A large-scale vision of feminist art, still a little too limited

Certain images may come to mind when we think of feminist art: that of Ana Mendieta Silhouettes (1973-1978), for example, or Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” (1974-1979) – a work that, in its form and content, immediately reads as “feminist.” The Mothers of Invention: The Feminist Roots of Contemporary Art (2024), a new book by authors Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal, and Sue Scott, examines how a surprising range of movements, media, and styles from the past 50 years have drawn on feminism, performance and abstraction (yes, surprise!), craft (probably less surprising?), and ecological art. While the book is inclusive in terms of movements, it is less so when it comes to the individual artists and thinkers it chooses to highlight.

All four authors, who have already collaborated on two books on women and contemporary art, are knowledgeable, thoughtful, and well-grounded in the history of art in general and feminist art in particular, making them admirable guides to a history we might never associate with feminism. I was particularly interested in Scott’s chapter on the development of Euro-American abstraction, from the now-famous example of Hilma af Klint to more recent artists like Alma Thomas and Anne Truitt. The authors convincingly demonstrate how feminist contributions have been devalued in real time, from minimalist artist and public theorist Donald Judd writing that Truitt’s sculpture “looks serious without being serious” to Hilton Kramer judging Hilma af Klint’s work “to be mostly color diagrams” in her review of the first major exhibition of her paintings in the United States, adding that she “would never have gotten this exaggerated treatment if she had not been a woman.” The authors also demonstrate that erasure is both in the past of art history and ongoing. In this sense, the book constitutes a significantly new history of art.

In the United States, this book comes at an important time, with the recent reversal of Roe v. Wade and a terrifying election on the horizon. It has much to offer. But it also reveals, perhaps unconsciously, some difficult questions that are still relevant in feminism and in the art world. I felt my first unease in the opening chapter, when Posner writes, “I came to question my former contempt for essentialism”—that is, the sense that there are distinct and intrinsic qualities to femininity. I wanted to know much more about how this might be revealed, or understood, in the context of contemporary art. If some essentialist notions of the 1970s—privileging the circle as more inherently feminine than, say, the rectangle—seem a little suspect, works once decried as too overtly feminine, such as the Pattern and Decoration (P&D) movement in general or Judy Chicago’s early pastel-colored minimalist sculptures, now seem brave and prescient.

The question of essentialism within feminism is central to understanding intersectional feminism—the theory that different dimensions of inequality interact—today. On the one hand, the authors are clear in their approach. In the first chapter, Princenthal writes, “In the 21st century, we know that we cannot limit our definition of women to those identified as female at birth.” The authors thus include not only trans and nonbinary artists, but also works by male artists they consider to be explicitly or implicitly feminist, including the AIDS Quilt, designed by Cleve Jones (unnamed in the book), P&D, and conceptual artists like Mel Chin. This big tent is made even bigger when Scott proclaims that “innovation is, in its own way, a feminist statement. It’s about taking back power and creating something new.”

That thought, along with statements like Heartney’s that “feminism has opened things up,” is the book’s hopeful and often inspiring heart. And much of the fun of such an investigation is discovering new artists and connections, like Jan Mun, whose oyster “The Fairy Rings @ ExxonMobil Greenpoint Petroleum Remediation Site” (2013) uses oyster mushrooms to neutralize toxic chemicals from a contaminated site, or Marguerite Wildenhain, a Bauhaus-trained artist who founded Pond Farm Pottery, not far from my home. It’s invigorating and truly enjoyable to find yourself going down rabbit holes for hours, adding to your to-read pile.

On the other hand, while the scope of the book is admirable, the history of feminist art told here often seems overwhelmingly white. For example, as the authors note in the epilogue, each chapter opens “with a photograph of a key figure in each of our narratives.” Yes, and each chapter opens with an image of a white artist. Similarly, the book’s cover is a photograph of Ann Hamilton’s “The Event of a Thread” (2012) that depicts a blonde woman who at least reads as white. And the quotes highlighted throughout the book also seem to come from uniformly white voices. Such a cover, chapter openings, and quotes convey more than the authors might imagine, and less than we might hope for from intersectional feminism and feminist art.

My point here is not about quotas or point counting, but about the need to challenge white feminism to meaningfully expand its vision, which requires a plurality of voices, perspectives, images, and imaginations. This is perhaps most acutely felt by the authors in the book’s final paragraphs, when they write about the undeniably important work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles:

“The idea of ​​interconnectedness and interdependence runs through all of Ukeles’ work. It makes her the ideal silhouette (emphasis added) with which to introduce the discussion of the challenge that ecofeminism poses to long-held and destructive assumptions about the relationship between humanity and nature. Ukeles’ call for an ecological consciousness that emphasizes collaboration, reciprocity, and connection resonates in the work of a growing group of young environmental artists.

I don’t question Ukeles’ importance as an artist and instigator at all, and there’s so much in The mothers of invention It’s a work rich with important historical information, but to describe Ukeles as “the ideal figure” in a global art world where artists like Mendieta, Kay WalkingStick, Cara Romero, Britta Marakatt-Labba, and Bernice Akamine have incisively explored Indigeneity and ecological art, to name just a few, demonstrates a too-monofocal view of feminist art in history and today. Just as the history of contemporary art cannot be told without the feminist movement, the history of feminism cannot be truly told by centering white artists.

The Mothers of Invention: The Feminist Roots of Contemporary Art (2024), written by Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal and Sue Scott and published by Lund Humphries is available for purchase online and in bookstores.