Betye Saar created her first recognized piece when she was 46 years old. Her work responds to themes of racism and identity. Her own heritage is African American, Irish American, and Native American. Betye’s medium is collage, sometimes more on the two dimensional side, and other times three dimensional and very sculptural. In her collages, Betye often uses negative stereotypes, such as Aunt Jamima and Mammie, and re-presents them as figures to empower, figures that call for action. These works were especially powerful in their first appearance, following the LA riots and police brutality in 1965 sparked by intense fear of the Nation of Islam. The use of these stereotypes has recently re-emerged in response to reactions to artists like Kara Walker, whose disturbing and confrontational images have caused many to question, what is art? Are ways to present sensitive topics in art that are okay, and ways that are not? Betye’s art is empowering to both blacks and women, calling for them to take the stereotypes that are imposed upon them and find strength in these. Betye also works with photographs of her family and of people she doesn’t know from history in order to work through and issues of her own identity, citing frequently the “one-drop rule” which labels her as black, despite her intensely mixed heritage. Many of her pieces also use astrological and occult symbols, reflecting their influence on her understanding of herself.


“And, more importantly, by arming her figures, the artist called for the redress of current race relations through militant action, in contrast to the nonviolent legislative approach taken by the contemporary civil rights movement.”

“her intent ‘was to transform a negative, demeaning figure into a positive, empowered woman who stands confrontationally… a warrior ready to combat servitude and racism.”

“confronting people with any time of stereotypic imagery helps to explode the historically damaging myths by releasing them and their effects from the ‘collective unconscious.’”







question-
What do you think the difference is between reclaiming a negative image or stereotype and perpetuating it? Do you think Betye Saar reclaims or perpetuates? Why?

ANA MENDIETA (1948-1985)

“My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature has been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence. The making of my silueta in nature keeps (make) the transition between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature. Although the culture in which I live is part of me, my roots and cultural identity are a result of my Cuban heritage.”

Ana Mendieta was Born in Cuba in 1948. When she was twelve years old (1961) her sister and her were exiled from Cuba and placed in foster care in Iowa. Mendieta later attended the University of Iowa and got her BA as well as two BFAs, one in painting and the other at the Hans Breder’s Intermedia program. While she was in the Intermedia program she was encouraged to work outside conventional art practices in a way that promoted innovation, hybridity, and an ephemeral approach to art making. Due to the fact that she was forced from her homeland at such an early age, Mendieta’s desire to come to terms with her bicultural identity became a central concern in her life and art. Mendieta worked in nature, exploring the relationship between her body, the earth and art. Her works were site specific and ephemeral so they became known primarily through the photographic documentation which she exhibited. For Mendieta the documented photographs of her work were an essential part because they were the only remaining records of her sculptures and performances. She did state in one of her interviews, however, that they did not always make her intentions clear.

Body art first emerged in the late 1960s and it involves the expression of an artists idea through the manipulation of the physical body itself. Mendieta moved her artistic production outdoors in order to primarily work with the natural landscape. In her Silueta series, which she created on location in Iowa and mexico, she would leave traces of her body behind from flowers, tree branches, mud, gunpowder and fire. For some, her works in nature propose a nostalgic return to the ancient past life with metaphysical associations however, for others the traces of her body address the ideas of female identity and women’s struggle for voice and authority within the world. She put the female body in to nature in order to form links between ancestral pasts and the present. By merging the female body and the landscape, she is then defining motif, gesture, subject and object, and form and content. In some of her works she would etch the female figure into a leaf or burn it into the soil or a tree trunk. She always used materials from the landscape around her to create her works. Most of her works and performances during the seventies were executed around her university in Iowa. Regarding her choice for new forms of art such as body art Mendieta states, “The turning point in art was in 1972, when I realized that my paintings were not real enough for what I want the image to convey and by real I mean I wanted my images to have power, to be magic.” Mendieta has been acknowledged for her exploration of the gaps between conceptual, performance, and land art as well as how they are able to intersect with feminism, gender and identity.

Many of Mendieta’s female forms are figures with their arms held overhead representing the mythical goddess as well as the merging of earth and sky. The classic goddess pose was used in many of her works and it showed her interest in ancient and popular Mexican iconography. Figures floating in water symbolize the minimal space between land and sea while her figures with arms raised and legs together signify a wandering soul. Mendieta would usually record the progress of her works, shooting entire rolls of film to show the burning of gunpowder into the earth or the tide washing away the female figure etched into the sand. Some of her figures were filled with materials such as flowers, red paint and then framed with grass.

Some of the questions I would like to ask the class are…..

How do you feel about ephemeral art? Do you think it makes her intentions comprehensible? Do you think that only having photographic documentations of the works takes away from her art and her exhibits?

Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni was born on January 19, 1964 in Freeport, Bahamas. As a child she danced and had an interest in performing art. After receiving her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, in New York, she decided to attend The Rhode Island School of Design where she earned her M.F.A. in sculpture in 1989.
Antoni’s work is interesting because she uses a variety of mediums to express herself as well as her criticisms and comments about American culture. She is considered a sculptor, installation artist, performance artist, as well as a photographer. Most of her work directly deals with both process and performance. Often, day-to-day experiences and rituals that have become obsessive in American culture influence her work. For example, her work discusses femininity or our culture’s obsession with packaging and outward appearances.
In 1992, Antoni created “Gnaw” a performance piece in which she took two six hundred pound blocks, one made of chocolate and the other made of lard, and gnawed them. During her performance she either swallowed or spit out the excess, in which she used later to make chocolate candy boxes or lard filled lipsticks. The final product consisted of an installation room filled with mirrors, the two cubes on the floor, and the chocolate candy boxes and lipsticks placed on shelves. For this piece she was heavily influenced on American culture with its constant consuming and discarding of products, which is why she refers to American society as being “bulimic”. In this work, she criticizes America’s obsession with physical appearance and beauty, while she relates it to packaging and product and desire for both. She states that, “packaging is a symbol of our times. It is a seduction—unwrapping is like undressing” (Antoni on “Gnaw”).

As she did in “Gnaw”, Antoni used her body as a tool and immersed herself physically into her work, “With Gnaw I was thinking about traditional sculpture, about carving. I was also interested in figurative sculpture. I put those two ideas together and decided that rather than describing the body, I would use the body, my body, as a tool for making art." (Antoni). In 1993, she created “Lick and Lather” in which she made busts of herself out of soap and chocolate. She then used the busts to lick or rub the faces away to distort them. In this performance she wanted to describe the love hate relationship people have with their own appearances.
One of Antoni’s earlier works also deals with the idea of love and femininity. Her installation of “Wean” in 1989 is made up of six impressions of her own nipple as well as superficial baby bottle nipples, and the packaging for the fake nipples. The impressions start from the left with her breast and nipple and move toward the right with the foe nipples and finally the packaging. In this piece she discussed how babies and their mothers separate from one another, and as they become distanced they are forced into culture full of “substitutions”. Her work also discusses how the female body becomes objectified, and made into a latex form.
In her performance of “Loving Care” in 1993, Antoni surprised gallery viewers when she dipped her hair in hair dye and used her body as a tool while she painted the floor. Her performance dealt with the idea of femininity through what was considered to be, by critics like Ewa Lejer Burcharth, Abstract Expressionism. By mopping the floor she brought up consumerism and feminine constructs. The idea of mopping also played with the idea of woman doing their domestic chores.
More recent work, “Saddle” created in 2000, is a ghost-like mold of Antoni’s body, cast out of cowhide. It too speaks about consumerism in popular culture as much as it does about living and dying, sensuality, and the body. I personally find this piece to be really thought provoking because of its grotesque quality.
I find Antoni’s work to be very interesting and at the same time both beautiful and grotesque. In her art, Antoni usually has more than one reason or influence for why she created her work. Her art makes me think about women’s place in society and culture. I also wonder what the work would mean at first glance, before I knew what the artist intended. A lot of Antoni’s work is about the uncomfortable and putting the viewer in and uncomfortable place, so I have to wonder…

If Antoni didn’t make her work uncomfortable would the work have the same connotations?
Would the work be as effective?
What do you think of her work?
Do you think her work is grotesque, beautiful, confusing, thought provoking or all of the above?

Adrian Piper

Adrian piper has been compared, by one art critic, for the way they both display the truth and in some cases rather bluntly but more so for the way they both incorporate their own formal qualities with social concerns. Manet’s was the “physical and psychic class displacement. Adrian’s social concern was one of prejudice, race and class.Adrian Piper was influenced by primarily Sol Lewitt, but also by Vito Acconci, Yvonne Rainer, and Michael Snow.

Her early work was mostly conceptual. Like “ Sixteen permutations on a planar Analysis of a Square” and “Meat into Meat”, she was disinterested art work that incorporated overt social content. It wasn’t until the 1970’s and the political upheavals that rippled thought the country at this time. The Vietnam War, US invasion of Cambodia, the Black and Women’s movements and the Kent State killings all had a serious impact on her work.

She found she could no longer play the mind games of minimalist and conceptual art with an art world that actively discriminated against both black and female artists. Her first movement away from eh art world was through performance which she often did unannounced and sometimes only for her own advantage. One of her most well known figured is the Mythic Being, a young black man who cruises white women and mugs young white men in public. Adrian Piper still continues to create works still with overt racial, and social subject matter. She has produced work using multimedia as well.

Her later works were all influenced by the political and social climate of the times and a lot of her work is charged with gender and racial connotations. many of her performances were impromptu and completely random

How affective can politically charged performances be if they are not announced, or in other words, can a point be driven across to an audience if the audience is unaware that they are in fact observing a performance piece?How do you think you would react if you observed a performance than involved "The Mythic Man" where it seemed as though someone was being physically assaulted on the street?