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German Artists Included in DC Exhibition of Revolutionary Art
This exhibition is not for the faint of heart! With more than 300 works of art by 118 artists in a broad range of media—painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance art—dealing with topics ranging from sexuality and politics to race and class, “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” the new exhibition at the National Museum for Women in the Arts, is the first comprehensive exhibition to explore the development and impact of feminism in post-war contemporary art on an international level. In addition to iconic works by US-based artists like Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta, Miriam Shapiro, and Cindy Sherman, many German artists or artists working in Germany are included. Katharina Sieverding has achieved international recognition for works such as Transformer, which explores the androgyny of the 1970s glam-rock subculture and raises questions about gender, identity, and transformation. Although many artists took part in international exhibitions, the artistic exchange between the United States and Germany was carried out mostly on an individual basis. Video and performance artist Ulrike Rosenbach, for example, spent time teaching at the California Institute for the Arts in 1975 before founding the School for Creative Feminism in Cologne, Germany. Another multimedia artist, Ulrike Ottinger, gained international renown for her 1984 film “Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press” at a time when European women filmmakers were largely ignored by the critics. Many women artists energetically embraced video art, and their work in this field helped bring this medium to the fore. Artists such as Rebbeca Horn and Ursula Reuter Christiansen also used video to create a lasting document of their live performance pieces.
With her work Selbst, Annegret Soltau records the transformation of her face as she wraps herself with black string. Her artworks explore the body’s malleability through both natural and imposed changes. Women’s bodies and faces—not those of a model but of the artists themselves—are often the subject of the works in this exhibition. This is a stark change from the preceding generation’s focus on abstraction or minimalism. A few artists such as Eva Hesse, Mary Bauermeister and Isa Genzken, who was chosen to represent Germany at the Venice Biennale earlier this year, decided to work in more traditional practices and materials, yet they imbued their works with features distinctive to their own personal ideologies. This provocative and poignant exhibition provides a rare opportunity to gain insight into the aspirations of these artists and the social and political climate between 1965 and 1980 as well as to reflect on the important contributions these artists have made to contemporary art. “Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution” is on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave. NW, through Dec. 16. The museum is open Monday-Saturday 10-5 and Sunday 12-5. Admission for adults is $10. The exhibition contains potentially disturbing or inappropriate subject matter for younger audiences. Organized by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LAMoCA), future venues include the Museum of Modern Art/PS1 and the Vancouver Art Gallery. October 5, 2007 Links
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