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Wack!
by Azadeh Azad01-Dec-2008
"WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" is a travelling exhibition organised by the Los Angeles Museum of Art and curated by Connie Butler. It has been open at the Vancouver Art Gallery since October 4 and will continue until January 11, 2009. The show is the first comprehensive, international survey of over 300 works that emerged from the dynamic relationship between art and feminism between 1965 and 1980, a time in which a majority of feminist activism and art-making occurred across the globe. Watch video.
In the West, these years were an era of enormous social and political upheaval. Women were colliding with authority and challenging accepted assumptions on every front. They were active in anti-Vietnam War protests, the civil rights movement and women’s rights struggles. They questioned societal norms, laws and taboos; they analysed, protested and provoked – both out in the world and in their art.
Feminist art embodied the phrase "the personal is political." It ranged from the introspective and personal to the intensely confrontational, breaking all previously accepted bounds of art. Working in a diverse range of media, the exhibited artists explored many unexamined areas, challenging assumptions about the materials and projects that could be considered art. They used their bodies as canvases. They cut, reinvented, collaged and pieced together. They pushed beyond accepted ideas about artists’ media, disciplines and values. They used traditional crafts strategically, as celebratory objects, subversive tools and political weapons. They rescued everyday objects, personal histories and mundane data from the confines of domestic life, and elevated them to the realms of high art. They questioned, worded, wrote, read and rebelled, addressing and challenging every and any power relationship that could limit their lives and art.
One of the most profound impacts of feminism on art is the erosion of the boundaries between art and life, which remains with us today. Yoko Ono’s 1964-65 multi-layered performance, entitled "Cut Piece," which you can see in the following video, is one example of many in which women protested the Vietnam War and publicly tested the boundaries of their oppression. Ono invited audience members to cut off her clothes with scissors. Her role in the event invokes a classical vulnerability, while there's everything from worried tenderness to raw misogynist aggression in the reactions of the cutters. And of course there's also something empowering in her refusal to react, whatever's done to her. She took the passive resistance of the civil rights movement and made it the medium of art.
The curator of the show made up the name "Wack!" to recall the acronyms of many activist groups and political communities in the 1960s and 70s that focused on women's issues - WAC (Women’s Art Coalition) and so on. The present photo essay includes a small sample of the exhibited artworks. The photos 8, 11 and 37 are taken from "The Wack! Catalogue."
In the West, these years were an era of enormous social and political upheaval. Women were colliding with authority and challenging accepted assumptions on every front. They were active in anti-Vietnam War protests, the civil rights movement and women’s rights struggles. They questioned societal norms, laws and taboos; they analysed, protested and provoked – both out in the world and in their art.
Feminist art embodied the phrase "the personal is political." It ranged from the introspective and personal to the intensely confrontational, breaking all previously accepted bounds of art. Working in a diverse range of media, the exhibited artists explored many unexamined areas, challenging assumptions about the materials and projects that could be considered art. They used their bodies as canvases. They cut, reinvented, collaged and pieced together. They pushed beyond accepted ideas about artists’ media, disciplines and values. They used traditional crafts strategically, as celebratory objects, subversive tools and political weapons. They rescued everyday objects, personal histories and mundane data from the confines of domestic life, and elevated them to the realms of high art. They questioned, worded, wrote, read and rebelled, addressing and challenging every and any power relationship that could limit their lives and art.
One of the most profound impacts of feminism on art is the erosion of the boundaries between art and life, which remains with us today. Yoko Ono’s 1964-65 multi-layered performance, entitled "Cut Piece," which you can see in the following video, is one example of many in which women protested the Vietnam War and publicly tested the boundaries of their oppression. Ono invited audience members to cut off her clothes with scissors. Her role in the event invokes a classical vulnerability, while there's everything from worried tenderness to raw misogynist aggression in the reactions of the cutters. And of course there's also something empowering in her refusal to react, whatever's done to her. She took the passive resistance of the civil rights movement and made it the medium of art.
The curator of the show made up the name "Wack!" to recall the acronyms of many activist groups and political communities in the 1960s and 70s that focused on women's issues - WAC (Women’s Art Coalition) and so on. The present photo essay includes a small sample of the exhibited artworks. The photos 8, 11 and 37 are taken from "The Wack! Catalogue."
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Thanks Azadeh
by Souri on Mon Dec 01, 2008 02:29 PM PSTThis was the best way you could express your opinion about the choice of the picture on the front page. Your article was a very great one, and we can all see how much work and interest you'd put on it. I believe, everybody in the site, knows already that the choice of the main picture or even " title" of the articles belongs only to JJ and we all know by now that the author's decision has little to do with this selection . None would point you out, for the selection of that odd picture.
Regards,
Yellow journalism
by Azadeh Azad on Mon Dec 01, 2008 02:19 PM PSTThank you every one for your positive comments.
However, I agree with "Anonymous111" that we don't need the current photo being posted on the front page. I don't know this anonymous poster's reason, but mine is because I am against Yellow Journalism.
Definition of Yellow Journalism from Wikipedia:
“Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that downplays legitimate news in favor of eye-catching headlines that sell more newspapers. It may feature exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists."
This photo essay is about the relationship between art and a major social movement I have been a part of most of my life. Knowing JJ's journalistic approach, I was worried he would use this very specific photo for the front page; which is an out of the context and sensationalist choice. I had an internal debate as to how to prevent him from doing so. I knew he would not listen to me if I asked him not to publish it on the front page. So, I didn't say anything. In the case of my previous photo essay (Taming my Animus), I suggested to him a less sensationalist photo, but to no avail. I thought of not including the present front photo, but it would have amounted to self-censorship, which is a no-no in my world. I really didn’t know what to do. And I still don’t know what to do to prevent him from mis-representing the content of a photo essay by choosing a *sensationalist* and *out of context* photo for the front page and *exploiting some readers’ voyerism*. It is unfortunate that JJ doesn't respect the wishes of the contributors nor discusses these issues with us. It is sad to see how some Iranians switch from one extreme (Islamic fundamentalism) to another extreme (anything goes, whatever, etc.)
With freedom of expression comes responsibility - and that has nothing to do with any kind of moralistic consideration.
Azadeh
N.B. I am now thinking that the best way to "make JJ respect" my wishes, would be to write my "photo essay text" mainly about the front page photo that I have chosen. This way, he would have to throw away the whole text of the essay, if he decides to go for a shockingly sensationalist choice. Don't you think?
No, we don't ...
by Souri on Mon Dec 01, 2008 01:49 PM PSTFollowing Anonymous111, I am all for freedom of expression, Art exhibition, Feminism expression too...but with all due respect to Mrs Azad and her great article here, I find that picture too odd for being posted in the front page.
Especially (in my opinion) that picture dose not even reveal the feminist view of sex !! This picture is showing more of "male" dominance position than the female one. ...and all in all, it is useless and not very much in tune with the content of the article nor with the spirit of the site.
Intellectually incorrect and backward
by Jaleho on Mon Dec 01, 2008 01:45 PM PSTHezbollahi as usual, I will be:
I find these works of "art" not only worthless, but I also can not imagine what kind of pleasure the psuedo-intellectuals get from wasting time in these exhibitions, and find "something" out of it too. Maybe tell a friend that they went there too?
It might have been a fashion few decades ago to call these garbage "art," but I was hoping that it was a phase, dead by now. Tell me you didn't have to spend a dime in tickets, please?
I'm all for freedom of expression....
by Anonymous111 (not verified) on Mon Dec 01, 2008 01:31 PM PSTBUT..do we really need the penis grabbing painting as the one posted on the front page?
Iranian Women
by Princess on Mon Dec 01, 2008 02:34 PM PSTMy apologies to Azadeh jan, if this is a bit of a tangent, but I couldn’t help make a connection with another article I read on The Nation (recommended and posted by JJ) today.
The article, which reviews a new book on the sexual revolution in Iran states that Iranian women: “…seem to occupy a wholly perplexing historical moment, or a palimpsest of historical moments. They live in a theocracy with a premodern, religious legal code, and they are undergoing, all at once, what we in the West would recognize as a 1960s-style sexual revolution, 1970s-style second-wave feminism and the contemporary postfeminist embrace of female sexuality, with all its complexities.”
And all that on the “mute” mode!! I mean after all, what are the Iranian women doing with all the anger and violence portrayed in these images, if they don’t have a platform to voice them publicly, like it was done here in the 60s and the 70s? I guess it’s not surprising that the women’s movement seems to be the most forceful and vocal current demanding change in Iran. I wonder how much longer before we can see similar images in the museums of Tehran.
In any case, thanks for sharing! I hope it also comes to London.
Shock and social responsibility
by Nazy Kaviani on Mon Dec 01, 2008 11:53 AM PSTSome of these art pieces shock me even today. I can imagine what kinds of reactions they might have received in their own time.
It would be so convenient to frown upon some of the pieces which appear jarring but one must remember, were it not for the shock value of feminist art in the 1970's, the gender dialogue might have stayed stagnant and repressed as it had in prior decades.
Yes, the imagery of a vagina, a naked pregnant woman, or someone pulling out a scroll from an unexpected place may not be eye pleasing in the usual ways in which most of us seek art, but it continues to be thought-provoking and sobering. Thought provoking and sobering are some of the characteristics of socially responsible art.
Thank you for sharing Azadeh Jan.
Azadeh Jaan
by ebi amirhosseini on Mon Dec 01, 2008 11:40 AM PSTLovely post !.
Sepaas
Feminist art and male-chauvinist art
by choghok on Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:03 AM PSTInteresting how Feministic and male-chauvinistic art seems to reflect one and same thing. Naked female bodies :-).
/Bidar bash ke ma bekhabim
Bravo
by nilofar shidmehr (not verified) on Mon Dec 01, 2008 09:26 AM PSTBravo Azadeh jan for your short introduction and wonderful photo essay. We need more of this kind of work.
Hamvare azadeh bashi,
Nilofar