Goddess: Feminist Art and Spirituality in the 1970s

Author(s): Jennie Klein

Source: Feminist Studies , Fall 2009, Vol. 35, No. 3, THE POLITICS OF EMBODIMENT (Fall
2009), pp. 575-602
Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/40608393

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 Goddess:
Feminist Art and

Spirituality in the
1970s

Jennie Klein

In 1977, Mary Beth Edelson, an artist and feminist activist, set out
with her traveling companion, Anne Healy, to visit the Neolithic Goddess
Cave at Grapceva on Hvar Island, Yugoslavia. Edelson was armed with the
archaeological maps in Marija Gimbutas's The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe,
7000-3500 B.C.: Myths, Legends, and Cult Images as a reference source. Edelson
managed to find an elderly tourist guide in the nearby town of Jelsa, who
arranged for his son to take them up the mountain to the Neolithic site.
The following day, carrying two Yugoslav flashlights and a number of
candles, Edelson returned to the cave, where she engaged in a ritual
designed to connect her to the power and female energy of the Neolithic
Goddess worshippers. In an article about the experience that she
published the next year in "The Great Goddess" issue of Heresies, Edelson
documented both her journey and the indescribable feelings that she
encountered while practicing her rituals in such an ancient and sacred
setting. "I felt one long hand extending across time, sending a jolt of
energy into my body. I began my rituals- The energy from the rituals
seemed to pulsate from the vaulted ceiling to me and back again."1 The
photo documentation of Edelson's ritual (fig. 1), enacted with no artificial
light other than the candles that Edelson had brought, show a nude figure
that seems to glow from a spiritual fire that burns from within, seated in

Feminist Studies 35, no. 3 (Fall 2009). © 2009 by Feminist Studies, Inc.

575

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 576 Jennie Klein

Fig. 1. Mary Beth Edelson, Grapceva N

Yugoslavia. Ritual Performance. Imag

the midst of a fire circle. At

ceiling of the cave is just visib
in a womblike structure.

Edelson's journey to the Grapceva cave was taken long before Goddess
tourism had turned into a thriving capitalist enterprise complete with tour
guides, cruise ships, and well-marked, easy-to-locate archaeological sites.2
In order to journey to Grapceva, Edelson had unsuccessfully applied for a
number of grants. She finally sold her car in order to finance her pilgrim-
age/performance/art work. When she went to the Balkans, Edelson had
been doing ritualistic performances such as See for Yourself at various sites in

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Jennie Klein 577

the United States, particularly

tural feminism was strongest
and radical leftist politics, Edel
ity-albeit a feminist spiritua
universal worldview- as a cataly
Edelson's unwavering commi
by her feminist spirituality, h
organizations, and her gender
the grants and tenure-track po
in the 1970s. To add insult to
commitment to using her nud
had made her something of a
more interested in Marxist, p
As feminism- and feminist ar
the academy, Edelson's brand
phisticated and naive attempt
reversing the terms by which
mind and women with the bod
attended a lecture on feminist
mesia Gallery in Chicago only
references to the Goddess and
son responded to McEvilley in th
tive publication that was based
was always "a metaphor for
task, writing in an open lette
would have understood how
quo: "This was powerful work
should be proof enough that it
It is little wonder that Ed
McEvilley's talk. Six years ea
Dark," an unapologetic celeb
Dionysian night of the unco
modern civilization something
oneness with nature." In "Art
son's use of primitivism prob

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 578 Jennie Klein

the Paleolithic sensibility of "s

sensibility of "fertility and blo
artists, including that of Edels
ing Goddess body art had shif
shift in emphasis among femin
by ideas coming out of the Un
Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, writing
Goddess body art in favor of a
tioned the manner in which m
through discourse. Essentialist
which the body serves as the a
described earlier) and art associ
reverses the terms of dominance and subordination. Instead of the male

supremacy of patriarchal culture, the female (the essential female) is

elevated to primary status." The primacy of theory-based feminist art and
criticism over "essentialist" feminist art was subsequently cemented in the
United States with two publications: Craig Owens's essay, "The Discourse of
Others: Feminists and Postmodernism," in 1983 and the catalog for the
exhibition Differences: On Representation and Sexuality curated by Kate
Linker and Jane Weinstock for the New Museum of Contemporary Art in
New York in 1985. Both publications included artists such as Mary Kelly
and Victor Bürgin whose work was concerned with the representation of
women in culture rather than the exploration of female experience. When
McEvilley dismissed Edelson's work at the Artemisia Gallery, he was reflect-
ing the current critical climate.4
Unlike other gender movements once considered radical, such as
feminism or gay rights, feminist spirituality has always remained on the
margins of mainstream culture and academic acceptability. To this day, the
nature Goddess/witch figure is depicted as monstrous, abject, and horrific.
Just how threatening the Goddess figure remains in popular culture was
demonstrated recently by Tudor Balinisteanu, who shows how the Star
Trek film, First Contact, serves to contain the Goddess/nature figure of the
Borg queen.5 That the idea of a Goddess aligned with the forces of nature
would be deeply threatening in a culture that continues to be based upon
both Judeo/Christian religious beliefs and Enlightenment ideas that prem-

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Jennie Klein 579

ise the mind over the body is

standable is the degree to whi
feminism- was almost more t
than it was to the male avant-
work that referenced the Go
tions: First, what is feminist s
ality so appealing to artists, p
Third, why has feminist art t
continued to be marginalized
who are very sympathetic to t
the increasing academicization
attention to this topic?
When I first began research
existed in this particular area
feminist artwork made in th
particular strain of radical fe
feminism," as I do in this arti
value of female connections
Goddess. Sympathetic art crit
and Gloria Orenstein readily
documenting it in their pub
renewed critical interest by t
mented in important exhibiti
Jones in 1996, there has been v
nist spirituality and belief in t
spirituality been addressed in
recently published biography
events celebrating the thirt
Woman's Building, and two
Wack! Art and the Feminist
inisms: New Directions in Fem
ans and critics have shied a
feminist spirituality and the
engage it in terms of contem
of the body, the performative

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 58o Jennie Klein

to contemporary feminist ac
thetically about 1970s femin
is the unacknowledged white
propose to revisit feminist sp
at the time, in order to unde
1970s and what it might mea

Artists and Cultural Feminism

In the mid- to late 1970s, cultural feminism, with its emphasis upo
nist spiritualities, including Goddess worship, was in its ascendanc
1973, Mary Daly published Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of W
Liberation, which called for the complete disavowal of all patr
systems, including religious systems, and the creation of a cosmic
nant of sisterhood through the raising of female consciousness. B
God the Father was quickly joined by a number of nonacademic pu
tions on feminist spirituality, ecofeminism, and the Goddess,
Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman, Adrienne Rich's 0/ Woma
Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Susan Griffin's Woman and Natu
Roaring inside Her, and Daly's Gyn/ Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Femi
did not take long for feminist artists on both the East and West Co
embrace the philosophical and cultural approach of these writers a
turn to engage in a practice that engendered much debate.
Women's spirituality was very appealing to visual artists for se
reasons. First, evidence for the existence of ancient matrifocal cu
existed in the form of small, anthropomorphic sculptures, eph
cave paintings, and monumental stone structures from the prehisto
that appeared to be female and that cultural feminists assumed were
esses and Goddess figures, giving many artists an already existing b
nonpatriarchal images to tap into. Betsy Damon's performance art
The 7,000 Year Old Woman (November 1976), referenced the many-
Diana of Ephesus, associated with a Neolithic Goddess site in Turkey
Damon had lived as a child. Covered in small bags of colored flour t
ritualistically punctured in a public ceremony on Wall Street,
eventually formed a spiral/labyrinthine pattern on the ground. D
based The 7,000 Year Old Woman on a dream that she had had years bef

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 Jennie Klein 581

resolved to realize the image

in her dream (fig. 2). Similarly,
Cheri Gaulke employed
video image of the Woman
from Willendorf for her 1985

performance Revelations of th
Flesh (a follow-up performanc
to This Is My Body) at Wilshir
United Methodist Church in

Los Angeles (fig. 3). Second, the

belief in "immanence," or the
recognition of the divine in all
life forms associated with the

feminist spirituality move-

ment, meant that nature and
the body were honored. Ana
Mendieta connected nature

and the female body in her

Serie Árbol de la Vida (1976), anFig. 2. Betsy Damon, The 7,000 Year Old Woman, New
earth-body work in whichYork City, 1977. Photograph taken by Su Friedrich.
Image courtesy of the artist.
a mud-covered Mendieta

pressed her body against a

tree. Many artists used nudity to suggest divinity, as did Cheri Gaulke in
This Is My Body, a performance done to counter the patriarchal suppres-
sion of women's spirituality (fig. 4).
Third, cultural feminists, with their embrace of ritual and perform-
ance, were particularly appealing to feminist artists such as Edelson who
were interested in reconfiguring avant-garde performance so that it had
meaning and significance beyond the narrow concerns of the avant-garde
art world. Edelson's ritualistic treatment of ordinary life had much in
common with Allan Kaprow's dissolution of the line between art and life
in his performance art (he called them "Happenings"). But unlike
Kaprow's Happenings, Edelson's rituals were meant to be personal and
sacred. Of the early rituals that she did with her children, Edelson has writ-
ten, "I was trying to tie them to the Earth, to help them feel in a direct way that

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 582 Jennie Klein

nature is not outside, but a part

of them. We merged-mother,
child, and nature- becoming
one again for a moment."9
Barbara T. Smith, performing as
a living sculpture in Feed Me
(1973), also viewed herself as a
temple priestess, asking visitors,
who entered her space one at a
time, to "feed" her in some way
(fig. 5). In 1979, Donna Henes
created sculptures that looked
like macramé webs based upon
Spider Woman from the Navajo
Emergence Myth (fig. 6).
Although performers
influenced by cultural femi-
nism worked on both coasts,
Southern California was the
Mecca for artists interested in
Fig. 3. Cheri Gaulke, Revelations of th
still from the the Goddess and where femi-
performance, Wi
Methodist Church. Los Angeles,
nist spirituality was loosely
courtesy of the artist and the Wom
interpreted to include just
Archives at Otis College of Art an
Angeles, Calif. about everything that wasn't
patriarchal. As Jenni Sorkin
put it, Los Angeles in the 1970s was "a beacon of counterculture set in the
shadows of Hollywood" that "witnessed the sexual revolution, the birth of
the aerospace industry, bodybuilding, roller-skating, surfing, and vegetari-
anism, as well as a myriad of alternative religion, lifestyle, and spiritual prac-
tices."10 The anything-goes attitude of the hippie culture in Southern
California was much more conducive to the development of an alternative
feminist spirituality than the considerably more regimented East Coast
culture of New York City. The art scene in Los Angeles was newer and less
established than the scene in New York. It was considerably less organized,
making it possible for a geographically diverse group of artists to come

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Jennie Klein 583

Fig. 4. Cheri Gaulke, This Is My Body, p

The Woman's Building, 1985. Image Cou
at Otis College of Art and Design, Los A

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 584 Jennie Klein

together as a community based

also had three things that New
Gimbutas, the Woman's Building

Marija Gimbutas
The "high priestess" of the w
California was not a theolog
psychologist. In fact, Gimbutas
most of her career. An archaeol
Lithuania but fled the repress
settled first on the East Coast
Harvard University's Peabod
known as a B
Fig. 5. Barbara T. Smith, Feed Me, Museum of Concep-
archaeologist
tual Art, San Francisco, 1973. Photograph taken by Dick
publication of
Kilgroe. Image courtesy of the artist.
The Gods and God
Europe (reissue
The Goddesses an
Europe) changed
The Gods and G
Old Europe w
Gimbutas's exp
the director of several

major Neolithic excava-

tions in Eastern Europe
after she had taken a fa-

culty position at the Uni-

versity of California at Los
Angeles. Gimbutas was
struck by how different
the Neolithic artifacts-

small, anthropomorphic
female figurines- were in
comparison to the Bronze
age sculptures with which

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Jennie Klein 585

Fig. 6. Donna Henes, Spiderwoman S

Jenkins. Image courtesy of the artist.

she was more familiar. As she

understand what was happenin
Europeans. It was a very gra
would write about Neolithic r
ally concluded that prior to
because of their burial moun
art-loving, matrifocal culture
Goddesses. Gimbutas wrote,
beautiful Virgin, Bear-Mother
Goddess existed for at least fi
Classical Greek Civilization."13
As a scholar, Gimbutas was f
to the early years of archaeol

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586 Jennie Klein

for a great deal.14 Rather tha

made on the basis of empirical
the discipline of archaeology,
nineteenth- and early-twentie
(The Golden Bough, 1890), Robe
Jakob Bachofen (Mutterrecht u
existence of an ancient matria
mythology.15 Along with othe
first part of the twentieth cen
excavating Çatal Hüyük), Gim
gion. The Goddess society tha
all the Neolithic figurines wer
was extrapolated from her ext
lore. According to her metho
the vestiges of Neolithic civ
Athena and Artemis and conti
Gimbutas's myth-inflected
historical evidence and deeply
found little support among
suspicious of her generalization
cultures.16 She was supported
were intrigued by the idea tha
toric Europe. Carol Christ has
Gods and Goddesses of Old Euro
been ignored; but The Gods and
after Daly's Beyond God the Fat
was launched, and it was qui
Woman, which also looked to P
an ancient, Goddess-centered
art historian and not an archa
civilization legitimacy. As O
archaeological studies have giv
knowledge of ancient Goddess
Gimbutas's ideas about the
were eagerly received by arti

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 Jennie Klein 587

Gimbutas, who went on to pu

Civilization of the Goddess, res
time to give lectures and inte
interested in Goddess civilizat
these women, who wrote ess
mentary of her life, Signs Out
"Tea with Mari ja" by Starr Go

I ask- what were they, our ance

Mari) a says-they were like us,
happy.
She describes the scene of a fresco
from Thera in ancient Greece.
-Oh the men were not excluded

but religion was in the hands of

women18

The Los Angeles Woman's Building (1973-1991)

It was more than a serendipitous coincidence that the city in which
Gimbutas taught and lectured for the latter part of her academic career
was also the home of the Woman's Building, the only institution in the
United States dedicated to providing a feminist art education. Named after
the Woman's Building at the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago (the
one building designed by a female architect, Sophia Hayden), the Los
Angeles Woman's Building, which opened on November 28, 1973, was
founded by Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven, and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville.
The building housed bookstores, art galleries, a thrift store, and an art
school, the Feminist Studio Workshop.19 In 1981, the art school was dis-
solved, and the administrators of the building, comprised of women who
had begun their careers at the building as students, turned their attention
to promoting cultural events and activities and to broadening the con-
stituency to include minorities, working women, and single mothers. In
1991, just three years before Gimbutas lost her battle with cancer, the
building finally closed.
Feminist/Goddess spirituality was extremely important at the Wom-
an's Building, at least during its first decade. During its heyday, in 1975, the

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 588 Jennie Klein

Woman's Building hosted tw

spirituality, "Public and Priv
"Lady Fingers/Mother Ear
Workshop, modeled on Ju
Feminist Art Project at Fres
exploration of female identit
raising, in which women ga
their experience of oppressi
work, was the linchpin of
came up frequently in the co
ness of violence and sexual e
students. Feminist/Goddess s
and beauty of the female bod
lenting misogyny experienc
example, had changed her
Chicago, who urged her to r
ence of being raped.21 Along
radical lesbian pedagogical p
on the sixth century B.C.E
Greek island of Lesbos, the
realized, proposed to resurre
Gimbutas. According to Wol
community of women, hav
developing creativity and se
Edelson did her first public ritu
the Mandeville Gallery at the
using students from the F
brought with her. Raven a
Years Are Up, for the gallery.2

Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women's Culture

Probably the most important contribution made by the Wo

Building to feminist spirituality was Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women
(1977-1980), whose readership numbered 13,000 at its high po
magazine was funded by reader contributions and a small gra

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Jennie Klein 589

Adrienne Rich that came from

motherhood that begins in
and the editorial staff manage
cation due to lack of funds.

From the beginning, Chrysa

culture, particularly the inter
arts. The list of contributing
spirituality and feminist art
that founded the magazine in
important but brief Womansp
aging editor Kirstin Grimstad
States interviewing women in
in spirituality. Audre Lorde se
issues. Contributing editors
Duncan, Susan Griffin, Luc
Gloria Orenstein, Adrienne R
During its two-year run, C
cultural feminist values and w
an alternative feminist spiritu
a Goddess or Goddesses. Every
poem, or original work of art
Goddess in a positive light.
women's spirituality compi
Charlene Spretnak, and Terr
players in the feminist spirit
Rich, appeared in Chrysalis p
feminist spirituality received
for example, Griffin and D
Gyn/Ecoloßy (Griffin on Daly) a
In looking over its ten issues
many approaches to feminist
within its pages. These appr
rather than simply reiteratin
tion. The resource catalogs, f
but also pictures of their cov

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 590 Jennie Klein

relative merits of each one. "

ity," in issue no. 6, included
ancient Goddesses, tarot, the
tianity, and ecofeminism, as
spirituality, such as Kay Turner
Spirit, and "The Great Goddes
that includes twenty-seven ar
ing ritual written by Z. Buda
bread sculpture by artist Nan
compiled of artists who were
Goddess consciousness" and a section called "Art of Transformation"

where Wolverton devoted a full page to Edelson's work. She also discussed
architect Mimi LobelPs design for a Goddess temple and Chicago's Dinner
Party along with a statement by Carolee Schneemann, poems by Stephanie
Mines and Robin Morgan, and a short review of a recording by Kay Gard-
ner, Mooncircles.

Although Chrysalis is most often remembered for its focus on the arts,
literature, and spirituality, articles in Chrysalis also addressed topical issues
such as the media representation of women, sexual abuse of children,
incest, rape, pornography, fashion, psychology, the idea of a feminist
(rather than a feminine) aesthetic, and feminist films. The editors and writ-
ers gave advice and shared resources about publishing, finances, and the
nascent computer technology. The editors tried to include a multitude of
voices and viewpoints; rather than devoting a special issue of the magazine
to topics such as feminist spirituality, Third World women, or lesbianism,
as did Heresies, every issue of Chrysalis included articles, stories, poems, and
artwork by and about marginalized voices and topics. Their efforts did not
satisfy all their readers, however: the editorial pages of the second issue
included a letter from Patricia Jones, who opined that "I as a Black Woman
am quite annoyed that there was only one text by a Black woman in the
magazine, a poem by Audre Lorde. ... I noted that there are three black
women involved in an editorial capacity, but I feel that is not enough." The
editors responded by printing a poem by Jones in issue no. 3. By issue no.
10, the editors were still struggling to include more voices of Third World
women: "So we ask readers, Third World and white, to join us, to help us

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Jennie Klein 59i

open the pages of Chrysalis t

issues of racism and, specific
contrast, when an angry Jan
much attention paid to lesbia
defend Chrysalis's inclusiven
fully reflecting] the sexual div

The Politics of Femin

In the pages of Chrysalis, femi
radical feminist vision that e
and class identities-and ant
the earth. Political action wa
the invocation of Goddess s
anthology, The Politics of Wo
Chrysalis, argued in the in
Spirituality" that the Goddes
thropology tells us that the
sponds with the sex of those
with an image of two women
bly pregnant, embracing in
Edelson, in an article co-auth
feminist spirituality and rad
"The Woman's spirituality m
tones," she wrote. "How it wi
it will be a different kind of p
Many of the artists associat
Suzanne Lacy, Gaulke, and W
used feminist spirituality
change. Gaulke, for example,
collectives, The Feminist Art
with people, and the Sisters
nist nuns, protested against
instrumental in organizing An
collaborative performances
Waitresses, a performance

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 592 Jennie Klein

Allyn, used ideas culled from

copied the many-breasted Dia
waitresses in various restaura
relationship between feminist
nist politics, and activist art,
and politics were linked in
Kathryn Rountree has written
an apolitical copout' seems u
theory about the relationship
observation of real failures of
tics and spirituality is borne ou
Equally important for this d
constitutes essentialism, an id
generation of artists that cam
efficacy of essentialism depen
Kosofsky Sedgwick have dem
ployed. Although it is true, a
feminists' worldview is a st
connectedness and interdepend
true that feminist spirituality
rituals, beliefs, and tradition
humorously put it. The essen
was progressively deployed to
assumptions regarding accep
writers and artists who were
quite clear that their "essentia
in order to challenge the soci
turn. These writers and artists were well aware that their worldview was

one that they needed to invent, and they had a lot of fun doing it. In her
collaborative article with Edelson, written for the inaugural issue of
Chrysalis, Raven stated, "this ritual form does not represent a retreat to an
idyllic prehistory, but rather a projection of a post-patriarchal spiritual
consciousness and an understanding of the present which is non-linear
and can thus include the past and envision the future."28

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 Jennie Klein 593

It is not surprising that Don

and Rich "would simply be
machines and consciousness of
the feminist spirituality mov
structures of the late-twentie
matrifocal worldview of the
of the few postmodern femini
to see this connection. What was it about artwork that referenced Goddess

feminism/feminist spirituality that caused later feminist art critics to

ignore or even dismiss iti

Primitivism, Nostalgia, Bodies, and the Goddess

Part of the problem might lie with feminist/Goddess spirituality's invoca-
tion of nostalgia and primitivism, both of which have been viewed pejora-
tively in contemporary art criticism and theory; but contemporary
scholars have been too quick to take the writers and artists associated with
feminist spirituality at face value, without unpacking what it meant for
them to deploy these two terms. In the work of Goddess artists, nostalgia
and primitivism are deployed strategically to challenge patriarchal limita-
tions placed on women's bodies. Rita Felski's insight that there are two
types of nostalgia, one that "glosses over the oppressive dimensions of the
past for which it yearns" and the other that "may mobilize a powerful
condemnation of the present for its failure to correspond to the imagined
harmony of a prelapsarian condition," grounds my argument.30 It was the
powerful condemnation rather than the gloss that was at work in the
pages of Chrysalis.
In "Quite Contrary: Body, Nature, and Ritual in Women's Art," Lip-
pard wrote that "much recent feminist art seems aimed at returning the
artist back to the earth, or into a nostalgic past where women may have
ruled. Many of these works resemble or specifically include ritual, which
began as animal communication and persisted as magic."31 The artists
discussed by Lippard, however, used ritual to return meaning to an avant-
garde art that had become increasingly solipsistic in its pursuit of goals
that were based on a formalist trajectory that developed from minimalist
sculpture. Edelson, for example, used ritual because she saw "acting out"

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594 Jennie Klein

as a more complete way to co

Edelson's performance discuss
read as a nostalgic journey tow
This nostalgia, however, is pr
creation of the past in orde
authors included in Spretnak's
same quotation from Monique

There was a time when you we

alone, full of laughter, you ba
recollection of it, remember . .
you say it does not exist. But r
failing that, invent.32

The spiritualized bodies that a

that invoked the Goddess in o
associated with female bodies
have been prelapsarian in the
but they were not sexually
invoked the sacred. Edelson an
ance to create a sacred body
were disturbing because th
acknowledge the limitations p
Fascination with the primor
be seen as (an)other manifes
primitive; however, as I have a
tivism that similarly challeng
Rebecca Schneider argues, "U
predecessors [e.g., Paul Gaugu
it is the primitives themselves
own primitivization, an exerci
perform feminization."33 In
Goddess becomes a strategic m
the over-conflation of the bod
Artistic subjectivity is reasse
through the body. In addition

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 Jennie Klein 595

into a performative relationsh

heteronormative narrative o
prehistoric to civilization.34
Goddess feminist artists used whatever art forms worked best in the

service of their message. Edelson, for example, found herself integrating

sculpture, drawings, photographs, collaborations, artists' books, and
public ritual performances into a living environment in order to achieve a
more "holistic" approach to life and art making. Artists who used Goddess
imagery did so because they wanted to invoke the harmony of the matri-
focal prehistoric society that scholars such as Gimbutas, Stone, and
Spretnak believed had existed. Their "nostalgia" for the prehistoric past
was not "essentialist" (whatever that term signifies today), nor was it
escapist. Rather, it was a politically engaged act of appropriation designed
to ameliorate the present.

Threatening Bodies

In spite of her admiration for cultural feminists, Haraway closed "A

Manifesto" with the polemical comment, "I would rather be a cybo
a Goddess."35 By the 1990s, the quintessentially postmodern cybo
human, half-machine, dystopian rather than Utopian- was a much
attractive figure than the Goddess to a younger generation of fe
especially those in academe. Part of the attraction was that th
promised a politics based on affinities and shared political goals rat
a predetermined essentialist identity. Cyborg/postmodern femin
least in theory, held out the possibility for a feminism more inc
women (and men) of color than cultural feminism had achieved.
The failure to be more inclusive, as Judith Plaskow has shown
not for lack of outreach. The editors of Chrysalis, along with the
students, and volunteers at the Woman's Building, were very con
that so few women of color participated in the events they organ
did their best to address this lack. The administrative staff of the Woman's

Building also responded proactively to charges of racism, founding an

antiracism consciousness raising group in 1980 under the direction of
Wolverton, who subsequently made a performance/video in 1984 about
her experience, entitled Me and My Shadow?6

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596 Jennie Klein

These attempts to address ra

unsuccessful because the racism
not for lack of oureach. Rathe
and unacknowledged, ethnoce
did not question the (false) pr
in European countries.37 More
cultural feminists, that variou
a universal unconscious that b
ence in favor of an imagined c
of the "community" shared in
spirituality movement, even i
European Paleolithic period ra
place where the feminist spiri
was in their ability to include
ingful without being patron
which this lacuna was rec
completely ameliorated. The e
tised themselves (and allowed
editor) for their lack of racial
oppressive and racist as contem
Ironically, postmodern femin
late 1980s, did not address rac
degree either. In "The Disco
work of white women. The lan
larly accessible to the nonacad
highly educated, and middle c
been noted by none other tha
postmodern theory to addres
"As a discursive practice it [po
voices of white male intellect
about one another with coded
Perhaps because of the backla
magazines such as Chrysalis g
1990s had all but disappeared.
actually expanded in number.

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 Jennie Klein 597

that the lasting reputation of

Reading the academic rebutta
faculty from a variety of discip
ality was viewed by these aut
could potentially undermine
Discussing the reaction of t
Gimbutas's work, Rountree h
logical establishment can affor
Gimbutas does not threaten
archaeologists feel they risk
Gimbutas."39 The same could b

who espoused a more theor

According to critics such as Fl
feminist spirituality risked un
tation and language that fem
although much of the art of
feminist/Goddess spirituality
The Art of the Feminist Revo
by including work in the "G
cheek than serious about femi
figure, Hon, by Niki de Saint
(1956) and Lorraine O'Grady's
Edelson, meanwhile, was absen
her collage, Some Living Americ
nently in "Making Art History

Mother, Are You There?

The simultaneous hope and resignation of Peter Ucko's 1996 appeal for
archaeological evidence of a matriarchal prehistory sums up the problems
faced today by anyone who wishes to defend the use of 1970s-style feminist
Goddess spirituality. It is quite likely that the archaeological evidence from
the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods was misread by Gimbutas. However,
as Rountree has argued, there was and is no particular reason why Goddess
feminists need to adopt a rigorously scientific approach to artifacts from
the past. Goddess feminists, Rountree has suggested, "want something

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598 Jennie Klein

different from the past and

Fleshing out the bones of the p
is seen as a justifiable and unp
tant end of transforming soci
feminist spiritual writers and a
Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an I
understand how and why thes
to make work that is profoun
the shortcomings of feminist/
was the single most import
number of artists working in t
not jettison a collection of wri
threatening to the patriarcha
Building, the people who ran
them sustenance, I am remind
possibility of hope: "It is in t
bridge between self and other-
the other-that we discover rea
For better or worse, the fem
nia in the 1970s viewed Godde
would unite a group of individ
In reading over Cecelia Dough
late Arlene Raven, made by t
myself, along with Dougherty
fice, and hope that went into
commitment that was suppo
Dougherty makes note of "Ra
mination to define the spirit
eated "the connections from
to community, all leading to a
feminism."41 From Doughe
Mother was there after ail-n
matriarchal utopia of which
who were willing to risk every
male-dominated system.

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 Jennie Klein 599

Notes

1. Mary Beth Edelson, "Pilgrimage/See for Yourself: A Journey

Cave, 1977, Grapceva, Hvar Island, Yugoslavia," in Heresies, no. 5: T
ed. (New York: Heresies Collective, 1978), 96-99.
2. Kathryn Rountree, "Goddess Pilgrims as Tourists: Inscrib
Sacred Travel," Sociology of Religion 63, no. 4 (2002): 475-96.
3. Mary Beth Edelson, "Objections of a 'Goddess Artist': An Op
McEvilley," New Art Examiner (April 1989): 34-38, 36.
4. Thomas McEvilley, "Art in the Dark," Artforum (Summer 19
Warr, ed., The Artist's Body (London: Phaidon Press, 2002), 224,
Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, "Textual Strategies: The Politics of
(Summer 1980); article was subsequently published in LIP: F
(1981/1982). The 1981/1982 version was included in Visibly Female: Fem
ed. Hilary Robinson (London: Camden Press, 1987), 108.
Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodern Culture," in The An
on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hai Foster (Port Townsend, Wash.: Bay
the generally critical climate, see Thalia Gouma-Peterson and P
Feminist Critique of Art History," Art Bulletin, no. 69 (Septem
Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, "Discussion: An Exchan
Critique of Art History," Art Bulletin 71 (March 1989): 124-26.
5. Tudor Balinisteanu, "The Cyborg Goddess: Social Myths of W
Technologized Otherworlds," Feminist Studies 33 (Summer 2007): 40
6. Lucy R. Lippard, Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehist
Books, 1983); Arlene Raven, Crossing Over: Feminism and Art of Soc
Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1988); Gloria Feman Orenstein, "R
Feminist Artists Reclaim the Great Goddess," The Power of Fem
Broude and Mary Garrard (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 199
Orenstein, The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press
7. Gail Levin, Becoming Judy Chicago (New York: Harmony, 2007);
Wack! Art of the Feminist Revolution (Los Angeles: Museum of Contem
ation with MIT Press, 2007). This was published in conjunction
Wack! Art of the Feminist Revolution, shown at the Museum o
Los Angeles, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Wash
Contemporary Art Center, New York. See also Maura Reilly and
Global Feminisms: New Directions in Feminist Art (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Bro
in association with Merrell, 2007). This was published in conjunc
tion Global Feminisms: New Directions in Feminist Art, sho
Museum of Art.

8. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1973); Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1976); Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

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 6oo Jennie Klein

(New York: W.W. Norton, 1976); Susa

(New York: Harper & Row, 1978); M
Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 197
9. Mary Beth Edelson, "Self-images of
Spirituality, ed. Charlene Spretnak (
10. Jenni Sorkin, "Performance as P
Century Odyssey Part II: The Perform
McGrew (Pomona, Calif.: Pomona C
11. Marija Gimbutas, The Gods and God
Cult Image (Berkeley: University of
12. Gimbutas, quoted in Joan Mari
From the Realm of the Ancestors: An
(Manchester, Conn.: Knowledge, Id
13. Gimbutas, The Gods and Goddesses of
14. Carol P. Christ, "Reading Marija
Sarunas Milisauskas, "Marija Gim
1921-1944," Antiquity 74 (December-
15. Ronald Hutton, The Neolithi
Antiquity 71 (March 1997): 91-99.
16. Marier, "Circle Is Unbroken," 18
17. Christ, "Reading Marija Gimbuta
18. See Marija Gimbutas, The Langua
1989), and The Civilization of the
Donna Read and Starhawk, Signs
Goode, "Tea with Marija," in From the
19. Faith Wilding, By Our Own Hands: T
1976 (Santa Monica, Calif.: Double X
20. Michele Moravec, "Building Wom
Woman's Building" (Ph.D. diss., U
Wolverton, Insurgent Muse: Life and A
2002).
21. Jennie Klein, "The Ritual Body as Pedagogical Tool: The Performance Art of the
Woman's Building," in From Site to Vision: The Los Angeles Woman's Building in Contemporary
Culture, ed. Sondra Hale and Terry Wolverton (Los Angeles: The Woman's Building,
2007), 183, http://womansbuilding.org/fromsitetovision.
22. Terry Wolverton, "Lesbian Art Project," Heresies, no. 7 (Spring 1979): 18.
23. Laura Cottingham, Shifting Signs: On the Art oí Mary Beth tdelson, in Ine Art oj
Mary Beth Edelson (Gettysburg, Penn.: Gettysburg College, 2001), 26.
24. Carrie Rickey, "Writing (and Righting) Wrongs: Feminist Art Publications," in The
Power of Feminist Art, 126; Charlene Spretnak, "Preface: The First Twenty Years," in The

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 Jennie Klein 601

Politics of Women's Spirituality, xi-xii.

25. Lucy R. Lippard, "Quite Contr

Chrysalis, no. 2 (1977): 31-49; Mary
Chrysalis, no. 6 (1978): 27-37; and A
Racism, Gynephobia," Chrysalis, no.
26. Patricia Jones, letters to the edit
Readers," Chrysalis, no. 10 (1979): 5;
Chrysalis" Chrysalis, no. 9 (1979): 8.
27. Spretnak, introduction to "Wom
(1978): 77-78; Mary Beth Edelson
Chrysalis, no. 1 (1977): 51; Cheri Ga
Woman's Building," in The Citizen A
Anthology from "High Performance" M
1980 and subsequently posted on
Rountree, "The Politics of the Go
Debate," Social Analysis 43 (July 1999
28. Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkele
"Politics of the Goddess," 144; Edels
29. Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Man
in the Late Twentieth Century," in S
1991' 174.

30. Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995),
59.

31. Lippard, "Quite Contrary," 32.

32. Monique Wittig quoted in Carol P. Christ, "Why Women Need the Goddess: Phe-
nomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections," in The Politics of Women's
Spirituality, 75.

33. Rebecca Schneider, The Explicit Body in Performance (New York: Routledge, 1997), 134.
34. Margo Thompson, "Agreeable Objects and Angry Paintings," Genders 43 (2006),
www.genders.org/g43/g43_margothompson.html.
35. Haraway, "Cyborg Manifesto," 174.
36. Judith Plaskow, "We Are Also Your Sisters: The Development of Women's Studies in
Religion," Women's Studies Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1993): 14-15; Wolverton, Insurgent Muse, 136-50.
37. A different feminist spirituality, based on the values, experiences, writings, and reli-
gions of women of color, draws on the work of Alice Walker and Gloria Anzaldua.
See Layli Phillips, The Womanist Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006); and also, for
Anzaldua's feminist spirituality, see feminist Studies special issue on Chicana Studies,
vol. 34 (Spring/Summer 2008).
38. bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990), 24.

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 602 Jennie Klein

39. Kathryn Rountree, "The Past Is

ogists, and the Appropriation of Preh
(2001): 8.
40. Peter Ucko, "Mother, Are You There?" Cambridge Archaeological Journal 6 (1996): 300-4;
Rountree, "The Past Is a Foreigner's Country," 9; Cynthia Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal
Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000);
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York: Routledge, 1993), 174.
41. Cecilia Dougherty, "Stories from a Generation: Early Video at the LA Woman's
Building," Afterimage 26 (July/August 1998): 8-11.

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