Glorious The RISD Museum focuses on feminist art BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ
	Breaking the mold Gloria: Another Look at Feminist Art of the 1970s was curated and first shown at the New York gallery White Columns, an alternative space for emerging artists, in the fall of 2002. Judith Tannenbaum, curator of contemporary art at the RISD Museum, saw it there and wanted it to be seen in Providence. "Women’s work shouldn’t be undervalued," she stressed at a panel discussion at the opening of Gloria on November 20, 2003. "We must connect the present with the past, and maybe people will see images throughout the museum in a different way after seeing this show." Curators Catherine Morris and Ingrid Schaffner were inspired to organize this exhibition because of the attention given to the work of some young women artists in the late ’90s — in particular, Vanessa Beecroft’s performance/installation of women in heels and bikini pieces at the Guggenheim, a New York Times article titled "The Artist Is a Glamour Puss" and the stylized photos of women by Katy Grannan, whose remark that "women today are much smarter" did not sit well with older women artists. "The implication was that we were dumb," quipped Morris, also speaking at the November discussion. "Gloria is definitely reactionary. It’s a response to that current generation of women artists. "And it’s also a reappraisal of ‘70s feminist art," she added. "We felt that this work looked so fresh right now. At that time, it was emerging art itself but it needed to be shown again. There was a hunger and an appetite to see this." Both curators emphasized that this exhibit is by no means a comprehensive survey of feminist art but rather an attempt to insert these particular works into the ongoing conversation about feminism and women artists. Schaffner pointed out that they took their title as a celebration of the assertive Glorias, both real and fictional, in the pop culture of the ’70s: Gloria Steinem, Gloria Bunker-Stivik (played by Sally Struthers in All In the Family), the Gloria of the John Cassevetes movie (played by Gena Rowlands), and the "Gloria" in Patti Smith’s rendition of the Van Morrison song. Schaffner felt that it was very important to revisit the work of the artists in this show partly to spotlight their role in the history of the feminist movement. She was surprised that in searching for the "iconic works" in the exhibit, none were in museums. All were borrowed from the artists themselves or from their galleries. Two of the artists in the show attended the November opening and participated in the panel discussion: Dara Birnbaum and Mimi Smith. Smith expressed her own shock at the attitudes of Beecroft and other young women artists and at their dismissal of early feminist artists. "If it wasn’t for the feminist work of the ’70s or ’80s, her work would have no place at all," Smith noted. "She couldn’t see that her work had roots in the earlier work." Smith was living in Cleveland in a big house with two small children in the ’70s, and she wanted to say something about her own life. So she started measuring appliances, furniture, architectural details, tying knots and/or measuring tapes around the outline of these objects (represented in this show are Wall Phone, Table & Chair, Window, 1973-74). "They were the process of my life," she explained. "No one else got that, even the men doing process art. The whole process part was dismissed and they referred to the subject matter. They said, ‘It shouldn’t be about one’s life but about making art.’ " Birnbaum, who displays her six-minute video takeoff of the Wonder Woman TV series in the show (Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978), remembers the controversy stirred up by her work: "My fight against images of women in a male-dominated culture got me some bad press, but I just ran with it. I was saying, ‘How dare you show me that?’ [Wonder Woman] and I needed to respond to it.’ " In Birnbaum’s version, Wonder Woman (as portrayed by Linda Carter) gets stuck in replays of her actions, whether sprinting up a hill, dodging bullets, or trying to twirl herself in and out of her Wonder Woman persona. When Wonder Woman falters mid-twirl, unable to transform herself amid repeated explosions, we know that Birnbaum is commenting on the inability (and frustrations) of an ordinary woman to access any such superpowers. In a statement by curators Morris and Schaffner in the catalog for Gloria, they reflect upon their discovery that, whether or not the younger women artists to whom they were originally responding consider themselves feminists or not, their work is based on the feminist movement and the feminist art that came before them. Morris and Schaffner realized that they did not want to split up women artists by generations but instead, they wanted to re-affirm the continuum of the feminist movement and its art. "And, also, when we looked at the work for this exhibition," Schaffner emphasized once again at the November discussion, "we found it so raw, sexy, powerful, vital." — Johnette Rodriguez

When curators Catherine Morris and Ingrid Schaffner began to look at the art that grew out of the feminist movement in the 1970s, it quickly became clear that women artists had broken with tradition in many more ways than just talking about social, economic, and intellectual equality for women. Not only did they turn the media of expression inside out, relying heavily on video and performance art, but they drew on subject matter from their own lives to create their work. It was, as John Lennon sang, in the 72-minute video by him and Yoko Ono, Bed Peace, a "revolution."

This exhibition focuses on 22 women and specifically on the work they did in photography, video, poster art, and performance pieces. The first work that’s apt to draw you into the show is, in fact, Yoko Ono’s 1969 performance, with new husband John Lennon, because the small video player sits close to the steps into the gallery and you might hear the chorus of "All we are saying . . . is give peace a chance." When you move closer to listen and watch the two of them, you are struck by the unselfconscious and un-self-righteous tone of the film, despite its urgent plea for peace and its implicit stands for male/female equality and for more healthy attitudes about sex.

Another video in the same gallery is just six minutes long but its message is clear. Martha Rosler filmed herself doing Semiotics of the Kitchen, as she worked her way, alphabetically, through the pronunciation and "demonstration" of many kitchen implements, including a grater, juicer, carving knife, nutcracker and rolling pin. Completely deadpan, she imbues each of these objects with a sinister twist, her barely-contained rage at being "stuck in the kitchen" implicit with every menacing jab and thrust. Another multi-messaged piece by Rosler, Cargo Cult, from a series titled Beauty Knows No Pain, or Body Beautiful, is a photomontage of women applying make-up, the facial close-ups projected onto the sides of huge cargo boxes being lifted off a ship.

Untitled Film Stills, a trio of photos by Cindy Sherman, are takeoffs on the B-movie images of women, with herself cast as a stereotypical bored housewife in a domestic setting. Barbara Kruger, in her narrative texts juxtaposed with photos, Pictures/Readings, suggests a similar sense of unease in her mini-stories.

Two artists who deal more specifically with the details of their everyday life are Mimi Smith in her tape-measure and knotted-string outlines and Mary Kelly, in Primapara: The Bathing Series. Kelly documents her infant son’s bath with tight close-ups of his ear, eye, mouth, hair, or the folds of his skin, a gentle but emphatic statement that her daily work at that time — caring for her baby — should be given equal recognition and status with men’s work outside the home.

That use of topics not previously touched on in art extends from Laurie Anderson’s photos of men who catcalled her on the street (Object/Objection/Objectivity), to Ana Mendieta’s slide show of People Looking at Blood, Moffit, her response to the rape and murder of a student at the University of Iowa, to Nancy Grossman’s H.U.F., a starkly scary sculpture of a male head wrapped in a black leather S&M mask, to Dara Birnbaum’s commentary on media representations of women in Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman.

Even more confrontational are the images from Hannah Wilke’s So Help Me Hannah series, six very large black-and-white photos in which the artist wears only spike heels and carries a handgun. She strikes different poses, with props and slogans across the pictures, daring the viewer to understand the objectification of women’s bodies, the violence against women that can grow from that, and women’s own capacity for violence in return. Several other artists in the show use their own nudity to turn pornography on its head. Lynda Benglis ran a nude ad of herself holding a giant dildo in Artforum magazine in 1974, as a response to a photo of Robert Morris dressed only in helmet and chains. VALIE EXPORT is posed as a gun-toting vigilante with her crotch exposed for Action Pants: Genital Panic. And Carolee Schneemann slowly extracted a crumpled scroll from her vagina as she read the text from it, in her performance piece Interior Scroll.

Other documented performances in the exhibition are Transformance (a.k.a Claudia), in which Martha Wilson, Jacki Apple, and four friends become Claudia, their parody of a glamorous woman; Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy, Joan Jonas’s combination of performance and video, in which she is seen smashing a mirror from below; Eleanor Antin’s portrayal of an androgynous king, as she interviews residents of California’s Solana Beach; and Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who conducts people-on the-street questionnaires about social issues. Adrian Piper recorded a performance of sorts, taking nude photos of herself throughout the summer of ’71, as she fasted and read Immanuel Kant (Food for the Spirit).

From ’77-’82, Jenny Holzer put up her Inflammatory Essays, unsigned posters with short, incisive statements about being ignored and repressed, all over New York City. And Nancy Spero took the texts of Antonin Artaud and commented on them verbally and visually (Codex Artaud XXVII A & B).

To set the context of the turbulent time in which these women were creating their art, RISD, under the direction of Judith Tannenbaum, put together fact sheets for this exhibition: on women in popular culture and in sports, landmark mass-media feminist publications, a series of "firsts" for women, feminist legislation and gender statistics, the latter in categories such as earnings and professionalism. Take the time to read these bright pink bulletins and you will fully understand the need to revisit and re-appreciate the work of the feminist artists in this show.