ROUNDTABLE
Deborah Garwood and Lara Taubman discuss Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art with Sandra Sider.
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum
March 23–July 1, 2007
Judy Chicago The Dinner Party 1974–1979
mixed media: ceramic, porcelain, and textile, 48 x 42 x 3’
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center Foundation
All images courtesy Brooklyn Museum
Sider: Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is the centerpiece of the new Center for Feminist Art, so let’s begin with that installation. What do you think of the presentation, including the space and lighting designed by the museum?
Garwood: Dinner parties are celebratory yet treacherous. Conversation and networking, conducted while eating and drinking, is their purpose. I see The Dinner Party as a jewel within the Center, a dark star that propels its metaphor out to the surrounding galleries. Artists who show in the surrounding galleries take on the role of invited guests to an ongoing banquet. Viewers are vitally important guests as well. As long as they participate and contribute to the conversation, the Center will be a success. The whole thing seems very daring and risky to me.
Sider: How about the physical setting?
Garwood: The installation’s architecture and lighting mount The Dinner Party in an appropriately otherworldly, theatrical setting. One looks at each place-setting in its own special light. The angled glass walls are like the facets of a diamond, or even an aquarium of fantastic personalities that surface from a pool of archetypes and past lives. I was put in mind of Proust’s novel, in which an illustrious dinner party that takes up most of The Guermantes Way. As this segment begins, the Narrator longs to be invited to a party at the Guermantes’ hôtel. He receives an invitation, but lingers so long in a salon of impressionist paintings collected by the Guermantes, discussing them at length, that he nearly misses the party. Finally, he finds it stupendous—and the conversation ridiculous. Within the greater scheme of the novel, the Guermantes episode contributes toward a conception of art as a profoundly transformative vehicle, one that is continually beset (and belittled) by the specifics of personality. Yet by noting the wayward process of art in formation, with all the quirks of society, rumor, and bad behavior attached to the process, great resonance develops around the Narrator’s own art—and his commentary about art.
Sider: Deborah, are you implying that Chicago may have had Proust in mind?
Garwood: I do not mean to imply that Chicago was thinking even remotely of Proust. It’s more that Chicago’s conception of The Dinner Party as a way IN for women artists is a metaphor for the salon. I’m thinking of the exhibition The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons at The Jewish Museum in 2005 in this regard. Chicago proposes conversation as a new model for work that was never seriously integrated in academic art-historical discourse. It’s a profound idea because it tosses away the need for validation through traditional modes of art history. I look forward to a day when the philosophical architecture of the discipline becomes flexible enough to comprehend the historical art work of women artists. With that may come a new approach toward the dense, comprehensive culture of our own times.
Sider: Lara, what is your opinion of the physical setting of The Dinner Party?
Taubman: As far as the installation of The Dinner Party itself, I did not mind the installation necessarily. It is overly dramatic and somewhat framed like a womb, “a safe place to be.” Then again, Judy Chicago is herself a dramatic, eccentric artist and personality. I interpreted the drama as a “we have arrived” moment. No doubt, the acceptance of feminism into any large institution is an arrival, though, it may have been just as effective had the piece been installed in a space that was more open and less theatrical. Nevertheless, I appreciate The Dinner Party’s permanent presence anywhere, and the issues that it does raise, good or bad.
Sider: I found that the approach to The Dinner Party was confusing because there was no arrow directing visitors through the passageway hung with the six introductory banners. People were drifting through the Herstory section to reach The Dinner Party, but, according to Chicago’s plan, Herstory is supposed to be viewed after The Dinner Party. Was anyone else bothered by this?
Garwood: I was completely unaware that I was supposed see the Center in any particular order, and would have ignored the advice anyway. I dislike being herded along a linear path at museum exhibitions. I prefer to negotiate my own way through a show; maybe I’m spoiled by the galleries.
Sider: I feel the same way,but in this case the path is part of the history of the exhibition. My point was that some visitors did not seem to make the connection between Herstory and The Dinner Party.
Taubman: My experience of The Dinner Party installation in that space seemed disjointed as a unit of three sections: the banners as you walk in, the Herstory section, and the installation proper. Maybe it was crowded on my visit, but it took awhile to recognize the Herstory section as part of it. When I did get to that section, I enjoyed all of the visual timelines of the history of significant women and pertinent events. Those are always interesting when done well.
Sider: The Dinner Party includes the names of nine Egyptian women, and the museum selected several pieces from its collection of Egyptian antiquities to display in the Herstory section. While these works are interesting in themselves, they seem to distract visitors from the Herstory panels, the main purpose of this room. Do you have any opinions about this?
Taubman: I was interested by but unsure what the Egyptian objects had to do with anything. Those seemed gratuitously chosen. Including them also flirts dangerously with a flat masculinization (though widely accepted) Western history of the world that begins with Egypt and the Romans and then the sudden emergence of the West, the United States and its historical lead up into its current manifestation. It is a blurry textbook history that any of us educated here in the United States received in school. I also felt strongly that if they were going to use the Egyptian sculptures, then they needed subsequent ones from other civilizations that also support the history of women and feminism.
Garwood: The Ancient Egyptian collection of the Brooklyn Museum has an illustrious history and is one of its premier assets. In a broad sense, the presence of ancient Egyptian artifacts in the Herstory section catapults our fast-paced minds toward contemplation of the ancient world. I immediately think of Egyptian cosmology. Thousands of years ago, the Milky Way arched directly over the Egyptian night sky. Archaeo-astronomers believe that this extraordinary sight was worshiped as the female goddess Nut, who is depicted in a back-bend pose.
Within the Center and The Dinner Party itself, names or other traces of Egyptian women and goddesses might also speak of the cosmopolitan culture that thrived around the Mediterranean Sea before the fall of the Roman Empire. Their presence in the Center might vouch for an intellectual and sensual approach to knowledge, history, and the body along the lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Written in exile from a town on the Black Sea, Metamorphoses was one of few “pagan” works to survive the transition from BCE to CE as Judeo-Christian culture developed across Europe during the Middle Ages.
After a long respite, ancient Egyptian art and culture was rediscovered and systematically studied due to Napoleon’s extraordinary late eighteenth-century campaign into Egypt. Egyptology helped introduce the fields of linguistics and archaeology which, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, shaped significant aspects of French intellectual culture. Ancient Egyptian art and Feminist theory can be linked through overlapping fields such as archaeology, linguistics, and surrealism.
Sider: Then you obviously approve of the Egyptian display.
Garwood: Yes, my opinion is that the Center’s display of ancient Egyptian artifacts is entirely appropriate, allusive, and intriguing: a labyrinth from the ancient world to our contemporary era, in which the viewer may wander and discover many marvelous, forgotten things.
Sider: The Dinner Party and its accoutrements occupy approximately sixty percent of the Center for Feminist Art. Because of its monumental nature, this installation will probably overshadow any exhibitions in the rest of Center. Do you agree? If so, what might be the effect? I am thinking, for example, of the essentialist nature of The Dinner Party and how it compares with some of the more conceptual works, and to the video presentations.
Garwood: I think that The Dinner Party overshadows the exhibitions in the rest of the center, yet enhances them, the more one becomes acquainted with its central purpose—to ground the Center in the idea of conversation and inclusion, to inflect ongoing shifts in art historical standards.
Taubman: During the one-day symposium lead by Linda Nochlin and Maura Reilly, the artist Sonia Dhurana (one of the artists in Global Feminisms) asked the panelists a similar question. After much deliberation, Maura Reilly stated that although the show was placed around The Dinner Party, it had no formal relation to it other than that it was in the same space.
Sider: How do you react to that statement?
Taubman: I am wondering a couple of things. First, might any first show in that space be questioned the same way in its relationship to The Dinner Party? Second, Dhurana’s poignant observation is well taken. Her question was whether the panelists felt that it was conspicuous that a show like Global Feminisms was juxtaposed to a work that is clearly contextualized by Western history. Nobody really undertook an answer excepting Reilly’s silencing disclaimer of their being any relationship with Chicago’s work.
I am not sure whether the work will endanger future exhibits, but for “out of the know” museum visitors there will always be a question of whether The Dinner Party is complicit with the changing exhibits. I think that the curators have tried to separate Chicago’s work with unique lighting and installation techniques, but it may have made more sense if they had maintained the standard white box installation—or in this instance—a triangle.
I don’t know that Chicago’s piece will always dominate in that space even though it is by nature dominating. The Dinner Party does create a context and a set of parameters by which to understand Feminism, so it automatically creates a discourse to interpret the meaning of Feminism and Feminist visual art in that space. It might always cause imbalances that are conceptual, physical (medium) or historical, effecting aberrations that are interesting or problematic or both. Because the work carries so much weight historically for Chicago and for civilizational history, it seems to have been positioned here as a kind of mine from which any of its numerous veins are available to reference. It is a problem that is perhaps avoidable in future exhibits by distinguishing the variable contexts between them more distinctly, but it could ultimately yield interesting curatorial decisions on the part of the Center.
Rebecca Belmore The Named and the Unnamed, 2002
video installation with light bulbs, edition of 2; 7' 4 1/8" x 8' 11 7/8" Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia,Vancouver, Canada
Sider: How might the medium of objects come into play?
Taubman: The question about comparing the works conceptually between Chicago’s “essentialist” feel in comparison to the slicker contemporary videos of Global Feminisms brings up the issue of medium in Feminist Art. Historically, there is a deliberate tradition of using “crafty” mediums in Feminist art as a way to gain distinction in the art world of slicker mediums. Even though the Global Feminisms show was primarily video, it brought to my attention that perhaps it was not the medium but a particular conceptual pattern running through much of the work that rearranges the priorities of interpretation so that the medium still holds presence, but at a different point in the sequence of how it is perceived by the viewer. Works that come to mind that prioritize in this way are by Sonia Dhurana, Tracy Emin, Rebecca Belmore, and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, among others.
Sider: Lara, what about the works depicting self-mutilation?
Taubman: I could not help wondering if the issue of mutilation or self-mutilation could not also be addressed as a type of performative medium. I am thinking of works by Sigalit Landau, Regina Jose Galindo, Mary Coble, Tracey Emin, or Milica Tomic to name a few. Mutilation and self-mutilation, both physical and metaphorical, is a significant force in Global Feminisms. Its presence was so pervasive that it could have realistically had its own section as well. I could not tell if mutilation was meant to emphasize violence consistently done to women or if the curators saw an imperative pattern that developed while researching works for the show. Since it was such a predominant form, it began to work as a tool of expression, much like a medium.
Sider: Global Feminisms is organized into four themes: Life Cycles, Identities, Politics, and Emotions. I was somewhat appalled by the museum shop that intruded between Politics and Emotions. Were you bothered by a shop that separates sections of the exhibition?
Taubman: Yes, when commerce becomes so literally linked to art it becomes offensive. What made it more painful was that the shop was located between the Politics and Emotion sections—a good space for some retail therapy I guess.
Garwood: I like museum shops. They’re tacky relative to the exhibition, but I often buy a postcard that helps me remember the show. The general viewer’s museum visit is often an expensive, elaborately-planned time commitment; an innocuous memento is often a good aide-memoire. Granted, a museum shop is usually found after the show, but in any number of ways the Center isn’t hewing to tradition.
Sider: Concerning the four themes, did you suspect that some of the pieces (such as Jenny Saville’s monumental painting in Life Cycles) were displayed in that particular area simply because they fit the space? Many of the pieces were incongruous in relation to their theme, especially in the Emotions section, which seemed like a catch-all.
Garwood: For me, it wasn’t so much that the pieces’ installation was incongruous; rather, that the works were put in conversation with one another by someone who had a deliberate intention. That intention, in its broadest and most important sense, was to start discussion. Perhaps to provoke discussion is a better way to put it. One can’t get Feminist art just by looking—this has really been one of the primary points of the movement. In general, the whole premise of the show (and of the Center itself) is to deal with human realities that are not easy. Feminist art is an entrée into notoriously complex realms of human behaviors, histories, and societies that have enlarged the threshold of human consciousness and emotional capacity. Now that the environment is imperiled, it’s beginning to make more sense to take a vast vantage point towards the whole arc of human habitation on the earth.
Boryana Rossa Celebrating the Next Twinkling 1999
Single-channel video, color, sound, 2 min. 45 sec., edition of 2
Private collection
Sider: Deborah, I know that you were present at the press preview. What sort of discussion developed in that group?
Garwood: I tagged along with the curator’s tour at the press preview. A number of artists in the exhibition were in the tour group, too, and they generously offered a few words to the group. The curator’s and the artists’ points of view helped get us all very engaged. Many pieces in Global Feminisms are deliberately visceral and primal, to the point where some people on our tour were asking why there was so much self-mutilation. The curator(s) were aghast at this perception, and sought to contextualize it. I hope that the curator makes a statement available for viewers. A guide to the show would give viewers who feel sort of at sea a place to begin, some impressions to test against their own.
Taubman: I am curious to know how they formulated the four headings. For me, the strongest section for the headings was in Life Cycles. The pieces held relevance and distinctly addressed the quirkiness and strangeness of how the female body moves through life.
Sider: As for the Emotions section, would you care to give your reactions in general to the idea of featuring Emotions as one of only four themes? (Do emotions, for example, have the same weight as questions of identity?)
Taubman: Sandra, I understand your point as to weighing identity against emotions—it is a strange combination. The felt banners seemed like a tip-off to referencing an historical “grassroots” perspective of Feminism. Their reference attempts to localize some of these themes into personal catharsis or experience such as in the piece by Zireb Sedira about mothers and daughters and their cross-cultural experiences in language and generation. It is interesting to me that the idea of emotion pops up in so much of the work in “identity,” making me wonder how they finally decided on the criteria for the two sections. Since the video looping was not working the day I was in the Emotions section, I could not see all the video. But from what I did see, the Emotions section read as a measurement scale. In other words, the premise was based upon “emotions spilling forth” and the shape of that. It was courageous of Nochlin and Reilly to make public a discussion about women as emotionally oriented, and valid as such. Tracy Moffatt's video in the section successfully made that point.
I think that the instability of the subject headings has more to do with viewer expectations than with the actuality of the show itself. Nochlin and Reilly commit themselves to a beginning point for the trajectory of the “personal to the political” or the “local to the global.” It is an unusual feature in this exhibit. Deciding where identity will begin and end in any discourse is not easy when there are millions of different situations from which to choose. It is difficult to mold the idea of identity to sit comfortably on a shelf next to Emotions, Politics, and Life Cycles.
I wonder if their attempts to shift the meaning of the word from its typical interpretation could also be read as a critique. The concept of identity is overused by virtually everyone—from intellectuals to rap stars to governmental agencies worldwide. Nochlin and Reilly give the word a tighter conceptual framework than is normally accorded. There are problems with it, but none that don’t usually crop up with most identity issues. I think that they did a great job in this aspect.
Garwood: So much emotion is involved in questions of identity! The question might rather be: how can Emotions be a separate theme? But I think there’s value in having Emotions serve as a focal point for the works in that section. People often come to see art in search of things like emotion, though they might not put it that way to themselves.
We should remember that the Brooklyn Museum has embarked upon renewing its image, very deliberately, as an art museum with a more populist mission than others in the New York metropolis. The Brooklyn Museum could hardly count all the people who came to the Annie Leibovitz exhibition (I tried to get a number for my review of it on Artcritical.) Let’s hope that a similar problem develops around the Center.
Sider: Global Feminisms has New Directions in Contemporary Art as its rather ambitious subtitle. What new directions did you see in this exhibition?
Garwood: The “new directions” have to do with greater inclusion of women artists from around the world. As these artists enter the existing conversation of international art—which ultimately stems from the impetus of modernism, in its avant-garde, technological, global sense—they also may contend with traditional arts of the culture into which they were born. For example, the Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi, who was active in the 1960s and 1970s, faced strong criticism for departing from traditional art through her minimalist photography. Consciously or not, she stood on the shoulders of notable twentieth-century post-war artists in Eastern Europe and China who faced a tired legacy of academic art and the visual culture of propaganda. Similarly, Japanese artists had to contend with post-war occupation and internal cultural repression surrounding the aftermath of the Bomb.
Sider: Are you talking about artistic models?
Garwood: Yes, the powerful models of some late twentieth-century artists may provide a context of sorts, if not a method per se, for artists struggling to work in remote regions today. Artists in twenty-first-century communist and Islamic countries have delicate matters to consider as they work, including personal safety. It could be very empowering for them to think that a museum in the New York region is looking, which is to say doing outreach and being supportive. Let’s hope that the next federal administration will appreciate the diplomatic value of artistic exchange in the twenty-first century, and perhaps even institute a Minister of Culture. At present, the functions of our default and unofficial “minister of culture” fall to the office of First Lady, according to a Rand report I accessed online a few years ago.
Taubman: I see these artists pursuing frameworks that define current historical trends in Feminist Art by which to look at, critique, and make art. They want to coin the Feminist art practice much in the same way that Conceptual art, Performance art, Pop art, etc. have been deemed practices. Their assertion is with the understanding that now is the time to make this move. All of the necessary doors have opened and enough time has elapsed since Nochlin’s show of 1977 that a Feminist practice could be redefined as such.
Sider: In a Center for Feminist Art, what do you think about displays that address not female identity, but gender issues in general, including a few works that are about males?
Garwood: I think it’s a good thing that the displays address not only female identity, but also gender issues in general. The 1960s American feminist movement, which continued after a fashion the suffragist movement of the 1920s, was part of a great spectrum of complicated issues that questioned the U.S. Constitution’s meaning with regard to race and gender. The Enlightenment modern subject was construed as male. Although suffragists eventually got the right for white women to vote, the greater issue of race remained unresolved for interminable decades of legally sanctioned criminality towards citizens who were … uncategorizable. Does everybody really mean every body? Yes, it does!
Taubman: It all depends on how the Center chooses to position itself. The ideal situation is one where the guidelines for exhibitions are loosely based on Feminist art and all that necessarily entails, including gender issues, performance issues, race issues, etc. A male perspective can have a crucial impact on any visual discussion about gender and its relationship to Feminism.
Catherine Opie Self-Portrait /Nursing 2004
chromogenic print, 40 x 32" (101.6 x 81.3 cm), edition of 8
Lent by C. Bradford Smith and Donald L. Davis
Sider: Should art by men be displayed in this Center?
Garwood: Yes. Women, men, and transgender people. Everybody.
Taubmanel: It is important to have work by men in the Center for Feminist Art when the work is relevant. The dialogue around Feminism should be inclusive; otherwise it runs the danger of becoming essentialist. This sort of inclusive dialogue also offsets the potential danger of making the initial perspective of the Center from that of the victimized female instead of from the gaze of artist, scholar or viewer. It has a more positive tenor that has longer ranging effects for the Center and for women.
Sider: One final question: Do you think that the Center for Feminist Art should be dedicated exclusively to contemporary art, or at least to post- Dinner Party works? What about including more historical displays?
Garwood: Because of its housing within a museum, the Center should avail itself of all the benefits a museum can confer. This includes historical displays.
Taubman: It is a mistake if the Center does not have historical shows mixed with the contemporary shows. A place like the Center is indispensable to the correction of history and the perpetuation of solid historical responsibility in the future for contemporary art.
