Postwar Art Reframed: Artistic Radicalization and Social Movements

As is the case with other women in this section, de Kooning was the wife of a canonical Abstract Expressionist artist, and largely known as an artist for that reason. However, she differentiated herself from her husband Willem in her range of stylistic skill, from completely abstract to figurative paintings. She was most interested in figurative painting, declaring, “men always painted the opposite sex, and I wanted to paint men as sex objects.” De Kooning’s self-portrait was made as one of multiple at the beginning of her career, as if she anticipated her place in history one day. She depicts herself in a painter’s smock, in the middle of reading or writing.

Krasner never took the last name of her husband Jackson Pollock, rather changed her first name from Lenore to Lee, possibly an effort to combat gendered biases in the art world. She painted in the same Abstract Expressionist style as Pollock, one that functioned as a symbol for freedom and independence, but comparing their work as it is presented in the same gallery by The Museum of Modern Art suggests that this message did not fully resonate with Krasner. Whereas the viewer’s eye travels freely across Pollock’s Number 1A, it circumnavigates Krasner’s crowded and textured composition to realize feelings of confinement and nervousness. Interestingly, Krasner put much of her artistic career on the backburner to support Pollock, but after his death, she began painting larger and more expressive canvases.

Sage’s painting utilizes landscape to represent her psychological state, in true Surrealist fashion. Wooden scaffolding encloses draped fabric in a loosely bodily shape, most comparable to a classical sculpture in a toga. Evoking feelings of entrapment and hopelessness, this painting was one of Sage’s last works before her death by suicide, however it could also be read as a metaphor for the sentiments surrounding women’s autonomy preceding the Women’s Liberation movement.

Sculpted in bronze, Bourgeois depicts a breast-like form inspired by reliquaries historically utilized in the Christian tradition to hold the remains of saints. These relics were ascribed a holy property and ritualistically utilized, such as by pilgrims who would travel across country borders just to touch these items. This artwork juxtaposes the holiness of the female body with the sexualization of women, evoked by tarnishing on the sculpture from touch.

Where depictions of mothers are lacking in art history, depictions of pregnant women even more so are. Refashioning the popular motif of the “reclining nude” in painting, Neel depicts a woman with emphasis on her bulging, pregnant belly in the center of the composition. Her realist style of painting conveys real experiences most directly, in contrast to the predominant styles at the time of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism.

Neel is most well known for her portraits, for example depicting Andy Warhol, who is known for his silkscreen prints that appropriate images from consumerist and popular culture. Though an art world powerhouse, Warhol is depicted partially naked with sagging skin, fresh surgical scars, and unaware, closed eyes. Here, Neel upends expectations and creates a raw, humanizing portrait, especially as Warhol was known for disguising himself with wigs and sunglasses.

Marcus’ painting of a male phallus is uncomfortable not because it is a nude, but a male nude. While naked women have been painted and sculpted by men throughout all of art history, the inverse has not been true because women were not allowed to draw from life until the late 19th century. Where women’s bodies have been forced to be on display, the male one is now in that vulnerable position. Here, by seeing a man in an objectified position, viewers are forced to confront this unequal history.

A.I.R. Gallery is a non-profit organization that has been operating since the early 1970s with the mission of exhibiting female and non-binary artists–carving out a space for them, when they are statistically underrepresented by museums. In a 1992 doctoral thesis that heavily incorporated interviews of A.I.R. members, the author concluded that women were in search of community and representation.

In addition to solo shows (with some of the heavily repeated names being Mary Beth Edelson, Nancy Spero, and Judith Bernstein), A.I.R. hosted group shows that reached beyond New York, for example exhibiting the female artists of Washington D.C., Native American tribes, Paris, and Japan. In a 1973 review of “Invitational: Women artists from Washington, DC” in the Washington Star News, the author aptly wrote that “there is just a touch of Women’s Lib in the air.”

Thomas’ abstract compositions are easily distinguishable for their vibrant colors and swatches of overlaid color. She is a figure to know in art history, as the first African American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art and to enter the White House’s art collection. Rather than depicting the political struggles of Black women, as is often an unfair expectation of them, Thomas responded to the era’s social and political unrest by concentrating, in her own words, on “beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man.” Her endeavor certainly manifests in this painting through its musical name and rich red pigment.

The earliest feminist works by Hammond, a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, were often concerned with materiality, as evident in Pink Weave’s use of oil and wax to mimic a woven textile. The artist creates a dually feminist message, challenging the male dominance of abstract art by elevating fiber art, a form that was long dismissed as domestic work.

In Whitten’s words, “The search for identity led me to carving wood.” Many of his wooden sculptures appear to be punctured with metal objects, such as nails and tools, a clear visual reference to the Kongolese power figure called a Nkisi N’kondi. Minkisi are unique to the 19th century because of Central Africa’s relation to colonization and violence, which may be where Whitten’s inspiration comes from; he is concerned with processes of reconstructing fragments, a focus originating from histories of enslavement. In light of this context, it is not immediately obvious why Whitten would name one of these sculptures John Lennon Altarpiece. However, given the historical context of the time, it seems to say something about the die-hard passion people had for celebrities while there were larger societal issues they could have been focusing their energy on.

Unite is a prime example of how the BAM sought to empower Black communities. It has an easily-deducible message; the word “unite” is repeated in the negative space, while figures raise their fists in resistance and solidarity. The simplicity of these visual elements easily conveys a pressing need for action. Further, the print medium would have been low-cost and easily reproducible, ideal for wide dissemination. The composition of Unite aligns with art-making guidelines established in 1970 by AFRI-COBRA, a prominent Chicago BAM collective of which Jones-Hogu was a founding member. The group believed that Black art “should define the past—through a consideration of African heritage; identify the present—in contemporary black heroes; and offer direction for the future—with images of the black family.” 

Just Above Midtown was founded by Linda Goode Bryant to create a space for the display of work by Black artists. It was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, where smaller organizations predominated the 144 institutions that received grants. In addition to showing art, JAM hosted programming, such as “The Business of Being an Artist” series that had workshops covering topics from making portfolios, applying for grants, mounting exhibitions, culminating in an exhibition that showcased what the artists learned. A series of seminars in 1983-84 included presenters like feminist critic Lucy Lippard and artist Alice Neel. Another seminar was an Afropop series of exhibitions and performances examining Black pop culture from the turn of century to the present, including a talk by prominent BAM writer Amiri Baraka, suggesting the compounded power of the arts when banding together.

From the late 1960s to the 1980s, a group of young filmmakers known as the L.A. Rebellion produced work, starting at UCLA, to document Black lives. The group’s ideological origins are in the Watts Rebellion of 1965, which were riots over racial discrimination and police brutality. To serve the population directly, the L.A. Rebellion artists had the goal of humanizing Black people in film and rejecting mainstream practices to break free from the dominant cinema in America that excluded and misrepresents minorities. A prime example of the Rebellion is Ballenger’s short film Rain (Nyesha). The protagonist lives a mundane life, without agency, but the capitalist labor structure, represented by the white boss, has trapped her and is imposing surveillance over her. When the thunder strikes to break this cycle, the protagonist makes change a reality; she is miserable until she can face the allegorical rain with a like-minded community, helping viewers imagine how they can affect change in their own lives.

One of the founding members of A.I.R. Gallery, Denes embarked on land-art endeavors with tangible messaging. In Wheatfield – A Confrontation, she filled Battery Park Landfill with 2 acres of seeds, nourishing them over the course of four months to yield 1,000 pounds of wheat. In the words of the artist, “Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept; it represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, and economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger and ecological concerns. It called attention to our misplaced priorities.” In a female-associated act of nurturing, Denes critiqued humans’ mistreatment of the world and its citizens while starting change. 

One effort within the Red Power Movement was the 1973 Wounded Knee Occupation, a 71-day protest in South Dakota in response to broken treaties and corruption of governing bodies. The site was historically relevant for an 1890 massacre of hundreds of Lakota people that occurred there at the hands of U.S. troops, which was the inspiration for this painting by Scholder just a few years before the Occupation–not a coincidence so much as a demonstration of the enduring effects of colonial oppression. Scholder referenced photographic documentation of the massacre, but produced an abstract rendering of it. He creates a visceral representation of violence with organ-like red hues and strokes and splatters that stand out from the white background.

WalkingStick produced a series of silhouette portraits, their anonymity standing in for her various identities as a woman, mother, artist, and Indigenous person. Subtle details of the painting allude to environmental issues: the blue rectangle in the background is a reference to one of WalkingStick’s paintings that was made in response to air pollution, and the acidic green dominating the composition conveys environmental catastrophe as much as it does sensuality. Indigenous peoples are some of the first to face the repercussions of climate change due to their close relationship with the environment and climate change’s exacerbation of preexisting issues of political and economic marginalization.

Simpson’s career was launched with the help of Just Above Midtown gallery, and now she is the subject of a recent solo show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art called “Lorna Simpson: Source Notes.” Three Figures utilizes imagery from a 1963 photograph of Black demonstrators being sprayed with a high-pressure hose by police in Birmingham, Alabama, during the civil rights movement. By recasting this moment, Simpson reclaims African American history in alignment with the BAM’s goals.

Though Watts was the epicenter of the L.A. Rebellion, its significance in Black culture has not disappeared in the current era. Halsey’s ultra-contemporary installation incorporates slogans and imagery from around Watts in order to recognize its shaping of the people who live there, beyond the riots that put it on the map. A theme throughout the piece is community building, carrying on the same message as works like the L.A. Rebellion’s Rain (Nyesha).