Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (LAMoCA) and curated by Dr. Connie Butler, WACK! showcases some 300 works by 118 artists, including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance art.
The late '60s through the '70s marked a period of fundamental shift in women's perceptions of their own social roles which had a profound impact on contemporary art practices. WACK! focuses on the intersection between art and feminism during the era and captures the idealism of the nascent feminist movement.
The exhibition's "story" begins in 1965 with important proto-feminist works by Louise Bourgeois, Yoko Ono, Yvonne Rainier, and others who influenced the feminist art of the 1970s. It continues with iconic works by feminist artists such as Chantel Ackerman, Eleanor Antin, Judith Baca, Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta, Ulrike Ottinger, Howardena Pindell, Betye Saar, Miriam Schapiro, Nancy Spero, Katherine Sieverding, and others. The exhibition ends in 1980 with early work by artists such as Cindy Sherman and Lorraine O'Grady, whose work was influenced by the first generation of feminist artists.
While the term "feminism" can be broadly defined, Stanford scholar and WACK! catalogue contributor Peggy Phelan states, "Feminism is the conviction that gender has been, and continues to be, a fundamental category for the organization of culture."
Although described by many as the most important artistic movement since World War II, feminist art is "less a movement defined by certain artistic conventions than a philosophy of art informed by gender," says Dr. Susan Fisher Sterling, NMWA chief curator and curator for the exhibition's Washington presentation.
Feminist art was born in '60s activism that saw the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and an anti-war movement unparalleled in American history that saw the downfall of a powerful president—Lyndon Baines Johnson—and the end of a tragic and divisive war in Vietnam. The '60s and '70s saw women seizing control of their own destinies and redefining their social roles. The feminist art that emerged from this crucible was often a strident, in-your-face manifesto that expressed women's long-held anger.
"For many of the artist in WACK!, feminism often co-existed with political engagement in other fronts, such as race, class, and sexual orientation, which at times superseded feminism as the dominant discourse within which they preferred to situate their work," writes Dr. Butler.
WACK! Dismantles the often canonical picture of feminist art through the inclusion of women of other geographies, formal approaches, socio-political alliances, and critical and theoretical concerns. The globalized model adopted in WACK! Acknowledges that even artists working in their own communities and working in relative isolation, nevertheless came together through discourse, affinity, and relationship forming a body of work that, for want of a better term, can be called "feminist."
Even thirty and forty years out, the art continues to have the power to shock and outrage.
Many of the artists in the exhibition set out to do just that, says Sterling. "They were throwing off many of the sanitized conceptions of women and expressing overt independence and sexuality in a way that had never been acceptable before."
A number of the works deal with sexual themes, including heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and transgender topics, in a frank manner that some may find offensive. Warnings will placed in certain portions of the exhibition space advising visitors of potentially disturbing subject matter.
WACK! Will be presented thematically, not chronologically. Sections include: Silence and Noise/Speaking in Public; Taped and Measured; Auto-Photo; Feminine Sensibility; Gendered Preference/Body Trauma; Gendered Space; Goddess; Body as Medium/Social Sculpture; Making Art History; Abstraction; Collective Impulse/Knowledge is Power; and Pattern Assemblage.
Also included in the exhibition package will be 23 free "Guide by Cell" exhibition tours and recorded lectures by exhibition artists that can be downloaded to cell phone or listened to via computer.
WACK! Is the largest exhibition in NMWA's twenty-year history, spreading across two full floors and over 12,000 gallery feet.
After leaving NMWA, WACK! Will travel to P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York (opens February 2008) and to the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia, Canada (summer 2008).
Admission to the exhibition is $10 for adults, $8 for students and visitors 60 and over and free for National Museum Of Women In The Arts, Washington members and youth 18 and under. -- www.nmwa.org
