1970's: 9 Women and Abstraction
The exhibition samples the work of 9 women artists involved in abstraction during one of the most essential decade for women in the arts: the 1970鈥檚. The women featured are heterogeneous in age and practices, but they all were actors on the NYC art scene. The youngest was born in 1950, the oldest in 1928. Some of them were friends and/or neighbors. Most of them knew of each other. If you ask them today, they鈥檒l give you the name of this 鈥渙ther woman artist鈥� who they think is worth seeing. Yet, their works are very different. They illustrate the diversity of abstraction and its practices. Their examples give us an insight into the artistic scene during these dynamic years. It also gives us the opportunity to glimpse at their generation鈥檚 contribution to carve a place for women in the arts.
As I am researching the social context of the time, a friend shows me a newspaper鈥檚 photograph from the summer of 1970. The picture shows a stylish thirty year old woman with large sunglasses and two young girls demonstrating in the street holding picket signs that read: 鈥淓mployers typecast women into low paying jobs!鈥� 鈥淓qual pay for equal work.鈥� This is the 70鈥檚. This is unfortunately still so relevant.
The 9 women represented here refused typecasting. They made the choice of a life in the arts where there were no women types. Certainly, visibility was much harder to get for female artists, as it was for all minorities. The percentage of women shown at museums was so ridiculously low that it sparked a series of protests and guerilla actions. For the 9 women in the show, the point was never to make a distinction between the genders. The point was to design their lives and create a place for their work. They felt entitled to their ambition and to push as far as they could. The arts offered more freedom than traditional fields. Authorship is more than accepted: it is demanded. It posits the creation of one鈥檚 original identity. Their originality was as open to creation as to their male counterparts. In many ways, they had more to author. Society at large had yet to conceive of images for the artist as a woman. This is what the decade did: it affirmed and exposed the plurality of women鈥檚 artistic practices.
New York City in the 70鈥檚 was the essential platform of exchange and change in the arts. The art world was coming out of the reign of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Minimalism and Conceptual Art had emerged and pushed the definition of art further away from traditional means of production and consumption. The creative crowds were gathered in Lower Manhattan: The Village, The Lower East Side, Soho, TriBeCa. In a very restricted perimeter, several generations of artists and art movements were cohabiting. The women in the show joined their ranks.
Samia Halaby, Hermine Ford and Lizbeth Marano found lofts in Tribeca. The affordable East side was attractive to most: Lula Blocton, June Leaf, Kazuko Miyamoto, Merrill Wagner. Regina Bogat and Lynn Umlauf found their way in the legendary building 222 Bowery where Rothko was their neighbor. On their blocks, sometimes in their buildings, they met like-minded people, feminist/political activists and an older generation of artists who gave them a hand. They found love. They found friendship. They found a home. And they went to work.
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The exhibition samples the work of 9 women artists involved in abstraction during one of the most essential decade for women in the arts: the 1970鈥檚. The women featured are heterogeneous in age and practices, but they all were actors on the NYC art scene. The youngest was born in 1950, the oldest in 1928. Some of them were friends and/or neighbors. Most of them knew of each other. If you ask them today, they鈥檒l give you the name of this 鈥渙ther woman artist鈥� who they think is worth seeing. Yet, their works are very different. They illustrate the diversity of abstraction and its practices. Their examples give us an insight into the artistic scene during these dynamic years. It also gives us the opportunity to glimpse at their generation鈥檚 contribution to carve a place for women in the arts.
As I am researching the social context of the time, a friend shows me a newspaper鈥檚 photograph from the summer of 1970. The picture shows a stylish thirty year old woman with large sunglasses and two young girls demonstrating in the street holding picket signs that read: 鈥淓mployers typecast women into low paying jobs!鈥� 鈥淓qual pay for equal work.鈥� This is the 70鈥檚. This is unfortunately still so relevant.
The 9 women represented here refused typecasting. They made the choice of a life in the arts where there were no women types. Certainly, visibility was much harder to get for female artists, as it was for all minorities. The percentage of women shown at museums was so ridiculously low that it sparked a series of protests and guerilla actions. For the 9 women in the show, the point was never to make a distinction between the genders. The point was to design their lives and create a place for their work. They felt entitled to their ambition and to push as far as they could. The arts offered more freedom than traditional fields. Authorship is more than accepted: it is demanded. It posits the creation of one鈥檚 original identity. Their originality was as open to creation as to their male counterparts. In many ways, they had more to author. Society at large had yet to conceive of images for the artist as a woman. This is what the decade did: it affirmed and exposed the plurality of women鈥檚 artistic practices.
New York City in the 70鈥檚 was the essential platform of exchange and change in the arts. The art world was coming out of the reign of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Minimalism and Conceptual Art had emerged and pushed the definition of art further away from traditional means of production and consumption. The creative crowds were gathered in Lower Manhattan: The Village, The Lower East Side, Soho, TriBeCa. In a very restricted perimeter, several generations of artists and art movements were cohabiting. The women in the show joined their ranks.
Samia Halaby, Hermine Ford and Lizbeth Marano found lofts in Tribeca. The affordable East side was attractive to most: Lula Blocton, June Leaf, Kazuko Miyamoto, Merrill Wagner. Regina Bogat and Lynn Umlauf found their way in the legendary building 222 Bowery where Rothko was their neighbor. On their blocks, sometimes in their buildings, they met like-minded people, feminist/political activists and an older generation of artists who gave them a hand. They found love. They found friendship. They found a home. And they went to work.
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