Some people are of two minds — if not more — about exhibits devoted exclusively to women artists.
Do such shows provide a much-needed affirmative action for artists who have been historically underrepresented or a backhanded compliment that implies they can't compete in an art market without a special place set aside for them? Femaleness as a unifying factor also tends to imply that works in such an exhibit make a statement about being a woman — an implication that reinforces a stereotype about female artists or celebrates an aspect of difference in their work, depending on your perspective.
Perhaps no two artists exemplify the two sides of this debate better than Grace Hartigan and Miriam Schapiro. Works by both appear in the Women Only! show currently at the Polk Museum of Art.
In the early '70s, Schapiro, a vocal advocate for women in the arts, co-founded a feminist art program at CalArts open to female students only. (Judy Chicago, whose renowned "Dinner Party" later featured painted plates representing the vulvas of famous women, was her partner in the endeavor.) After the program's short life, Hartigan was critical of it for creating an atmosphere in which female students lacked the experience of learning how to work alongside men. That one-sided experience won't prepare them for the real world, she argued.
Hartigan herself weathered tempestuous times with men during her life, cycling through a series of relationships with fellow artists that ended, by her own account, due to rivalry. She signed early works George Hartigan, then, briefly, Grace George, before using her own name at the recommendation of a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. The practice was an homage to female writers George Sand and George Eliot rather than a measure taken to avoid discrimination, she said in a Smithsonian oral history.
In many paintings, she remixes the figuration of Old Master paintings with a personal style influenced by the abstract expressionism of her older contemporaries: Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Exploring museum gift shops for postcards of the older paintings to take back to her studio, Hartigan discovered an unexpected source of inspiration: children's coloring books devoted to periods of art and history. Appropriating their flattened, cartoonish imagery and irreverent simplicity, she produced a series of paintings with ancient Egyptian, New and Old Testament, and other themes drawn from the books. "Blood and Wine" (1975) depicts a biblical sage-type figure surrounded by disparate symbolic objects: books, swans, a dog, a clock with Roman numerals and a revolver.
Schapiro set about reclaiming traditionally feminine domains like craft, textiles and patterning, even coining a new term — femmage, from female and collage — to describe her work. "The Beauty of Summer" (1973-1974) layers scraps of found fabric and acrylic paint on canvas to create a psychedelic baroque floral patterning. Some scraps complement, some clash, creating a sort-of-Laura-Ashley-on-acid effect. Another acrylic and fabric painting of figures dancing in a garden evokes Matisse gone wild.
Many works in the show give voice to ethnicity as well as gender. The most familiar and accessible are three story quilts by Faith Ringgold. Two tell of life in Harlem, including "Tar Beach 2," which the artist later reprised in a children's book. A third tells the lively tale of an African-American woman's last-minute hesitance to marry a white Frenchman. As she runs down the Seine River and away from the ceremony, the wedding party pursues her, shouting assurances that he will be a good husband.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, a noted Chicana artist, conjures an image of painful passage in her installation, "Transparent Migration." A bed of broken glass covers the floor between the visitor and the doors of a mirrored armoire, which hang open to reveal a cluster of glittering glass trinkets inside. The trinkets suggest the landscape of an imaginary promised land or an idealized image of home. Above, an antique blouse with brooch hangs on the armoire rod, a reference, perhaps, to an enabling or inspirational older woman who watches over in spirit form.
Flo Oy Wong recounts ambivalent feelings about being born a daughter rather than a lucky son, obsessively pasting the words "lucky daughter" around photographs of herself as a child and her mother in a suitcase turned photo album. The witty use of materials references the journey of life as well as emotional baggage.
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith takes aim at American cultural imperialism and its collateral damage to Native American cultures. In one haunting painting, the unmistakable visage of Snow White appears nestled in a macabre mound of skulls topped with the flags of colonizing nations.
Younger artists — post-WWII babies — mix it up with more contemporary media, including photography, text and references to pop culture. Like Smith, Barbara Kruger sets her sights on commercialism as a target. A photograph of a woman, ecstatically smiling with red lips parted to reveal a sort of mouth-vagina, superimposed with the word LUST in bold caps, draws uncomfortable attention to our own unwitting relationship (whether male or female) to her hypersexualized image.
Dreamy photographs of a doll-like face by Ann Hamilton originated as part of a site-specific sound-and-image installation in France. In this context, two of the photos — one of a woman's bright red lips, another of a set of wide eyes balanced on the narrow bridge of a nose — read as a rumination on female beauty, its fragmentation and objectification.
Laurie Simmons' loopy photographs play with scale and our tendency to interpret sentience into inanimate objects that look even vaguely human. A mop-headed hand puppet and a coconut each star in harshly lit scenes that suggest an amateur talent show or a police interrogation. Both reveal a drive to communicate, pretend and perform poignant in its silliness.
Where Simmons reaches out with playfulness, Jenny Holzer alternately bludgeons and scandalizes with a diatribe of twisted platitudes. A series of day-glow posters are covered with text rife with images of aggression, competition and austerity — a parody of an image of extreme masculinity. Define the will, restrain the senses, leave the family, flee the church, kill the vermin … forgo amusement, deny nature, reject acquaintances … scorn joy, scorn touch, scorn tragedy, she counsels, as if channeling Nietzsche.
Oh, and don't forget to vomit the heart.
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2006.