Joyce Kline’s review of Allan Antliff’s Anarchy and Art (“The Bad Boys of Modern Art,” November 2007) reminds me that art history is mostly about “the boys” in the Euro/U.S. conceit of modern art. I agree with Kline’s statement of wanting more. Yep, more about the contribution to this anarchy by female artists, which—for them at any time—would be breaking double the rules.
Dada, which actually started in Zurich and Berlin, not America, in 1916, had mommas. A few of them. Their events took place at Alfred Steiglitz’s New York gallery, which is where Marcel Duchamp and Picabia met Man Ray. Georgia O’Keefe, Steiglitz’s wife, was part of that, and I like to think of her as the Father of American modern art … she was the absolute first to take a singular image and make it huge. Flowers, skulls, whatever. Before that, painting was all about historical battle scenes, still life, landscapes or society portraits. A much-copied rebel.
Moving on to the Surrealists, Merit Oppenheimer, who created the fur-lined teacup, was a dear friend, muse and naked model of Man Ray. Hanna Hoch, in Berlin, gave us collages in the 1930s that still look fresh today because of their startling, grotesque, intelligent bravery. Hilla Rebay was another transplanted German avant-garde painter, who influenced Kandinsky and his group of painters. I would even say he stole from her. She was the agent who introduced Frank Lloyd Wright to Guggenheim, and the result of that is the iconoclastic spiral gallery.
Lee Krasner was a muse, a partner-in-crime with Jackson Pollock, both loved by rebel-with-a-cause museum owner Peggy Guggenheim. Louise Bourgeois, who emigrated from France in the 1950s, said as much in her autobiography: “New York is a Men’s Club, and I am not included.” She quietly continued to make her art, was “discovered” at 68, and is now considered one of the masters.
Our Emily Carr, so inspired by the revolutionary French Impressionists that she took her long skirts and paint boxes from the British Columbia rainforest in early 20th century to meet them, and then did it her way. Another well-respected Canadian female was Agnes Martin, a prairie Abstractionist who only painted austere horizontal lines, refusing all imagery.
Judy Chicago, with her “Dinner Party,” dared to suggest the importance of vaginas. The male artworld generally rejected this work for two reasons: the subject matter and the customary denial of craft in modern art. Now, with more female curators, things are much improved. Professor Antliff’s timeline ends with the fall of the Berlin Wall. How many of the hundreds of artists who protest-painted that 27-kilometre travesty were female?
A book about the history of anarchy in the art world is always welcome, but let’s not forget the influence and importance of female artists.
Barbara Klunder
Toronto, Ontario
