tanakas male artist without the benefit of an underdrawing, in a process that to these repetitive patterns she has been able to maintain
associates, who, when using their bodies in their employed a number of automatist elements. It features two her psychological balance and her connection with the
artistic activities, did so in essentially energetic partially overlapping sets of concentric circles to which the world, as well as to create a form of resistance to her
ways, often directly, expressionistically, or aggres- artist added multiple lines, so that one appears to trigger depersonalization disorderthe loss of a sense of reality,
sively, Tanaka used the energy of the materials the next in a kind of chain effect that conveys a sense of with the world growing increasingly distant. This sensory
themselves to give the materials as much sculptural transformation and movement. Many automatist elements overload, according to curator Robert Storr, is the flip-side
richness as possible. Paradoxically, by putting can be detected in this process. Next she dripped synthetic of sensory and emotional deprivation. This psychological
restrictions on the female body, [Tanaka] liberated polymer paint onto the circles to create powerful skeins of symmetry is clear in her art. 6 Kusamas obsession with
the female body from the terribly pumped up ges- bright, contrasting colors reminiscent of the cords in Electric infinity stems from the urge to repeat these markings,
tures that were a characteristic of the work of the Dress, which crisscross the circles and appear entangled in the source of her monotonous surface treatments and
groups male artists when they used their bodies. them. The glossy pigment produces a luminosity that environmental elements.
All she did was pretend to exhibit/expose herself. appears to emanate from below the works surface, contrast- The performances in which Kusama covered the world
The strength of her own body becomes the support ing with the superficial space and stimulating the observers in polka dots and phalluses were aimed at creating a kind
mechanism for a kind of industrial energy that reflexes and tactile senses. Untitled conveys a chaotic of nirvana; in her self-obliteration performances she
appears in the form of light of various colors. She ing bulbs appear on the darkened stage simply as flicker- energy that explodes from the circles centers, like cells that donned long, flowing robes and waded through water,
does not turn this industrial energy as a signal, but ing light. One imagines that for audiences of that era, have been hurtling toward each other from a distance and becoming one with the surrounding environment, disap-
transforms it into a complex sign for stimulating when there was still very little neon in Osaka, the twin- are now trying to conjugate. The result is an implosion of pearing as a result of her actions. The deep connection
and invigorating the imaginary.5 kling of that colored light would have been a real visual symbolism and centripetal force, a mandala that gives rise of her motifs to her distinctive sensory state was sensa-
delight, and the flickering would have been enlivening and to a diverse and almost frightening changeability. tionally dramatized in performances in which she exposed
In Stage Clothes (1957), a performance contemporary exhilarating, creating a real sense of physical stimulation. Although the paintings in this series all have the same her body alongside her work, such as Aggregation: One
with Electric Dress, Tanaka would remove her clothing When Tanaka wore Electric Dress, she emphasized this formal motifs, each one is different, full of movement and Thousand Boats Show (1963, a work similar to Violet
piece by piece, revealing different-colored garments, like connection between electricity and the body by waving freshness, as if producing them re-created in the artist Obsession [1994, no. 3], in the collection of The Museum
the rapid costume changes in Kabuki theater. Her final her arms up and down to emphasize the presence of a per- the movement of Electric Dresss flickering light, a kind of of Modern Art), in which a boat covered in phalluses,
layer was a black bodysuit covered in blinking lightbulbs, son inside. When Electric Dress was dismantled and hung internal mechanism that gave her access to other, latent which appeared to have sprung up like mushrooms, was
signaling the transition from female striptease to electric on a wall like a painting, its essence of light and energy emotions. Tanaka continued this series of paintings even set in a space surrounded by photographs of the boats
muse. In footage of this performance, the randomly flash- was translated into space. after leaving Gutai in 1965, due to conflict with Yoshihara. surface and behind which the artist sat naked, with her
HASEGAWA 339
back to the audience. Kusama used theater-style spot- otherart with all the hallmarks of Pop but in which a invited involvement on the part of the audience through at the speed of clouds. Mend Piece (1966/1968), in which
lights in this work to emphasize her inner obsessions childish, immature perspective replaces dry distance dematerialization, through art created from intangible ele- adhesive and pieces of a broken teacup were placed
and anxieties. which took hold in Japan in the 1990s and after. In the ments such as text or instructions. Onos work focused on together in a room, was based on the concepts of restoration
As voids or holes, Kusamas shadows and polka dots twenty-first century her work addresses many issues philosophical contemplation and meaning at the everyday and healing in a deeper psychological sense. Onos
had not by themselves proved powerful enough a virus to facing contemporary society: information overload in level and on casually repeated actions, an idea consider- instructions are a form of visual metaphysics that could
contaminate the male-dominated art scene in New York, an IT-centric world, viral infections, pollution, and the ably influenced by Zen (which regards ordinary life as a be called Duchampian: an imaginable vision on a game
where she lived and worked from 1958 to 1968; this challenge of uniting a self torn between the real and succession of opportunities for the philosophical practice board. They restrict the recipient, calling his or her
required the use of what curator Lynn Zelevansky has the virtual. of existence) and its koans (which entrust disciples to find attention to a certain set of aesthetic mannersand the
called protrusions, like those found on the boats in the answers to their own questions). In performance she resulting philosophical meaningthat lie within a simple
Aggregation and Violet Obsession, possessed of more power- saw the possibility of encouraging viewers to direct their set of actions.
ful symbolism.7 According to religious scholar Shinichi THE WOMEN OF FLUXUS gaze inward and think critically, creating an accumulation Shiomi, too, used instructions in her experimental
Nakazawa, Kusamas use of such forms is not simply meant of small changes in consciousness that she felt would bring music, using instruments and various objects in a form
to exorcise her fear of male genitalia but to create a capti- The Fluxus movement, characterized by a brand of inde- about revolutionary social change. In Cut Piece (1964) that she called action music. A student of music theory,
vating space amid sexual disparity by juxtaposing male terminacy and randomness that its participants offered in Ono posed personal and existential questions by literally she sent to George Maciunas, a founding member of
symbols and female sexuality and exposing something opposition to Western rationalism, was in many respects exposing her own body to the audience: sitting quietly Fluxus, event scores with instructions in Japanese and
hidden. The resulting sculptural formsemotional plants, a successor to Dada, but Fluxus transcended Dadas non- onstage with a pair of scissors next to her, she invited the English; at Maciunass instigation she traveled to the
as Nakazawa calls them, a kind of form with spirit sense by incorporating elements of Eastern philosophy; audience to cut into her clothes, all the while sitting as United States in 1964 and stayed there for a year. Water
occupy the space like pollen or spores.8 For Narcissus the word fluxus is Latin for flow or change. It did not calmly as she could, doing her best to avoid theatrics. Music (1964) includes the instructions 1. Give the water
Garden (1966) Kusama lay among 1,500 mirrored plastic regard ordinariness and artistic expression as antagonistic The performance is a metaphor for the way women still form. 2. Let the water lose its still form; Event for the
balls, looking at the reflections of her body like so many but saw the everyday as sustenance for such expression, are looked at, and it encourages the audience to criticize Late Afternoon (1963) includes the instructions Suspend
alter egos; she then sold the mirror balls to passersby. For attempting to reveal the richness of life and spontaneous both the inherent aggressiveness of the act of looking and a violin with a long rope from the roof of a building until
Kusamas Peep Show, an installation that same year, she nuances through the improvised reconstruction of com- their own desire to participate in it. Ono also addressed it nearly touches the ground; and Disappearing Music for
once again used mirrors to create an infinite number of monplace actions such as eating and going out. Shiomi, the problem of the invasiveness of looking in films such Face (1964) includes the instructions Change gradually
reflections, this time of the audience, producing a space one of four women included in the original Fluxus group, as Fly (1970), in which a fly crawls over the flesh of an from a smile to no smile. Events and Games (1963, no. 5)
filled with emotional plants and offering a vicarious with Ono, Kubota, and Takako Saito, has pointed out that immobile woman, closing in on existence in an even more contains instructions for twenty-two such events printed
experience of her hallucinations. Fluxus hated expressionism and self-expression and visceral and vivid fashion. Her performances constituted on different-sized cards in Japanese and English.
Although her nude performances were sometimes sought to be simple and objective. . . . It was an attempt to a self-disciplinary practice: the artists ontological ques- Shiomis works eschew aggressiveness and emotional
perceived as publicity stunts (and there may have been a dismantle the walls between artists and people in general tioning of herself, principally in the form of instructions conflict, drawing instead on intellectual, poetic flights of
strategic element involved), their aim was a kind of invis- through things like audience participation and collabora- for the creation of artworks, which she began using in inspiration. Photographs of Event for the Late Afternoon
ibility, a becoming one with the environment. Her sym- tive work. . . . One can also see the influence of Zen in the 1961. The instructions for Smoke Painting (1962), for make clear how delicately and carefully she chose the
bolic materials (mirrors, phalluses, food in the form of emphasis on gamelike qualities, jokes, and humor. 9 example, are Light canvas or any finished painting with circumstances and actions and engineered the work to
macaroni), together with polka dots, all form a part of the The overwhelming majority of artists involved in the a cigarette at any time for any length of time. See the produce a feeling of jamais vu. In a number of objects these
great performance that is Kusamas life, helping Kusama, avant-garde in Japan were male, and it was striking that smoke movement. The works created on the basis of flights of inspiration gave physical expression to the dura-
whose physiological condition threatens to reduce her to a four female Japanese artists were suddenly involved on detailed instructions would be displayed along with the tion of time as experienced in music, such as in Endless
pure receptor of external sensation, to continue to affirm the international stage, gaining recognition in their own instructions themselves. By staying vague about details, Box (1963), in which a musical diminuendo is rendered in a
her position in the world. way. Ono came to Fluxus through her involvement with Ono relied heavily on the power of the participants series of progressively smaller white origami boxes nested
Kusamas unique art practice formed a bridge between John Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and others. She regarded imagination; Blue Room Event (1966/2003) was meant to together; for the artist, the act of lifting each box to reveal
the Abstract Expressionist/Minimalist movements on Conceptual art as the making conscious of the everyday, stimulate this power, instructing the audience inside a the smaller box inside represents the same qualities of
the one hand and what might be called wet Pop on the and she became a pioneer of a gentle conceptualism that white room to imagine the room bright blue or moving focus and activity as listening to music.
Opposite:
8. Shigeko Kubota (Japanese,
born 1937). Duchampiana:
Nude Descending a Staircase.
1976. Super 8mm film
transferred to video and
color-synthesized video (color,
silent), four monitors, and
plywood, overall 66 1/4 x
30 15/16 x 67" (168.3 x 78.6 x
170.2 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Gift
of Margot and John Ernst,
Agnes Gund, and Barbara Pine
viewer. The production of an homage to Duchamp using forms in the shape of crude robots, such as in Jogging Lady
video, a medium that he himself did not utilize, contains (1993), Pissing Boy (1993), and Nam June Paik 1, 2 (2007).
clear Oedipal elements; Duchamplike Maciunas, Paik, It is fascinating that this work, conceived in New Yorks
and Kubotas own fatherfigures among the fathers phallocentric art world, does not simply criticize or
who are the subjects of much of her video work, and her resist male-dominated society; Kubota seemed to yearn
Freudian craving for these fathers is addressed through for this world and sought to identify with the object
the equation of paintbrush as a phallus in Vagina Painting. of yearning in a different form.
Kubota generally shoots her videos with a single fixed Idemitsu, who also used video and monitors to create
camera and is more interested in altering colors and her narratives, took a less metaphorical approach, recon-
distorting images than in depicting the passage of time; ciling her roles as mother, wife, and artist using a kind
this gives rise to dissonant forms and occasionally to of allegorical horror. A video monitor appears in many
a schizophrenic or emotional dismantling of the body of her works, a monitor within a monitor representing
represented by the assembled monitors, a body without a deep psyche or alternate self; the acting is mechanical
organs.11 Strong human emotions flow through her and amateurish, based on archetypal characters and clearly
mechanical works, which include three-dimensional meant to be symbolic. The works thus take the form of
Opposite:
11. Mariko Mori (Japanese,
born 1967). Dream Temple.
199799. Metal, glass, salt,
plastic, audio, and VisionDome
(3-D hemispherical display),
16' 6" (5 m) x 32' 9 9/16" (10 m)
diam. Edition: 2 plus 1 artists
proof. Courtesy Fondazione
Prada
HASEGAWA 351
FROM VIDEO TO INTERMEDIA: A PERSONAL HISTORY / BARBARA LONDON
During the late 1960s, in the spirit of counterculture and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and
revolution, artists took up the new portable video camera, Robert Whitman with the mandate of establishing
with its grainy black-and-white images and crudest of better relationships among interdisciplinary artists with
editing systems. The medium had previously been the a scientific bent, to help select contemporary works.
domain of commercial television, with hefty cameras EAT arranged a competition, and out of two hundred
locked onto enormous tripods in broadcast studios, submissions Hultn selected nine computer experiments,
but now women artists flocked to this wide-open field, including a kinetic sculpture by Lillian Schwartz, a com-
attracted to its clean slate and lack of old-boys network. puter artist who also made short experimental films and
Merging a strong sense of independence with this recently videos. Proxima Centauri (1968), Schwartzs collaboration
accessible medium, they experimented with time-based with Bell Laboratories engineer Per Biorn, was a highly
(and therefore intangible and difficult to collect) art, in polished black box that opened to reveal a translucent
a seat-of-the-pants style well suited to the artist-run, glass dome emitting an astrophysical glow, activated by
rough-and-ready venues sprouting up everywhere. viewers standing on pressure-sensitive pads installed
Viewers became participants, engaging in a more under a carpet.
active relationship with image and sound. Video offered Video gained a forum in 1971, when the Museum
a more immediate form of expression, with inexpensive launched its Projects series in order to adapt to the ex-
distribution possibilities that echoed the spreading the panding practice of site-specific installations. One of the
word also essential to feminisms forward momentum. first, Eleanor Antins mail-art narrative 100 Boots (1971
With these new tools, women artists investigated their 73) chronicled an army of galoshes marching across the
identities, defying the romantic notions of beauty dis- United States, storming New York, and finally invading
seminated by advertising and the consort roles offered the Projects galleries.2
by movies and soap operas, in interdisciplinary projects, My own work with video and intermediaa concept
characterized by vitality and candor, that formed alterna- developed in the mid-1960s by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins
tives to and a critique of male-dominated modes of art and Hans Breder to describe the often confusing activities
production. As the categories of Miss and Mrs. were torn that occur between genresbegan in the early 1970s,
apart, so were those of traditional art practice, reception, when as a young curator in the Department of Prints
and circulation. and Illustrated Books I became absorbed in how artists
The first exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art to stretched and manipulated time, that most elusive of
feature the eras new electronic mediums was The Machine materials.3 In 1971, for example, to inaugurate Ileana
as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age in 1968, organized Sonnabends SoHo gallery, the living sculptures Gilbert
by Pontus Hultn.1 The show opened with drawings of & Georgedressed in tweed suits, their skin covered
Leonardo da Vincis flying machines and included works with gold powderstood for weeks on a table and sang
up through the present. Hultn invited the group Exper- Underneath the Arches, in a nonstop looped action
iments in Art and Technology (EAT), which had been that managed to emulate both robotic mechanization
1. Laurie Anderson (American, launched the previous year by engineers Billy Klver and and over-the-top grandeur.
born 1947). O Superman. 1983.
Video (color, sound), 8 min.
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of Warner Bros.
352 Records 353
My interests settled on cutting-edge mediums, and films in the more established film theory exemplified by was the norm, she carried out her project with extreme masculinean aesthetic, social, and political act.6 She
on how artists harnessed new technology in a world where such journals as Cahiers du cinma, founded in 1951. The precision, standing motionless in an empty gallery, reso- began her experiments with film in 1969, mixing different
that technology was perpetually shifting. I sought out fundamentals of expanded cinema (an expedient generic lutely facing four video cameras set at different distances. colored liquids on a mirror and projecting the reflections
independent voices, looking for work that expanded term for radical experimentation with the moving image) The live images were cycled onto an adjacent monitor as abstract swirls. These erratic, live projected shapes,
boundaries. In nosing around makeshift venues (such as included intermedia techniques, participation from the using carefully scripted switching and split-screen effects, rather than recorded (and thus mediated) celluloid images,
the Kitchen and 112 Greene Street) and talking with artists audience, and the destruction and abstraction of imagery all synchronized with audio composed from four synthe- formed her reality. In the early 1970s she carried out a
(such as Antin, Beryl Korot, and Hermine Freed), I discov- and film projection, all used toward decoding reality as it sizer tones, so that her impassive body made a sharp series of hard-hitting performances that tested her physical
ered a dynamic counterculture, the offspring of the Beats was manipulated in commercial film and toward breaking contrast with her aggressively in-motion, on-screen self. limits and questioned physical and mental identity in a
and Woodstock, flourishing in Manhattans desolate SoHo out of films two-dimensionality by transporting the Space SeeingSpace Hearing, with its paradox of feminist critique that she called Media Aktionism, as
neighborhood and in rural communes in upstate New York cinematographic apparatus into an installation of time physical stasis and electronically generated motion, can be in Hyperbulie (1973, no. 3), in which she navigated, nude
(such as Lanesville TV, in Lanesville, and Experimental and space. This, it was thought, would lead to the opening seen as part of EXPORTs uncompromising investigation for the most part and often crawling on her hands and
Television Center, in Owego), operating on the fringes of of our usual patterns of perception and representation; into the social position and physical being of women knees, the narrow passage of an electrified metal fence,
the art world, with its prevailing modes of Conceptual and otherwise we were limited in our ability to tell the differ- like her pseudonym, adopted in 1967 in light of receiving a formidable jolt every time she inadvertently
Minimal art. With other like-minded souls I climbed dank ence between natural and artificial images, as well as in her refusal to cater to a system that is defined by the brushed against the edge. One of her goals in performance
staircases and congregated in dusty lofts for impromptu our conception of truth and reality.5
screenings of black-and-white videos and for interdisci- These fundamentals were manifest in the work of the
plinary performative experiments that stretched into the audaciously spirited Clarke, a modern dancer long before
night. Process took precedence over saleable product, and she became passionate about video, which she felt shared
information from the hardcore reached out-of-the-way the spontaneity of dance; her early videos explored the pro-
artists through publications such as Radical Software cess of their own making, and were about instantaneous
(founded by Korot, Phyllis Gershuny, Ira Schneider, and image and live, two-way communication among partici-
Frank Gillette), a theory and grassroots how-to magazine; pants. In 1974 I visited the Video Teepee, her rooftop
and Avalanche (founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby studio at the Hotel Chelsea, where she taught workshops,
Sharp), an in-depth interview magazine that captured the setting up multiple cameras and monitors on the roof
grit of downtown New York. and in stairwells, and where other Hotel Chelsea dwellers,
At MoMAs Open Circuits conference in 1974, I including Viva and Agns Varda, would drift by. I met
observed practitioners of expanded cinema from around Clarkes lively followers, including a socially engaged
the world argue about the distinctions between video and collective, the Videofreeks, who explored public-access
film, with the former represented by such upstarts as cable, using live phone-ins to create two-way, interactive
Nam June Paik, Shigeko Kubota, and Woody and Steina cablecasting and transmit whatever was on their minds
Vasulka, and the latter including the veterans Shirley Clarke at the time.
and Jonas Mekas, who had bucked the Hollywood system Several months later I made my first curatorial
in the 1950s, along with Maya Deren and John Cassavetes. research trip abroad. At Projekt 74, an exhibition of video
Clarke went on to found the Filmmakers Cooperative with installations organized by the Klnischer Kunstverein, I
Mekas in 1962, joined by Stan VanDerBeek, Robert Breer, witnessed VALIE EXPORT, who had been the only woman
2. VALIE EXPORT (Austrian,
Michael Snow, and others.4 These moving image practi- to participate in the visceral events staged by the Vienna born 1940). Space Seeing
tioners spoke different languages: videos nascent critical Actionists, create a new work, Space SeeingSpace Hearing Space Hearing. 197374. Video
(black and white, sound), 6:19
discourse was rooted in the visual arts, with essays in (197374, no. 2), on the eve of the opening. Although she
min. The Museum of Modern
Studio International and Arts Magazine, and experimental worked very much in the make-it-on-the-spot spirit that Art, New York. Purchase
printmaking, and computer graphicsand were finding alone and in her twelve-year collaboration with Ulay; In 1983 Video Viewpoints moved into the comfortable presentation, discussed her approach to bridging cinema
their own way, experimenting on the fringes of a staunchly her exploration of the limits of the body, ego, and 220-seat Titus Theater 2.19 Here, with new equipment and video even as she embraced their complementary
entrenched hierarchical society. The trip turned into the artistic identity; and the limitations of early portable and a regular technical crew, we were poised to evolve attributes. In Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue (1985)
exhibition Video from Tokyo to Fukui and Kyoto in 1979, video cameras: with the medium. Younger artists attended the lectures; she collaborated with two children, setting her video
and included one of Idemitsus early videos. In her Video the artists presenting their work got to see their tapes on camera on a tripod in her basement, aiming the lens at
Viewpoints talk she elaborated on the way Japanese media In the early 70s we really hated video. It was the a big screen, shown by a state-of-the-art video projector the children, and leaving the room while they devised a
artists approached video, according the medium a certain worst thing that could happen to you. The bad that enlarged the image and made it frameless, like a land- make-believe narrative.
respect, which gave their work a certain formality and image, the bad sound, everything was bad about scape, but did not provide the same saturated color as a By the late 1980s computerized video-editing allowed
self-consciousness. She herself was interested in observa- it. It was limited to one hour and it was boring. monitor. The theaters Dolby surround-soundthe best artists to edit works frame by frame, as accurately as film,
tion, using video to record the daily routines of women, So the video in those days we used only as a docu- video sound system in townmollified some of the more taking the medium into a controlled and polished realm
to deal with the daily life of women, which also included mentation record of our performance. We mostly dubious presenters. far removed from the old rough-and-ready, shoot-from-
non-routines. In this way video became a medium I used asked the cameraman to put the camera on in With the advances in home-computer technology, the-hip aesthetic of the early days. The surge of program
to explore womens conscious and unconscious behavior. 17 one spot.... These videos are just like this... including advanced and readily accessible graphic and and advertising slots available on cable television resulted
In 1984 I went to Amsterdam to see Het lumineuze one image hardly using a zoom and never using sound capabilities, the shift from analog to digital video in a proliferation of commercial postproduction video
Beeld/The Luminous Image at Amsterdams Stedelijk a cut... . [After 1980] we didnt make any more took root. Most filmmakers still had no interest in aban- studios in New York, many of them accessible to artists
Museum, an exhibition featuring twenty-two new instal- videotapes, any more documentation of perfor- doning film resolution and tactile editing processes until at reduced rates when they werent being used by profes-
lations by artists engaged with media. While there I talked mance. We tried to document it, if we could later in the 1990s, when video editing became more sionals. Other artists used completion funds from public
extensively with Marina Abramovic, and as a result she on film, because the quality is much better and precise and portable at the same time that film-lab work television and foundation grants for postproduction, a
came to speak at Video Viewpoints in 1985. She spoke you can project the image from the floor up and became frightfully expensive. A crossover slowly took critical and difficult-to-fund project phase. For some
about her practice as a performance artist, both working you see the life-size body in the space.18 place. Leslie Thornton, in her 1990 Video Viewpoints artists, such as Max Almy, high-end production values
1. The exhibition had a cata- was popularized by media the- 7. EXPORT, in Interview with Geiger, Review: Latin American 15. On the development of
logue with an embossed metal orist Gene Youngblood in his Andrea Juno, in Juno and Literature and Arts, no. 48 Laurie Andersons style, see
cover depicting MoMAs facade book Expanded Cinema (New V. Vale, eds., Angry Women (Spring 1994): 55; reprinted in RoseLee Goldberg, Laurie
and dynamic street life. K. G. York: E. P. Dutton, 1970). This, (San Francisco: Re/Search Anna Bella Geiger: Constelaes Anderson (New York: Harry N.
Pontus Hultn, The Machine the first book to consider video Publications, 1991), p. 187. (Rio de Janeiro: Museu de Arte Abrams, 2000), p. 47.
as Seen at the End of the as an art form, was influential 8. Many of the earliest master Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, 16. For Andersons description
Mechanical Age (New York: The in establishing the field of tapes sat in their moldy base- 1996), p. 81. of Handphone Table, see Laurie
Museum of Modern Art, 1968). media arts as a scholarly disci- ments or hot attics, and as a 11. Paulo Herkenhoff, quoted Anderson, Control Room and
2. Projects came about after pline. Youngblood argued that result were gumming up, cor- in Ashton, Anna Bella Geiger, Other Stories: Confessions of
prolonged efforts by several a new, expanded cinema is roding, and flaking. From an p. 81. a Content Provider, Parkett,
curators in the Department of required for a new conscious- archival standpoint it was clear 12. On Passagens, see Tadeu no. 49 (May 1977): 132.
Painting and Sculpture, namely ness and described various that unless cultural institu- Chiarelli, Fax para Anna Bella 17. Mako Idemitsu, statement
Kynaston McShine and types of filmmaking that uti- tions placed the work in cli- Geiger, in O mundo talvez, olam in Barbara London, ed., Video
Jennifer Licht. In early 1970 lized new technology, including mate-controlled storage ulay (The world, perhaps) from Tokyo to Fukui and Kyoto
Licht organized two exhibitions special effects, computer art, facilities, this part of art history (Ipanema: Joel Edelstein Arte (New York: The Museum of
that were early models for the video art, multimedia environ- would slowly disintegrate and Contemporanea, 1995), pp. 67; Modern Art, 1979), p. 14.
series: Robert Breer: The Osaka ments, and holography. fade away. The Museums regis- excerpts reprinted in Anna 18. Marina Abramovi c, untitled
Sculpture and Robert Irwins 5. My thoughts on expanded trar, the official keeper of Bella Geiger: Constelaes, pp. lecture, Video Viewpoints, The
Room Work. Lichts exhibition cinema are indebted to VALIE records and storage locations, 3940, Fax to Anna Bella Museum of Modern Art, New
Spaces, with installations by EXPORT, Expanded Cinema gave the newly acquired video Geiger, trans. Stephen Berg, p. York, January 7, 1985.
Michael Asher, Larry Bell, Dan as Expanded Reality, lecture in sub-masters acquisition num- 79. 19. By this time video had
Flavin, Robert Morris, Pulsa, The Essential Frame: Austrian bers, and the tapes were 13. On Mapas elementares 3, become part of the Department
and Franz Erhard Walther, took Independent Film, 19552003, placed under archival condi- see Karin Stempel, Anna Bella of Film. As time-based medi-
place in early 1970. Licht and London, May 31June 1, 2003, tions. A media acquisition can Geiger, in Anna Bella Geiger: ums, film and video have simi-
I together selected videos to archive.sensesofcinema.com/ be thought of as a subscription: Arbeiten, 1975 bis 1995 lar storage and preservation
accompany the 1973 loan exhi- contents/03/28/expanded_ a long-term commitment to (Herausgeber, Germany: Galerie issues.
bition Some Recent American cinema.html. preserve the artwork in as Bernd Slutzky, 1996); excerpts 20. Stir-Fry: A Video Curators
Art, which traveled to Australia. 6. EXPORT, quoted in Sophie close to the original form as reprinted in Anna Bella Geiger: Dispatches from China,
This video selection recurred Delpeux, VALIE EXPORT: possible, with eventual upgrad- Constelaes, pp. 4748, trans. adaweb.walkerart.org/context/
as Projects: Video I in 1974. Semper et Ubique/De-Defining ing from its obsolete format to Sylvia Frota, pp. 8081. stir-fry/. 13. Nalini Malani. (Indian, born
3. Dick Higgins, Intermedia, Women, Art Press, September the next archival standard. 14. Together with her partner, 21. Nalini Malani, quoted in Pakistan 1946). Gamepieces.
Something Else Newsletter, 2003, p. 36. On EXPORTs use of 9. Joan Jonas, quoted in Joan Woody Vasulka, Steina Vasulka London, New Forms, in 2003/2009. Four-channel
1966. In 1968 Hans Breder her body in video works, see Simon, Scenes and Variations: made technological investiga- Gayarti Sinha and Paul video (color, sound), six
founded the first university Kristine Stiles, CORPORA An Interview with Joan Jonas, tions into analog and digital Sternberger, India: Public rotating acrylic reverse-painted
program in the United States VILIA: VALIE EXPORTs Body, in Art in America 83, no. 7 (July processes; their development Places, Private Spaces: Lexan cylinders, 12 min. The
to offer a Master of Fine Arts Else Longhauser et al., VALIE 1995): 75. of electronic imaging tools Contemporary Photography and Museum of Modern Art, New
in intermedia, at the University EXPORT: Ob/De+Con(Struction) 10. On Anna Bella Geigers place them as major architects Video Art (Newark, N.J.: Newark York. Gift of the Richard J.
of Iowa, Iowa City. (Philadelphia: Moore College coming of age in Brazil, see of an expressive electronic Museum; Mumbai: Marg Massey Foundation for Arts
4. The term expanded cinema of Art and Design, 2000), p. 26. Dore Ashton, Anna Bella vocabulary of image-making. Publications, 2007), pp. 1011. and Sciences
444 / RIOT ON THE PAGE: THIRTY YEARS OF ZINES BY WOMEN / GRETCHEN L. WAGNER
1. Adrian Piper, Talking to Myself: pursuing the conceptual, she adequately convey the artistic Sight, vol. 1, p. 117. no. 10 (Summer 1967): 7983;
The Ongoing Autobiography of did not wholly reject the value intuition than any other 5. As Sol LeWitt claimed, It is reprinted in Alicia Legg, ed.,
an Art Object (Hamburg: of the object, though it was not medium, rather than dictating the objective of the artist who Sol LeWitt (New York: The
Hossman, 1974), p. 5. her main focus: This does not or generating the intuition is concerned with conceptual Museum of Modern Art, 1978),
2. Piper, My Art Education, Out mean that material doesnt conveyed. art to make his work mentally pp. 16667. Piper has credited
of Order, Out of Sight: Selected matter at all, but merely that it 3. Piper, Food for the Spirit, interesting to the spectator, LeWitt as a major influence;
Writings in Meta-Art, 1968 remains a tool for giving physi- Out of Order, Out of Sight, vol. 1, and therefore usually he would see, for example, My Art
1992, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: cal existence. The material p. 55. want it to become emotionally Education, Out of Order, Out
MIT Press, 1996), p. 5. Here form provides a public percep- 4. Piper, Notes on the Mythic dry. LeWitt, Paragraphs on of Sight, vol. 1, p. 4.
Piper also explains that in tual language that can more Being IIII, Out of Order, Out of Conceptual Art, Artforum 5,
Lynda Bengliss public image as an artist is she doing it? 5 But some feminists saw the unrelated to the works title, such as, The
developed quickly: only a year after her first ad as a declaration of female liberation from wax painting [sic] were like masturbating in
solo show in New York, at the Bykert Gallery, both male-dominated society and aspects my studio. . . . They are both oral and geni-
she was featured in an article in Life maga- of the overly proscriptive womens movement. tal.10 Even in its physical form Embryo II is
zine that juxtaposed photographs of her at As critic Lucy R. Lippard remarked soon unfamiliar and unknowable. The hollows
work with already iconic images of Jackson afterward, The uproar that this . . . image between its cliffs of color are deep enough to
Pollock creating his drip paintings.1 Hers was created proved conclusively that there are make parts of the work inaccessible to the
a respected voice in the burgeoning feminist still things women may not do. 6 The adver- eye and do not reveal the way they were made.
movement; in 1971 she was one of eight tisement does not seem to have much to do Victor (1974, no. 2), one from a series of
artists invited to respond to Linda Nochlins with Bengliss largely abstract oeuvre, but knots that Benglis began in 1972, is also
groundbreaking Art News article, Why Have its defiant refusal to lay bare its motivation created from layers of textured materials
There Been No Great Women Artists? 2 She (prompting the chorus of Why is she doing and also has an uncanny human presence.
has acknowledged the role that the feminist it?), along with its dependence on a discon- Its height and width approximate that of a
movement played in her success, in creating certingly intimate relationship with the figure, and the knot widens where a persons
an awareness of female artists at a time human body for meaning, relate it to her shoulders might, before tapering into two
when the organic shapes of her own art ful- larger practice. thin legs; its surface is flexed and bent where
filled a preconceived notion of what womens According to Benglis, the attenuated it presses against itself, just as human skin,
art should look like.3 length of Embryo II (1967, no. 1), a beeswax muscle, and fat might flex and bend. Benglis
But Bengliss ambivalent relationship to painting from a series begun in 1967, was found it appropriate to give the knots human
rank-and-file feminism was evidenced in directly inspired by Barnett Newmans thin names, because they then began to be
her now-notorious advertisement in the zips of color.7 The works support is long these individual people that breathed. 11
November 1974 issue of Artforum, in which and elliptical, and over it Benglis brushed Victor takes its name from the phonetic v
she appeared greased up and nude, wearing many layers of hot, colored wax in long, slow in the nautical alphabet.
sunglasses and shamelessly cradling a dildo. strokes. The layers, at first unbroken, were Although viewers can easily follow the thin
This event threw feminism, and the art histo- naturally transformed as the work dried: As tangle that forms Victor from beginning to
rians sympathetic with its cause, into a state they cooled they began to rumple. And then end, the nature of the works material is far
of confusion. Five members of the magazines as they began to rumple I became interested less obvious, with its rigid metal surface that
editorial board, belatedly deciding that the in the formations that occurred. 8 The works seems to contradict its organic curves. The
advertisement was nothing more than a thinly cratered surface of striated color is thickest sculpture in fact is structured of several lay-
disguised pornographic pinup, cosigned a and messiest at its center, where Benglis ered surfaces, beginning with an aluminum
letter in the December issue, apologizing to began each stroke. screen that Benglis rolled into a cylindrical
their readers for exposing them to an object Benglis scaled Embryo II to her own body: form, overlaid with bunting cloth, and then
of extreme vulgarity.4 The Feminist Art at thirty-six inches high, the sculpture covered with plaster, which was still wet
Journal called the ad a frantic bid for male approximates her arms length. Installed, when she tied the resulting cylinder into
attention, and suggested that a bewildered it occupies the space of an adult head and Victors loose knot. She worked with airplane
chorus of womens voices was asking, Why torso, and its bright tentacles reach out to technicians in Los Angeles to metalize these
engage its viewers directly. The title alludes knots, first spraying on a layer of zinc, and
to birth, and Benglis has related her sculp- then a layer of tin. (When the workers werent
ture to the notion of the germ or the egg working in space technology, Benglis repor-
or the cell. 9 However, it is ultimately ambig ted, they were making art with me.)12
1. Embryo II. 1967. Purified uous in its bodily reference, and Benglis Benglis found appealing the idea that the
and pigmented beeswax and has also provided provocative interpretations knots capture something inaccessible and
dammar resin and gesso on
Masonite, 36 1/8 x 6 x 5 1/8"
(91.8 x 15.2 x 13 cm). The
Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Gift of Agnes Gund 377
unknowable within them, that these works, different times. Thus the artist was able to to sculpture, to the idea of the surface, the
so simple in form, nonetheless enclose experiment with the dimensionalityor lack form, the gesture, the mystery of what is
something inaccessible: When I began of itin video, with the realities produced inside and outside, but also the movement
making these images . . . I thought of them by layers of film in Mumble creating a formal in space.17 The form of her artwork may vary
embracing a kind of air or form inside. 13 ambiguity similar to the multiple concealed across sculpture, film, and advertising,
Victor was included in her first New York materials of Victor or the puzzling, organic but her interests have proved consistently
exhibition in the wake of the Artforum ad, layers of Embryo II.16 Benglis relates Mumble confounding, consistently rich.
at Paula Cooper Gallery in late 1975. The
Museum of Modern Art purchased it directly
from the exhibition, making it the first of
Bengliss works to enter the Museums col-
1. David Bourdon, Fling, Dribble because of the early rising Center: Feminist Essays on 13, no. 3 (November 1974): 55. interested in doing a recording.
lection. (Other major museums, including
and Drip, Life 68 (February 27, feminist movement. Interview: Womens Art (New York: E. P. This article was published in . . . I had the video equipment.
the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the 1970): 6266. Lynda Benglis, Ocular 4, no. 2 Dutton, 1976), p. 127. the same issue of Artforum After I had done the recording,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, had begun to 2. The original article was (Summer 1979): 33. 7. Interview, Ocular, p. 35. as Bengliss notorious I had asked him if I could use
acquire her sculptures a few years earlier.) published in Art News 69, 4. Lawrence Alloway, Max 8. Benglis, interview with the advertisement. this image and this recording
no. 9 (January 1971): 2239; Kozloff, Rosalind Krauss, author, November 11, 2008. 11. Benglis, author interview. for a work. Benglis, author
Although there is no documentation of the
and Lynda Benglis responded Joseph Masheck, Annette 9. Benglis, quoted in Erica-Lynn 12. Ibid. interview.
reaction within the walls of the Museum to in Benglis, Social Conditions Michelson, Letters, Artforum Huberty, Intensity of Form 13. Ibid. 16. Ibid.
the Artforum incident, it is certainly likely Can Change, in ibid., p. 3. 13, no. 4 (December 1974): 9. and Surface: An Interview with 14. Interview, Ocular, pp. 17. Ibid.
that it brought Benglis to MoMAs attention Other respondents included 5. Cindy Nemser, Lynda Lynda Benglis, Sculpture 19, 3031.
as an artist of historical importance. Despite Eleanor Antin, Elaine de BenglisA Case of Sexual no. 6 (JulyAugust 2000): 35. 15. Benglis made this film with
Kooning, and Louise Nevelson. Nostalgia, Feminist Art Journal 10. Benglis, quoted in Robert the artist Robert Morris, with
the radical and sexualized use of her body
3. For example: I felt that in the 3, no. 4 (Winter 197475): 7. Pincus-Witten, Lynda Benglis: whom she was working closely
that the advertisement involved, Benglis beginning, my work was chosen 6. Lucy R. Lippard, From the The Frozen Gesture, Artforum at the time: Robert Morris was
who crossed out one-man shows on
MoMAs standard artists questionnaire and
scribbled in one-person showshad created
a work that concealed sexual reference
within the indirect language of abstraction,
perhaps thus making it palatable to the
Museums habitually apolitical tastes.
In 1971 Benglis began to work in video,
using it to explore issues that she felt sculp-
ture could not address, such as the duplicity
and contradictions of life, adding, I cant Opposite:
always do that with an icon. An individual art 2. Victor. 1974. Aluminum
work doesnt always cover all these psycho- screen, cotton bunting, and
plaster with sprayed zinc,
logical complexities.14 Videos engagement
steel, and tin, 66 7/8 x 20 1/2 x
with the human body can indeed be more 13 1/8" (169.8 x 52 x 33.3 cm).
direct than that of amorphously human The Museum of Modern Art,
sculptures like Victor or Embryo II, but in New York. Purchased with the
such videos as Mumble (1972, no. 3) Benglis aid of funds from the National
Endowment for the Arts and
continued to mine a confounding vein, dis-
an anonymous donor
tancing the viewer from the on-screen figures
with a narrative that only appears to be 3. Mumble. 1972. Video (black
continuous.15 Although multiple figures are and white, sound), 29 min. The
Museum of Modern Art, New
shown together, the shots containing them
York. Gift of Jerry I. Speyer
are made up of different reels of film layered and Katherine G. Farley, Anna
over one anothercharacters appear next Marie and Robert F. Shapiro,
to other characters who may have been and Marie-Jose and Henry
filmed in entirely different places at entirely R. Kravis
Hanne Darboven was one of the few women prototypical Conceptual art exhibition orga- numbers because they are so steady, limited,
artists to play a major role in the nascent nized by Elayne Varian and Mel Bochner at artificial. The only thing that has ever been
New York Conceptual art scene in the late the Finch College Museum of Art, New York. created is the number. A number of some-
1960s. Her first years in the visual arts, Darbovens time in the United States was thing (two chairs, or whatever) is something
following an early career as a pianist and pivotal for her artistic development. It was else. Its not pure number and has other
studies at the Hochschule fr bildende a period marked by her renunciation of meanings. If I were making it up I couldnt
Knste in Hamburg (1963 to 1965), were paintingher early work in this medium possibly write all that. It has to be totally
spent in relative isolation. Art critic Lucy R. shows the influence of the artists group simple to be the real writing. 2 A few years
Lippard vividly remembers that at first, in Zero, whose goal it was to make objects in later in Hamburg, Darboven adopted a
New York, where Darboven moved in 1966 direct correlation with reality, devoid of the standardized form of cursive script (no. 2)
from Germany, the artist knew no one and expressionism that characterizes much of that is reminiscent of her early correspon-
met no one.1 Over time, however, Darboven the art of the 1950sand her decision to dence, in which she often repeated the letter
befriended a number of artists closely asso- work mainly on paper. She began to cover n in her first name over and over.
ciated with Minimal and Conceptual art, sheets with typewritten or hand-drawn nota- In 1968, just after she had returned to
including Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, On tions, often composed of numbers organized Hamburg, Darboven was included in several
1. II-b. 197073. Ink and Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, and Sol LeWitt. In according to a calendar structure (no. 1). The highly influential international exhibitions,
typewriting on twenty-eight
1967 her work was presented for the first artist explained, I only use numbers because among them Live in Your Head: When Attitudes
pieces of paper, each 11 1/2 x
33" (29.3 x 83.8 cm). The time in New York, at the Museum of Normal its a way of writing without describing Become Form: Works, Concepts, Processes,
Museum of Modern Art, New Art, a storefront space founded by Kosuth [Schreiben, nicht beschreiben]. It has nothing Situations, Information, organized by Harald
York. Gift of Ileana Sonnabend and Christine Kozlov, and in Art in Series, a to do with mathematics. Nothing! I choose Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern, Lippards
380 381
557,087 show at the Seattle Art Museum, scale, intensity, and complexity. In 1996 she Opposite:
and Konzeption/Conception, organized by presented Kulturgeschichte 18801983 2. Untitled. c. 1972. Ink on ten
Rolf Wedewer and Konrad Fischer at the (Cultural history 18801983), an installation pieces of transparentized
paper, each 11 5/8 x 16 1/2"
Stdtisches Museum Schloss Morsbroich, realized over a three-year period (1980 to
(29.5 x 41.9 cm). The Museum
Leverkusen, Germany. Her work was first 1983), composed of 1,590 panels covering of Modern Art, New York. Art &
shown at The Museum of Modern Art in the walls of an entire full-floor gallery at the Project/Depot VBVR Gift
1970, on the occasion of Kynaston McShines Dia Center for the Arts in New York. In this
3. 100 Books 0099. 1970.
milestone group exhibition Information, project her writings are combined and
One hundred books, 365 or
which called for a redefinition of art: The juxtaposed with myriad images, including 366 pages each, offset printed,
activity of these artists is to think of con- reproductions of earlier works, fabric patterns, each 8 7/16 x 10 15/16 x 1 7/16"
cepts that are broader and more cerebral sheets of music, old postcards, photographs (21.5 x 27.8 x 3.7 cm).
than the expected product of the studio, of New York, and pages from various periodi- Collection the artist. View of
the exhibition In & Out
McShine wrote in the catalogue.3 Darbovens cals and art books. Kulturgeschichte 1880
of Amsterdam: Travels in
work expanded the definition of sculpture 1983 contains the date as part of its title; the Conceptual Art, 19601976,
by visualizing time, not exploring space, time of the making of the work is included in The Museum of Modern Art,
through very simple actswriting, counting, the time of cultural history; and it might as New York, July 19October 5,
2009
or browsing a booknot bound to any par- easily be said that the century 18801980 is
ticular medium. In 1973 she began borrowing incorporated within the period of the making
texts from various writers, such as Heinrich of the work, Michael Newman has written.
Heine and Jean-Paul Sartre, and in 1974 in What we see hereto use a spatial metaphor
Eight Contemporary Artists (described at the for a temporal conceptis a double enfold-
time by critic Max Kozloff as MoMAs largest ing: the work incorporates its outside in
exhibition of new art since 1970) 4 curator which the work is included. 5 mechanically printed books whose page
Jennifer Licht acknowledged the rapid obso- Shortly after her death, in 2009, Darbovens count365 or 366varies according to the
lescence of medium specificity by presenting work shared a room at MoMA with that of number of days in each year of the twentieth
two remarkable sets of writing by Darboven, fellow German sculptor Charlotte Posenenske, century.6 In both cases, the works are made
Four Seasons and Ia/Ib (both 1973), alongside with whom she had been paired in an exhibi- of parts for the curator or the collector to
documentation of performances by Acconci, tion at the beginning of her career, at Konrad interact withto decide the final shape of
drawings by Alighiero e Boetti, striped paper Fischer Gallery, in Cologne, in 1967. In & the sculpture in one case and to randomly
by Daniel Buren, photographs by Jan Dibbets, Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, open the books on tables in the other
wall stencils by Robert Hunter, and paintings 19601976, a group show focusing on ten demonstrating that sculpture is not bound to
by Brice Marden and Dorothea Rockburne. artists associated with the city of Amsterdam a specific physical form. Darboven produced
In 1978 and 1979, found photographs and and the gallery Art & Project, included some of the most influential works in her
musical notations, respectively, made their prefabricated, galvanized steel elements generation by favoring from the start, as she
way into her work. conceived by Posenenske in 1967 together explained in 1968, the least pretentious and
Through the final years of her life, with a 1970 installation by Darboven entitled most humble means, for my ideas depend
Darbovens projects continued to grow in 100 Books 0099 (no. 3): one hundred on themselves and not upon material.7
1. Lucy R. Lippard, Hanne Essay, in Information (New 5. Michael Newman, (New York: Dia Art Foundation, Posenenske, Allen Ruppersberg,
Darboven: Deep in Numbers, York: The Museum of Modern Remembering and Repeating: 2004), pp. 13435. and Lawrence Weiner.
Artforum 8, no. 7 (October Art, 1970), p. 139. Hanne Darbovens Work, in 6. Artists included in the 7. Darboven, Artists on Their
1973): 37. 4. Max Kozloff, Traversing the Lynne Cooke, Karen Kelly, exhibition were Bas Jan Ader, Art, Art International 12, no. 4
2. Hanne Darboven, quoted Field . . . Eight Contemporary and Bettina Funcke, eds., Stanley Brouwn, Darboven, Jan (April 20, 1968): 55.
in ibid., pp. 3536. Artists at MoMA, Artforum 13, Robert Lehman Lectures Dibbets, Ger van Elk, Gilbert &
3. Kynaston L. McShine, no. 4 (December 1974): 44. on Contemporary Art, vol. 2 George, Sol LeWitt, Charlotte
And what costume shall the poor girl physical abuse, drug addiction, and AIDS. tive and emotional impact of the show. Early
wear to all tomorrows parties? The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is the diary musical accompaniments to the images
For Thursdays child is Sundays clown I let people read, she has said. I photograph were the band The Del-Byzanteens (whose
for whom none will go mourning. directly from my life. These pictures come members included Jim Jarmusch and James
A blackened shroud, a hand-me-down gown out of relationships, not observation. 1 Nares) playing live and, more frequently, a
of rags and silks, a costume fit for one who Goldins work has been shaped by her taped soundtrack of commercially released
sits and cries for all tomorrows parties. personal circumstances. She first presented songs that brought a clearer and more
All Tomorrows Parties, Lou Reed, 1966 her photographs in slide form because she pointed meaning to the images. The estab-
did not have access to a darkroom in which lished soundtrack is a mix of rock, blues,
Nan Goldins photographs of New Yorks to make prints. She had her first slide and opera (the music of passion and pathos),
downtown scene in the 1970s and 1980s are shows for friends at bars in Provincetown, but it shares much in attitude and aesthetic
projected as slides, each for a few fleeting Massachusetts, where she worked as a bar- with punk: homemade and rough around the
seconds, as Nicos distinctive Teutonic voice tender, and in 1979 she performed for the edges, it takes a rebellious stance against
sings All Tomorrows Parties. Like the song, first time in New York at Frank Zappas birth- the Establishment. Its music, in its eclectic
Goldins images capture the transient highs day party at the Mudd Club. While the slide mix of high and low, from Maria Callas to
and lows of the night. They include icons shows were initially a practical solution to a Yoko Ono, mimics a mixed tape or DJ set.
Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel lack of funds and limited darkroom access, The soundtrack cannot be divorced from
Basquiat, Debbie Harry, and Fab 5 Freddy Goldin quickly saw the potential for creating the images, and together they are more than
but more important are the individuals larger narratives by editing and sequencing the sum of their parts.
whom viewers have come to know intimately linked still images, molding a familiar living- By 1986 The Ballad had been included in
through Goldins work: Cookie, Sharon, room exhibition format to reflect her own the Whitney Biennial, screened at the Berlin
Suzanne, Brian, David, and, of course, Nan lifestyle, attitude, and experiences. Early Film Festival, and published as a book by
herself. These musicians, artists, writers, performances were spontaneous and impro- Aperture, and its distinct identity had been
punks, New Wavers, b-boys, and hangers-on visedthe artist hand-loaded slides into the firmly cemented. In its final form, the slide
smoke, drink, hustle, have sex, masturbate, projector while keeping count in her head. show opens with portraits of couples, including
and shoot up in the hundreds of images that They had no titles (The Ballad got its name a picture of Goldins parents, accompanied
compose The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, in 1981), but the subject was always the by the title song, The Ballad of Sexual
Goldins arresting slide show that has samecoupling and intimate relationships. Dependency, performed by The Velvet
the power to move audiences to laughter Throughout the early 1980s Goldin showed Underground. The show is structured into
and tears. slides at lofts, clubs, and bars such as Rafiks groups of pictures by gender, beginning with
Taking its title from a song in The Three- OP Screening Room, Rock Lounge, and the women, and each section and subsection is
penny Opera (1928), by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Times Square dive bar Tin Pan Alley. With introduced by its own leitmotif. Accompanied
Brecht, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency each performance the selection changed, by such songs as Dionne Warwicks Dont
some seven hundred color slides set to a and the audience, primarily the subjects of Make Me Over and an aria from Norma sung
forty-five-minute soundtracktakes as its her photographs, came to see who was in by Callas, women are pictured empathetically,
theme the intensity of amorous relationships. and who was out. alone (no. 1) and with friends, gazing into
1. Trixie on the Cot, New York It chronicles the personal lives of Goldins Its not about the quality of the photo- mirrors and relaxing in bed, contemplative
City. 1979. Silver dye bleach friends and loversa young, gorgeous, tragic, graph, its about the narrative thread, Goldin and teary or ecstatic and shrieking with
print (printed 2008), 15 1/2 x and hedonistic group. In her pictures, desire has said of her work.2 As she adjusted and laughter. The mood changes with the song
23 1/8" (39.4 x 58.7 cm). readjusted the slide sequences and sound-
and ecstasy are punctuated by depression, Miss the Girl, and the images show women
The Museum of Modern Art,
addiction, illness, and death brought on by track of The Ballad, adding and removing battered, abused, and subjected to the
New York. Acquired through
the generosity of Marian and dysfunctional relationships, emotional and images and songs, Goldin honed the narra- violence of men. A 1984 self-portrait of the
James Cohen, in memory of
their son Michael Harrison
Cohen
384 385
artist after being brutally beaten by her boy- intimacy (no. 3)followed by images of empty focused on the making of images rather than
friend, Brian (no. 2), is the emotional apex of beds, vacated rooms, and, finally, graves. the making of prints.5 This was a rebellion
the slide show. Goldin gazes directly into the The final slide, of a graffito of two skeletons against the rarefied and male-dominated
camera with two black eyes while Siouxsie coupling, is accompanied by Dean Martin world of fine art photography best exempli-
Sioux sings, You didnt miss the girl/You hit crooning Memories Are Made of This, fied, even in the 1980s, by photographers
the girl/You hit her with a force of steel. revealing Goldins view that men and women such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. A
James Brown singing Its a Mans Mans are, in her own words, irrevocably unsuited. 3 departure from the establishment and a dis-
Mans World initiates a sequence of images Gender difference is at the heart of the work. tinct undermining of the photographic image
of menan assorted bunch of cowboys, Ultimately, the slide show is a narrative as art object, Goldins Ballad champions a
bodybuilders, skinheads, and junkies. The driven by the experiences and points of view democracy of ever-changing, ephemeral
music ranges from the theme song of the film of women.4 images. In The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to Bronski Goldin continues to insert new images and Goldin pioneered a remarkable and persua-
Beats Smalltown Boy, as men are pictured rediscover old ones. She has remarked that sive format, somewhere between cinema
sitting in cars and trolling bars, showing photographing has enabled her to remember, and still photography, to reconstitute her
off tattoos and masturbating. With Petula and The Ballads changing contents under- own lived experiences.
Clarks 1965 song Downtownits inclusion score that memory is a continually shifting
here is ironicthe images turn to the grit entity. In The Ballad there is no hierarchy
and glamour of Manhattans downtown of images; rather, the work is a constantly
scene and the inevitable ravages of the party shifting accumulation that reflects the mess
lifestyle. Couples return with Screamin Jay of real life. Marvin Heiferman, an early cham-
Hawkins singing I Put a Spell on You pion of Goldins work and a former producer
they have sex and endure the aftermath of of The Ballad, has stressed that the artist
1. Nan Goldin, The Ballad of 4. For more on the role of queer identity in Goldins work,
Sexual Dependency (New York: gender in Goldins work, see see Goldin, The Other Side,
Aperture, 1986), p. 6. Catherine Lord, This Is Not in Liz Heron and Val Williams,
2. Nan Goldin, interview by a Fairy Tale: A Middle-aged eds., Illuminations: Women
J. Hoberman, in Goldin, David Female Pervert (White) in Writing on Photography from
Armstrong, and Hans Werner the Era of Multiculturalism, the 1850s to the Present
Holzwarth, eds., Ill Be Your in Diane Neumaier, ed., (Durham. N.C.: Duke University
Mirror, (New York: Whitney Reframings: New American Press, 1996).
Museum of American Art, Feminist Photographies 5. Marvin Heiferman, interview
1995), p. 141. (Philadelphia: Temple with the author, December 19,
3. Goldin, quoted in Mark University Press, 1995); and 2008.
Holborn, Nan Goldins Catherine Lampert, Family
Ballad of Sexual Dependency, of Own Gender, in The Devils
Aperture 103 (Summer Playground (London: Phaidon,
1986): 42. 2003). For further reading on
Opposite:
2. Nan One Month After Being
Battered. 1984. Silver dye
bleach print (printed 2008),
15 1/2 x 23 1/8" (39.4 x 58.7 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Purchase
natural and historically significant materials during this same period indicate a change 3. Nile Born. 1984.
as a continuation of the obsessive act of in artistic themes or goals: her use of the Sand and binder on wood,
2 3/4 x 61 1/2 x 19 1/4"
reasserting my ties with the earth, even if female body, personal experience, and
(7 x 156.2 x 48.9 cm).
this act was not performed directly in nature.10 ancient female archetypes as subjects The Museum of Modern Art,
Mendietas shift to a more traditional studio remained the same. In distancing herself New York. Gift of Agnes Gund
practice in the 1980s should not be read as a from a feminist context, she was reacting
break with her earlier work in the landscape; to an increasingly simplified reading of her
on the contrary, her efforts to maintain a link work. Feminist thought today, having evolved
with nature, reflected in her choice of medium, to embrace a broader and more complex
suggest an intentional blurring of boundaries range of cultural practices and experiences,
between art forms and a resistance to divid- is a field that Mendieta would have perhaps
ing up a cohesive body of work. Nor did her found more accommodating.
increasing resistance to formalized feminism
1. On the way Ana Mendietas Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, suggested by statements she Paper (Mexico City: Ediciones John Perreault, Earth and Fire:
work destabilizes physical and 2004), p. 73. Mendieta resigned made at the time and by her Euroamericanas, 1971), n.p.; Mendietas Body of Work, in
political borders, see Irit Rogoff, from AIR in 1982. titling of the works but cannot and Lilian A. Bell, Papyrus, Perreault and Petra Barreras
Borders, in Terra Infirma: 3. Ibid., p. 69. See also Viso on be absolutely confirmed. Tapa, Amate and Rice Paper: del Rio, Ana Mendieta: A
Geographys Visual Culture situating Mendietas work in See ibid., p. 118 n. 307. Papermaking in Africa, The Retrospective (New York: The
(London: Routledge, 2000), the art movements of her time, 7. See the photograph of Pacific, Latin America and New Museum of Contemporary
pp. 11243. including feminism, in ibid., Mendietas Rome studio, in Southeast Asia (McMinnville, Art, 1987), p. 10. Mendietas
2. Mendieta, quoted in Olga pp. 6876. Laura Roulet, Ana Mendieta: A Ore.: Liliaceae Press, 1985), n.p. interest in primitive cultures
Viso, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body: 4. Mendieta, quoted in ibid, Life in Context, in ibid., p. 238. 9. On Mendietas leaf-drawing was greatly enhanced by her
Sculpture and Performance, p. 70. 8. On the history and use of technique, see Viso, Ana experiences in Mexico; on these
19721985 (Washington D.C.: 5. Ibid., pp. 10412. amate paper, see Bodil Mendieta, pp. 1089. experiences and their influence
Hirshhorn Museum and 6. Mendietas addition of mate- Christensen and Samuel Marti, 10. Mendieta, unpublished on her work, see Viso, Ana
Sculpture Garden; Ostfildern- rials from specific locations is Witchcraft and Pre-Columbian statement, 1981; quoted in Mendieta, pp. 4561.
Zaha Hadid, winner of the 2004 Pritzker Prize distinguished by four horizontal structures teacher at the AA School of Architecture. The
(the first woman to receive it), is recognized stacked one atop the other, slightly offset. assignment, as formulated in the announce-
as much for her project designs as for her Thanks to their vertical overlappings and ment of the competition by the city of Paris in
realized buildings. She began her training conjunctions, the layers are tied into a highly 1982, was to transform a former slaughter
as an architect in 1972, at the Architectural complex and expressive whole. The bottom house site in the 19th arrondissement into
Association (AA) School of Architecture, section burrows into the mountain, and a new multipurpose urban space. Its 125
London, where she studied under Elia excavated material is integrated into the acres were to include walking paths, sports
Zhengelis, Rem Koolhaas, and Bernard remainder of the structure. facilities, picnic areas, and various cultural
Tschumi, among others. For her graduate The lowest level contains fifteen double- institutions.
project in 1977a bridge over the Thames height studio apartments, the one above it Hadids entry consists of a portfolio of
she reached back to the Suprematist idiom twenty apartments. The clubs sports and drawings. Twelve in colored pencil on tracing
stamped by Kazimir Malevich.1 The Russian leisure areas, including library and bar, occupy paper (no. 2, for example) represent the
avant-garde and its utopian ideals were an open space some forty-two feet high, separate features of the projectCar Park,
a major influence on the development of between the roof of the second level and the Green Strip, Flower Fields, Planetary/Water
modernism in Europeon the Bauhaus and underside of the penthouse level above it. Strip, and Jogging Strip, in addition to
de Stijl, for exampleand her reference to The architecture and the landscape are tied unnamed cultural elements (the park now
them was a turn away from the flourishing together at various points, with spectacular houses a museum, the Cit des sciences et
postmodernism of her own era. projecting and cantilevered elements befit- de lindustrie). In the design these features
After graduating, Hadid worked along- ting a landmark structure. In contrast to the are elaborated as elongated fields, and they
side Elia and Zoe Zhengelis and Madelon extreme density of the city below, with its overlap and penetrate each other at various
Vriesendorp in the Office for Metropolitan cramped, vertical high-rises, Hadids design levels, in most cases intersecting and over-
Architecture (OMA), established by Koolhaas is an energetic and expansive architectural lying each other at sharp anglesthere
(Vriesendorps husband) in 1975. Vriesendorp sculpture. By flouting expectations of an are few rounded or circular shapes. Only
and Zoe Zhengelis were largely reponsible elegant, stately clubhouse, she positioned the central Green Strip crosses the Canal
for the formulation and presentation of herself as an architect of exceptional stature de lOurcq. A culminating set of drawings
project designs for OMA, and the delicate and daring. Her drawings, suggestive but dif- (including no. 3) comprises ten photoelectro-
illustrations they used in place of the typical ficult to read, are virtually visual manifestos, static prints of the basic elements of the
models and drawingsvisually appealing, espousing an architecture in permanent design on transparent film, bound together.
large-scale gouaches and paintings in muted explosive movement, and they contributed in Despite the overall view created by the
colors, showing the architecture in isome- no small part to the projects provocativeness. superimposition and the explanatory text
tryhad a lasting influence on Hadid.2 This was, of course, intended; Hadid had on three of the drawings, it is difficult to form
Hadid left OMA after three years, and in shrewdly assimilated lessons from her time a three-dimensional image of the project.
1980 she set up her own office. When her at OMA. However, despite the international The eight additional ink drawings are supple-
design for a mountaintop building in Hong attention and the full assurance of the mentary; in slightly different form they show
KongThe Peak Clubbeat six hundred engineering firm Ove Arup & Partners that the projects different levels as collated in
1. The Peak Project, Kowloon,
Hong Kong, exterior others in an international competition in her plan could be realized, the design was the bound series.
perspective. 1991. Synthetic 1982, she became the focus of worldwide deemed impossible to build by the jury who Hadid structured her presentation in so
polymer paint on paper attention. The architecture is like a knife had selected it, and the project was shelved. complex a manner that its realization, the
mounted on canvas, 51 x 72"
cutting through butter, Hadid wrote of the Another important project from Hadids spatial form, can be imagined only with dif-
(129.5 x 182.9 cm). The
Museum of Modern Art,
project, devastating traditional principles early years as an architect is her competition ficulty. However, the programmatic structure
New York. David Rockefeller, and establishing new ones, defying nature entry for the Parc de la Villette in Paris, a that can be discerned behind her design
Jr., Fund but not destroying it. 3 Her design (no. 1) is commission won by Tschumi, Hadids former makes it clear that this project, like The Peak
392 393
Club, is a kind of visual formulation of a theory: movementDeconstructivismthat, After her somewhat fragmented struc- 1. On Hadids relationship
they are both imagined spaces in which the despite Johnson and Wigleys positioning of tures and projects of the 1980s, with their with Suprematism, see Detlef
Mertins, The Modernity of
usual laws of gravity and stability appear to the architects, did not exist as such, for the acute angles and sharp edges, in the last few
Zaha Hadid, in Zaha Hadid
be transcended. Her approach in these early individual positions were too various. But years Hadid has developed a more organic (New York: Solomon R.
projects is akin to Analytical Cubismrela- because of this and other such exhibitions, architecture, in which the major volumes Guggenheim Museum, 2006),
tionships between objects and viewers in Hadid became better known, and increasing encounter each other with rounded edges pp. 3338.
2. On Madelon Vriesendorp
space, their representation and perception, discussion of her ideas led to her first con- and the spatial relationships are defined
and Zoe Zhengheliss influence,
are completely redefined.4 Her architecture crete commissions. In 1993 she realized her not so much by abrupt breaks as by a fluid see Zaha Hadid, Zhengelis, and
does not reassure a user with a sense of first projects: Vitra Fire Station, for the Vitra continuum. Hadid has positioned herself in Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nano
stability and solidity; it is a medium through Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, the first rank of architects known to a larger Questions and Nano Answers,
which dynamic forces may be perceived and and a residential building on Stresemann public, a field dominated by men. Yet she in Shumon Basar and Stephan
Trueby, eds., The World of
that reflects and magnifies the dynamic strasse, Berlin, for that citys International has never set out to be popular: As a woman,
Madelon Vriesendorp (London:
perception of visitors as they move through Building Exposition. Thanks to her extremely Im expected to want everything to be nice, AA Publications, 2008), pp.
the space. complex building projects for the auto and to be nice myself, she has said. A very 6873.
Hadids design for The Peak Club was industrya BMW factory in Leipzig (2005) English thing. I dont design nice buildings 3. Hadid, The Peak, Hong
Kong, AA Files, July 1983, p. 84.
exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in and the world of culturethe Contemporary I dont like them. I like architecture to
4. In 2008 Lebbeus Woods
the 1988 show Deconstructivist Architecture, Arts Center, Cincinnati (2003), and Phno have some raw, vital, earthy quality. 5 This wrote of Hadids 1980s work,
organized by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, museum, Wolfsburg, Germany (2005), for search for the elemental is perceptible Its obvious mission was to
along with work by Coop Himmelb(l)au, Peter exampleshe has long since refuted the in Hadids realized designs. Moreover, she reform the world through
Eisenman, Frank O. Gehry, Koolhaas, Daniel assertions of early critics that her designs, has given to her architecturenecessarily architecture. Such an all-
encompassing vision had not
Libeskind, and Tschumi. Hadid came to be though visionary, are ultimately impossible immobile structuresthe additional aspect
been seen since the 1920s.
thought of as a representative of a stylistic to build. of dynamism. Woods, Drawn into Space:
Zaha Hadid, Architectural
Design 78, no. 4 (JulyAugust
2008): 31.
5. Hadid, quoted in Jonathan
Glancey, I Dont Do Nice, The
Guardian, October 9, 2006.
Opposite:
3. Parc de la Villette Project,
Paris. 198283. Plan: ten
photoelectrostatic prints on
polymer sheets between
synthetic polymer sheets with
metal screws and supports,
each 16 3/4 x 11 3/4" (42.5 x
29.8 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Gift
of the architect in honor of
Philip Johnson
1. Cady Noland, quoted in N.Y.: Center for Curatorial no. 4 (1989); reprinted in Kremer and Camiel van Winkel, 5. Noland, quoted in Cone,
Michle Cone, Cady Noland, Studies, Bard College, 2006), Witness to Her Art, p. 127. Metal Is a Major Thing, and a Cady Noland, p. 156.
in Rhea Anastas and Michael pp. 15556. 3. Noland, Towards a Major Thing to Waste: Interview 6. Noland, quoted in ibid.,
Brenson, eds., Witness to Her 2. Noland, Towards a Metalanguage of Evil, p. 131. with Cady Noland, in Witness p. 155.
Art (Annandale-on-Hudson, Metalanguage of Evil, Balcon, 4. Noland, quoted in Mark to Her Art, p. 157.
Irma Booms singular and single-minded way their physical presence, either because they a designers overstocked productwhatever
of making books is the paradigm of what are certain of an audience (academic texts, is necessary to minimize mundane preoccu-
many contemporary-art curators seek: the books by best-selling authors, cookbooks, pations so that he or she can concentrate on
moment in which the conventional labeling self-help books, and coffee-table books) or innovation and production. Because of the
of artists and categorizing of objectsas because they are designed as objects built respect afforded them by their culture, Dutch
graphics, product design, or artfeels radi- according to an aesthetic vision. Such books designers have been responsible for much of
cally unnecessary or even irrelevant. Boom follow a storyboard that guides the readers the forward movement in the applied arts
is a prolific designer who works on commis- experience through precise steps, unlike a throughout the twentieth century and so far
sion, and since opening her own studio in digital publication, which may leave many in the twenty-first. Designers who are excep-
1991, in Amsterdam, she has conceived lateral doors open and the reader free tional, such as Boom, have been able not
and realized more than two hundred books to forsake the path and wander in search only to blossom but also to compose a body
and won the Gutenberg Prize, in 2001, for of footnotes or other, more engaging topics. of work of uncompromising quality.
her body of work, including books for the Booms books clearly fall in the latter cat- Booms career indeed describes a pecu-
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam; the Austrian egory, placing her among those designers liarly Dutch arc. After graduating from the
lighting company Zumtobel; the Swiss furni- who celebrate the book as an object, as a AKI Art Academy, in Enschede, she worked in
ture manufacturer Vitra; the Spanish shoe space for a unique narrative and visual expe- the Dutch governments printing office in The
company Camper; Netherlands Architecture rience that cannot be replicated on a Web Hague, where she produced two catalogues
Institute Publishers; the United Nations; site, in a video, or with an exhibition. Her for a special edition of postage stamps
OMA/Rem Koolhaas; Petra Blaisse and her designs always start with rigorous research issued in 1987 and 1988, her first project as
architectural textiles studio, Inside Outside; of the content, but she is not satisfied with both editor and designer. These books dis-
and many others. Through bold experimenta- clarity and elegance. She takes inspiration play the beginning of her experimental
tion she has introduced countless innova- from her subject and propels the book into approach, with gorgeous overlays of different
tions; with her fierce demands for artistic overdrive, layering details, adding pages, translucent papers, text running across
autonomy she has led her commissioners switching types of paper, fraying edges to multiple sheets, and double-folded pages
(which is what she calls her clients, estab- add drama and physicalityand, thus, printed on the interior, all creating an effect
lishing the ground for a relationship that is experienceto what could have been mere of richly layered imagery and information.
far from subservient) on sometimes tough communication. Each book is unique and During this time she met Paul Fentener
but always enriching intellectual rides. stylistically independent, and considered van Vlissingen, the CEO of the Dutch con-
Opinionated and open-minded, forceful but as a group, they form a complex and diverse glomerate SHV, who would become her most
never arrogant, she approaches every book body of work unmatched by any other con- important and supportive commissioner. He
as if it were her first, questioning her own temporary designer. asked her to design a book for the companys
process with the same depth and relentless- Could her work have happened anywhere centenary, in 1996, and his only requirement
ness with which she questions every estab- else with the same boldness? Could she was that she make something unusual.2
lished book archetype. For Boom the book is have emerged anywhere else with the same SHV Think Book (1996, no. 1) took five years
a sensory, tactile experience, an object to autonomy? The Dutch tradition in graphic to completethree and a half of them spent
hold and discover, and thus a unique medium design is unequaled in its excellence and researching the company, attending share-
1. SHV Think Book 19961896, for delivering information. ability to penetrate culture and politics, holder meetings, and digging through
by SHV Holdings NV, Utrecht,
We find ourselves at a crucial juncture, from currency designthose fifty-guilder archives of records and images. It is a 2,136-
The Netherlands. 1996.
Photo offset lithography what the revered American editor Jason banknotes of yore, with their bright sunflow- page journey through the companys history,
(white), 8 7/8 x 6 11/16 x 4 5/16" Epstein, among others, has called the end of ersand stamps to Web sites, public sign presented in a reverse chronology. To encour-
(22.5 x 17 x 11 cm); lithograph the Gutenberg era.1 It seems as though the age, and posters. Dutch design culture is age readers to stray from the constraints
on adhesive paper (black), destiny of printed matter is sealed: more and among the most mature and refined in the of sequential movement through the book,
8 7/8 x 6 11/16 x 4 5/16" (22.5 x
more books exist in digital format, as big world, due in part to generous subsidies for, Boom did not include page numbers; the
17 x 11 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Gift publishers shrink print runs, reserving the among other expenses, housing and child- edges of the pages display an image of
of SHV Holdings NV, Utrecht honor of paper for those books that can justify care, and the government will even purchase a tulip field as you flip through the volume
400 401
from left to right, and a Dutch poem in the in formationwith photographs of ingredi- taminations among design, art, and science paper; flocked covers; frayed and sculpted
opposite direction. The book broke from all ents and products and documentation of the modulated by changing typeface size and edges; a broad range of inks and printing
previous notions of what a commemorative immigrants kitchens, homes, and ways of accentuated by a sine-wave pattern running techniques; and many others. Reading does
tome or a corporate publication should be, life. Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor (nos. along the edge. Boom thus gave the book a not properly describe the experience of
and for Boom proved to be an ideal labora 3 and 4), designed in 2006 for an exhibition of lucid structure and a rigor that could com- encountering one of Booms books; a book,
tory for experimentation. work by Hicks, a textile artist, was a tight, fortably accommodate diverse sources and she says, is a voyage, and the means of
Since then she has designed several complex collaboration with the artist and the iconographies, at the same time leaving transportation changes with each title, and
award-winning books. Tutti i motori Ferrari/ exhibitions curator, Nina Stritzler-Levine. For room for her own interpretive freedom. with it the pace and focus of the journey.3
All Ferrari Engines, a catalogue designed for this volume, named The Most Beautiful Boom is known for her uncompromising One is led at the pace of a walk or an inti-
sports car manufacturer Ferrari (2002, no. 2), Book in the World at the Leipzig Book Fair attitude, refusing prepared briefs and reject- mate conversation through Weaving as
celebrates the irresistible beauty of the in 2007, Boom invented an industrial process ing client control. She designs every book Metaphor, pausing at each spread for con-
enginethe true power behind the car in which a circular hacksaw gives a texture from scratch, working on several projects templation; one tears roaring through her
with a brash and elegant juxtaposition of red, to page edges that evokes the selvages of simultaneously, questioning every detail Ferrari catalogue; one floats through Design
yellow, black, and metallic silver, instantly the artists textiles. Each of Hickss works, one imagines her restless mind doubting and the Elastic Mind as if through outer
evoking not only the Ferrari brand but also, in beautifully and simply rendered, is centered paper itself. She insists on realizing her ideas space; and one mounts an attack on the
an almost neo-Futurist strike, the boldness and floating on its own page. no matter how unconventional, and through massive SHV book. Whatever the particulari-
and audacity of a Formula 1 race. Linda At The Museum of Modern Art, Boom them she engages and surprises with both ties of the project, the trip is always a move-
Roodenburgs Rotterdams Kookboek designed the catalogue for the 2008 exhibi- low and high technologies: exposed and ment through a visual and intellectual space.
(Rotterdam cookbook, 2004), which com- tion Design and the Elastic Mind, an investi- scented spines; experimental binding and
bines recipes from and culinary histories of gation into the relationship between design die-cuts; elaborate color-coding linking dif-
Rotterdams immigrant communities, does and science. She incorporated into the book ferent parts of the book; vertical, horizontal, 1. Jason Epstein, The End of boom.html; an edited version
the Gutenberg Era, Library of the interview was published
not display any food at all on its cover, but design one of the exhibitions main tenets: and perforated foldouts; unconventional
Trends 57, no. 1 (Summer 2008): in Abitare 405 (April 2001).
inside the book Boom has respected the the perception of scale as a shift not through paper stock, from the slick and glossy to the 816. 3. Irma Boom, unsigned
books anthropological slantthe highlight- physical dimensions but through degrees of fuzzy and textural (as well as such unexpected 2. Irma Boom discusses the essay published by the
ing through the lens of food of a new culture complexity. The result is a maze of lively con- sources as coffee filters); heat-sensitive project in Peter Bilak, Inter Design Museum, London,
view with Irma Boom, www. designmuseum.org/design/
peterbilak.com/readings/irma_ irma-boom.
Opposite:
2. Tutti i motori Ferrari / All
Ferrari Engines, by Gianni
Rogliatti. 2002. Publisher:
Ferrari SpA, Maranello, Italy.
Photo offset lithography,
9 11/16 x 7 3/4 x 3/8" (24.6 x 19.7
x 1 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Gift
of the designer
Lin Tianmiao has played a seminal role in the of living. Truly, being an artist is a state of break up power. Thread can represent gender
development and practice of contemporary mind as much as a way of life.1 When Lin and change identity. Thread is both real
art in China, remapping the boundaries for returned permanently to Beijing, in the fall and imaginary. Thread is sensitive and sharp.
female artists there through her complex, of 1995, she transitioned from design to art, Thread is a process, something you go
often large-scale interdisciplinary work and and in her new practice provided an essential through.3
her nurturing of Chinas burgeoning contem- link between contemporary art communities The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995,
porary art scene in the mid-1990s. As a in New York and China. She converted her no. 3) consists of approximately twenty
cofounder of Loft New Media Art Center in traditional courtyard home into one of Beijings thousand balls of thread about the size of
2001, Chinas first venue dedicated to media first open studios, creating a new space for Ping-Pong balls. Each ball is attached to a
art, she has blazed a trail for many younger dialogue and providing an important venue needle, and the needles are plunged into a
artists working in nontraditional mediums. for Apartment Art, an underground movement piece of rice paper covering a mattress on
Art was part of Lins early family life: her in which Chinese artists, turning inward in an iron bed. This work demonstrates Lins
mother studied traditional dance and her response to the crackdown on personal almost alchemical touch with materials:
father was an ink painter. Lin studied art at expression after the events of June 1989, the thin paper has been transformed into
university, in Beijing, in the 1980s, but the showed their work in private settings. pierced flesh. Lin also uses thread to wrap
subject was dealt with primarily in terms of Many such artists working and exhibiting quotidian objects, in a kind of Zen-like,
pedagogyshe received instruction on how in the private sphere, Lin included, made art meditative action, turning them into mono-
to teach art to young people. Her turn to art centered on personal themes, and numerous chromatic, ghostly still lifes. The objects in
practice came later in life, after she had critics have connected Lins work to the strain many of these wrapped worksold-
already established herself as a successful of Western feminist art that focuses on the fashioned woks, large iron pans, coal stoves,
textile designer in one of the first licensed objects, sites, techniques, and materials of sewing machines, thimbles, ladles, back-
sole proprietorships in Beijing. domesticity. After looking in many books scratchers, knitting needles, pickling bottles,
From 1986 to 1994 Lin lived in Brooklyn and catalogues of female artists to see if pots for decocting medicinesignify
with her husband, media artist Wang Gongxin, that was true, Lin concluded that the desig- for Lin a traditional way of life that is being
while pursuing her career in textiles. With nation didnt fit: I had never thought I judged supplanted by modernity.4
Wang she immersed herself in New Yorks life . . . from the perspective of being a woman, In a 2006 residency at Singapore Tyler
artistic community, visiting galleries and it was always from my own experience as a Print Institute, Lin explored printmaking
museums and meeting artists. Our experi- person who just happened to be a woman. 2 and new paper mediums. Collaborating there
ence in New York taught me a great lesson: In the mid-1990s Lin began making work with master print- and papermakers, she
what being an artist meant, how real artists that displays her predilection for quotidian experimented freely, layering mediums,
in the US live, she has said. I realized that materials of contrasting textures; The embedding materials in wet paper pulp,
to be an artist you must first find your own Temptation of St. Theresa (1995) features embossing and debossing, and improvising
character, form your own opinions, and way cold cream and rough-hewn carpenters new techniques to achieve desired effects.
boxes. She also began using what would The Museum of Modern Art acquired pieces
1. Focus XV A. 2006. Lithograph
become her signature medium: undyed cotton from the resulting body of editioned and
and screenprint with thread. This material, familiar in her former unique works on paper, including Seeing
embossing, sheet 50 x 39 3/4" work in the textile industry, reminds her of Shadows VIII A (no. 2) and Focus XV A (no. 1).
(127 x 101 cm). Publisher and her childhood chore of winding thread into Like Lins wrapped still lifes, Seeing
printer: Singapore Tyler Print
balls for household sewing. It also has sym- Shadows VIII A addresses the growing and
Institute, Singapore. Edition:
20. The Museum of Modern bolic value: Thread can change the value of visible tension between traditional and
Art, New York. Fund for the things, turning the useful into the futile, and modern China. It is an image of one of Beijings
Twenty-First Century futile into useful. Thread can both collect and numerous hutongshistoric alleyways in
404 405
which people live, work, socialize, shop, and lines of text that appear on traditional land- alchemical sewing of fabric made flesh.
hang their washing out to dry. Blocks of scapes, a kind of poetic eulogizing of a In the pioneering body of work Lin made
hutongs are being razed to make way for new site that is disappearing before our eyes. in Singapore, each piece marks a different
development and construction, and many A similar kind of perceptual questioning experimental moment as the artist and her
remain inhabited in a state of extreme straining at a wisp of an imageis at work collaborators forged new techniques and
neglect and disrepair. The picture is faint, but in Focus XV A, part of an ongoing series processes, layering content through the
the eye grabs certain details: an abandoned Lin began in 2001 and continued in her manipulation of materials. In these works on
truck tire, a bit of graffiti on a crumbling brick Singapore residency. For each iteration paper, Lin continues to explore tradition and
wall, piles of refuse. The work draws on Sung Lin digitally alters a photograph of a friend, modernization, memory and reality, self and
Dynasty landscape painting (a.d. 9601280) family member, or herself, then often supple- identity, concepts that are at the core of her
but upends the tradition both literally and ments the image with thread, wire, or small practice. The evocative images demonstrate
figurativelymoving from a vertical to a clusters of fabric balls. Printed in the palest the conceptual complexity and nuance,
horizontal orientation, from a scenic natural grays on wet paper, the images resist the exceptional workmanship, and ghosted
view to urban detritus. Thread embedded in eyes attempts to bring them into focus, and beauty that have made her among the most
the paper holds together the fractured com- they become even more elusive the nearer acclaimed contemporary artists in China.
position (printed on four separate sheets of you are to them. But close viewing of Focus
paper) in a symbolic effort to mend or rebind XV A does reveal something new: hundreds of
a disappearing way of life. In both its calli- embossed impressions of needles, conjuring
graphic nature and its position, cascading visions of an acupuncture session gone awry,
down the paper, the thread suggests the an attack of tiny projectiles, or the artists
1. Lin Tianmiao, quoted in 2. Ibid., p. 17. 2. Seeing Shadows VIII A. 2006. Opposite:
Karen Smith, Lin Tianmiao, in 3. Lin, Seeing Shadows (Beijing: Lithograph and screenprint 3. The Proliferation of Thread
Non Zero (Beijing: Timezone 8, Timezone 8, 2007), n.p. with thread additions on Winding. 1995. White cotton
2004), p. 14. 4. Smith, Lin Tianmiao, p. 15. four sheets, overall 43 1/8" x thread, needles, monitor,
9' 11" (109.5 x 302.3 cm). video, bed, and rice paper,
The Museum of Modern Art, dimensions variable.
New York. Fund for the Collection the artist
Twenty-First Century
408 409
Opposite:
2. Janet Cardiff and George
Bures Miller. The Killing
Machine. 2007. Sound,
pneumatics, and robotics,
9' 10" x 13' 1" x 8' 2" (118 x 157
x 98 cm), 5 min. The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. Gift
of Julia Stoschek
movie and while we wouldnt want to see reach in from the sides. Inspired in part by automatically, The Killing Machine is not negative connotations. The positive use of
anybody killed, or to see real guns, we do go Franz Kafkas short story In the Penal complete until the button is pushed. In this notion becomes manifest each time
wanting to be scared. Its like rides. Were Colony (1914), this contraption appears to shifting this burden of responsibility from theater is threatened to be confused with
providing a relatively safe environment in be some sort of torture device recovered themselves and onto the participant life. 5 Confusing the boundaries between
which we can scare people.4 Creating this from our past or brought here from a dysto- who is made to play the role of Kafkas the spaces of representation and life is
safe environment for viewers allows them pian future. The work is silent at first, but executionerCardiff and Miller bring the Cardiff and Millers specialty. The participant
to engage with the unfolding action without this is only temporary. One is invited by a sign safely fictional space they have created is constantly jostled between the two, falling
consequence. to press a big red button, which jolts the into collision with the real world. into the artwork like Alice through the looking
The Killing Machine (2007, nos. 2 and 3), machine into action. Wailing like a siren, the Another interpretation of theatricality glass, not knowing which way is up.
1. Janet Cardiff, e-mails to the 3. Cardiff, quoted in Meeka (Paris: Bordas, 1991), p. 820;
a collaboration between Cardiff and Miller, motorized megaphone begins circling the may prove useful here. In the Dictionnaire author, April 17 and April 23, Walsh, Pleasure Principals: quoted in Virginie Magnat,
tests this premise. The work is overwhelm- work, and soon the robotic arms start exam- encyclopdique du thtre, Michel Corvin 2009. The Art of Janet Cardiff and Theatricality from the
ingly sculptural: within a metal armature sits ining and then drilling into a body that is writes that theatricality is both a value 2. Michael Fried, Art and George Bures Miller, Border Performative Perspective,
Objecthood, in Art and Object- Crossings 20, no. 2 (May 2001). SubStance 31, nos. 23 (2002):
an old dentists chair covered with pink furry absent but nonetheless suggested by the which one must aspire to and a pitfall of
hood: Essays and Reviews 4. Ibid. 148.
fabric; a mirrored disco ball and megaphone form of the chair. Unlike The Forty Part Motet, which one must beware. Indeed, this word (Chicago: University of Chicago 5. Michel Corvin, Dictionnaire
hang overhead; and two spindly metal arms which plays on loop and so begins and ends encompasses equally loaded positive and Press, 1998), p. 155. encyclopdique du thtre
Three sculptures, by three different artists, made within with the layers and contrasting metallic and black paint
two years of one another in the 1970s, share a number of obscuring the end of the passageway and creating the
commonalities, some obvious and factual, others implied sensation of contracting space and the illusion of walls
and ineffable.1 The first is an untitled 1976 work by closing in.
Mary Miss (nos. 2 and 3), created for an exhibition in The The second work, made for a Projects show the follow-
Museum of Modern Arts Projects series. The structure ing year, is Project Entitled Studies for a Town, by Alice
is large, made of plywood, unpainted on the exterior and Aycock (no. 1). It is an enormous round structure, also
painted black inside, elevated slightly off the floor. A viewer constructed of plywood and cut on a skew, as the artist
peering inside encounters a series of plywood screens, described it, to provide a birds eye view to reveal its
each painted silver on the front and black on the back and interior components.2 A double flight of stairs curves
edges, which are set at a ninety-degree angle from either around a cramped interior space, inside which a ladder
side of the interior and increase progressively in width, is propped, and a triangular slit at the front would allow
thus creating a narrowing passageway toward the back of a relatively small person to enter sideways. Inspired by
the work. No one can enter the sculptures interior; none- Roman amphitheaters and the eighteenth-century Jantar
theless it has a disorienting and claustrophobic effect, Mantar observatory in Delhi, this work resembles an
412 413
inhabitable place but is not actually one; like Misss artists in a difficult ideological position, for from the
untitled work, it tempts its viewers with intimacy and earliest days of their careers they have regularly (and
the possibility of entry while essentially blocking both. willingly) been included in exhibitions, books, and articles
The third, Jackie Winsors Burnt Piece (197778, devoted exclusively to women artists, an organizing
no. 4), is a cube made of wood and concrete, whichas principle that one could argue is inherently feminist. The
the title suggestshas been burned so completely as to question of whether such gender-based categorizations
render the interior gutted and the remaining elements are helpful (granting them exposure that they might not
charred, a mere shell of what was once a pristine structure. otherwise have had) or hurtful (ghettoizing them based
Although it is not nearly as large as Misss and Aycocks on their sex) is perennial and irresolvable, but it is an
sculptures, in its form (a cube with a windowlike opening issue that resonates powerfully in their work.
centered in each side) and heft (about 1,700 pounds) it For this reason, their sculpture provides compelling
resembles a destroyed house. Its ruined appearance and material for a case study on how women artists of the
scorched odor, still strong after thirty-plus years, evoke so-called feminist generationthe late 1960s and early
burned-out buildings and urban blight, while its geometric 1970s, when the womens movement was at its peak
form calls on the long history of abstract sculpture. have navigated issues of gender in relation to their work.
Since the early 1970s, when Aycock, Miss, and Winsor Although Aycocks, Misss, and Winsors careers have
all began their careers, they have often been grouped been distinguished and their art was especially well
together under a number of broad and often homogenizing received, exhibited, and publicized during the 1970s and
rubrics, including Post-Minimalism, land art, architectural 1980sas MoMAs support with its Projects series during
art, Neo-Constructivism, site-specific art, and sculpture this time demonstratesthey are rarely incorporated into
in the expanded field, as well as, in certain instances, histories of 1970s art.5 (Still, because their work fit within
Minimalism, Conceptualism, public art, and feminist art.3 the modernist tradition of abstraction, it may have been
Such terms apply to these artists unequally at best, and more palatable to mainstream art institutions, such as
some dont apply at all. To categorize their work as feminist MoMA, than explicity feminist art of the 1970s, which
is particularly problematic; even today it remains unclear until recently such institutions rarely exhibitied or col-
what the term feminist art means. (Art made by self- lected.) Their renown has never approached that of many
proclaimed feminists? Art that deals directly with femi- of their male contemporaries, whose objectives defined
ninity, gender, or sexuality? Art made during the historical the discourse around contemporary art and on whose
height of the feminist movement, in the 1970s? Art made work most of the aforementioned categories are based.
by women, period?) 4 Nevertheless the early sculpture by these three women
Aycock, Miss, and Winsor have maintained particu- represents an important moment in the art of that period,
larly complicated relationships with feminism as a political distinguished by a set of circumstances and objectives
or artistic imperative. Coming of age during the late 1960s quite distinct from those of, for example, Donald Judd,
and 1970s, they identified strongly with the contemporary Robert Morris, and Robert Smithson. It mined new
counterculture and were politically active, particularly in territory in the relationship between the body, space, and
the burgeoning womens movement. But all three hesitate sculptural form, exploring the physical and the psycholog-
to label their work feminist, arguing that it does not address ical impact upon viewers and raising the difficult question
issues of gender and should be judged without regard to of whether this workthe result of intense physical
4. Jackie Winsor (American,
born Canada 1941). Burnt their sex. This stance, though irrefutable, has left these labor by the artists, and thus reflections of the scale and
Piece. 197778. Cement, burnt
wood, and wire mesh, 33 7/8 x
34 x 34" (86.1 x 86.4 x 86.4 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art,
414 MIND, BODY, SCULPTURE New York. Gift of Agnes Gund SCHWARTZ 415
strength of the artists own, specific bodiesmight also liberating. The guys were still guys, but they were losing There can be little doubt that gender played a sig- This leaves open the more difficult question of whether
be considered in some way gendered, like those bodies some of their sheen. Women were out there, they just nificant role in the development of their careers. Their gender issues are evident in their work. The very choice
themselves. picked up the hammer and they did it. There was some- professional successes would not have been possible of creating monumentally scaled, laboriously constructed
Although women artists of that generation are fre- thing going on. 7 without the progress achieved by the womens movement sculpture could be considered feminist, since most middle-
quently grouped together arbitrarily, with few unifying The eras sociopolitical shifts had a profound effect and its reverberations within the art world. These changes class women of their generation had been raised to eschew
threads apart from the fact of their gender, Aycocks, on their artistic philosophies. Miss and Winsor were brought new opportunities for women artists to exhibit both professional careers and demanding physical labor.
Misss, and Winsors sculpture of this period supports especially active in political causes, regularly attending the and had an effect on art education as well: Aycock, Miss, But the work of Aycock, Miss, and Winsor explores a rela-
the conventional wisdom about its similarities. It tends to womens consciousness-raising meetings that developed and Winsor were among the few women in their under- tionship to issues of gender that is far more sophisticated
be constructedmade with physical labor and industrial out of the Art Workers Coalition. These gatherings, graduate and graduate art programs, and they and their and complex, and its crux lies in the dynamic between
materialsusually of wood and nails, as well as concrete, initially organized in various lofts by critic and activist contemporaries were among the first women to be actively sculpture and the human body.
rope, twine, and mesh, and is likewise architectural in Lucy R. Lippard, gave rise to such projects as the 1970 recruited to teach in art schools in the early 1970s; prior By the time they completed art school, the importance
nature, with forms echoing those of buildings and some- march on the Whitney Museum of American Art (and to this period, there were very few female art professors.9 of the body in Minimalist sculpture had already been estab-
times allowing entry to viewers. All three artists make other key art-world protests, including at MoMA), the But despite the historical moment, they wished to be lished, thanks primarily to Morriss Notes on Sculpture
work both for the gallery and the landscape, probing the Womens Slide Registry, the Heresies Collective and jour- judged as artists rather than as women artists; First and articles, which he published from 1966 to 1969 and in
relationship between inside and outside, and frequently nal (both cofounded by Miss), and plans for a number of foremost, Im an artist, Aycock said, regardless of the which he argued for a new form of large-scale sculpture.
between indoors and outdoors. Each artist makes sculpture all-women exhibitions. Several of these exhibitions were bias and the prejudice. . . . Its not that my work isnt Traditional sculptures, he asserted, were useless three-
that depends on a series of physical relationships, first organized by Lippard, the first of which was her landmark informed by my experience as a woman, and by my being dimensional objects with sizes [on] a continuum between
between the work and the artist who constructed it and Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists, at The Aldrich a woman and by living in a womans body. Im sure it is. the monument and the ornament, provoking emotional
then between the work and the viewer who experiences it. Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut, But when people look at my work, they see the work, they responses from the viewer: monuments, at larger than
The circumstantial connections between them are in 1971. Dedicated to emerging artists who had not yet dont say, Oh, shes a woman and she does this. 10 But human scale, overwhelm, while ornaments, smaller,
also strong. They have known each other for most of their had solo exhibitions in New York, this show helped launch sexism within the art world was rampant and insidious create intimacy. Morris thought such emotionalism
working lives; Aycock and Winsor first met at Rutgers Aycocks, Misss, and Winsors careers. during this era. There was a great deal of overt discrimi- anathema to advanced art, and he believed that sculpture
University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where the former This community of women artists constituted for nation, and all three artists faced bias and condescension must be perceived with the physical body rather than the
was an undergraduate and the latter a graduate student in Aycock, Miss, and Winsor a source of support and com- in the reception of their work. Even attempts by some psychological mind, with the body [entering] into the total
the late 1960s, and then became better acquainted while fort that each of them had previously lacked, particularly critics to theorize their work from what was presented as continuum of sizes and [establishing] itself as a constant
moving in overlapping social circles in the downtown New in art school. The community was not without its internal a feminist perspective ultimately did it a disservice, such on that scale. Minimalist work, [falling] between the
York art scene of the early 1970s. All three were involved politics, particularly evident in the promotion, by some as April Kingsleys 1978 article, Six Women at Work in extremes of this size continuum with its approximately
in transforming Manhattans formerly industrial down- members, of essential feminine imagery in art by women. the Landscape, in which she made the essentialist obser- human scale, demanded a new perceptual model, one in
town into the artistic enclaves that came to be known as The interests of these three artists, however, tended more vation that male earthworks are public objects that which the body and the sculpture were roughly the same
SoHo and TriBeCa, and their interest and proficiency in toward the abstract than the representational; none wished externalize the values of society in the traditional ways art size and scale. Although Morris conceded that certain
constructed sculpture owed much to their experience in explicitly to address issues of gender or sexuality and has always done, whereas the womens works are private variables could affect a viewers bodily perceptionhe
converting former factories into live/work lofts; Aycock resisted the call to do so. Miss reflected, There were so places made for interiorizing values and universal experi- himself is establishing relationships as he apprehends the
recalled that we all had to build our own spaces. . . . You many of us who were feminists and who were artists but ences.11 The degree to which sexism may have curtailed object from various positions and under varying conditions
just did it because you didnt have a choice. Otherwise who didnt accept a particular imagery. At the time, there the professional success of Aycock, Miss, and Winsor is of light and spatial contexthe assumed the viewer
you wouldnt have walls around your bathroom. 6 The do- were people around saying, If you are a feminist artist, you impossible to assess; all three artists feel that their work (himself) a constant: a universal human body of a
it-yourself spirit of the downtown scene also influenced need to be using a particular kind of imagery. You need to never achieved the same prominenceor pricesas that uniform size and shape.12
their view of making art. According to Aycock, For a be using a particular kind of material. I already had men of some (though not all) of their male counterparts, but Morriss theories owed an immense debt to French
young woman, it was a very invigorating time. You felt telling me what to do, so I certainly wasnt going to have they also acknowledge other possible factors, including the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Pontys principles of
like you could probably do anything you wanted. Very anybody tell me what the restrictions were going to be. 8 difficulty of collecting large-scale sculpture. phenomenology, which hold that perception occurs
In a 1992 article appearing in the New York Times on the People associate artists with doing things origi-
occasion of his first retrospectiveheld at the Whitney nal, he says. Heres someone who calls you up
Museum of American Art and organized by Lisa Phillips and says, I want to do your work. I thought Jeez,
Richard Prince complains about women on a number of I havent heard that one before. Ms. Levine, for
counts.1 For one thing, he claims, his peer group from the her part, says, I know that Richard thinks I get all
late 1970s onward (predominantly female artists), as well my ideas from him.
as their supporters (predominantly female critics), came
to have little tolerance for what they saw as his willfully Unlikely as it might seem, I begin my essay with this
ambiguous, purposefully shocking, and politically ambiva- quick look back at Prince in the early 1990sjust as he
lent work. I got kicked out of the womens club, Prince was ascending to a newfound level of famein order to
says, referring to the negative reaction he garnered in consider a triangulation among feminism, artistic practice,
1983 from writer Kate Linker, along with other previous and theoretical discourse as they manifested during the
advocates, when he infamously exhibited an appropriated late 1970s and 1980s. For even if the story in question
image, originally taken by Gary Gross, of a naked, oiled, seems totally in keeping with what we now know of
and made-up prepubescent Brooke Shields. (Prince titled Princes coy persona and penchant for crafting malleable
the work Spiritual America and hung it briefly the following narratives, we are nonetheless also provided here with an
year in his short-lived fake gallery on Rivington Street on exceptional clue to the rapidly morphing vicissitudes of
New Yorks Lower East Side.)2 But perhaps more startling meaning around those visual tactics linked in the early
than this stark admission that both his career and, it seems, days of postmodernism to criticalityappropriation,
his feelings were so affected by these art-world women repetition, and intertextuality primary among them.
whom he obviously considered more successful and out- Indeed, if Prince in this interview was so ready to display
spoken than heis another story he tells here, taking aim a personal drive to be seen as the progenitor of appropria-
specifically at Sherrie Levine. The article, by Paul Taylor, tive procedures (a seeming oxymoron), it was not because
a committed commentator on contemporary art who he felt any kinship to what had been argued up to that
died of AIDS-related illness later that year, recounts point by many to be appropriations most valuable faculty:
Princes grievance: that of undoing any pretense to (and in fact laying bare
fictions of) mastery. Rather, and quite to the contrary,
After seeing his work in an exhibition in 1979, Princes sentiments reveal that heretofore critical tactics
according to Mr. Prince, the intense young artist such as appropriation were by the early 1990s already
Sherrie Levine called him and asked how he had understood in terms of styleand so much so that he felt
done his photographs and whether she could no compunction (or embarrassment) about picking a bone
use the idea. Nonchalantly, he said he wouldnt with Levine about originality when it came to the two
1. Barbara Kruger (American, mind. Years later, after Ms. Levine had stolen artists respective associations with appropriation as such.
born 1945). Untitled (You
the appropriation spotlight and amassed greater In this sense, it seems to me that Levines response to
Invest in the Divinity of
the Masterpiece). 1982. critical acclaim, he is less cool about her call. Princes accusation is tellingly pointed. She stole stealing
Photostat, 71 3/4 x 45 5/8"
(182.2 x 115.8 cm). The
Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Acquired through
an Anonymous Fund 429
from me, says the male artist. Why, of course he could see her own critical interventions (advocacy and critique alike) subjector those subjectsare being taken up today, Global Feminisms (which took up contemporary practices,
things no other way, replies the female artist. If Princes could be usurped to market ends and tastemaking codas. how they are being motivated to perform (to represent which is to say the 1990s to the present) was precisely
work, that is, had once been understood to participate in Solomon-Godeau was, of course, responding directly themselves) historically in the present. what we might call the eighties. Conversely, although
a kind of larger shared project, whereby a group of young to a context that feels to us now at once historical and yet This I mean quite literally. Writing this essay in there is some mention of feminism in The Pictures
artists could be seen as subverting notions of authorship, eerily near at hand: the final years of the Reagan era, late 2009 means that the widely discussed exhibitions Generationand certainly visual evidence of it in the
ownership, and access, it might be the case thatfor Prince defined as they were by a level of extreme political reac- (WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution and Global works compiledthe real impact and driving force of
at leastthe death of the author simply enumerated a tion (as the author puts it) coupled with media saturation Feminisms, at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los feminist discourse (and of theory overall) is itself vastly
counterintuitive reinscription of authority. unlike anything America had experienced before.5 That Angeles, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, respectively) underplayed.7 In fact, the exhibition locates the temporal
Such internal tensions at the heart of advanced art she goes so far as to borrow for her essays subtitle The and events (The Feminist Future symposium at The end point of its inquiry, 1984, at precisely the moment
of the period were considered and debated almost from its Great Communicators brand of economic rhetoric shows Museum of Modern Art) of 2007, the year of feminism, when such a topic would be too forceful to ignore:
inception. For instance, in one pivotal essay, Living with a kind of commitment to seeing the logic of the art world as it has been called by some, have settled into a kind of Difference: On Representation and Sexuality, the ground-
Contradictions: Critical Practices in the Age of Supply-Side as inextricably linked with that of the times politics. Near near past (or just passed)still an area of discussion but breaking exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary
Aesthetics (1987), Abigail Solomon-Godeau highlights the end of her piece, Solomon-Godeau makes her stakes no longer quite so pressingly immediate. In addition, Art, New York, which took up precisely the questions one
the urgency of constantly reassessing the changing con- clear: For if we accept the importance of specificity as Prince (once the self-professed underdog) had a major feels lurking everywhere in Eklunds show, opened late
text in which images and discourses are positioned.3 It is a condition of critical practice, we are thrown into the career retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim that year.8 That showwhose limber focus was neither
not enough for an artist or critic, she warns, to turn time specifics of our own conditions and circumstances in the Museum in New York in 2007, for which his work from appropriation nor feminism per seclaimed its ter-
and again to those aesthetic or theoretical operations that sphere of culture.6 The gist, then, is deceptively simple the last three decades coiled up the buildings rotunda rain to be triangulated by the terms sexuality, meaning,
have in the past supported oppositional work; in fact, and ruefully hard to perform: how to stay ever-alert to and culminated in recent, large paintings that took their and language and included a number of works (and many
such unflagging allegiances risk blind conservatism and the ways in which seemingly static images (and histories) cue equally from Willem de Kooning and porn magazines. more artists) now in MoMAs collection, Dara Birnbaums
might onlyand unwittinglyrender effects once radical are perpetually retooled by the new situations that receive (One had the feeling that the artist was less interested 197879 Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman
into comfortable, consumable things and ideologies. To them, into which they are literally handed down? in showing his oeuvres progression than in arguing for (page 364, no. 9) and Roslers 1977 Vital Statistics of a
demonstrate her point, Solomon-Godeaus overtly politi- The question is relevant not only to our understand- a totally new historical routing for it.) And, finally, in Citizen, Simply Obtained (no. 2) among them.9
cal, avowedly feminist tract takes up the evolution of ing of individual artworks but also to our approach to and 2009, there was a large-scale, eagerly awaited exhibition, When considering the implications of what might be
postmodernist photography, outlining the ways in which construction of art historyand it would seem all the more curator Douglas Eklunds The Pictures Generation, 1974 seen as omissions (but are perhaps more accurately char-
different artists work registered delicately within para- pertinent to this particular subject of art and feminist 1984 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the least likely acterized as framing decisions), it is important, I think,
digms (art world, medium-specific, gallery, museum, discourse during the 1980s, since there is, after all, a kind venue, one might argue)the first attempt to plot histori- to follow the feminist art historian and urban theorist
mass-cultural, academic) that they initially troubled but of self-reflexivity at stake here. For I was struck, when cally the early works and operations of a group of artists Rosalyn Deutsches disavowal of viewing periods such as
eventually transformed, rendering their contours more approaching what my authors contract for this essay whose entry into the canon came swiftly during the early the eighties via temporal modalities. Discussing, among
accommodating in every sense of the word. Indeed, she describes as the general topic of art and feminism in the 1980s via critics like Hal Foster, Douglas Crimp, and other things, WACK! and Global Feminisms in an important
suggests, a number of important, left-leaning practitioners 1980s, by the degree to which there has been a rush of late Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, but whose impact over time has, roundtable published in spring 2008 in the journal Grey
insisting on a certain conception of political artthe to fully ensconce various sets of received ideas about this arguably, yet to be evaluated. That theseand other Room (titled Feminist Time: A Conversation), Deutsche
critic singles out a text by Martha Roslerwere at risk of topic and less evidence than one might expect of alter surveys and evaluations of what might seem merely over- proposes that we consider the 1980s not as a literal
rendering themselves incapable of experiencing new forms native, or at least competing, narratives. Perhaps better lapping terrain are happening in close proximity is of no decade but as a formation of ideas and practices that
and aspects of critical art (perhaps as yet difficult to make said, at just the moment when ideas of both the eighties small interest, since just how variations of feminism transgresses chronological boundaries.10 In proposing
sense of or quantify) that would respond to the local, and second-wave feminism have seemingly come to frui- register and are recognized both in histories of art of the such a distinction, Deutsche argues against the common
evolving terms of their own time and place.4 Solomon- tion as plausible historical periods (or at least topics for eighties and within feminist history itself is the crucial oversimplification that the eighties ushered in an all-
Godeau is not only concerned here about the ways in historical study), their contours feel already strikingly question at hand. Indeed, I am not the first to point out encompassing turn away from the ostensibly more imme-
which artistic counterstrategies were ultimately ushered established. In other words, to look back at this particular that what tended to fall out between WACK! (whose diate, corporeal, and instinctual work of the 1960s and
into institutions but is also acutely aware of how even subject is to also look closely at the ways in which that parameters were the late 1960s through the 70s) and 70s and a turn toward the academic, the theoretical and
During the summer of 1991 Kathleen Hanna, Molly There has been a tremendous increase in such titles since
Neuman, T0bi Vail, and Allison Wolfe, friends who knew the 1970s, and during this period women have played a
each other from the underground college-music scenes of considerable role in cultivating this platform and inten-
Olympia, Washington, and Eugene, Oregon, converged sifying its usefulness in challenging the status quo.
in Washington, D.C., and put down the bedrock of the The material featured here, all from the collection of
Riot Grrrl revolution. Hungry to establish spaces and The Museum of Modern Art Library, touches on some
networks in which women could act, dress, and create as of the defining issues of the postmodern era: heightened
they pleased, these women and their many collaborators scrutiny of the art establishment, renewed emphasis on
shaped a movement that would be highly influential in the collective activity, questioning of fixed gender identities,
landscape of late-twentieth-century American feminism. and opposition to the social conditioning of the individual
Unlike the protests of the 1960s and 70s, which largely in an oppressive commercial environment. These works
squared off with sexual discrimination and economic supply an opportunity to consider the many varied path-
inequality, the Riot Grrrl movement grew out of music ways of creative production not always foregrounded in
and art circles and consequently focused on the creative the story of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art.
expression of women-positive ideas. With a heritage that includes politics, journalism,
Along with punk rock music, the self-published literature, music, and visual arts, the zine became an apt
zinea small booklet of collaged drawings, photographs, setting for the convergence of dissenting creative and
and texts photocopied for distributionserved as the political assertions by women. During the French and
primary form for the expression of the Riot Grrrls American Revolutions, oppositional pamphlets and broad-
dissonance, and Bikini Kill, Girl Germs, and Jigsaw, among sides (single-sheet publications) were created by private
many others, placed the visual arts at the heart of their individuals who owned movable-type presses, and the
raucous approach (no. 1). Since the 1990s the format has practice continued into the early twentieth century with
become an immensely popular outlet for an international socialist and anarchist interest groups hoping to sway
community of radical women artists connected by a vast international opinion.3 The appearance of the self-
network.1 Situating Riot Grrrl publications at the center produced and self-distributed booklet in visual-art
of this scene, I will examine a selection of zines by women practice during the last fifty years has brought with it an
in the years preceding, including, and following the out- implicit interrogation of the status quo and established
put of the Riot Grrrl movement, an era that spans thirty power structures; modest printed matter has not only
years of highly transgressive projects originating on those circumvented an increasingly commercial and exclusion-
printed pages. ary art market but has also accommodated the shift
Zineshortened from magazineis an evolving from object to idea advanced through Conceptual and
1. Left to right: b. Kathleen Hanna (American, c. Molly Neuman (American,
a. Kathleen Hanna (American, born 1968). Billy Karren born 1971). Allison Wolfe moniker, but it has come to refer loosely to noncommer- performance art.4
born 1968). Billy Karren (American, born 1965). (American, born 1969). Girl cial, nonprofessional, small-circulation magazines which The content of zines, like that of the science fiction
(American, born 1965). Tobi Tobi Vail (American, born Germs, no. 5. c. 199394.
Vail (American, born 1969). 1969). Kathi Wilcox (American, Photocopy, page 8 1/2 x 7"
their creators produce, publish, and distribute by them- and rock n roll fanzines from which they are descended,
Kathi Wilcox (American, born born 1969). Bikini Kill: A Color (21.6 x 17.8 cm). Cover by selves, usually with the aim of putting forward radical is largely provided by readers, but often the zines aim is
1969). Bikini Kill: Girl Power, and Activity Book, no. 1. 1991. Miss Pussycat (American,
and often personalcultural and social production.2 to dismantle the commercial system that begat the fan in
no. 2. 1991. Photocopy, page Photocopy, page 8 1/2 x 7" born 1969). The Museum of
8 1/2 x 5 1/2" (21.6 x 14 cm). (21.6 x 17.8 cm). Cover by Modern Art Library, New York
Cover by Hanna. The Museum Hanna. The Museum of
of Modern Art Library, New York Modern Art Library, New York
444 445
the first place.5 Moreover, as Stephen Duncombe, who has with a pitchfork, and other grotesques. Banana maintained 2.
a. Anna Banana (Canadian,
made an in-depth study of zines, has observed of this an inflammatory relationship with her readers, as evidenced born 1940). Bill Gaglione
collaborative function, The medium of zines is not just in the introduction to the first issue, which blasts, O.K. (American, born 1943). Vile,
a message to be received, but a model of participatory Here it is. I hope youre satisfied. As editor-in-chief of no. 1. 1974 (dated 1985).
Offset with offset wrap cover,
cultural production and organization to be acted upon this project, all I can say is dont bother sending me any page 8 1/2 x 11" (21.6 x 27.9 cm).
that is, the network is essential to the zines production, more of this shit.13 All sorts of personal and social taboos The Museum of Modern Art
Library, New York
meaning, and distribution.6 Such focus on interconnec are tested within Viles pages, which are sullied, thanks b. (left page) Genesis
tivity has a precedent in the correspondence art, or mail to readers and Bananas artist friends, with brazen dirty P-Orridge (British, born 1950).
art, of the 1960s and 70s, when artists sent each other jokes, absurdist decrees, and surreal collages of drawing, (right page) Robin Klassnik
(British, born South Africa
works by post, all in the spirit of liberated transmission photography, and print. 1947). Spread from Vile, no. 1.
and reciprocal exchange.7 Anyone with a stamp could Banana claimed as influences Dada humor, theories of 1974 (dated 1985). Offset,
11 x 16" (27.9 x 40.6 cm).
enter the dialogue, so correspondence art certainly offered therapeutic madness, and the blissed-out bohemia afoot The Museum of Modern Art
more points of entry for women, and its marginal position in the Bay Area during the 1960s and early 70s, but Viles Library, New York
provided space to explore provocative themes that might nihilist tenor dovetailed with the hard-boiled punk atti-
not have been otherwise permissible.8 The DIY (do-it- tude on the rise in Britain and the United States at the
yourself) ethic, democratic and inclusive, would not time.14 The presence of the British art collective COUM
have been possible without the advent of the affordable Transmissions in the zines pages offered one such bridge
and accessible printing processes developed since from the peacenik to the punk. This evolving enterprise,
the 1960s, especially mimeograph or ditto machines anchored by core members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey
and photocopiers.9 Fanni Tutti, pursued large, central, universal issues such
Canadian artist Anna Banana, who founded Vile in as sexuality, death, life, decay, definitions of space, and
1974, was one woman who gravitated to these democra- the nature of authority in society, and explored them
tized technologies.10 She has explained that [Vile] began through the adoption of the non-universal behavior of
at Speedprint, a small instant-print shop in San Francisco the deviant.15 P-Orridge, Tutti, and their collaborators
where it became apparent to me that anyone could be a used a visceral and unnerving immediacy and a taste for
publisher.11 Vile, distributed through the correspondence all things forbidden in order to annihilate reality and
network, through which Banana had many ties, is a its imposed codes, scrambling received notions of self,
combination of art, poetry, fiction, letters, photos, and life, and art by taking on pseudonyms, experimenting
manipulated advertisements from Life magazine. It is a with appearance and behavior, and moving between music,
predominantly visual publication, engaging critically performance, and the production of objects.16
with the inundation of mediated pictures that come out Their unique collages, mailed to Banana as gifts of
of the organs of mass communication. Vile came out of not art, were reproduced in Vile, continuing this trans-
my wanting the magazine to reflect the negative, anti- gressive project; according to P-Orridge they felt Vile
social aspects of humanity, Banana has said, and her cover gave them carte blanche to be more tasteless and provoc-
designs do just that, with the inaugural issue depicting ative.17 Two submissions, photo-collaged, rubber-stamped
artist and industrial musician Monte Cazazza bloodied montages representing the activities of the fictitious
from extracting his own heart (no. 2a).12 Subsequent covers LEcole de lart infantile (no. 2b), the creation of COUM
feature a naked man dangling in a noose, a face pierced Transmissions and frequent collaborator Robin Klassnik,
3. Left to right: were printed in the first issue of of oppression and abuse, which had been muted by the
a. Anna Banana (Canadian,
Vile; at this imagined school British authorities; operating her zine on the fringes of
born 1940). Bill Gaglione
(American, born 1943). Vile: everyone was the director/ the art world, she was able to reclaim this imagery for the
Fe-Mail Art, no. 6. 1978. principal and there were no stu- artists and redeploy their radical intent.
Offset, page 10 x 7" (25.4 x
17.8 cm). The Museum of
dents, thereby abolishing aca- The punk and postpunk milieu and its music fanzines
Modern Art Library, New York demic formulas and promoting provided fertile ground for photographer and musician
b. (left page) COUM
amateurism in the arts.18 An Barbara Ess to establish Just Another Asshole, in 1978,
Transmissions (Britain,
19691976). (right page) issue devoted to fe-mail art amidst the buzz of New Yorks No Wave scene. Having
Cosey Fanni Tutti (British, includes the press release for returned to her hometown in 1976 after studying film
born 1951). Spread from Vile:
Fe-Mail Art, no. 6. 1978.
COUMs infamous exhibition abroad, Ess found herself in a surge of activity in the
Offset, 10 x 13 1/2" (25.4 x Prostitution alongside a portrait makeshift studios and alternative spaces and clubs of
34.3 cm). The Museum of
of Tutti (no. 3); in 1974 Tutti SoHo and the Lower East Side. It was a mutable web of
Modern Art Library, New York
began to model for pinup maga- collaborations, where inspired individuals jumped in and
zines, and she subsequently out of bands, organized fleeting exhibitions, and contrib-
incorporated explicit images of herself into COUMs work uted to each others compilations of poetry and prose,
as part of a larger project, articulating instances of exploi- all in a frenetic drive to revolutionize the structures of
tation in the art world and in society in general. During art and life. Ess, like many others, juggled simultaneous
Prostitutions run, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts projects, dabbling in sound, photography, film, writing,
in London, photographs by Tutti similar to those appear- performance, and noisy amalgams of all four. Composer
ing in Vile were the center of a national controversy over Glenn Branca joined Ess in the bands Daily Life and
public funding of indecent art and were consequently The Static, and together they coedited later issues of
made available only upon request. By making the images Just Another Asshole, which, like Vile, took its shape
visible in Vile, Banana reactivated COUMs interrogation from open submissions. The third issue had solicited
Consider a portrait in which an amalgam of techniques informed collage and assemblage in Cubist and Surrealist
from old-fashioned photogravure to chine coll and practices during the first decades of the twentieth century,
engraving done by a tattoo machine, with additions of and it articulates a critical message about gender and race
plasticine, pomade, glitter, toy googly eyeballs, and imi- by redefining or reenacting identity through performance.
tation ice cubesreflects the role of ornamentation in Collage and papier coll first emerged as fine-art
African American culture. Or a funky Janus-style sculpture, strategies in 1912 Cubist works by Pablo Picasso and
assembled from ready-made and handmade parts, of an Georges Braque, as audacious forms of anti-painting or
androgynous mannequin bearing the mask of a heroic plausibly as tactics to invigorate painting. In the same
leader on the back of its head. Or a collage, assembled year Picasso also began his three-dimensional assem-
from pizza-parlor advertisements, of a womans alter ego blages of diverse found materials. His Still Life with Chair
rendered as a famous male soccer player. Or a photographic Caninga rope framing a piece of oilcloth adorned with a
self-portrait in which the artists adult eyes gaze out from photomechanically printed chair-caning patternengages
behind a silicone mask modeled in her own adolescent the play between object and image. The Surrealists, in
image. However dissimilar in look, materials, and affect, the following decade, extolled the properties of these
these worksby the artists Ellen Gallagher, Rachel new mediums: their aesthetic impurity, accidental mark-
Harrison, Sarah Lucas, and Gillian Wearing, respectively making, criture automatique, and semantic plasticity. At
probe issues of selfhood, mimesis, minstrelsy, and the the same time the authority of pure painting was being
representation of oneself as another. challenged by photography, which in the 1920s became
They also share an artistic strategy informed by collage, synonymous with the anti-art connotations of photo-
montage, and assemblage-type techniques that usurp, montage (the term montage comes from the German
denaturalize, fragment, and reconstruct the subject. Each montieren, meaning to engineer).2 This was a moment
artist invites us to question whether the subject of por- particularly propitious for the emergence of women pho-
traiture, the I of the work, is singular or plural, thus tographers. As some critics suggest, photography offered
addressing the lability of identity.1 Many of these artists access to a new vision, along with a technical apparatus
contemporaries (such as Lucy McKenzie, Wangechi Mutu, for image production that displaced male virtuosity and
Shahzia Sikander, Lin Tianmiao, and Kara Walker) have manual skill as the exclusive measures of artistic identity.3
also queried societal definitions of femininity, beauty, and The experimentation that took place at the fringes of
dress, as well as class, race, and ethnicity, but the work of modernism defined the period as much as the well-known
these four effectively suggests activities taking place at its center. Yet if the early uses
1. Ellen Gallagher (American, that the enduring trope of of collage, montage, and cut-paper assemblage expanded
born 1965). Skinatural. 1997.
woman as representation has the notion of what art is by tapping non-art materials
Oil, pencil, and plasticine on
magazine page, 13 1/4 x 10" gained new focus, one with and creative free association, the outcome was still largely
(33.7 x 25.4 cm). The Museum intentions of its own: it bids associated with male inventiveness at the expense of work
of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James R.
farewell to chance and auto- by women artists. Conversely, the reemergence of collage
Hedges IV matism, the concepts that and assemblage techniques in the twenty-first century has
462 463
had little to do with the vast array of foreign materials or colonialist ideas as well as European gender definitions. identity. Ellen Gallaghers elegant, labor-intensive paint-
with the random expressions of the unconscious mind. It The theatricality of these new forms of portraiture ings and collages pointedly refer to the myths of racist
is less the differences in materials that create differences and self-portraiture would pave the way for the feminist lore perpetuated through stereotypes.6 Her interest in
in intention than the ways in which those materials are performances of the early 1970s, when the womens liber- crossing language with performance began when she was
used, by whom, and in what context. The impetus to work ation movement took center stage. Through performance studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in
with collage is now a kind of antithesis to heroic individu- the concept of woman could be debated, an idea com Boston, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She became
alism and, quite often, the expression of a lost faith in the plicated by class, ethnicity, sexual inclination, and other involved with the Dark Room Collective, an activist
ideal unity, or synthesis of personality, that the traditional facets of identity, and this attitude was in turn adopted by community of artists that began, in 1988, as a group of
Cubist portraitdespite its overlaying, broken planes artists working in other mediums. Cindy Shermans self- African American writers who wanted to create a place
and unusual perspectivesintended to convey. transformations in her black-and-white Untitled Film to read their poetry and stories. The writings of some
There were precedents for this new kind of work, Stills (197780) and her color photographs of mannequin of its authors, such as Kevin Young, Thomas Sayers Ellis,
starting in the years around 1918, when the Nineteenth body parts from the 1980s and 1990s paid scrupulous and Samuel R. Delany, illuminated Gallaghers own
Amendment was passed in the United States, granting attention to the artifice of masqueradethat is, to the considerations of racial representation.7
women the right to vote. Given the changing status of production of womanliness as a mask that can be worn, In her collages, made on pages taken from black
women in society, it is hardly surprising that portraits of removed, or replaced. magazines published during the Civil Rights Movement,
women, often conceived by women, took on added signifi- Correspondences between interwar and contemporary from the 1950s to the 1970sincluding Ebony, Our World,
cance. Photography scholar Monika Faber has noted that artistic practices were also reflected in the psychoanalytic Sepia, and Black StarsGallagher creates a sense of history
female photographers in particular used the portrait to precursors of current gender theories. Writing in 1929, and transformation. She masks the eyes or paints over
try out ideas that had yet to become fully accepted in real in response to Sigmund Freuds postulate that primary the faces of black models and adds her signature caricatural
life.4 The mordant Dada photomontages of Hannah Hch bisexuality complicates gender formation, psychoanalyst marks, disrupting the signifiers that have naturalized black
and Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob), two witty observers of Joan Riviere noted that womanliness could be assumed popular culture, fashion, and race (in this case, a lineup of
the multifaceted, often conflicting sociopolitical conditions and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of mas- wigs and cosmetics) and creating new models of African
of the 1920s, made significant contributions to revising culinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found American portraiture.8 2. Umbo (Otto Umbehr) farcical, completely effacing or
(German, 19021980). Ruth
the representation of gender. Placing a protofeminist spin to possess itmuch as a thief will turn out his pockets The image of shadowed or masked eyes was a common even distorting the very terms
with Mask. 1927. Gelatin
on the concept of the neue Frau or femme nouvellethe and ask to be searched to prove that he has not stolen the theme in portraits of the New Woman in the 1920s, with of representation, a distortion
silver print, 7 x 5 1/16" (17.8 x
emancipated New Woman of Weimar Germany and Third goods. The reader may not ask how I define womanliness some of its earliest representations in pictures taken by 12.9 cm). The Metropolitan accentuated by minuscule marks
Museum of Art, New York.
Republic France, crossing class, ethnic, and gender bound- or where I draw the line between genuine womanliness and Bauhaus photographer Umbo (Otto Umbehr) of the actress Gilman Collection, Alfred
of racist caricature, such as
ariesHchs and Cahuns practices deliberately over- the masquerade. My suggestion is not, however, that there Ruth Landshoff (1927, no. 2). As an actress (she played Stieglitz Society Gifts popping eyeballs, that percolate
turned codified mannerisms to experiment with what is any such difference; whether radical or superficial, they the second female lead in F. W. Murnaus Nosferatu [1922]) along the full right side of the
Arthur Rimbaud called Je est un autre (I is another). Cahun are the same thing.5 However different their approaches, Landshoff knew how to play on the artifice of expression magazine page. These shorthand signs look abstract from
cross-dressed, shaving her head and posing in male attire Cahun, Hch, and Sherman understood womanliness to elicit a response. In Umbos tightly framed shot of her a distance, but on closer scrutiny they are revealed to be
varying from that of a stylish dandy to a conventionally to be a construct from start to finish. Their persistence masked face, undoubtedly inspired by close-ups in silent stock derogatory emblems of black minstrelsy. Gallagher
suited civil servant, but she also fashioned a feminine in exploring the construction of identity through gender motion pictures, her sensual features are dramatized in has noted that these disembodied eyes . . . refer to per-
persona using the artifice of dress, makeup, and masks. playlike Orlando, the titular character in Virginia Woolfs starkly contrasting blacks and whites. Yet as art historian formance, to bodies you cannot see, floating hostage in
Hchs politics, intertwined with race and ethnography, are 1928 novel, they took on different roles and embodied Herbert Molderings has noted, Landshoffs mask sets the electric black of the minstrel stage.10
well represented in her provocative photomontages from both sexeslargely informed the contemporary practices the stage for a tender, erotic drama. . . . [Her] look is alert In his 1952 novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison drama-
the 1920s and 1930s. With cutout pictures of Weimar of performance and role-playing that followed. and full of spirit, mysterious and seductive, open and tized the social and intellectual issues that transformed
women combined with those of tribal sculptures, Hch In the last two decades artists have expanded the self-confident.9 In contrast, the masks worn by the black African Americans into an invisible group, and found
developed a critical language that challenged racist and notion of masquerade to encompass any gender and ethnic models in Gallaghers Skinatural (1997, no. 1) are more in them an overt declaration of racism. Art critic Mark
By using double-faced mannequins, Harrison taps the condition of selfhood, built on representation, is thoroughly In a museum, when male supremacy is dead. Id like my
Surrealist fascination with the doppelgnger. Alexander alterable, thanks to the selfs exposure to an inexhaustible work to be an anthropological artifact from an extinct,
the Great could be a distant cousin of Hans Bellmers The array of myths. These include the myths of historical primitive society. 18
Doll (193537, no. 6), an assembled and demountable doll representation (the mannequins valiant stance mimics A touchstone in Lucass exploration of identity is her
inspired by Jacques Offenbachs fantasy opera The Tales of that of General Washington in Emanuel Gottlieb Leutzes relationship with George, the star soccer player of Londons
Hoffmann (1880) in which the hero, maddened by his love painting George Washington Crossing the Delaware [1851]), top club, Arsenal. Lucas grew up in Islington, a gritty,
for an automaton with an uncanny resemblance to a living the myths of celebrity culture (the androgynous figure working-class community in North London, on the same
woman, ends up committing suicide. Bellmers specially recalls Oliver Stones controversial portrayal of Alexander block as George, who was a close friend of her brother.
constructed doll, which he photographed in various the Great as bisexual in his movie Alexander [2004]), and A tough childhood complicated her feelings about class-
provocative scenarios involving sadistic acts of dismem- the myths of masculinity (Harrison conceived ten sculp- conscious British society, success, and the social places
berment, dispensed with the idea of the unitary self.16 tural portraits of Great Men, including this one, for If carved out by men. Geezer (2002, no. 7), one of a series of
If Bellmers transformation of the dolls body into a I Did It, a solo exhibition with a title derived from O. J. portraits dedicated to George, is a collage of fulgent Pop
series of selves offered an alternative to the unyielding Simpsons unpublished, sensationalist memoir about the motifs and colors, made up largely of pizza-parlor flyers
image of the body and armored murders of his ex-wife and her friend, for which he was much like those stuffed in the mailboxes in Lucass neigh-
6. Hans Bellmer (German,
stars and holding a trash can advertising NASCAR, the psyche idealized by proto- the prime suspect). Harrison redefines the performative borhood. Although George is the subject of the portrait
19021975). The Doll.
mannequin assumes the pose of a conqueror atop a multi- fascist Germany in the 1930s, 193537. Gelatin silver print, nature of identity, presenting a collection of selves in dis- (identified by his team logo), he in fact bears an unsettling
colored, amorphous mound, but the Lincoln mask attached Harrisons Alexander the Great 9 1/2 x 9 5/16" (24.1 x 23.7 cm). guiseJanus-faced, cross-dressed, engrossed in playful resemblance to Lucass younger self, dressed in unfeminine
The Museum of Modern Art,
to the back of her head parodies the classic statuary suggestsin its array of masks, New York. Samuel J. Wagstaff,
theatricsand destabilizes the notion of self historically Gunners T-shirt and sporting the same lank, side-parted
convention of the solitary hero, presenting a figure who costumes, and propsthat the Jr. Fund upheld by the genre of the portrait. hair. Geezer is in fact a self-portrait blending the artists
is literally two-faced. The provocative nature of visual puns, bawdy humor, androgynous persona with that of the soccer star. Since
Alexander the Great, like the performances of Marcel social clichs, and tabloid low-life culture gives Sarah George was the first famous person Lucas knew, she
Duchamp as Rrose Slavy and Andy Warhols self-portraits Lucass work much of its critical character. In two of her emblazoned the subjects forehead with the phrase nanza,
in drag, depends on the construction of identity through largest portrait series, including a group of photographic an allusion to the bonanza of success, but in composing
gender indeterminacy. In 1990 philosopher Judith Butler self-portraits from the 1990s and a suite of collages the portrait out of collaged advertisements, the artist
published Gender Trouble, an influential book that advanced dedicated to the legendary 1970s British soccer player underscores the way success is linked to capitalism, a
the interpretation of identity beyond the traditional Charlie George, she recombines masculine and feminine worldview sensitive to the history of photomontage as
binary definitions of gender. Butler identified parody attributes to stretch and permeate the boundaries of gender a socially engaged art form.19
(such as the practice of dressing in drag) as a practice definition. Lucass critique of social stereotyping has been A point of historical comparison is offered by Hch,
that destabilizes the social power systems that validate informed by feminist theory, especially by the writings whose provocative montages from the late 1920s to the
heterosexuality as coherent or natural, and in so doing of American radical feminist and activist Andrea Dworkin, mid-1930s reshuffle the clichs of mass media represen-
make identitys variable constructions apparent. Empha- which she read while studying at Goldsmiths, in London. tation to examine the equivocal status of women in post
sizing the inherent instability of gender categories, she Dworkins best-known book, Pornography: Men Possessing World War I Germany. In her best-known photomontage,
noted that there is no doer behind the deed, because the Women, which stirred tremendous controversy when it Schnitt mit dem Kchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer
doer is constructed in and through the deed.15 In other was first published in 1981, criticized pornography with Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands (Cut with the Dada
words, gender is an act; an impersonation; a set of codes, a unique sense of urgency as a form of violence against kitchen knife through the last Weimar beer-belly cultural
costumes, and masks rather than an essential aspect women.17 A strong advocate of womens civil rights, epoch in Germany) (191920), Hch likened the scissors
of identity. As such, Harrisons Great Men flirt with Dworkin attributed the inequity between genders to of her mtier with the domestic kitchen knife of a house-
experimentation akin to theater, another arena in which misogynist societal power structures. When asked in an wife, used in this case to cut through the traditionally
the self is concocted as one among an aggregate of selves. interview how she would like to be remembered, she said, masculine field of politics.20 A prevailing theme in Hchs
MARCOCI 477
1. On the ways in which con- reprinted in Victor Burgin, Germany: Steidl, 2007), p. 201. photomontage is made in
temporary women artists have James Donald, and Cora 10. Gallagher, 1000 Words, MoMA Highlights, rev. ed. (New
questioned the singular I, see Kaplan, eds., Formations of Artforum 42, no. 8 (April York: The Museum of Modern
Linda Nochlin, Women Artists Fantasy (New York: Routledge, 2004): 131. Art, 2004), p. 371.
Then and Now: Painting, 1986), p. 38. 11. Mark Stevens, Ellen 20. Maud Lavin adopted Hchs
Sculpture, and the Image 6. The discussion of Ellen Gallagher: DeLuxe, New York title for her insightful book
of the Self, in Maura Reilly Gallaghers work is based on Magazine, February 21, 2005, Cut with the Kitchen Knife:
and Nochlin, eds., Global my previous analysis and inter- p. 77. The Weimar Photomontages
Feminisms: New Directions in view with the artist published 12. Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, of Hannah Hch (New Haven:
Contemporary Art (London: in Roxana Marcoci, Comic The History Lesson: Flesh Is Yale University Press, 1993).
Merrell, 2007), pp. 4769. Abstraction: Image-Breaking, a Texture as Much as a Color, 21. Susan Gubar, Blessings
2. Carolyn Lanchner discusses Image-Making (New York: The Parkett 73 (2005): 3944. in Disguise: Cross-Dressing
the term montage in The Museum of Modern Art, 2007), 13. Tania Modleski, Cinema as Re-dressing for Female
Later Adventures of Dadas pp. 1719, 5663. and the Dark Continent: Race Modernists, The Massachusetts
Good Girl: The Photomontages 7. Samuel R. Delany, From and Gender in Popular Film, Review: A Quarterly of Literature,
of Hannah Hch after 1933, in The Mummers Tale, Callaloo 7, in Linda S. Kauffman, ed., the Arts and Public Affairs 22
The Photomontages of Hannah no. 22 (Autumn 1984): 3659; American Feminist Thought (Autumn 1981): 479.
Hch (Minneapolis: Walker Art Delany, The Tale of Rumor at Centurys End: A Reader 22. Jean-Christophe Royoux,
Center, 1996), p. 129. and Desire, Callaloo 10, no. (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, Gillian Wearing: Violent
3. See, for example, Hal Foster, 32 (Summer 1987): 41678; 1993), p. 76. Emotions Are the Heart of the
Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Delany, Among the Blobs, 14. Scott Bukatman, Matters Matter, in Wearing, Gillian
Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Mississippi Review 16, nos. 23 of Gravity: Special Effects and Wearing: Sous influence (Paris:
Art since 1900: Modernism, (1988): 8692; Kevin Young, Supermen in the 20th Century Muse dArt Moderne de la
Antimodernism, Postmodernism How to Make Rain, Callaloo (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Ville de Paris, 2001), p. 52.
(New York: Thames & Hudson, 14, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 340; Press, 2003), p. 148. 23. Claude Cahun, Aveux non
2004), p. 240. Young, Letters from the North 15. Judith Butler, Gender avenus (Paris: ditions du
4. Monika Faber, A Grand Star, Callaloo 14, no. 2 (Spring Trouble: Feminism and the Carrefour, 1930), p. 212; pub-
Finale and Off Into the Blue: 1991): 341; Thomas Sayers Subversion of Identity (New lished in English as Disavowals,
Two Eras Reflected in Portrait Ellis, On Display, Callaloo 13, York: Routledge, 1990), p. 142. or Cancelled Confessions
Photography, in Faber and no. 3 (Summer 1990): 433; Ellis, 16. On the corps morcel (body- (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
Janos Frecot, eds., Portraits of Ellis Hush Yo Mouf, Callaloo in-pieces) in Hans Bellmers 2008), p. 183.
an Age: Photography in Germany 13, no. 3 (Summer 1990): work, see Foster, Armour Fou, 24. Robert Storr, On the Edge:
and Austria, 19001938 43132. October 56 (Spring 1991): Contemporary Art from the
(Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: 8. On these strategies, see 6497. Werner and Elaine Dannheiser
Hatje Cantz; New York: Neue Jeff Fleming, Ellen Gallagher: 17. Andrea Dworkin, Pornog- Collection (New York: The
Galerie New York; Vienna: Preserve (Des Moines, Iowa: raphy: Men Possessing Women Museum of Modern Art, 1997),
Albertina, 2005), p. 20. Art Center, 2001), pp. 68. (New York: Putnam, 1981). p. 122.
5. Joan Riviere, Womanliness 9. Herbert Molderings, Umbo 18. Dworkin, quoted in Julie
to received constructions of identity includes the investi- simultaneously as authors and models, by taking up as a Masquerade, The (Ruth), in Points of View: Bindel, Obituary, The Guardian,
gation of role-playing and other performance pursuits. positions both of viewer and viewed. Many artists International Journal of Masterpieces of Photography April 12, 2005, p. 29.
Psychoanalysis 10 (1929); and Their Stories (Gttingen, 19. The connection to
The artistsand the protagonists in their worksunder- investigate current issues of gender, race, and class through
take full masquerade, in masks, makeup, and costumes, and portraiture, but few have been as effective as these four
also simply adopt poses, putting on roles and taking them in deconstructing the binding status of representation,
off at will, thus reordering the clichs of mass media rep- or as provocative and compelling.
resentation. As women of many faces, Gallagher, Harrison,
Lucas, and Wearing destabilize the myths of a unified,
authentic self, often doubling their artistic personalities, 13. Cindy Sherman (American,
born 1954). Untitled Film Still
#56. 1980. Gelatin silver print,
6 3/8 x 9 7/16" (16.2 x 24 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Acquired through
the generosity of Jo Carole
and Ronald S. Lauder in
memory of Mrs. John D.
478 FROM FACE TO MASK Rockefeller 3rd MARCOCI 479
IN THE WAKE OF THE NEGRESS / HUEY COPELAND
Nineteen-ninety was a watershed year for Lorna Simpson. holdings constitute a necessarily incomplete archive that
The artists trademark photographs of black female figures allows us to reconsider not only the lives and strategies
paired with evocative texts were featured in exhibitions of individual artists but also the circumstances in which
from Long Beach, California, to Venice, Italy. In New York African diasporic female identity, visibility, and history
she was simultaneously positioned on the encroaching have been produced and transformed.3
margins and at the contested center of artistic discourse. Carrie Mae Weemss landmark series From Here I Saw
Her work was included in The Decade Show: Frameworks What Happened and I Cried (1995, nos. 1 and 2) offers
of Identity in the 1980s, an exhibition, jointly presented an incisive meditation on just those circumstances,
by The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, The New particularly the ways in which visual technologies have
Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Studio Museum been mobilized to render black subjects transparent to a
in Harlem, that became a touchstone of multicultural racializing gaze. This multipart work was commissioned
critique; at the same time her show at The Museum of by The J. Paul Getty Museum as a response to Hidden
Modern Artthe twenty-third in the Projects series Witness, a 1995 exhibition of mid-nineteenth-century
devoted to living artistsbecame the first solo exhibition photographs of black men and women.4 Weems selected,
by an African American woman in the institutions sixty- reproduced, enlarged, and tinted red thirty-two images,
year history.1 each of which she placed under a glass plate etched with
Blindness in the face of racially and sexually marked affectively charged phrases: scientific profile, mammie,
subjects is arguably endemic to Western culture. Yet mama, mother, playmate to the patriarch. This far-
more than a belated victory for colored girls everywhere, reaching pictorial inventory is bracketed on either end
Simpsons MoMA exhibition can be seen as one of the with an indigo-tinted reproduction of Lon Poiriers
signal moments of black feminine rupture, revelation, and 1925 photograph of Nobosodrou, one of many Mangbetu
misrecognition which, for good or ill, have shaped the women whose distinctive busts have been reproduced on
Museums accounting of modern art. In this essay, I will everything from Belgian Congo stamps to Central African
examine a few of those moments in order to articulate sculpture. Here, the artist inscribed an image of a singular
how the black womanas absence and presence, artist woman with text that serves to mourn and witness the
and model, agitator and adherent, fiction and factmatters pernicious economies of classification and exchange
to and puts pressure on MoMAs guiding assumptions that have determined the historicity of blackness in the
and collecting practices, which have become paradigms visual field.5
1 and 2. Carrie Mae Weems
of hegemonic modernism. In so doing, I conceive of the From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried was
(American, born 1953). Museum and other cultural institutions, broadly construed, presented to MoMA in 1997, as a gift on behalf of The
From Here I Saw What as contested sites in black womens struggles to represent Friends of Education, a Museum affiliate group founded,
Happened And I Cried from the
series From Here I Saw What themselves and to articulate critical practices that describe in 1993, by lawyer and banker Akosua Barthwell Evans
Happened and I Cried. 1995. modernitys terrain with an alternative set of aesthetic to foster a greater appreciation of art created by African
Chromogenic color prints with
sand-blasted text on glass
imperatives and political cartographies.2 Taken together, American artists and to encourage African American par-
with frame, each 43 1/2 x 33 1/2" the works by and about black women in the Museums ticipation and membership at MoMA.6 Like Simpsons
(110.5 x 85.1 cm). The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. Gift
on behalf of The Friends of
Education of The Museum of
480 Modern Art 481
and Weemss work, Evanss advocacy
reflects a remapping of social and sexual
privilege in the late 1980s and early
1990s that transformed the cultural
landscape as well as the relationship of
black women to the Museum. MoMA
has historically emphasized the indi-
vidual author, medium specificity, and
a formalist conception of quality, often
denuding even the most politically
astute art of its social context and
downplaying artists ambitions for social change in favor
of a modernist narrative based on stylistic progression.7
As a result, it has effectively reiterated the storied disjunc-
ture between dominant teleological constructions of sure, Negress is an absurd and excessive appellation. 5. Romare Bearden (American, 6. George Overbury (Pop)
19111988). Patchwork Quilt. Hart (American, 18681933).
history and the fragmented, horizontal configuration of Yet that is precisely why the term so effectively sums
1970. Cut-and-pasted cloth Nude Negress, Souvenir of
black memory, which is pieced together at the margins.8 up what literary critic Hortense J. Spillers has called the and paper with synthetic the Tropics. 1922. Lithograph,
For the black feminist artists, scholars, and advocates signifying property plus of the black female body, which polymer paint on composition sheet 12 1/2 x 10 1/4" (31.8 x
board, 35 3/4 x 47 7/8" (90.9 x 26 cm). Publisher: unknown.
who emerged in the age of multiculturalism, MoMAs con- is everywhere marked by the trauma of colonial enter- 121.6 cm). The Museum of Printer: probably J. E.
ceptions of the past and of the art object were inadequate prise, the dislocations of transatlantic slavery, and the Modern Art, New York. Rosenthal, New York. Edition:
Blanchette Hooker unknown. The Museum of
to address the visual position of a Nobosodrou, let alone logic of international capital as mere flesh and recal-
Rockefeller Fund Modern Art, New York. Gift
the historical re-vision of a Weems, whose work signifies citrant thing.12 Whether on the auction block or in the of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
on dominant representations of the black, the feminine, museum, the Negress casts a shadow over the black woman
the photographic, and the modern all at once.9 Cultural that has consistently overdetermined the conditions of
practitioners such as Freida High Tesfagiorgis, Lorraine her appearance.
OGrady, Gilane Tawadros, and Michele Wallace have MoMAs collection tells the tale. Consider Romanian- and the nearly monochromatic canvasses of Agnes Martin.
argued that we must reckon with the multiple sites and born sculptor Constantin Brancusis Blond Negress, II Contemplate the weirdly proportioned creaturehalf
symbols through which African diasporic womens (1933, no. 3), a bronze, made in Paris, whose interest animal, half womanwho stares out from George Overbury
history has been routed, not only to reclaim black female evolves from the apparent contradiction of an Africanized (Pop) Harts Nude Negress, Souvenir of the Tropics (1922,
subjectivity from the clutches of stereotype but also to subject rendered as a golden piscine abstraction, at once no. 6), a rebarbative little print given to the Museum in
3. Constantin Brancusi 4. Doris Ulmann (American,
(French, born Romania. 18841934). Untitled.
comprehend the practices of violence and visualization primitive and futuristic. Look to one of Doris Ulmanns 1940 by one of its founders, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.13
18761957). Blond Negress, II. 192931. From Roll, Jordan, which, in shaping raced and gendered bodies, have deter- numerous black-and-white photographs depicting an aged Finally, think back to Pablo Picassos Les Demoiselles
Paris 1933 (after a marble of Roll, by Julia Peterkin and
mined the contours of modernist practice.10 woman pausing in her work (192931, no. 4), an image dAvignon (1907), that scandalously disjointed conjunction
1928). Bronze on four-part Doris Ulmann (New York:
marble pedestal, limestone, Robert O. Ballou, 1933). Western phantasms of difference doubledblackness that seems intent on fixing an idealized vision of black of African-ness and the feminine, which famously served
and two oak sections (carved Photogravure, 8 3/8 x 6 3/8" and femaleness untethered from the particularity of any labor in the American South before it is lost to modernity. the artist as a talisman of sexual aggressivity and MoMA
by the artist), overall 71 1/4 x (21.3 x 16.2 cm). The Museum
14 1/4 x 14 1/2" (181 x 36.2 x of Modern Art, New York.
given subjectmight be said to take their measure from Recall, too, how in Romare Beardens 1970 collage as an epochal marker of what founding director Alfred H.
36.8 cm). The Museum of Gift of Blanchette Hooker the Negress, that foundational figure of black femininity Patchwork Quilt (no. 5), an Egyptian goddess turned down- Barr, Jr., identified as a new period in the history of mod-
Modern Art, New York. The Rockefeller
first named in seventeenth-century France, who has come home odalisque precariously perches on a couch that is ern art. 14 Despite the varying racial, national, and sexual
Philip L. Goodwin Collection
to epitomize unalloyed darkness and sexuality.11 To be equally suggestive of African American fabric traditions identities of their makers and the divergent ontological
COPELAND 495
1. On Simpsons discursive practices draws upon Douglas Black Venus: Sexualized 19. On Thelma Johnson Streats also wrote several letters to 30. For useful surveys of black 1996), pp. xxxxxxiii. thinking on the subjects visual
construction in the age of Crimp, The Art of Exhibition, Savages, Primal Fears, and life and work, see Lizzetta Barr and to curator Dorothy art and activism, see Campbell, 39. Howardena Pindell, Art and sensual predication in
multiculturalism and its after- in On the Museums Ruins Primitive Narratives in French LeFalle-Collins, Streat, Thelma Miller that reveal her consis- Tradition and Conflict, pp. World Racism: A Documen- Copeland, Bye, Bye Black
math, see Huey Copeland, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Johnson, in Thomas Riggs, ed., tent desire to show at the 4568, as well as Mary Ellen tation, 19801988, 1988, in Girl, pp. 7476, in light of
Bye, Bye Black Girl: Lorna 1993), pp. 26271. Press, 1999), p. 56. The Oxford St. James Guide to Black Artists Museum. Shannon, A Question of The Heart of the Question: Tesfagiorgiss and Simss think-
Simpsons Figurative Retreat, 8. On this disjuncture, see English Dictionary offers a thor- (Detroit: St. James Press, 1997), 23. Russell Lynes, Good Old Relevancy: New York Museums The Writings and Paintings of ing about the disruptive and
Art Journal 64, no. 2 (Summer Michael Hanchard, Black ough account of the etymology pp. 51213; Judith Wilson, Modern: An Intimate Portrait and the Black Arts Movement, Howardena Pindell (New York: healing forces of black womens
2005): 6277. Memory versus State Memory: of Negress. How the Invisible Woman Got of the Museum of Modern Art 19681971, in Lisa Gail Collins Midmarch Arts Press, 1997), vernacular traditions. See
2. Katherine McKittrick con- Notes toward a Method, Small 12. Hortense J. Spillers, Herself on the Cultural Map: (New York: Atheneum, 1973), and Margo Natalie Crawford, pp. 17, 7. Tesfagiorgis, In Search of a
ducts a related inquiry in Axe 12, no. 2 (June 2008): Mamas Baby, Papas Maybe: Black Women Artists in p. 212. eds., New Thoughts on the 40. On autobiography and Discourse, p. 232, and Sims,
Demonic Grounds: Black 4562. An American Grammar Book, California, in Diana Burgess 24. Barr, A New Art Museum, Black Arts Movement (New adornment in Pindells practice, African American Women
Women and the Cartographies 9. Here I use signify in the 1987, in Black, White, and in Fuller and Daniela Salvioni, 1929, in Defining Modern Art: Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers see Autobiography: In Her Own Artists, p. 86.
of Struggle (Minneapolis: sense elaborated by Henry Color: Essays on American eds., Art/Women/California, Selected Writings of Alfred H. University Press, 2006), Image, 1988; Free, White and
University of Minnesota Press, Louis Gates, Jr., who traces Literature and Culture (Chicago: 19502000: Parallels and Barr, Jr., eds. Irving Sandler and pp. 92116. 21, 1992; and The Aesthetics
2006). the terms history as a form of University of Chicago Press, Intersections (Berkeley and Los Amy Newman (New York: Harry 31. Lippard, Dreams, Demands, of Texture in African Adorn-
3. For a useful reckoning with troping and ironic reversal in 2003), p. 203. Angeles: University of California N. Abrams, 1986), p. 71. and Desires, p. 78. ment, 1984, in The Heart of
the concept of African dias- black expressive cultures in 13. On Abby Aldrich Press; San Jose: San Jose 25. For a working draft of the 32. The Demands of the Art the Question, pp. 7273, 6469,
porawhich refers to the The Blackness of Blackness: Rockefellers collection, its Museum of Art, 2002), pp. 201 Museums exhibition history, Workers Coalition, May 6, 8486.
forcible dispersal of black A Critique of the Sign and the importance for the Museum, 16; and Ann Gibson, Two see www.moma.org/learn/ 1970, and Byers Committee 41. Wallace, Reading 1968: The
peoples from the continent Signifying Monkey, in Figures and her investment in George Worlds: African American resources/archives/archives_ Report to Trustees, February Great American Whitewash,
as well as to their efforts to in Black: Words, Signs, and the Overbury (Pop) Hart, see Sybil Abstraction in New York at exhibition_history_list; on 1971, John B. Hightower Papers 1988, in Invisibility Blues: From
create political and cultural Racial Self (New York: Oxford Gordon Kantor, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Mid-Century, in The Search Barrs various engagements III.1.8 and I.9.70, The Museum of Pop to Theory (London: Verso,
community in the wake of such University Press, 1987), pp. and the Intellectual Origins of for Freedom: African American with black diasporic culture, Modern Art Archives, New York. 1990), p. 196.
displacementsee Brent 23576. the Museum of Modern Art Abstract Painting, 19451975 see Alfred H. Barr Papers, 33. Collins, The Art of 42. Piper, The Triple Negation
Hayes Edwards, The Uses of 10. Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, (New York: Kenkeleba Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art Transformation: Parallels in of Colored Women Artists,
Diaspora, Social Text 19, no. 1 In Search of a Discourse and 2002), pp. 19195. 1991), pp. 1154. Archives, New York. the Black Arts and Feminist Art 1990, in Out of Order, Out of
(Spring 2001): 4573. Critique/s That Center the Art 14. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso: 20. I borrow the notion of a 26. Barr, quoted in Kantor, Movements, in New Thoughts Sight, vol. 2, pp. 16173; Pindell,
4. Images from the exhibition of Black Women Artists, in Forty Years of His Art (New York: dictionary of primitivist styles Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the on the Black Arts Movement, Art World Racism, pp. 319.
based on the holdings of the Stanlie M. James and Abena The Museum of Modern Art, from Gibson, Abstract Expres- Intellectual Origins of the p. 274. 43. Wallace, Variations on
Getty Museum and that of P. A. Busia, eds., Theorizing 1939), p. 60. sionism: Other Politics (New Museum of Modern Art, p. 369. 34. Betsy Jones, Report on Negation and the Heresy of
collector Jackie Napolean Black Feminisms: The Visionary 15. Kara Walker, quoted in Jerry Haven: Yale University Press, 27. Mary Anne Staniszewski, Meeting with the Womens Black Feminist Creativity,
Wilsonare reproduced in Pragmatism of Black Women Saltz, Ill-Will and Desire, Flash 1997), p. 160; and that of eth- The Power of Display: A History Committee of the AWC, n.d., in Invisibility Blues, p. 218.
Wilson, Hidden Witness: (London: Routledge, 1993), Art 29, no. 191 (November nocultural redemption and of Exhibition Installations at p. 2, John B. Hightower Papers 44. See Rene Ater, Making
African-American Images pp. 22866; Lorraine OGrady, December 1996): 84. retrieval from Wilson, How the the Museum of Modern Art III.1.11.a, The Museum of History: Meta Warrick Fullers
from the Dawn of Photography Olympias Maid: Reclaiming 16. I have relied on Darby Invisible Woman Got Herself (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, Modern Art Archives, New York. Ethiopia, American Art 17, no. 3
to the Civil War (New York: Black Female Subjectivity, Englishs thoroughgoing on the Cultural Map, p. 207. 1998), pp. 11011. 35. Faith Ringgold reflects on (Fall 2003): 14.
St. Martins Press, 1999). Afterimage 20 (Summer 1992): account of Walkers practice 21. In characterizing Streats 28. Lucy R. Lippard, Dreams, this moment in We Flew Over 45. Judith Wilson, Hagars
5. My reading of this work 1415, 23; Gilane Tawadros, in How to See a Work of Art in discursive production, I have Demands, and Desires: The the Bridge: The Memoirs of Daughters: Social History,
expands on Enid Schildkrouts Beyond the Boundary: The Total Darkness (Cambridge, drawn on clippings included in Black, Antiwar, and Womens Faith Ringgold (Boston: Little, Cultural Heritage, and Afro-U.S.
in Les Parisiens dAfrique: Work of Three Black Women Mass.: MIT Press, 2007), Painting and Sculpture Artist Movements, in Mary Schmidt Brown, 1995), pp. 143216. Womens Art, in Bearing
Mangbetu Women as Works Artists in Britain, Third Text 3, pp. 11012. File I. 315, The Museum of Campbell, Tradition and 36. OGrady, Olympias Maid, Witness: Contemporary Works
of Art, in Barbara Thompson, nos. 89 (AutumnWinter 17. Sharpley-Whiting, Black Modern Art Archives, New York: Conflict: Images of a Turbulent p. 23. by African American Women
ed., Black Womanhood: Images, 1989): 12150; Michele Wallace Venus, p. 10. Colored Girl to Exhibit Decade, 196373 (New York: 37. Adrian Piper, Three Models Artists (New York: Rizzoli
Icons, and Ideologies of the Modernism, Postmodernism, 18. My theorization of the Paintings, Oregon Journal, The Studio Museum in Harlem, of Art Production Systems, International, 1996), pp. 95112.
African Body (Hanover, N.H.: and the Problem of the Visual Negress is indebted to Hilton September 19, 1934, sect. C3, 1985), p. 78. in Kynaston L. McShine, ed., 46. Alain Locke, Negro Art: Past
Hood Museum of Art, in Afro-American Culture, in Alss memoir, The Women, p. 5; and The News Thats 29. For a brilliant gloss on the Information (New York: The and Present (Washington, D.C.:
Dartmouth College; Seattle: Russell Ferguson et al., eds., which tells the stories of black Going Around, The Irish Press, multiple valences of the black Museum of Modern Art, 1970), Associates in Negro Folk
University of Washington Press, Out There: Marginalization gay men and women, most May 6, 1950. sign in the 1960s and 70s, see p. 111. Education, 1936), pp. 2728.
2008), pp. 7093. and Contemporary Cultures notably the authors mother, 22. The MoMA file on Streat Kobena Mercer, Tropes of the 38. Piper, Introduction: Some 47. Lowery Stokes Sims,
6. The Friends of Education, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, whose remarkable way[s] contains lists of the artists Grotesque in the Black Avant- Very FORWARD Remarks, in African American Women
www.moma.org/support/ 1990), pp. 3950. of being constitute their notices, critics, and collectors Garde, in Mercer, ed., Pop Art Piper, Out of Order, Out of Sight, Artists: Into the Twenty-First
support_the_museum/affiliate_ 11. T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting Negressity. Als, The Women that she herself produced and Vernacular Cultures vol. 2, Selected Writings in Art Century, in Bearing Witness,
groups/index. offers an invaluable gloss on (New York: Noonday Press, and submitted to the Museum. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press Criticism, 19671992 p. 85.
7. My account of the Museums the meaning of the Negress in 1996), p. 19. Between 1947 and 1953 Streat and Iniva, 2007), p. 147. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 48. This paragraph expands my
514 515
4. Elodie Courter, Director,
Department of Circulating
Exhibitions, with panels from the
teaching portfolio Elements of
Design, c. 1945. Photographic
Archive. MoMA Archives
Opposite:
6. Dorothy H. Dudley, Registrar, with
a preparator during installation of the
exhibition Rodin (May 1September
8, 1963). Photographic Archive. MoMA
Archives
522 523
Jakobson, Roman, 157n17, 315n12 Klassnik, Robin, 446, 447 Leutze, Emanuel Gottlieb, 471 Marion, Frances, 81 Mock, Rudolf, 286 Nin, Anas, 305 Platz, Gustav Adolf, 189 Rockefeller, Blanchette, 356, 518, Schtte-Lihotzky, Margarete Soby, James Thrall, 45, 212
James, Betty, 284 Klee, Paul, 159, 173n5 Levaillant, Franoise, 336 Marisol, 17 Model, Lisette, 117, 118, 193, 195, Nixon, Mignon, 50405, 50910 Poirier, Lon, 481 52021 (Grete), 174, 175, 18184, 181, Socit Anonyme, 33
Jameson, Fredric, 27n3 Klinger, Max, 77 Levine, Sherrie, 429, 432, 433, Marro, Xander, 456, 457, 458, 201, 211, 213n4, 215n44, 263 Nobosodrou, 48182 Political Art Documentation/ Rockefeller, John D., 3rd, 520 183, 189, 190n3, 191n23, 191n37 Sofranova, Antonina, 157n1
Janice, Cari Goldberg, 460n2 Klver, Billy, 353 434, 43940, 441, 442, 443n25, 461n36 Modigliani, Amedeo, 515, 521 Nochlin, Linda, 18, 22, 213, 377, 434 Distribution, 517 Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 520 Schutz, Dana, 501, 502, 504, 508, Solomon, Alan, 249n2
Janis, Sidney, 39 Knoll, Florence, 295 443nn2829 Marsh, Mae, 82 Modleski, Tania, 68 Noland, Cady, 396, 397, 39899, 399 Pollock, Griselda, 18, 22, 27n15, Rockefeller, Nelson, 517, 51920 512 Solomon-Godeau, Abigail, 430, 436,
Jarmusch, Jim, 385 Koch-Otte, Benita, 159 Lvi-Strauss, Claude, 468 Martin, Agnes, 17, 20, 110, 111, Modotti, Tina, 119, 119, 123n23, Noland, Kenneth, 251 60, 62, 213 Rodchenko, Aleksandr, 39, 152, Schwartz, Lillian, 353 442n4, 443n8, 443n25
Jarrico, Paul, 235 Kofman, Sarah, 38 Levitt, Helen, 39, 195, 204, 211, 242, 24345, 24445, 245nn34, 194, 196, 197, 209 Nonn-Schmidt, Helene, 160, 173n6 Pollock, Jackson, 5152, 377, 504 15556 Schwitters, Kurt, 332n2 Sonnabend, Ileana, 353
Javits, Jacob K., 516 Kolbowski, Silvia, 61 215n44, 519 245n9, 483 Moholy-Nagy, Lszl, 159, 168, Norman, Charles, 73 Popova, Lyubov, 39, 40, 106, Rodin, Auguste, 488 Scott Brown, Denise, 189, 218, 230, Soto, Jsus Rafael, 317, 320, 321,
Jeanneret, Pierre, 176, 17778, Kollwitz, Kthe, 76, 7778, 7879 Levy, Julien, 103n5, 103n10 Martin, Dean, 386 171, 291 Norman, Julia, 73 109, 14142, 15152, 15253, Roger-Marx, Claude, 35 267, 269, 269 329
180, 187, 22627 Koolhaas, Rem, 218, 230, 39394, Lewis, Edmonia, 484 Martinez, Julian, 294 Molderings, Herbert, 465 Noun, Louise, 27n26 15455, 155 Romains, Jules, 87n2 Seitz, William, 255 Spaeth, Brian, 451, 461n22
John, Gwen, 33, 34 401 LeWitt, Sol, 374n5, 381, 382n6 Martinez, Maria, 294 Molesworth, Helen, 18, 59 Noyes, Eliot, 286 P-Orridge, Genesis, 446, 447 Roob, Rona, 520 Sekula, Sonja, 43, 45 Spero, Nancy, 60, 62, 6869, 520
Johns, Doug, 259 Kooning, Elaine de, 29, 379n2 Libeskind, Daniel, 394 Marx, Karl, 37, 77 Mondrian, Piet, 317, 324, 514 OBrien, Hugh, 237 Porset, Clara, 279, 281, 282, 288 Roodenburg, Linda, 402 Serra, Richard, 259, 504 Spillers, Hortense J., 483
Johns, Jasper, 25, 249n2, 257n6 Kooning, Willem de, 20, 50, 51, 66, Licht, Jennifer, 368n2, 382 Masson, Andr, 514 Moore, Marcel, 199 Offenbach, Jacques, 470 89, 29192 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 209 Setla, Salme, 181 Sprth, Monika, 443n16
Johnson, Buffie, 45 431, 501, 504, 510, 512 Lichtenstein, Roy, 25, 249n2 Matisse, Henri, 47, 51, 106, 515 Morais, Frederico, 360 Office for Metropolitan Porter, Liliana, 11314, 114, 116 Rose, Barbara, 253n5 Seurat, Georges, 115, 515 Stalin, Joseph, 156
Johnson, Philip, 16768, 218, 219, Korot, Beryl, 354 Liebes, Dorothy, 284, 286, 288, Matter, Herbert, 220 Morey, Charles, 47 Architecture, 393, 401 Posenenske, Charlotte, 382, 382n6 Rose, Bernice, 520 Shaffer, Mary, 427n3 Stamerra, Joanne, 62, 65, 66, 520
288, 291, 295, 394 Kosuth, Joseph, 381 295, 296 Matzko, Claudia, 521 Morgan, Barbara, 193, 195, 204, OGrady, Lorraine, 482, 487 Posey, Willi, 487 Rosenfeld, Lotty, 360 Shahn, Ben, 212 Steichen, Edward, 134, 210, 519
Johnston, Frances Benjamin, Kozloff, Max, 382 Lieshout, Joop van, 57 Maude, Clementina, 120 20911, 210, 212, 213n4, Oiticica, Hlio, 25, 31718, 31920, Powell, Michael, 312 Rosevear, Cora, 427n5 Shakespeare, William, 27n3 Stein, A. L., 69n16
12529, 128, 13031, 132, Kozlov, Christine, 381 Lin Tianmiao, 404, 40506, 40607, Maude, Grace, 120 215n32, 215nn4142, 215n44 331, 360 Power, Cyril, 97 Rosler, Martha, 43132, 432, 434, Sharits, Paul, 310 Steinmetz, Joe, 285
13437, 138n10, 138n21, 139n27, Krasner, Lee, 17, 29, 45, 46, 5152, 463 May, Ernst, 18182, 191n23 Morgan, Douglas, 212 OKeeffe, Georgia, 39, 43, 59, 92, Powers, Harriet, 488 442n4 Sharp, Willoughby, 354 Stella, Frank, 249n2, 504
139n45 59, 110 Lindig, Otto, 159 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 143, 15556 Mori, Mariko, 335, 34748 9395, 95n2, 95n6, 95n9, 95n11, Pratt, Davis, 279 Rossellini, Roberto, 235 Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean, 484 Stepanova, Varvara, 60, 14142,
Jonas, Joan, 35657, 35859 Krauss, Rosalind, 102, 427n3 Linker, Kate, 429, 443n8 Mayer, Helene, 20203, 214n30 Morineau, Camille, 60 95n13, 195 Pratt, Elsa, 279 Rossi, Aldo, 332n10 Shaver, Dorothy, 221, 288, 289 15152, 15456, 15456
Jones, Betsy, 520, 521n23 Kravis, Marie-Jose, 521 Lipchitz, Jacques, 514 McAndrew, John, 519 Morisot, Berthe, 35 Oldenburg, Claes, 249n2, 307 Prince, Keiko, 427n3 Rosso, Medardo, 514 Shemshurin, Andrei, 157n16 Stern, Joanne, 518
Jones, Lois Mailou, 488 Kristeva, Julia, 13, 53 Lippard, Lucy R., 15, 17, 22, 66, 68, McCall, Anthony, 510 Morris, Robert, 259, 307, 368n2, Olga, 263 Prince, Richard, 42931, 442n2, Rothko, Mark, 61 Sherman, Cindy, 60, 199, 214n23, Sternberg, Harry, 239
Joy, Josephine, 39, 42 Kruchenykh, Aleksei, 143, 145, 148, 377, 381, 416, 427n3, 427n22, McCausland, Elizabeth, 199 379n15, 415, 417, 419, 426 Ono, Yoko, 1415, 313, 335, 341, 443n8, 443n25 Rouault, Georges, 521 432, 434, 435, 442, 443n20, Sterne, Hedda, 45
Judd, Donald, 415 154, 157n17, 157n20 51819 McCoy, Esther, 218, 231n4 Morris, Wright, 212 34344, 343, 385 Prouv, Jean, 227 Rousseau, Henri, 42, 515, 517 443n25, 464, 477, 478, 504, 505, Stettheimer, Ettie, 94
July, Miranda, 313 Kruger, Barbara, 15, 363, 428, Liss, Carla, 450 McKee, Marjorie, 43 Motherwell, Robert, 61 Oppenheim, Dennis, 427n3 Pudovkin, Vsevelod, 309 Rowell, Margit, 515 508 Stettheimer, Florine, 39
Kafka, Franz, 410 434, 450 Lissitzky, El, 332n2 McKenzie, Lucy, 463 Mouffe, Chantal, 432 Oppenheim, Meret, 39, 41, 45 Pulsa, 368n2 Royoux, Jean-Christophe, 475 Shields, Brooke, 429 Stevens, Mark, 465, 468
Kahlo, Frida, 18, 25, 45, 59, 100, Krull, Germaine, 119 Livshits, Benedikt, 141 McQuaid, Matilda, 230 Moyer, Carrie, 460 OSullivan, T. H., 212 Pushkin, Alexander, 143 Roysdon, Emily, 68, 458, 45960, Shiff, Richard, 27n3 Stieglitz, Alfred, 93, 94, 95n4, 95n9,
10102, 103n5, 103nn713 Kubota, Shigeko, 335, 341, 344, Locke, Alain, 490 McShine, Kynaston, 15, 368n2, 382, Mulas, Ugo, 249n2 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 397, 399 Pyne, Kathleen, 19495 460 Shiomi, Mieko, 335, 34144, 342 12529, 130, 13437, 138nn67,
Kahlo, Guillermo, 103n7 34445, 346, 354, 361 Lods, Marcel, 227 427n5, 519 Mller, Ulrike, 20, 68 Otto, Elizabeth, 168 Quinn, John, 33, 514, 516 Rozanova, Olga, 14142, 14749, Shiraga, Kazuo, 335, 344 138nn2122, 139n31, 139n33,
Kahn, Louis I., 227, 228, 229 Kulagina-Klutsis, Valentina, 157n1 London, Barbara, 518 Mehretu, Julie, 491, 49495 Mulvey, Laura, 55n29, 313 Oud, J. J. P., 175 Raetze, Griswald, 220 14751, 15152, 15455, Shulman, Julius, 218 139n45, 19496, 212, 214n13,
Kanaga, Consuelo, 204, 205, Kulbin, Nikolai, 148 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 73 Meireles, Cildo, 317, 360 Mumford, Lewis, 227, 282 Ove Arup & Partners, 393 Rainer, Yvonne, 25, 313, 41920, 157n16, 157nn1819, 157n20 Siegle, Robert, 454 442n2, 519
215n44 Kusama, Yayoi, 14, 27n12, 42, 335, Loos, Adolf, 181, 323, 332n10 Mekas, Jonas, 354 Murakami, Saburo, 335 Owens, Craig, 432, 434, 436, 419, 42425 Rubin, William S., 427n5 Sikander, Shahzia, 15, 463 Stockholder, Jessica, 510
Kanayama, Akira, 337 337, 33839, 340, 349 Lorenz, Richard, 214n30 Mendieta, Ana, 388, 389, 39091, Muray, Nickolas, 10102 443n18 Rauch, John, 267, 269 Rudofsky, Bernard, 286, 288, 298 Sillman, Amy, 501, 503, 504, 508, Stolzer-Segall, Judith, 189
Kandinsky, Vasily, 159 Kwon, Miwon, 25, 27n25, 510 Lozano, Lee, 25, 59, 500, 501, 504 391, 391n6, 391n10 Murnau, F. W., 465 Pabst, G. W., 90, 91 Rauschenberg, Robert, 66, 249n2, Ruppersberg, Allen, 382n6 510, 512 Stlzl, Gunta, 39, 158, 15961,
Kant, Immanuel, 373 LaBruce, Bruce, 461n29 LTTR, 20, 26, 6768, 458, 459 Menelik II, 490 Murray, Elizabeth, 1415, 516 Paik, Nam June, 344, 346, 354, 366 353 Saarinen, Eero, 291 Silverman, Kaja, 442 16163, 164, 173n10
Kantor, Sybil, 33 Lacan, Jacques, 434 Lubitsch, Ernst, 89, 91 Menken, Marie, 309, 313 Mutu, Wangechi, 463, 504, 506, Panofsky, Erwin, 55n26 Ray, Nicholas, 235 Saarinen, Eliel, 295 Simmons, Laurie, 434 Stone, Oliver, 471
Kapadia, Jesal, 460 Lachowicz, Rachel, 521 Lucas, Kristin, 366, 367 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 417 508, 512 Pardo, Mercedes, 33233n14 Raymond, Nomi, 279, 280 Saarinen, Loja, 295 Simonds, Charles, 427n3 Storr, Robert, 15, 103n11, 337, 477
Kapur, Geeta, 22, 67 Laittre, Eleanor de, 45 Lucas, Sarah, 463, 471, 472, 474, Merriweather, Annie Mae, 204 Naito, Rei, 335, 34748 Parkinson, Elizabeth Bliss, 517, 521 Reagan, Ronald, 235 Saatchi, Charles, 501 Simpson, Lorna, 116, 481, 490, Stout, Rene, 488
Karren, Billy, 444, 454, 456 Lamantia, Philip, 303 474, 478 Merriweather, Jim Press, 204 Nakazawa, Shinichi, 340 Parra, Catalina, 360 Redon, Odilon, 515 Sachs, Paul J., 33, 47, 517 49293 Strand, Paul, 195, 20910, 212, 519
Ksebier, Eduard, 129 Lamba, Jacqueline, 45 Luce, Henry, 196 Meskimmon, Marsha, 26 Nanney, Robin, 456 Partridge, Rondal, 203 Reed, Lou, 385 Saito, Takako, 341, 344 Simpson, O. J., 471 Strauss, Beth, 518
Ksebier, Gertrude, 11920, 120, Lambert, Phyllis, 218, 219 Lucier, Mary, 361 Metzinger, Jean, 152 Nares, James, 385 Pastormerlo, Angelo, 454 Reeves, Jennifer, 313 Salle, David, 440 Sims, Lowery Stokes, 490 Streat, Thelma Johnson, 484, 486,
124, 12529, 132, 133, 13437, Landshoff, Ruth, 465 Lucretius, 332 Meyer, Baron Adolf de, 134 Natzler, Gertrud, 294 Paxton, Steve, 419 Reich, Lilly, 168, 181, 188, 189, 216, Sampe, Astrid, 295, 297 Singerman, Harold, 434, 443n28 496n22
13537, 138n24, 139n31, Lange, Dorothea, 117, 118, 19495, Lupino, Ida, 234, 235, 23637, 237 Meyer, Erna, 18183, 189 Nauman, Bruce, 25, 259 Pearlstein, Alix, 366 21718, 224, 224 Saper, Craig J., 460 Siniakova, Maria, 157n1 Strengell, Marianne, 284, 286, 292,
139n33, 139n41, 139n43, 207, 208, 209, 21112, 215n32, Lurat, Andr, 175 Meyer, Hannes, 168 Naylor, Genevieve, 39 Pedrosa, Mrio, 360 Reichardt, Grete, 164, 173n10 Saret, Alan, 427n3 Sioux, Siouxie, 386 295, 299n20
139n45 215n35, 215n44, 519 Lynes, Russell, 485 Meyer, Richard, 439 Nengudi, Senga, 488 Pelez Del Casal, Amelia, 60 Reid, Jaime, 450 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 382 Sipprell, Clara E., 520, 521 Stritzler-Levine, Nina, 402
Kaufmann, Edgar, Jr., 101, 103n5, Lanux, Eyre de, 45 Macdonald, Margaret, 218, Michelson, Annette, 315n12 Nepodal, Virginia, 299n17, 299n20 Pereira, Irene Rice, 43, 45 Reinert, Nicole, 457, 458 Sauzeau-Boetti, Anne-Marie, 13 Sjstrm, Victor, 82, 82 Stryker, Roy, 215n32
220, 221, 286, 288, 289, 294, 298 Lao Tzu, 243 224225, 226 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 175, Nessen, Greta von, 290, 291 Perriand, Charlotte, 17, 61, 17576, Reinhardt, Ad, 251, 253n3, 257n7 Sawada, Tomoko, 335, 34849, 350 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 218, Stuart, Michelle, 427n3
Kawara, On, 381 Larionov, Mikhail, 143, 145, 147 Maciunas, George, 342, 346 180, 216, 21718, 219, 22122, Nessen, Walter von, 291 17779, 17980, 184, 187, 189, Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 50, 515 Scarborough, Dorothy, 82 295 Sturtevant, Roger, 194
Keats, John, 13, 27n3 Larsen, Hazel Frieda, 519 MacIver, Loren, 39, 45 224, 224, 226, 231n14 Neuman, Molly, 444, 445, 454 191n37, 218, 224 Rice, Margery Spring, 175 Schall, Heinz, 90 Slobodkina, Esphyr, 44, 45 Sullivan, Cornelius, 521
Keck, Caroline, 521 Lauder, Jo Carole, 517 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, 218, Milhazes, Beatriz, 59 Neundrfer, Ludwig, 183 Peter, Sarah, 22, 519 Rice, Thomas Dartmouth (Daddy), Schama, Simon, 325, 327 Smillie, Thomas, 126 Sullivan, Mary Quinn, 33, 514, 514,
Keck, Sheldon, 521 Laughton, Charles, 8283 224, 225 Miller, Dorothy, 496n22, 518, 518 Neutra, Richard, 218 Peters, Sarah Whitaker, 95n6 468 Schatz, Zahara, 291 Smith, Erin, 454 51617, 52021
Keeney, Mary Jane, 211, 215n47 Lawler, Louise, 434, 437 Maillol, Aristide, 27n12, 50 Miller, George Bures, 40911, Nevelson, Louise, 29, 32, 45, 379n2 Pevsner, Nikolaus, 282 Ridykeulous, 68, 69n16 Schemberg, Mario, 329 Smith, Jack, 357 Suzuki, D. T., 245n4
Keeney, Philip, 215n47 Lawrence, Jacob, 485 Maiolino, Anna Maria, 53, 54, 332n3 41011 Newhall, Beaumont, 19495, 207, Pezold, Friederike, 356 Riefenstahl, Leni, 202, 203 Schendel, Mira, 1718, 20, 106, Smith, Kiki, 104, 10506, 122n7 Sweeney, James Johnson, 45, 93,
Keiley, Joseph T., 139n41 Le Corbusier, 61, 17576, 17778, Malanga, Gerard, 450, 454 Millet, Jean-Franois, 271 210, 212, 215n42, 519 Phillips, Lisa, 429 Riehl, Willhelm Heinrich, 327 107, 31718, 320, 32324, 329, Smith, Philip, 439, 443n22 95n2
Kelly, Mary, 61, 432, 432, 442 17980, 184, 187, 211, 218, 222, Malani, Nalini, 67, 367, 369 Mills, Wilbur, 399 Newhall, Nancy, 19395, 204, Phillpot, Clive, 461n8 Rietveld, Gerrit, 226 33031, 331, 332n1 Smith, Tai, 22 Syrkus, Helena, 189
Kent, Natalja, 457, 458 224, 227 Malevich, Kazimir, 109, 15152, Miralles, Enric, 218, 219 20912, 213n4, 215n32, 215n40, Picasso, Pablo, 20, 37, 47, 49, 51, Riley, Bridget, 254, 25557, 25657, Schiele, Egon, 440 Smith, Tony, 105 Szapocznikow, Alina, 18, 20, 20
Kepes, Juliet, 299n20 Le Fauconnier, Henri, 152 393, 440 Miss, Mary, 413, 413, 41517, 215n42, 215n44, 519, 521n21 463, 483, 515, 517, 52021 257n7 Schiller, Greta, 34 Smithson, Alison, 189, 218, 22122, Szarkowski, John, 207, 519
Kertsz, Andre, 193 Lehmbruck, Wilhelm, 279 Mallet-Stevens, Robert, 183 41920, 42021, 42526, 427n3, Newman, Barnett, 20, 251, 253n3, Pickford, Mary, 81 Rimbaud, Arthur, 458, 464 Schlegel, Friedrich, 325 223, 224, 226, 231n14 Szeemann, Harald, 381
Kesner, Jan, 214n11 Leirner, Jac, 521 Man Ray, 33, 101, 103n8 427n5, 427n9 257n7, 377 Pindell, Howardena, 10607, 108, Ringgold, Faith, 487, 488, 490 Schneemann, Carolee, 301, 30607, Smithson, Peter, 189, 218, 22122, Tacitus, 325
Key, Ellen, 182 Lennon, John, 343, 343 Manet, douard, 43, 134, 307, 460 Miss Pussycat, 444 Newman, Michael, 382 427n5, 488, 490, 490 Rist, Pipilotti, 366 30809, 309 224, 226, 231n14 Taeuber-Arp, Sophie, 45
Khlebnikov, Velimir, 143, 14748 Leonardo da Vinci, 18, 353 Mann, Thomas, 202 Mitchell, Joan, 2829, 29 Newmeyer, Sarah, 519, 519 Pins, Carme, 218, 219 Rivera, Diego, 101, 102, 103n9 Schneider, Fred, 454 Smithson, Robert, 259, 415, 427n3 Takahashi, Ginger Brooks, 458,
Kiesler, Frederick, 43 Les Reines Prochaines, 366 Mapplethorpe, Robert, 43940 Mitchell, Juliet, 50910 Nicholas II, 141 Pinto, Jody, 427n3 Riviere, Joan, 464 Schneider, Ira, 354 Snow, Michael, 310, 354 45960
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 487 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 325, 329 Marchese, Michelle, 460 Mitchell, Margaret, 484 Nico, 385 Piper, Adrian, 372, 37374, 374n2, Rockburne, Dorothea, 382 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 325 Snyder, Joan, 49899, 501, 504, Tallis, Thomas, 409
Kingsley, April, 417, 427n3, 427n22 Leudesdorff, Lore, 159 Marden, Brice, 382, 504 Mock, Elizabeth, 286, 298, 299n11, Nielsen, Asta, 88, 8991, 90, 91, 37475, 488, 489, 490 Rockefeller, Abby Aldrich, 33, 483, Schrder-Schrder, Truus, 224 50708, 512, 519 Tanaka, Atsuko, 20, 25, 59, 334,
Kinnock, Neil, 475 Leufert, Gerd, 324, 326 Marin, Louis, 31718 514, 519 91n6 Piper, Rose, 488 51417, 514, 52021, 520 Schtte, Wilhelm, 190n3 Sobel, Janet, 43, 45 33537, 336, 349
528