Studio Matters Notes & Commentary

It would be difficult to find a better way to jump back into routine practices that I've let slide than with a Notes & Commentary essay by Maureen Mullarkey. "Following Her Instincts," reviewing Joan Snyder at Alexandre Gallery and at Betty Cuningham Gallery, proves that Mullarkey's sharp insight...

Do women make lists? You bet; I have one right here. Mine is a tally of the self-worshiping conceits trumpeted by a generation of women artists in their sortie against standards of achievement—dismissed by art historian Linda Nochlin as "the white male Western viewpoint." Nochlin famously derided what she termed "the Lady's Accomplishment" ("a modest, proficient, self-demeaning level of amateurism"). In its place, scholarly fiat substituted Womanart and its own peculiar accomplishment: an immodest, not necessarily proficient, self-assertive level of amateurism that coincided handily with the assault of camp sensibility on public taste.

.. is not limited to art alone:

Politics, as used here, is a dodge for merchandising lacrimose fantasies of women as vessels of cosmic altruism: The Breast That Never Empties ("Mamilla Immortalis"). Still pitching the old zeal, she insists that "we need to send powerful female energy and imagery out into the universe" to save the world from (male) violence. Even more implausible than Ms. Snyder's painting is her adherence to a crumbling orthodoxy that denies women's complicity in their own culprit cultures. Thirty years ago, her schtick about redemptive female energy was merely silly. Today, in the wake of female terrorists—and the sight of women dancing in Ramallah on 9/11— it is cynical. Or delusional.

(Click the gallery names above for samples of Snyder's Womanart.)