- Through intimate interviews, provocative art, and rare, historical film and video footage, this feature documentary reveals how art addressing political consequences of discrimination and violence, the Feminist Art Revolution radically transformed the art and culture of our times.—Anonymous
- In the 1960's, a few women artists formed a coalition naming it W.A.R.: Women Artists in Revolution because art created by women was ignored or denigrated. Even today, people struggle to name three woman artists. In the 1968, one year after the summer of love, America was still in Vietnam. While at home, the Black Panthers, civil rights and free speech movements were only part of the subterranean agitations. The Women's Liberation movement was gaining traction. Lynn Lester Hershman was a student at Berkely at this time. With a borrowed camera, Hershman felt the need to capture the moments she was experiencing. The 1968 Miss American Pageant was the scene for one of the first feminist demonstrations where feminists spread a foul-smelling vapor near the foot of the beauty pageant runway. It was at this time, Hershman claim art and politics fused. was a There was a weeklong protest of art events against the Vietnam War. Judy Cohen- Gerowitz was inspired by the Black Panthers when she changed her last name to Chicago. Like Chicago, many women artists of the time felt they were going it alone to get noticed and show their work. Major art shows were dominated by white mail artists. One voice after another that Hershman recorded became a chorus syncopated into a movement that would become a revolution. Minimalism was the prevailing tendency at that time. The whole ethos of minimalist art was to arrive at an ever-purer notion of what an object could be. It was free and devoid of politics and that was a higher form. The culture was in a state of grave agitation, where people were marching by the hundreds of thousands in the streets, yet the leading artistic activity of the day was mute. Art had reached an impasse that American culture was already breaking through. There had to be an invention of a new kind of art, and that's exactly when feminism starts in the art world. In 1970, the Kent State incident and Nixon's order to secure the border in Cambodia spurned a more artists to react. Adrien Piper's performance art become more concrete and confrontational. In protest to the invasion of Cambodia, the artist Robert Morris closed his exhibition at the Whitney. Robert Rauschenberg and Carl Andre withdrew their work from the Venice Biennale, and together they opened a Biennale-in-Exile in New York City. But the artists in this exhibition were only white men. A group called WSABAL--Women, Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation, threatened to demonstrate if they didn't integrate the exhibition. That group was actually just Faith Ringgold and her daughter Michelle Wallace. The Whitney Annual was protested by women artists projecting images on the outside of the museum and sending out press releases on Whitney stationary acknowledging the lack of women and people of color in their exhibitions. Eggs were placed inside the museum some of which Ringgold had painted black and written 50% upon them. The Los Angeles County Museum was planning an "art and technology" show, and the red flag was the cover of the catalog, with a grid with 50 heads of men on it. Protesters counted the works on the walls, embarrassing them, until they felt they had to negotiate. A.I.R. was the first women's cooperative, a gallery showing women's works in Soho. Judy Chicago started the very first feminist art program in Fresno State College in 1970. This evolved into a conference organized by Miriam Schapiro and Chicago at Cal Arts where slide of many women artists' work were shared on slides and copied. Exposure was quickly gained across the country and the globe. Women entered the art world through performance art. Performance art is this strange, amorphous area that attracts hybrids from every discipline. It remains this peculiar place that people can be extremely experimental. Consciousness raising began organically with one person talking to another until a group had formed. The women began to focus on their work often to the exclusion of their family. Marriage breakdown was common. The number of women experiencing rape was also staggering. Women began questioning their traditional roles as homemaker and expressed their rage in their art. Artists experiments with role playing and gender swapping. From 1973 to 1979 Lynn Herschman lived as a fictional person named Roberta. Roberta had a driver's license, saw a psychiatrist and had better credit than Hershman did. The fragments of her life emerged to eventually show a portrait of what it was like to experience alienation, rejection and loneliness. Roberta put ads in newspapers to meet roommates, and, as she met them, she became part of their reality, just as they became part of her fiction. She was a fractured identity, a virtual person captured in a time frame, waiting for her history to congeal. Race became the subject and the content of art that was produced. Adrian Piper tells how it was common for people who were not white, but appeared white to pass as white rather than point out their racial differences. Howardena Pindell tells the story of when she was in a white kindergarten and the teacher tied her to the cot with sheet so she would not share the bathroom with white children in her discussion of her experiences with racism. There was conflict within the movement. Martha Wilson created a portfolio where she photographed herself as a man and a woman using make up to enhance and deform. Judy Chicago asked what she thought of the art that was ready present. When criticized the art, Judy Chicago offended her because she was not universally supportive of a woman's effort. Judy Chicago became vehemently convinced not to make change was available to the ignorant but must become knowledgeable of theory, Mao, Marx and such. Many women artists did not align themselves with her ideas or politics. In 1972, at Cal Arts, twenty-one female art students transformed a vacant Hollywood home into Womanhouse, a feminist artwork. Schapiro and Chicago stopped talking to each other and the Cal Arts program dissolved. Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven and Sheila de Bretteville left Cal Arts and formed the Feminist Studio Workshop. It became its own institution and moved into the Women's Building and survived for several years during he time when the equal rights amendment passed the House of Representative. Later, Sheila de Bretteville would decry the limitations that not having money would have on the movement and what they wanted to accomplish. Feminists resented the long tradition of the woman being looked upon. When feminist performance began, it literally was the looking back. Martha Rosler, for instance, was measured ruthlessly as illustration of how women were constantly being compared to an imposed ideal standard. Eleanor Antin displayed 184 nude photos of herself in defiance of body typing. Ana Mendieta stressed the temporal nature and frailty of the female body using blood filled corpses of Earthwork and graphic images of tears to express her feelings about violence. Yoko Ono played a silent victim while inviting the audience to cut away at her clothing. Marina Abramovic inflicted wounds to herself in "Rhythm 10". The female body moved from the outcome of work to the tool of work. Some went even further and expressed sexuality on the screen to a public that would see it as pornography or attacked by other women. The popular media was challenged who frequently portrayed women only as an idealized image such as Wonder Woman. The media could be corrupted or interrupted or used to record a deeper perspective of womanhood. Lynn Hershman recorded personal diaries about incidents that "were not supposed to be talked about." Hershman was able to get her first gallery showing by creating three fictional critic that were published that wrote about her art. Women across the country started publishing magazines about feminism and the art world. Judy Chicago created "the Dinner Party", with 39 place settings that each represented a woman of achievement from the Western Civilization. The San Francisco opening in 1979 gave a glimpse of what it would mean to have a real feminist society with poetry, performance and collaboration. While some artists were having success in museums, others took to the streets. Art in store fronts, protests and creation of the worlds largest mural in California were attempts to change the popular culture. Suzanne Lacy tried to find ways to use public art to get the media's attention on the prevalence of rape. They encouraged women to fight back rather than live in fear. 1980 arrived. Feminism was set back by Ronald Reagan's election, the defeat of the Equal Right Amendment in the US Senate, and other world events. In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art opened an exhibition of "An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture". It included very few artists that were women or people of color. In protest, the Guerilla Girls, used humor to where gorilla masks to draw attention to their concerns. They protested art shows, named names and put out report cards, all in a humorous way, to show how woman were routinely left out of major events and shows. Marcia Tucker became the first woman curator at the Whitney. She tried to affect the power structure within the museum that excluded woman artists. She was hired at $2000 less per month that her male colleague but threatened press exposure to her directors to have their salaries equalized. Judy Chicago was unprepared to defend the verbosity of assault on "the Dinner Party". Galleries refused to present it and it was even criticized on the floor of Congress which they labeled pornography. The display never became part of the broader art world. Tucker was subsequently fired at the Whitney for reasons which could not be explained. Rachel Rosenthal, a Nazi regime survivor, expressed her concern how freedom of expression was slowly being eroded away. Ana Mendieta fell to her death from w 34th story winder at the hands of her husband, minimalist artist Carl Andre. Feminist artists failed to come to her defense. Andre got massive financial support from the existing art community and was acquitted of the charge of 2nd degree murder. The Anita Hill Clarence Thomas hearings were the root of the Women's Action Coalition, When the Guggenheim opened their first exhibition in Soho which included only one female artist and the works of Carl Andre, outraged WAC protesters stormed the museum and spread photos of Ana Mendieta on and around Andre's exhibit. Marica Tucker opened the "Bad Girls" exhibit n New York that was scathed by the critics. Artists used humor to comment on the prevalent attitudes of sexism of the times. Dr. Amelia Jones got similar reactions to show called "Sexual Politics" that ran at UCLA. These frustrations were the root of infighting in the feminist movement. Jones concludes that feminism failed to permanently change the structures in the art world through which art is made, sold, displayed and written about. Modern women artist view identifying with feminism as limiting their careers. Modern female artists are sometimes surprised how connected the art they are doing today mirrors the art that was created in the 1970's during the feminist movement. Lynn Hershman reveals that the documentary itself is only a small fraction of the footage and work her camera has recorded. This creates a view of history with so much left out. What the film reveals is the many questions that were raised in the 1970's that simply were not solved. After she was fired from the Guggenheim, Marcia Tucker quickly opened the New Museum, a still thriving exhibition space for contemporary art in New York. The Hollywood Women's Political Committee was able to defeat a bill in the US Senate that would have prevented "the Dinner Party" from being shown in Washington D.C. The Women's Action Coalition proved to be a stained force in promoting feminist artists in galleries across the country. The Museum of Contemporary Art held an exhibition of 119 artist with 450 of Woman Artists called WACK! Art and the Feminist Movement. It is important attempt to rectify the history of the Feminist Art Movement from a history that tried to reduce, fragment, and contain the productions of women. The exhibition has traveled to several cities and spawned more permanent exhibitions in Brooklyn and at Rutgers University. Hershman reveals that the timeline for the film is her own timeline in art. While she created art for several decades, there was no market for her art until recently, when her art appraised for 9000 times its original sale value. The proceeds of that sale allowed creation of this documentary. The work of the early feminists set the foundation for the opportunities that women artists have today. 5*
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