WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution
edited by Cornelia Butler and Lisa Gabrielle Mark
Co-published by The MIT Press
In the 1970s, women changed the way art was made and talked about forever. WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is a long-awaited international survey that chronicles the impact of the feminist revolution on art made between 1965 and 1980, featuring groundbreaking works by artists such as Chantal Akerman, Lynda Benglis, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Valie Export, Mary Heilman, Sanja Ivekovic, Ana Mendieta, and Annette Messager, who came of age during that period — as well as others such as Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Lucy Lippard, Alice Neel, and Yoko Ono, whose careers were well established.
The book opens with a rich, full-color plate section in which works by over 120 artists are grouped into themes, including Abstraction, Body as Medium, Family Stories, Gender Performance, Knowledge as Power, and Making Art History. Highlights include the figurative paintings of Joan Semmel; the performance and film collaborations of Sally Potter and Rose English; the untitled film stills of Cindy Sherman; and the large-scale, craft-based sculptures of Magdalena Abakanowicz. Written entries on each artist offer key biographical and descriptive information, while accompanying essays by leading critics, art historians, and scholars offer a fresh look at feminist art practice from a cross-cultural perspective. Topics such as the relationship between American and European feminism, feminism and New York abstraction, women’s art under the Pinochet dictatorship, and mapping a global feminism provide a broad social context for the artworks themselves.
Working in a diverse range of media, including painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, film, and video, the artists in WACK! made feminism one of the most important influences on art of the late twentieth century.
Essays by: Cornelia Butler, Judith Russi Kirshner, Catherine Lord, Marsha Meskimmon, Richard Meyer, Helen Molesworth, Peggy Phelan, Nelly Richard, Valerie Smith, Abigail Solomon Godeau, and Jenni Sorkin
Entries by: Esther Adler, Cornelia Butler, Elizabeth Hamilton, Jane Hyun, Susan Jenkins, Lisa Gabrielle Mark, Rebecca Morse, Corrina Peipon, Alexandra Schwartz, Jenni Sorkin, Linda Theung, and Dawson Weber
Check back soon to purchase a WACK! catalogue from the MOCA store.
originally posted February 23, 2007