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Put the Blame on Boys, Mame
By Carrie Rickey

(from page one) female practitioners, though women are among its most eloquent artists.

Three statistics prompt me. Of the 40 artists in Zeitgeist, a current Berlin international exhibition, only one—Susan Rothenberg—is a woman. In The Expressionist Image: American Art from Pollock to Now, of the two-dozen artists represented, only two—Louise Bourgeois and Rothenberg—are women. Last year's New Spirit in Painting in London: none. In complimenting Carroll Janis on the fine show, a sensitive historical exhibition that's the most rigorous theme survey New York has seen in ages (and one of museum quality, putting the Whitney's hastily assembled Figuration show to shame), a friend and I mentioned that while he'd included the Expressionist forefathers, he'd neglected the foremothers. Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, and Alice Neel should rightfully have been hanging next to Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Philip Guston. Just as Katherine Porter, Joan Snyder, Joan Brown, and Judy Pfaff should have been side-by-side the excellent examples by Lucas Samaras, Malcolm Morley, Susan Rothenberg, and George Segal. Janis admitted he'd tried to get some of the artists we'd mentioned, but their work was unavailable. I believe him because he's honorable, yet Zeitgeist and The New Spirit in Painting are symptomatic of a much more pervasive cultural malady, one so deeply rooted in the system that Janis et al. do not recognize it as sexism by another name.

To find its roots, a brief account of American postwar art is in order. Fueled by the emigration of European Surrealists and the burgeoning U.S. economy, American art enjoyed its first international success with Abstract Expressionism. This exuberant action painting explored formalist values while its implicit polemic was that in America, artists were absolutely free, and under Communist regimes, Socialist Realism was de rigeur. You won't read it in most histories of the period, but women were seminal—should we say ovular?—in Abstract Expressionism, as exhibitions organized by Phyllis Rosenzweig (The Fifties, at the Hirshhorn in summer 1980) and Barbara Rose (Krasner and Pollock: A Working Relationship, at the Grey Gallery last year) powerfully demonstrate. In trying to figure precisely why the histories of the period (and the mythology) stress the achievement of male artists, the recurring clue is in the language of the art historian: the triumph of American painting. Harold Rosenberg's designating the canvas as an arena in which the gladiator/artist struggles. This is the jargon of war, of competition. Abstract Expressionism represents not only a dynamic art movement that changed the course of painting and sculpture but a war waged by American art against the tyranny of European aestheticism. And we know it's men, not women, who are sent to fight war.

And it's warfare time again in the '80s. Since the School of Paris was supplanted by the New York School after World War II, Europe has sorely missed being the center of the art world. In the last five years transatlantic art alliances have come and gone at a supersonic rate exceeding that of a Concorde. In 1978 "New Imagism" was the agreed-upon style and succeeded by "Pattern and Decoration," which was rapidly superseded by "Neo-Expressionism." The aggressiveness of all these styles was hotly discussed in the journals as a kind of transartworld battle: could Julian Schnabel and David Salle resist America's invasion by Italy's "Three Cs" (Clemente, Cucchi, and Chia)? In the marketplace competition, it's Europe's best men against ours. 

Or to try another historical precedent: why not examine the way Expresssionism, in its fin-de-siécle German and Northern European manifestation, celebrates another assertion of manhood. Alessandra Comini, in her essay "Gender or Genius? Women Artists of German Expressionism" (collected in Feminism and Art History) sees the problem in the standard definition of Expressionism, "a definition which seems to take relish in contemplating and re-contemplating the 'revolt of the sons against the fathers.'" As Comini quips, there is no room for daughters here, which is why the work of Kaethe Kollwitz, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Gabriele Munter was long eclipsed by discussions of Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, and Wassily Kandinsky. An Oedipdal struggle must be more important than a parallel struggle (Electral?) fought by women. Comini points out that though Kollwitz's themes—dying, war, and death—are virtually the same as Munch's, the litany has it that Kollwitz favored "social" themes and Munch more universal subject matter. If a woman paints it, it's sociology; if a man treats the same content, it's philosophy. Or so double-standard-bearing art historians would have us believe. 

But warfare and Oedipal struggle, two sex-linked characteristics, are only part of the reason Neo-Expressionism has a masculinist rep. To understand another contributing factor to the backlash, we must review the '60s and '70s, crucial decades when woman artists (some identified as feminists, others not) came to the fore and powerfully changed ideas about art as other women, on picket lines and in inflammatory editorials, were transforming givens about society.

It's an axiom of contemporary art history that expressionism is "hot" and minimalism, a prevailing mode in the '60s, is "cool." But while these impulses tend to alternate in the history of painting and sculpture—explosiveness followed by implosiveness—what happened in the '70s was totally unanticipated. Women artists appropriated formerly disreputable media, fabrics and ceramics, and deliberately embraced a maximalism that discredited the monastic minimalism which had preceded it. Things heated up not only on the aesthetic level—the work was more engagé, expressive, than art had been during the '60s—but also on an intellectual level as well—no longer would women silently let Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella be applauded for paintings that used quilt and Navajo motifs without insisting that these women-made artifacts be treated as seriously as the man-made paintings. They pointed out the double standard of believing that when women do it, it's unconscious craft, and when men do it, it's consciously vanguard art.

The exclusive, chilly quality of '60s Minimalism and Pop was replaced by an inclusive, convivial sensibility bred and nurtured by newly confident women artists. Purity was replaced by motley expressiveness. Lyrical abstraction gave way to operatic excess. And the work of almost every male artist changed radically as a result. Would Frank Stella be constructing

[[image]]
KAETHE KOLLWITZ
Kollwitz: Nie wieder Krieg! (1924)


his "Exotic Birds" had not an exuberant taste for glitz, embellishment, particolor, and decorativeness made his constructivist collages look pallid by contrast? Compare his recent work with that of the previous decade. Likewise Lucas Samaras: would his fabric collages have been thinkable if he hadn't been swept by a zeitgeist that suggested textile tactility was more sensuous than his demonic deconstructions of chairs? And would Kenny Prince's Mexican pottery have been so celebrated had not the formerly debased "crafts" challenged the hegemony of "high art"? Postmodern art is a direct consequence of feminism, and whether they acknowledge it or not (most of them do) the male artists during this period were profoundly affected by the autobiographical, diaristic, confessional, and expressionistic modes of woman artists, which aimed to expand rather than contract the popular notion of art.

And for fostering such expansion, how are women artists acknowledged? By once again being eliminated from mainstream shows. Nothing raises my hackles more than counting the number of women in shows. I hate counting. I was bad at math. But after hearing about the Zeitgeist Image, I started counting every expressionist woman artist I could think of (and some of them aren't neo-) and, with help from friends, came up with enough names so that we'll never again have to hear, from men curators, "But there are no women expressionists." I append this list for use by any curator, foreign or domestic, with plans to organize another Neo-Expressionism show. I'll define Expressionism briefly: It's an individual's subjective responses to a situation, usually characterized by a violent handling of paint or sculptural material, and often an aggressive juxtaposition of disparate media (Voice critic Roberta Smith, in her aptly titled review in last week's paper, Everyman's Land, mused that what some people mean by "Expressionism" is everything except flat-painted geometric renderings). Perhaps it's this violence and assertiveness that male curators would prefer remain in the realm of the masculine, which is why they can neither acknowledge nor validate such art made by women. If a man does it, it's Oedipal. If a woman does it, it's threatening.

The systematic exclusion of women expressionist artists deliberately distorts the contemporary situation: a few well-funded male curators have chosen not to look at women. But in fact the art world in the last decade is as profoundly changed as the art. There are more women artists—artists of quality—than ever before. Each of the art journals is now helmed by women: Betsy Baker and Joan Simon at Art in America, Alexandra Anderson and Denise Martin at Portfolio, Amy Newman at Art News, Amy Baker and Ingrid Sischy at Artforum, Isolde McNicholl at Art and Auction. Among the museums: Diane Waldman steers the Guggenheim, Gail Levin and Barbara Haskell are Whitney curators, Barbara Rose and Linda Cathcart have important positions at Texas museums, Stephanie Barron is at L.A. County, Phyllis Rosenzweig and Miranda McClintic at the Hirshhorn, Jane Livingston at the Corcoran, Marcia Tucker at the New Museum, Janet Kardon at Penn's ICA, and Anne d'Harnoncourt at the Philadelphia Museum.

Nationally, the most influential galleries are run by women: Miani Johnson, Holly Solomon, Pat Hamilton, Paula Cooper, Mary Boone, Rebecca Blattberg, Nancy Lurie, and Rosamund Felsen. (Even Mary Boone, at long last, has added two women to her stable.) So why the ritual elimination of women artists from these major shows? I'd like to put the blame on boys, Mame, but we girls are responsible, too, and there are reasons other than male fear at the aggressiveness of women artists that women are being excluded. That oracle of the New Conservatism, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, reveals that the reason "post-feminists" excoriate feminism is because feminists are shrill, strident, militant, and aggressive. Well, it's the militants and aggressors who transform society, and silence that reinforces the status quo. It's feminist stridency that changed the art world in the '70s, and now men are earning most of the profit and press—just as fin-de-siécle expressionist men eclipsed the reputation of Kollqitz, Modersohn-Becker, and Munter. And it's going to happen again, if we don't stay shrill- and aggressive.

Thank you to Mimi, Melissa, Ida, Joyce, Scott, Ingrid, and Joan for supplying me with names, precedents, and ideas. 


Expressionist Women

Judy Baca
Elvira Bach
Lynda Benglis
Judith Bernstein
Anna Bialabroda
Louise Bourgeois
Phyllis Bramson
Nancy Brett
Joan Brown
Louisa Chase
Chryssa
Cora Cohen
Colette
Elaine deKooning
Martha Diamond
Sari Dienes
Mary Beth Edelson
Jean Feinberg
Louise Fishman
Hermine Ford
Linda Francis
Mary Frank
Helen Frankenthaler
April Gornik
Nancy Graves
Denise Green
Nancy Grossman
Harmony Hammond
Freiya Hansell
Grace Hartigan 
Candace Hill-Montgomery
Jenny Holzer
Joan Jonas
Ida Kohlmeyer
Lee Krasner
Barbara Kruger
Suzanne Lacy
Faye Lansner
Maria Lassnig
Susan Laufer
June Leaf
Sherrie Levine
Margo Margolis
Mercedes Matter
Louisa Matthiasdottor
Ana Mendieta
Melissa Meyer
Joan Mitchell
Elizabeth Murray
Alice Neel
Laura Newman
Pat Olezsko
Meret Oppenheim
Howardena Pindell
Judy Pfaff
Lil Picard
Jody Pinto
Katherine Porter
Deborah Remington
Kate Resek
Germaine Richtier
Judy Rifka
Faith Ringgold
Susan Rothenberg
Joan Semmel
Cindy Sherman
Hollis Sigler
Amy Sillman
Jenny Snider
Joan Snyder
Nancy Spero
Pat Steir
Isolde Wawrin
Dondi White
Jackie Winsor
Daisy Youngblood
Zarina
Barbara Zucker

Filmmakers

Ericka Beckmann
Valie Export
Ulrike Ottinger
Federike Pezold
Yvonne Rainer 


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VOICE NOVEMBER 2, 1982