Militant Art Bitch

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  The best piece of feminist writing in a long ass time.

  Posted: 3-September-2008, 10:40pm CEST by Edna

  Life of Her Party, today's Op-Ed by Maureen Dowd, the last brain at the New York Times.
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  The Blog Was Locked Down

  Posted: 4-August-2008, 2:33pm CEST by Nancy

  
  
  
  And my dog ate my homework on the way to school, and my little sister peed on my rough paper draft.
  
  Yup. That's why you haven't heard from me. Well, okay, if you're going to be all nit picking about it, I got blocked for two days. The blogger team identified my blog as a spam site, and I have been warned, blocked and humiliated. Today they let me back in and if don't post anything in 20 days, the blogger boys will go all nuclear on me and delete my site.
  
  (I'm apologizing right off the bat for double posting on Anonymous Female Artist and Tireshop. Forgive my egregious bad manners. It will never happen again. Promise)
  
  I think I found a serious motivation to get back to posting.
  
  So what's been pissing me off lately? Well, my eyebrows arched a little after reading Holland Cotter's piece in the Times, China's Female Artists Quietly Emerge. I've certainly been thinking about this lately, because I have been somewhat concerned that no one has noticed that only the Chinese boys are getting attention. I have been very disturbed about this recently, what with all the extravagant parading and monumentalizing of Chinese male artists. Not that I know how to pronounce any of their names of course.
  
  Well, I was pretty pissed off about the sorry state of inequity in the Chinese art world, until I read Cotter's article. He is always The Man when it comes to righteously pointing out some very bad gender politics in a world that I care about. So I was somewhat disappointed with Holland when I saw the photo of Cui Xiuwen who is a gaga beautiful, young , stylish woman seated next to her work which is a pile of pukey crap, a mighty bad imitation of Mariko Mori's extra terrestrial robotic looking females.
  
  Okay, same old shit on a different continent. Listen up Women. Ya gotta have good looking legs. Do y'all remember when you were a piece of crap in the art world if you weren't South American, Cuban or from Dade County? Then the Latinos got dumped for the Bosnians, Serbs, Russians and Azerbaijanis. So I am thinking to myself that my particular subset of age, race, gender, cultural and religious background is so outré that it must be coming back around the mountain to Beulah Land. It must be my turn next. So if you are a white, Jewish woman in your fifties, you might have a really big chance of being hot shit very soon. I earnestly feel this to be true.
  
  But putting aside my general bitterness at the decline of Western Civilization and the deterioration of our world wide hegemony, I am also really happy to be getting ready for my solo show, Duck and Cover Drill, in New York at Denise Bibro's project space, Platform. This is just to let you know that I am not comepletely dead in the water. Life goes on. But this is the first and last time that I will promote myself. Props to Almitra and Oly at the gallery! They rule.
  
  Sorry for this.
  
  BTW, I've been running and my legs look good.
  
  So I'm back; all refreshed and mean and pissed off as usual.
  
  Love,
  
  Rebel Belle
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  ART CRITICS R ALL DUMBS 'n SHIT.

  Posted: 9-October-2006, 5:20am CEST by Edna

  They're a silly bunch. Are they trying to contribute? It's pathetic really.
  
  Every Friday, we crack open the NYT arts page for another round of reviews, usually of the most boring shows in town by men. Lately, it's been the short list of who's sucking Warhol's proverbial dick (oh wait, that's next week; Marclay). Or, in last week's case, who's reminiscing about jacking off under his Star Wars sheets. Here are a few of my favorite snippets from last Friday.
  
  Holland Cotter on Adam McEwan (I like Klagsbrun, but this show is a fucking bore, sorry):
  
  Most of the more interesting artists these days work in several mediums, tend to approach ideas at a slant and are difficult to talk about. The British-born Adam McEwen qualifies on all three counts... Mr. McEwen took the nine Lefrak pictures himself, from the same spot and just seconds apart.
  
  Gee whiz. All by himself? Did he chew the gum by himself, too? Cotter, get back out there and find out! You're a journalist, right? I want to know.
  
  Roberta Smith on Gabriel Vormstein (a.k.a. Dream Catcher) at Casey Caplan:
  
  Two of the most beautiful works are ?A Song for X After He?s X,? which involves a musical score made of wire and cherries, and an untitled sculpture that uses soil, sugar, cardboard, a Ping-Pong ball and cereal to suggest a dead and decaying body, possibly that of a fallen drummer boy, under snow.
  
  That's kind of funny. A musical score of wire and cherries. A fallen drummer boy. Was that the thing by the door? I kind of liked that, but the rest of the show (wow, a French paper! A German paper!) should be lit on fire. Why didn't she mention how boring and self-indulgent the show is? I don't understand. Also, whenever a critic runs down a list of the artist's materials you know you're in trouble.
  
  Cotter on Gerald Davis at JCP:
  
  The show is titled ?1986? for the year he entered his teens, and in several polished autobiographical drawings it illustrates a crisis already in progress.
  
  Oh my God, Cotter. No one out of puberty gives a fuck about diaristic art. Didn't you get that memo?
  
  Smith on Wallpaper Lab:
  
  Phoebe Washburn has opted for a large close-up that suggests one of her jerry-built installation pieces...
  
  WTF. The only thing more ridiculous than reviewing a show of wallpaper is having one at your gallery and/or inviting artists to make a product out of their art. Oops. Should have resisted writing that one, but couldn't resist the urge to drop a bunch of well-known names, right? RIGHT?
  
  Smith on Taylor McKimens:
  
  The Drips are us, or the us we don?t want to know...
  
  Um... I think they're actually James Esber's. Barry McGee's? Someone's. I don't know ANY artist who thought that show was good. NOT ONE. The fucking Drips? Come on, that's just dumb.
  
  Cotter on Alice Könitz:
  
  Certain items... are normal, hang-on-the-wall art.
  
  What kind of art critic uses the word "normal" to describe traditional presentation? Then, this:
  
  Modernism put art here and design there. But we?re over that now. It?s all one.
  
  Good one, Cotter. That's just pure greatness! You're wicked smart! Congratulations!
  
  Cotter on Aaron Young at Harris Lieberman:
  
  For me most of the above falls under the category of prankish boy stuff, which is basically what I came to art to get away from.
  
  Um... right. LIAR.
• 

  Saint Marcia

  Posted: 19-October-2006, 10:32pm CEST by Nancy

  
  Last week Pope Benedict VI named four new saints to the pantheon of the Catholic Church. I think he missed someone, even though perhaps this notion would have seemed absurdly funny to Marcia Tucker, who grew up as Marcia Silverman in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. I would like to believe that this might have been good material for a Miss Mannerist stand up schtick.
  
  Marcia Tucker died today. In The New York Times, it was revealed that she had cancer, and had been struggling with this for several years. I am terribly grieved by this, it seems that there really is no justice.
  
  We have all lost a remarkable, courageous woman, a friend and great supporter of women, artists of color, and other outlaws that didn't quite fit into the good old white boy's millionaire club. Her mission was to identify and support great talent that existed outside the paradigm of the white box. She became founder and director of the New Museum in 1977, an institution that veered wildly off the usual museum trajectory of empty didactic scholarship. She took enormous risks, and was vilified for this during her tenure at the Whitney Museum. Finally, after a poorly received and reviewed Richard Tuttle Exhibition, she resigned. Besides being highly controversial in the art world, Marcia Tucker was a feminist, and it was rumored that she was one of the Guerilla Girls.
  
  I knew Marcia Tucker. I was an undergrad at SVA and had the great fortune of attending one of her seminars in contemporary issues. She had a keen sense of the absurd, and one of her assigned class projects is certainly deeply embedded in anyone's memory who was present. We were to all meet at Grand Central Station, but in disguise. I came as a hooker. No one recognized me, and I could have made some good money. Marcia came as a Hasidic old man with a cane, fur hat, tallis, the whole thing. She was brilliant and completely unrecognizable.
  
  She left the New Museum after 23 years. On her website, under "Bad Reviews" I found this gem, "Of her departure from the New Museum after 23 years: "Clearly, Tucker has overstayed her welcome." ?Howard Halle, "New Is Old," Time Out, New York, April 2-9, 1998.
  
  According to her website, she then assumed the comedic personna of "Miss Mannerist" a maven of mores and manners for career-impaired artists, visually challenged curators, and artistic "big-fish-in-a-small pond" wanna-bees of all kinds. She was the offspring of stand-up comic Mabel McNeil aka Marcia Tucker.
  
  Well Marcia, here's to you! I hope Mabel knocks 'em dead in the big synagogue in the sky.
• 

  Joanne Greenbaum

  Posted: 6-November-2006, 6:03pm CET by Edna

  I remember the first time I saw a Greenbaum painting. It was hanging in the office at D'Amelio Terras and I only found it because I wandered back there and happened to look around the corner. I forget what the actual exhibition even was. I only remember this huge fantastic red painting in the office; a network of paths and smushes and pockets of wacky color. It really blew my mind.
  
  The show up now at D'Amelio Terras has only 4 giant paintings - one on each wall of their new, glossy-floored space. The one on the back wall is a tangle of blacks and purples so dense and dry - like a compulsive drawing gone wrong. Edges confine and explode all over the place; a purple and yellow canvas pounds three out of four sides with big, blocky white shapes, like flattened graffiti. The neon one on the south wall has a muddy trail of bandaid-colored paint that makes the geometric shapes behind it go nuts trying to get out of the space.
  
  They need to be seen in person.
  
  The last one - Untitled, 2006 - is the least successful formally, making it the most exciting one. An architectural tower of blue and orange embraces a worm hole, a set of purple magic-markery stairs and a dripping mass of blue hair. I love these paintings.
  
  One last thing: check out the drawing catalog that is on display.
  
  [Images from D'Amelio Terras' web site.]
• 

  Art. Women. Depression. Do The Math

  Posted: 17-November-2006, 4:25pm CET by Nancy

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  According to the National Institute of Mental Health, women are twice as likely to be depressed than men. To all my depressed guy friends out there, I feel your pain too, because you probably are an artist, and any kind of statistical sampling which includes all genders is probably off the charts. But today we're gonna talk about depression and women, something I know a lot about. My family is probably in line for the next important case study of multigenerational mental dysfunction. (Your family too?!) I do not know why the researchers have not yet called me. Last night I saw a special on TV about this unusual family in Turkey; some of the siblings walk on all fours. The geneticists, psychologists, reseachers, were all over this anomaly. They can come to my house next.
  
  Besides the genetic component of depression, bi-polar disorder, etc. there is a very real environmental context of stressors that I live in.
  
  

  Persons with certain characteristics; pessimistic thinking, low self-esteem, a sense of having little control over life events, and a tendency to worry excessively, are more likely to develop depression. These attributes may heighten the effect of stressful events or interfere with taking action to cope with them or with getting well. Upbringing or sex role expectations may contribute to the development of these traits.

  
  
  Fucking Aye. There's no mystery about why women are depressed.
  And from the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1 out of 3 women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime.
  
  In the spirit of contributing to scientific inquiry and discovery, I thought that I might offer my own, humble short list of some personal stressors:
  
  1. Art Auctions at Christie's. Yesterday the de Kooning painting Untitled XXV went for 27.1 million. Also, a Clifford Stills painting, 1047-R-No.1 Went for 21.2 million. (and without real names.) In reading about the happy event last night, the boys had a great evening, and the women were as plentiful as fleas on a dog dog in Antartica. Carol Vogel is only the messenger, let's not shoot her.
  
  2. Galleries that don't represent women, or just a few. Don't even get me started on this. Are women really such bad artists?
  
  3. The new "Sincerity" in art. Barf.
  
  4. Patient Dumping. Yesterday, Kaiser Permanente Hosptial in LA dumped a deranged, indigent woman on a "crime-plagued skid row street". Ten hospitals in LA do this on a regular basis.
  
  5. MOMA. . I just love their permanent collection and the ratio of male/female artists. If I'm in a particularly tentative mood, a visit to this venue will sink me into the abyss. "On the fourth and fifth floors of the Museum of Modern Art, in the galleries devoted to the permanent collection of art from 1879 to 1969, there are currently 399 objects. Only 19, or 5 percent, of those objects are by women.... Meanwhile, since 2000 only 14 percent of the Guggenheim's solo shows of living artists have been devoted to women." Thank you Jerry!
  
  6. Male College professors that claim to be doing a great service by tearing their female students to shreds because it is "good for their careers". Usually they are fucking them too.
  
  7. Social Security. You decide to have a family. You quit your job to stay home and raise these kids, just like the all the conservative fasicts out there demand. You and your husband collect social security when he retires. He dies and your social security is cut in half, because you never "worked or had a real job". If he dumps you for a trophy wife you still only get half.
  
  8. Carl Andre, Ana Mendieta. OJ Simpson and Nicole Brown. Very romantic.
  
  9. Ageists. Yes, I am probably older than you. But do you really think you are not going to get older? The alternative is not a great option.
  
  10. Herbal remedies for depression. And relying on personal faith for curing bi-polar disorder. Sure. That works, especially after the Electro-Shock Therapy.
  
  I'm sure I left out a lot. I am standing by for your insightful additions to my list.
  
  Love,
  Rebel Belle
• 

  Top 100 Biggest Compensators

  Posted: 22-November-2006, 7:00pm CET by Edna

  Matthew Barney
  Julian Schnabel
  Damien Hirst
  Peter Halley
  Richard Serra
  Anselm Kiefer
  Anish Kapoor
  Matthew Ritchie
  Paul McCarthy
  Frank Gehry
  John Currin
  Gregory Crewdson
  Jason Rhoades
  Frank Stella
  Richard Tuttle
  Andreas Gursky
  Chuck Close
  Thomas Ruff
  Thomas Struth
  David Smith
  Tony Smith
  Sol LeWitt
  Ellen Gallagher
  Jenny Saville
  Marc Quinn
  Lisa Yuskavage
  Abstract Expressionism
  Christo and Jean-Claude
  Claus Oldenberg
  Dan Graham
  Douglas Gordon
  Gordon Matta-Clark
  Barnaby Furnas
  Jessica Stockholder
  Tracey Emin
  Peter Saul
  Dan Flavin
  Jon Kessler
  Tom Otterness
  Mike Kelley
  Jeff Koons
  Jeff Wall
  Jake and Dinos Chapman
  Faux-Naive
  Jack Pierson
  Richard Prince
  Terry Richardson
  Robert Longo
  Larry Clark
  Sophie Calle
  Mark DiSuvero
  Vito Acconci
  Lawrence Wiener
  Robert Smithson
  Tara Donovan
  Julie Mehretu
  Luc Tuymans
  Wangechi Mutu
  Gagosian
  Christian Marclay
  Chris Ofili
  Kelly Walker
  Chris Burden
  Maurizio Cattlean
  Eric Fischl
  Diana Thater
• 

  Deitch's New Project

  Posted: 4-December-2006, 11:49pm CET by Edna

  Behold an excerpt from Sunday's New York Times article about the artist Ted Mineo, whose work Jeffrey Deitch will unveil at Art Basel Miami.
  
  Mr. Mineo?s work has what might be described as an adolescent sensibility. His obsessions are science fiction and food, with a little Catholic iconography thrown in for good measure. But whether the subject is a 23rd-century kitchen appliance or a pizza crust imprinted with the Shroud of Turin, each star, each gear, each crumb is lovingly, meticulously rendered.
  
  Leaning over a drawing of a dinosaur wearing futuristic weaponry he says, ?The narrative that I?m developing is based on me being a kind of war correspondent reporting, via these drawings, from a futuristic apocalypse, with humans versus dinosaurs."
  
  Mineo earned his MFA from Yale. One of the works pictured in the Times is a painting of a muffuletta (a New Orleans sandwich) with a crown of thorns. In the accompanying audio interview, Mineo states that he is interested in the "transformative power of images." He mentions how a painting of a sandwich can look like a sandwich, then a face, then a Christ image, then back into a sandwich, "depending on how long you look at it."
  
  When I listened to that I almost choked. This is a Yale grad talking? "Transformative" is one of those hated words; the ones no one uses unless they're heckling at an open studio. And of course images can be many different things - not an earthshattering concept after all - but a Sandwich Christ image? Wait, there's more: In one piece, Mineo spells out his name, inspired by a needlepoint his mom gave him when he was a kid.
  
  OK, so he's 25. Fine - his terminology is a little underdeveloped. But come on. That's what you say when the f*king New York Times calls?
  
  Mineo goes on to admit that the work Deitch first saw in his studio was "kind of schlocky cheesecake art," but Deitch thought it would "make a lot of people angry" and decided to take a chance on it.
  
  Anyway, after a few comments in my last post about the write-up on Mineo, Ted himself piped in with a very thoughtful comment (here's part of it; see the last post for the whole deal):
  
  Some of the biggest challenges artists face today are maintaining some kind of control over their work, their public image, and their careers (That's not to mention, of course, the challenge of getting the work made, exhibited, and/or written about). I wish I had answers, but I'm (obviously) still trying to wrap my head around this myself.
  
  The best insight I've got so far is that this is something that artists are going to have to step up and take control of, and they must support each other as much as possible in the process.
  
  It is true that NO ONE would pass up the opportunity for a giant NYT article, but what are we to think of all this?
• 

  What's Age Got To Do With It Anyway?

  Posted: 18-December-2006, 3:56pm CET by Nancy

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Yoko Now, The Surprisingly Sexy septuagenarian
  
  First, let me apologize, you've probably already seen this article from New York Magazine's guide to shopping. Okay, I missed it, mea culpa. I've been itching to write something about the crappy situation of older artists (especially women artists) for awhile. But it depresses me so much that it's difficult to come anywhere near this crap. Recently, I have been especially nice to my daughter, knowing that sometime in the not too distant future, she will be wiping the spittle off my whiskered chin, and wheeling me (while I am drooling) into the arts and crafts room for finger painting an decoupage.
  
  Fuck it. I believe that I would rather consult Yoko Ono's playbook.
  
  "I really communicate quite strongly with what I wear, "she says. When Yoko first came on the scene as a public figure, her hair was long and unkempt, (think Two Virgins, remember?) her clothes loose, baggy, outrageous for the time. "It was such an improper thing to do, to grow your hair." She giggles a childish giggle, still delighted in the naughtiness of her former self".
  
  I like to think of Yoko Ono back in the says of Fluxus, a well regarded artist, taking a lot of personal risks. I totally am down with why she would not like to follow in the footsteps of the usual suspects of old age, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, etc. and their brand of necrotic, loony, narcissistic sisters. The choices are unappetizing. Medusa, Miss Devine, Margaret Hamilton, and Margaret Thatcher, or Baby Jane.
  
  Yoko Ono's comments in New York Magazine are inane, and I can only attribute this to some bloodsucking members of the fourth estate that seek the nasty underbelly. However, the boys and their sartorial splendor are treated a lot better. From a some what dated but still relevant interview by Deborah Gimmelson;
  
  "...Dressed in a well-made, wide-wale blue corduroy suit, dark shirt, and expensive silk tie, his current image is hard to reconcile with the Baselitz who reputedly, in his youth, hung out in Berlin bars with the Baader-Meinhof terrorists. Now more country squire than social revolutionary (he spends most of his time in a castle in Derneburg, where his studio is in a series of connecting, high ceilinged, seventeenth-century rooms), he still wages an aesthetic war with his stark, volatile and often primitive images.
  
  Hot!! Kind of like Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnin.
  
  And this comment showed up on Ed Winkleman's blog this week about Miami and the fairs:
  
  "And one thing that drove us crazy last week (which we don't remember as much of in the past) is the "how old in the artist" question. I don't know now many times we were asked that and it was the first thing they asked, not what is the process, what is the bio. etc/ If you say anything older than 29 (which our artists are) the "collectors" can't run away fast enough. Very frustrating"
  
  Blame some of this shit on the Brits, especially Saatchi and his website, Stuart, a kind of My Space for teeny bopper artists interested in hooking up with buyers, and dealers. "With dealers and collectors scouring student shows for undiscovered talent and students hunting for dealers to represent them, Mr. Saatchi has tapped a vein that can't stop gushing..."His office meanwhile is fielding e-mail messages and calls from dealers, museum curators and directors...who want to meet some of the artists in their studios..." says Carol Vogel today in her piece in The New York Times, "I Like Ur Art".
  
  "I'm glued", Mr Saatchi said. I spend hours a day looking at students' works on the site". This sounds so creepy, that I'm tempted to ask, if there isn't a law against propositioning minors on line?
  
  And more blame can be placed at the feet of the award industry, like the egregious 50 and under rule of the Turner Prize. Props to Toma Abbts for receiving this award, I am thrilled for her, yet I am dismayed by the logic of this prize. It's getting to be like Oscar night.
  
  When I was younger, I was offered a job as live-in care taker for Louise Nevelson in her Chinatown studio. I declined, after it was suggested that one of my responsibilities involved rescuing the old lady from some of her misadventures with booze. I have no idea if this was true or not, but I declined, being somewhat put off with the additional stories of her mink eyelashes and lack of comfortable furniture. It sounded too much like Hansel and Gretel for my comfort level. Why were old women artists so crazy and repulsive? But now, in retrospect, I understand why only the extremely crusty and narcissistic survive in this business.
  
  Have a nice day
  Rebel Belle
• 

  Nothing More To Lose

  Posted: 6-February-2007, 4:52pm CET by Nancy

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Advantage of Being a Woman Artist
  
  Working without the pressure of success.
  Not having to be in shows with men.
  Having an escape from the art world in your four freelance jobs.
  Knowing your career might pick up after you are eighty.
  Being reassured that whatever kind of art you make it will be labeled feminine.
  Not being stuck in a tenured teaching position.
  Seeing your ideas live on in the work of others.
  Having the opportunity to choose between career and motherhood.
  Not having to choke on those big cigars or paint in Italian suits.
  Having more time to work when your mate dumps you for someone younger.
  Being included in revised versions of art history.
  Not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius.
  Getting your picture in the art magazines wearing a gorilla suit.
  
  The Guerilla Girls, 1989.
  
  Not a fucking thing has changed.
  
  But lots of stuff has happened since I last posted. Judy Chicago's seminal work, The Dinner Table, has been acquired by the Brooklyn Museum and will be installed in its very own gallery, as part the the very new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The Center is slated to open in April of this year. Wahoo!
  
  According to the Brooklyn Museum, along with The Dinner Party, " a computerized study area, a biographical gallery, a gallery space to accommodate a regular schedule of feminist art, and additional space for the presentation of related public and educational programs.
  
  I know that lots of you do not like The Dinner Table. However, I am old school went to college in the golden era of feminism, in a time when it was still okay for male faculty to fuck their college students, or refuse to grant tenure to women.
  
  I did not wear a bra when I really needed one, I refused to wear a dress in high school when one could be easily expelled for such treasonous acts. When I was 13 I was sexually accosted by my Spanish teacher and reported it to the principal. How quaint you say? But to my nineteen year old daughter who was never forced to dress in pantyhose, or withstand any physical or verbal attack from a teacher, I say "don't forget who went to war for you"! So you will excuse me if I think Judy Chicago kicks fucking ass.
  
  The Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art. About 90% of me thinks this is great. I think it's wonderful that we have our own little corner of the world now. We can't be be part of the big boy game, so they're giving us our own special room. Separate but equal. Except for the fact that anytime a woman picks up a paintbrush, it is indeed a feminist act, and by this fact alone, every piece of art made by a woman is revolutionary. I am not dismissing a venue devoted to feminist art, but I am disgusted that the only way to recognize women is to give them their own school house.
  
  I missed the symposium at MOMA, The Feminist Future: Theory and practice in the Visual Arts. My bad. Lots of you did attend, and I would like to hear more from you about it. Of course, IMO, it was completely ridiculously absurd that is was held at MOMA, poster child for bad behavior when it comes to acquiring the work of women artists. Was this symposium supposed to make everyone kiss and make up, or did the organizers still have to remove their shoes before they came in the back door?
  
  Instead of a symposium, they should have had an anti-MOMA rally outside. I'm burning mad at how gutless we've become. Probably it would not be overly politick to antagonize the masters who hold the purse strings.
  
  But for me, freedom is nothing more to lose.
  
  Love,
  Rebel Belle