LOS ANGELES — Artist and filmmaker Hildegarde Duane recalls Los Angeles in the 1970s and describes the sense of freedom and opportunity that broke through the closed, predominantly male art world of the previous decades. “Something new was happening, a shift from a purely male network to a more open feeling,” says Duane. Hyperallergic“What really united us was the do-it-yourself spirit. We would do it no matter what.”
The two-part, bi-coastal exhibition Five female artists in Los Angeles in the 1970s features Duane’s work alongside that of four of her contemporaries – Nancy Buchanan, Susan Mogul, Susan Singer and Nancy Youdelman – all of whom rose to prominence as artists in the South five decades ago. Although not part of a formal collective, they are united by their interests in feminism, autobiography, the body, subversive humor, photography and the do-it-yourself spirit to which Duane refers. Taken together, the two exhibitions at Ortuzar Projects in Manhattan and As-Is Gallery in LA’s Pico-Union neighborhood offer windows onto a sprawling time and place, and onto five artists who seized those opportunities.
The Feminist Art Program (FAP), founded by Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and others at Fresno State College in 1970 and expanded to the California Institute of the Arts in 1971, had an outsized influence on several of these artists.
“It was so new, anything was possible,” said Youdelman Hyperallergic her experiences at FAP in Fresno and CalArts. She later participated in other groundbreaking feminist art spaces, including Womanhouse, Grandview Gallery in the Woman’s Building and the Double X collective. Youdelman often depicted her dreams, which she lived out and photographed, offering surreal, whimsical portraits of her subconscious. In the photo series Running with tail in Griffith Park (1974), which is on display at the As-Is Gallery until August 24, she is seen romping wildly and mischievously through the idyllic LA park, her tail dragging behind her.
Other works by Youdelman have a more somber tone, such as “Self-Portrait as Ophelia” (1977–2017), a burial mound of earth and flowers through which ceramic impressions of her face, hands and feet protrude. Since the exhibition opened, the living flowers have wilted and dried out in a kind of time-based process. Remember the deathAt Ortuzar, whose exhibition recently closed, “Shallow Grave” (ca. 1973), a disturbing series of six photographs, shows her lying in a grave, disappearing under a pile of earth.
“The beauty of all these spaces for women was that even though people made fun of us, the spaces themselves were inviting,” said Mogul, who also participated in FAP at CalArts and was involved in the Woman’s Building. Hyperallergic“Our goal was not to penetrate male art spaces.”
At the end of the 1970s, the artist created her Hollywood moguls series, intricate photo collages in which she depicts herself as a giantess trampling LA landmarks to imagine a female mogul replacing the male studio heads who dominated the entertainment industry. Working outside of traditional art systems, she originally exhibited these collages at a soda foundation in Hollywood in 1979. Likewise, Duane showed her films in non-art spaces like movie theaters and a shoe store. “The galleries weren’t really ready for it yet,” she said.
In addition to the barriers faced by women artists, it didn’t help that many of them worked in performance, video, photography and art books. “Of course, painting sells, not performance, and photography was discussed as a ‘serious’ medium in the ’70s,” Buchanan said. HyperallergicDocumentation of several of her early performances is shown at As-Is, including “Hair Transplant” (1972), in which she shaved a male performer’s mustache and body hair, cut her own waist-length red hair, and replaced the man’s missing hair with her own. “Twin Corners” (ca. 1974), documented in a photograph at As-Is and on view at Ortuzar, is a clever parody of minimalism in which a triangular corner pile of metal shavings is shown next to a photograph of the artist’s legs and crotch with a triangular patch of pubic hair.
“Photos are a problem for galleries concerned about rental income, but art books are even more difficult,” said Tom Jimmerson, curator of both exhibitions and owner of As-Is. Hyperallergic“It is understandable why this work presents a commercial challenge.” Nevertheless, he noted, “Some of the best works in the New York exhibition are unique books.”
These include Susan Singer’s “Bodies” (ca. 1976–77), an oversized flipbook of full-body nude portraits of artists Paul McCarthy, Barbara T. Smith, Allan Kaprow, curator Hal Glicksman, and others. Their body parts could be reassembled in “more than 19,476 combinations,” as the cover notes, combining seriality, photography, publishing, and sculpture. However, Singer left the art world shortly after creating this work to become a teacher, and questions remain about how her career would have developed had she continued working.
Despite the “anything is possible” attitude that characterizes these shows, a high level of production quality is evident.
“Above all, we wanted to appear serious,” said Duane Hyperallergic. “We didn’t want to be punky.” Duane had experience in commercial filmmaking, and the short videos she showed at Ortuzar, which play with Hollywood glamour and narratives, are all the more compelling for their polished appeal. “When you’ve worked in Hollywood, you’re aware of the evil behind the beauty. I try to portray that in a funny way. You can be funny and still be taken seriously. It’s a contradiction that works,” she said, a maxim that could apply to all the artists in the show.
Unlike many other historical exhibitions that attempt to rescue a lost artist from oblivion, four of these artists are still very active, and although the title of the exhibition refers only to the 1970s, more recent work is also on display, illustrating continuity rather than a historical break. Duane’s series My dead friends (2014), which combines photographs with text, creates poetic rather than didactic memorials to lost relatives and comrades, including comedian Rodney Dangerfield, musician Peter Ivers, painter Margaret von Biesen, and others.
“I see myself as a narrative artist, a storyteller… This is an extension of what I’ve always done,” Duane explained. “That was one of the reasons I wanted to show contemporary work. I’m still in the business. I’m still doing it. We’ve always done it.”
