Reviewing 1970s and 1980s Feminist Art Practices in
the 1990s:
Three Major Exhibitions on Judy Chicago, Eleanor Antin and Martha Rosler
Alexander Alberro - Discussant's Closing Remarks
First of all, I would like to thank Lisa Bloom for organizing this panel – one of the few of its kind at CAA this year, and to express regret at the same time of the perhaps significant fact that one of the only other feminist panels at this conference was scheduled to run concurrently with ours, thus forcing a choice and splitting the constituency. For unlike several years ago, when papers and panels devoted to feminism were prevalent at the CAA, today they seem to have receded to the margins thus imitating a general trend or backlash in academia specifically and society more generally. Feminist studies are not so much under siege as merely ignored, the issues that mobilized and informed the work of a generation of artists and scholars are no longer deemed pressing or relevant. That said, however, it is with a certain degree of optimism that I note that two of the speakers in today’s session – Catherine Caesar and Lucy Soutter –represent a new generation; their projects are in part motivated by an attempt to forge a link between feminist activist practices of the 1960s and 1970s and current feminist practice today. The other two speakers, Ruth Wallen and Alison Rowley, provide us with first hand experiences of exhibitions and performances as well as reminding us of the international dimension of feminism. For while the artists under consideration certainly have achieved national acclaim and attention, they are above all international artists whose work resonates with cultural workers and activists around the globe.
Rowley’s excellent paper focuses on the recent Martha Rosler retrospective entitled Martha Rosler: positions in the life world that opened at the Ikon Gallery in Britain and travelled to Lyon, France, The Generali Foundation in Vienna, MACBA in Barcelona, and Rotterdam in the Netherlands before its Fall 2000 double installation in both the downtown Soho New Museum and the uptown ICP. For Rowley, Rosler’s work has always been significant precisely in its capacity of performing a “feminist critique of modernism” one which puts into jeopardy the concept of artistic authorship. And yet, as Rowley observes, drawing from Mary Kelly’s groundbreaking 1981 essay ‘Re-viewing Modernist Criticism’ (in M.Kelly Imaging Desire MIT, 1999), it is precisely the temporary exhibition system and the retrospective which, as modernist constructs, necessarily inscribe the artist in an inherently modernist paradigm. Thus, Rowley signals a contradiction in the anti-modernist and institutional politics practiced by Rosler over the years and the current retrospective and accompanying exhibition catalogue. The catalogue, Rowley underscores, completes the modernist project for she remarks, referencing Griselda Pollock, it is the discursive structure by means of which an artistic subject is realized in the field of art history. Rowley then concludes the first part of her paper with the powerful statement that, “the retrospective functions in the field of curatorial practice to massively underwrite modernist criticism’s production of artistic authorship in the form of the bourgeois subject, autonomous, proprietorial.”
In the second part of her presentation, Rowley attempts to redress this unfortunate outcome of the retrospective by engaging in a close reading of two of the installations and their critical reception in the press – the one at the Ikon Gallery and the two-part New York City show, in order to determine the extent to which the exhibitions reopened “public debates about the generational shifts in feminist art and curatorial practices”. In New York the reception to the split venue was mixed. New York Times’ critic Holland Cotter, and Time Out’s Martha Schwendener interpreted the division as symptomatic of Rosler’s “long standing habit of dividing her energies”, describing the city space between the two sites as somehow related to Rosler’s own milieu. Rowley astutely notes that by focusing on biographical details, both reviewers rob Rosler’s “work of its status as representation” and as a “sophisticated signifying practice”. Rowley’s own reading of the New York show productively departs from the dominant view disseminated in the mass media – where they see the separate venues as a negative, she discerns that “the spatio-temporal disposition of the exhibition functioned as a radical challenge to the conventions of the retrospective, structurally inhibiting narrative, spatial and temporal continuity.” Just as the show was spatially dislocated, Rowley brilliantly finds a similar dislocation or disjuncture between the visual aspects of the exhibits and the audial component. And it’s within the domain of sound that Rowley locates the primary challenge to the modernist paradigm traditionally focused on the visual. The use of sound as a means by which to offer an alternative representation of history is at the basis of many of the films of Jean Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet whose filmic practice, especially History Lessons, had, as Rowley notes, a profound impact on Rosler’s methodology. And a theory of the rematerialization of history is at the core of Nancy Roth’s review of the Ikon Gallery retrospective in Afterimage. Roth proposes that the retrospective represented “a way of doing history other than writing exclusively about it.”
After advancing this provocative insight, Rowley hastily concludes with a quotation from Rosler’s conversation with Michael Rush in the New York Times in which the artist justifies the retrospective with the argument that it “enable the young to discover what to some of us is still so present.” Here, I wish that time had permitted Rowley to tease out further the implications of both her own observations on the making of history as well as that suggested by writers such as Nancy Roth. I think it would also have been productive if Rowley had foregrounded her own role within an academic context, as well as in her capacity as a participant on this panel, in the making of history, the continuation or even extension of the retrospective which discursively continues here in this room today. Also, one might legitimately ask, to what extent did the accompanying catalogue reinforce or undermine the modernist enterprise? Rowley points out many of the contributing texts that must be attended to in the formation of a retrospective and though she does provide us with certain curatorial models which would break with the modernist trope this point could be productively taken further. Also what to do with the paradoxical situation where it seems that in NYC the curatorial practice challenged the modernist paradigm while the press reinscribed it, and in Britain the exact opposite took place? In other words, what do we make of the possibility that in the end the traditional presentation provoked more critical thought and discussion in the public sphere than the non-traditional one?
In contrast to Rowley who focuses on the present day retrospective of Martha Rosler, Catherine Caesar takes us back a quarter of a century to the mid-1970s and discusses Rosler’s work in the context precisely of her not being exhibited. Here, Caesar reminds us of just how difficult it was for artists informed by feminism who also happened to be on the left to be accepted and therefore included in shows by curators, especially for artists such as Rosler whose work denied easy categorization. Caesar charts out a teleology of Rosler’s career, one which, though influenced by conceptualism, eschews the privatized interiority of many early conceptual artists, in favor of the socially engaged practices of someone like Hans Haacke, or Fred Lonidier. Caesar then links this preference in Rosler to her attitude towards a majority of artists informed by feminism who relied heavily on autobiographical first person narratives. This emphasis on the personal and the interior private space, Caesar suggests, ultimately leads to a practice based in narcissism that ignores a recognition of the crucial role that class and social problems play in sexism. She then argues that it was this ideological lens that separated Rosler from feminist peers such as Eleanor Antin and Adrian Piper, ultimately resulting in Rosler’s exclusion from Lucy Lippard’s important exhibit c. 7500 in 1973. Caesar proposes that there was more behind Lippard’s claim that Rosler was not included in c. 7500 because the critic simply didn’t know her work, and instead grounds this exclusion in the fact that Rosler’s work was at the time antithetical to Lippard’s curatorial concept that favored artists whose work dealt “with the perception on exterior phenomena; with reframing...factual material into personal patterns; with biography, usually autobiography; and with transformation, primarily of the self.” Since Rosler didn’t fit these criteria which, Caesar argues, became the benchmark for artists informed by feminism in the US of the 1970s, her work was therefore largely neglected until the 1980s. And because Rosler’s artistic practice was not included in traditional exhibition sites, there are few reviews or catalogues from this time from which to draw on in order to become fully acquainted with her work.
It is therefore extremely welcome that Caesar gives us detailed descriptions of Rosler’s more important work from the 1970s such as the 1974/75 The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, the 1974-76 postcard series Tijuana Maid, or the 1977 videotape Vital Statistics of a Citizen Simply Obtained. Caesar doesn’t locate these works in a vacuum but contextualizes them through contrasts with the work of other contemporary artists such as On Kawara. Yet, within the context of the structure of Caesar’s paper, I think it would have been productive to hear more about what work Rosler was making prior to 1973, such as Bringing the War Home of the late 1960s, or the Diaper Pattern of 1971, since I think that such a discussion would strengthen her argument concerning Lippard’s overlooking of Rosler’s work in 1973. I also think that Ceasar might push her argument concerning narcissism a bit further by extending it to the media that Rosler used. In particular, I am thinking here of Rosler’s videotape, Vital Statistics, which Caesar suggests looks at women’s role in patriarchal society and problematizes their self-absorption and narcisism? The argument could be buttressed if a bit more time was spent charting out to what extent the camera, both the still and video camera, is imbricated with politics in Rosler’s practice?
Like Ceasar’s, Ruth Wallen’s fascinating presentation returns us to the 1970s, albeit with the added dimension of firsthand experience. For Wallen, unlike Rowley and Caesar, is a practicing artist, and the unmediated recollections that she provides are invaluable. She takes us on a journey from the seventies to the present day which illustrates the evolution of feminist art practice from an initial emphasis “on identification and embodiement,” “telling personal stories” – (what Ceasar has referred to as the narcissistic moment) – to an “emphasis on creating dialogue and community.” Using the occasion of the 1996 restaging of Judy Chicago’s celebrated Dinner Party of 1979, Wallen launches a discussion that seeks to find the influence of Chicago’s piece in “the development of activist, community based work over the last two decades.” Attentive to the fact that “activist work often gets lost in the museum recontextualization,” Wallen focuses the rest of her discussion primarily on two artists – Suzanne Lacy and Betsy Damon, whose public work demonstrates the transition from a focus on the personal and the body to a “community based practice.” Within Wallen’s paper we find a trajectory that leads from identity politics and a following of the slogan “the personal is political,” to the recent eco-art of Damon whose collaborative projects address environmental disasters. I was particularly struck by the juxtaposition of Wallen’s paper with Caesar’s, for Wallen seems to be describing precisely the feminist art practice of the seventies that Rosler was decidely not a part of, and the point now reached is more akin to the latter’s practice. Thus, Wallen cites Lacy in 1995 describing the evolving role of the feminist artist as public “experiencer, reporter, analyst, or activist.” And yet, in my understanding this is precisely Rosler’s practice. In her conclusion, Wallen returns to Judy Chicago with the summation that “Chicago may be criticized for not following up on the radical implications of her major work.” I have to admit I found myself wishing that Wallen had given some recent examples of Chicago’s work to buttress this point and make it sound less like the off-the-cuff remarks of those critics she rightfully takes issue with at the opening of her paper.
The final presentation, Lucy Soutter’s meditation on the 1999 Eleanor Antin retrospective, touches upon some of the same issues found in the other three papers albeit from a different perspective. Again it problematizes the retrospective –on the one hand signaling that an artist has reached a certain point in their career, on the other hand unwittingly canonizing an artist and blunting the critical dimension of their work. Along this line of thought, the genre of the retrospective is perceived as essentially modernist and male, and therefore incompatible with feminist political aesthetics. In contrast to Rowley’s more critical view of the Rosler retrospective, Soutter celebrates Antin’s show and attributes its success to “three key curatorial decisions: to make the installation and catalogue accessible, to frame Antin as a pioneering feminist artist, and above all, to foreground Antin’s biography and public persona.” Soutter’s paper pushes Antin’s reception beyond a feminist one and places it in the context of other work being made at the same time. To that effect, she provides us with insightful comparisons of Antin’s work in relation to early conceptual artists such as Vito Acconci and Douglas Huebler. However, the main subject of analysis in Soutter’s work lies with the catalogue which she describes both in terms of its physical materiality as well as in terms of the structure and content of the essays and its reception. Now, certainly, the catalogue is crucial in placing the subject within the field of art history. But I think that one must be careful that, unless this is its explicit function, it doesn’t substitute for, or displace, the actual work – even if it is an award-receiving catalogue. I regret that Soutter didn’t have the opportunity to actually walk through and see the retrospective first hand and instead had to rely on mediated receptions, especially given that, as she states in her paper, she’s so “enthusiatic” and “invested” in Antin’s work.
Which brings us back to the role of biography and persona – the third key curatorial decision for Soutter. In contrast to Wallen, Rowley, and Ceasar who all express reservations about biographical readings and see these as a legacy of a certain 1970s feminism, Soutter seems to be calling for a return to the personal, and not just the artist’s personal subjectivity, but the critic’s or historian’s as well. Thus, she abandons the conventional academic semi-detached voice of a scholar in favor of a much more personal, engaged tone – as she herself states, she’s writing about Antin because she likes Antin and her work. Soutter’s here signaling the return of pleasure within the academic enterprise where theory and analysis is being replaced by a more subjectively based critique. As she notes, both early conceptual artists and their historians – Lucy Lippard being the exception – have in common a privilege of the intellect over the senses and a language which is “specialized, jargon-laden and esoteric.” I can’t help but be reminded here of the attacks on feminist intellectuals such as Judith Butler or Gayatri Spivak by members of the conservative National Association of Scholars who couched their dismissal of the ideas and politics of these intellectuals through the derision of their particular use of language. In an era when there is not only a backlash against feminism but against intellectuals generally – a dumbing down of public discourse and sites of learning – I think we need to exercise extreme caution and be careful not capitulate but to maintain rigorous intellectual investigations. This isn’t to say that the personal/biographical has no place within the academy, not at all. But like every other text,as Soutter reminds us, the personal is a text which must be critically read.
So let me conclude by reading again the final sentences of each paper: Soutter ends with the words that Antin’s work “offers a model for a dialogue between accessibility and seriousness, community and context.” Wallen hopes that “this discussion is only a beginning of consideration of the influence of seventies feminist work to the development of community-based activist art.” Caesar argues that Rosler’s artistic practice has from the beginning encouraged the viewer to look at the world beyond her or his immediate environment, into the larger issues of societal control and exploitation. And finally Rowley concludes that Martha Rosler: positions in the life world was a crucial reminder that doing these histories must entail attending to the means by which the particular configuration of each can precisely be translated into curatorial practices in the present. I think the message is clear, whatever shortcomings the retrospective exhibitions and installations of Rosler, Chicago, and Antin might have, the importance and impact of their work cannot be underestimated, both at the time of production and continuing on today. The importance that community based activism now plays signals a significant shift, I would argue, not just in feminist aesthetic practice but in cultural production in general. What is interesting is that none of the presenters directly addressed changes in the political climate which may have directly contributed to the move away from the personal toward a more community-based practice in the US such as the reactionary politics of the 1980s and Reaganism, and now, in 2001, Bushism, and the assault on intellectuals, and the arts, and the NEA, spearheaded George Bush, Lynn Cheney, and others. We’re now entering a new, highly conservative period, with yet another highly reactionary regime here in the US, and must as academics, artists, critics, intellectuals and workers remain vigilant that our work will be supported and make a difference.
These papers were presented at the 89th College Art Association conference in Chicago, February 28-March 3 2001.
Copyright © : Alexander Alberro, February 2001
N.Paradoxa : Issue No. 14, 2001