Just posted a small respite from the whirlwinds that seem to whip us all around. Getting back into the swing of all the on-going projects. Romaine Brooks, Barbara Hammer interview out just in time for her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Everything you wanted to know and then some.
Got out early this morning to see The Jewish Museum's show. It was an interesting selection that included several men who considered themselves feminist males and did what they could to forward the cause of equality. Much appreciated at the time and now.
This exhibit attempts to position a number of feminist artists who were key to shifting the gaze at the time during the later seventies, eighties and beyond within the larger context of Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Minimal. There are works by Judy Chicago, Nicole Eisenman, Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, Lee Lozano, Louise Nevelson, Louise Fishman, Joan Snyder, Miriam Schapiro, Nancy Spero and others. It is a good representation from the Museum's own collection augmented with loans. For my part I would have liked a more edgy selection but there were several cutting edge works by Hannah Wilke, Nancy Spero, Lee Lozano, and Ida Applebroog. I particularly recall Ida's Crimson Gardens which I had seen in 1987 and found shattering. It still is and holds up very well given the wars we are involved with currently. Hannah's Venus Pareve too stands the test of time as does Louise Fishman's Golem from 1981. Not all of these works qualify as feminist in my opinion, for example, Nicole Eisenman's Seder 2010 that seems to be more about queering than equality unless, of course, one considers what is going on with the GLBTQ communities as a part of the on-going feminist legacy. Certainly there are a lot of strong gay and bi-sexual women as well as feminists in this show which speaks well for it and today's politics.
It's worth a look and then some.
