Charles Esche has recently discussed a cult feminist artwork, Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen ’s film, »Riddles of the Sphinx« (1977) and formulated the title of his essay as a question: »What does it mean to say that feminism is back?« He remarks: »The current rush to recall, and even restage first-way feminism in the art world is at least gratifying. Yet it is also somehow tragic that it has taken until recently to remember what we choose to forget so deliberately over twenty years before. To help to understand why feminism is again suddenly en vogue, it is probably essential to think through what caused it slip out of fashionable art discourse for the last decades.«¹

Indeed, throughout 2006 and 2007, both in the U.S. and Europe there were a number of events – exhibitions, symposia, special issues of art journals – focusing on feminism and art, feminism in art, feminist art. ² Relating to this, Amelia Jones is far more critical than Esche, as she draws attention to the »market value of this kind of »sexy« feminism«, which according to her had emerged already with the first exhibitions promoted under the rubric of »bad girls«, the title of a show organized by Marcia Tucker in The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1994. As for the current recalling and restaging of the feminist 1970s as it appeared in the exhibitions organized in the USA Jones spells out her sober account:
»The recuperation of feminism in art discourses and institutions is also, surely, in part perhaps about a desire to return to, and take wisdom from, the most successful political movement within the visual arts in the past 50 years during a time of political crises for the left. In the face of the explosive resurgence since 9/11 of American (and to a lesser extent British) imperialism and sectarian wars all over the world, this need to define some effective mode of political intervention in the face of global networks of power that seem inexorable and impossible to break down is surely in part what drives the sudden motivation to look back to a fantasized golden age when art and activism were intimately linked.«³

Amelia Jones here primarily targets the exhibition »WACK! Art and Feminist Revolution«, curated by Cornelia Butler and held in MOCA Los Angeles, which presents works by 119 women (62 from the US and the rest from »other geographies«), covering the period ca. 1965-1980.⁴ Before this show opened, there was already another project in New York, namely, »Global Feminisms – New Directions in Contemporary Art«, which was co-curated by Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin; it included 88 women artists from all round the globe (all born after 1960) with their productions from the 1990s.⁵ In contrast to these two all-women shows, the exhibition »Gender Battle«, curated by Juan Vicente Allaga at the Galician Center for Contemporary Art (CGAC) in Spain, tried to demonstrate how feminist thinking also affected male subjectivities, and consequently, the curator incorporated works by a number of men artists active in the 1970s. This international show, accompanied by lectures, plays and debates about the rules of gender, sexuality and the impact of feminism in the art of the seventies (the first work dates back to 1963, and the last in 1982), brought together 61 artists and a film collective.⁶

The purpose of my present contribution is not to examine these three exhibitions on/about art-feminism because I haven’t seen them. However, given that all three projects are accompanied by comprehensive publications, and due to the fact that exhibition catalogues have a life of their own and can be consumed independently of the shows that occasioned them, my intention is to try to inspect what kind of critical – feminist – discourse(s) these publications offer to contemporary readers. Do these publication reach the level set by Catherine de Zagher, in her »Inside the Visible«, an exhibition catalogue whose structure and theoretical level introduced new standards in feminist writing on art.⁷

Let me first turn to Charles Esche and restate his otherwise truthful observation that feminism (in art) was »what we choose to forget so deliberately over twenty years.«
Although it is rather interesting to investigate who »we« are in this sentence - the women artists, (male) art historians, or rather the art institutions and the art market - more appealing is to ask who wants to remember art-feminism or, to use the politically correct phrase – feminisms – today? In asking this, I speak from personal experience and try to remember when in the past 15 years I met a younger woman artist who stated openly that she was a feminist. Some claim that they are not interested in group ideologies (that was, for example, a position Marina Abramovic took already in the 1970s and has kept till the present day); some claim that they »always already« wanted to make »universal« art and some others intelligently stress that the feminist »message« represents just one aspect of their otherwise complex artwork.

Thus, the very first problem, or at least nuisance, a (feminist) curator must face when preparing a »feminist show« is as follows. In her introduction to the »WACK!« catalogue, Cornelia Butler tries to explain what she understands by feminism: »I want to assert that feminism constitutes an ideology of shifting criteria, one influenced and mediated by myriad other factors…. Feminism is a relatively open-ended system that has, throughout its history of engagement with visual art, sustained an unprecedented degree of internal critique and contained wildly divergent political ideologies and practices.” So far, so good. However, she admits: »Many of the artists in WACK! do not necessarily identify themselves or their work as feminist.« ⁸ Wrestling with this unhappy fact, she goes on, quoting the artist, Suzan Hiller, who declared back in 1990 that »art practice with no overt political content may, nevertheless, be able to sensitize us politically.« Does this quote help the curator to suggest that artworks featuring in her show are in fact not political, which is a position that fits well to our post-political universe. How are we to resolve a paradox, namely, that exhibitions having the adjective »feminist« in their titles, such as »feminist revolution« or »global feminisms«, do not necessarily show feminist (i. e., political) artists – but simply »women’s art« (itself a problematic term); in addition, how are we to explain the information that approximately 300 women artists who do not associate their work with »feminist« agendas agreed to take part in exhibitions »about« feminism? In approaching this paradox, Joan Kee, in her excellent essay on Asian women artists, published in the catalogue for »Global Feminism«, writes: »The question is not whether women artists from Asian countries identify themselves as feminists, or whether their work imparts feminist messages. Instead, the issue concerns the logic of interpretation.«⁹ Well, if the girls involved in art-making are not political/feminist, art critics/historians/curators may correct this fact. How?

In interpreting, that is, reading art by (feminist) women artists, the curators of »WACK!« and »Global Feminism«, tend to launch a new terminology: Cornelia Butler states that »WACK!« tries to survey from an international perspective - »simultaneous feminisms«. This should be understood as an attempt at mapping feminist constellations in non-western contexts (Chile, for example) or marginalized groups within the white-dominated Western canon (black women artists). In contrast to Cornelia Butler, whose catalogue introduction manifests her rather limited theoretical abilities, the other ten contributions to the catalogue explore the 1970s from different vantage points, offering a standard theoretical level (Peggy Phelan, Abigail Solomon Godeau, Richard Meyer), whereby the text on Italian feminist art criticism by Judith Russi Kirshner, at least for me, is a historical discovery. The only authoress who proposes indeed a novel reading of the period is Marsha Meskimmon, who, equipped with post-colonial literature, subverts one of major modernist prejudices, described by Doreen Massey, who once argued that »differences that are truly spatial are interpreted as being differences in temporal development – differences in the stage of progress reached.« (p. 324). Following Massey, Meskimmon (who completely neglects any earlier Western feminist literature written prior to 1990, as it belongs to what is today known as »hegemonic«, first-world, white, »canonic« feminism) contends: »Demonstrating the relevance of »feminist art« to a contemporary audience entails not a temporal shift of focus, but a spatial realignment of our intellectual frames of reference. Casting spatial disjunctions of meaning in terms of temporal »development« is a major obstacle to genuine cross-cultural dialogue in a globalized world.«¹⁰

Such a contribution would be more than useful in the catalogue of »Global Feminisms«, which however contains brilliant essays dealing with »third world« art constellations (India, Japan, Asia, Central America), a less inspiring text on Western Europe and a depressingly dull contribution on post-totalitarian Eastern Europe. If the basic term for »WACK!« « is »simultaneous feminism«, Maura Reilly, co- curator of »Global Feminism« (whose theoretical capability, as Cornelia Butler’s, is seriously poor) tries to institute a »relational feminist approach« in curating as well as in interpretation. This basically means constructing comparisons and affinities between works produced under completely different cultural conditions so as to challenge the Westerncentric art system, question the center-periphery paradigm and open up to a multitude of feminist voices from across cultures. Such a »relational« and »dialogical« operation (practiced also by writers involved in »WACK!«) may turn out to be successful only if one does not end up with formal analysis, and this could be avoided only if one describes –once again – contextual differences.

Finally, one should, I think, investigate how the authors who wrote for these two exhibitions relate to the American and British feminist critics/art historians who dealt with (as well as witnessed) feminist practices of the 1960/1970s, and these are Lucy L. Lippard, Linda Nochlin, Roszika Parker, Griselda Pollock, Arlene Raven, and film theorist Laura Mulvey. Even though one would expect that »WACK!«, as a show that tends to »remember” and reconstruct the past of the 1970s, would at least recognize that feminist writing existed before 1990, this was not the case. (For example, Lucy Lippard figures only in the text about Italian feminist criticism!) In contrast, in discussing the period after 1990, the »Global Feminism« catalogue, offers rather serious readings of feminism as a political movement and as art. In doing so, this publication investigates the First and Third World, and last but not least, examines what was known in the Cold War as the »Second« world – Eastern Europe. This was a task completed by Charlotta Kotik (who left Prague in 1970, made her curatorial career in the States, and is currently curator at the Brooklyn Museum, the producer of the show.) I do not have anything against her readings of the artworks by 7 women artists born in countries practicing state socialism (I.Dimitrova, M. Dipitova, E. Jablonska, K. Kozyra, T. Osyojic, B.Rossa, and M. Tomic), since, as we all know, there are many ways that we (be it in a feminist vein or not) read art. What is irritating is Kotik’s understanding of the » totalitarian« period in Eastern Europe, where, as she comes to claim, modernism had flourished before 1940, and after 1945 Socialist Realism. She argues that in Eastern Europe »any form of modernism became highly suspect.« Well, if one consults only one art historian (and for me the best one) who deals with post-1945 modernism in the »East«, Piotr Piotrowski (whose major texts are available in English), one easily learns how and why communist states embraced »socialist modernism«. Indeed, as of 1954, abstract art was the official art ideology in Socialist Yugoslavia. Even more annoying is Kotik’s view of the »post-totalitarian« condition of women in Eastern Europe. Critical as she is about state-promoted gender egalitarianism and the absence of the political feminist movement in the East, she naively romanticizes the current, post-communist era by stating, for example: »For the women of Eastern Europe, being at home with their families was not only a practical goal but also a political statement – opposing the regimentation of women into cadres of the Heroes of Socialist Labor« ¹¹ AMEN! Such a neoliberal approach completely neglects the fact that during the economic transition, it was mainly post-Socialist »new women« who lost their jobs, and that unemployment went hand-in-hand with demands from nationalist ideologues that women produce the NATION, that is, be Mother again, whose life is now to be organized according to anti-abortion laws. It was in fact the very first law that most (if not all) post-Socialist parliaments tried to pass after 1990. In passing, just as feminism as »capitalist ideology« was rejected by Socialist states before 1989, it is again rejected today, this time as »remnants of the Communist ideology« that introduced gender equality.

In answering more seriously the question from my title, let me quote again Charles Esche, with whom I share this belief: if »we« try to recall the feminist art from the past, we may see »how these works might continue to provoke and seduce in the light of a different, contemporary relationship to the image – the image of woman certainly, but also images in general.« ¹²

 

 

---