Alex Alvis Art

Carla Accardi Day

As you know, if you read the blog yesterday (or the day before), we are learning about each artist who was in the  WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution show in 2007...in alphabetical order.

I am going through the whole list systematically because, otherwise, I may just talk about a few of the artists if I allowed myself to just choose the artists I think I like most.  Today is Carla Accardi day.  She was born in Italy during war time.  Here, I think is a good overview of her - short and sweet which, after researching the history of Mussolini and Marxism in Italy and not really wishing to get into it...I am leaning toward liking best:

Carla Accardi rose to fame as founding member of the 1947 Italian avant-garde movement Forma 1, a group of artists based in Rome who, in the face of Fascism, embraced the principals of Futurism and Marxism. As one of the key figures of abstract art in Italy during the time, Accardi developed an iconic visual lexicon of calligraphic marks that, when combined with her minimalist color palette and dynamic compositions, showcased the endless possibilities of abstraction. In the 1960s, Accardi began painting on Sicofoil, a transparent plastic sheeting used in commercial packaging, instead of canvas. The dynamism in Accardi’s work, as well as her emphasis on non-art materials and simple processes and structures, became a precursor to Arte Povera.

The painters of the "Form 1": Pietro Consagra, Mino Guerrini, Ugo Attardi, Carla Accardi, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo and Piero Dorazio

Her early paintings were of interlocking geometric forms and she worked to attempt to revolutionize abstraction through the combining of geometric abstraction and gestural painting.

She stopped painting for about a year and then just painted for a while white on black (it was thought this was to explore the relationship between figure and ground).

When she went back to painting, it was with a limited palette (2 colors) and on a plastic material called sicofoil (no longer manufactured) with which she made painted sculptural tent-like forms.
She eventually went back to painting on canvas, still with a limited palette and geometric figures.
I cannot find very much information about Accardi's life, only that her contribution to abstract art has been significant.  She passed away this year in February and the only thing left that I think I will leave you with is this from the Hyperallergic website:

Sometimes the quietest and most unassuming exhibitions turn out to be the most fascinating, if not the strangest.

Tucked away on the third floor of Sperone Westwater’s Bowery building, there’s a show titled Post-War Italian Art: Accardi, Dorazio, Fontana, Schifano. That’s it. No jazzy tagline like “Treasures of Proto-Arte Povera” or “Secrets of Euro-Neo-Pop.” Just Post-War Italian Art: Accardi, Dorazio, Fontana, Schifano.

There isn’t even a press release accompanying the listing on the gallery’s website, which is just as well. It’s a plainspoken exhibition whose strengths are apparent only after a period of unhurried observation, however outmoded that may sound. . . . .

Another artist who deals with the art object — how it is made and perceived — is Carla Accardi, who was born in Sicily in 1924 and now lives in Rome. She has several works here, one more radical than the next.

There is a small, patterned green-on-red abstraction in casein on canvas near the gallery entrance called, appropriately, “Verderosso n. 6” (“Green-red no. 6,” 1964). It’s an intriguing painting, but it doesn’t prepare you for “Bianco oro” (“White Gold”), which she made in 1966, hanging on the other side of the room.

Carla Accardi, “Bianco oro” (1966). Enamel on sicofoil mounted on canvas, 25 3/16 x 35 7/16 inches. (Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York)

The first thing you notice about “Bianco oro” are the cursive strokes of gold-colored varnish rippling outward from the center of the painting; the second thing you notice is that the brushstrokes are casting shadows on the white canvas, which is wrapped in transparent plastic — a material called sicofoil — upon which Accardi has applied the varnish.

Compellingly, what should by all rights be dismissed as cheap effect instead comes off as weirdly, poetically beautiful. The hovering gold brushstrokes, which grace the plastic with a minimalist purity, assert the painting’s thing-ness while their shadows dissolve our sense of it as a solid object. Yes, it’s a trick, but resistance to its artless radiance is futile.

By the following year the canvas support is gone. In “Segni Verdi” (1967), which can translate as “Green Signs,” “Green Signals,” “Green Symbols” or simply “Green Marks,” the painting’s stretcher bars are visible between the strokes of green varnish, which are brushed on in a diagonal, wavelike pattern.

Carla Accardi, “Segni verdi” (1967). Enamel on sicofoil, 63 x 43 5/16 inches(Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

The result isn’t quite as engaging as “Bianco oro,” perhaps because it is more literal in its approach to unmasking the art object, but its audacious simplicity can be enjoyed as a lyrical answer to Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, which approach a similarly self-conscious aesthetic with kitchen-sink aggressiveness. (from Alien Skins: Experimental Italian Painting of the 1960's - 2013, Thomas Micchelli).

Hyperallergic is a great website for perspectives about art in today's world.  I hope you check out their site.

That's all I have for you today.  Hope you are enjoying your weekend!

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex

Marina Abramović-Her Body as Medium and Subject

As you know, if you read the blog yesterday, we are learning about each artist who was in the  WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution show in 2007...in alphabetical order.

I am going through the whole list systematically because, otherwise, I may just talk about a few of the artists if I allowed myself to just choose the artists I think I like most.

No good.  Because, I have found that once I begin to research the artists I find them all very interesting, and this opens my mind to them more and I learn other things along the way too.  

Certainly, the curators of the show included each of these artists because they felt their contribution to the history of feminist art was significant.  And, as Fran Smith says in her article in Edutopia;  Why Arts Education Is Crucial, and Who's Doing It Best:

A 2005 report by the Rand Corporation about the visual arts argues that the intrinsic pleasures and stimulation of the art experience do more than sweeten an individual's life -- according to the report, they "can connect people more deeply to the world and open them to new ways of seeing," creating the foundation to forge social bonds and community cohesion. 

So, in the interest of creating the foundation to forge social bonds and community cohesion we are going to talk about Marina Abramović today.

Dozing Consciousness (c) Marina Abramovic

Marian was one of the first people to use performance as a visual art form.  You may ask, don't all actors do this?  Not in this way.  Marina Abramović uses her body as her medium and subject to explore her physical and emotional limits.

One of her first installations was the use of her hand and several knives where she recorded the sounds she emitted each time she cut herself and then switched to another knife.  Sound pretty weird?

Rhythm 10 (c) Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic’ and Ulay, Relation in Time. Originally performed at 1977 for 17 hours at Studio G7, Bologna. Still from 16 mm film transferred to video (black and white, sound), 50:33 min. (c) 2010 Marina Abramovic. Courtesy the Artist and Sean Kelly Gallery/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“What I’m doing is inventing events that I am afraid of. I go in front of the public and, if I can do it, they can do it, too. That’s why performance art – if it’s good – can be a life-changing experience.”

She pauses. “This is the function of an artist. I am not a therapist. I am not a spiritual leader. These elements are in the art: it is therapeutic, spiritual, social and political – everything. It has many layers. But art has to have many layers. If it doesn’t, then forget it.”

Balkan Baroque (c) 2010 Marina Abramovic

Well.  I agree with that...art has to have many layers.

In case you are taking Marina's artworks too seriously, a visit to this site - created by Scott Indrisek-may just take care of that :) - pretty funny!

Hope you experience many layered art today for yourself.

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Hitler, and Moms

I asked my daughter once, as she was young and idealistic and feeling the burdens on her young shoulders of everything that is "wrong" with the United States Government.  We were driving along in our car, safe from what so many people in the world experience as horrors in their everyday existence (and this was about a year before 9-11);  I think I said - "don't you ever think how nice it is that there are no bombs dropping around (or on) us?  Why do you think that is?"

Imagine this.  You're a 9 year old little girl living in a big house with your family, (who happens to be quite comfortably wealthy) and one day, the city you live in is invaded, your home is seized and burned, and your mother is shot dead in front of you.

I'm going to talk about each of the artists in the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution show by alphabetical order.  Doesn't that sound orderly?  :) and Magdalena Abakanowicz is first on our list.

Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in Poland in 1930 and was 9 years old when Poland was invaded by the Nazis.

You see?  Back in 1938 Hitler wanted Poland as a continuation of his expansion efforts that started with the lands bordering Czechoslovakia and Germany (then called Sudentenland), and then Czechoslovakia itself in 1939.  He managed to get away with this without causing any hostilities with the two superpower countries at the time.  Ah.  That would be the United States and the Soviet Union.

I need a map.

 
There.  I feel much better now.

Anyway.  In his infinite wisdom, ol' Adolf thought to himself.  "My people need to stretch out some more.  I think Poland would be a nice addition to my collection.  And, after all, the native Slavs (which should make nice slaves) aren't really people and all...."

Oh.  No...that's not exactly it.  He felt that the Germans were "racially superior..." and in the hopes of going unnoticed about his little takeover of Poland, he got some Nazi S.S. troops to dress up as Polish soldiers and stage a mock invasion of Germany and publicized the "Polish attack" as an "unforgivable act of aggression" so he could call his invasion a "defensive action."

Had Hitler's mother still been alive I don't think she would have been particularly proud of this sneaky tactic - but it has been argued that the way she died was one of the reasons he was...the way he was...as if such evil could be explained away somehow.  But don't we humans always try to make sense of things?

Let us pause for a moment and think about what is happening in the world at the moment and think about the saying; "history repeats itself."

How about another map?


Hmmm.
Well.  

Back to Magdalena Abakanowicz. 

80 BACKS 1976-80, burlap and resin life size h. 61-69 cm; depth 50-56 cm; width 55-66 cm collection: Museum of Modern Art, Pusan, South Korea

From her website is this:

     Poland was a politically volatile country where instability was a permanent state. She has learned to escape to her corner, to make the best of things, to use whatever was viable and even to make gigantic works in a tiny studio. Her art has always addressed the problems of dignity and courage. This dignity resistance and will of survival conceal her individual personal affinities to the culture of Poland, the country where she has grown up, to this country’s political situation, and to the realities of existence of an artist, an intellectual.

DANCING FIGURES 2001/2002, bronze 7 figures each ca 165 x 150 x 55 cm

     The metaphoric language of her work has achieved a point of junction, which still is a challenge for mankind, for all its sophisticated civilization. This is the point where the organic meets the non - organic, where the still alive meets that which is already dead, where all that exist in oppression meet all that strive for liberation in every meaning of this word.

AGORA 2005-2006, iron 106 figures 285-295 x 95-100 x 135-145 cm Permanent installation in Grant Park, Chicago

SEATED FIGURES 1974-79, figures: burlap and resin, pedestal: steel Eighteen pieces, each figure ca. 104 x 51 x 66 cm each pedestal: 76 x 46 x 22 cm whole sculpture: 145 x 47 x 75 cm Sydney Lewis Collection, Richmond, Virginia Second group in Muzeum Narodowe, Wroclaw

Hope you are and will be enjoying these amazing artists as much as I am.

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex

Why Ignorance is NOT Bliss

Back in the days of college classes for me, which was a very long time ago and yesterday all at once, I had a class (the name escapes me) but it was about politics, probably a sociology class. 

I had to do a class project which I decided would be a film about woman's rights and the journey to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed (I got an A+ and the instructor wanted to keep the tape)...and what happened that caused ERA to have never been added to the Constitution.

Ever.

I made this film mostly because of the fact that I had been somehow ashamed by my own ignorance...that although Congress passed it in 1972 - it was never ratified by the necessary 38 state legislatures.  Do you know how many people busted their asses to get it THAT far?

Do you know HOW CLOSE it came to being ratified?  Only THREE STATES! 

Yes.  35 states said YES.


Well. I was not alone in this assumption apparently, and I would not be alone today if I still had the assumption that both sexes have equal Constitutional rights. 

In a poll taken in 2012, 72% of the people who took it assumed the Constitution already included a guarantee of equal rights for men and women.

Nope.

The U.S. Constitution still does not explicitly guarantee that all of the rights it protects are held equally by all citizens without regard to sex.

It includes a provision that we are equally allowed to vote...

Is it just me? Or were women more politically active about women's rights in the 1970's than they are today? And, if they were - why? 

What has happened in the generations of women that followed?

I don't watch this show, but this was posted on the ERA Facebook page and maybe it answers the above questions somewhat...and provides a little hope too.



Not all of us can be encouraged to act by Gloria Steinem personally - but... hey! 

There are still (...42 years later) only three states ratification needed for the ERA to become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

I should think we could all get our overwhelmed selves together and help just a little tiny bit to make it happen. 

I think there are 84 days left to do it this time around. 

Go to this website to check it out if you'd like to help.

So.  Why am I talking about any of this at all? 

Because, looking at which artists of that time I would feature today, I came across a comment made on the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution website by George...and it just got me thinking about that class project and the ERA ...STILL not part of the Constitution! 

WHY?  Why this backslide to NOT paying attention to something so fundamental as equal rights for all getting put into the language of our Constitution?


George says in the comments section (back in 2007):

     I toured your WACK! site with my wife and mother-in-law this past Sunday. I burnt them out and liked it so much that I returned to spend all day Monday as well. Very well done!
     I had only one disappointment. I would have liked to have seen information that pointed the viewer to what’s going on in the feminist movement today. I felt as if it was saying “these are all the wonderful things that happened back then but it’s history and nothing is really going on now.”
     Perhaps this is just the natural outcropping of the current state of affairs in our country: regressive, militaristic, and ignorant of in the face of human values while ironically espousing “family values”. Nevertheless, it made me sad.
     Perhaps (actually likely) I am just displaying my ignorance on this topic, but when I asked several people there — including the docent who guided us on a wonderful tour for 3 hours — they had absolutely no information to share. It was as if I was asking for an explanation of quantum physics.
     What I was seeking is a simple “If you enjoyed this retrospective, take a look at what’s going on today!”
    The major point still holds true — thanks again for a great show! It was terrific!
                    George

It was as if I was asking for an explanation of quantum physics...

Well.  Thanks for noticing, George. 

I notice that too. 

How about you?  Do you notice?

I'll be back talking about another artist from this period of time tomorrow.

'Til then!

~Alex

Tomorrow Never Came

No.  Really it did.  It was my blog post that didn't happen.  All I can say is, today is another day.

Harmony Hammond-installation view, Alexander Gray Associates (2013)

Harmony Hammond - Bag XI Brooklyn Museum

Going back to talking about the extraordinary artists featured in !Woman Art Revolution film - today I want to talk about Harmony Hammond- a member of the New York feminist art movement and, more specifically, the lesbian feminist art movement.  In her early adulthood she and artist Stephen Clover married.  He struggled with gender identity issues once they were married.  They divorced sometime after arriving in New York when Hammond came out herself after a time.  In New York, Hammond was a good bridge between the hetero and lesbian feminist art movements during the 70's.  There is all sorts of information about that on the internet and you won't have any trouble learning more about that on your own, if you wish to.  What I wanted to highlight today was more about how she speaks about her art.

Harmony Hammond-Speaking Braids (detail) see explanation of this sculpture

In her interview with Lynn Hershman in 2008 she had a wonderful way of describing what she creates and why - here is part of that I have transcribed from that video interview.
Just so you know, at Redline Gallery in Denver, starting Friday October 17th (through December 27) is presenting a major Judy Chicago exhibition titled: Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970–2014  Curated by Simon Zalkind. I know Mark and I will have to go.  Hope you can too.  Redline Gallery also had an exhibition of Harmony Hammond's work not very long ago, and if I had known we would have gone to see that too.

That's all I have for today.  Hope you have been enjoying yours!

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex

Inspiration Sunday

Hope you are having a very artful Sunday...no not awful...ARTful.  :)

It's Inspiration Sunday - and your quotes from the Artist to Artist book are from the sections on Seeing and Perception and Solitude:

A painter should be a solitary.  Solitude is essential to his art.  Alone you belong to yourself only; with even on other person you are only half yourself, and you will be less and less yourself in proportion to the number of companions. ~ Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519

Leonardo da Vinci - Lady With An Ermine

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see.  ~Edgar Degas 1834-1917

Edgar Degas - Dancers in Pink

I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotions reveal to him the hidden truths beneath appearances . . . his eye grafted on his heart reads deeply into the bosom of Nature.  That is why the artist has only to trust his eyes.  ~Auguste Rodin 1840-1917

Auguste Rodin - The Three Shades

Try to reduce everything you wee to the utmost simplicity.  That is, let nothing but the things which are of the utmost importance to you have any place . . . there are lots of clever people who can paint 'anything,' but lacking the seeing power, paint nothing worth while . . . . Seeing is not such an easy thing as it is supposed to be.  ~Robert Henri 1865-1929

Robert Henri - Spanish Landscape (1902)

I work alone (I haven't ever found a way of working other than in considerable privacy), and I go to quite considerable lengths to insure that. . . . I don't find it possible to lose myself in the activity if there are other people around.  ~Reg Butler 1913-1981

Reg Butler - Manipulator

Art, to me, is seeing.  I think you have got to use your eyes as well as your emotions, and one without the other just doesn't work.  ~Andrew Wyeth 1917-2009

Andrew Wyeth - Winter 1946

I realized also that the artist is always alone.  Early in life I had thought I needed other people to confirm or approve what I was doing. . . .  It was important for me to learn that what I wanted was really no different from what other artists wanted:  confidence that I could be my own censor, my own audience, my own competition.  ~Beverly Pepper 1924-

Beverly Pepper-Parc de l'Estació del Nord, Barcelona

Sometimes I see it and then paint it.  Other times I paint it and then see it.  ~Jasper Johns 1930-

Jasper Johns - Zero Through Nine (1961)

Actually you see things differently all the time depending on the light, the nature of the day, the way your eyes are focused, the mood you are in.  Your focus keeps changing. f Your head is always moving.  All these things are happening and it is all changing your perception.  ~Janet Fish 1938-

Janet Fish - Black Bowl Red Scarf (2007)

You see, it takes me forever to do a painting, and for that you need peace and quiet. . . .  ~Catherine Murphy 1946-

Catherine Murphy - Persimmon (1991)

Tomorrow we will go back to talking about the women artists featured in the film !Women Art Revolution.

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex

Miriam Schapiro - Not a Revolution

“The main direction of an artist’s life . . . is to search out identity, to know who they are, where their center is. At least that’s my definition of a serious artist.” Miriam Schapiro, quoted in Nickell and Stanciu, “Creating Beauty: An Interview with Feminist Artist Miriam Schapiro,” Gadfly, September 1997

Miriam Schapiro - Beauty of Summer

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has a lovely YouTube station and on it I found an interview with Miriam Schapiro that is quite wonderful.  She talks about the time in which she was creating art. 
 
In the interview she calls it the "white glove era" because woman would be looked down upon if they were to show up at a restaurant with their husband without wearing white gloves.
 
She says in the video that at the time she went to California and met up with Judy Chicago that "there was no such thing as a (recognized) specific art by women." 
 
"In the fall of 1971, the relocated Feminist Art Program started at California Institute of the Arts with 25 students.  Since the school was still under construction, the Program met in the private residences of the students to plan its first project, Womanhouse, which had bee conceived by Paula Harper, an art historian who had joined the Program's staff." (from By Our Own Hands by Faith Wilding) 
 
As Miriam Schapiro puts it in this interview:  Womanhouse was created "beginning an art course for women to make woman understand that to be artists, they had to find their identity, as well as work hard to create images that came from their belief system."

 She goes on to say in the interview:  "The real core was the idealism.  We haven't had that since.  That's what we experienced together, that's what changed our lives.  The point being that we really felt we could make a revolution. 
 
Actually we did make a revolution - but by an evolutionary process because we never took guns, we never burned our bras.  We never did the things that the media says we were well known for.  What the media doesn't say we were well known for was this incredible level of idealism. 
 
We really had faith.  An in political matters and in social matters you really don't get that all that often - people having faith in something."


Video of images of Miriam's work with "Concerto for Violin And Orchestra in D Major,
Op. 61: Rondo: Allegro" by Philharmonia Slavonica, Jan Czerkow and Alberto Lizzio

Here is an excerpt from another very good interview:

Transcript of Interview with Miriam Schapiro 1992

Suzanne Lacy: We wanted to start w/ your involvement w/in the women's movement, and how or why did you first get involved?

Miriam Schapiro:  . . . . I worked at it. And when I came to California I immediately got involved in consciousness raising groups and met Judy Chicago, and pretty soon the two of us were teaching a feminist art program at the California Institute of the Arts, and subsequently we made the Womanhouse project.
 
And it seemed very natural for me to get involved. Although I know when I tell this story and repeat the fact that I was 48 years old when this began, it serves as some sort of good point for our side, that you can really change your life when you're almost 50 and find new horizons.
 
The woman's movement meant everything to me because it allowed me a kind of freedom in making my art which I never had before. And yet, I was a successful artist. I had a reputation as a good artist, and I was connected with Andre Emmerich (?), which was one of the prestigious galleries in New York. I was there for sixteen years.
 
So, many people feel-what was it I was looking for? Point is, I had been trained in high school and in college, and even from my father, as a small child, to be an artist, and always my experiences were with men.
 
And what I had absorbed was a man's sense of what the truth was, and never really looked into what a woman's truth was. Never really explored, never really understood how important my mother and my aunt and my grandmother were to me.
 
I was an only child, and this was my world, this world of women. And so this gave me a new lens with which to look at my life and with which to make my art, and I threw myself into that. And working with other women as a collective at the California Institute of the Arts, this was enormously supportive to me, who had been very much an isolated woman.
 
Married, with a child, but feeling very isolated. Looking for something but not knowing what it was. Having no language for it, and not finding the words until the advent of the women's movement. And there I could move into a country, as it were, which was my own country. I had found it. And give a voice to that other side of me, which had never been explored before.
 
SL: And what kind of changes did that make in your art?
 
MS: I don't want to make it sound easy, because after all I was a full professional in the way I had worked. And I had learned certain principles of making art, certain directions to go in in art, which I thoroughly felt comfortable with.
 
And actually, unlike women much younger than I, I made a slow transition in my art, from say the man's truth to the woman's truth. Always keeping a good deal of what I had learned. And maybe that's what makes the art interesting. That I represent a sort of transitional figure in that way.
 
But I began to explore women's history and women's culture, and I became very interested in people I called artist makers. These were not trained women.
 
These were women who in fact had their centers were in their homes. They were women who sewed, they were women used the needle, they were the women who made the great quilts, they were the women who made lesser quilts.
 
They were women who tatted and embroidered, and I got really interested in those women and why they did that. And when I discovered why they did that I realized they weren't so different from me.
 
Because the why of it had to do with making beautiful things. With creating works that express a side of oneself which was the roses side of the phrase Bread and Roses. And these women, I figure, late at night after seven children had been put to bed, after all the washing had been done, after all the meals had been cooked, then sat down quietly and alone to work on their art, to express a side of themselves.
 
I think we overlook this. I think it's really important to know that all women have this in common, that they need, they need to make something, which is a release from all of the pesterings of the day, and create something just their own.
 
And I don't think we've given nearly enough emphasis in the history of art to the importance and the value, let's say, of the creativity of the quilts.
 
So, all of this crept into my art. I began to make enormous paintings which was my way of making quilts. I began to make smaller paintings which revolved around handkerchiefs, which bore the tears of women, and aprons, embellished aprons. Or aprons I just found in flea markets all over, which carried the sign of what these women did, despite looking at them as prisoners of their life.
 
I felt we had to look at them also for that aspect of them, which was the search for inner freedom. Because our lives are complex. We are not ever either one or the other. We are not ever totally free, or ever totally imprisoned by our conditions.
 
SL: Could you go back to when it was that you started.
 
MS: I wanted to say that having come to California to begin a new life, as it were, in 1967, I was 48 and so I'm 68 now. And one of the things that I do and the talks I give around the country and so forth, is always I flash my age because I don't think we have role models in this country for the idea of what power an older woman has.
 
We think of an older woman as, whose power has dried up, because we're so critical of the way she looks. Indeed, if she's aged and if she has wrinkles and is no longer number ten or one or whatever it is.
 
We're so into the beauty myth, and we're so concentrating on that all the time in the media, that we lose the idea that a woman might have something to say. Not only that, she might have a life ahead of her, drawing near 70, she might still think of her life as being ahead of her, which in fact I do, because I'm constantly involved with various projects that I do with other people.
 
Also, my life is filled with younger people, including my own son, who keep me alive, who keep me abreast, who tell me what they are reading, what they are looking at, what they are seeing, how they are functioning. And this mix is terribly important in our society.
 
SL: You mentioned that you had a school for feminist art here, or workshops.
 
MS: I have to tell you that since 1967 my life has been out of the studio, devoted to giving workshops, telling the history of feminist art, bringing the news of what happens from this center in New York.
 
Today we have the WAC organization. A few years back we were all talking about the Guerilla Girls.
 
When I go out of town, when I go to Minneapolis or when I go to San Antonio, wherever, I tell the story from the message center. I tell what the women are doing and what they're thinking about.
 
SL: What kind of response do you get when you go around and talk about. . ..
 
MS: You won't believe this, because when we live in New York we get a kind of veil of sophistication which makes us think we're unique, and the only people living in the country.
 
But the truth is when I bring this story of how to do consciousness raising, of how to share inner ideas, intimate ideas, it's as though I'm bringing it for the first time. You'd think not.
 
You think that, Oh, so much has happened in this country, we women are so ahead of where we were years ago. In some ways that is true, and the media misleads us. The media gives us the impression that we're way ahead of ourselves.
 
But, I want to remind you of an image, a single image. This is the image of Pat Schroeder leading a very small group of five or six women up the steps of the Capitol in Washington. Anita Hill has just spoken, the whole Clarence Thomas trial-trial is not the right word. But, the experience is over, and these women are coming to. . .actually it's not over.
 
These women are coming to bring pressure on the senators and the senators won't see them. The story is that the senators won't see them. That these distinguished women, all of them, are in the Congress at the same level as the men and they wish to talk to them, to put forth their point of view, and the men won't see them.
 
And this is humiliating for us, because as we read about this story we identify. So, how far have we come? How empowered are we?
 
SL: Can you bring that even further then, into the lives of say women artists and dealing with the gallery world?
 
MS: The gallery world has a few token women artists who in fact are wonderful. But, it is not the answer to the question because the question is, Who runs the art world?
 
And what is it about this question of making art? And I have to say that in my belief the art world is run for investment. That the kinds of people who have immense power in the art world are people who are collectors.
 
I won't even say dealers, but people who are collectors. And the influence that goes back and forth between collectors and curators and dealers is significant in the direction of greed, in the direction of investment, in direction of building up a portfolio you might say, even though we're talking about works of art.
 
And women are not even in this picture, because, as always, if you read the auction rolls, throughout history, you learn a lot about a society.
 
And if you read the auction roles in terms of contemporary society you'll find that what is exciting to the "artworld" is the manner in which a Julian Schnabel recedes a little in his prices, or advances a little in his prices.
 
But you never hear such talk about women because women don't figure in terms of the top level of power in the investment picture.
 
SL: In light of that really gloomy situation, what do you say to young women artists, or women today who aspire to create and make a living with their work?
 
MS: Well, I say one thing. I've always said it, and I'll continue to say it: Don't become isolated.
 
Don't think that because you read about Rembrandt working alone in his studio that that is the way to function.
 
In fact, the most fearful thing is being isolated, being all the time alone with your canvas, and the antidote to that is to work collaboratively, to work collectively, to be with other people your own age, people who have the same skill as you have, the same interests you have. Work together.

So - this Saturday the word for us artists and us women artists would be Collaborate!
 
Hope you are enjoying your weekend.  I'm going out to the studio now to get some work done.
 
'Til tomorrow!
 
~Alex