Kirsten Justesen, Sculpture II, 1969.

Camille Billops, Suzanne Suzanne, 1977-1982, Black-and-white film, 26 minutes, Courtesy Hatch-Billops Archive, New York.

Carolee Schneeman, Interior Scroll, 1975-1977, Performance.

Suzy Lake, Choreographed Puppet #4, Original 1976 / 77 (reprinted 2008), 40 X 44", B&W chromagenic print, Courtesy of the artist.

Valie Export, Actionpant: Genital Panic, 1969, Performance.

MOCA Los Angeles
Geffen Contemporary
152 North Central Avenue
213-626 6222
Los Angeles
First and Second Floors
and Third Floor Main Gallery
WACK!
Art
and the Feminist Revolution
March 14-July 16, 2007

WACK! focuses on the crucial period of the 1970s, during which the majority of feminist activism and artmaking occurred internationally.

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution brings together nearly 300 works, including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and sculpture, by 118 artists from 21 countries to examine how the feminist movement fundamentally changed the way we see and understand art.

The exhibition includes work produced by artists in the U.S., the U.K., western and central Europe, Australia, and Canada as well as India, Japan, China and South and Central America, offering a major re-thinking of feminist art, adding depth to the historical record and creating interest in feminism as a vital force for a whole new generation.

The exhibition’s story begins in 1965 with important proto-feminist work by Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Yvonne Rainer and others who influenced the feminist art of the 1970s. It continues with iconic works by feminist artists such as Chantal Akerman, Eleanor Antin, Judith Baca, Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta, Ulrike Ottinger, Howardena Pindell, Betye Saar, Miriam Schapiro, Nancy Spero, and Katharina Sieverding, among many others. The exhibition ends in 1980, with early work by artists such as Cindy Sherman, and Lorraine O’Grady whose work was informed by feminist practices of their foremothers.

In the late 1960s through the ‘70s — a period marked by the resurgence of feminism — a fundamental shift in women’s perceptions of their own social roles began to have an impact on contemporary art practices. As reflected in the exhibition’s title, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution focuses on the intersection of art and feminism during this era and recaptures the idealism of the feminist movement. “WACK” is not an acronym in itself, but was chosen by curator Connie Butler to recall the acronyms of many activist groups and political communities from this time whose activities focused on women’s issues and cultural production.

While the term “feminism” can be broadly defined, scholar and author Peggy Phelan states, “Feminism is the conviction that gender has been, and continues to be, a fundamental category for the organization of culture. Moreover, the pattern of that organization favors men over women.” Embracing this definition, WACK! argues that feminism was perhaps the most influential of any postwar art movement — on an international level — in its impact on subsequent generations of artists.

In the past few decades, a canonical list of American artists have become identified with the feminist movement. The exhibition dismantles this canon through the inclusion of women of other geographies, formal approaches, socio-political alliances, and critical and theoretical concerns. The artists in WACK! do not necessarily all identify themselves or their work as feminist. Nonetheless, as artist Susan Hiller has said, “Art practice with no overt political content may, nevertheless, be able to sensitize us politically.” The globalized model adopted by WACK! acknowledges the importance of artists working in their own communities and/or connecting with artists elsewhere and recognizes that while individual artists may work in relative isolation, their practice — and worldview — comes together through discourse, affinity, and relationship.

Influential proto-feminist work produced by artists in the years immediately prior to the florescence of the 1970s is also featured, including work by important figures who were active through that crucial decade and beyond, but whose contributions in the mid-1960s anticipated new feminist aesthetics that took hold during the 1970s. The scope of the exhibition also allows for the inclusion of the early work by such artists as Cindy Sherman and Lorraine O’Grady, representing a division between essentialist work of the 1970s — which hypothesized a universal way to portray female experience — and a more theory-driven approach adopted during the 1980s — which accounted for concepts like race, class, and sexual orientation.

Rather than following a chronological sequence, WACK!’s thematic organization encourages a dialogue between individual works from a wide range of media — including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance art. The themes are: Abstraction, Autophotography, Body as Medium, Body Trauma, Collective Impulse, Family Stories, Female Sensibility, Gendered Space, Gender Performance, Goddess, Knowledge as Power, Labor, Making Art History, Pattern and Assemblage, Silence and Noise, Social Sculpture, Speaking in Public, and Taped and Measured.

Following its debut at MOCA, the exhibition tours to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. (September 21-December 16, 2007); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York (Winter 2008); and the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia, Canada (Summer 2008).

Exhibition Catalogue
WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. Each artist in the exhibition is represented by a short biographical text and a selected bibliography. An extensive chronology offers an essential overview of the period. In addition to a significant curatorial essay by Connie Butler, the catalogue presents new scholarship on individual artists and subjects related to feminism in art. Contributing authors include the highly respected scholars Connie Butler, Judith Russi Kirshner, Catherine Lord, Marsha Meskimmon, Richard Meyer, Helen Molesworth, Peggy Phelan, Nelly Richard, Valerie Smith, Jenni Sorkin, and Abigail Solomon Godeau. Design is by Lorraine Wild and Green Dragon Office, Los Angeles.