JOAN SNYDER
"Joan Snyder: Work on Paper: 1970s and Recent"
at Alexandre Gallery (41 East 57th Street, 212-755-2828)
"Joan Snyder:
Women Make Lists" at Betty Cuningham Gallery (541 West 25 Street,
212-242-2772)
A version of this
article was first published at The New York SUN, November 18, 2004
By MAUREEN
MULLARKEY
Joan Snyder Mamilla/Pods
2004
acrylic & mixed media on paper, 22-3/4 x 30 inches
COVER: November 28, 2004: Tongues/Pool 1999
watercolor on paper, 22-1/4 x 30 inches
images Courtesy Alexandre Gallery
If you were just
a tyke in the 70s, you missed the Women's Art Movement, its luxurious
cant and mélange of no-styles. Now you can catch up at Joan Snyder's
latest exhibitions. There are two: Works on paper from the 70s to the
present, uptown at Alexandre Gallery; recent paintings, downtown at
Betty Cuningham Gallery.
Both shows illustrate
the vulgarity of a movement that traded on the susceptibilities of its
audience. Uptown, Ms. Snyder's bleeding scribbles are being conjured
into art history with a scholarly essay, one of those tricks of the
bazaar that mesmerize a parvenu art crowd. Downtown, an ensemble of
20 canvases-entitled "Women Make Lists" and dedicated to the
women of Iraq-celebrates the artist herself as the bearer of female
benevolence.
Do [[ITALICS]] women
make lists? You bet; I have one right here. Mine is a tally of the self-worshiping
conceits trumpeted by a generation of women artists in their sortie
against standards of achievement-dismissed by art historian Linda Nochlin
as "the white male Western viewpoint." Nochlin famously derided
what she termed "the Lady's Accomplishment" ("a modest,
proficient, self-demeaning level of amateurism"). In its place,
scholarly fiat substituted Womanart and its own peculiar accomplishment:
an immodest, not necessarily proficient, self-assertive level of amateurism
that coincided handily with the assault of camp sensibility on public
taste.
Ms. Snyder is the
doyenne of Womanart. While camp advanced itself seriously, it expected
to be taken lightly. Not so the Women's Art Movement. In debunking the
myth of the Great Artist, it hatched myths of its own. In dead earnest.
Among these was the vanity that artmaking is just one of those things
that women do naturally, like lactating. Instinct is art, sisters; we
are the Earth.
Ms. Snyder's instinctive,
unspoiled mark-making is solemnly packaged at Alexandre Gallery. Between
watercolor splotches of tongues and tits, gnomic scraps of handwriting
present themselves as a strategy to "erase the boundary between
the verbal and the visual." And catch those "mamilla berries,"
showcased with the reverence due sacred relics. Why not? An artist's
touch is a hallowed thing-to be honored under glass by the faithful,
like Padre Pio's bloody gloves.
Self-indulgent artlessness
is perilously dependent on the quality of the artist's hand. Ms. Snyder's
hand owes everything to academic rhetoric which has, indeed, confused
the verbal and visual. One dazzling irony here is that esteem for the
artist's mark rests on the very recognition of greatness that the Movement
sought to undermine. But the catalogue transcends this stumper by insinuating
an association with big names: Hans Hoffman, de Kooning, Pollock, et
alia.
Ever her own mythographer,
Ms. Snyder lends herself to interpretation as a shaman, sibyl, priest,
healer (those dried medicinal herbs stuck in the paint!) and a Miriam
leading us to the Promised Land. That is where our inner goddess abolishes
hierarchies, especially those of talent and taste; and reductive labial
or mammary images are as good as a Duccio Madonna.
The game gets help,
downtown, from sonorous Latin titles. "Perpetuo" (2004) submits
a field of disembodied breasts with rivulets of paint flowing from erect
nipples. "Antiquarum Lacrimae" (2004) approaches the lyricism
of needlepoint maxims with "The Heart is a Lake" scrawled
over blots.
From the downtown
catalogue (yes, there's another) we learn that Ms. Snyder's single ambition
after 9/11 was to make beautiful paintings; however, "her politics
cut more deeply." Just as well, really. These spills, shmears and
drips clotted with glass beads, glitter, fabric, herbs-whatever- are
strenuously unimpressive. But then so is the pretense to politics. She
coyly omits mentioning whether her recent pity for Iraqi women and children
was triggered by Saddam's barbarities or the invasion that ended them.
Viewers can project their own positions onto the ambiguity.
Politics, as used
here, is a dodge for merchandising lacrimose fantasies of women as vessels
of cosmic altruism: The Breast That Never Empties ("Mamilla Immortalis").
Still pitching the old zeal, she insists that "we need to send
powerful female energy and imagery out into the universe " to save
the world from (male) violence. Even more implausible than Ms. Snyder's
painting is her adherence to a crumbling orthodoxy that denies women's
complicity in their own culprit cultures. Thirty years ago, her schtick
about redemptive female energy was merely silly. Today, in the wake
of female terrorists-and the sight of women dancing in Ramallah on 9/11-
it is cynical. Or delusional.
Ms. Snyder is self-referential
and sententious enough to be anointed the next Frida Kahlo. Promotional
machinery is heating up. Current shows are preliminary to next year's
crowning event: a retrospective at the Jewish Museum and an Abrams monograph.
An honest appraisal of the WAM-its achievment in breaking glass ceilings
for women artists and the harm done by the means taken-would be helpful.
Canonizing Joan Snyder only compounds the damage.
