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| Judy Chicago's Gunsmoke: the artist as the victim in one of her early works |
By New Worker correspondent
Feminist
artists have been around for a long
time but is there really such a thing as feminist art? Well we may find
the answer to this at an exhibition of the works of four major women artists
currently showing at the Ben Uri art museum in north London.
Judy Chicago, Louise Bourgeois, Helen
Chadwick and Tracey Emin have all achieved critical acclaim over the years and
this collection of the output of these American and British artists has been
brought together for the first time under the banner of A Transatlantic
Dialogue.
Judy Cohen changed her name to Chicago
in 1970 in a protest against patriarchy.
A pioneer of the feminist art movement, she coined the term ‘feminist
art’ and she was clearly an inspiration for the other three artists.
Her most famous work is probably The Dinner Party which is an
installation which uses 39 symbolic plates at the table to illustrate the “progress” of women
throughout history while Tracey Emin is best known for her controversial ‘unmade bed’. But while this exhibition concentrates on
their small scale works they typify the output of these four artists over the
decades.
The themes deal with sexuality, male
domination and female assertiveness in differing ways but they largely ignore
the reality of the life of working women. These semi biographical images of
menstruation, birth and female servitude may tell us a lot about the artists
and their self-obsession but they do little more than convey a feeling of
indifference and depression.
Any serious student of modern art of the
latter apart of the twentieth century would probably find this exhibition
fascinating but whether it concretely contributes to the struggle for equality
is debatable.
The Ben Uri Gallery, which incorporates
the London Jewish Museum of Art, goes back to 1915 when the Ben Uri Art Society
was founded in the East End of London in 1915 by the Russian emigre artist,
Lazar Berson to provide an art venue for Jewish immigrant craftsmen and artists
to exhibit their works. Today it houses
the world’s most distinguished body of
work by artists of European Jewish descent.
The gallery holds over 1,200 works,
representing major avant-garde movements and encompassing a broad range of
20th-century modern British art. Though only a fraction of collection can ever
be displayed in the current cramped building in Camden it nevertheless provides
a window to the contribution made by Jewish artists to the avant-garde
movement.
The Ben Uri Gallery is at 108A Boundary
Road, London NW8 0RH and the exhibition runs tol 10th March.
Admission is £5 and it is open Monday 1pm - 4pm, Tuesday to Friday
10am - 5.30pm and Sunday 12pm to 4pm.
