1 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTnews 69, January 1971, 22–39.
2 Robert Bersson, “Building the Literature of Art Pedagogy,” College Art Association News 30, no. 5 (September 2005): 1, 3, 39–40.
3 Howard Singerman, Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American University (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999).
4 Hannah Wilke, “Stand Up,” a song on the album Revolutions per Minute (The Art Record), recorded in New York by Ronald Feldman Fine Art, and the Charing Hill Company, 1982.
5 Griselda Pollock, “What’s Wrong with Images of Women?” in The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1992), 140.
6 Lucy Lippard, “Going Around in Circles,” in From Site to Vision: The Woman’s Building in Contemporary Culture, ed. Sondra Hale and Terry Wolverton (Los Angeles: Otis College of Art and Design, 2011), 12.
7 From Site to Vision.
8 Jane F. Gerhard (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2013).
9 Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds. Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 5.
10 Steven Henry Madoff, ed., Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century), (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 39.
11 Frances Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 112.
12 Octave Uzanne, The Modern Parisienne. Transl. William Heineman (London: William Heineman, 1912) 129. Originally published as Parisiennes de ce temps en leurs divers milieux, états et conditions (Paris: Mercure de France, 1910).
13 Howard Singerman, Art Subjects, 89.
14 Gyorgy Kepes, Language of Vision (Chicago: Paul Theobold, 1944), 201.
15 Vincent Katz and Martin Brody, Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 188.
16 Mary D. Garrard, “Of Men, Women and Art: Some Historical Reflections,” Art Journal 34, no. 4 (January, 1976), 324.
17 Susan S. Klein et al., eds. Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity Through Education, (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007).
18 David and Myra Sadker and Karen R. Zittelman, Still Failing at Fairness: How Gender Bias Cheats Girls and Boys in School and What We Can Do About It (New York: 2009), 87.
19 Robert Maynard Hutchins, Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), 3.
20 Amelia Jones, Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in Feminist Art History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), quoted in Jane F. Gerhard, The Dinner Party: Judy Chicago and the Power of Popular Feminism, 1970–2007 (University of Georgia Press, 2013), 268.
21 Madoff, Art School, 7.
22 Art Journal 58, no. 1 (Spring 1999).
23 Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Picador, 1966), 15.
24 Madoff, Art School, 4.
25 David and Myra Sadker and Karen R. Zittelman, Still Failing at Fairness: How Gender Bias Cheats Girls and Boys in School and What We Can Do About It (New York: Scribner, 2009), 8–9.
26 Ibid., 20–21.
27 Anthologized in Joanna Frueh, Cassandra L. Langer, and Arlene Raven, eds., New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 42.
28 When I use first names only, it is either that I am protecting the privacy of people who do not have public visibility in the art world or, occasionally, because I have no access to the class lists to be able to identify them more fully.
29 Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler, eds., Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), xx.
30 Anna Quindlen, “The Leadership Lid,” Newsweek, Oct. 3, 2008.
31 Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” The Atlantic, July/August 2012.
32 James Elkins, Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2009), iv.
33 Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie-Smith, Women and Art: Contested Territory (New York: Crown, 1999).
34 Martin Rosenberg and Frances Thurber, Gender Matters in Art Education (Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, 2007), 48.
35 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 39.
36 bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), 1, x.
37 Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Free Press, 2005).
38 Deborah Siegel, Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 155.
39 Ariel Levy, “This bawdy world of boobs and gams shows how far we’ve left to go,” The Guardian, February 16, 2006.
40 Mary Ann Gawelek, Maggie Mulqueen, and Jill Mattuck Tarule, “Woman to Woman: Understanding the Needs of Our Female Students,” in Gender and Academe: Feminist Pedagogy and Politics, ed. Sara Munson Deats and Lagretta Talent Lenker (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).
41 Gawelek et al, “Woman to Woman,” 186.
42 Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 214, 226.
43 Charlotte Templin, “The Male-Dominated Curriculum in English: How Did We Get Here and Where Are We Going?” in Gender and Academe, 51–52.
44 Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975).
45 Catherine G. Krupnick, “Women and Men in the Classroom: Inequality and its Remedies,” On Teaching and Learning: The Journal of the Harvard-Danforth Center, vol. 1 (1985): 18–25.
46 Ibid.
47 bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody, 116.
48 Michael Kimmel and Thomas Mosmiller, eds. Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776–1990: A Documentary History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), xix.
49 Ibid., 209.
50 James Elkins, Art Critiques: A Guide (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2011), viii–ix.
51 Howard Singerman, Art Subjects, 211.
52 Ibid., 161.
53 Sheila Tarrant, ed. Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power (New York: Routledge, 2008).
54 bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 36.
55 bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody, 70.
56 Kyle Brilliante, “Engendering the Classroom: Experiences of a Man in Women’s and Gender Studies” in Sheila Tarrant, ed., Men Speak Out, 224, 226.
57 Frances Borzello, At Home: The Domestic Interior in Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006), 16.
58 Howard Singerman, Art Subjects, 20.
59 Ibid.
60 Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 4–5.
61 Ibid., 113, 107.
62 James Elkins, Art Critiques: A Guide (Washington DC: New Academia Publishing, 2011).
63 Viki Thompson Wylder, The Journal of Gender Issues in Art and Education, vol. 3, 2002–3.
64 Karen Keifer-Boyd, “From Content to Form: Judy Chicago’s Pedagogy with Reflections by Judy Chicago,” Studies in Art Education, 2007.
65 Madoff, Art School, 10.
66 Ibid., 3.
67 Ibid., 72–73.
68 Malu Byrne, “Running from the City,” New York Times, May 27, 2012.
69 Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 59.
70 Ibid., 60.
71 Ann Douglas, “Crashing the Top,” Salon (October 11, 1999): at http://www.salon.com/1999/10/11/douglas/; accessed September 11, 2013.
72 Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, 55.
73 Dushko Petrovich and Roger White, eds., Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment (Brooklyn: Paper Monument, 2012).
74 Howard Singerman, Art Subjects, 173.
75 Ernesto Pujol, “On the Ground: Practical Observations for Regenerating Art Education,” in Madoff, Art School, 3.
76 Charles Renfro, “Undesigning the New Art School,” in Madoff, Art School, 162, 164.
77 Michael Graves, “Drawing with a Purpose,” New York Times, September 2, 2012.
78 Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, 29.
79 Holland Cotter, “China’s Legacy: Let a Million Museums Bloom,” New York Times, July 4, 2008.
80 Holland Cotter, “The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!” New York Times, February 12, 2009.
81 Ute Meta Bauer, “Under Pressure,” in Madoff, Art School, 221.
82 Ibid.
83 David Barboza, “Schooling the Artists’ Republic of China,” New York Times, March 30, 2008.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Steven Henry Madoff, “States of Exception,” in Madoff, Art School, 275.
87 Fred Wilson, “Questionnaires,” in Madoff, Art School, 300.
88 Ernesto Pujol, “On the Ground: Practical Observations for Regenerating Art Education,” 13.
89 Marilyn G. Stewart and Sydney R. Walker, Rethinking Curriculum in Art (Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, 2005).
90 Rosenberg and Thurber, Gender Matters.
91 Stewart and Walker, Rethinking Curriculum in Art.
92 Ibid.
93 Rosenberg and Thurber, Gender Matters in Art Education, xvi.
94 David and Myra Sadker and Karen R. Zittelman, Still Failing at Fairness: How Gender Bias Cheats Girls and Boys in School and What We Can Do About It (New York: Scribner, 2009), 87.
95 Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).
96 Robert Storr, “Dear Colleague,” in Madoff, Art School, 65.
97 Stewart and Walker, Rethinking Curriculum in Art.
98 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 207.
The Cock and Cunt play is to be performed in a highly stylized manner. Words are to be spoken haltingly and in stilted form. Poses and movements should be awkward, slow, and jerky, resembling the motion of puppets. Arms and legs are held akimbo, palms upright, and feet pointing out. Voices are highly exaggerated and in singsong rhythm with the body movements. Male voice is low and authoritarian. Female voice is high and obsequious. This piece can be very effective as a way of raising consciousness about gender roles and attitudes. In order to employ it as such, the facilitator can use a number of methods including the following:
(1) Separate the class into two groups: “male” and “female.” If there are men in the class, ask them to play the female role and ask the women to take the male part. Give everyone a copy of the play. After they have read it, ask each group to read their parts together. Do this several times until everyone becomes familiar with the words. Then begin clapping hands in a brisk one-two, one-two rhythm. Everyone then reads the words along with that rhythm until the play goes very smoothly, with everyone reciting their lines.
(2) Ask the class to form a single line. Pass out the script. Then tell everyone to begin walking around the room in a circle, lifting their legs in the one-two, one-two rhythm. Perform the entire play this way until everyone feels comfortable. Then ask people to split up into teams of two in which each person takes a turn in the male and then the female role. After about thirty minutes of practice, ask the teams to perform the play twice; one team at a time so that everyone gets a chance to play both roles.
(3) Pass out the script to everyone assembled. Tell them to divide into teams of two and, if men are present, ask each person to take the role of the opposite gender. Show them how to perform the piece in puppet-like fashion. Then let each team practice in a separate part of the space. After a while, request that the group reassemble and ask for volunteer teams to perform the piece.
After the performances, it is very important to have a discussion using the circle-based method so that everyone has a chance to speak. The questions to solicit responses could include: Which part did you like better? Why? How did you feel about playing a “man”/“woman”? Usually, the problems that developed in the process of performing the piece indicate the difficulties women have in being assertive, expressing their own sexuality, or in sharing housework. For men, the issues might involve fear or hatred of the feminine, distaste for violence, discomfort with the male role, or a resistance to doing housework. Whatever concerns participants raise after they have performed the play should be discussed, either at that session or a later time.
Two women, dressed identically in black leotards, enter stage left. On stage right is a large sink full of dirty dishes. Stage center, an oversized bed. Regular lighting. Or the performance can take place in a large room with audience seated on floor facing performers. First woman (SHE) has a plastic vagina strapped to her crotch. SHE crosses stage to sink, turns and faces audience, head turned toward second woman (HE), who has followed SHE across stage and stopped beside her, also facing audience. HE has a plastic phallus strapped to his crotch.
Lights darken. Single spot on performers and sink.
SHE: “Will you help me do the dishes?”
HE: (Shocked) “Help you do the dishes?”
SHE: “Well, they’re your dishes as much as mine!”
HE: “But you don’t have a cock!” (grasps cock and begins stroking it proudly)
SHE: “What’s that got to do with it?”
HE: “A cock means you don’t wash dishes. You have a cunt. A cunt means you wash dishes.”
SHE: (looking at cunt) “I don’t see where it says that on my cunt.”
HE: (pointing at her cunt) “Stu-upid, your cunt/pussy/gash/hole or whatever it is, is round like a dish. Therefore it’s only right for you to wash dishes. My cock is long and hard and straight and meant to shoot like guns or missiles. Anyone can see that.” (emphasis on cock, long, hard, straight shoot; strokes cock on each emphasis)
HE turns toward SHE, begins to move in erotic manner, as if having sexual relations. SHE follows his motion, still in one-two rhythm.
“Speaking of shooting, I need to shoot—off, that is, you know—drop my load, shoot my wad, get my rocks off—you know—I have to; I have to; you know; come, that is. I have to, no matter what—I have to come! ”
(voice becomes progressively louder—last phrase said facing audience)
HE and SHE walk in jerky manner in line to bed. HE mounts SHE (spotlight on bed).
SHE lying spread-eagled on bed with head hung over end of bed toward audience, smiling deliriously. HE is on top of her with his plastic phallus in her plastic vagina, humping her mechanically, eyes glazed but looking into audience.
HE: (voice building to crescendo) “I-I-I—me-me-me—I have to—I need to—I must—I-I-I-I—I! ” (falls on her gasping, as if after climax)
Silence. Couple get up mechanically and walk as before to stand in front of bed.
Single spot. Couple standing center stage in front of bed.
SHE: “Was it all right? Did I do it right?”
HE: “Yes, yes, it was fine. Now let’s go to sleep.”
SHE: (almost wistfully) “You know, sometimes I wish I could come too.”
HE: (reprimandingly) “Now, you know you don’t need to come like I do. Your cunt is made to receive.”
SHE: (slowly, in sing-song voice) “I know. My cunt is made to receive.
My cunt has an opening in the middle. Therefore, I must receive. My cunt is shaped like a dish. Therefore I must wash dishes.” (beginning to sing)
“My cunt is shaped like a dish.
Therefore I must wash dishes.”
(next verse sung five times, singing becoming louder and shriller, like a cantata)
“I have a cunt.
I must receive.
I have a cunt.
I must wash dishes.”
HE begins to speak simultaneously with first verse of cantata (in singsong voice, low tones).
“I have a cock.
It is long and hard and straight.
It is shaped like a gun or missile.
Therefore I must shoot.
I must shoot, I must shoot.
I have a cock.”
Next verse is sung three or four times. HE stops. SHE continues singing, HE glares at her for several bars. SHE, embarrassed, stops.
“I have a cock.
I must shoot.
I must shoot.
I have a cock.”
HE: “You know, if you keep all this up, making all these demands on me, like asking me to help with the dishes, and wanting to come and everything—you’re going to castrate me.”
SHE: (timidly) “Castrate you?”
HE: “Yes, castrate me!”
SHE: (scared) “Castrate you?”
HE: “Yes, castrate, castrate . . . castration!”
As he says this last phrase, screaming, he rips off his plastic phallus and begins chasing after her, hitting her with his cock. Lights are all on. As they run, he keeps yelling “castrate,” “castration,” “castrate me.” As they run they knock dishes off sink, pull bedding off bed until SHE sinks to her knees in a pile of bedding. HE keeps beating her fiercely until SHE slumps and dies, lying straight out with the bedding twisted around her. HE glares at her body self-righteously with pursed lips, and in an imperious stance, puts one foot on her body and triumphantly puts his arm in a salute, flexing his whole torso in victory.
HE and SHE rise and walk off stage right, in puppet fashion.
End
Although I have given several commencement speeches, I became quite nervous at the prospect of composing remarks to present here at Smith, the reason being—and my apologies to the male students who are here today—I care passionately about female education and I wanted to say something meaningful to you. In my previous talks at various coed commencements, I had to be careful about what I said because I didn’t wish to exclude the male graduates, something that would have been easy for me to do given my overwhelming desire to address the young women.
In preparation for composing my remarks, I spoke to your president, Ruth Simmons, who urged me to share with you some of what I have learned during the nearly four decades of my career. Let me begin my saying that I have lived the life I wanted to live and, even though it has often been difficult, I have no regrets about the path I chose. However, I do not quite know how much of what I have learned should be shared with you, in part because I am still not sure whether my parents’ failure to warn me about what the world was like helped or harmed me in the end.
From the time I was a young child, I wanted to be an artist and to be a part of art history, a history that I saw represented at the Art Institute of Chicago, which I visited every Saturday from the time I was five years old in order to take art lessons and wander through the galleries. From childhood, I was encouraged in this goal. I was raised in a family that believed in equal rights for women, which was quite unusual at the time, though I did not know this as my parents never told me that their beliefs were not shared by most other people of their generation.
So it should come as no surprise that no one ever pointed out to me the lack of women artists in the Art Institute’s collection—even less than the 5 percent that comprises our nation’s art collections today. At any rate, in addition to being raised to believe that I could be and do what I wanted, I was also taught to believe that the purpose of life was to make a contribution to a better world, an attitude that today, in what is sometimes described as a “post-feminist” world, is often seen as quaint, particularly if one’s idea of making a difference concerns the status of women.
Many of my friends bemoan the fact that too many young women seem unwilling to call themselves feminists, all the while benefitting from the hard work of our generation. I, however, have a different view; one based upon my own experience. When I was in school at UCLA, there were two tenured female faculty members (two more than there were for a good many years thereafter). In fact, one of them had a collection of women’s art.
I would imagine that those people here who are familiar with my career are thinking that I must have really been inspired by these women and by this art collection. On the contrary, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with either of them, nor was I interested in the collection, as I could not imagine why anyone would exclusively collect “women’s art.”
Like many women of my generation, once I began attending school, I learned that it was what men did that was important, a perspective that was not conveyed overtly, but rather through the fact that almost everything we studied was by men. That this was a contradiction to my own desire to do important work did not deter me from pursuing my goals with determination and incredibly hard work.
However—and despite the fact that in my youth I had what might be described as a proto-feminist consciousness—I absolutely did not want to be called a “suffragette,” which is the term that was thrown at me whenever I tried to challenge the overt sexism of my male teachers and, later, that of the L.A. art scene of the sixties, which, if described as “macho,” would be considered an understatement. It took me ten years to realize that, even if I didn’t wish to identify with other women, in the eyes of the art world my gender figured prominently—and negatively.
My singular goal was to be taken seriously by my “fellow” artists (there were few women artists who were visible then). In order to achieve this, I felt compelled to move away from my natural impulses as an artist, impulses that revealed my gender. For even if art has no gender, artists do, and it is often the case that one unconsciously reveals aspects of oneself when one creates art. In my case, my forms tended to be biomorphic and feminine, which was definitely a no-no at that time—the end of the heyday of abstract expressionism and the beginning of minimal art.
It took me a decade of denying my natural impulses to decide that it wasn’t worth it, that I had best be who I was. Would it have helped me if my parents had told me that even though they believed in equal rights for women, not everyone shared their beliefs? Would I have been spared the years of moving away from myself? Or would it have only made me give up before I had even tried? There is no answer to such a question, for who can predict what “might have happened,” but it did trouble me when I was working on these remarks, as I didn’t want to be discouraging in any way.
In my conversation with President Simmons, she told me something that surprised me, that today, many students work for a few years before entering graduate or professional school. This is quite different than my own experience, which involved going directly to graduate school and then into the rough-and-tumble Los Angeles art scene of the sixties.
I must say that almost nothing I learned in school prepared me for the reality of professional life—with one exception. During my first year in graduate school at UCLA, one of the local art stars came for a year’s residency. He was quite different from the rest of the faculty, who tended to be more teachers than artists. Moreover, he was handsome, dashing, and tough.
He allowed me to visit his studio and to see, for the first time, what a “real” artist’s life was like, thereby exposing me to not just the glamour of the art world, but to the many challenges involved in an artmaking life—for example, the need to support a studio and a lifestyle that seemed both frightening and exciting in its level of risk. It was he who first introduced me to the “something’s going to happen” way of living, which involved never getting a full-time job because one’s studio work was full time enough.
This meant living from month to month on meager earnings and hoping that “something would happen” so that the next month’s rent could be paid. I have lived this way for most of my life, only recently moving into a home of my own and, with it, having to deal with the responsibility of a mortgage (something which has definitely curtailed my freedom).
Of course, things were quite different when I graduated; the international art market was just developing and had certainly not yet extended its reach to the West Coast. There was no notion of reaping any real financial success from art, which was good for art but bad for artists.
Last fall, I taught for a semester at Indiana University in Bloomington, my first formal teaching job in more than twenty-five years. Although my studio class was open to both men and women, only women enrolled. They were from twenty-six to sixty in age and all of them had experienced leaving school and facing the void of having no studio, no equipment, limited money, and a lack of context and stimulation in terms of being around other people who were vitally interested in art. Before very long, they all stopped making art. Their solution to this problem was to reenroll in school, sometimes repeatedly, which only served to put off the moment of truth, as it were.
My class was a project class aimed at addressing this very problem, that is, the gap between art school and art professional practice. My students were provided with a group studio and my course was structured to help them move from concept to artmaking to exhibition in the I. M. Pei–designed university art museum, an intense process that involved long hours of work on their part.
Along the way, I learned something very important. Without meaning to, most of our educational institutions infantalize women. Although it is difficult for all students to make the transition from school to life, it is harder for women because, no matter how excellent their education, few of them are schooled in how to become independent in the sense that I am describing, i.e., feeling able to generate what they need for themselves rather than being dependent upon others, be it family, husbands, significant others, or friends.
Once I recognized this, I encouraged my students to find a way to create art without depending upon the facilities of the university so that they would have some experience of what it would be like after they left school. I spent a considerable amount of time during class discussing what was involved in professional art practice, something I had only learned by accident, thanks to the happy coincidence of the residency of the aforementioned art star. Unfortunately, my education came at the price of having to endure many comments like “you cannot be a woman and an artist too.”
When I met this fellow, I—like any of my students at IU—had no idea that becoming a professional artist involved establishing and supporting a studio, generating money for supplies, sustaining myself in the face of the world’s general indifference to art, and most of all, being able to stand up to criticism, which is particularly difficult for women as most of us are raised to want to be loved—I know that I was.
Regarding criticism, another thing I learned from my mentor was the following: “Never read reviews,” he told me. “Just count the column inches of the article and note how many reproductions of your work are included. Then go back to work. That’s what counts—to keep on working, no matter what.” Had I not been given this advice, given the piles of bad reviews I’ve received, there is no way I would be standing here before you, presumably because of my “success.”
But how was I able to achieve such self-confidence that I could overcome my need to be loved, learn to generate the money I needed to make art and run a studio, and most important, disregard what others thought and continue with my own vision, even when it was publicly ridiculed as it has often been? My explanation rests in my childhood and the love and support I received from my parents and also, the lessons I learned from my father about the crucial importance of history, although I cannot recall his ever including women’s history in his lessons.
Nevertheless, I was fortunate in having received such an upbringing. However, it would have not been sufficient had I not applied my father’s lessons about the importance of history by investigating my own heritage as a woman. A few years back, I was at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, where I was engaged in discussions about their becoming the repository of my papers, which, happily, has occurred.
Mary Maples Dunn, then the director (and a former president of Smith) asked me whether my archives should not be in an art institution. My answer was that indeed, my art belonged in such an institution, but that I would not have survived as an artist had I not known about my female predecessors and that consequently, my papers belonged with theirs. For it was only through my discoveries of the stories of such women as Elizabeth Blackwell, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth that I was able to overcome the many obstacles I encountered.
When I experienced rejections or disappointments, I thought about Elizabeth Blackwell’s experience in medical school in Rochester. For the two years she was there, no one ever invited her to dinner and she was sometimes spit upon by women in the street. And I thought: “If she could do it, I can do it.” When I became discouraged, I thought about Susan B. Anthony and how she had stood firm for fifty years, helping to change many of the discriminatory laws against women that allow us to stand together in this place today. And I thought: “If she could do it, I can do it.” When I felt hurt by the attitudes of my colleagues, I thought about Sojourner Truth and how she had stood up to ridicule, humiliation, and prejudice in order to bring her message to the world. And I thought: “If she could do it, I can do it.”
Earlier, I mentioned young women’s discomfort with the word “feminist”—I hope that many of you will come to see that in disowning that word, you disown the history that will allow you to do what you want to do. For only by standing upon the shoulders of your foremothers will it be possible to achieve all that you are capable of doing, a lesson I learned painfully and which I would like to pass on to you.
In terms of learning, I should like to again talk about something that I learned—also at IU—in order to share another lesson with you. A male graduate theater student enrolled in a seminar class I team-taught entitled “Feminist Art: History, Philosophy, and Context,” and asked if he could add a performance section to the exhibition of my project class. He wanted to re-create some of the performances I had done with my students during the seventies at Womanhouse, one of the first openly female-centered art installations. Also, he wished to employ my pedagogical methods to create new, more up-to-date performances with a group of female theater students.
I was quite enthusiastic about this idea and looked forward to seeing what they might come up with. As it turned out, a number of the original performances involved the theme of conflicting desires. The most effective of these pieces focused on one young woman and a clown, who kept bringing her balloons which she first blew up, then attempted to juggle. These balloons were labeled: parents, education, friends, career, relationship and baby. All important parts of life but too much for anyone to juggle, no matter how able they might be. Sure enough, one or more of the balloons kept getting away from her.
The reason I am describing this performance to you is that I believe that one of the pernicious lies that has been told to your generation is that one can “have it all.” Although I can’t explain how I knew it, I always knew was that this was not possible. Again, I looked to history and discovered that those women who had achieved at the level at which I had set my sights had been childless and those that were not had suffered constant guilt at not being able to meet the demands of both their work and their child.
Although I would be the first to say that this situation is not a fair one, I must also state that I would hate for you to discover that choices must be made after you had already made those whose consequences will shape your life for years to come. I believe that it is exceedingly important to be clear about your goals and to be willing to construct your life in a way that makes them possible to achieve. For it is not a lack of talent, intelligence, or ability that has prevented from women from fully realizing their potential, it is a life structure that makes too many demands.
I realize that I have said some things that are not popular and that, if you follow my advice, your choices will not always be popular either. But if I am truly to pass on lessons about what I have learned and also what I have done to achieve my own successes, I would be less than honest if I did not include some uncomfortable facts.
In closing, let me congratulate you on your graduation, wish you success in your chosen career, and wish for you the sense that you have made a difference in whatever sphere becomes your own. Last but not least, I feel obliged to tell you that feeling that my life has had a purpose has brought me the most intense satisfaction, a satisfaction I hope that you will all experience in the years to come.
I have been exceedingly fortunate to have worked with my editor, Mindy Werner, on numerous publications over the years of our literary relationship, which dates back to the early 1990s. But this book presented both of us with a formidable challenge because my writing style tends towards narration. This time, I was asked to balance a narrative approach with a series of themes, which was very difficult for me. Without Mindy as my guide, there was no way that I could have accomplished it so I owe her a huge debt of gratitude. And of course, as always, I am indebted to my husband, Donald Woodman, who is both a wonderful photographer and a great life partner. We were aided in the many tasks that an illustrated publication requires by our assistant, Chris Hensley, and I want to thank him for his help. On the publishing side, this is the second book I’ve done with Christopher Lyon, the creative Executive Editor of The Monacelli Press. I would like to express my appreciation for his input, his help, and most of all, his faith in me. Thanks are also due to Stacee Gravelle Lawrence, the copy editor, the designer, Gina Rossi, who worked hard to make this book visually lively, and the resourceful Michael Vagnetti, production manager at Monacelli.
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