Art Schmart.

Call it like it is Dana Gioia, new NEA Chairman! Chairman Gioia (pronounced Joy-a) spoke to the graduates of Stanford, who apparently disdained Gioia's lack of personal celebrity. His address was about the vapidness of current culture. This is an informative, if sketchy, read from the San Francisco Chronicle. Stanford snored.

Art Review | Global Feminisms

"Ecstatic, Hysteric, and Other Saintly Ladies" by Anna Baumgart (2004)

"The word feminism will be around as long as it is necessary for women to put a name on the sense of assertiveness, confidence and equality that, unnamed, has always been granted men." Roberta Smith, NYT

Roberta Smith, NYT Art Critic, has reviewed the new exhibition Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum (coming right on the heels of WACK! at the Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, see my March 12th entry) and has found it worthy, especially the work of women creating art in far flung places where feminist art provides an aggressive critique of an assaultive male culture. As supportive as the review is, and it is, there is the final blow, "...it should have been much better."

This critique provokes in me a short, quick gasp of disappointment. Smith continues:

"(T)he show itself feels narrow. Nearly devoid of significant painting and sculpture and thoroughly dominated by photography and video, with a documentary slant to many of its better works, it is more about information, politics and the struggle for equality than it is about art in any very concentrated or satisfying sense."

I know this unsatisfied sense. I am thrilled by the expression of feminist philosophy, but I find myself hungry for ART, masterful technique. Because this is work created by women after 1990, all of whom were born after 1960, one wonders if this somehow reflects the state of training in art schools, rather than state of feminist art? I often hear friends who teach in art schools lamenting their student's rejection of formal training as being a restraint of expression. Is this just the state of art in general?

This speedy, pop culture world combined with access to "easy" technology allows anyone to be "an artist." The liberation of art from formal restraints offers the possibility for radical new ways of doing art and envisioning our world. The problem, as always, when such "restraints" are removed is that mediocrity ensues, with only occasional flashes of brilliance. The irony is that under formal restraints, the result may be the same---brilliance being so rare.

In art with feminism as its motivation, there seems to be the need to shock the viewer into understanding, because the forces of discrimination seem so natural. The use of shock forces recognition. But if shock is the time-honored means, over time it becomes just boring---oh there are the bloody sanitary napkins again, oh there are the butchered bodies again, and so on.

And, is it the curation that is at fault? Is it by choosing easily readable work that the value of struggling to master technical skills is undermined? Is it only about the message? Are we just in love with the message and unconcerned about the "exertion and passion," to use Smith's words, of the object of our love.

Feminism is a philosophy. I think that the philosophy is much bigger than ART. Art helps to communicate the philosophy, but art is not feminist. The message is not the medium. So this unsatisfactoriness, if you will, could be the result of numerous factors effecting the art world in general. Didn't Andy warn us, years ago?

So far, no one seems able to curate a significant show of masterful works with a feminist message. The statement, "...it should have been much better..." leaves me with the hopeful feeling that the critic knows the work is out there. Someone please find it. The hunger prevails.

Roots

Well it seems the force of a narrative thread, according to New York Times art critic Holland Cotter, in reviewing the Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, MoCA, exhibition, WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution, is missing.

In the spirit of feminism, Cotter's review of this first major museum show of early feminist work, while highly supportive of the show, also provides useful criticism. This criticism doesn't diminish Cotter's greater understanding of feminist art of the 60s and 70s:

"One thing is certain: Feminist art, which emerged in the 1960s with the women’s movement, is the formative art of the last four decades. Scan the most innovative work, by both men and women, done during that time, and you’ll find feminism’s activist, expansionist, pluralistic trace. Without it identity-based art, crafts-derived art, performance art and much political art would not exist in the form it does, if it existed at all. Much of what we call postmodern art has feminist art at its source."

My strongest connection to this thinking is the emergence of performance art. It always seemed to be the freshest and riskiest form of feminist art. Its place as an art form was wildly debated at the time. Performance art also seems to me to be essential to revolution on many levels.

This show, curated by Cornelia Butler, Chief Curator of drawing at MoMA, travels in the summer to P.S. 1 in Brooklyn. Hopefully by the time it arrives solutions will be provided that enlarge and better elucidate the role and context of feminism in the progress of art. As the reviewer suggests, waiting 40 years for something to happen leaves one wanting, whatever the show.

Photo above: "The exhibition “Wack!” begins with “Abakan Red” (1969), a suspended fiber sculpture by Magdalena Abakanowicz."