Gillian Parker

Professor Sohl Lee

ARH 391

14 November 2019

Postwar Artistic Engagement

In postwar history, there have been many compelling examples of artists directly

engaging with the changing social, cultural and political circumstances surrounding them during

the period of time in which they are producing their works. The artistic response can be as overt

as Mary Beth Edelson’s feminist critique on female artistic recognition in 1972 with ​Some Living

American Artists/The Last Supper ​or, later, Barbara Kruger’s 1989 reaction to the battle for

women’s reproductive rights with her photographic silkscreen on vinyl ​Untitled (Your Body is a

Battleground)​.1,​ 2​ In the same year, the complexities of Adam Rolston’s appropriation of one of

Barbara Kruger’s other works (and Descartes’s meditation) with his offset lithograph, ​I Am Out,

Therefore I Am ​became “a declaration of sexual politics.” (102).​3​ Finally, The Guerrilla Girls

use blatant visuals to expose inequities and corruption within the modern art world and society

by proxy. A present day example has in fact been installed in front of the Museum of Modern

Art in New York as of the 13th of November, 2019 in the form of . ​“MoMA should kick Leon

Black & Glenn Dubin off its Board immediately, drape the Black & Durbin Galleries in black, &

put up wall labels explaining why,” reads the ad on a phone booth opposite the museum. “The

Guerilla Girls volunteer to help write those labels.” (artnet).​4​ Each of these pieces is a direct
interpretation and reaction to the society, politics and culture surrounding the artist. The

messages expressed within them are telling about the relationship between art and the world

from which it is born.

The first wave of feminism evolved around women’s suffrage in the 1920’s, while the

second wave involved women’s fight for equality in all other aspects of society, bringing forth

the Feminist Art Movement inwhich Mary Beth Edelson played an integral role. The world was

changing, and it became clear that the white heterosexual male experience could no longer be the

universal perspective within the art community or the world. There was a space created --not

without undue force-- for eager and innovative female artists to step out of the shadows and

share the female perspective. In Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard’s book, ​The Power of

Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970's, History and Impact​, it stated that “The goal

of feminism, said early spokeswomen, was to change the nature of art itself, to transform culture

in sweeping and permanent ways by introducing into it the heretofore suppressed perspective of

women.”​5​ (10) As was pointed out, this was a rather simplistic and utopian vision regarding the

idea that a singular female vision ever existed, yet the attitudes towards the question as to

whether women ever had or ever would create aesthetically or historically significant art was a

guantlet thrown. In the 1970’s there were women like ​Mary Beth Edelson who were ready with

a response, “motivated to create imagery that would literally bring women artists, for the first

time, to the table of history.”​6 ​ 16

Some Living American Artists/The Last Supper, ​or ​SLAWA​ as Edelson refers to it, was her

Dada-ist move to not only take a humorous jab at the male dominated art world and male

dominated religion, but to acknowledge more than 8o female artists whose faces were
superimposed over the faces of Christ and his disciples.​7​ It challenged and humourously

perverted the patriarchal historical account of ​The Last Supper. ​It is ​cut and pasted gelatin silver

prints with crayon and transfer type on printed paper with typewriting on cut and taped paper.

As stated by Kat Griefen in her recent article on Edelson in The Brooklyn Rail, “​As early as

1972, Edelson printed ​SLAWA ​in an edition, making it readily available for wide distribution as

she understood the work’s great potential for instigating future connections and opportunities. In

the pre-internet world ​SLAWA​ served as a map or archive for women artists looking for each

other. Curators also came to know the names and faces in the print as it hung in homes, studios,

and offices across the United States and abroad. In the 1970s, ​SLAWA,​ in combination with Lucy

Lippard’s Women Artist Slide Registry of more than 600 images, was evidence of women

artists’ greatness, or at least their existence.”​8 ​ It was of utmost importance to the progression and

acceptance of women into the enclaves of artistic canon and significance. Meanwhile, the mass

production of the piece into posters which were circulated throughout the country provided

existing and up-and-coming artists a visual “who’s who” amongst the feminine ranks,

circumventing the boy’s club as far as the directory to access goes.

1989 was a year which found Barbara Kruger producing ​Untitled (Your Body is a

Battleground) ​in support of women’s reproductive rights and freedom for the Women’s March

on Washington. The years since the Roe v. Wade saw antiabortion laws diminishing hard won

rights.​9​ (web) Kruger’s visual form of combat in her signature bold style of white-on-red Futura

Bold Oblique lettering cropped and juxtaposed across a demure repurposed photo from some

mid-century American print source. The face, split in half on the vertical line with left side

positive and right side negative exposures denoting the sharp divide in the realm of public and
political opinion on abortion. Directly addressing issues at hand, Kruger’s “works address issues

of power, pleasure, ambition, commerce, culture, and gender, and have for forty years exerted a

​ (ex cat) Barbara

broad influence on contemporary art, graphic design, and cultural discourse.” 10​

Kruger guides the discourse head on with her works, yet always manages to deftly execute her

works at many different levels left for the viewer’s interpretation. In fact, her work left such a

visual impact that both her style and images have been repeatedly appropriated for other

purposes.

One such example of the appropriation of Barbara Kruger’s work occurred in 1989, as

well, but in deference to the ongoing AIDS epidemic besieging the United States while those in a

position of power remained silent. In conjunction with ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash

Power), Adam Rolston played an integral role in producing propaganda art work to assist in the

fight against AIDS. Specifically, Barbara Kruger’s work had previously taken “a swipe at

consumer-determined identity: I SHOP, THEREFORE I AM.”​11​(Crimp 103) Instead, Rolston

swapped out the power dynamic to one of sexual identity in ​I AM OUT, THEREFORE I AM.

Both statements speak truth to power. Boldly. This was essential for the work of the artists

working with ACT UP. Visibility lends voice to those least in a position to fight. A chorus of

voices leads to recognition, awareness and, eventually, change.

Finally, the feminist activist artists the Guerrilla Girls take the spotlight off of themselves

throught their predilection for masks and continued dedication to anonymity. This affords them

the ability to maintain an unyeiding focus on the issues they wish to expose without fear of

repercussions. They “use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias

as well as corruption inpolitics, art, film, and pop culture. We undermine the idea of a
mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright

unfair.”​12​ (web) Such is the case in their current work, which is an advertisement placed on a

telephone booth in front of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City which has eliminated

the ability for the institution of MoMA or its trustees to feign further ignorance in regards to

board members and financiers Leon Black and Glenn Dubin who had maintained professional,

financial and personal ties with now deceased Jeffrey Epstein following his conviction.​ ​ The art

activist poster reads, “Advice to the Museum of Modern Art about BIG donors with BIG ties to

Jeffrey Epstein: MoMA should kick Leon Black and Glenn Dubin off its Board immediately,

drape the Black and Dubin Galleries in black, & put up wall labels explaining why. The

Guerrilla Girls volunteer to help write those labels,” and features the image of a screaming

gorilla mask at the bottom. The activist group Art in Ad Places has acknowledged their

collaboration with the Guerrilla Girls to ensure that their message would be heard.​13

The importance of artists continuing to educate, illuminate and stimulate the public

visually, cannot be underscored enough. In the case of the feminist art movement, artists played

a fundamental role in not only the liberation of themselves from the prior self-imposed restraints

of the art world, but that of the women of the world. The awareness that the “female artist” was

not a unicorn sighting in the wild, but there were at least eighty others acknowledged and

identified within Mary Beth Edelson’s ​Some Living American Artists/The Last Supper.

Perspectives were shifted through the prolific amount of Barbara Kruger’s works, and battle lines

deliberately drawn as she called a spade a spade within her piece ​Untitled (Your Body is a

Battleground).​ Her powerfully emphatic and concise messages and bold aesthetic hold the

viewer hostage, not to be ignored or soon forgotten. Adam Rolston’s ​I AM OUT, THEREFORE
I AM ​ used identical tactics to Kruger (imitation is the greatest form of flattery), insistent for the

viewer to see and accept the message being conveyed. It begged for action and

acknowledgement at a time when people were dying at an accelerating rate and the best weapon

activists had for change was through art, as well. Fast forward to today, which sees the Guerrilla

Girls continuing in the same vein of not only their own previous work, but those who preceded

them. Inequity is inequity whether it is in regards to gender, sex, politics or corruption.

Whether it has been the under-representation of female artists, AIDS-infected individuals, or the

elite maintaining positions of influence and power despite criminal ties or questionable activities,

artists are not only in a position to respond directly through their works to the social, political,

cultural conditions surrounding them, but they become the watch dogs for and of the citizenry.

They find their power in truth; they unearth the truth in power.