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Originally a component part of an installation and exhibition titled Bunny Gets Snookered, this is one of eight similar mannequins arranged on and around a snooker table at Sadie Coles HQ, London, in 1997. Black and White Bunnies (Tate P78227) are three black and white photographs of one of the mannequins which were included in the exhibition. Lucas stuffed variously coloured pairs of tights with cotton wadding to make 'bunny girl' forms, whose limply dangling arms and passively lolling legs provide a representation of abject femininity, in thrall to the arena of male virtuosity as suggested by the snooker table. Each 'bunny' wears differently coloured stockings corresponding to the colours in a set of snooker balls. Pauline Bunny, in its black stockings, corresponds to the highest value snooker ball. The black stockings are the most traditionally alluring of the selection of colours, connecting this representation of a woman to the image of a seductress. Any suggestion of power this might carry is subverted by the passivity of the floppy, stuffed body, which is clipped to an office chair, providing an emblem of secretarial submissiveness. The title of the installation reinforces the reading of disempowerment: to be snookered, in the language of the game of snooker, means to be prevented from scoring. This bunny girl is trapped by her femininity, only to be knocked against her fellow bunnies in a game of masculine skill(Tate).

Reference List

Tate(n.d.) Pauline Bunny. At:https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lucas-pauline-bunny-t07437 (Accessed 19/08/2023).

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Presented by the Patrons of New Art (Special Purchase Fund) through the Tate Gallery Foundation 1998

Originally a component part of an installation and exhibition titled Bunny Gets Snookered, this is one of eight similar mannequins arranged on and around a snooker table at Sadie Coles HQ, London, in 1997. Black and White Bunnies (Tate ) are three black and white photographs of one of the mannequins which were included in the exhibition. Lucas stuffed variously coloured pairs of tights with cotton wadding to make 'bunny girl' forms, whose limply dangling arms and passively lolling legs provide a representation of femininity , in thrall to the arena of male virtuosity as suggested by the snooker table. Each 'bunny' wears differently coloured stockings corresponding to the colours in a set of snooker balls. Pauline Bunny, in its black stockings, corresponds to the highest value snooker ball. The black stockings are the most traditionally alluring of the selection of colours, connecting this representation of a woman to the image of a seductress. Any suggestion of power this might carry is subverted by the passivity of the floppy, stuffed body, which is clipped to an office chair, providing an emblem of secretarial submissiveness. The title of the installation reinforces the reading of disempowerment: to be snookered, in the language of the game of snooker, means to be prevented from scoring. This bunny girl is trapped by her femininity, only to be knocked against her fellow bunnies in a game of masculine skill.

The eight mannequins are individually titled Bunny, except Pauline Bunny, the skinniest of all the bunnies, which is named after Pauline Daley, assistant to Sadie Coles. This corresponds with Pauline Bunny's status as the most important and seductive of the bunnies, since contemporary fashion prefers the skinny female form. The artist had originally titled this work Bunny Gets Snookered #7 before retitling it in 2002.

Lucas specialises in challenging gender stereotypes through a play on conventions of representation and framing, specifically through the language and media of popular culture. The title of this piece suggests a lewd violation, a masculine victory in a sexual war. But the bunny's unhelpful slump, her sagging form and literal empty head (she has comic-strip stuffed 'ears' but the part of the tights which would logically be her head hangs empty) provide a comic antithesis to her traditional namesake and turn the desiring stereotype of masculinity back on itself. If femininity has been objectified, here it is that process of objectification itself which is revealed to be both comic and ridiculous, a self-defeating reduction which turns its object into something ultimately undesirable. Doll-representations of women trace a lineage from Surrealists such as Hans Bellmer (1902-75), through the assemblage - sculptures made by Ed Kienholz (1927-94) in the 1960s, to the photographs of Cindy Sherman (born 1954). Appropriating the macho vernacular of her working-class London background has provided Lucas with the means to critique the tradition of the male gaze in its own language.

Further reading:
Lynn Barber, 'Drag Queen', Observer Magazine, London, 30 January 2000, pp.10-16
Sarah Lucas, exhibition catalogue, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1996
Minky Manky, exhibition catalogue, South London Gallery, London 1995, pp.2-5

Elizabeth Manchester
January 2000/September 2001/October 2002

Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

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'Pauline Bunny', Sarah Lucas, 1997 | Tate

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'Pauline Bunny', Sarah Lucas, 1997 on display at Tate Britain.

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No one could have guessed it, but an unremarkable hashtag has been quietly trending on social networking sites - "baby food."

At the bottom of various life sharing types of posts, there is always a tag called "# baby food". Most of the content of these posts is very everyday, including girls' selfies, funny pet photos, or record daily study, confide in some private emotions... In short, it has nothing to do with baby food itself.

The reason behind this magical behavior is straightforward: Posts with this tag are significantly less likely to be pushed to male users（Cui，2023）.

Reference List

Cui,S.(2010) "Baby food" tag: Internet new shield. At:https://www.imaginepeace.com/archives/2680 (Accessed 19/08/2023).

Little Red Book（2023）"Baby food" tag: Internet new shield. [photography] At: https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_22561257(Accessed 20/08/2023).

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Historical illustration of a noblewoman who is a wife and mother. Her life would likely have been modeled after the Confucian ideals of Three Obediences, or Submissions (to the men in her life), and the Four Virtues (a code of moral conduct for women).

The Three Obediences and the Four Virtues describe precepts for womanly behavior that derive from Confucian ideals of harmony and order. The first century CE book Lessons for Women states that the proper role of a woman is to be a submissive daughter, wife, and mother who restrains her speech, dresses in a pleasing manner, and manages her household.

The role and function of women in Chinese society has long been defined by the Confucian moral precept of the Three Obediences, or Submissions, and the Four Virtues. The Three Obediences seek to give stricture to the entirety of a woman’s existence, and accordingly state that the woman, in her youth, should be obedient to her father and her older brothers; in married life, she should be obedient to her husband; and as a widow she should be obedient to her son. The Four Virtues, on the other hand, impart rules of propriety, whereby a woman may be able to govern her life and her conduct. The first virtue is the ability of a woman to know and adhere to a submissive place in society and to modulate her behavior accordingly. The second virtue consists of restraining speech, since a talkative woman is not only considered impolite but even tiresome. The third virtue instructs a woman to dress and adorn herself in order to please a man. The last virtue states that a woman must know the proper management of her household and she must cheerfully do all the work needed in the home.

Reference List

DASS，N. (2010) Three Obediences and the Four Virtues . At:https://www.berkshirepublishing.com/chinaconnectu/2012/01/23/three-obediences-and-the-four-virtues-sancong-side-%E4%B8%89%E4%BB%8E%E5%9B%9B%E5%BE%B7sancong-side-%E4%B8%89%E4%BB%8E%E5%9B%9B%E5%BE%B7-three-obediences-and-the-four-virtues/ (Accessed 19/08/2023).

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Nirmal DASS

The Three Obediences and the Four Virtues describe precepts for womanly behavior that derive from Confucian ideals of harmony and order. The first century CE book Lessons for Women states that the proper role of a woman is to be a submissive daughter, wife, and mother who restrains her speech, dresses in a pleasing manner, and manages her household.

The role and function of women in Chinese society has long been defined by the Confucian moral precept of the Three Obediences, or Submissions, and the Four Virtues. The Three Obediences seek to give stricture to the entirety of a woman's existence, and accordingly state that the woman, in her youth, should be obedient to her father and her older brothers; in married life, she should be obedient to her husband; and as a widow she should be obedient to her son. The Four Virtues, on the other hand, impart rules of propriety, whereby a woman may be able to govern her life and her conduct. The first virtue is the ability of a woman to know and adhere to a submissive place in society and to modulate her behavior accordingly. The second virtue consists of restraining speech, since a talkative woman is not only considered impolite but even tiresome. The third virtue instructs a woman to dress and adorn herself in order to please a man. The last virtue states that a woman must know the proper management of her household and she must cheerfully do all the work needed in the home.

Origins

The idea of defining and instilling a mode of conduct for women may be traced back to the first half of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), during which time the scholar Dong Zongshu (179-104 BCE), who was instrumental in making Confucianism the state religion, formulated his Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues, through which he sought to describe the ethical relationship that existed between humankind and heaven. The Three Guides consisted of axiomatic formulations on the proper correlation between the individual and institutional power. Thus it was stated that (1) a prince was the guide of his ministers; (2) the father was the guide of his sons; and (3) the husband was the guide of the wife. These Three Cardinal Guides led to the Five Constant Virtues, which consisted of mercy, correctness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness. The guarantor of both the Virtues and the Guides was heaven itself, which required obedience in order to ensure that human society functioned well, and in order to bring about a consistent ethical balance, or harmony, in the world. Therefore, to go against the Virtues and the Guides was to go against the will of heaven itself. For women, the stipulation of being obedient to the husband meant that the state of being a mother and a wife was deemed the highest achievement, which brought about an ethical stability of sorts, in which all persons knew their place in society.

The perception of women as wives and mothers is intimately related to the Confucian understanding of the two essential principles that govern both the world and the universe: the yin-yang (shady/sunny), and the nei-wai (inner/outer). Care must be taken to ensure that these principles are not interpreted as mutually exclusive or even oppositional; rather, they are to be seen as complementary opposites, in that the one principle finds completion in the other; nor can the one exist without the other or come into a position of dominance; and both are required to achieve harmony and balance. Whereas the yin-yang principle defines the characteristics of men and women, the nei-wai elaborates the realm in which each of them functions.

The Four Books for Women

It was within this Confucian context that the earliest woman historian of China, Ban Zhao (45-116 CE), composed her small but influential book Lessons for Women, in which she expounded the precept of the Three Obediences and the Four Virtues. The book received wide acclaim and was often entirely memorized by women to serve as a convenient vade mecum (Latin for "manual") of proper behavior and comportment. The book consists of seven chapters: "Humility," in which the female is described as being humble by nature; "Husband and Wife," in which a woman is instructed to do all she can to serve and attend to her husband; "Respect," in which a man is given the nature of hardness, while a woman is soft and yielding-therefore, a husband and wife are to treat each other with respect; "Female Virtues," in which the Four Virtues and their benefits are stipulated; "Devotion," in which a wife is advised to be entirely devoted to her husband; "Obedience," in which the Three Obediences are outlined and explained; "Harmony among Younger In-Laws," in which a wife is advised to work towards creating harmony among in-laws that are younger than she, as if she were their mother.

These various moral precepts sought to describe the ideal station for a woman in the world, namely, that of a wife and mother. Wisdom for a woman, therefore, resided in her ability to gain the knowledge that would ensure the achievement of her place in society. In other words, the realm of the woman was the house; that of men was the public sphere. But a woman did not naturally come by such domestic wisdom; she had to be taught it, just as men had to be taught the ways of the world. This brought about a concern to create and establish a system of education for women that would inculcate in them the spirit and willingness to become good mothers and good wives. Indeed, it was argued that just as men brought order into the world, so women brought order into the family and to the house; and an orderly family led to an orderly society. By the time of the latter Ming period (1368-1644), a specialized educational system for women was firmly established. Just as men studied the Four Books ( The Analects, The Mencius, The Doctrine of the Great Mean, and The Great Learning), women were provided with their own four books, the first of which is Lessons for Women. The other three are The Women's Analect by Song Ruoxin, the eldest of the famed Song sisters, in which the proper behavior of a woman is outlined: how she may educate herself in womanly virtues, how she is to bring up her children, how she is to treat her husband and her in-laws, and how she is to observe the various religious rituals. Then, there is Domestic Lessons, written by the Empress Xu, wife of the Ming Emperor Liu Xiang (77-6 BCE), in which the traditional Three Guides and the Five Virtues were made relevant to women living in the domestic sphere by way of examples drawn from the past.

The Traditions of Exemplary Women brought about a subgenre of books for women in which the lives of women deemed worthy were recounted, the reading of which would provide tangible examples which other women could imitate in order to become worthy themselves. However, these biographies of sorts do not simply relate the lives of good mothers and wives; rather, they show women involved in the entire breadth of Chinese society. For example, there are women who are both virtuous in the Confucian sense, as well as women who exist outside this traditional definition, namely, demonic and power-hungry women who act for their own benefit and advancement, and women who are skilled i
n debate, argumentation, and intellectual and cultural activities. Further, these biographies in no way show women to be docile creatures, who submit to the will of fathers, husbands, and then sons; rather, they show women who seek to fulfill their destinies as they will them to be, entirely outside the demands and wishes of men. Thus we read of women admonishing and shaming their husbands into action, of women defiantly mutilating their faces in order to avoid having to marrying a man they cannot respect or love. In effect, these biographies seek to define what the realm of a woman is in Chinese society; they do not seek to demarcate that realm. It may even be stated that when we read of such active and engaged women, we are being presented with the various possibilities available to them, rather than simply reading about the reification of the docile and submissive woman. But these examples may also be seen as the chaos that results when a woman does not follow the precepts that have been laid down for her.

Women and Universal Harmony

The Confucian ideal of womanhood was closely related to notions of order and disorder, in that personal behavior reflected universal harmony. Thus, a disobedient woman who acted without virtue created chaos in the sphere assigned to her, namely, the home; this chaos extended outwards to disrupt the world and society. Since women were inseparable from domesticity, they had no right to divorce or separate from a husband. But a husband could divorce his wife if she failed to obey and serve her in-laws, if she bore no son, if she talked too much, if she stole, if she was libidinous, or even if she became ill with some disease. The only time a husband could not divorce his wife was if he had married her when he was poor and had eventually got rich, if she had given birth within a given year, if she had no family to return to, or if she had officially mourned the passing of one or both of her husband's parents.

The strength of this tradition is still prevalent in China, despite Maoist teachings to the contrary, and the old adage that men are in charge of external things and women are in charge of internal things is very much part of Chinese society.

Further Reading

Ayscough, F. (1975). Chinese women: Yesterday and today. New York: Da Capo Press.

Behnke, K. A. (2003). Lienü zhuan: The traditions of exemplary women. Retrieved February 19, 2009, from http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/xwomen/

Bernhardt, K. (1999). Women and property in China, 960-1949: Law, society, and culture in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Cass, V. (1999). Dangerous women, warriors, grannies and geishas of the Ming. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Chang, Pang-Mei Natasha. (1996). Bound feet and western dress: A memoir. New York: Doubleday & Company.

Chung, Priscilla Ching. (1981). Palace women in the Northern Sung, 960-1126. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

Cole, R. A. (1998). Mothers and sons in Chinese Buddhism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Croll, E. (1984). Chinese women since Mao. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Cusack, D. (1986). Chinese women speak. North Pomfret, VT: Trafalgar Square.

Davin, D. (1980). Woman-work: Women and the Party in revolutionary China. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ebrey, P. B. (1991). Confucianism and family rituals in imperial China: A social history of writing about rites. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ebrey, P. B. (1993). The inner quarters: Marriage and the lives of Chinese women in the Sung period. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Eunson, R. (1975). The Soong sisters. Danbury, CT: Franklin Watts.

Fan Hong. (1997). Footbinding, feminism, and freedom: The liberation of women's bodies in modern China. London: Frank Cass.

Gross, S. H. (1980). Women in traditional China. Saint Paul, MN: Upper Midwest Women's History Center.

Hoe, Susanna. (2001). Chinese footprints: Exploring women's history in China, Hong Kong and Macau. Hong Kong: Roundhouse Publications.

Jaschok, M. (1988). Concubines and bondservants: The social history of a Chinese custom. London: Zed Books.

Johnson, K. A. (1985). Women, the family and peasant revolution in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ko, Dorothy. (1994). Teachers of the inner chambers: Women and culture in seventeenth-century China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kristeva, J. (1986). About Chinese women (A. Barrows, Trans.). New York: Marion Boyars. (Original work published 1977)

Ling, Amy. (1990). Between worlds: Women of Chinese ancestry. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lee Yao, Esther, S. (1983). Chinese women: Past and present. Irving, TX: Ide House.

Lee, Lily. (1994). The virtue of yin: Essays on Chinese women. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Tsai, Kathryn A. (1994). Lives Of the nuns: Biographies of Chinese Buddhist nuns from the fourth to sixth centuries. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Source: Dass, Nirmal. (2009). Three Obediences and the Four Virtues. In Linsun Cheng, et al. (Eds.), Berkshire Encyclopedia of China, pp. 2260-2263. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing.

Three Obediences and the Four Virtues (S?ncóng Sìdé ????)|S?ncóng Sìdé ???? (Three Obediences and the Four Virtues)
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Nirmal DASS Historical illustration of a noblewoman who is a wife and mother. Her life would likely have been modeled after the Confucian ideals of Three Obediences, or Submissions (to the men in her life), and the Four Virtues (a code of moral conduct for women).

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Cut Piece performed by Yoko Ono on July 20, 1964 at Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan. Photographer unknown; courtesy Lenono Photo Archive.

To mark her MoMA show, we examine the moment the artist invited her audience to cut off her clothes
Walking up onto a concert hall stage and snipping the clothes from a 31-year-old, passive female artist is a provocative act, even 50 after Yoko Ono staged such a performance. Yet it's one that visitors to New York's Museum of Modern Art are returning to once more, following the opening of a new Ono retrospective.

Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971 draws together 125 early objects, works on paper, installations and performances by the 82-year-old Fluxus artist. Of course, the performance pieces cannot be entirely re-staged, however MoMA is screening footage of Yoko Ono's better-known ones, including Cut Piece from 1964.

This work, first staged on July 20, 1964 at Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, examined in a disarmingly simple way, the role the female body has played in art throughout the ages. How should we regard it today? Perhaps as a work that, despite its novelty, keys into earlier artistic concerns. For example here's how our book Art and Feminism puts it:

"In this performance Ono sat on a stage and invited the audience to approach her and cut away her clothing, so it gradually fell away from her body. Challenging the neutrality of the relationship between viewer and art object, Ono presented a situation in which the viewer was implicated in the potentially aggressive act of unveiling the female body, which served historically as one such 'neutral' and anonymous subject for art. Emphasizing the reciprocal way in which viewers and subjects become objects or each other, Cut Piece also demonstrates how viewing without responsibility has the potential to harm or even destroy the object of perception."

The work remains a key piece within the Fluxus art movement, because of the way it engages with an artist's body, but also thanks to the manner in which it breaks down the distinctions between art and life. As our book Art in Time explains, "Fluxus transformed art from an object of aesthetic contemplation to a gesture of political action.

Fluxus leader George Maciunas summarized the themes found in much of Fluxus work in his Fluxus Manifesto. Cut out dictionary definitions of 'flux', which emphasise its bodily character - a flow of fluids and discharge - were interrupted by his handwritten statements calling for a fusion between art and reality." Ono's Cut Piece fits this brief perfectly.

You can view an excerpt of Ono's 1965 performance at Carnegie Hall above, find out more about how her work fits into a greater feminist narrative in Art and Feminism, and for more on its place within corporeal art, check back soon for more news about our Body of Art book.

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yoko ono cut piece body of art art and feminism moma fluxus 1964 2015

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To mark her MoMA show, we examine the moment the artist invited her audience to cut off her clothes

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Sarah Lucas exhibition in The National Gallery of Australia

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Sarah Lucas exhibition in The National Gallery of Australia

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PETER JOHNSON (PJ) COVID-19 has had significant impacts on all our lives - particularly in the UK. How are you? And how has it has affected your creative practice?

SARAH LUCAS (SL) I think what I've enjoyed about it most, especially in the first lockdown when the world outside the window really went quiet, is the sense that nothing needs to be done in any great hurry. It reminded me of life some decades ago when time seemed to stretch and yawn. You could go days or a week when the phone didn't ring. There was time to get a bit bored and then start something, read a book or get into action making something - and really spend the time with it. Or not, as the case may be. One didn't have the feeling then of being watched or expected to account for every moment of the day or even the obligation to be useful. When I come to think of it, that is the kind of time that I hanker after and do my best to preserve. The feeling that time is my own. Initially, when everything stopped, I realised how far from that, in my own habitual thinking to myself, I've become in recent years. And I think this has happened to everybody.

PJ How did you get started? What drew you to art as a way of making sense of, and being in, the world?

SL Well, I've always been making things, not for art's sake, exactly. I think it must have started with mud pies. Just keeping myself company. It's still that to some extent. I left school when I was 16, dying to get out, then had a good couple of years playing records and talking with friends and travelling a bit. Then it struck me to wonder what I was going to do with my life. What I'd been up to had run out of steam. I realised it needed input of some kind - something to talk about, something to do. Someone I met at work suggested art college might suit me. I spent a couple of years doing all the evening classes I could get my hands on and getting a portfolio together. Then I applied.

PJ You studied at [prestigious London art college] Goldsmiths, surrounded by many contemporaries who would go on to have remarkable careers. Tell us about that experience - was there a sense that something special was happening?

SL I fancied the college in the first place mainly for not having to choose between disciplines, but I rapidly gravitated towards sculpture once I was there. There was a big conceptual side, too, and lots of part-time and visiting artists - many of them close in age to the students. So one began to feel a part of something going on in the world, it came into focus. Colleges now seem to be under enormous pressure to prove they're ticking all the right boxes. That's a shame. There needs to be a truly free art school type of place where people can grow into being themselves. For me, that's what art is, finding a way to do what you like and making that valid. Validate yourself. That should be point A. One has to ask: Am I convinced by this? What's it saying back to me? That's difficult, too. If it was easy, everybody would do it. Of course, it might and often does look easy when it's done. And a lot of people think: I could have done that. But they didn't. It's taking a mental leap and finding your own feet that's important. It's less about fulfilling existing criteria and more about what might be possible and what you dream it could be. I didn't have a sense back then of an impending career - let alone one as an actual contemporary artist. In the first place I didn't know there was such a thing. I was totally up for doing things, though.

PJ You use everyday materials - stockings, cigarettes, foodstuffs - in your work. What about these materials draws you to them? Why are these materials important to your exploration of gender, sex and death?

SL In the first place they were just handy. And cheap. And full of connotations. At college I'd been grappling with a lot of more abstract materials. I'd buy a huge amount of blue plastic, for instance, and see what I could do with that. And that seemed meaningful at college. When the college context was over, less so. I found myself in a room at home with a pile of something or other that was taking up all the available space and thinking, Who cares about this stuff? Do I? So I started again using readily available, ordinary stuff that didn't take up so much space and seemed to be already imbued with some sort of content. Worldly content. Whether that be tabloid newspapers or nylon tights or my own image or fruit and veg. . .These things seemed to me to be currency and language that had to do with real life, everybody's real life: I'm in the world and what's it all about? That sort of thing.

PJ The bunnies in your upcoming show at the National Gallery have a very different disposition to your earlier bunnies. Where the sculptures in Bunny Gets Snookered [Lucas's 1997 installation at Sadie Coles HQ in London] are entirely abject - limp, sexually available yet filled with ennui - the newer bunnies have a greater sense of individual character, even dignity. How have the bunnies changed in the years you've been making them?

SL Well, the times have changed a lot since then. In those days London was quite abject, and my life was too in many ways. Living in rundown areas and having studios in half derelict warehouses. Drinking in the roughest pub and having to get everywhere by foot or on a bike at all hours of the day and night. . .Also, I used floppier wire in those days. Things evolve in all kinds of ways, materially and in one's own thinking, out in the world. At college and even before that at evening classes, I aspired to making something beautiful as my high ideal. On leaving college - and I can't leave disillusion out of the equation - I started to make things with, I felt, a much more gritty reality. And certainly I was living in a gritty reality. I also wanted to be hardcore and a radical, I expect, like most young people. These days I often feel inclined to cheer things up. Lift the spirits. My own, first and foremost. Although I'd like to think I keep some sort of edge.

PJ The bronzes, in particular, also start to mix masculine and feminine elements. DICK 'EAD sports a very proud and prominent penis. What draws you to androgyny? How do the bunnies feel about mixing with the masculine?

SL Masculinity was made for bunnies. It's a bunny plaything. Or is it the other way around? I was always a bit of a tomboy. It makes sense really to want to do a lot of the things that are traditionally the preserve of men and boys - because that's most things. I didn't give it too much thought. Post-college, reading a bit of Freud, penis and absence-of-penis stuff, it made me laugh, but I also realised there is something to it. Through that lens, art making seems a decidedly macho activity - in the sense that it is manifestation; what's present rather than what's absent. That got me wondering about what it is to be a women artist, how to mobilise it. Then I read Andrea Dworkin and she really turned my head (spun my nut). She aided my dawning realisation that it's all a construction and could therefore be constructed quite differently. If we wanted it. So I found myself playing with these kinds of ideas and they seemed to have some potency, in the art world, at least.

PJ The exhibition features monumental reproductions of images from the contact sheet of your work Eating a Banana. What draws you to using your own image? What brings you back to this work after such a long time?

SL Eating a Banana was the first 'selfportrait' I made. It came about quite casually, as a lot of things do. I was sharing a studio with Gary Hume, who was my boyfriend at the time, and I asked him to take some pictures of me eating this banana - it was just the one banana. A very off-the-cuff idea. Looking at the contact sheets, one in particular jumped out at me, so I had a print made and put it in an exhibition. Somehow it seemed to help the other work I was making. It helped to put myself in the picture and lent the other sculptural works a bit of my personality and angle. It seemed to become iconic very quickly, among my coterie, at least. It's very convincing when something like that happens. You start to believe in some magic about the image itself, like it has to be that image and no other would do, sort of thing. Many years later, rummaging through drawers looking for something or other, I came across the contacts. I thought: Actually, they're all really good. And I liked seeing my younger self. Later still, when I had an idea to make a black and white room as part of an exhibition, I had the idea to use them as a wallpaper. Often when I'm hanging an exhibition I realise it would benefit from the addition of something or other and have to act on that quite fast, whether that's getting images printed up or making some ad hoc sculpture, or just introducing some furniture. I'm thinking on my feet a lot.

PJ So much of your work pushes back against a sense of propriety. Through its crassness - or some might say honesty - it rejects authority and repressive regimes, especially those based on class. What draws you to this subject matter and way of making?

SL A kind of desperation. Exasperation.

PJ On a similar note, humour is central to so much of your work, whether that be through the use of visual puns or pushing back against our expectations. What do you find useful about humour as an artistic strategy?

SL It's not a strategy in the sense of being a plan, something I set out with. It happens. When humour happens, things get good. Less depressing. It's a kind of magic. Suddenly things make sense. Contradictory things. Hard-to-reconcile things. The same as jokes, really. Or Freudian slips. They are a revelation of where the gaps are, the chinks in the armour of our seamless reality. Making something concrete at that point is like slipping through the veil.

PJ There's something very raw and mythic about the newest bunnies - both the soft sculptures and the bronzes. They almost recall the Venus of Willendorf with their unapologetic embodiment of gendered forms. How has the relationship of the bunnies to the representation of women changed over the years you have been making them?

SL A lot has changed with the century. In the '70s and '80s I grew up in the feminist movement, which tended to be made up largely of hippie-ish and also butch lesbian types (I was living in squats and short-life housing co-ops at the time), women who were against the definition of females as sex objects. Sexy attire and lots of makeup was the province of women in the glamour and sex industries and women out to 'snare' a man. As it turned out, these days women in powerful positions in government and running companies tend to be very glamorous. They may wear a well-cut power suit but they're still likely to be tottering about on six-inch stiletto heels in full makeup and hair. It's beginning to seem like any serious political challenge to the likes of Trump is going to have to be a huge bullet-breasted, mega-high-heel-wearing, big-painted-lips sort of super-heroine cartoon character.

PJ You've been making bunnies for 30 years. What draws you back to them time and again? How do you feel about repetition - or, more accurately, iteration - in your work?

SL I've tended to be wary of repetition. It struck me years ago in college days that many successful artists seem to only make versions of the same thing they made a name for themselves with in the first place. I thought: Crikey, that looks boring, like having a job in a factory or something. So I set about being eclectic about materials and methods. A period of making cigarette works, for instance, or plaster casting. Then a bit of messing about with tights. Building up a repertoire, I suppose. Often long gaps when I don't use certain materials at all. So going back to something is usually very fresh - something else is ready to happen.

PJ And finally, when do you know a work is finished?

SL When I know its character. When it becomes my friend. When I don't want to tamper with it anymore. When I wouldn't want it to be some other way.

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"In Fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnamable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform their work. Perhaps this common thing is a feeling that the bounds of art are much wider than they have conventionally seemed, or that art and certain long established bounds are no longer very useful."

"The misunderstandings have seemed to come from comparing Fluxus with movements or groups whose individuals seem to have some principle in common or an agreed upon program."

"Fluxus is the 'event' according to George Brecht:
putting the flower vase on the piano.
fluxus is the action of life/music:
sending for a tango expert in order to be able to dance on stage.
fluxus is the creation of a relationship between life and art, fluxus is gag, pleasure and shock, fluxus is an attitude towards art, towards the non-art of anti-art, towards the negation of one's ego, fluxus is the major part of the education as to john cage, dadaism and zen, fluxus is light and has a sense of humor."

Ben Vautier from Text on Fluxus

Summary of Fluxus

Fluxus was a loosely organized group of artists that spanned the globe, but had an especially strong presence in New York City. George Maciunas is historically considered the primary founder and organizer of the movement, who described Fluxus as, "a fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, Vaudeville, Cage and Duchamp." Like the Futurists and Dadaists before them, Fluxus artists did not agree with the authority of museums to determine the value of art, nor did they believe that one must be educated to view and understand a piece of art. Fluxus not only wanted art to be available to the masses, they also wanted everyone to produce art all the time. It is often difficult to define Fluxus, as many Fluxus artists claim that the act of defining the movement is, in fact, too limiting and reductive.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

Unlike previous artistic movements, Fluxus sought to change the history of the world, not just the history of art. The persistent goal of most Fluxus artists was to destroy any boundary between art and life. George Maciunas especially wanted to, "purge the world of bourgeoisie sickness...." He stated that Fluxus was "anti-art," in order to underscore the revolutionary mode of thinking about the practice and process of art.

A central Fluxus tenet was to dismiss and mock the elitist world of "high art" and to find any way possible to bring art to the masses, much in keeping with the social climate of the 1960s. Fluxus artists used humor to express their intent and, along with Dada, Fluxus was one of the few art movements to use humor throughout history. Despite their playful attitude, Fluxus artists were serious about their desire to change the balance of power in the art world. Their irreverence for "high art" had an impact on the perceived authority of the museum to determine what, and who, constituted "art."

Fluxus art involved the viewer, relying on the element of chance to shape the ultimate outcome of the piece. The use of chance was also employed by Dada, Marcel Duchamp, and other performance art of the time, such as Happenings. Fluxus artists were most heavily influenced by the ideas of John Cage, who believed that one should embark on a piece without having a conception of the eventual end. It was the process of creating that was important, not the finished product.

Artworks and Artists of Fluxus

Cut Piece (1964-66)

Artist: Yoko Ono

Cut Piece puts the artist at the mercy of the audience: Ono invited the audience to cut away her clothing as she sat completely still and expressionless on stage. The interaction between artist and viewer is unequivocally intimate, as the viewer completely invades the personal space of the artist, literally cutting away the boundary between the self and the other. Control is literally in the hands of the audience member who holds the scissors, and the outcome of the piece changed each time it was performed. This particular piece likely influenced Marina Abramovic's Rhythm O, though Abramovic took this concept even further, presenting the audience with items to use on her body as they wished, including a knife and a loaded gun, which one audience member pointed at her head.

Optimistic Box #3 - So much the better if you can't play chess (you won't imitate Marcel Duchamp) (1969)

Artist: Robert Filliou

Optimistic Box #3 is an actual fold-up chess set similar to Dada readymades but in this instance the viewer is invited to interact with the artwork. In order to see the entire text, one has to open the box to continue reading. The interior verse is a tip of the hat to Marcel Duchamp, the artist who conceived the readymades. While this piece is an object and not a performance, it still incorporates the Fluxus ideals; nonsensical humor and a lack of boundary between the art and the viewer. The significance of this piece is in its insistence that the viewer interact with it, unlike traditional art objects in a museum context in which touching is forbidden.

Wooden box

Total Art Matchbox (1966)

Artist: Ben Vautier

The piece is a box of matches with "directions" printed on the cover stating, "USE THESE MATCHES TO DESTROY ALL ART - MUSEUMS ART LIBRARY'S - READY-MADES - POP-ART AND AS I BEN SIGNED EVERYTHING WORK OF ART - BURN - ANYTHING - KEEP LAST MATCH FOR THIS MATCH -" This piece literally proclaims the Fluxus belief in anti-art and is one of many "editions" manufactured. Often Fluxus artists would produce a large number of identical pieces to deliberately devalue the object. It can be assumed that many of these boxes were burned as per the instructions on the cover, the involvement of the viewer completing the piece.

Matchbox and matches

Zen for Film (1964-65)

Artist: Nam June Paik

Zen for Film is an example of another Fluxus medium. It is an eight-minute film showing nothing but a white screen with occasional scratches and graininess flickering across the viewers' field of vision. Even though it is a film, it follows the general consistency of Fluxus art, which is usually simple, ironic, and succinct. Just as Cage used silence as part of his musical compositions, Paik is using an absence of imagery as the work of art. It has a distinct Zen sensibility, as it encourages meditative interiority, as opposed to active involvement.

Film

Licking Piece (1964)

Artist: Benjamin Patterson

The sly directions for Patterson's Licking Piece state, "cover shapely female with whipped cream, lick, topping of chopped nuts and cherries is optional." As in Ono's Cut Piece, again the boundary between viewer and artwork is removed. Here the frisson of sexual tension is made nearly grotesquely apparent (the act of licking, the specifics that it be a "shapely female"). It is not the artist who is made vulnerable, it is his "shapely female" he puts in a fairly uncomfortable position. The piece was performed on several occasions, touching on the subjects of the erotic, objectification, and misogyny.

"Shapely female" and whipped cream

Make a Salad (1962)

Artist: Alison Knowles

In Make a Salad the participants are instructed to make a salad. The act of creation as the focus of the work, and the repetitive, nearly meditative actions of the participants, mark this piece as distinctly drawing from the more Zen-influenced aspects of Fluxus practice. The piece has a vital auditory component: the noise made by the chopping of vegetables and the rustling of lettuce leaves is to be considered as musical and beautiful as if one was listening to actual instruments performing a symphony, a notion coming directly from composer John Cage.

Vegetables, knives, bowls

Beginnings of Fluxus

Fluxus was an avant-garde art movement that emerged in the late 1950s as a group of artists who had become disenchanted with the elitist attitude they perceived in the art world at the time. These artists looked to Futurists and Dadaists for inspiration, focusing especially on performance aspects of the movements. The Dadaist use of humor in art was also definitive in the formation of the Fluxus ethos. The two most dominant forces on Fluxus artists were Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, who championed the use of everyday objects and the element of chance in art, which became the fundamental attitude and practice of all Fluxus artists.

The early phase of Fluxus, often called Proto-Fluxus, began in 1959 when a group of artists who had met in Cage's class at The New School in New York banded together to form the New York Audio Visual Group. This group provided venues for experimental and performance art. Al Hansen, Dick Higgins and Jackson Mac Low were associated with this group, and would all be part of Fluxus. George Maciunas, often credited as the driving force behind what is otherwise a rather inchoate movement, would often be in the audience at the performance venues. Maciunas is credited with naming the group Fluxus, which means "to flow." The first Fluxus event was organized by Maciunas at the AG Gallery in New York in 1961, where he was co-owner. The event was called Bread & AG, and consisted of readings by poet Frank Kuenstler. That was the first in a series of performances that were staged that year at AG Gallery.

Fluxus: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

George Maciunas had strong opinions he frequently and forcefully expressed, often leading to contention between himself and other Fluxus artists. Maciunas articulated his beliefs in Fluxus manifestos, one being that fine art, "at least its institutional forms," should be, "totally eliminated." Other Fluxus artists such as Jackson Mac Low did not agree, once writing, "...I would not want to eliminate museums (I like museums)."

Maciunas was a bit of a volatile leader; he would indiscriminately expel individuals from Fluxus according to his whims and had no qualms about dropping artists for the most petty of disagreements. In 1963, Maciunas removed Jackson Mac Low from the Fluxus group, and the following year, expelled Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, and Nam June Paik.

Essentially, while a group of artists who were all considered Fluxus existed, they did not all agree to the same ideals and each viewed Fluxus in a different way. As filmmaker George Brecht put it, "In Fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnamable in common have simply coalesced to publish and perform their work."

Fluxus events included audience participation as a way of involving the public in the making of art. Such was the 1970 Fluxfest Presentation of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, where Maciunas made paper masks of John Lennon and Yoko Ono for the audience to wear. With this act, Maciunas shifted the role of the viewer from observer to performer .The use of the audience as the focus of the piece was a logical extension of his idea that, "anything can substitute for art and anyone can do it...the value of art-amusement must be lowered by making it unlimited, mass-produced, obtainable by all and eventually produced by all."

Although Fluxus is mainly known for performances and organized events, Fluxus artists also created more plastic forms of art, such as boxes filled with various items (often called Fluxkits), prints, and Fluxus films. Sometimes these works were not signed, as per Maciunas' belief that the ego of the artist should be removed from the artwork, meaning all pieces should be signed as simply, "Fluxus."

Fluxus and Zen

Zen is a Japanese Buddhist philosophy that focuses on meditation and the importance of the present moment. No single moment is to be more important than another in life. Zen had a powerful impact on John Cage who thought that art should be concerned with equivalency of values instead of elevating artistic experiences from everyday experiences - "in this way art becomes important as a means to make one aware of one's actual environment." This comes directly from Buddhist teachings on the importance of being aware of every moment and present in every moment in life.

Fluxus artists sought to apply that philosophy to art. This idea comes from Cage's classes at the New School where some artists followed along these lines in their work related to Fluxus. Besides wanting to challenge the elitist art institutions, the other side of Fluxus was to reach a kind of enlightened state that involved art so much that art and life would meld into one, and there would be no distinction between them. Although Maciunas once stated that Fluxus was, "more like Zen than Dada." Maciunas himself was less concerned with the Zen aspect of things and more concerned with a political, nonsensical, and anti-art stance.

Later Developments - After Fluxus

Fluxus arguably came to an end with the death of Maciunas in 1978. A "Fluxfuneral" was held, as had been requested by Maciunas, and put together by Geoffrey Hendricks, where several Fluxus artists performed. Afterwards there was a "Fluxfeast and Wake," where, in typical Fluxus fashion, all food was black, white or purple. This was the last major Fluxus event, although smaller episodes are occasionally held, even today.

The influence of Fluxus resonates throughout the arts particularly with later incarnations of Performance art, Land art, and Graffiti and Street art, and those artists who deliberately work outside established museum systems. An artist like Banksy is a good example of the continuation of the Fluxus philosophy.

Useful Resources on Fluxus

The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.

Similar Art

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Fluxus was described as a fusion of gags, games, Vaudeville, Cage, and Duchamp. Like the Futurists and Dadaists before them, fought the authority of museums.

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The “High Priestess of the Happening” and performance art pioneer, Yoko Ono drew on an array of sources from Zen Buddhism to Dada to make daring art.

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Summary of Sarah Lucas

Joining the likes of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Gary Hume, Lucas came to the public's attention as one of the foremost contributors to the Young British Artists (YBA) movement. The YBAs gained world-wide notoriety in the late 1980s and early 1990s by using shock tactics to court the worlds of commerce and celebrity. Building her art through everyday objects - items of household furniture would often double as the human body for instance - Lucas brought a raw energy to works that offered blunt (many would say, obscene) commentaries on sensitive topics including sexuality, female objectification and death. Lucas topped the career highlight (though she insists that she does not have "a career") of the 1997 Sensation exhibition when she represented the UK at the 2015 Venice Biennale where she exhibited her typically controversial installation I SCREAM DADDIO. Having become disillusioned by the metropolitan art scene, she moved to the more rural surroundings of Suffolk where she works from home and at her own pace; and with, in her words, "her hands rather than her head".

Accomplishments

Carrying a particular grievance against what she saw as the male dominated contemporary art scene, Lucas pushed the limits of her practice to allow women's art to compete in domains from which women artists like herself had traditionally been excluded. As such, she can claim to be a pivotal figure in a late-twentieth-century shift in attitudes towards art produced by women and pointing the way for the next generations of young female artists.

Lucas often employs visual puns to lay bare what she sees as the absurdity of cultural biases and petty everyday situations. Her work is known for its course humor and its use of metaphor to attack gender tropes and the inane vernacular of the male working classes. In her sculpture Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab (1992), she uses slang terms to define the model's sexual organs: breasts are "fried eggs" and the vagina is a "kebab".

Having experimented with minimalist sculpture while a student at Goldsmith's College, Lucas turned her attention to more immediate sources of imagery for inspiration, such as the British tabloid press. Inspired by the writings of the feminist Andrea Dworkin, she set about the task of challenging the casual objectification of women and dismantling the myth (as she saw it) of female sexual liberation. In the early self-portraits which helped make her name - such as Eating a Banana (1990) and Self Portrait with Fried Eggs (1996) - we see her attack narrow perspectives on female beauty in everyday visual culture.

Though she is associated with strident feminist statements, Lucas's starting point is generally her immediate access to materials which can range from furniture, food, concrete blocks, stockings and cigarettes. The found objects must be, however, sculptural and associative. Her sculptures are all headless (defined only by their genitals) and the only live human face to be seen in her work is her own which is omnipresent through a series of photographic self-portraits.

Important Art by Sarah Lucas

Sculpture - Private Collection

Biography of Sarah Lucas

Childhood

The third of four siblings (two brothers and a sister), Lucas was born in 1962. Her father was a milkman and her mother was a cleaner and part-time gardener. The Lucas family lived on a council estate near the Holloway Road in North London. At the suggestion that she was an unhappy child, Lucas recalled: "I was very reserved when I was a little kid, I didn't even speak till I was three. So I'd find a corner somewhere and just make things, to keep myself company".

Lucas was a self-proclaimed tomboy, playing out on the street with local children (mostly boys), learning to swear without really understanding what the swearwords meant. She has spoken since of the political implications of swearing and how "whole classes of people had language stacked against them". Speaking of her formative years, art critic Gilda Williams has spoken of how Lucas's work "seems forever suspended in [...] the brief instance hinged between childhood and adolescence [...] arrested in the short space of puberty, in that giggly, boy crazy (or girl-crazy) period when almost any object [...] trigger squeals of embarrassed giggling".

Lucas has said that her mother wouldn't allow her to do any homework on the thinking that the time she spent at school should be enough of an education. She left school at 16 with no qualifications, stating that she "bummed around for a couple of years" and survived on part time jobs and unemployment benefit. Reacting to an abortion at 17, Lucas hitchhiked around Europe for a year with a boyfriend while trying to work out what she would like to do with her life. On her return, her mother got her a job in a play centre where she was working. Once there, she spoke with a colleague who had gone to art college and she realised that this was path she might follow.

Early Training and Work

Having attended the Working Men's College in 1982, Lucas put together a portfolio which secured her a place on a foundation course at the London College of Printing in 1983. As a fine Art undergraduate, she studied at Goldsmith College between 1984 and 1987 where she met many fellow artists who would form the Young British Artists (YBA) movement, including Damien Hirst, Angus Fairhurst, Gillian Wearing and Gary Hume. She entered into personal relationships with Hume and Fairhurst, the latter ending in a tragedy that would affect Lucas's outlook on life. Following her graduation, she contributed to Hirst's famous Freeze exhibition in a London Port Authority Building in Docklands. Many of the artists showing at Freeze became associated with the YBAs whose work was promoted by advertising guru and art collector Charles Saatchi. The journalist Lynn Barber observed that "at college, the boys all treated [Lucas] as an equal and respected her work. But after college, she noticed, the boys were all quickly wooed by galleries and fêted by collectors, while she was only invited to things as Gary Hume's plus one". Lucas has spoken frequently of her anger about that situation.

In 1990 Lucas met art director Sadie Coles, who was at that time working for the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, and would later represent Lucas through her own commercial gallery in London. At this time Lucas became strongly influenced by the writing of Dworkin and her radical feminist position on patriarchy: attacking the dominance of "blokey" art that she believed was "actually a construct". Her sculpture Penis Nailed to a Board soon followed and her first solo exhibition at City Racing Gallery brought her recognition in her own right. In fact Lucas describes how success came after she returned to making things as she did, "when I was little, just making things, because I always did, to keep myself company. I think that sort of continues - the making things to keep yourself company".

Mature Period

In 1993, and inspired by Vivian Westwood and Michael McLaren's 1970s shop Let it Rock, Lucas and fellow YBA Tracy Emin set up a temporary shop (called "The Shop") at 103 Bethnal Green Road, London. Though their friendship proved to be rather short lived, Lucas and Emin called themselves "The Birds" and promoted their shop by handing out business cards at parties. The pair sold decorated key-rings, wire penises, T-shirts hand-painted with slogans such as "Love Come" and "Fucking Useless" and ashtrays with Damien Hirst's face pasted to them. Critic Matthew Collings noted that "It was a certain kind of titillation the shop offered, sexual but also hopeless, destructive, foolish, funny, sad". When, after just six months, the shop went out of business, the pair went their separate ways and Lucas returned to making photography and sculpture.

Lucas's first solo commercial exhibition with Sadie Coles, Bunny Gets Snookered in 1997, was a great success and paved the way for her works Sod you Gits (1991), Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab (1992) and Pauline Bunny (1997) to be included in the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy later in 1997. Journalist Lynn Barber has said that, much of Lucas' early work, "seemed - not scary, exactly, because it was too witty for that - but fuelled by anger; anger against pornography and men's casual denigration of women though Lucas responded to that suggestion by saying she was more "annoyed than angry". Nevertheless, Lucas became known for partying hard at places like the Groucho Club, and Colony Rooms in Soho, London, and for her "unabashedly all-balls-out, rock 'n' roll" attitude. Lucas herself confessed to being an aggressive drunk: "I had such an axe to grind and I was annoyed. I was furious with all these blokes with their one-line ideas getting successful around me". However, speaking later of her association with the YBAs, Lucas said, "At the time, you were struggling in such an awful, egocentric way that you couldn't appreciate how amazing it was. I think most of us, all of us, now think, 'Fuck, that was incredible'".

By 1998 - by which time her works were selling for six figure sums at auction - Lucas decided to start working one day a week at the Colony Rooms, a famous bar (frequented previously by the likes of Francis Bacon) in London's Soho (a district once thought of the "home of British bohemia"). Of this she said, "for years and years I did work in bars, and it didn't make me feel in a lowly position. It gave me quite a strong sense of myself, in fact. I've never believed in those notions that dignity lives in status or in how much money you've got. It's good to remind yourself".

Late Period

Lucas doesn't have an assistant, has never had a studio, and prefers to work from home with available materials. Having achieved a level of financial security, her status has allowed her to work intermittently and at her own pace rather than under the pressure of deadlines. In a recent work, Lucas cast her partner Julien Simmons's penis repeatedly for an artwork called Penetralia, describing the process as "playing around" and her "hands doing it [the art] more than [her] head".

In an attempt to avoid the chaos of the metropolitan art scene, Lucas moved to Suffolk and stopped reading art magazines and newspapers. Her "retreat" allowed her to maintain connections with friends, fellow artists and to focus on her work. She currently lives with Simmons (in a converted cottage previously owned by Benjamin Britten), continuing a pattern of dating fellow artists. Her ex-boyfriend, collaborator, and fellow Goldsmiths graduate Angus Fairhurst, tragically committed suicide in 2008 and she has spoken of having to live with the grief of that tragedy and also her own struggles with depression. In an interview with writer Aida Edemariam, she put Fairhurst's death down to the sudden explosion of the YBA generation and the pressures of fame and fortune that followed: "I do have doubts", she said, "and when I'm putting a show together, and the day goes badly, I'm thinking this is how he must have felt".

The Legacy of Sarah Lucas

Even though many in the art world would regard the rise of the YBAs with mixed blessings - reprioritizing contemporary art as commerce, through artworks that more often than not functioned as in jokes and one-liners did not meet with universal approval - the commercial fortunes of Lucas and her peers caused seismic industry-wide waves that have yet to be repeated. Writer and Journalist Charlotte Higgins described how "The YBAs brought great change to the British art world. Tate Modern, Frieze art fair, the mushrooming of contemporary art galleries around the country, the massive expansion of the UK art market - all [of which] were unthinkable when Lucas, Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk et al graduated in the late 1980s".

Journalist Christina Patterson has added that, unlike many of the YBAs, Lucas "probably has had the most enduring influence of her 'Freeze' and YBA generation, moving beyond those associations to develop an ambitious and enduring contemporary sculptural practice". Damien Hirst, who has bought all of Lucas's early pieces from Charles Saatchi, and is probably her biggest collector, described Lucas as "the greatest artist I know [and] out there stripped to the mast like Turner in the storm, making excellent pieces over and over again". Indeed, while many of her YBA colleagues have suffered a downturn in their artistic fortunes, Lucas seems to have gone from strength-to-strength following her acclaimed solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2013 and her triumphant pavilion showing at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Journalist Deborah Orr summed up her current output thus: "it is easy to see that Sarah's work has the very qualities that people crave currently, post [financial] crash, the most simple authenticity [and] sheer talent for expression".

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Sarah Lucas

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Sarah Lucas sculptures feature found objects, collage, photography, puns, and "bawdy" humor through which she critiques misogyny, voyeurism, and society's view of the female body.

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"Because we are denied knowledge of our history, we are deprived of standing upon each other's shoulders and building upon each other's hard earned accomplishments. Instead we are condemned to repeat what others have done before us and thus we continually reinvent the wheel."

"My images speak of vulnerability that is wedded to strength, not weakness."

Summary of Feminist Art

The Feminist Art movement in the West emerged in the late 1960s amidst the fervor of American anti-war demonstrations and burgeoning gender, civil, and queer rights movements around the world. Harkening back to the utopian ideals of early-20th-century modernist movements, Feminist artists sought to rewrite a falsely male-dominated art history, change the contemporary world around them through their art, intervene in the established art world, and challenge the existing art canon. Feminist Art created opportunities and spaces that previously did not exist for women and minority artists, as well as paved the path for the Identity and Activist Art genres of the 1980s. However, the contributions and influences of women artists from a number of countries should not be overlooked, such as German Dadaist Hannah Höch and Mexican Surrealist Frida Kahlo, whose powerful works have served as a source of inspiration for Feminist artists around the world since the early twentieth century.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

Feminist artists sought to create a dialogue between the viewer and the artwork through the inclusion of women's perspective. Art was not merely an object for aesthetic admiration, but could also incite the viewer to question the social and political landscape, and through this questioning, possibly affect the world and bring change toward equality. As artist Suzanne Lacy declared, the goal of Feminist Art was to "influence cultural attitudes and transform stereotypes."

Before feminism, the majority of women artists were invisible to the public eye. They were oftentimes denied exhibitions and gallery representation based on the sole fact of their gender. The art world was largely known, or promoted as, a boy's club, of which sects like the hard drinking, womanizing members of Abstract Expressionism were glamorized. To combat this, Feminist artists created alternative venues as well as worked to change established institutions' policies to promote women artists' visibility within the market.

Feminist artists often embraced alternative materials that were connected to the female gender to create their work, such as textiles, or other media previously little used by men such as performance and video, which did not have the same historically male-dominated precedent that painting and sculpture carried. By expressing themselves through these non-traditional means, women sought to expand the definition of fine art, and to incorporate a wider variety of artistic perspectives.

Feminist Art does not geographically discriminate but rather connects female voices worldwide. Notable Feminist artists over the movement's decades-long lifespan have spanned the globe representing a diverse array of countries including America, Britain, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and more as women continue to fight for equal rights and visibility within their distinct cultural landscapes.

Since the 1990s, Feminist Art and discourse has taken on an "intersectional" approach, as many Feminist artists explore not only their gender identity through their art, but also their racial, queer, (dis)-abled, and other aspects of identity that inform who they are in the world.

Overview of Feminist Art

In 1971 at the California Institute of the Arts, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro founded the first Feminist Art program. Chicago said she was "scared to death of what I'd unleashed," but, at the same time, "I had watched a lot of young women come up with me through graduate school only to disappear, and I wanted to do something about it." They did do something: she and Schapiro founded Womanhouse, a space for collaborative Feminist Art projects, that became a foundational model for the movement.

Artworks and Artists of Feminist Art

Womanhouse

Artist: Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro

The installation Womanhouse encompassed an entire house in residential Hollywood organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro as the culmination of the Feminist Art Program (FAP) at California Institute for the Arts in 1972. The twenty-one all-female students first renovated the house, which had been previously marked for demolition, then installed site-specific art environments within the interior spaces that ranged from the sculptural figure of a woman trapped within a linen closet to the kitchen where walls and ceiling were covered with fried eggs that morphed into breasts. Many of the artists also created performances that took place within Womanhouse to further address the relationship between women and the home.

The entire collaborative piece was about a woman's reclaiming of domestic space from one in which she was positioned as merely a wife and mother to one in which she was seen as a fully expressive being unconfined by gender assignment. This challenged traditional female roles and gave women a new realm to present their views within a thoroughly integrated context of art and life.

Mixed media site installation

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Artist: Lynda Benglis

In 1974, when artist Lynda Benglis was feeling underrepresented in the male-heavy art community, she reacted by creating a series of advertisements placed in magazines that took critical stabs at traditional depictions of women in the media. Her most famous ad was run in ArtForum in which she promoted her upcoming show at Paula Cooper Gallery by posing nude, holding a double-headed dildo, with sunglasses covering her eyes. She paid $3,000 for the ad, a small price for something that would establish her as a major player in Feminist Art history. Also, by paying for the ad, Benglis was able to assure her voice would be heard without editing or censorship. She later cast a series of sculptures of the dildo, bent into a smile, a cheeky "f*** you" to the male-dominated art institutions.

Anatomy of a Kimono

Artist: Miriam Schapiro

Anatomy of a Kimono is one of many "femmages" Schapiro created, starting in the mid-1970s, and is based on the patterns of Japanese kimonos, fans, and robes. Schapiro used the term femmage to describe works that combined collage, painting, fabric, embroidery, and other "high art" and "decorative art" techniques, simultaneously highlighting women's relation to those materials and processes.

Here, the artist collected donated handkerchiefs while touring the country and cobbled them together with other fabrics to form ten large panels filled with Japanese-inspired shapes. The work adopts the monumental scale of Abstract Expressionist canvases, but by using fabric instead of paint, Schapiro elevates a utilitarian and feminine material to the realm of "high art."

Fabric and acrylic on canvas - Private Collection

Semiotics of the Kitchen

Artist: Martha Rosler

Now one of the canonical works of feminist video art, Semiotics of the Kitchen examines women's bondage within the context of home through the trope of the televised cooking show. In it, we see Rosler as a self-described "anti-Julia Child" as she picks up an alphabetized stream of kitchen utensils (some strange and antiquated) and gives them random names before violently demonstrating their use with pantomime. The woman and her implements disrupt the familiar system of everyday meanings - the safely understood signs of food production erupt into anger. In listing the kitchen implements, states Rosler, "when the woman speaks, she names her own oppression." She, like many feminist artists of the 1970s, wished to interrupt and change the preconceived notions about women's roles within the home, and how these were represented in mass media.

Black and white video with sound - Electronic Arts Intermix

Interior Scroll

Artist: Carolee Schneemann

At a 1975 exhibition called "Women Here and Now", Carolee Schneemann performed the unforgettable Interior Scroll. For the piece, she undressed in front of an audience until she was wearing only an apron. Then, while reading from her book Cézanne, She was a Great Painter (1975), she began to paint her body. Afterwards, she stripped completely and shockingly began to pull a scroll of paper from her vagina while reading its contents aloud. The text was inspired by a recording she had made of a filmmaker talking about women and how they were unable to access certain traits such as logic and rationality, which he described as specifically male. He concluded that women were only capable of stereotypical attributes such as intuition, emotion, etc. By pulling the scroll from literally inside her own body, Schneemann made the point that only a woman could truly represent the female experience or speak on its behalf - anything else was hearsay. By placing her vagina front and center, and using it to birth a provocative message, she proved no longer interested in suppressing the authentic feminine, or asking permission to fully inhabit her female sexuality or reality.

The Dinner Party

Artist: Judy Chicago

The Dinner Party is one of the most well-known pieces of Feminist Art in existence and is permanently housed at the Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The installation consists of a large banquet table with place settings for thirty-nine notable women from history and mythology. The settings have gold ceramic chalices and porcelain plates painted with butterfly- and vulva-inspired designs representing Mother Nature, the vagina, and the life-giving properties of being female. By doing this, Chicago offered unabashed femininity on the plate rather than a meal cooked by a woman whose identity would be cloaked passively behind her food offering. In addition to the thirty-nine settings, there are the names of 999 other women painted on the tiles below the triangular table.

The Dinner Party participates in the feminist revision of history, initiated during the 1970s, in which artists worked to rediscover lost role models for women, rewriting the past that had previously only included male voices. In the combination of intricately wrought textiles, tile, and porcelain, Chicago reclaimed the realm of "high art" to include what had traditionally been relegated to the lower status of "women's work."

Painted porcelain plates, silverware, chalices, fabric, tiles - The Brooklyn Museum, New York City

Untitled (I shop therefore I am)

Artist: Barbara Kruger

This piece is characteristic of Kruger's early work, depicting a phrase placed over a photographic image from a newspaper or magazine. Kruger first worked in magazine advertising, and used her graphic design expertise in her art. The slogan in this work refers to images of women in the media, specifically product advertisements designed for women, which are usually created by men. It is a reminder that most of the media that is geared toward women is based on men's assumptions about women's desires, lives, and ideals, interrogating the belief that women only need material objects to feel happy and that men can keep them under their control by those means. Kruger's work is accessible and direct, and was incredibly influential among the artists of the 1980s.

Photographic Silkscreen/Vinyl

THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING A WOMAN ARTIST

Artist: The Guerrilla Girls

This is one of the Guerrilla Girls' early posters, and exemplifies their strategy of using humor to defuse and break down discrimination and prejudice within the art world. Adopting a tongue-in-cheek tone, they list the "advantages" that still faced women artists in the late 1980s, like "Knowing your career might pick up after you're eighty."

Guerilla Girl "Lee Krasner" stated, "The world of High Art, the kind that gets into museums and history books, is run by a very small group of people. Our posters have proved over and over again that these people, no matter how smart or good-intentioned, have been biased against women and artists of color." This poster reflects how pervasive that bias was in 1989, despite almost two decades of feminist activism. The fact that the Guerrilla Girls are still making posters and appearing globally implies that this problem persists to this day.

Poster

Beginnings of Feminist Art

Feminist art production in the West began in the late 1960s, during the "second-wave" of feminism in the United States and England, but was preceded by a long history of feminist activism. The "first wave" of feminism began in the mid-19th century with the women's suffrage movements and continued until women received the right to vote in 1920. Organized feminist activism then effectively ceased until the late 1960s, but women's concern about their role in society certainly remained.

Artists that expressed some of these concerns in their work have been posthumously identified as proto-feminist. For example, Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois created works that contained imagery dealing with the female body, personal experience, and ideas of domesticity, even if the artists did not explicitly identify with feminism. Others, such as the German-American Anni Albers and the English Vanessa Bell worked to elevate media that was previously seen as "women's work" and "handicrafts," such as weaving and pottery-making, to the status of "art."

These subjects were later embraced by the Feminist Art movement that began producing work during the resurgence of the larger women's movement in the late 1960s. The American Feminist artists of this "second-wave" of feminism expanded on previous themes by linking their artwork explicitly to the fight for gender equality and including a wider visual vocabulary to help describe their goals. As Andrea Giunta, Argentinian art historian, notes, "these processes were paralleled in Latin America and Europe," with notable developments occurring in Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia. Just as American women artists were identifying statistics that demonstrated their underrepresentation in major arts institutions, so were Latin American women artists noting very similar discrepancies.

The United Nation's first World Conference on Women was, in fact, held in Mexico City in 1975, and was focused on addressing issues that women face around the world (including domestic abuse, feminicide, and lack of access to education, among many others) and on identifying potential policy changes to improve these issues in numerous countries. The conference was followed by a high number of exhibitions and events that foregrounded the work of women and Feminist artists in Mexico and beyond, with much communication and collaboration between American Feminist artists and international Feminist artists driving Feminist art making worldwide in the following years and decades.

The 1970s

In New York City, which had a firmly established gallery and museum system, women artists were largely concerned with equal representation in art institutions. They formed a variety of women's art organizations, like the Art Worker's Coalition, Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) and the AIR Gallery, to specifically address Feminist artists' rights and issues in the art community. These organizations protested museums like The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney, which exhibited few, if any, women artists. Protests of the Whitney Annual led to a rise in the number of women artists presented, from ten percent in 1969 to twenty-three percent in 1970.

In California, women artists focused on creating a new and separate space for women's art, rather than fighting an established system. In 1972, artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who were co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts' Feminist Art Program, organized the project Womanhouse, which encompassed an entire property in Los Angeles at which various female artists contributed on-site installations. In 1973, Chicago along with graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and art historian Arlene Raven created the Feminist Studio Workshop (FSW) - a two-year program for women in the arts that covered Feminist studio practice as well as theory and criticism. The FSW was a part of the Woman's Building in Los Angeles, which was created by Feminist artists as an inclusive space for all women in the community, and contained gallery space, a cafe, a bookstore, and offices for a feminist magazine, among other resources.

Art critics also played a large role in the 1970s Feminist Art movement by calling attention to the fact that women artists had been completely omitted from the canon of Western art. They were important advocates who sought to rewrite male-established criteria of art criticism and aesthetics. In 1971, ARTnews published critic Linda Nochlin's provocatively titled an essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" The essay critically examined the category of "greatness" (as it had largely been defined in male-dominated terms) and initiated the Feminist revision of art history that led to the inclusion of more women artists in art history books. In 1973, England's art critics Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock founded the Women's Art History Collective to further address the omission of women from the Western art historical canon. In 1976, Nochlin and fellow art historian Ann Sutherland Harris organized the first international female-only exhibition "Women Artists: 1550-1950" to familiarize the public with 400 years worth of work that had gone largely unrecognized.

The 1980s

With the end of the 1970s, an era of radical idealism in the arts came to a close with the new conservatism of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations. The Feminist artists of the 1980s focused more on psychoanalysis and Postmodern theory, which examined the body in a more intellectually removed manner than the embodied female experience that dominated the art of the 1970s. Artists continued to expand the definition of Feminist Art and although they were not always aligned with a coherent social movement, their works still expressed the need for women's equality. The Feminist artists of the 1970s made many advances, but women were still not close to equal representation.

This continued discrepancy spawned the Guerrilla Girls, a group formed in 1985, best known for fighting against sexism and racism in the art world by protesting, speaking, and performing at various venues while wearing gorilla masks and adopting pseudonyms to hide their identity to avoid real-world repercussions for speaking out against powerful institutions. The Guerrilla Girls took Feminist Art in a new direction by plastering posters all over New York and eventually buying advertising space for their images. Their posters used humor and clean design to express a pointed, political message. Other 1980s Feminist artists such as Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger also focused on mass communication that drew on the visual vocabulary of advertising in both use of graphics and the distillation of complex political statements into catchy slogans. These artists sought the destruction of male-dominant social precepts, and focused less on the differences between men and women associated with 1970s Feminist Art.

Feminist Art: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

A Multi-Disciplinary Movement

There is no singular medium or style that unites Feminist artists, as they often combined aspects from various movements including Conceptual art, Body art, and Video art into works that presented a message about women's experience and the need for gender equality.

Feminist Art and Performance art often crossed paths during the 1970s and beyond, as performance was a direct way for women artists to communicate a physical, visceral message. It had the impact of being face-to-face with the viewer, which made it more difficult to disregard. Performance kept the work on a highly personal level, as there was no separation between the artists and the work itself.

Body art was another medium that was conducive to Feminist artistic concerns, as it provided a means to convey an immediate message to the viewer that was unequivocally connected to the personal space of the artist. Often Body and Performance art overlapped in Feminist Art.

Video art emerged in the art world just a few years before Feminist Art, and provided a medium, unlike painting or sculpture, that did not have a historic precedent set by male artists. Video was viewed as a catalyst that could initiate a media revolution, placing the tools for television broadcasting in the hands of the public, and thus providing the Feminist Art movement with vast potential to reach a broader audience. The Woman's Building housed the Los Angeles Women's Video Center (LAWVC), which provided women artists with unprecedented access to the expensive new equipment required for making video art.

Gender Performance

Mierle Laderman Ukeles explored the idea of women's work with her Maintenance Work series (1973), in which she eliminated the separation between art and life by performing typical household chores within the museum. Viewers had to walk around her while she cleaned the steps of the entrance, and common tasks were made into art that could not be ignored. Carolee Schneemann pulled a scroll from her vagina in public, a shocking attempt to reclaim the vagina to its rightful place as sacred source and birth passage. Yoko Ono revealed her own vulnerability in a performance where she sat submissively on stage as audience members were invited to cut off her clothes. By sharing gender specific experiences with audiences, these artists were using the "knowledge is power" model to influence new ways of thinking about traditional female stereotypes and to inspire empathy and compassion for the female condition.

Body as Medium

Artists often distorted images of their bodies, changed their bodies with other materials or performed self-mutilation not only to shock, but to convey a deeply felt experience in the most visceral manner. Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta used blood and her own body in her performances, creating a primal, but not violent, connection between the artist's body, blood, and the audience (and nature). Mendieta and many other Feminist artists saw blood as an important symbol of life and fertility directly connected to women's bodies.

Sexual Equality and De-Objectification

Many Feminist artists illuminated an imperative to end sexism and oppression with works that went against the traditional ideas of women as merely beautiful objects to be visually enjoyed. As Lucy Lippard stated, "When women use their own bodies in their art work, they are using their selves; a significant psychological factor converts these bodies or faces from object to subject." These works compelled viewers to question society's social and political norms.

For example, Dara Birnbaum used video art to deconstruct women's representation in mass media by appropriating images from television broadcasts into her video-collages, re-presenting them in a new context. In her most prominent piece, the 1978-79 video Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, she used images from the popular hit television show to expose its sexist subtexts. Birnbaum's peer Judith Bernstein was known for using sexually explicit images, many drawing reference from the male phallus and reminiscent of signs that might be found in a graffiti-scrawled men's restroom. Her monumental drawing Horizontal (1973) consists of a domineering, swirling screw - a metaphorical jab at male domination.

Domesticity and Family Life

Miriam Schapiro coined the term "femmage" to describe works she began to make in the 1970s that combined fabric, paint, and other materials through "traditional women's techniques - sewing, piercing, hooking, cutting, appliqueing, cooking and the like..." This put a spotlight on "women's work" as a viable contribution to the category of traditional "high art." Artists Faith Wilding and Harmony Hammond, among others, used fabric in their work to interrogate the deletion of feminine crafts from the arts.

Martha Rosler explored the various facets of female and domestic life. In her A Budding Gourmet (1974), we see a video of a woman describing efforts to improve herself and her family through gourmet cooking. Her dialogue is randomly interrupted with slides showing glossy images from food and travel magazines meant to depict consumerism's baiting of the everyday housewife.

Making and Reshaping Art History

Many feminist artists made work intended to show the inequity in the absence of women from historical cultural texts and documentation. In Judy Chicago's seminal Dinner Party, 1974-1979, credit is given toward the influence of women such as Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Gertrude Stein, and many others on contemporary female artists. One artist particularly concerned with toppling unfair male domination was Nancy Spero. Her Notes in Time (1979) is a long scroll-like work that explores the place of women throughout history, traveling across epochs, continents, time and space, lending them overdue documentation and significance.

Later Developments - After Feminist Art

Perhaps Kiki Smith said it best, when describing the major impact the Feminist Art movement had on the art world of its time: "I would say that without the feminist movement I wouldn't exist; and an enormous amount of the artwork that we take for granted wouldn't exist; and a lot of the subject matter that we assume can be encompassed by art wouldn't exist. The feminist movement exponentially expanded what art is, and how we look at art, and who is considered to be included in the discourse of art making. I think that it caused a tremendous, radical change. You don't want to have a cultural notion that one specific gender embodies creativity. All humanity - and all aspects of gender and sexuality and how people define themselves -are inherently creative. It's against the interests of the culture at large not to embrace feminism as a model, just like many other models of liberation, because they don't only liberate women, they liberate everybody."

Because of the progress made by previous generations of Feminist artists, many contemporary female artists no longer necessarily feel the responsibility to identify as "women artists" or to explicitly address the "women's perspective." Building on the precedent of the 1980s, many women artists began to produce work that focused on their individual concerns and less on a general feminist message.

Cindy Sherman, for instance, photographed herself in the roles of different iconic stereotypes portrayed in film and history and by doing so she reclaimed those stereotypes while at the same time questioning the male gaze so prevalent in cinematic theory and popular culture. In the 1990s artists such as Tracey Emin showed the influence of Feminist Art by focusing on personal narratives and using non-traditional materials, such as the famous piece My Bed (1998), which consisted of her own slept-in bed strewn with used condoms and blood-stained underwear. These varied practices, even if not directly identified as feminist, grew from and are connected to the first and second generation Feminist artists and critics in the variety of materials, roles, and perspectives they exhibit.

In 2008, the Feminist Art movement was given its proper due in the annals of art history through its first major retrospective titled WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. The seminal exhibition, which originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles featured works from 120 artists and artists' groups from around the world.

Today, much Feminist Art and discourse takes an "intersectional" approach. The concept of intersectionality was first put forth by legal scholar and feminist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989 as a way to acknowledge that aspects of identity, such as gender, race, and sexuality could not be examined in isolation from one another, but rather, should be understood as intersecting aspects of one's being, which overlap and often compound the power disparities that one experiences. Though the term and theory of "intersectionality" first appeared just a few decades ago, looking back through history we see that proto-feminist and Feminist artists have been taking this approach to identity in their art making for much longer. For instance, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's representation of her gender identity is intricately woven together with her experience of disability, race, and cultural heritage, and South African artist Helen Sebidi's art grapples with her identity as a woman of color, not just as a woman.

The representation of the woman's body and of female sexuality continues to be politically charged and to express the tension between personal and public identity. Today's generation of women artists, like Kara Walker and Jennifer Linton, continue to speak directly about sexism and equality in their works. The topic persistently shows up in works as diverse as Mary Schelpsi's Beauty Interrupted, 2001, which shows a model walking down a runway covered in a blur of the artist's white brush strokes that obscure both her eyes and her rail thin ideal, and Mickalene Thomas' paintings that reframe the identity of African American women while dismantling historical beauty memes. Whereas the Feminist Art movement opened doors for these very important dialogues, female artists continue to pinpoint the exhaustive and never-ending presence of its issues.

Useful Resources on Feminist Art

Similar Art

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Feminist artists fought for representation and fair treatment using video, photography, performances, and even their bodies. Chicago, Wilke, Schapiro, Kruger+

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You should be able to feel comfortable in your place of work or learning. If you are being sexually harassed, you can report it to the authorities at your job or school.

What is sexual harassment?

Sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature in the workplace or learning environment, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ( EEOC). Sexual harassment does not always have to be specifically about sexual behavior or directed at a specific person. For example, negative comments about women as a group may be a form of sexual harassment.

Although sexual harassment laws do not usually cover teasing or offhand comments, these behaviors can also be upsetting and have a negative emotional effect.

What does sexual harassment look like?

Sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances. The harasser can identify with any gender and have any relationship to the victim, including being a direct manager, indirect supervisor, coworker, teacher, peer, or colleague.

Some forms of sexual harassment include:

Making conditions of employment or advancement dependent on sexual favors, either explicitly or implicitly.

Physical acts of sexual assault.

Requests for sexual favors.

Verbal harassment of a sexual nature, including jokes referring to sexual acts or sexual orientation.

Unwanted touching or physical contact.

Unwelcome sexual advances.

Discussing sexual relations/stories/fantasies at work, school, or in other inappropriate places.

Feeling pressured to engage with someone sexually.

Exposing oneself or performing sexual acts on oneself.

Unwanted sexually explicit photos, emails, or text messages.

What is the difference between sexual harassment and sexual assault? What about sexual misconduct?

Sexual harassment is a broad term, including many types of unwelcome verbal and physical sexual attention. Sexual assault refers to sexual contact or behavior, often physical, that occurs without the consent of the victim. Sexual harassment generally violates civil laws-you have a right to work or learn without being harassed-but in many cases is not a criminal act, while sexual assault usually refers to acts that are criminal. Some forms of sexual assault include:

Penetration of the victim's body, also known as rape.

Attempted rape.

Forcing a victim to perform sexual acts, such as oral sex or penetration of the perpetrator's body.

Fondling or unwanted sexual touching.

Sexual misconduct is a non-legal term used informally to describe a broad range of behaviors, which may or may not involve harassment. For example, some companies prohibit sexual relationships between coworkers, or between an employee and their boss, even if the relationship is consensual.

Where can sexual harassment occur?

Sexual harassment can occur in the workplace or learning environment, like a school or university. It can happen in many different scenarios, including after-hours conversations, exchanges in the hallways, and non-office settings of employees or peers.

What can I do when I witness sexual harassment?

You may have heard the term bystander intervention to describe stepping in to help if you see someone who might be in danger or at risk for sexual assault. Bystander intervention can also be a helpful strategy if you witness sexual harassment. You don't have to be a hero to make a positive impact in someone's life, and you can intervene in a way that fits your comfort level and is appropriate for the situation. If you choose to step in, you may be able to give the person being harassed a chance to get to a safe place or leave the situation. Below are some of the steps you can take if you see someone being sexually harassed-just remember to C.A.R.E., and of course, keep your own safety in mind at all times.

Create a distraction. Do what you can to interrupt the harassment, or distract those taking part in the harassment. But remember to make sure that you aren't putting yourself in danger by doing this. If someone seems like they could become violent, do not draw their attention.

Ask directly. Talk directly with the person who is being harassed. If they are being harassed at work or school, offer to accompany them anytime they have to meet with the harasser. If a friend is worried about walking alone to their car at night, offer to walk with them.

Refer to an authority. The safest way to intervene for both you and the person being harassed may be to bring in an authority figure. You can talk to another employee, security guard, RA in your dorm, bartender, or bouncer, and they will often be willing to step in.

Enlist others. It can be hard to step in alone, especially if you are worried about your own safety or if you don't think you will be able to help on your own. It may be a good idea to enlist the help of a friend or another bystander.

What are some effects of sexual harassment?

Experiencing sexual harassment may cause some survivors to face emotional, physical, or mental health concerns. Some of them might include:

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what is sexual harassment in the workplace

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You should be able to feel comfortable in your place of work or learning. If you are being sexually harassed, you can report it to the authorities at your job, school, or local law enforcement.

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Women in a bikini contest are valued for their bodies and sexual appeal over other attributes.

Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society, but can also refer to the behavior of individuals and is a type of dehumanization.

Although both men and women can be sexually objectified, the concept is mainly associated with the objectification of women, and is an important idea in many feminist theories and psychological theories derived from them. Many feminists argue that sexual objectification of girls and women contributes to gender inequality, and many psychologists associate objectification with a range of physical and mental health risks in women. Research suggests that the psychological effects of objectification of men are similar to those of women, leading to negative body image among men. The concept of sexual objectification is controversial, and some feminists and psychologists have argued that at least some degree of objectification is a normal part of human sexuality.

The sexual objectification of women involves them being viewed primarily as an object of male sexual desire, rather than as a whole person. Although opinions differ as to which situations are objectionable, many see the objectification of women taking place in the sexually oriented depictions of women in advertising, art and media, pornography, the occupations of stripping and prostitution, and women being brazenly evaluated or judged sexually or aesthetically in public spaces and events, such as beauty contests.

Some feminists and psychologists argue that sexual objectification can lead to negative psychological effects including eating disorders, depression and sexual dysfunction, and can give women negative self-images because of the belief that their intelligence and competence are currently not being, nor will ever be, acknowledged by society. Sexual objectification of women has also been found to negatively affect women's performance, confidence, and level of position in the workplace. How objectification has affected women and society in general is a topic of academic debate, with some saying girls' understanding of the importance of appearance in society may contribute to feelings of fear, shame, and disgust during the transition to womanhood, and others saying that young women are especially susceptible to objectification, as they are often taught that power, respect, and wealth can be derived from one's outward appearance.

Male strippers are an example of the sexual objectification of men.

"Male sexual objectification" involves a man being in publicity in a sexual context.

Instances where men may be viewed as sexualized can be in advertisements, music videos, films, television shows, beefcake calendars, women's magazines, male strip shows, and clothed female/nude male (CFNM) events. Women also purchase and consume pornography.

Within gay male communities, men are often objectified. In 2007 a study found discussing negative effects of objectification was met with considerable resistance in the community. The sexual objectification of men of color may force them to play specific roles in sexual encounters that are not necessarily of their own choosing.

Research suggests that the psychological effects of objectification on men are similar to those of women, leading to negative body image among men.

Men's bodies have become more objectified than they previously were, though because of society's established gaze on the objectification of women, the newfound objectification of men is not as widespread. Even with this increase of male objectification, men are still seen as the dominant figures and so the focus is still primarily on women.

Male sexual objectification has been found in 37% of advertisements featuring men's body parts to showcase a product. Similar to the issues of sexual objectification in women, it is common for said objectification to lead men to body shaming, eating disorders, and a drive for perfection. The continued exposure of these "ideal" men subject society to expect all men to fit this role.

Male actors featured in TV shows and movies are oftentimes in excellent shape and have the "ideal" bodies. These men often fill the leading roles. When society is subjected to men who do not have ideal bodies, we typically see them as the comic relief. It is rare to see an out of shape man have a leading role. Leanne Dawson writes that "There are temporal, cultural and geographical "norms" of gender and other aspects of identity, which are often incorrectly considered to be inherent or natural."

In the media, the ideal version of a man is seen as a strong, toned man. The idealized version of a woman is thin. Body evaluation is more commonly used to criticize women than men, and it can take different forms for men. For example, body evaluation is often directed at men's nonverbal cues. By contrast, women more often are subject to body evaluation in the form of sexual, sometimes offensive, verbal remarks. Men tend to experience this from other men, whereas women experience it from both sexes. The Interpersonal Sexual Objectification Scale (ISOS) is a scale that shows sexual objectification of respondents, both men and women. While experiencing sexual objectification it creates the need to constantly maintain and critique one's physical appearance. This leads to other things like eating disorders, body shaming, and anxiety. The ISOS scale can be related to objectification theory and sexism. Self-objectification, which is the way in which people evaluate themselves, is concentrated more on women. Men typically experience it through media display. To the extent that men do experience self-objectification, studies have shown that men typically do not experience its negative effects to the extent that women do.

In the media, sexual objectification has been used as a way to sell products to the general public. Sexual objectification has been used as a marketing strategy for many decades according to the Journal of Advertising. This specific strategy targets the public in selling products that will make them look and feel desirable and attractive. It is stated that this strategy sells well by grabbing the attention of the public. The journal states that explicit advertisements do better in marketing than other non-explicit ads.

While the concept of sexual objectification is important within feminist theory, ideas vary widely on what constitutes sexual objectification and what are the ethical implications of such objectification. Some feminists such as Naomi Wolf find the concept of physical attractiveness itself to be problematic, with some radical feminists being opposed to any evaluation of another person's sexual attractiveness based on physical characteristics.[citation needed ] John Stoltenberg goes so far as to condemn as wrongfully objectifying any sexual fantasy that involves the visualization of a woman.

Radical feminists view objectification as playing a central role in reducing women to what they refer to as the "oppressed sex class".[This quote needs a citation ] While some feminists view mass media in societies that they argue are patriarchal as objectifying, they often focus on pornography as playing an egregious role in habituating men to objectify women.

Pro-feminist cultural critics such as Robert Jensen and Sut Jhally accuse mass media and advertising of promoting the objectification of women to help promote goods and services, and the television and film industries are commonly accused of normalizing the sexual objectification of women.

The objection to the objectification of women is not a recent phenomenon. In the French Enlightenment, for example, there was a debate as to whether a woman's breasts were merely a sensual enticement or rather a natural gift. In Alexandre Guillaume Mouslier de Moissy's 1771 play The True Mother ( La Vraie Mère), the title character rebukes her husband for treating her as merely an object for his sexual gratification: "Are your senses so gross as to look on these breasts - the respectable treasures of nature - as merely an embellishment, destined to ornament the chest of women?"

The issues concerning sexual objectification became first problemized during the 1970s by feminist groups. Since then, it has been argued that the phenomenon of female sexual objectification has increased drastically since its problematization in all levels of life, and has resulted in negative consequences for women, especially in the political sphere. However, a rising form of new third-waver feminist groups have also taken the increased objectification of women as an opportunity to use the female body as a mode of power. One study found that men exposed to media content in which women were objectified were more likely to accept those behaviors than men who were exposed to content where women were not objectified.

Some social conservatives have taken up aspects of the feminist critique of sexual objectification. In their view, however, the increase in the sexual objectification of both sexes in Western culture is one of the negative legacies of the sexual revolution. These critics, notably Wendy Shalit, advocate a return to pre-sexual revolution standards of sexual morality, which Shalit refers to as a "return to modesty", as an antidote to sexual objectification. Some social conservatives have argued that the feminist movement itself has contributed to the problem of the sexual objectification of women by promoting "free" love (i.e. men and women choosing to have non-reproductive sex outside of marriage and for their own pleasure).

Others such as civil libertarians and sex-positive feminists contest feminist claims about the objectification of women. Camille Paglia holds that "[t]urning people into sex objects is one of the specialties of our species." In her view, objectification is closely tied to (and may even be identical with) the highest human faculties toward conceptualization and aesthetics. Individualist feminist Wendy McElroy says, given that 'objectification' of women means to make women into sexual objects; it is meaningless because, 'sexual objects', taken literally, means nothing because inanimate objects do not have sexuality. She continues that women are their bodies as well as their minds and souls, and so focusing on a single aspect should not be "degrading". Feminist author Wendy Kaminer criticized feminist support for anti-pornography laws, arguing that pornography does not cause sexual violence, and bans on such material infantilize women. She has noted that radical feminists have often allied themselves with the Christian right in supporting these laws and denouncing the depiction of sex in popular culture although the two groups strongly disagree on virtually everything else. Her ACLU colleagues Nadine Strossen and Nan D. Hunter have made similar criticisms. Strossen has argued that objectification is not in and of itself dehumanizing, and may fulfill women's own fantasies. Psychologist Nigel Barber argues that men, and to a lesser extent, women, are naturally inclined to focus on the physical attractiveness of the opposite sex (or the same sex in the case of gays and lesbians), and that this has been widely misinterpreted as sexism.

Waitresses of Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery restaurant in uniform. Tilted Kilt has skimpily dressed waitresses, and is thus an example of a breastaurant.

Ariel Levy contends that Western women who exploit their sexuality by, for example, wearing revealing clothing and engaging in lewd behavior, engage in female self-objectification, meaning they objectify themselves. While some women see such behaviour as a form of empowerment, Levy contends that it has led to greater emphasis on a physical criterion or sexualization for women's perceived self-worth, which Levy calls " raunch culture". In a study conducted by the State University of New York, it is found that women self-objectify when trying to fit the "perfect" female standard according to the male gaze.

Levy discusses this phenomenon in Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Levy followed the camera crew from the Girls Gone Wild video series, and argues that contemporary America's sexualized culture not only objectifies women, it encourages women to objectify themselves. In today's culture, Levy writes, the idea of a woman participating in a wet T-shirt contest or being comfortable watching explicit pornography has become a symbol of feminist strength.

Jordan Peterson has asked why women need to wear make-up or high-heels in the workplace, that a double standard exists for sexual harassment and females who self-objectify themselves in society.

Social media has made a major impact on the self-objectification of women. Through social media, women self-objectify by posting provocative images that know will be objectified by their viewers as a form of seeking validation of posting images that fits the mold of society.

Latina women face a particular form of sexual objectification based on stereotypes relating to Latina women. American media often portrays Latina women as being sexually promiscuous and curvaceous, having large breasts and buttocks, being melodramatic, or having a feisty attitude. Keller identifies three main stereotypes that contribute to the objectification of Latinas. (Cantina Girl, Suffering Senorita, and Vamp). The "Cantina Girl" is characterized as being an alluring sexual presence. The "Suffering Senorita" is the Latina who goes "bad" due to her love of the (usually Anglo) love interest. Lastly, the "Vamp" is seen as beautiful but devious, and a psychological threat for her wit or charm. All three of these categorizations stem from the sexual objectification of Latina women's bodies and identities.

Such sexual objectifications hold real-world consequences for Latina women. For instance, the prevalence of negative Latina stereotypes (such as hypersexualization) has led to a decrease in positive in-group attitudes among the Latina community.

Black women have been fetishized and objectified throughout history. They may be portrayed as having a more animalistic nature than their non-black counterparts. People who fetishize black women are sometimes said to have " jungle fever".

Black women are widely objectified in the media and in pornography, and are scrutinized more closely for doing the same things as their non-black counterparts.[citation needed ] They are also stereotyped in the media as having more curvaceous bodies and bigger lips.

This section needs attention from an expert in Gender Studies. The specific problem is: The prose is jargon-filled, repetitive and nearly impenetrable to laypeople. The structure needs improvement. WikiProject Gender Studies may be able to help recruit an expert.

Objectification theory is a framework for understanding the experiences of women in cultures that sexually objectify them, proposed by Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts in 1997. Within this framework, Fredrickson and Roberts draw conclusions about women's experiences. This theory states that, because of sexual objectification, women learn to internalize an outsider's view of their bodies as the primary view of themselves. Women, they explain, begin to view their bodies as objects separate from their person. This internalization has been termed self-objectification. This theory does not seek to prove the existence of sexual objectification; the theory assumes its existence in culture. This self-objectification then, according to objectification theory, leads to increased habitual body monitoring. With this framework in mind, Fredrickson and Roberts suggest explanations for consequences they believe are the result of sexual objectification. The consequences suggested are: increased feelings of shame, increased feelings of anxiety, decreased peak motivational state, and decreased awareness of internal bodily states.

Sexual objectification has been studied based on the proposition that girls and women develop their primary view of their physical selves from observing others. These observations can take place in the media or through personal experience. Through a blend of expected and actual exposure, women are socialized to objectify their own physical characteristics from a third-person perception, which is identified as self-objectification. Women and girls develop an expected physical appearance for themselves, based on observations of others; and are aware that others are likely to observe as well. The sexual objectification and self-objectification of women is believed to influence social gender roles and inequalities between the sexes.

Self-objectification can increase in situations which heighten the awareness of an individual's physical appearance. Here, the presence of a third-person observer is enhanced. Therefore, when individuals know others are looking at them, or will be looking at them, they are more likely to care about their physical appearance. Examples of the enhanced presence of an observer include the presence of an audience, camera, or other known observer.

Women, girls, and self-objectification

Primarily, objectification theory describes how women and girls are influenced as a result of expected social and gender roles. Research indicates not all women are influenced equally, due to the anatomical, hormonal, and genetic differences of the female body; however, women's bodies are often objectified and evaluated more frequently. Self-objectification in girls tends to stem from two main causes: the internalization of traditional beauty standards as translated through media as well as any instances of sexual objectification that they might encounter in their daily lives. It is not uncommon for women to translate their anxieties over their constant sense of objectification into obsessive self-surveillance. This, in turn, can lead to many serious problems in women and girls, including "body shame, anxiety, negative attitudes toward menstruation, a disrupted flow of consciousness, diminished awareness of internal bodily states, depression, sexual dysfunction, and disordered eating."

Sexual objectification occurs when a person is identified by their sexual body parts or sexual function. In essence, an individual loses their identity, and is recognized solely by the physical characteristics of their body. The purpose of this recognition is to bring enjoyment to others, or to serve as a sexual object for society. Sexual objectification can occur as a social construct among individuals.

Sexual objectification has been around and present in society for many but has increased with the introduction of social media according to "Objectification, Sexualization, and Misrepresentation: Social Media and the College Experience - Stefanie E Davis, 2018" This journal shows a clear explanation for how young girls are influenced by social media to be sexually objectified. The platform is meant to share a glimpse into a person's life through photos to share with friends, family and mutuals. For many individuals, social media applications like Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter are used to glamorize and romanticize certain lifestyles. Examples of this can be young women using their platform (however big it may be) to pose as an older age by uploading provocative photos. This behavior promotes sexual objectification of young girls that participate on social media.

Objectification theory suggests both direct and indirect consequences of objectification to women. Indirect consequences include self consciousness in terms that a woman is consistently checking or rearranging her clothes or appearance to ensure that she is presentable. More direct consequences are related to sexual victimization. Rape and sexual harassment are examples of this. Doob (2012) states that sexual harassment is one of the challenges faced by women in workplace. This may constitute sexual jokes or comments, most of which are degrading. Research indicates that objectification theory is valuable to understanding how repeated visual images in the media are socialized and translated into mental health problems, including psychological consequences on the individual and societal level. These include increased self-consciousness, increased body anxiety, heightened mental health threats ( depression, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and sexual dysfunction), and increased body shame. Therefore, the theory has been used to explore an array of dependent variables including disordered eating, mental health, depression, motor performance, body image, idealized body type, stereotype formation, sexual perception and sexual typing. Body shame is a byproduct of the concept of an idealized body type adopted by most Western cultures that depicts a thin, model-type figure. Thus, women will engage in actions meant to change their body such as dieting, exercise, eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, etc. Effects of objectification theory are identified on both the individual and societal levels.

Learned helplessness theory posits that because human bodies are only alterable to a certain point, people develop a sense of body shame and anxiety from which they create a feeling of helplessness in relation to correcting their physical appearance and helplessness in being able to control the way in which others perceive their appearance. This lack of control often results in depression. In relating to a lack of motivation, objectification theory states that women have less control in relationships and the work environment because they have to depend on the evaluation of another who is typically basing their evaluation on physical appearance. Since the dependence on another's evaluation limits a woman's ability to create her own positive experiences and motivation, it adversely increases her likelihood for depression. Furthermore, sexual victimization may be a cause. Specifically, victimization within the workplace degrades women. Harassment experienced every day wears on a woman, and sometimes this results in a state of depression.

Ann J. Cahill uses the concept of derivitization as an alternative to objectification when trying to address sexual objectification's seeming judgment of all physical interactions (termed somatophobia by Cahill). Cahill criticizes the notion of objectification as marginalizing the role of the body in one's subjective experience and therefore making it impossible to understand how being viewed as a sexually appealing body can enhance an individual's notion of self.

Instead, Cahill uses the concept of subjectivity from the study of intersubjectivity. A subject IS an individual with their unique experience of reality. Derivitization is then defined as limiting another person's subjective behaviour and experience to align with or serve your own subjective experience. In this framing, the objectification exists in sex work is viewed instead as the derivitization of having another act for only one's own subjective experience and ignoring the sex worker's experience. Drawing comparisons to the doctor-patient relationship, Cahill argues that a recognition of what both people bring to a relationship and their subjective goals is what makes a relationship ethical.

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User generated content

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Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society, but can also refer to the behavior of individuals and is a type of dehumanization.

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Sarah Lucas

by
Robecchi, Michele;
Lucas, Sarah

Supercontemporary, 2007

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Summary

One of the leading figures in an outstanding generation of young British artists who emerged during the 1990s, Sarah Lucas has gained an international reputation for provocative works that frequently employ coarse visual puns and a defiant, bawdy humour. This book explores her oeuvre.

Summary

Provocatoria, narcisista, ironica: è difficile definire lo stile di quest'artista inglese, che lavora con diversi materiali e oggetti tratti dal quotidiano per realizzare le sue installazioni, ma che è anche fotografa. Il volume presenta una selezione di circa 40 opere della Lucas sempre corredate da puntuali testi esplicativi che chiariscono gli intenti dell'artista e ne decodificano il linguaggio.

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One of the leading figures in an outstanding generation of young British artists who emerged during the 1990s, Sarah Lucas has gained an international reputation for provocative works that frequently employ coarse visual puns and a defiant, bawdy humour. This book explores her oeuvre.

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PowerPoint : Cyber Sexual Harassment & Objectification Of Women

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PowerPoint : Cyber Sexual Harassment & Objectification Of Women

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sexual harassment comments in Chinese application

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sexual harassment comments in Chinese application

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Stop Sexual harassment Draft（The first version）

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Stop Sexual harassment Draft（The first version）

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Gloomy city

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Tom Harlington's diary

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buildings

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Peilin Zhao（Linda）WORDS TO DESCRIBE CHANGE Homework

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Project Brief Key Vocabulary Table Peilin Zhao（Linda）

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Stop Sexual Harassment Final Design（The first version)

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Stop Sexual Harassment Final Design（The first version)

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Gender Inequality and the Ultimate Resistance of Women in China

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Gender Inequality and the Ultimate Resistance of Women in China

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The emergence of a market economy in China means women have achieved unprecedented levels of educational and professional achievement.

But they are also suffering widespread gender violence and discrimination, as well as oppressive gender norms legitimised by both the culture and authority. While women, especially young women have embraced feminist movements in their quest for social transformation, China’s traditional gender power structure remains stubborn with implicit support from a powerful government. However, this patriarchy is also facing a crisis as more and more women are consciously making autonomous decisions about their lives.

Reference List

Lu,P.(2010) Gender Inequality and the Ultimate Resistance of Women in China. At:https://disruptiveasia.asiasociety.org/gender-inequality-and-the-ultimate-resistance-of-women-in-china (Accessed 20/08/2023).

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Mulholland Drive

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The Silence Of The Lambs

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Take a step towards violence against woman

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Take a step towards violence against woman

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Over the past thirty years, Lucas has created a distinctive and provocative body of work that subverts traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Since the late 1980s, she has transformed found objects and everyday materials such as cigarettes, vegetables, and stockings into disorienting, confrontational tableaux that boldly challenge social norms. The human body and anthropomorphic forms recur throughout Lucas's works, often appearing erotic, humorous, fragmented, or reconfigured into fantastical anatomies of desire.

Initially associated with a group known as the Young British Artists (YBAs), who began exhibiting together in London in the late 1980s, Lucas is now one of the UK's most influential artists. This presentation, which takes place across the three main floors of the New Museum, brings together more than 150 works in photography, sculpture, and installation to reveal the breadth and ingenuity of her practice. The exhibition addresses the ways in which Lucas's works engage with crucial debates about gender and power, along with the legacy of Surrealism-from her clever transformations of everyday objects to her exploration of sexual ambiguity and the tension between the familiar and the absurd.

"Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel" features some of Lucas's most important projects, including early sculptures from the 1990s that substitute domestic furniture for body parts and enlarged spreads from tabloid newspapers from the same period, which reflect objectified representations of the female body. Alongside the photographic self-portraits that Lucas has produced throughout her career, the exhibition features biomorphic sculptures including her stuffed-stocking Bunnies (1997-ongoing) and NUDS (2009-ongoing), the Penetralia series (2008-ongoing), and selections from her installations at the Freud Museum in London (2000) and the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015). These works, which complicate inscribed codes of sexual and social normativity, have never before been shown together in the US. Lucas has also created new sculptural works for the exhibition, including This Jaguar's Going to Heaven (2018), a severed 2003 Jaguar X-Type-the car's back half burned and its front half collaged with cigarettes-and (2018), a pair of eleven-foot-tall thigh-high platform boots cast in concrete.

The exhibition is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director, and Margot Norton, Curator. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue copublished by the New Museum and Phaidon Press. The catalogue includes an interview with Sarah Lucas conducted by Massimiliano Gioni, as well as contributions by Whitney Chadwick, Anne Ellegood, Angus Fairhurst, Quinn Latimer, Maggie Nelson, Linda Nochlin, Margot Norton, and Anne Wagner.

Following its presentation at the New Museum, Lucas's exhibition will travel to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in June 2019.

Sarah Lucas (b. 1962, London, UK) lives and works in Suffolk, UK. She was included in the now-legendary group exhibition "Freeze" (1988), organized by Damien Hirst at the Surrey Docks in London Docklands. For six months in 1993, she collaborated with fellow artist Tracey Emin on The Shop, for which the duo made and sold objects such as T-shirts, paper badges, and printed mugs in a London storefront. Lucas has since exhibited internationally, at institutions such as Tate Britain, London (2004); Tate Modern, London (2002); the Freud Museum, London (2000); Tecla Sala, Barcelona (2000); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1997); Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1996); Portikus, Frankfurt (1996); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1993). In 2005, a traveling retrospective of her work was shown at Kunsthalle Zürich, Kunstverein Hamburg, and Tate Liverpool. Recent solo exhibition include "Good Muse," Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2017); "INNAMEMORABILIAMUMBUM," Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2016); "POWER IN WOMAN," Sir John Soane's Museum, London (2016); "Sarah Lucas," Tramway, Glasgow (2014); the retrospective "SITUATION Absolute Beach Man Rubble" at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); "NOB + Gelatin," Secession, Vienna (2013); and "Ordinary Things," Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK (2012). Lucas represented Britain at the 2015 Venice Biennale with her exhibition "I SCREAM DADDIO."

This exhibition contains images of genitalia, which may not be suitable for all audiences. Contact info@newmuseum.org for more information.

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The New Museum will present the first American survey of the work of British artist Sarah Lucas (b. 1962, London, UK).

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Yoko Ono's CUT PIECE: From Text to Performance and Back Again by Kevin Concannon

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Yoko Ono's CUT PIECE: From Text to Performance and Back Again by Kevin Concannon

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Yoko Ono's CUT PIECE : From Text to Performance and Back Again

by Kevin Concannon

Art is inexorably bound up in the situation where it is produced and where it is experienced. You can emphasize this, or you can emphasize where it is produced or experienced: you can even equate them, and emphasize the equation. The relationship exists in any case, and, either as artist or as audience, we are in a situation analogous to a swimmer who may fight the surf, dive through it and struggle against it until he gets out beyond where the surf is noticeable: or else this swimmer can roll with the waves. Dick Higgins, Postface (1964) [1]

The seemingly sudden and recent popularity of reprise performances of live artworks of the 1960s and 1970s has been greeted with an equally abundant supply of critical analysis, much of which frames these events as "reenactments." Such is the case with Yoko Ono's 2003 performance of her 1964 Cut Piece. It was performed by Ono on at least six occasions and by others many times more. The first two performances took place in Kyoto and Tokyo in July and August 1964. The third performance was presented at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City in March 1965. And the fourth and fifth performances were offered as part of the Destruction in Art Symposium presentation of Two Evenings with Yoko Ono at the Africa Centre in London in September 1966. While Ono "directed" later performances of the work, these were - until September 2003 - the only confirmed occasions on which she herself publicly performed it.

In these first performances by Ono, the artist sat kneeling on the concert hall stage, wearing her best suit of clothing, with a pair of scissors placed on the floor in front of her. Members of the audience were invited to approach the stage, one at a time, and cut a bit of her clothes off - which they were allowed to keep. The score for Cut Piece appears, along with those for several other works, in a document from January 1966 called Strip Tease Show.

Cut Piece First version for single performer: Performer sits on stage with a pair of scissors in front of him. It is announced that members of the audience may come on stage - one at a time - to cut a small piece of the performer's clothing to take with them. Performer remains motionless throughout the piece. Piece ends at the performer's option.

Second version for audience: It is announced that members of the audience may cut each other's clothing. The audience may cut as long as they wish.

And in the 1971 paperback edition of her book, Grapefruit, Ono included not so much a score as a description, concluding with the statement that, "the performer, however, does not have to be a woman."

In her catalogue essay for the 2005 exhibition, Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art, Jennifer Allen characterizes Ono's 2003 performance of Cut Piece as a "reenactment," and imputes to the artist rather grand ambitions for the event.

In September 2003 at Paris's Ranelagh Theatre, Yoko Ono reenacted her own Cut Piece as an expression of her hope for world peace.... One could argue that the original performances of the sixties and seventies needed to be reenacted in order to catch up with the spectacle, in order to be reproduced, in order to exist. Ono's intervention seems to differ since she decided to reenact Cut Piece, not for an exhibition, but for the mass media, and not merely to ensure the continued existence of her work, but in order to make a difference in the present. In France, the organizers placed a full - page advert for the event with a statement by Ono who described her intervention as a response to the political changes in the wake of 9/11. Her statement appeared around the world for a little bit longer than fifteen minutes. It seems that Ono hoped that her performance would reenact the peace movement of the sixties on a global scale. In this case, the reenactment searched for a lost totality, not in the performance, but in an entire generation. [2]

There are a number of problems with this assessment. Most importantly, the very notion that Ono reenacted her own work seems to miss the point of an event score entirely. In the two score variations quoted above, Ono refers to the performer in the third person - and makes it clear that the performer may be either male or female. Thus there is no sense of an "original" performance - or any sense of priority for the artist's own performances - even after the fact. The texts are not so much documents of a singular performance as the performances are realizations of the score. And whether these realizations are made by the artist herself or another performer - or whether they are made in 1964 or 2007 - makes little difference in this regard. While Allen suggests that performances of the sixties and seventies might be reenacted "in order to be reproduced, in order to exist," she seems to recognize that there is more than this behind Ono's 2003 performance when she notes that Ono mounted her Paris performance "not merely to ensure the continued existence of her work, but in order to make a difference in the present."

Having conceived Cut Piece as an event score, Ono foresaw the work's realization in a succession of presents. And from the start, she understood that in each of these presents the work would be transformed - not from any authentic original, but from an idea into an experience - each one distinct from the others. Ono has described her instruction works - or scores - as "seeds," activated individually and collectively in the minds and actions of those who receive them. And as is often the case with her work, this germinating idea is manifest in multiple variations.

At earlier performances of Cut Piece, Ono has discussed the work in several different ways. As will be clarified below, she has characterized it as a test of her commitment to life as an artist, as a challenge to artistic ego, as a gift, and as a spiritual act. Critics over the years have interpreted Cut Piece as a striptease, a protest against violence and against war (specifically the Vietnam War), and most recently (and most frequently) as a feminist work. In September 2003, at the age of seventy, Ono performed Cut Piece in Paris "for world peace." Thirty - nine years after her first performance of the work, she told Reuters News Agency that she did it "against ageism, against racism, against sexism, and against violence." Although neither Ono nor her critics framed Cut Piece as a feminist work in the 1960s when she was first performing it, she has clearly subsumed the subsequent feminist interpretations of her piece into her own revised intention all these years later.

John Lennon noted on more than one occasion that Ono was "the world's most famous unknown artist." Although Ono had already established a fairly substantial reputation in London by the time she first met Lennon in November 1966, her subsequent liaison with the married Beatle soon eclipsed her growing reputation as a prominent avant - garde artist. And after marrying Lennon she became "the woman who broke up the Beatles," and consequently an object of scorn in the worldwide press. In addition to losing her artistic identity (in the popular press) and being labeled a homewrecker, Ono bore the brunt of an onslaught of racism and sexism that is still hard to fathom thirty - odd years later. It is hardly surprising then that she now offers her performance against racism and against sexism. And, having last performed it in the eighth decade of her life, ageism has become part of her personal experience as well. To borrow Higgins's metaphor, she is rolling with the waves (or perhaps the punches).

In recent years, even before the current vogue for "reenactment," Ono's work has become an increasingly popular subject of art - historical reclamation, culminating in the recent retrospective exhibition and book, Yes Yoko Ono. Since her reemergence onto the art scene (having been virtually ignored by the artworld during her years with Lennon) with a small exhibition of bronzes at the Whitney Museum in 1989, the majority of authors who have considered her work as a visual artist (or a recording artist, for that matter) have presented her work as "proto - feminist," typically citing Cut Piece, as a major example from the sixties. The act of art historical description and interpretation is a form of "reenactment" as well, of course. Allen's contention that performances might be reenacted "to catch up with the spectacle, in order to be reproduced, in order to exist," seems to imply that the "event" of the performance is a "media event" of sorts - prompting the consequential press (or art - historical literature) as its objective. In the case of the performance reenactments of which she writes, however, it seems more likely that it is exactly the other way around. That is, it is the art - historical attention that prompts the "reenactments."

While Ono's own earlier discussions of the work's inspiration and "meaning" certainly accommodate any number of different readings, the current dominance of feminist approaches - something the artist herself has clearly accepted and reinvested into her 2003 performance - or at least her discussion of it - has had the cumulative effect of recasting Cut Piece as one - dimensional - and in the process ironically marginalizing the very work these feminist scholars seek to reclaim for history - and indeed have. As shall become clear, the differences between Ono's own earlier explanations of the piece and the feminist framings by critics writing since Ono's 1989 reemergence are substantial, though certainly not irreconcilable. These differences can be understood, of course, in the context of the hermeneutics to which Higgins alludes in the epigraph. Elsewhere, he has proposed that hermeneutics is an ideal approach with which to critically consider Fluxus performances. Paraphrasing Hans - Georg Gadamer, Higgins explains:

The performer performs the work. He or she establishes a horizon of experience - what is done, its implications and whatever style the performer uses are all aspects of this horizon.

The viewer has his or her own horizon of experience. He or she watches the performance, and the horizons are matched up together. To some extent there is a fusion of these horizons (Horizontverschmelzung). When the horizons fuse, wholly or in part, they are bent, warped, displaced, altered. The performance ends, and the horizons are no longer actively fused. The viewer examines his or her horizon. It is changed, for the better or for the worse. The best piece is the one that permanently affects the recipient's horizon, and the worst is the piece which the recipient, acting in good faith, cannot accept at all. [3]

While Ono's Cut Piece is not necessarily a Fluxus work, Gadamer's hermeneutic model is entirely appropriate, as I will demonstrate below. But first, a review of the work's critical reception is in order. My first example raises the important question of documentation in addition to the current pervasiveness of the work's feminist interpretation.

In 1992 artist Lynn Hershman was commissioned to re - document Cut Piece for European television. Working from photos and texts, as well as a first - hand account of one of Ono's performances that a colleague of hers had seen, Hershman created a fifteen - minute video documentation of a 1993 performance staged with three actors specifically for this purpose. Her attempts to interview Ono for the project were unsuccessful. Cut Piece: A Video Homage to Yoko Ono concludes with a discussion between art historians Moira Roth and Whitney Chadwick; the tape had been produced with the classroom in mind, Hershman told an interviewer in 1993.

One of the most obvious ways in which the video seems to deviate from the original performance score is in its splicing together of three performances by three different women. Hershman saw Cut Piece in terms of "feminism, violence, and risk" and recreated it with the idea of "video cutting as a type of violence as well." When asked why she chose to present performances by three women, Hershman replied: "I think she represented everywoman, not just one." [4]

Another scene, in which a man from the audience approaches the stage and raises the scissors in a threatening gesture (though ultimately lowering his arm and simply cutting her dress) is based on written accounts of a similar event that is said to have occurred during the first performance in Kyoto.

While some of the earlier accounts of Cut Piece performances refer to the audience's behavior as sexually aggressive, it is not until Barbara Haskell and John G. Hanhardt's 1991 book, Yoko Ono: Objects and Arias, that Cut Piece is given a specifically feminist reading - and a somewhat qualified feminist reading at that:

Running through much of Ono's work is a bold commentary on women. Yet far from being strident feminist tracts on the subordination and victimization of women, her pieces achieve power because of their ambiguity; their willingness to forfeit the illusion of politically proper thinking throws responsibility for judgment upon the viewer. [5]

Three years later, though, in Marcia Tanner's catalogue essay for the 1994 Bad Girls exhibition, the author calls Cut Piece "fiercely feminist in content" and explains:

Ono's inspiration for Cut Piece was the legend of the Buddha, who had renounced his life of privilege to wander the world, giving whatever was asked of him. His soul achieved supreme enlightenment when he allowed a tiger to devour his body, and Ono saw parallels between the Buddha's selfless giving and the artist's. When addressing serious issues - in this case voyeurism, sexual aggression, gender subordination, violation of a woman's personal space, violence against women - Ono invariably found means to combine dangerous confrontation with poetry, spirituality, personal vulnerability, and edgy laughter. [6]

Within five years, Haskell and Hanhardt's rather tentative feminist interpretation had become dominant, cropping up regularly in the popular press as well. Cut Piece wasn't always a feminist statement, however. Cut Piece is an incredibly rich and poetic work that raises questions about the nature of the artist - audience relationship, and in so doing, deliberately offers its performers, audiences, and critics an opportunity to project their own "meaning" into the work.

While Ono clearly has no objections to the feminist readings that currently prevail, her recent comments also suggest that she understands that "hindsight is twentytwenty." In 1994 interviewer Robert Enright asked her, while discussing one of her films, "Did you think of yourself as a proto - feminist?" She responded: "I didn't have any notion of feminism. When I went to London and got together with John that was the biggest macho scene imaginable. That's when I made the statement 'Woman is the Nigger of the World.'"7 It was 1969 when she made that statement to Nova, a British women's magazine. And in 1972 she and Lennon would issue a controversial pop single of the same title.

Two years earlier, after she had met Lennon, but before she had "gotten together" with him, she directed a performance of Cut Piece as part of a "happening." The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream Extravaganza at London's Alexandra Palace in April 1967 was the epitome of swinging London - and the epitome of the macho scene to which Ono referred. Lennon was in the audience that night, and the band Pink Floyd was also on the bill. A film of the event shows Ono's then - husband, Tony Cox, presiding over the performance, which featured model Carol Mann. An enormous crowd presses against Mann, who is perched on a large stepladder, wearing granny glasses and smoking a cigarette. In contrast to the solemn air that envelops Ono in her own performances of Cut Piece, the Alexandra Palace performance seems a mob scene - a spectacle. While one would be hard - pressed to present this performance as feminist, Ono clearly accepted authorship of this performance as photographs of this event were used in subsequent publicity for her later concerts.

How, then, did Ono herself talk about Cut Piece when she was first performing it? Discussing the work in a 1967 article in a London underground magazine, Ono told her interviewers: It was a form of giving, giving and taking. It was a kind of criticism against artists, who are always giving what they want to give. I wanted people to take whatever they wanted to, so it was very important to say you can cut wherever you want to. It is a form of giving that has a lot to do with Buddhism. There's a small allegorical story about Buddha. He left his castle with his wife and children and was walking towards a mountain to go into meditation. As he was walking along, a man said that he wanted Buddha's children because he wanted to sell them or something. So Buddha gave him his children. Then someone said he wanted Buddha's wife and he gave him his wife. Someone calls that he is cold, so Buddha gives him his clothes. Finally a tiger comes along and says he wants to eat him and Buddha lets the tiger eat him. And in the moment the tiger eats him, it became enlightened or something. That's a form of total giving as opposed to reasonable giving like "logically you deserve this" or "I think this is good, therefore I am giving this to you." [8]

This is the very same story alluded to by Bad Girls author Tanner, above. Yet Tanner characterizes the story as a kind of poetic spirituality in which Ono cloaked her "serious issues," namely feminist issues.

By 1973 Ono was widely considered a "radical feminist." Only a year earlier, for example, the record Woman is the Nigger of the World had been greeted with great controversy in the mainstream press. Yet in 1974 she discussed Cut Piece at length in an autobiographical essay written for a Japanese magazine - with no reference at all to feminist politics.

Traditionally, the artist's ego is in the artist's work. In other words, the artist must give the artist's ego to the audience. I had always wanted to produce work without ego in it. I was thinking of this motif more and more, and the result of this was Cut Piece.

Instead of giving the audience what the artist chooses to give, the artist gives what the audience chooses to take. That is to say, you cut and take whatever part you want; that was my feeling about its purpose. I went onto the stage wearing the best suit I had. To think that it would be OK to use the cheapest clothes because it was going to be cut anyway would be wrong; it's against my intentions.

I was poor at the time, and it was hard. This event I repeated in several different places, and my wardrobe got smaller and smaller. However, when I sat on stage in front of the audience, I felt that this was my genuine contribution. This is how I really felt.

The audience was quiet and still, and I felt that everyone was holding their breath. While I was doing it, I was staring into space. I felt kind of like I was praying. I also felt that I was willingly sacrificing myself. [9]

The idea of giving the audience what it wishes to take is very much bound up with hermeneutics - or reception theory - the idea that it is the viewer as much as the artist who invests a work of art with meaning. Cut Piece's reception - the meaning with which it is invested - is as varied as its audiences.

One of the earliest reviews of Cut Piece that I have been able to find is of Ono's second performance of the work in August 1964 in Tokyo. The headline translates as: "The title is 'Stripping' - avant - garde musician, Ono Yoko's recital." And it continues: In the center of the stage without any props, under the hazy spot light, a woman sits. From their seats, members of the audience ran up onto the stage and started to cut off her clothing with scissors. Soon, the scissors cut even to her underwear. With the theme 'Stripping,' it is a scene from Ono Yoko's recital held at Sogetsu Art Center the other day. [10]

After listing the other works performed, it concludes: "Now, one may say 'there, the sign of essence was performed' and bow down his head, and others may say 'If no sounds were made, give me back my money' and raise their arms in the air. Anyway, avant - garde music is a mysterious thing." This anything - but - feminist reading of Cut Piece in the Japanese press can perhaps be better understood when one realizes that another piece on the program, listed in this review as Chair Piece, was actually titled Strip Tease for Three. It involved simply a curtain rising to reveal three empty chairs on the stage and then descending.

In June 1968, however, a similar characterization of Cut Piece - along with a suite of provocative photographs - was presented in the pages of TAB, a New York "gentlemen's magazine." With a headline, "The Hippiest Artistic Happening: 'Step Up and Strip Me Nude,'" the brief article continued:

Though Time magazine called her performance "music of the mind," and Art and Artists in London described it as "the next logical step," Yoko Ono's "art" striptease still seems like a striptease to excited viewers. The difference here is that Yoko, a Japanese lovely now performing on the continent, does not take her clothing off . . . the audience does it for her. Guys who used to sit back and yell "Take it off!" now have the golden opportunity to take it off for her. [11]

Published only weeks prior to the revelation of Ono's affair with Lennon, the author's characterization of the artist as a "Japanese lovely" stands in stark contrast to the descriptions of her as "ugly" that would soon predominate.

A canonically feminist work since the 1990s, Cut Piece began its life quite differently. But Ono's aesthetics of reception accommodate both these readings and many more too numerous to review in these pages. Interpretations of Cut Piece as a feminist work and as a striptease are ultimately at least as revealing of those respective interpreters as they are of the artist who conceived the work. For if Cut Piece is both these things and more, it is foremost a work that challenges our notions of what a work of art is and who actually makes it - a conceptual work.

Curiously, Cut Piece has received considerably more press in the past seventeen years than during the three or four years that Ono initially performed it - all incidentally before her famous liaison with Lennon. And for the most part, this expert opinion has been based on previously published descriptions and photographs. As it turns out, while Ono's staff had unknowingly informed artist Lynn Hershman otherwise, there is a film of the 1965 Carnegie Recital Hall performance of Cut Piece made by Albert and David Maysles - and others as well. I discovered this film in late 1996 while researching a catalogue essay for Ono's 1996 FLY exhibition and subsequently found other films as well. While I had screened it at conferences in 1997, its first major public showings occurred within the Out of Actions exhibition at L.A. MoCA in 1998. From this point on, most writers and performers worked from this film document.

As noted earlier, Ono had always intended Cut Piece to be performed by men or women. The first documented male performance of Cut Piece (that I've been able to find, anyway) took place in Central Park on September 9, 1966, as part of the Fourth Annual Avant - Garde Festival organized by Charlotte Moorman. Ono had been scheduled to perform Cut Piece, but left suddenly for London and the Destruction in Art Symposium. Ono's performance had already been publicized though, so Moorman hastily arranged for two men to perform the piece in Ono's stead. Apparently facing problems with nudity and her parks permit, the performers appeared in large black bags that were cut off instead of their clothing - a conflation of Ono's Bag Piece and Cut Piece. For what was in all likelihood the first male performance of Cut Piece, then, the performers wore bags, under which they were fully clothed. Due to specifically stated park policy, nudity was prohibited.

The next known male solo performance of Cut Piece was in the fall of 1968, and the performer was Jon Hendricks, then director of the Judson Gallery, and now Ono's exhibitions manager as well as curator of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection. Hendricks was a guest instructor for a "Semester in New York" program sponsored by a consortium of Midwest colleges. The students were living at the Paris Hotel, where the course was taught. Hendricks performed Cut Piece as part of their introduction to the course.

I was kind of nervous so I decided to do Cut Piece. I bought a suit at the thrift store, put the scissors down in front of me and explained the work. I saw it as a kind of leveling of the student - teacher relationship and a way of getting into something that was timely in terms of both performance and social issues - the war in Vietnam, riots, and the feeling of some of us against authority in society. And here I was, the authority figure . . . . [12] Hendricks's performance seems to have been more about challenging the authority of the performer rather than his vulnerability.

Thus a feminist interpretation of the piece seems to presume a female performer - something never mandated by the artist herself. This in turn likely reflects a commonly held notion that an original performer and an original performance constitute an authentic version of the piece. Curiously, more recent performances by men (Jim Bovino at the Walker Art Center in 2001 and John Noga at the University of Akron in 2007, for example) have more closely kept to Ono's score. Both Bovino and Noga assumed the seated position indicated in Ono's instruction and maintained a calm, passive demeanor. Thus performed, the more recent feminist framings seem irrelevant - and the "content" seems more clearly to be the actions of the audience members themselves.

This notion of the "original" performance work that underlies much of the recent interest in performance "reenactment" might well hold true for other performances by other artists, but not of performances encoded in scores - Fluxus or otherwise. Marina Abramović, who recently performed a number of well - known performance works from the 1960s and 1970s at the Guggenheim Museum (Seven Easy Pieces, November 2005), spoke about her own work of the 1970s at a symposium that followed the week of performances: "We never wanted to repeat things . . . . We never even wanted to be photographed. We were pure pure pure." [13] Curiously, her week of historic performances was made possible by what Nancy Princenthal characterizes as a "radical response."

By treating the irremediably category - resistant performance form as if it were, say, popular music, and translating "instructions" as "score," a performance could be re - presented by anyone with the necessary stamina and determination (no small qualifications). If the original artists were credited and paid, the whole messy medium could be brought into the world of copyright and distribution and licensing fees - in a word, into the marketplace. To use another mouthful of a word, it could also, Abramović argues, thereby be brought into the academic discourse of history." [14]

Of course, this concept of performance score has existed within the Fluxus orbit since at least the early 1960s - the very period at stake in Abramović's project. More problematic, however, is the idea that new performances provide an object of sorts for art historical study. As demonstrated above, reformulations of Cut Piece have arguably contributed to a distortion of the work, more so than an illumination of it. On the other hand, the nature of Ono's work seems not merely to allow this, but encourage it. Indeed, one might argue that Cut Piece, more than anything else, exploits the hermeneutic circle among artist, score, performer, audience, and critic.

Readings of Cut Piece as feminist, pacifist, anti - authoritarian, Buddhist, Christian - and even as a striptease - are all valid. The many and varied interpretations of Cut Piece by artist, performers, audiences, and critics testify to the work's great power - a power embedded in its score. But most importantly, Cut Piece is an incredibly rich and poetic work that poses seldom - asked questions about the nature of art itself and in the process opens itself up to a multitude of readings. To assert that any of its performances or interpretations are definitive denies the work the very multivalence at its core and minimizes the qualities that make it forever vital and alive.

NOTES 1. Dick Higgins, Postface, New York: Something Else Press, 1964, 2.

2. Jennifer Allen, "'Einmal ist keinmal': Observations on Reenactment," in Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art, edited by Sven Lütticken, Rotterdam: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, 2005, 211-13.

3. Dick Higgins, "Fluxus Theory and Reception," in The Fluxus Reader, New York: Academy Editions, 1998, 230.

4. E - mail correspondence with the author, March 28, 1997.

5. Barbara Haskell and John G. Hanhardt, Yoko Ono: Objects and Arias, Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 90.

6. Marcia Tanner, "Mother Laughed: The 'Bad Girls' Avant - Garde," in Bad Girls, New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1994, 61.

7. Robert Enright, "Instructions in the Marital Arts: A Conversation with Yoko Ono," Border Crossings 13,1 (Winter 1994): 37.

8. Roger Perry and Tony Elliott, "Yoko Ono," Unit (December 1967): 26-27.

9. Yoko Ono, "If I Don't Give Birth Now, I Will Never Be Able To," Just Me! The Very First Autobiographical Essay by the World's Most Famous Japanese Woman, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1986, 34-36. This article was originally published in the summer of 1974 in the Japanese magazine, Bungei Shunju, during Ono's "Yoko Ono and Plastic Ono Super Band: Let's Have a Dream" tour. This translation was commissioned by the author from Akira Suzuki.

10. "The title is 'Stripping' - avant - garde musician, Ono Yoko's recital," Shukan Taishu 36,10 (September 1964): 1. This translation was commissioned by the author from Sumie Ota. Thanks to Mikihiko Hori for providing publication details for this previously unidentified press cutting from the artist's files.

11. "The Hippiest Artistic Happening: 'Step Up and Strip Me Nude,'" TAB 18,2 (June 1968): 65-68.

12. Jon Hendricks's personal communication with the author, New York City, February 4, 1998. In a personal communication of June 6, 2001, Hendricks recalled that he was seated in a chair for his performance.

13. Abramović, quoted in Nancy Princenthal, "Back for One Night Only!" Art in America (February 2006): 90.

14. Princenthal, 90.

KEVIN CONCANNON is Associate Professor of Art History at the Myers School of Art at The University of Akron-Ohio. With John Noga, he is curator of Yoko Ono Imagine Peace Featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace, currently traveling, and Agency: Art and Advertising, scheduled for September 12 through November 8, 2008 at the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngtown State University.

© 2008 Kevin Concannon

Published in PAJ - A Journal of Performance and Art Sept 90 (2008), pp. 81-93

web.mac.com/kconcan/iWeb/PDFs/2008/CutPiecePAJ.pdf

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Yoko Ono's CUT PIECE: From Text to Performance and Back Again by Kevin Concannon

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Yoko Ono's CUT PIECE : From Text to Performance and