ARHT 1002 2012 End-of-Semester Exam

A 1-hour visual test will be given on week 13, Monday 4th June, starting at 4pm in the Eastern
Avenue Auditorium. This exam is a compulsory component of your overall assessment. It is worth
40% of your overall mark.
The test format will include 3 short questions that require you to compare and contrast at least two art
works and/or film excerpts. These will be screened/shown during the exam. You will be given twenty
minutes to answer each question in your exam booklet, which we will provide. These images and film
excerpts will be chosen from a short-list drawn largely from ARHT 1002 lectures in the second part
of the course (ie from Abstract Expresionism onwards). A short-list powerpoint of selected images,
listed below, is posted on our ARHT 1002 website for you to study. This typed short-list of images
and films will also be made available to you during the exam for reference (for titles, dates, etc).

Remember that we are after your own point of view! Answers should demonstrate skills of visual
analysis (and textual analysis in the case of film excerpts), and should draw upon the historical
information and analytical approaches addressed in the lectures, tutorials and essay research. In the
final tutorials of the semester you will have the opportunity to do some revision and practice in image
analysis for the exam.

The artworks you will need to revise are:
Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist No 1, 1950
Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimus, 1950-1951
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1974
Richard Hamilton, Just what is it that makes today's home so different, so appealing? 1956
Model Jean Shrimpton at the Melbourne Cup, 1965, Photograph: David Bailey
Roy Lichtenstein, Yellow and Green Brushstrokes, 1966
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974-79
Miwa Yanagi, Yuka, from the My Grandmothers series, 2000
Karla Solano, Hogar (Home), 2004 (performance/video still)
Yoko Ono, Cut piece, 1964 (N.Y. performance)
Nalini Malani, Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain, Video installation, 5
projections, 5.30 minutes, 2005
Yue Minjun, Execution , 1995, oil on canvas, 150 x 200 cm
Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty urn 1995, Silver gelatine photographs

We will book the room next to the Schaeffer Library in the Mills Building for film screenings for
exam revision during the week of May 28th-June 1st (the week before the exam). A separate note will
be emailed to you directly which will detail the venue and the specific times for each film screening.
The films you will need to revise are:

1. Andy Warhol, Kiss, 1964
2. Kenneth Anger, Scorpio Rising, 1963
3. Deborah Kelly, Beastliness, 2011
4. Baz Luhrmann, Australia, 2008
5. Larry and Andy Wachowski, The Matrix, 1999
6. James Cameron, Avatar, 2009

Good luck and dont panic!
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Abstract expressionism was an American postWorld War II art movement.
New York became the centre of the western art world because of abstract
expressionism, a role formerly filled by Paris.
During the period leading up to and during World War II modernist artists, writers,
and poets, as well as important collectors and dealers, fled Europe and the onslaught
of the Nazis for safe haven in the United States. Many of those who didn't flee
perished.
In the United States a new generation of American artists began to emerge and to
dominate the world stage and they were called Abstract Expressionists.
The movement's name is derived from the combination of:
o German expressionist emotional intensity and self denial
o European abstract schools such as Futurism, Bauhaus, Synthetic Cubism,
particularly their anti-figurative aesthetic.
Abstract expressionism in general expanded and developed the definitions and
possibilities that artists had available for the creation of new works of art.

Abstract expressionism is:
rebellious
anarchic
highly idiosyncratic
nihilistic
spiritual
unconscious



At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after
another as an arena in which to act. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture
but an event.

Harold Rosenberg
[7]





JACKSON POLLOCK
LAVENDER MIST

Pollock Redefining Art
During the late 1940s Jackson Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized
the potential for all Contemporary art that followed him.
Pollock redefined what it was to produce art. The journey is as important as the
artwork itself.
His move away from easel painting and conventionality was a liberating signal to the
artists of his era and to all that came after.
Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's processthe placing of unstretched raw canvas
on the floor where it could be attacked from all four sides using artist materials and
industrial materials; linear skeins of paint dripped and thrown; drawing, staining,
brushing; imagery and non-imageryessentially blasted artmaking beyond any prior
boundary.
"The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint'. The gesture on the
canvas was a gesture of liberation from value political, aesthetic, moral."

Action painting and the Unconscious
The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s.

Unconscious Production
o This spontaneous activity was the "action" of the painter, through arm and
wrist movement, painterly gestures, brushstrokes, thrown paint, splashed,
stained, scumbled and dripped. The painter would sometimes let the paint drip
onto the canvas, while rhythmically dancing, or even standing in the canvas,
sometimes letting the paint fall according to the subconscious mind, thus
letting the unconscious part of the psyche assert and express itself.
o Pollock denied "the accident"; he usually had an idea of how he wanted a
particular piece to appear. His technique combined the movement of his body,
over which he had control, the viscous flow of paint, the force of gravity, and
the absorption of paint into the canvas. It was a mixture of controllable and
uncontrollable factors. Flinging, dripping, pouring, and spattering, he would
move energetically around the canvas, almost as if in a dance, and would not
stop until he saw what he wanted to see.
o All this, however, is difficult to explain or interpret because it is a supposed
unconscious manifestation of the act of pure creation.


Effect on the Audience
o One of the purposes of art is to allow us indirect access to our inner psyche.
Great art affords a way to get in touch with the unconscious part of our
existence, even if we don't realize what we are doing.
o In this sense, the role of the artist is to create something that, when viewed by
an observer, evokes unconscious feelings and emotions.
o The reason abstract art has the potential to be so powerful is that it keeps the
conscious distractions to a minimum. When you look at, say, the apples and
pears of Czanne, your mental energy mostly goes to processing the images:
the fruit, the plate, the table, and the background. However, when you look at
"Lavender Mist", you are not distracted by meaningful images, so virtually all
of your brain power is devoted to feeling. You can open yourself, let in the
energy and spirit of the painting, and allow it to dance with your psyche.
o The audience must cooperate with the artist, whose job is to create a painting
that is rendered so skilfully that, when the audience looks at it, what they see
actually changes what you feel at an unconscious level. Their job is to clear
their conscious mind of thoughts and preconceptions in order to allow
themselves to be influenced by what you are seeing. This means that, if one
are to truly appreciate a work of art, one must be willing to let oneself go, to
put oneself in the hands of the artist, so to speak, and let him take one
wherever he or she wants.
Thus, it is possible to view the history of painting as a long evolutionary process, starting
with the slow, labored development of tools and techniques. Eventually, after centuries of
representationalism, the Impressionists began to shake off the long- standing restrictions,
which led to the development of various schools of abstract art, culminating, in the 1940s,
with Abstract Expressionism, the beginning of a new age of creation and human achievement.

Quotes:

Greenberg: the physicality of the paintings' clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the
key to understanding them as documents of the artists' existential struggle.
Rosenberg: his critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle itself, with
the finished painting being only the physical manifestation, a kind of residue, of the
actual work of art, which was in the act or process of the painting's creation.
Jackson Pollocks Style
Challenge of the conventional
o Movement away from figurative representation, and challenged the Western
tradition of using easel and brush.
o Movement away from the use of only the hand and wrist, since he used his
whole body to paint.
Angles
o Paint applied from all angles and sides of the canvas, exploring the
revolutionary dimensions of painting.
Drips
o With this technique, Pollock was able to achieve a more immediate means of
creating art, the paint now literally flowing from his chosen tool onto the
canvas.
o By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new
dimension by being able to view and apply paint to his canvases from all
directions.
o Pollocks notorious brush drip technique is achieved by the tacking of the
large canvas onto the floor while using the medium of synthetic alkyd enamels
(house paints)
o His implements would range from brushes to sticks and even basting syringes
to apply the thick stream of paint.
Colour
o The elements and principles Pollock uses here are colour, contrast, texture,
emphasis and variety.
o The use of colour contributes to the overall effect of the painting which
appears to be very earthy, atmospheric and relatively calm from the light of
the whites to the intense streaks of striking black.
o Contrast is used here to balance the whole picture resulting in a flowing
formation which Pollock was most prized and famed for.
Texture
o Texture allows for multiple layers and a 3D like appearance thus creating a
shimmery texture.
o Pollock achieves this through the use of impasto with thick layers of paint
from green to black to white and brown.
Vectors
o The black streaks are the focal point, bordering the entire painting and
allowing the viewer to be directed around the painting to the four corners of
the canvas.
Quotes
My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched
canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface.
On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since
this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in
the painting.
I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel,
palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint
or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added.
When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a
sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no
fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has
a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact
with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony,
an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.
Jackson Pollock, My Painting, 1956
Pollocks finest paintings reveal that his all-over line does not give rise to
positive or negative areas: we are not made to feel that one part of the
canvas demands to be read as figure, whether abstract or representational,
against another part of the canvas read as ground. There is not inside or
outside to Pollocks line or the space through which it moves. Pollock has
managed to free line not only from its function of representing objects in the
world, but also from its task of describing or bounding shapes or figures,
whether abstract or representational, on the surface of the canvas.
Karmel, 132






BARNETT NEWMAN
VIR HEROICUS SUBLIMIS

Vir Heroicus Sublimis is a painting by Barnett Newman, an American painter who was a
key part of the abstract expressionist movement. Vir Heroicus Sublimis"man, heroic and
sublime" in Latinattempts to evoke a reaction from its viewers because of its
overwhelming scale (his largest canvas yet at the time he released it) and saturated colour.
The painting is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York
City.
Intentions
The Unconscious
Lack of tangible subject. A philosophic statement made without artistic skill, or
conversely, as pure painting devoid of a subject.
Only one or two colours- working off of Jungs idea of the collective unconscious that
played a major role in developing the ideology of abstract expressionism, Newmans
painting specifically sought to take one colour remove it from its context, therefore
encouraging viewers to react to the colour according to their instincts, completely
separated from its societal connotations.
Attempt to capture both the tangible and intangible, "spirit and matter
Newman himself compared seeing his painting for the first time to meeting a new
person: "It's no different, really, from meeting another person. One has a reaction to
the person physically. Also, theres a metaphysical thing, and if a meeting of people is
meaningful, it affects both their lives."

Style
Chromatic Abstraction
Colour is the primary vehicle of expression, as opposed to the emphasis on the artistic
process that was indicative of gestural abstraction.
Colour field painting came from chromatic abstraction.
In both, "colour is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself."


Large scale
Like most abstract expressionists, Newman worked with large-scale canvasses in an
attempt to make a large impact on viewers. (over 5m x 2m)
He intended his audiences to view this and other large paintings from a close vantage
point, allowing the colours and zips to fully surround them.
Mel Bochner, an artist associated with Conceptualism, remembered encountering it at
MOMA in the late 1960s and realising that its scale and colour created a new kind of
contact between art and the viewer. "A woman standing there [looking at it].. was
covered with red," he recalled. "I realised it was the light shining on the painting
reflecting back, filling the space between the viewer and the artwork that created the
space, the place. And that that reflection of the self of the painting, the painting as the
subject reflected on the viewer, was a wholly new category of experience."

Zips
Vir Heroicus Sublimis consists of a single, slightly modulated colour field separated
by vertical, narrow bands called "zips."
Newman explained that the function of the zips was to give the work scale and serve
as a contrast to the massive colour field; however, they were not to be viewed as
separate entities.
"The streak was always going through the atmosphere; I kept trying to create a world
around it," he said.
The zips are variously solid or wavering, creating a perfect square in the center and
asymmetrical spaces on the perimeter.


VIDEO: http://www.artbabble.org/video/moma/painting-techniques-barnett-newman-vir-
heroicus-sublimis







POP ART

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in
the United States.

Challenged:
traditions of elitist fine art by including mundane pop imagery from popular culture
such as advertising, news, etc, mostly in ironic ways.
then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism

Defined by:
use of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects.
artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques.
"found objects" such as, advertising, comic book characters, magazine covers and
various mass produced graphics that mostly represented American popular culture.

Origins
In the United States, it marked a return to:
hard-edged composition and representational art
response by artists using impersonal, mundane reality, irony and parody to defuse the
personal symbolism and "painterly looseness" of Abstract Expressionism.

In post-War Britain:

more academic with a focus on the dynamic and paradoxical imagery of American
popular culture as powerful, manipulative symbolic devices that were affecting whole
patterns of life, while improving prosperity of a society.


Contrast between Britain and America:
Early pop art in Britain was a matter of ideas fuelled by American popular culture
viewed from afar, while the American artists were inspired by the experience of living
within that culture. Similarly, pop art was both an extension and a repudiation of
Dadaism.
While pop art and Dadaism explored some of the same subjects, pop art replaced the
destructive, satirical, and anarchic impulses of the Dada movement with detached
affirmation of the artefacts of mass culture.

United Kingdom: The Independent Group
The Independent Group (IG), founded in London in 1952, is regarded as the precursor to the
pop art movement. They were a gathering of young painters, sculptors, architects, writers and
critics who were challenging prevailing modernist approaches to culture as well as traditional
views of Fine Art.
Following Paolozzi's seminal presentation in 1952, the IG focused primarily on the imagery
of American popular culture, particularly mass advertising.

British pop in a country stricken by war
Britain as a declining world power after WWII
The young looked towards the pop for cultural interest
Anxiety and America
Pop culture magazines reveal the sources of anxiety- fear of American cultural
imperialism as opposed to the German war enemy
A mix of fear and curiosity and resentment of American affluence
o GIs
o Drinking beer and cola from a bottle rather than a glass
o Clear sexual provocation
o Chocolate bars, silk stockings, good manners
o Commercial goods from the American post-war boom
The British denounced the homogenisation, the levelling of culture and aesthetics
through the advance of mass culture
The spectre of the American GI was overtaken by a home-grown figure, the teddy boy,
who inhabited the harshly lit amusement arcade or the milk bar, listening to
nickelodeons or jukeboxes. British elites saw them as being a symptom of moral
collapse, as they appeared to be modelled on American snack bars.
o Slouch
o Cigarette
o Overt display
o Purposelessness
o Zoom suit
o Sub cultural difference
o Working class or unemployed
o The only freedom he could claim was the power to consume and dress
differently, to assert a subcultures difference and give him a small sense of
freedom.
In universities and the ivory towers away from the grim housing that the teddy boys
inhabited was the independent group, which met at the White Chapel Gallery with a
show called This Is Tomorrow with cultural items on display, defining them as pop.
Pop is expendable, low cost, mass produced, youthful, sexy, big business, glamorous.
Radical when considering the old Britain.
o Eduardo Paolozzi, I was a rich man's plaything 1947
o Some elements of dada aesthetics
o American coca cola advertising aesthetics
o Interested in the seductive power of the comic and the movie
Mods
A youth market
Listened to African American music like soul and jazz
Enjoyed the crassness of American culture, scooter-riding
The dolly bird
o A working girl
o Independent cash
o Easy to buy, easy to wear clothes
Pantyhose not stockings, for example
o Fashion shifted accordingly away from the full, figure hugging clothing of
mature women, to a streamlined, quadri linear, prepubescent, flat-chested,
boyish, long legged supermodel look, as exemplified by Twiggy and Jean
Shrimpton
o Polystyrene, lycra, colourful, lightweight

United States
Although Pop Art began in the late 1950s, Pop Art in America was given its greatest impetus
during the 1960s. By this time, American advertising had adopted many elements and
inflections of modern art and functioned at a very sophisticated level.
Consequently, American artists had to search deeper for dramatic styles that would distance
art from the well-designed and clever commercial materials.
American artists being bombarded daily with the diversity of mass produced imagery,
produced work that was generally more bold and aggressive.




RICHARD HAMILTON
JUST WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES TODAYS
HOMES SO DIFFERENT, SO APPEALING?

Richard Hamilton was one of the founders of the British pop movement in 1955.
Pop art embraced everyday art from ads, commercials, the media and culture at large,
particularly advertising. This was the heyday of the post-war boom years in the US,
when everyone was buying homes, cars and what-will-they-think-of-next machines
like toasters and dishwashers.
In 1957, Hamilton wrote what pop art was for him: "Popular (designed for a mass
audience); transient (short-term solution); expendable (easily forgotten); low cost;
mass produced; young (aimed at youth); witty; sexy; gimmicky; glamorous; and last
but not least, Big Business."

Sources
The collage consists of images taken mainly from American magazines. The principal
template was an image of a modern sitting-room in an advertisement in Ladies Home Journal
for Armstrong Floors, which describes the "modern fashion in floors".
The title is also taken from copy in the advert, which states "Just what is it that makes today's
homes so different, so appealing? Open planning of course - and a bold use of colour."
The body builder is Irvin 'Zabo' Koszewski, winner of Mr L.A. in 1954. The photograph is
taken from Tomorrow's Man magazine, September 1954.
The artist Jo Baer, who posed for erotic magazines in her youth, has stated that she is the
burlesque woman on the sofa, but the magazine from which the picture is taken has not been
identified.
The staircase is taken from an advertisement for Hoover's new model "Constellation",and it
was sourced from the same issue of Ladies Home Journal, June 1955, as the Armstrong
Floors ad.
The picture of the cover of Young Romance was from an advertisement for the magazine
included in its sister-publication Young Love (no 15, 1950). The TV is a Stromberg-Carlson,
taken from a 1955 advert.
Hamilton asserted that the rug was a blow-up from a photograph depicting a crowd on the
Whitley Bay beach.
The image of planet Earth at the top was cut from Life Magazine (Sept 1955).
[4]
The original
reference image for the collage from Life Magazine supplied to Hamilton is in the John
McHale archives at Yale University.




ROY LICHTENSTEIN
YELLOW AND GREEN BRUSHSTROKES
Intentions
Challenge of Abstract Expressionism
Challenge of Abstract Expressionism. In part a satirical response to the gestural
painting of Abstract Expressionism.
Edward F. Fry described the work in the October 1969 ARTnews as "The heroic
brushstroke of Abstract-Expressionism mocked by objective treatment in comic-strip
idiom".
"...instance of Abstract Expressionism recycled through conventions taken from the
mass media..."
"I'm thinking now of doing something on Abstract Expressionism...The problem there
will be to paint a brush stroke, a picture of a brush stroke...Purposely dripped paint
and things, you know, where the drips are actually drawn drips that look like drops of
water drawn by a commercial artist."
Although both the Cubists and the Futurists conveyed movement and speed within the
two dimensions of a painting, it was Pollack who brought dynamic movement to the
canvas in the 1950s with his form of Abstract Expressionism known as gestural
painting in works such as Autumn Rhythm, 1950.
In Yellow and Green Brushstrokes, dynamic activity was a prominent feature of the
work. Lichtenstein's loops and depiction of sweeping gestures all resemble Pollock's
gestural painting.
Style
Painting style
Yellow and Green Brushstrokes is a 1966 oil and Magna on canvas pop art painting
by Roy Lichtenstein. It is part of the Brushstrokes series of artworks that includes
several paintings and sculptures.
Rather than attempt to reproduce his subjects, his work tackled the way mass media
portrays them.
Comic Strip and Parody
His work defined the basic premise of pop art better than any other through parody.
Favoring the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein produced hard-
edged, precise compositions that documented while it parodied often in a tongue-in-
cheek humorous manner.
His work was heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book
style.
Instantaneity
Lichtenstein described Pop Art as, "not 'American' painting but actually industrial
painting"
Works in the Brushstrokes series depict brushstrokes as their subject. However, rather
than depict the use of the delicate artist paint brush, he depicted the strokes of the
broad house-painter's brush.
His works both turned a mundane household task into a planned artistic operation and
made a time-consuming task appear as if it was produced mechanically in an instant.
The satirical element of the Brushstroke was obvious to many because it is a
calculated presentation of the spontaneous gestural works of the day.
Mechanical mass-production
To the viewing audience, the painting resembled what they had become accustomed
to seeing in pop media, however, his result is completely flat without any trace of the
brushstroke or the artist's hand.
The works are considered ironic mechanical representations of gestural techniques.
His works depict the brushstroke directionality beginning with the full beginning,
gradual fraying and ragged ending laid out over a field of Ben-Day dots.
The effort to make the painting appear mechanically-produced by flattening the
brushstroke, also gives the illusion that the brushstroke is floating freely.
Yellow and Green Brushstrokes is regarded as quite notable for its ability to imply
perceptible movement although his works is limited to a single image on a canvas
with finite space.
He uses overlapping forms rather than a single form or distinct adjacent forms, which
seems to create a more dynamic feel to the shallow space.
However, since Lichtenstein does not uses shading or contrast, the monochromatic
strokes with just bold black outlines are void of certain elements of depth.

Criticism
When his work was first released, many art critics of the time challenged its
originality. More often than not they were making no attempt to be positive.
Lichtenstein responded to such claims by offering responses such as the following:
"The closer my work is to the original, the more threatening and critical the content.
However, my work is entirely transformed in that my purpose and perception are
entirely different. I think my paintings are critically transformed, but it would be
difficult to prove it by any rational line of argument".


FEMINISM IN ART

The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists
internationally to:
make art that reflects women's lives and experiences.0
to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice.
to include art by women from all cultures and periods in studies and exhibitions of art.
In 1971 Linda Nochlin (American, contemporary art critic) wrote a landmark article,
"Why Have There Been No GREAT Women Artists?"

Feminist Art and Diversity
By asking whether male experience was universal, Feminist Art paved the way for
questioning exclusively white and exclusively heterosexual experience as well. Feminist Art
also sought to rediscover artists.

Backlash
Some women who were artists rejected feminist readings of their work. They may have
wanted to be viewed only on the same terms as artists that had preceded them. They may
have thought that Feminist Art criticism would be another way of marginalizing women
artists.
Some critics attacked Feminist Art for "essentialism." They thought each individual
womans experience was claimed to be universal, even if the artist had not asserted this. The
critique mirrors other Womens Liberation struggles.
Another prominent question was whether using womens biology in art was a way of
restricting women to a biological identity--which feminists were supposed to have fought
against--or a way of releasing women from the negative male definitions of their biology.


ART AND FEMINISM
FROM GLOBAL FEMINISMS BY MAURA REILLEY


Women Artists (2007) at the Brooklyn Museum
Worked against but within a Western canon of art history
Questioned the grand narrative
Challenged Westerncentric art system

Global Feminisms (2009) at the Brooklyn Museum

Reclaim women lost from the Western historical canon
Present a multitude of feminist voices from across cultures
Imagines a more inclusive counter discourse that presents a more global vision of art
Acknowledges that women artists have achieved greater recognition in the Western
art world in modern times
However, continues to argue that these advances are still insufficient and that benefits
have only been reaped by privileged women (and probably still western centric)
Though more women artists have been recognized, there are still many systemic
problems
o High art education is now available to those with financial means
o Institutional power structures as argued by Nochlin have made it impossible
for women to achieve artistic excellence on the same footing as men
o We should not make the mistake of assuming that signs of equality actually
mean that equality has been achieved.
Challenges the monocultural first world feminism that assumes sameness among
women.
Show through juxtaposition of works the disparities and similarities in response of
women artists to similar thematic material and subjects



JUDY CHICAGO
THE DINNER PARTY


The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago is an icon of feminist art, which represents 1,038 women
in history39 women are represented by place settings and another 999 names are inscribed
in the Heritage Floor on which the table rests. This monumental work of art is comprised of a
triangular table divided by three wings, each 48 feet long.
Entry Banners
o Six woven banners hang in procession, welcoming visitors to The Dinner
Party.
Place Settings
o The principal component of The Dinner Party is a massive ceremonial banquet
arranged in the shape of an open trianglea symbol of equalitywith a total
of thirty-nine place settings.
o Each place setting features a table runner embroidered with the woman's name
and images or symbols relating to her accomplishments, with a napkin,
utensils, a glass or goblet, and a plate.
o Many of the plates feature a butterfly- or flowerlike sculpture as a vulva
symbol.
The "butterfly vagina" imagery continues to be both highly criticized
and esteemed.
Some feminists also found the imagery problematic because of its
essentialising, passive nature.
[8]
However, the work fits into the
feminist movement of the 1970s which glorified and focused on the
female body. Other feminists have disagreed with the main idea of this
work because it shows a universal female experience, which many
argue does not exist. For example, lesbians and women of ethnicities
other than white and European are not well represented in the work.
[8]

Artist Cornelia Parker stated: "Too many vaginas for my liking. I find
it all about Judy Chicago's ego rather than the poor women she's
supposed to be elevating we're all reduced to vaginas, which is a bit
depressing.
o A collaborative effort of female and male artisans, The Dinner Party celebrates
traditional female accomplishments such as textile arts (weaving, embroidery,
sewing) and china painting, which have been framed as craft or domestic art,
as opposed to the more culturally valued, male-dominated fine arts.
o The number thirteen represents the number of people who were present at the
Last Supper, an important comparison for Chicago, as the only people
involved there were men.
o The 39 plates themselves start flat and begin to emerge in higher relief
towards the very end of the chronology, meant to represent modern woman's
gradual independence and equality, though it is still not totally free of societal
expectations.
Heritage Floor
o The Dinner Party rests upon the Heritage Floor; inscribed on the tiles in gold
luster are the names of 999 mythical and historical women of achievement
who correlate to the 39 women represented in the place settings.
Heritage Panels
o The seven Heritage Panels are large-scale hand-coloured photo-and-text
collages that portray the lives of the mythical and historical women whose
names are inscribed in the Heritage Floor of The Dinner Party.

Intentions:
"end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical
record."
"The Dinner Party elevates female achievement in Western history to a heroic scale
traditionally reserved for men."
Major challenge to academic and artistic tradition that the subject matter of women's
achievements was adequate for a monumental work of art.
o Developing that subject matter, expressing it traditionally - i.e., on a heroic
scale -- in media that were considered beneath the standard of fine art,
working openly with scores of studio participants and acknowledging their
role in the production of art - in all these ways Judy Chicago defied tradition,
and challenged the usual boundaries of the contemporary art world.

The Dinner Party was donated by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation to the Brooklyn
Museum, where it is now permanently housed within the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for
Feminist Art, which opened in March 2007.

Response
Immediate critical response (1980-1981)
Essentialisation
o Maureen Mullarkey also criticized the work, calling it preachy and untrue to
the women it claims to represent. She especially disagreed with the sentiment
she labels "turn em upside down and they all look alike", an essentializing of
all women which does not respect the feminist cause.
o Woolf's inclusion ignores her frustration at the public's curiosity about the
gender of writers, and OKeeffe had similar thoughts, denying that her work
had any gendered or sexual meaning.
Larger retrospective response
Amelia Jones, for example, places the work in the context of both art history and the
evolution of feminist ideas to explain critical responses of the work.
She discusses Hilton Kramer's objection to the piece as an extension of Modernist
ideas about art, stating, "the piece blatantly subverts modernist value systems, which
privilege the pure aesthetic object over the debased sentimentality of the domestic
and popular arts"





CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART

Since the 1990s, Asian contemporary art has grown exponentially due to a mushrooming of
regional biennials and triennials (drawing attention to Asian cities as alternative art centres),
the building of new contemporary art museums and the international recognition and success
of Asian artists.
Parameters
There is no single, unified history of Asian modern art, which is largely defined by a
series of overlapping engagements with Western art and cultural influences.
The same applies to Asian contemporary art, which is more of a catch-all term for
diverse contemporary, avant-garde, experimental or non-traditional art practices by
Asian artists (regardless of where they were born, live, or work) than a viable geo-
cultural category.
In the past Asian art was assimilated under the term Eastern as the antithesis of
Western
Contemporary Asian art reconstructs Asian art as not being a naturalised reflection of
Europe, nor a set of Orientalist projections, but as an intellectual concept.
Experimental media
Experimental media was preferred by many younger generation artists during the
1980s, many of them curious about Western culture and art history, which seemed
more progressive, exciting and liberating than the type of activities conventionally
regarded as culture in their own, often tradition-bound, societies.
Through the adoption of experimental media, Asian artists were able to engage with
an international art world: they began to be included in large thematic survey
exhibitions outside Asia, as well as art magazines and popular studies of
contemporary art.
It is also important to note that this interest in new forms of representation was not
embraced by all contemporary artists in Asia. Many artists, in some cases the vast
majority, continued to advance local artistic traditions: for example, patra painting in
India, calligraphy in China, or lacquer painting in Vietnam. Their work was
frequently overlooked by international curators interested almost exclusively in artists
working in experimental media, which matched their own ideas of more progressive
contemporary art.
Thus parallel art worlds emerged in many of these countries, where those who
worked in experimental media tended to sell and exhibit their work in the
international art world, while those who specialized in more traditional or established
media remained confined to local and national arenas.

Transmission
The knowledge of experimental contemporary art was transmitted to artists living in
Asian countries through multiple channels.
o Imported foreign art magazines and books, which provided much needed
historical and visual information.
o Exhibitions of foreign art.
o Artists returning from study overseas in 80s and 90s.
o International and regional biennial and triennial exhibition. They fostered a
new sense of a regional contemporary art identity.
Biennial and Triennial Exhibitions both International and Regional
United the work of contemporary artists from different countries in one place
Created spaces in which artists from these countries could meet, see each others art
and discuss shared issues and concerns.
The sheer number of Asian cities hosting periodic is striking. They played an
important role in the advancement and dissemination of contemporary art in their
respective countries.
However, the most influential of these exhibitions have been the:
o Asia-Pacific Triennial (begun 1993) at the Queensland Art Gallery
o Fukuoka Triennial (begun 1999)
o Shanghai Biennial (begun 1996)
o Gwangju Biennale (begun 1995) in Korea
The emergence of periodic contemporary art exhibitions across Asia coincides with
growing regional prosperity. This is more than coincidental, particularly as most, if
not all, of the Asian biennales have been funded by ambitious local city governments
eager to promote themselves as regional cultural hubs.
Substantial new museums devoted to contemporary art, many of them linked to or
hosting these biennales, have also sprung up across the region, something that was
unheard of ten years earlier.

Beyond Asia
Just as Asian biennales sought to bring non-Asian contemporary artists to Asian cities,
non-Asian biennales increasingly sought to bring Asian contemporary artists to the
attention of international audiences.
o Exhibitions of Asian contemporary art have also fuelled a growing art market
in and outside the region.
More recent developments in Asian contemporary art are less easy to categorize. This
is because there is now a much more fluid and dynamic flow of people and ideas both
inter- and intra-regionally, partly due to globalization and partly because wealth and
success have fostered a new level of artistic mobility.
Many important Asian artists now live outside the region (the Chinese post-
Tiananmen Square generation moved to New York, Sydney and Paris), while others
have shuttled between various Asian and non-Asian cities. Still others have lived and
worked in non-Asian countries for years before returning to their homes. Ai Weiwei
lived in New York and returned to China. In the early 21st century Asian
contemporary art reflected this plurality of transnational identities and experiences.
Factory 798
Nowhere is the dynamism of avant-garde China more evident than at the former
weapons factory in the Chaoyang district of Beijing known as Factory 798. The
soaring Bauhaus-style structure now houses the country's largest single collection of
private galleries and studios.
What started as a funky, low-rent, grass-roots art enclave two years ago now hosts
dozens of cutting-edge shows a year and is home to international galleries run by
collectors in London, Singapore, Tokyo and Berlin. "This is the only community of its
kind in China," says Chaoyang district director Chen Gang. "People are comparing it
to New York's SoHo district."

Display
While most such works are displayed privately, government-sponsored venues are
also beginning to test the limits of creative freedom.
Beijing recently invested $18 million to renovate its National Art Museum, which
now boasts several Picassos as well as works by Andy Warhol and Jasper Johnsall
of which would have been banned during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution.

Counter-Appropriation
Discursive process where art styles, contents or practices are borrowed from one art
discourse into another, and then used to situate the art of the second discourse in terms
of the first.
Broadens the second discourse and privileges its contents and intentions inside the
discourse from which the borrowing originally took place.

National allegory
Allegory is a rhetorical mode where one element or visual sign is used to stand for
another idea, or moral position.
Collection of different types of person defined by common pursuit, gender,
occupation, etc, is used to stand allegorically for the unity-in-diversity of the new
nationally conscious entity.
o Once Mao.

Guo-hua, National Painting
As part of a powerful twentieth century trend toward the Westernization of China's
economy, society, and culture, the art education in China's modern schools was
dominated by European artistic techniques, which educators considered necessary for
engineering and science.
Painting in the traditional medium of ink and color on paper was now referred to as
guohua (national painting), to distinguish it from Western-style oil painting,
watercolor painting, or drawing, and became only one of several options for a Chinese
artist.
Faced with this institutionalized assault on traditional ink painting, idealistic artists
organized themselves to defend and reform China's heritage.
They agreed that innovation was necessary, but believed progress could be, and
should be, achieved within the confines of China's own cultural tradition.

Maoist period
Art was driven by ideological directives from the central party-state
art must serve the masses
Veneration of Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought

YUE MINJUN
EXECUTION

Yue Minjun is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China.
He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in
laughter.
These images have become a sort of logo that can be attached to any setting to add
value.
While Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese "Cynical Realist" movement in art
developed in China since 1989, Yue himself rejects this label.
His piece Execution became the most expensive work ever by a Chinese
contemporary artist, when sold in 2007 for 2.9 million pounds (US $5.9 million) at
London's Sotheby's.

Context

Cynical Realism Movement
Born in 1962 to the Mao's People's Republic of China, a dismal one party state
struggling to escape the problems of underdevelopement via the brutality of forced
industrialization
o a reality Yue would have faced directly, as his father worked in the oil fields
of northeast China.

Intentions
Yue often challenges social and cultural conventions by depicting objects and even
political issues in a radical and abstract manner.
His self-portraits have been described by theorist Li Xianting as a self-ironic
response to the spiritual vacuum and folly of modern-day China.
[5]
Art critics have
often associated Yue with the Cynical Realism art movement in contemporary
Chinese art.
While Tiananmen served as the catalyst, the oil painting should not be seen as
depicting what happened at Tiananmen, the Beijing-based artist said this week
through a translator in a phone interview.
Stretching across "Execution" is a long red building, suggesting Tiananmen's gate
outside the Forbidden City.
"I want the audience not to think of one thing or one place or one event," he said from
his Beijing home. "The whole world's the background."
The big picture, he said, "it's on the whole world's human conflict that is worth
laughing about."And the men in the position of being shot are shown in their
underwear. "People feel freedom, most themselves, at home in their underpants," Yue
said. And whereas in Goya's painting, the man's hands are up in resistance, the men's
hands in "Execution" are down. "They are not fearing death," Yue said.
"The laughs illustrate my deep feelings," he said. The viewer will feel happiness but
also fear toward the future and the unknown, a universal sentiment, he said. "One
might be very happy now but always unsure of what's going to happen next.
As for the main figures that dominate the right-half of the painting, they assume the
position of holding the guns, but without the guns themselves. "In my painting, they're
pretending to hold guns, as if playing a game." The man on the far right, holding one
hand to his chest and another by his waist, is a direct reference to the man on the far
right-hand side of Manet's painting: In that, he is cocking a gun.
Yue disagrees with the notion that his paintings are a veiled criticism of his
government or of Chinese society, and he does not believe that this work will bring
him trouble. "I think the painting expresses my feelings. It's not a criticism," he said,
describing himself as not having strong political leanings. "I was trying to express my
confusion over what I see."
And what is the meaning behind the cloned figures that bear his likeness in all his
paintings? "Because I want to be famous."
My mood changed at that time, he said. I was very down. I realized the gap
between reality and the ideal, and I wanted to create my own artistic definition,
whereby there could be a meeting with social life and the social environment.

The Smile:
The first step, he added, was to create a style to express my feelings accurately,
starting with something that I knew really well myself. That was the first step
toward forging what has become the image that has now made him famous. The
second step was to devise the laugh, which, he said, was inspired by a painting he saw
by another Chinese artist, Geng Jianyi, in which a smile is deformed to mean the
opposite of what it normally means.
So I developed this painting where you see someone laughing, he said. At first you
think hes happy, but when you look more carefully, theres something else there.
A smile, Mr. Yue said, doesnt necessarily mean happiness; it could be something
else.
The smile has been variously interpreted as a sort of joke at the absurdity of it all, or
the illusion of happiness in lives inevitably heading toward extinction.
Karen Smith, a Beijing expert on Chinese art, suggests that Mr. Yues grin is a mask
for real feelings of helplessness.
In China theres a long history of the smile, Mr. Yue said. There is the Maitreya
Buddha who can tell the future and whose facial expression is a laugh. Normally
theres an inscription saying that you should be optimistic and laugh in the face of
reality.
There were also paintings during the Cultural Revolution period, those Soviet-style
posters showing happy people laughing, he continued. But whats interesting is that
normally what you see in those posters is the opposite of reality.
Mr. Yue said his smile was in a way a parody of those posters. But, since its a self-
portrait, its also necessarily a parody of himself, he added.




AI WEI WEI
DROPPING A HAN DYNASTY URN


Intentions

Ready-mades
Urns of this vintage are usually cherished for their anthropological importance. By
employing them as ready-mades, Ai strips them of their aura of preciousness only to
reapply it according to a different system of valuation.
However, this is not the well-worn strategy of the readymade famously applied by
Duchamp to his urinal Fountain, wherein the object lacked cultural gravitas until
placed in an art context.
Instead, Ais chosen ready-mades already have significance. Working in this manner,
Ai transforms precious artefactstreating them as base and valueless by painting,
dropping, grinding, or slapping with a logointo contemporary fine art.
The substitution of one kind of value for another occurs when he displays the
transformed urns in a museum vitrine, reinstilling value but replacing historical
significance with a newer cultural one.
This body of work is distinguished by its paradoxical investment in the Chinese
ceramic vessel, a legacy whose values and significations it both questions and
transcends.
Ai working through the dynastic progression of Chinese ceramics to reconcile the
formal, material logic and historical, political commentary that give his work its
unique mixture of gravity and wit.
Dropping the Urn includes examples of a range of Ais practices, including his
unprecedented use of Neolithic and Han dynasty vessels as historic readymades,
replicas appropriating Qing dynasty (18th-century) porcelain commissioned by the
artist from craftsmen in the town of Jingdezhen, where porcelain has been produced
for the past 1700 years, and mimicry of the traditional trompe loeil strategy of
producing glazed teapots and vases that replicate natural forms.




Miwa Yanagi
Yuka from Grandmother Series


The My Grandmother series was next in line and focuses on how young girls from between
14 and 20 years old perceive themselves. Miwa Yanagi conducted a series of interviews
aimed at young girls ask what they thought there life would be like in 50 years. If Yanagi
liked the answer and felt inspired to work with it the interview was then selected to be
photographed with models (Bergquist). Some of these models came from the Elevator Girls
series ( Wakasa). The models for her work comes from different sources. Yanagi has an
address in the magazine Ryukou Tushin where her art works are usually printed and seen by
the public. She also gets help from friends and gets emails from models who want to be part
of her work. These emails come mainly from people who attended lectures Miwa Yanagi
often gives at different universities ( Wakasa).The girls who were interviewed for My
Grandmother were asked what they think their life will be like 50 years from now. During the
interview process Miwa Yanagi eliminates those she feels that are too young to have any real
life experience. She believes that if they are too young they truly cannot express what they
want from life. Those who are seen to have enough life experience are accepted.

Yanagi believes that younger people puts restrictions on what they can do. When the age
restriction is released, women are more free to express their wishes and desires. The more
restricted a young girl feels today closely relates to the amount of freedom she feels 50 years
from now ( Wakasa ). After the interview is accepted, the concept drawings based are created.
After the drawings are made Miwa Yanagi goes to photograph the scene she has created in
her head and put on paper. The photographs are taken with a high degree of technical ability
and high production value in which the future world imagined by the interviewed girls is then
turned into a picture.

After the photographs are taken then it is sent to a long session at the computer for digital
altering. The young girls idea and the surreal dream of Yanagi is then merged into one. Each
photo has its distinct likeness. You can see emotions ranging from sad to pessimistic or funny.
For example, a girl named Mie imagines in 50 years that her life be of loneliness, looking
around a field of empty landscapes during a time of an apocalyptic cataclysm. In another
example A woman known as Yuka, believes she will be living somewhere on the U.S. Coast
without a care in the world and a playboy for a lover (Bergquist ). Along with each photo
comes a poetic verse based on the interviews and the photos.



Most writers find in Yanagis next series, "My Grandmothers" (begun in 1999), a
programmatic reversal of the claustrophobic world of the "Elevator Girls." Based on
interviews the artist did with a variety of women (including some of the models from
"Elevator Girls"), she created photographic scenes depicting their ideas of themselves 50
years in the future, complete with elaborate old-person make-up and occasional futuristic
touches. Each is accompanied by a text, a sort of capsule internal monologue for the character
depicted. In Japan, reproductive roles are an explosive topic (even this year, a government
official touched off controversy when he referred to women as "baby-making machines"),
and if Yanagis earlier series depicts young women existing to serve the desire of others, the
new series depicts women projected beyond their reproductive years and very much liberated
by this fact.
Thus, Yuka centers on a woman with wild red hair in the sidecar of a motorcycle, being raced
across the Golden Gate bridge by her much younger lover (he is almost cropped out of the
photo, emphasizing his disposability), while Regine & Yoko shows a lesbian couple -- one
German, the other Japanese -- playfully embracing while cleaning up the remains of what
looks to have been a lavish dinner party. Sachiko and Mineko both feature lone women in
airplanes, the former a first-class traveler taking a vacation, the latter at the helm of her own
glider. Yanagis own self-portrait, Miwa, depicts her elder self racing adventurously across an
ice flat.
Aside from the recurrence of lone, in-charge women, the key theme is international travel,
hinting at the material basis for the transition between the two series. When she started
making art, Yanagi was full of ambition -- the eye-grabbing panoramas of the "Elevator
Girls" leave no doubt about this -- but had no promise of successfully finding an audience,
because Japan has no real contemporary art market; her critique of confining gender roles
thus coincided with a sense that her artwork itself was confined. Her unexpected encounter
with the international scene opened up the possibility to plug her own artistic fantasies into
the circuits of the global art market, at the same moment as it provided a concrete exterior to
the sexual politics in her native land. This confluence is the subtext of "My Grandmothers."
The result, however, is that Yanagis gender politics shade into what Naomi Wolf dubbed
"power feminism," the notion that womens liberation means becoming affluent and
succeeding in business rather than resisting male-dominated structures (Wolf: "enough
money buys a woman out of a lot of sex oppression.") Indeed, a photo like Hiroko is a kind of
"power feminist" limit case -- a younger woman sits on a bed in a luxury hotel room, getting
made up, as a severe older woman in a kimono lectures her. The accompanying text indicates
that in this future, prostitution is legal and safe, and while the "discrimination and unfair
laws" of the past are mentioned, apparently the basics of the profession have not changed --
our protagonist is instructing her granddaughter via some pretty standard-looking
pornography on a nearby TV (featuring blond, Western actors). The more unpalatable things
about this quintessential exploitation of women seem to have dissolved into history now that
granny is in charge.
This ambition sits uneasily with a more longing, romantic side of Yanagi, on view in works
like Ai, Ayumi and Mika. All of these have a kind of magical realist vibe, depicting their
subjects visions of themselves as mildly fantastic figures -- indexing the failure of these
young womens dreams to place them in reality, perhaps. Both sides come together in
Minami, showing a woman in an office overlooking an enormous theme park, served by two
secretaries. The text tells us that Minami helms an entertainment empire that rivals the Walt
Disney Corp., with locations in Hawaii, Los Angeles and Paris. She is clearly an eccentric,
reclining in the costume of her companys signature character, "Little Milky," a pink, fuzzy
space alien. Here, being CEO of a Disney-like corporation means that you have the liberty to
broadcast your personal dreams far and wide, not that you are a soulless corporate hack -- a
stance that probably best touches on Yanagis Minami-like self-perception as fabricator of
idiosyncratic fairy tales for a global audience.
Surveying all this, it becomes clear that the connecting thread in Yanagis work is less a
straightforward, unapologetic feminism than it is a sort of uneasy circling between a sense of
being thwarted by the system, on the one hand, and a sense that success can be had by
adopting its terms, on the other (with the latter running slightly ahead of the former). Its a
deadlock that Yanagi has repeated on an ever greater scale, but not resolved. It makes her
work at once intriguing and poignant, and slightly stilted and equivocal.


Over the course of nine years, Yanagi conducted email applications to women from an early
twenties age group for this particular photo exhibition. Including models from the Elevator
Girls series, Yanagi asked these particular women what they imagined their lives in fifty or
sixty years. These answers would then be incorporated into the twenty five photo collection.

Obviously, answers exemplifying "In sixty years I want to be surrounded by a loving family
with a loving husband" were the first to be sent to the trash pile. Yanagi's "extraordinary
grandmother(s)" are women with flaming red hair with their young lovers whisked into
"another universe." They are lesbian partners running back and forth between Japan and
Germany or mentors to young prostitutes in the future's openly legalized sex industry. Their
expressions range from spiritual and contemplative to enthused and flirtatious. The models
used for this series are Yanagi's embodiment of the ultimate grandmother.

But they aren't actually grandmothers. The models throughout the series are in their early
twenties and thirties, aged with an impressive use of Photoshop. The same women from the
email applications and even the Elevator Girls series envision (in sixty years) declining
marriage proposals from men their present age.

Given Elevator Girls vs. Grandmothers presents a proverbial ping pong match between age
and individuality. Female artists presenting feminist ideals is not a new trend, but why does
Yanagi portray a strong sense of self grow towards the end of the life of the average blank-
faced elevator girl? In an interview with Mako Wasaka, the artist states:
"I had opportunities to talk with models who were in their twenties... They want something
for their future. But, they have a hard time expressing what they want as if their desires were
subdued or locked inside.. They don't openly talk about their wishes or strange desires even
though they had some ideas about who they wanted to be when they were children. In order
for them to recall their childhood dreams, they need to be liberated from their youthfulness...
It's maybe easy to go your own way in America, but in Japan self-centered individualism is
not acceptable without you being totally on top of others."
Yanagi mentions age groups spanning from childhood to old age in terms of individualism in
Japan. A woman can express a sense of self before Jr. High and after age sixty, but the
middle years are a grey area mostly spent conforming to one's peers in the operated elevators
of modern Japanese society. The concept of age is muddled, where youth is present in the
elderly and the young are eager to age out of societal constrictions concerning how they must
behave. The extremes of age, the young and the old, are where true personalities lie. Yanagi
also compares Japan to America on this notion, even though America has its own confusions
between criss-crossing different age groups. Even so, Yanagi's approaches to age in regards
to individualism is an ever relatable piece of the Feminist ideology.



In Miwa Yanagi's striking photographs, Japanese women waver between society's
expectations and their own deepest desires.

Yanagi, 40, draws inspiration from what she calls the "strange contradictions in Japanese
society." On the surface, Japanese women have come a long way, enjoying successful and
diverse careers. But women are still expected to play "a certain role," says Yanaginamely
wife and mother. She recalls that when Hakuo Yanagisawa, the cabinet member in charge of
improving the country's record-low birthrate, referred to women as "child-making devices"
earlier this year, there was only a minor uproar. "I guess because that's what people think,"
she says. Michiko Kasahara, chief curator of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography, where Yanagi's solo show is planned for next year, says the artist is a master at
depicting the modern feminine dilemma. "She captures the ambivalence and absurdity of
being a woman in this mass-consumer society," she says.


While working with models posing as elevator girls, Yanagi found many of them had trouble
expressing their immediate feelings. But, interestingly, they had no problem discussing their
distant futures as old women. "Somehow, when liberated from the age issue, they felt no
pressure to be appropriated," says Yanagi. That insight led to the vibrant and often hilarious
"My Grandmothers" series, in which Yanagi uses digitally altered photography and special-
effects makeup to depict young women 50 years from now. She let women describe how they
picture themselves in old age, and "realized" those dreams. Red-haired "Yuka" (2000) is seen
speeding away with a young hunk on a motorcycle. "Mineko" (2002) poses as an adventurous
traveler, while "Hiroko" (2002) appears as a proud S&M queen with her granddaughter.
Yanagi recognizes that these are not typical retirement plans; half the people she interviewed
said they pictured themselves as "sweet old women surrounded by adorable grandkids," she
says. But those are the ones she avoided. "I'm looking for my idea of an ideal grandmother."

Everyone wants a piece of her now. In addition to the Deutsche Bank collection show, some
"My Grandmothers" works are currently on display at Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen,
Germany (through May 27), the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (through July 1), and
Tokyo's Shiseido Gallery (through June 10).





Nalini Malani
Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain


Walsh Gallery is thrilled to have the U.S. debut of Nalini Malani's seminal work, Mother
India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain, which will run from July 20 - October 13,
2007. This multimedia installation, inspired by a text by sociologist Veena Das comments on
the abuse of women during times of war or intense political conflict. Specifically, Malani
addresses the unprecedented degree of violence inflicted by men during the Partition of India
in 1947 and during the Gujarat genocide in 2002. According to Das, "The bodies of women
were metaphors for the nation, they had to bear the signs of their possession by the enemy." It
is this idea of possession and collective powerlessness to which Mother India responds,
providing a voice to those who have been silenced.
Ms. Malani's new media piece Memory: Record/Erase is inspired by a story written by
Bertolt Brecht. The story has been transposed into a visual narrative in which women and
men are created and destroyed. In fact, the figures are almost washed out of existence. They
either turn into drips of paint which fall down the screen or become erased. The drawings are
done slowly. The entire effect of the video is as if you are watching over the shoulder of a
painter in action. The video is based on a story about a woman who disguised as a man, takes
a job at a factory that her dead husband was promised. She even marries a "wife" and has two
children to complete the charade. Finally, after four years she is discovered and loses her job
to a man.
The last piece in Ms. Malani's solo show is called Stains. This video also has a painterly
quality. It starts out as various bodily fluids are dropped onto the surface of the screen
creating stains. These marks ebb and flow, turning into humans involved in ambiguous acts
towards each other. The video seems to question human nature and man's ability to create
pain in another.


Mumbai-based artist Nalini Malani was born in 1946 in Karachi, now in Pakistan. This
installation features several of her videos, with the focus on Mother India: transactions in the
construction of pain 2005.
Realised on a scale that overwhelms the viewer, this emotive five-channel projection is 15
metres long. It explores Malanis core political themes, drawing on her familys experience
of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.
Looking at partition, and the riots in Gujarat in 2002, Malanis politically charged sequence
of images addresses histories of gendered violence in India, which continue to the present day.


Nalini Malanis multi-media works focus on issues of identity, gender, migration and
political violence. Born in 1946 in Karachi during the Partition of
India, Nalini Malani suffered from this difficult period. Her experience as a refugee
influenced her art. One of her major works, Mother India: transactions in the construction of
pain (2005), will be soon exhibited for the first time in Sydney. Art Gallery Road, which has
recently acquired other earlier videos by the artist, is presenting this exhibition as an
introduction to Nalini Malanis work and concerns.
Mother India: transactions in the construction of pain (2005) is to be presented on five
screens placed in a semi-circle, that hypnotise and overwhelm the viewer. The screens feature
images of women from the time of the Partition of India, flags, Gandhi and refugees carrying
their goods on their heads. The images are broken into religious symbols and metaphorical
images, for instance one image features the face if a woman whose teeth overhang her eyes
and throat. The series ends on destroyed landscapes as a result of the riots in Gujarat in 2002.
Through this work, Nalili Malani compares violence during the partition of India and
Pakistan in 1947, and the violence that continues in India today.


At thirteen metres across, Nalini Malanis Mother India: Transactions in the construction of
pain, 2005, is physically overwhelming. The five screens of this video installation are
arranged in a semi-circle that surrounds the body, dominating ones field of vision. They
show archival footage of women spinning, flags converging on the face of Gandhi, people
flooding across borders and religious iconography alongside more recent allegorical
imagery including a young woman superimposed over a map of India and Pakistan. Having
opened with images from the time of the 1947 Partition of India, the work closes with
pictures of the destroyed landscape of Gujarat in 2002 when many Muslims and Hindus were
killed following racial riots in western India.
With such politically charged sequences concerning violence against women, past and
present, Mother India constitutes a major work by an artist who grapples with history in many
different forms. Where Malani has often portrayed mythological women from both western
and Indian literature (such as Euripidess Medea and the Hindu goddess Sita), Mother India
depicts both anonymous and allegorical female figures, representing the estimated 100,000
Indian and Pakistani women who were caught up in the Partition and its aftershocks.



At thirteen metres across, Nalini Malanis Mother India: Transactions in the construction of
pain, 2005, is physically overwhelming. The five screens of this video installation are
arranged in a semi-circle that surrounds the body, dominating ones field of vision. They
show archival footage of women spinning, flags converging on the face of Gandhi, people
flooding across borders and religious iconography alongside more recent allegorical
imagery including a young woman superimposed over a map of India and Pakistan. Having
opened with images from the time of the 1947 Partition of India, the work closes with
pictures of the destroyed landscape of Gujarat in 2002 when many Muslims and Hindus were
killed following racial riots in western India.
With such politically charged sequences concerning violence against women, past and
present, Mother India constitutes a major work by an artist who grapples with history in many
different forms. Where Malani has often portrayed mythological women from both western
and Indian literature (such as Euripidess Medea and the Hindu goddess Sita), Mother India
depicts both anonymous and allegorical female figures, representing the estimated 100,000
Indian and Pakistani women who were caught up in the Partition and its aftershocks.