1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:06,500 MUSIC: Women Is Losers by Janis Joplin 2 00:00:10,460 --> 00:00:14,540 It's true that the 1960s had been a time of incredible change. 3 00:00:18,340 --> 00:00:20,180 But by 1970, 4 00:00:20,180 --> 00:00:24,300 the height of female achievement still looked a bit like this. 5 00:00:24,300 --> 00:00:25,740 The lure of a crown, 6 00:00:25,740 --> 00:00:27,660 60 countries from all over the globe 7 00:00:27,660 --> 00:00:29,740 have sent a beautiful girls to London 8 00:00:29,740 --> 00:00:31,380 tonight in search of a title. 9 00:00:32,860 --> 00:00:36,020 Miss World was supposed to be every girl's dream, 10 00:00:36,020 --> 00:00:37,860 a parade of perfection, 11 00:00:37,860 --> 00:00:39,980 what you could achieve if you 12 00:00:39,980 --> 00:00:43,580 clucked and pummelled your body into submission. 13 00:00:43,580 --> 00:00:46,780 And being sized up like a piece of meat was so completely 14 00:00:46,780 --> 00:00:49,660 normal for women, it was broadcast live on television 15 00:00:49,660 --> 00:00:51,820 and watched by millions. 16 00:00:51,820 --> 00:00:55,780 And her measurements are 36, 24, 36. 17 00:00:55,780 --> 00:00:58,020 Girls, would you please turn... 18 00:00:58,020 --> 00:00:59,380 Urgh! 19 00:01:00,860 --> 00:01:05,660 But 1970 was also the year that women around the world rose up... 20 00:01:07,540 --> 00:01:10,340 ..and used their bodies to fight back... 21 00:01:10,340 --> 00:01:11,780 through art. 22 00:01:12,900 --> 00:01:15,100 In one explosive decade, 23 00:01:15,100 --> 00:01:18,900 feminist artists revolutionised the way women were seen... 24 00:01:20,380 --> 00:01:22,780 ..and shook the establishment to its core 25 00:01:22,780 --> 00:01:25,020 with experimental new art forms... 26 00:01:26,860 --> 00:01:29,260 ..and provocative political statements. 27 00:01:31,020 --> 00:01:32,940 And their art is just as shocking today. 28 00:01:35,580 --> 00:01:37,820 It still upsets people. 29 00:01:37,820 --> 00:01:42,300 Explicit, revolutionary, and unashamedly female. 30 00:01:42,300 --> 00:01:45,700 Together, they broke down barriers and changed 31 00:01:45,700 --> 00:01:48,380 the definition of what art could be. 32 00:01:48,380 --> 00:01:49,980 It's incredible art 33 00:01:49,980 --> 00:01:51,820 by incredible women 34 00:01:51,820 --> 00:01:54,860 who were making incredible art against the odds. 35 00:01:54,860 --> 00:01:59,260 Be warned, this film contains provocative female imagery. 36 00:02:04,620 --> 00:02:06,860 Shame on you all! 37 00:02:06,860 --> 00:02:09,500 You're degrading yourselves! 38 00:02:09,500 --> 00:02:12,060 Back at the Miss World competition, 39 00:02:12,060 --> 00:02:15,740 an angry crowd had gathered outside the Royal Albert Hall. 40 00:02:15,740 --> 00:02:20,740 It was the perfect occasion for us to make a protest. 41 00:02:21,100 --> 00:02:25,380 Margaret Harrison wasn't yet a feminist art legend, 42 00:02:25,380 --> 00:02:27,660 but she was a member of the newly-formed 43 00:02:27,660 --> 00:02:30,260 Women's Liberation Movement of Great Britain. 44 00:02:30,260 --> 00:02:31,540 Shame on you all! 45 00:02:31,540 --> 00:02:34,380 I went with my friend, Alison Fell. 46 00:02:34,380 --> 00:02:39,380 I had this black plastic chest with fur nipples and a smile on a stick. 47 00:02:40,740 --> 00:02:45,660 And she had these light bulbs strapped to her chest. 48 00:02:46,140 --> 00:02:49,500 And in her sleeve, she had this thing that she pressed 49 00:02:49,500 --> 00:02:52,780 and every now and again, they would flash on and off. 50 00:02:52,780 --> 00:02:54,700 We demand the right to enter Bessie in 51 00:02:54,700 --> 00:02:56,660 the world's largest cattle market. 52 00:02:56,660 --> 00:03:01,660 How you could succeed was by being beautiful or judged to be beautiful. 53 00:03:01,740 --> 00:03:04,060 So, there were all these reporters and they were saying, 54 00:03:04,060 --> 00:03:07,380 "You are only jealous because you're ugly." 55 00:03:07,380 --> 00:03:08,780 Miss Africa, South. 56 00:03:10,260 --> 00:03:14,300 But inside, not everyone was there for the lovely girls. 57 00:03:15,740 --> 00:03:18,780 Bob Hope was the compere for the year. 58 00:03:18,780 --> 00:03:21,860 And he just couldn't stop these awful jokes 59 00:03:21,860 --> 00:03:25,460 about cow's udders and comparing it to female anatomy. 60 00:03:26,740 --> 00:03:28,380 Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. 61 00:03:28,380 --> 00:03:32,260 I am very, very happy to be here at this cattle market tonight. 62 00:03:32,260 --> 00:03:34,300 LAUGHTER 63 00:03:34,300 --> 00:03:35,660 Moo! 64 00:03:35,660 --> 00:03:37,460 APPLAUSE 65 00:03:43,180 --> 00:03:46,260 Feminists erupted with football rattles, 66 00:03:46,260 --> 00:03:48,380 flour bombs, and shouts of, 67 00:03:48,380 --> 00:03:51,020 "We are not beautiful, we are not ugly! 68 00:03:51,020 --> 00:03:52,780 "We're angry!" 69 00:03:52,780 --> 00:03:55,420 SCREAMING AND SHOUTING 70 00:04:00,420 --> 00:04:03,620 The proceedings have been temporarily suspended. 71 00:04:03,620 --> 00:04:08,460 The interruption to the organisers isn't altogether unexpected. 72 00:04:09,660 --> 00:04:13,220 And after that, he said that was the worst experience of his whole 73 00:04:13,220 --> 00:04:14,780 professional life. 74 00:04:14,780 --> 00:04:17,780 # You don't own me 75 00:04:17,780 --> 00:04:19,260 # Don't tie me down. # 76 00:04:19,260 --> 00:04:23,020 The publicity surrounding the Miss World protest ignited a feminist 77 00:04:23,020 --> 00:04:24,820 revolution across Britain. 78 00:04:27,860 --> 00:04:30,580 This is International Women's Day today, 79 00:04:30,580 --> 00:04:34,340 and you send a male to interview me and a male cameraman. 80 00:04:34,340 --> 00:04:36,860 Where are your women cameramen at the BBC? 81 00:04:36,860 --> 00:04:39,500 The whole thing became very creative. 82 00:04:39,500 --> 00:04:43,340 It gave us a kind of confidence to actually go on and do other things. 83 00:04:49,180 --> 00:04:50,940 So, this is the piece, Homeworkers. 84 00:04:50,940 --> 00:04:53,860 For Margaret, Miss World was just the beginning. 85 00:04:53,860 --> 00:04:57,260 She decided to put feminist issues at the heart of her work. 86 00:04:57,260 --> 00:05:00,780 One pound to two pounds. £71 is quite a lot of money. 87 00:05:02,340 --> 00:05:04,540 47 years on, almost to the day, 88 00:05:04,540 --> 00:05:06,740 Margaret is here in Bilbao, 89 00:05:06,740 --> 00:05:08,740 opening a huge retrospective, 90 00:05:08,740 --> 00:05:12,260 and it starts with a landmark moment for feminist art. 91 00:05:14,340 --> 00:05:19,220 This room is mostly from 1971. 92 00:05:19,220 --> 00:05:21,660 It was the first feminist solo show. 93 00:05:24,460 --> 00:05:28,060 Feminist artists were responding to centuries 94 00:05:28,060 --> 00:05:31,740 of a particular kind of portrayal of women. 95 00:05:31,740 --> 00:05:35,340 From page three girls, through Miss World, to the kind of 96 00:05:35,340 --> 00:05:38,860 advertising that routinely portrayed 97 00:05:38,860 --> 00:05:42,100 naked women lying over the bonnets of cars. 98 00:05:45,260 --> 00:05:47,900 Having given birth only a few months before the show, 99 00:05:47,900 --> 00:05:50,620 Margaret left the private view early. 100 00:05:50,620 --> 00:05:53,500 Well, I went in the next day to have a look, see how it looked, 101 00:05:53,500 --> 00:05:57,380 because the reception had been quite crowded. 102 00:05:57,380 --> 00:06:00,620 And when I got there, the woman who was looking after the gallery, 103 00:06:00,620 --> 00:06:02,260 she sort of looked a bit pale. 104 00:06:04,060 --> 00:06:06,340 I looked round, there's no work on the wall. 105 00:06:06,340 --> 00:06:08,180 She said, "We've had to take it all down." 106 00:06:09,860 --> 00:06:12,380 I said, "Why?" She said, "The police came and said 107 00:06:12,380 --> 00:06:15,500 "if we didn't take it down, they were going to take us to court." 108 00:06:17,380 --> 00:06:20,140 And so, she was very frightened. She took it down. 109 00:06:20,140 --> 00:06:24,300 The police had closed the show on the grounds of obscenity. 110 00:06:24,300 --> 00:06:28,340 But of course, it wasn't the images of women that had offended them. 111 00:06:28,340 --> 00:06:32,580 So, this was one of the images that the police didn't like. 112 00:06:32,580 --> 00:06:35,620 This is an image of Captain America and as you can see, 113 00:06:35,620 --> 00:06:38,060 he's not in his usual garb. 114 00:06:38,060 --> 00:06:40,500 He's wearing stockings, suspenders... 115 00:06:42,140 --> 00:06:45,100 ..and high heel shoes, which he can hardly walk in. 116 00:06:45,100 --> 00:06:47,540 And he has stars on his genitals. 117 00:06:47,540 --> 00:06:50,220 And he has a nice sort of basque on. 118 00:06:52,260 --> 00:06:56,740 The gallery person said it was these kind of images they didn't like. 119 00:06:56,740 --> 00:06:59,420 # She was everybody's darling 120 00:07:01,180 --> 00:07:05,060 # But she never lost her head Even when she was giving head 121 00:07:05,060 --> 00:07:06,900 # She said, Hey, babe. # 122 00:07:06,900 --> 00:07:09,140 They just felt it was insulting. 123 00:07:09,140 --> 00:07:14,140 Well, if it's insulting to a male, it's also insulting to a female. 124 00:07:24,340 --> 00:07:27,220 So, I guess I objectified them 125 00:07:27,220 --> 00:07:31,500 in the same way that they had objectified women. 126 00:07:31,500 --> 00:07:35,380 This combination of brilliant artistic skills 127 00:07:35,380 --> 00:07:37,420 with a kind of inversion, 128 00:07:37,420 --> 00:07:39,740 when it's done to men, it makes you laugh. 129 00:07:39,740 --> 00:07:41,860 When it's done to women, you do not notice. 130 00:07:46,980 --> 00:07:49,940 I'd been drawing these things for ages, for a whole year. 131 00:07:49,940 --> 00:07:53,500 And my partner had taken on this awful job to support me. 132 00:07:53,500 --> 00:07:56,780 And then it gets closed down. 133 00:07:56,780 --> 00:07:57,900 You know, you go, 134 00:07:57,900 --> 00:08:00,260 "Oh, for God's sake!" 135 00:08:00,260 --> 00:08:02,540 You know, "I can't win, whatever way I do it." 136 00:08:03,580 --> 00:08:07,420 But then you would have to pick yourself up and say, 137 00:08:07,420 --> 00:08:09,060 "OK, that's how it is. 138 00:08:09,060 --> 00:08:12,260 "If this doesn't work, I'm going to try a different way of working." 139 00:08:13,460 --> 00:08:15,940 Margaret put these works in a drawer, 140 00:08:15,940 --> 00:08:18,980 and didn't show them again for over 25 years. 141 00:08:22,460 --> 00:08:26,180 Truly revolutionary art is always ahead of its time, 142 00:08:26,180 --> 00:08:28,660 but after decades in the wilderness... 143 00:08:28,660 --> 00:08:31,700 Here I am. I'm not dead yet. 144 00:08:31,700 --> 00:08:34,860 ..feminism is the hot ticket for contemporary art, 145 00:08:34,860 --> 00:08:37,820 packing out galleries around the world. 146 00:08:37,820 --> 00:08:42,780 I think it's very difficult now to understand just how pioneering this 147 00:08:42,780 --> 00:08:44,740 generation was. They were breaking through 148 00:08:44,740 --> 00:08:47,180 all sorts of conventions that had... and hierarchies, 149 00:08:47,180 --> 00:08:50,300 that had absolutely governed the visual arts for centuries. 150 00:08:51,860 --> 00:08:54,260 And the number one hierarchy that 151 00:08:54,260 --> 00:08:58,100 feminist artists had in their sights was the patriarchy. 152 00:08:59,220 --> 00:09:03,020 In LA, one of the most explosive names in feminist art 153 00:09:03,020 --> 00:09:07,420 was about to throw down the gauntlet to the male-dominated art scene. 154 00:09:08,580 --> 00:09:13,300 I knew what I was experiencing in the LA art scene was sexism. 155 00:09:13,300 --> 00:09:15,500 There wasn't even that word then. 156 00:09:15,500 --> 00:09:18,660 But you couldn't talk about it. There was no language for it. 157 00:09:18,660 --> 00:09:21,180 Nobody talked about gender discrimination. 158 00:09:21,180 --> 00:09:23,500 Nobody talked about sexual harassment. 159 00:09:23,500 --> 00:09:25,580 Nobody talked about sexism. 160 00:09:25,580 --> 00:09:27,780 That was all ahead of us. 161 00:09:27,780 --> 00:09:31,900 And so, being an artist was a tough career choice. 162 00:09:31,900 --> 00:09:35,540 Judy had been trying to blend in with the boys, making macho, 163 00:09:35,540 --> 00:09:37,020 minimalist art. 164 00:09:37,020 --> 00:09:38,820 But it just didn't feel right. 165 00:09:38,820 --> 00:09:43,900 I decided to make this radical change in my art practice 166 00:09:44,260 --> 00:09:46,980 and I wanted to symbolise the fact that 167 00:09:46,980 --> 00:09:49,540 I was saying bye-bye to being a boy. 168 00:09:51,180 --> 00:09:55,500 Judy legally changed her surname from Gerowitz to Chicago, 169 00:09:55,500 --> 00:09:57,740 ditching the name of her first husband. 170 00:09:59,500 --> 00:10:02,260 Well, we have to get hold of our own image. 171 00:10:02,260 --> 00:10:04,820 Take it over. That's why I changed my name. 172 00:10:04,820 --> 00:10:08,820 Because I took hold of my own identity and I said, "Henceforth, 173 00:10:08,820 --> 00:10:10,740 "I shall determine who I am. 174 00:10:10,740 --> 00:10:13,700 "I reject the definition society has given me." 175 00:10:16,180 --> 00:10:18,220 Now all she needed was some publicity. 176 00:10:20,900 --> 00:10:25,900 Now, this was a spoof on the male artists who all did these posters 177 00:10:28,180 --> 00:10:32,380 and advertisements for their show, the studs. 178 00:10:32,380 --> 00:10:35,060 Billy Al with his motorcycle. 179 00:10:35,060 --> 00:10:39,380 And Larry Bell with his cigar and Kenny Price on a surfboard. 180 00:10:39,380 --> 00:10:41,420 So, you know, I hung out with the guys. 181 00:10:41,420 --> 00:10:43,100 I thought I was going to be hilarious. 182 00:10:43,100 --> 00:10:44,900 I was going to be in a boxing ring. 183 00:10:44,900 --> 00:10:49,300 I mean, anybody who knew me knew I was tough but I wasn't a boxer. 184 00:10:51,220 --> 00:10:55,980 The poster was printed in Art Forum and spread like wildfire. 185 00:10:55,980 --> 00:10:58,500 It caused this huge sensation 186 00:10:58,500 --> 00:11:00,900 because it was right around the time 187 00:11:00,900 --> 00:11:03,340 that women artists were just starting 188 00:11:03,340 --> 00:11:05,700 to organise around the country. 189 00:11:05,700 --> 00:11:08,180 There were a lot of women getting really fed up 190 00:11:08,180 --> 00:11:09,820 with what was happening. 191 00:11:11,620 --> 00:11:12,940 In 1970, 192 00:11:12,940 --> 00:11:17,620 only 3% of the exhibitions held in New York were by women artists, 193 00:11:17,620 --> 00:11:20,660 a pretty good indication of what was happening around the world. 194 00:11:24,060 --> 00:11:27,260 If anyone called your work feminine, you were finished. 195 00:11:27,260 --> 00:11:29,380 We used to trail along with our paintings 196 00:11:29,380 --> 00:11:31,180 and get rejected all the time. 197 00:11:33,620 --> 00:11:38,700 Let's face it, as far as most people were concerned, artists were men. 198 00:11:38,940 --> 00:11:43,940 I mean, I had started looking back in history at the end of the '60s 199 00:11:44,140 --> 00:11:49,100 to see if any women before me had encountered what I was encountering. 200 00:11:49,820 --> 00:11:53,420 There was no information about women. 201 00:11:53,420 --> 00:11:56,340 There was only absence. 202 00:11:56,340 --> 00:11:59,420 If we don't have a whole history of women in politics, 203 00:11:59,420 --> 00:12:01,980 and you don't have a history of women in art, 204 00:12:01,980 --> 00:12:04,420 you don't have a history of women writers, 205 00:12:04,420 --> 00:12:06,660 you continue to consider that, 206 00:12:06,660 --> 00:12:09,140 that women have done nothing worth remembering 207 00:12:09,140 --> 00:12:10,740 in the history of the world. 208 00:12:10,740 --> 00:12:12,820 Of course, this was a moment where 209 00:12:12,820 --> 00:12:15,900 Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation was broadcasting 210 00:12:15,900 --> 00:12:20,900 and it was celebrating the many centuries of the creativity of men. 211 00:12:23,460 --> 00:12:25,820 So, this was a generation who were 212 00:12:25,820 --> 00:12:28,860 absolutely marginalised and disempowered. 213 00:12:28,860 --> 00:12:30,860 And it was their moment. 214 00:12:30,860 --> 00:12:35,420 I thought maybe it would be good if I tried to help some young women 215 00:12:35,420 --> 00:12:38,460 overcome whatever it was that stopped 216 00:12:38,460 --> 00:12:42,660 the women of my generation, and I helped them do something 217 00:12:42,660 --> 00:12:46,140 I couldn't do which was to build their art making 218 00:12:46,140 --> 00:12:50,140 on the basis of their experiences as women. 219 00:12:50,140 --> 00:12:52,580 I, I... 220 00:12:52,580 --> 00:12:55,020 Need, need, need... 221 00:12:55,020 --> 00:12:57,540 I need... 222 00:12:57,540 --> 00:13:02,260 In California, Judy started the very first feminist art course. 223 00:13:02,260 --> 00:13:03,660 How many 'I's? 224 00:13:03,660 --> 00:13:08,260 A lot. Nancy. Nancy, has anybody ever used you sexually? 225 00:13:08,260 --> 00:13:11,940 I went up to Fresno without realising 226 00:13:11,940 --> 00:13:14,500 that for a lot of young women, 227 00:13:14,500 --> 00:13:16,740 saying, "Oh, I want to be an artist" 228 00:13:16,740 --> 00:13:19,020 was like, "Oh, I want to go to the moon." 229 00:13:19,020 --> 00:13:22,860 They had absolutely no idea what that meant or entailed. 230 00:13:22,860 --> 00:13:25,500 In essence, she freed herself from her own fear 231 00:13:25,500 --> 00:13:27,340 that she'd be seen that way. 232 00:13:27,340 --> 00:13:30,300 I got my students to stop reading anything 233 00:13:30,300 --> 00:13:32,540 or looking at anything by men. 234 00:13:32,540 --> 00:13:35,740 I figured they knew enough about men's history already. 235 00:13:35,740 --> 00:13:38,820 So, for the entire year, they focused on women. 236 00:13:41,380 --> 00:13:43,380 The impact was immediate. 237 00:13:44,380 --> 00:13:45,460 It was a heady year. 238 00:13:45,460 --> 00:13:46,860 I mean, it was incredible. 239 00:13:46,860 --> 00:13:50,460 I taught my students how to present themselves. 240 00:13:50,460 --> 00:13:52,500 I mean, this is how they present themselves. 241 00:13:52,500 --> 00:13:55,220 "Hello. My name is Susie." 242 00:13:55,220 --> 00:13:58,860 And I'd say, excuse me, stand up tall, 243 00:13:58,860 --> 00:14:02,900 and say, "My name is Susan Brown. How do you do?" 244 00:14:02,900 --> 00:14:05,220 When I first came to this class, 245 00:14:05,220 --> 00:14:08,220 well, you know, we had our first sessions... 246 00:14:08,220 --> 00:14:10,740 I had a real kind of foggy idea of myself... 247 00:14:10,740 --> 00:14:13,340 My God, I mean it was like I had taken 248 00:14:13,340 --> 00:14:16,940 the lid off of a boiling pot with this energy 249 00:14:16,940 --> 00:14:18,900 that boiled up with these young girls. 250 00:14:18,900 --> 00:14:21,380 I mean, they were incredible. 251 00:14:21,380 --> 00:14:24,180 I mean, like, there's... The classic scene 252 00:14:24,180 --> 00:14:29,220 was when we brought this feminist theorist to the studio, 253 00:14:30,100 --> 00:14:35,020 and the students had made cheerleader outfits 254 00:14:35,020 --> 00:14:37,500 and it says C-U-N-T on the sweatshirts. 255 00:14:37,500 --> 00:14:41,420 And so we went to meet the theorist at the airport, 256 00:14:41,420 --> 00:14:44,380 and there were these Shriners coming off the plane. 257 00:14:44,380 --> 00:14:45,420 And there they are... 258 00:14:45,420 --> 00:14:49,260 "C-U, C-U, C-U-N, C-U-N-T" 259 00:14:49,260 --> 00:14:53,060 in the Fresno airport, and I'm like... "Oh, my God!" 260 00:14:53,060 --> 00:14:54,860 C, C, C-U-N. 261 00:14:54,860 --> 00:14:57,180 U, U, U-N-T. 262 00:14:57,180 --> 00:15:01,340 C-U, C-U, U-N-T. 263 00:15:01,340 --> 00:15:06,380 C-U-N-T. Yay! Cunt! 264 00:15:08,860 --> 00:15:12,380 Judy's students weren't the only ones causing a ruckus. 265 00:15:12,380 --> 00:15:15,700 In Britain, Rose English was running into 266 00:15:15,700 --> 00:15:18,740 some serious resistance at art school. 267 00:15:19,900 --> 00:15:23,100 Basically, art was either painting or it was sculpture. 268 00:15:23,100 --> 00:15:26,060 It couldn't actually even be both those things concurrently. 269 00:15:26,060 --> 00:15:27,540 It had to be one or the other. 270 00:15:27,540 --> 00:15:30,780 I was already making things that just didn't fit into either of those 271 00:15:30,780 --> 00:15:31,900 categories, really. 272 00:15:33,380 --> 00:15:36,020 Rose was dragged in for a stern talking to. 273 00:15:37,540 --> 00:15:39,860 They just had me up in front of a panel, 274 00:15:39,860 --> 00:15:43,380 all men, and just laid into me. It was really shocking. 275 00:15:43,380 --> 00:15:46,980 They were saying that the work I was making was not art. 276 00:15:46,980 --> 00:15:49,660 And in the end, I just thought at the point I was going to cry, 277 00:15:49,660 --> 00:15:51,940 I just left the room and I never went back. 278 00:15:51,940 --> 00:15:53,620 It could have really destroyed me. 279 00:15:53,620 --> 00:15:56,500 In a way, perhaps it was a good learning curve for later, 280 00:15:56,500 --> 00:15:59,500 when you sort of realise that actually you're not going to... 281 00:15:59,500 --> 00:16:01,620 Nobody is going to give you permission to do this. 282 00:16:01,620 --> 00:16:04,460 Nobody is necessarily going to support you to do it. 283 00:16:04,460 --> 00:16:06,260 But you just have to do it. 284 00:16:06,260 --> 00:16:09,220 Really, what I was wanting and I didn't really know it, 285 00:16:09,220 --> 00:16:11,420 was a milieu in which I could start 286 00:16:11,420 --> 00:16:13,300 to make what were at the time 287 00:16:13,300 --> 00:16:15,940 weren't even given a name, particularly, 288 00:16:15,940 --> 00:16:17,260 were performances. 289 00:16:17,260 --> 00:16:21,220 At that moment when these women were graduating and making their first 290 00:16:21,220 --> 00:16:23,460 experimental practices, 291 00:16:23,460 --> 00:16:25,260 you could define art as something 292 00:16:25,260 --> 00:16:28,540 you hung on a wall or you put it on a plinth. 293 00:16:28,540 --> 00:16:30,500 And it was made by a man. 294 00:16:30,500 --> 00:16:32,700 And in the decades since then, 295 00:16:32,700 --> 00:16:35,860 art has got off the plinth and it's come off the wall, 296 00:16:35,860 --> 00:16:39,580 and I think that has been a very profound and significant shift 297 00:16:39,580 --> 00:16:41,900 over the last few years and it's very exciting. 298 00:16:43,940 --> 00:16:48,260 In 1970, there was one school breaking down boundaries. 299 00:16:48,260 --> 00:16:52,900 Leeds College of Art was pioneering a new style of art education. 300 00:16:52,900 --> 00:16:54,740 One without any rules at all. 301 00:16:57,820 --> 00:17:01,940 When I eventually found a niche for myself inside this extraordinary 302 00:17:01,940 --> 00:17:05,300 freedom that was quite intimidating at first, I discovered that on 303 00:17:05,300 --> 00:17:08,260 I think it was the fifth floor there was a ceramics department. 304 00:17:08,260 --> 00:17:11,140 And I sort of gravitated up there and I just started 305 00:17:11,140 --> 00:17:13,020 modelling with porcelain clay. 306 00:17:15,060 --> 00:17:18,780 These fragile ceramics became part of Rose's early performances. 307 00:17:22,900 --> 00:17:25,420 This is one of the few ceramic breasts I've got left. 308 00:17:25,420 --> 00:17:28,700 You would wear as a piece of jewellery on your nipple, 309 00:17:28,700 --> 00:17:32,140 which then became my degree show when I was at Leeds. 310 00:17:32,140 --> 00:17:34,820 I presented an exhibition and a performance in parallel. 311 00:17:36,740 --> 00:17:40,180 Rose's graduation show was an erotic tableau 312 00:17:40,180 --> 00:17:42,580 performed by three female art students. 313 00:17:45,740 --> 00:17:48,860 There was a fellow student who played the piano, 314 00:17:48,860 --> 00:17:50,980 she played Satie Gymnopedies, 315 00:17:50,980 --> 00:17:52,180 that was the music we used. 316 00:17:53,980 --> 00:17:56,300 The performance reached its climax 317 00:17:56,300 --> 00:18:00,380 when two of the women kissed and a lace curtain made of porcelain 318 00:18:00,380 --> 00:18:01,820 crashed to the floor. 319 00:18:03,940 --> 00:18:08,780 This is a smaller porcelain cunt piece, or yoni, 320 00:18:08,780 --> 00:18:11,460 that had little tiny perforations in it. 321 00:18:11,460 --> 00:18:15,180 I enjoyed the idea that somebody might thread their own pubic hairs 322 00:18:15,180 --> 00:18:16,940 through them. 323 00:18:16,940 --> 00:18:19,060 So it was like a sort of merkin. 324 00:18:21,100 --> 00:18:25,100 The sexual revolution had lifted the lid on explicit imagery. 325 00:18:25,100 --> 00:18:29,500 But as usual, it was all from the male perspective. 326 00:18:29,500 --> 00:18:32,660 I think I just wanted it to be completely, 327 00:18:32,660 --> 00:18:35,220 overwhelmingly immersively erotic. 328 00:18:35,220 --> 00:18:38,100 It was full of very heavily scented flowers. 329 00:18:38,100 --> 00:18:41,180 Baroque in its intensity. 330 00:18:41,180 --> 00:18:43,820 And sort of mirroring all those 18th-century 331 00:18:43,820 --> 00:18:47,700 sort of erotic paintings by Fragonard and Boucher. 332 00:18:47,700 --> 00:18:50,620 But actually reclaiming them for a female sexuality, 333 00:18:50,620 --> 00:18:53,380 rather than just about a male gaze. 334 00:18:53,380 --> 00:18:57,500 I was questioning my own desire as well. 335 00:18:57,500 --> 00:19:00,340 What I found desirable, or what could be desirable. 336 00:19:00,340 --> 00:19:02,900 It was almost sort of an announcement perhaps. 337 00:19:04,140 --> 00:19:05,940 Very extravagant and... 338 00:19:07,420 --> 00:19:09,180 ..announcement or invitation. 339 00:19:10,460 --> 00:19:15,500 The function of feminist art is investigation and an exploration, 340 00:19:15,660 --> 00:19:18,740 not an affirmation of this is what it is. 341 00:19:18,740 --> 00:19:20,180 We didn't know. 342 00:19:20,180 --> 00:19:21,380 We had to find out. 343 00:19:23,220 --> 00:19:25,900 Rose continued to cross boundaries, 344 00:19:25,900 --> 00:19:28,660 learning taxidermy to make shoes and tails 345 00:19:28,660 --> 00:19:33,420 for her iconic work of 1975, Quadrille, 346 00:19:33,420 --> 00:19:36,420 exploring the fetishizing of women's bodies. 347 00:19:37,500 --> 00:19:39,300 You sort of really see the shoes here 348 00:19:39,300 --> 00:19:41,180 mirroring the front feet of the horse. 349 00:19:42,940 --> 00:19:45,020 Rose staged a performance in the middle 350 00:19:45,020 --> 00:19:46,780 of the Southampton Horse Show. 351 00:19:47,900 --> 00:19:50,860 Landing provocative feminist art 352 00:19:50,860 --> 00:19:55,140 in the heart of conservative upper-class society. 353 00:19:55,140 --> 00:19:57,540 As you can see, when they start to trot, 354 00:19:57,540 --> 00:19:59,060 you can see how the tails move. 355 00:20:01,020 --> 00:20:04,860 Of course, the male gaze was never far away. 356 00:20:04,860 --> 00:20:07,940 The photographer who keeps getting in shot was nothing to do with us. 357 00:20:07,940 --> 00:20:10,780 He was a bit annoying. But he was part of it. 358 00:20:13,260 --> 00:20:15,460 Public performances were one thing, 359 00:20:15,460 --> 00:20:18,140 but as far as commercial galleries were concerned, 360 00:20:18,140 --> 00:20:19,980 women's art didn't sell 361 00:20:19,980 --> 00:20:22,460 so they had no interest in exhibiting it. 362 00:20:24,460 --> 00:20:27,580 In New York, Barbara Zucker and Susan Williams 363 00:20:27,580 --> 00:20:29,660 had hit upon a radical idea. 364 00:20:29,660 --> 00:20:33,380 In my mind, it feels like, if I can be so bold to say, 365 00:20:33,380 --> 00:20:35,740 sort of a historical event - 366 00:20:35,740 --> 00:20:37,860 the fact that this is the first woman's gallery. 367 00:20:41,300 --> 00:20:44,780 We want to dispel the onus that a bunch of women showing together 368 00:20:44,780 --> 00:20:46,420 don't make a strong showing, 369 00:20:46,420 --> 00:20:47,740 which we knew was a lot of crap. 370 00:20:49,300 --> 00:20:52,580 The Air Gallery founders began to make studio visits 371 00:20:52,580 --> 00:20:55,980 to artists who might be interested in joining the new collective. 372 00:20:58,460 --> 00:21:03,180 My work at that time was very organic, 373 00:21:03,180 --> 00:21:05,580 very feminine. 374 00:21:06,860 --> 00:21:10,060 And dealers would walk into my studio 375 00:21:10,060 --> 00:21:13,100 and practically run out the door. 376 00:21:13,100 --> 00:21:14,820 I mean, they were shocked. 377 00:21:14,820 --> 00:21:17,940 And there was no interest in pursuing it. 378 00:21:17,940 --> 00:21:20,900 And when Barbara and Susan came to my studio 379 00:21:20,900 --> 00:21:22,900 and looked at work and said, 380 00:21:22,900 --> 00:21:26,660 "This is what we want to do", I was very interested. 381 00:21:26,660 --> 00:21:28,180 I thought, "Wonderful." 382 00:21:28,180 --> 00:21:31,500 When we started, it had this aspect of freedom. 383 00:21:31,500 --> 00:21:33,100 There was no feminist ideology. 384 00:21:33,100 --> 00:21:35,260 The work just had to be good. 385 00:21:35,260 --> 00:21:38,420 We were a motley crew and I don't think 386 00:21:38,420 --> 00:21:41,660 that we always understood each other. 387 00:21:41,660 --> 00:21:45,940 That said, we overcame them because we had a goal. 388 00:21:45,940 --> 00:21:50,940 The goal was to show that work and that was overarching and superseded 389 00:21:51,420 --> 00:21:55,740 everything else. We'd look at the work and our eyes would light up, 390 00:21:55,740 --> 00:21:57,780 certain people were so fabulous. 391 00:21:57,780 --> 00:22:00,380 You could hardly contain yourself. 392 00:22:00,380 --> 00:22:04,740 And then we'd talk after over a cup of coffee and we'd say, "OK, 393 00:22:04,740 --> 00:22:06,780 "let's invite her, let's invite her." 394 00:22:06,780 --> 00:22:10,820 I think because possibly we were outsiders from the art world, 395 00:22:10,820 --> 00:22:13,460 we were not accepted in the art world, 396 00:22:13,460 --> 00:22:16,780 we could do anything we wanted and we did. 397 00:22:16,780 --> 00:22:18,940 And we would each voice our opinion, 398 00:22:18,940 --> 00:22:22,460 and we tried to be respectful of each other and we were on the whole. 399 00:22:22,460 --> 00:22:24,780 The meetings took a very long time. 400 00:22:24,780 --> 00:22:25,820 Long time. 401 00:22:27,140 --> 00:22:29,260 I think materials were radical. 402 00:22:29,260 --> 00:22:33,380 Yes. What women were making things out of was radical. 403 00:22:33,380 --> 00:22:36,020 It was a tremendously creative group of women. 404 00:22:36,020 --> 00:22:38,620 You put it all together, it was extraordinary. 405 00:22:38,620 --> 00:22:43,620 It was. And once we opened and the reviews were fabulous, people, 406 00:22:45,940 --> 00:22:50,580 we got this little article in New York magazine saying finally, 407 00:22:50,580 --> 00:22:53,420 some women have gotten it together. 408 00:22:53,420 --> 00:22:58,420 AIR. Art News. We were being covered. 409 00:22:58,780 --> 00:23:02,020 We were hot. It was quite remarkable 410 00:23:02,020 --> 00:23:07,060 that this little gallery that had just opened got attention. 411 00:23:07,620 --> 00:23:09,100 We had permission. 412 00:23:09,100 --> 00:23:12,340 We gave ourselves permission and no-one said no. 413 00:23:16,780 --> 00:23:19,260 Dave? Yes. Dave? 414 00:23:19,260 --> 00:23:20,780 Here's your tea. All right, love. 415 00:23:20,780 --> 00:23:22,740 Leave it. I'll see you later on. 416 00:23:22,740 --> 00:23:25,940 Women were finding new ways to work and to live. 417 00:23:25,940 --> 00:23:28,380 Everything was being questioned. 418 00:23:30,340 --> 00:23:33,380 The 1960s and early '70s was the decade 419 00:23:33,380 --> 00:23:35,740 where artists became politicised. 420 00:23:35,740 --> 00:23:37,780 And they were politicised for very good reasons. 421 00:23:37,780 --> 00:23:41,020 It was a... It was a very, very turbulent era. 422 00:23:41,020 --> 00:23:43,740 And women were at the centre of that change. 423 00:23:43,740 --> 00:23:46,980 And one of the great transformations of consciousness raising was that we 424 00:23:46,980 --> 00:23:50,500 discovered what were felt to be private difficulties 425 00:23:50,500 --> 00:23:53,820 of each individual were actually structural. 426 00:23:53,820 --> 00:23:57,420 We have to talk with each other to find out who we are. 427 00:23:59,540 --> 00:24:02,540 Women were looking to each other for inspiration. 428 00:24:02,540 --> 00:24:05,100 I'm meant to compete with that sexless object, supposedly... 429 00:24:06,580 --> 00:24:09,860 In London, pioneering conceptual artist Mary Kelly 430 00:24:09,860 --> 00:24:13,660 was discovering the power of collective action. 431 00:24:13,660 --> 00:24:15,940 It was just like a lightning bolt. 432 00:24:15,940 --> 00:24:18,180 You know, like something just hit you. 433 00:24:18,180 --> 00:24:20,300 Wow! A women's group. 434 00:24:20,300 --> 00:24:21,620 A women's anything... 435 00:24:25,300 --> 00:24:28,740 Once the women's movement started, it was actually 436 00:24:28,740 --> 00:24:33,460 a recognition that it was about us. 437 00:24:33,460 --> 00:24:36,260 But at the same time, as it was about your personal life, 438 00:24:36,260 --> 00:24:39,100 it was about something bigger than you. 439 00:24:39,100 --> 00:24:41,860 We didn't know anything. It was all happening at once. 440 00:24:44,980 --> 00:24:49,620 Communes had been a part of the new agey lifestyles of the 1960s. 441 00:24:49,620 --> 00:24:54,580 But feminism took the social experiment in a bold new direction. 442 00:24:54,780 --> 00:24:57,580 Because this is a commune, we share our tasks. 443 00:24:57,580 --> 00:25:01,260 And that's why the men put the children to bed sometimes 444 00:25:01,260 --> 00:25:03,420 and the women do things like cutting wood. 445 00:25:05,380 --> 00:25:06,980 By living communally, 446 00:25:06,980 --> 00:25:11,220 women were able to explore what equality really felt like. 447 00:25:11,220 --> 00:25:13,980 And these new non-sexist ways of living 448 00:25:13,980 --> 00:25:18,180 became the creative engine of the feminist art movement. 449 00:25:18,180 --> 00:25:21,820 Three women setting up the commune and it was like 450 00:25:21,820 --> 00:25:24,820 whoever we were living with at the time got to be there 451 00:25:24,820 --> 00:25:29,740 but they had to follow the rules of cooking, cleaning and childcare. 452 00:25:29,740 --> 00:25:32,300 So that drove a lot of men out in a hurry. 453 00:25:33,420 --> 00:25:37,980 It was the idea of actually sharing our lives and our work. 454 00:25:44,260 --> 00:25:47,020 Childcare and the division of labour in the home 455 00:25:47,020 --> 00:25:49,900 was one of the key issues for the early feminist movement. 456 00:25:51,740 --> 00:25:54,700 Inspired, Mary joined a film collective 457 00:25:54,700 --> 00:25:57,740 documenting the lives of working mothers. 458 00:25:57,740 --> 00:26:02,260 In those interviews, the women would just describe what they did at home, 459 00:26:02,260 --> 00:26:04,340 then they went to work, then they came back home, 460 00:26:04,340 --> 00:26:06,380 and they would describe everything. 461 00:26:06,380 --> 00:26:08,780 The investment that the women had with children 462 00:26:08,780 --> 00:26:11,700 was way beyond anything we could think 463 00:26:11,700 --> 00:26:14,780 just simply in terms of division of labour. 464 00:26:14,780 --> 00:26:17,220 So, I said, when I had a child myself, 465 00:26:17,220 --> 00:26:19,500 "I'm going to look at this very closely. 466 00:26:19,500 --> 00:26:20,980 "I'm going to document it." 467 00:26:22,460 --> 00:26:26,580 Mary's film, Antepartum, is a minimalist masterpiece. 468 00:26:26,580 --> 00:26:29,620 And it marked the beginning of a six-year body of work. 469 00:26:32,060 --> 00:26:35,780 To speak as an artist who is a mother 470 00:26:35,780 --> 00:26:38,940 absolutely goes to the heart of the silencing 471 00:26:38,940 --> 00:26:42,420 of women's experience in the model of the history of art. 472 00:26:42,420 --> 00:26:44,020 In classic art history, 473 00:26:44,020 --> 00:26:47,260 the central mythology is about the heroic artist. 474 00:26:48,500 --> 00:26:50,820 And the heroic artist is the son, 475 00:26:50,820 --> 00:26:53,380 for whom the mother is just the vessel. 476 00:26:53,380 --> 00:26:58,020 The radicalness of Mary Kelly's work lay in saying, 477 00:26:58,020 --> 00:27:01,060 "I am an artist and I am a mother." 478 00:27:01,060 --> 00:27:05,140 I had my son, while I was living in the commune. 479 00:27:05,140 --> 00:27:10,180 And it gave me such an insight into, you know, what was really invested 480 00:27:10,540 --> 00:27:15,540 emotionally in that relationship because I remember 481 00:27:16,060 --> 00:27:19,580 everyone saying, "Well, if you don't stop breast-feeding, 482 00:27:19,580 --> 00:27:22,460 "we won't be able to help you, we can't feed him." 483 00:27:22,460 --> 00:27:25,300 So, I kind of agreed that I would... 484 00:27:25,300 --> 00:27:28,260 I would do that and then I discovered, of course, 485 00:27:28,260 --> 00:27:30,900 I didn't want to and I cried and cried. 486 00:27:30,900 --> 00:27:34,220 It was like... I wanted to be the only one, you know, 487 00:27:34,220 --> 00:27:36,460 who was able to supply that. 488 00:27:36,460 --> 00:27:40,300 And so that became the first section of Post-Partum Document. 489 00:27:41,940 --> 00:27:44,860 The artwork recorded in detail Mary's experience 490 00:27:44,860 --> 00:27:46,180 of raising her child. 491 00:27:47,980 --> 00:27:50,980 Fragments of cloth and stained nappy liners 492 00:27:50,980 --> 00:27:52,980 were overlaid with data and 493 00:27:52,980 --> 00:27:56,020 Mary's personal thoughts and feelings as her son grew. 494 00:27:58,180 --> 00:28:03,140 Post-Partum Document was exhibited at the ICA in 1976 495 00:28:03,140 --> 00:28:05,700 as part of a group show of conceptual art. 496 00:28:07,860 --> 00:28:10,300 I was the only woman showing. 497 00:28:10,300 --> 00:28:14,180 The entire programme was men. 498 00:28:14,180 --> 00:28:19,180 I thought what I was doing was very much following the logic of what the 499 00:28:19,580 --> 00:28:24,620 conceptual artists who were men at the time had undertaken, 500 00:28:24,780 --> 00:28:27,220 you know, to sort of interrogate the object, 501 00:28:27,220 --> 00:28:29,460 and then interrogate the interrogation. 502 00:28:30,780 --> 00:28:34,380 Predictably, the press had a field day. 503 00:28:34,380 --> 00:28:37,300 I always said that I managed to make everyone unhappy, 504 00:28:37,300 --> 00:28:39,780 because there were mothers who said, 505 00:28:39,780 --> 00:28:43,340 "I can identify with that experience but why do you have 506 00:28:43,340 --> 00:28:44,580 "to have the theory?" 507 00:28:44,580 --> 00:28:48,900 And the women in the movement that said, "Theory is male dominated. 508 00:28:48,900 --> 00:28:50,580 "So, you can't have that." 509 00:28:50,580 --> 00:28:53,420 And then the conceptual artists, the men, saying, 510 00:28:53,420 --> 00:28:57,540 "That theory is great but why do you have to have this stuff for?" 511 00:28:57,540 --> 00:29:00,020 She too, you know, broke with a taboo, 512 00:29:00,020 --> 00:29:05,020 the presentation of soiled nappies in the gallery space was 513 00:29:05,180 --> 00:29:07,060 profoundly disturbing, 514 00:29:07,060 --> 00:29:10,180 the elevation of something, you know, 515 00:29:10,180 --> 00:29:11,900 the kind of excremental, 516 00:29:11,900 --> 00:29:15,900 to the status of a work of art, was a really, really radical act. 517 00:29:19,140 --> 00:29:22,100 In California, Judy's course was in full swing. 518 00:29:26,420 --> 00:29:29,020 And one particular student was about to take 519 00:29:29,020 --> 00:29:31,420 feminist art in a whole new direction. 520 00:29:31,420 --> 00:29:34,460 You never can tell who is actually going to succeed. 521 00:29:34,460 --> 00:29:36,860 Like, there was one young woman who 522 00:29:36,860 --> 00:29:39,500 I really didn't want to let into the class 523 00:29:39,500 --> 00:29:41,940 because she had no art background, 524 00:29:41,940 --> 00:29:43,340 she couldn't draw, 525 00:29:43,340 --> 00:29:45,620 she had no skills. 526 00:29:45,620 --> 00:29:47,620 She came from psychology. 527 00:29:47,620 --> 00:29:49,900 And she said to me, 528 00:29:49,900 --> 00:29:53,660 "I want to be creative", which is like... 529 00:29:53,660 --> 00:29:56,620 "Oh, my God, like, go take a hobby class." 530 00:29:56,620 --> 00:29:59,460 I was definitely going to be in that programme, right? 531 00:29:59,460 --> 00:30:03,860 Because I was a feminist and that was the only feminist thing going. 532 00:30:03,860 --> 00:30:05,980 But she turned out to be Suzanne Lacy, 533 00:30:05,980 --> 00:30:09,140 who is an internationally known performance artist, 534 00:30:09,140 --> 00:30:12,220 and the student I'm proudest of. 535 00:30:12,220 --> 00:30:17,260 Judy was the first really strong role model that I had, 536 00:30:17,620 --> 00:30:20,420 and we all admired her deeply. 537 00:30:21,700 --> 00:30:26,180 Will you help me do the dishes? 538 00:30:26,180 --> 00:30:28,100 Judy had been encouraging role play 539 00:30:28,100 --> 00:30:31,140 as a consciousness-raising exercise in class. 540 00:30:32,300 --> 00:30:37,340 Performance became the way in which women could deeply explore their 541 00:30:37,700 --> 00:30:41,260 identity and be inescapably themselves. 542 00:30:41,260 --> 00:30:46,380 But you don't have a cock. What's that got to do with it? 543 00:30:48,380 --> 00:30:53,060 A cock means you don't wash dishes. 544 00:30:53,060 --> 00:30:56,380 It raises a lot of questions about why you're alive, 545 00:30:56,380 --> 00:30:58,340 why you're making art, 546 00:30:58,340 --> 00:31:02,700 and that's a perfect platform for politics and art, 547 00:31:02,700 --> 00:31:04,700 particularly for feminist politics and art. 548 00:31:04,700 --> 00:31:08,900 The work of art as a work of protest was something that was quite new, 549 00:31:08,900 --> 00:31:10,980 and I think it was incredibly exciting 550 00:31:10,980 --> 00:31:14,580 for a whole generation of young women coming of age 551 00:31:14,580 --> 00:31:17,700 at a period which was still very, very male-dominated. 552 00:31:20,100 --> 00:31:23,820 More and more women were joining the feminist art movement, 553 00:31:23,820 --> 00:31:27,540 and much of the activity centred around a building downtown. 554 00:31:27,540 --> 00:31:30,660 So, the Woman's Building was a couple of miles that way. 555 00:31:33,420 --> 00:31:36,740 Founded by Judy Chicago, Sheila de Bretteville 556 00:31:36,740 --> 00:31:39,220 and Arlene Raven in 1973, 557 00:31:39,220 --> 00:31:42,100 it was described by the LA Times as a feminist mecca. 558 00:31:44,460 --> 00:31:46,620 One of the things that the 559 00:31:46,620 --> 00:31:50,620 consciousness-raising practice of feminism did 560 00:31:50,620 --> 00:31:55,060 was it unearthed issues that hadn't been spoken about. 561 00:31:55,060 --> 00:31:58,300 And one of the ones that was most, I think, 562 00:31:58,300 --> 00:32:01,100 resonant and fundamental to the feminist movement 563 00:32:01,100 --> 00:32:03,300 was the issue of violence against women. 564 00:32:03,300 --> 00:32:07,620 If you can imagine LA in the early '70s when rape was... 565 00:32:07,620 --> 00:32:10,020 It was not a crime to rape your wife. 566 00:32:12,060 --> 00:32:13,660 So, at the Woman's Building, 567 00:32:13,660 --> 00:32:16,340 there was a lot of women interested in this topic, 568 00:32:16,340 --> 00:32:18,940 and a lot of women who had experienced rape. 569 00:32:18,940 --> 00:32:21,540 When you would get ten women together, 570 00:32:21,540 --> 00:32:25,780 and a woman who had never said in her life that she had been 571 00:32:25,780 --> 00:32:30,780 raped at the age of 16 said that and found out that the woman next to her 572 00:32:32,140 --> 00:32:35,780 had been raped going home at night. 573 00:32:35,780 --> 00:32:40,820 So the idea that a woman was not alone in her experience 574 00:32:40,900 --> 00:32:42,540 began to emerge. 575 00:32:45,100 --> 00:32:50,100 We say "Yes" when we mean yes, and "No" when we mean no! 576 00:32:50,700 --> 00:32:52,700 It's hard to believe now, 577 00:32:52,700 --> 00:32:56,020 but rape was not seen as a serious issue at the time. 578 00:32:56,020 --> 00:32:58,580 This woman went dashing into the police station, she said, 579 00:32:58,580 --> 00:33:00,020 "I've just been graped." 580 00:33:00,020 --> 00:33:02,740 The copper said, "You mean raped?" 581 00:33:02,740 --> 00:33:05,460 She said, "No, there was a bunch of them." 582 00:33:09,580 --> 00:33:12,220 Until feminists took up the issue, 583 00:33:12,220 --> 00:33:14,220 there wasn't a single support line 584 00:33:14,220 --> 00:33:16,220 for victims of rape 585 00:33:16,220 --> 00:33:19,100 in either the US or the UK. 586 00:33:19,100 --> 00:33:23,540 I wanted to show the kind of ubiquitousness of rape 587 00:33:23,540 --> 00:33:27,860 and make it very public. So I decided it would be very interesting 588 00:33:27,860 --> 00:33:32,220 to go to the police department and get actual rape reports. 589 00:33:32,220 --> 00:33:35,340 Interestingly, it was not hard to get rape reports from the police 590 00:33:35,340 --> 00:33:36,540 department at that time. 591 00:33:37,580 --> 00:33:40,220 In the '70s, I simply went across the street every day 592 00:33:40,220 --> 00:33:44,500 and met with a cop, who gave me short description of the rape. 593 00:33:44,500 --> 00:33:49,620 Male, 38, female, 22, 594 00:33:50,340 --> 00:33:52,460 place, what happened, how it occurred. 595 00:33:54,020 --> 00:33:56,780 And then I would take them into a public space. 596 00:33:57,940 --> 00:33:59,100 I think it's this way. 597 00:33:59,100 --> 00:34:01,020 First, I thought it should be a gallery. 598 00:34:01,020 --> 00:34:04,220 That was sort of the convention of performance art at the time. 599 00:34:04,220 --> 00:34:07,340 And then Sheila de Bretteville said to me, "You know, 600 00:34:07,340 --> 00:34:09,380 "why would you do this in a gallery, 601 00:34:09,380 --> 00:34:11,500 "why don't you do it in a public space?" 602 00:34:11,500 --> 00:34:12,700 And so I started thinking, 603 00:34:12,700 --> 00:34:14,300 "That's very interesting", 604 00:34:14,300 --> 00:34:17,220 and looked at a variety of malls in the downtown area. 605 00:34:17,220 --> 00:34:22,220 And the only mall that would allow me to do anything was the City Hall 606 00:34:23,300 --> 00:34:25,660 because this place was quite defunct. 607 00:34:25,660 --> 00:34:29,180 There was nobody coming, there were very few stores. 608 00:34:29,180 --> 00:34:32,340 This is where the maps were, all along this area. 609 00:34:32,340 --> 00:34:34,660 Two maps of the city. 610 00:34:34,660 --> 00:34:37,580 And they were each about 25 feet long. 611 00:34:37,580 --> 00:34:41,100 And on one, we marked daily rape reports 612 00:34:41,100 --> 00:34:44,700 that we had gotten from the police department. 613 00:34:44,700 --> 00:34:46,260 I think in three weeks, 614 00:34:46,260 --> 00:34:50,460 there was something like 98 or so rapes that were reported. 615 00:34:50,460 --> 00:34:53,380 Now, this is in a moment where people, feminists, 616 00:34:53,380 --> 00:34:55,900 speculated that for every one reported, 617 00:34:55,900 --> 00:34:57,980 there were ten that were unreported. 618 00:34:57,980 --> 00:35:02,180 And so, I put a red mark on the map for the one report, 619 00:35:02,180 --> 00:35:06,140 and then fainter outlines, nine, for the ones 620 00:35:06,140 --> 00:35:09,380 that were theorised to go unreported. 621 00:35:09,380 --> 00:35:11,980 The maps very quickly became quite red. 622 00:35:14,660 --> 00:35:19,100 Three Weeks in May started a public conversation about rape. 623 00:35:19,100 --> 00:35:23,620 But it also offered women practical ways to fight back. 624 00:35:23,620 --> 00:35:27,620 We created the second map and that was showing 625 00:35:27,620 --> 00:35:32,660 where women were actively working against violence. 626 00:35:32,780 --> 00:35:35,020 This was part of a feminist discourse 627 00:35:35,020 --> 00:35:40,020 around showing victimisation versus showing empowerment. 628 00:35:41,220 --> 00:35:43,620 So, it would have been the first rape hotline centre, 629 00:35:43,620 --> 00:35:46,500 the sheriff's department had a sex crimes unit. 630 00:35:46,500 --> 00:35:48,820 And all kinds of self defence activities. 631 00:35:48,820 --> 00:35:51,260 So, there were about 30 organisations. 632 00:35:51,260 --> 00:35:53,580 There was a lot of publicity. 633 00:35:53,580 --> 00:35:57,380 And that was part of the strategy of the entire project. 634 00:35:57,380 --> 00:36:01,100 If you're going to make something part of a public discourse, 635 00:36:01,100 --> 00:36:03,700 you had to use major media. 636 00:36:04,740 --> 00:36:07,540 What Suzanne Lacy did in the initial performances 637 00:36:07,540 --> 00:36:10,300 is not performances on a stage, 638 00:36:10,300 --> 00:36:15,340 but to choreograph an event that could be picked up by the media, 639 00:36:15,980 --> 00:36:20,980 so they would have to report the event in such a way that the media's 640 00:36:21,260 --> 00:36:26,300 normal presentation of rape, which is always slightly violent 641 00:36:27,420 --> 00:36:29,900 and slightly voyeuristic, is interrupted. 642 00:36:31,860 --> 00:36:36,900 The urgency of the campaign was made clear in the December of that year, 643 00:36:37,180 --> 00:36:41,540 when California was rocked by the rape and murder of ten women by the 644 00:36:41,540 --> 00:36:42,660 Hillside Strangler. 645 00:36:44,580 --> 00:36:47,420 Suzanne, together with Leslie Labowitz, 646 00:36:47,420 --> 00:36:50,260 created a performance on the steps of City Hall, 647 00:36:50,260 --> 00:36:53,500 called In Mourning And In Rage. 648 00:36:53,500 --> 00:36:56,140 The memorial began with a processional, 649 00:36:56,140 --> 00:36:59,980 it started at the Woman's Building on Spring Street and weaved its way 650 00:36:59,980 --> 00:37:02,380 through the centre of the city. 651 00:37:02,380 --> 00:37:06,300 On the steps of City Hall, the memorial became a symbolic drama. 652 00:37:06,300 --> 00:37:08,460 Ten actresses dressed in black 653 00:37:08,460 --> 00:37:10,860 to symbolise the grief for the ten women 654 00:37:10,860 --> 00:37:13,900 who have recently been found raped and strangled. 655 00:37:13,900 --> 00:37:17,380 We are here today in memory of the ten women 656 00:37:17,380 --> 00:37:20,380 who were recently slain in Los Angeles. 657 00:37:21,900 --> 00:37:26,900 And we are here in memory of all women who have been 658 00:37:27,900 --> 00:37:31,220 and are being battered, 659 00:37:31,220 --> 00:37:35,180 raped and killed throughout this country. A result... 660 00:37:35,180 --> 00:37:40,060 We formed a camaraderie with each other in order to support 661 00:37:40,060 --> 00:37:41,500 each other's voice. 662 00:37:43,980 --> 00:37:49,020 I am here for the 4,033 women who have been raped in LA last year. 663 00:37:49,980 --> 00:37:55,020 In memory of our sisters, we fight back! 664 00:37:55,380 --> 00:38:00,420 For the hundreds of women who are portrayed as victims of assault 665 00:38:01,020 --> 00:38:05,460 in films, television and magazines. 666 00:38:06,460 --> 00:38:10,740 In memory of our sisters, we fight back. 667 00:38:10,740 --> 00:38:14,060 We looked at each other and saw power 668 00:38:14,060 --> 00:38:16,900 when we looked at each other. 669 00:38:16,900 --> 00:38:20,460 If we looked a man, we didn't see power reflected back. 670 00:38:20,460 --> 00:38:22,460 We saw all kinds of other things. 671 00:38:22,460 --> 00:38:26,700 Desire, sexuality, you know, the need to protect, whatever. 672 00:38:26,700 --> 00:38:29,100 But when you looked at a woman who was a strong woman, 673 00:38:29,100 --> 00:38:31,780 you saw your own empowerment reflected back. 674 00:38:31,780 --> 00:38:34,220 The event in itself was fabulous. 675 00:38:34,220 --> 00:38:36,060 A thing that I really have learned 676 00:38:36,060 --> 00:38:39,540 and I am gaining more confidence in is the potential of artists 677 00:38:39,540 --> 00:38:41,820 as image-makers to really make a change in society, 678 00:38:41,820 --> 00:38:46,540 in terms of the images that they project of women and that is 679 00:38:46,540 --> 00:38:48,660 just as important as a political organisation 680 00:38:48,660 --> 00:38:50,740 and the things that they make. 681 00:38:50,740 --> 00:38:55,020 So the idea that actually art could be born out of a discussion or 682 00:38:55,020 --> 00:38:58,900 consensual collaborative project 683 00:38:58,900 --> 00:39:01,980 between different artists 684 00:39:01,980 --> 00:39:06,180 was extremely radical, and I think for many people in the 1970s, 685 00:39:06,180 --> 00:39:10,460 particularly those people involved in the commercial side of the 686 00:39:10,460 --> 00:39:13,740 art world simply did not recognise it as art. 687 00:39:13,740 --> 00:39:16,220 And of course now we see it as the lifeblood of the art world. 688 00:39:16,220 --> 00:39:19,540 And it's what gives access to people 689 00:39:19,540 --> 00:39:23,860 is the sense that you can become involved. You can have voice. 690 00:39:26,900 --> 00:39:28,980 Encounters with audiences had previously 691 00:39:28,980 --> 00:39:31,100 been the preserve of theatre, 692 00:39:31,100 --> 00:39:35,340 which also had a long tradition of radical voices. 693 00:39:35,340 --> 00:39:38,580 The thing about theatre design for me was that it was a way of being 694 00:39:38,580 --> 00:39:42,020 political without being a politician. 695 00:39:42,020 --> 00:39:45,980 I had no intention or desire to be a painter, to be a fine artist. 696 00:39:45,980 --> 00:39:48,220 I wanted to, I suppose, change the world, 697 00:39:48,220 --> 00:39:50,820 and I think I saw theatre design as the way to do it. 698 00:39:52,300 --> 00:39:56,180 Lubaina Himid was studying at Wimbledon College of Art 699 00:39:56,180 --> 00:39:59,100 but discovered there was nothing revolutionary 700 00:39:59,100 --> 00:40:01,580 about the division of labour backstage. 701 00:40:01,580 --> 00:40:04,300 The culture of the art school was very much 702 00:40:04,300 --> 00:40:07,980 a kind of nurturing of the genius. In the theatre courses, 703 00:40:07,980 --> 00:40:11,260 there were maybe six or seven men, 704 00:40:11,260 --> 00:40:14,980 and the rest of the students were women. 705 00:40:14,980 --> 00:40:19,980 It was clearly our place to service that cohort of men. 706 00:40:20,300 --> 00:40:23,100 And so we ended up building scenery, 707 00:40:23,100 --> 00:40:26,260 and the men were doing the thinking 708 00:40:26,260 --> 00:40:28,700 and doing the important things. 709 00:40:28,700 --> 00:40:31,180 It was reflective of the... 710 00:40:31,180 --> 00:40:33,380 ..of the whole attitude of the '70s. 711 00:40:35,180 --> 00:40:37,140 Using her set-building skills, 712 00:40:37,140 --> 00:40:41,100 Lubaina decided to target the male art elite. 713 00:40:41,100 --> 00:40:44,140 The first works that I made that had that idea of myself being a 714 00:40:44,140 --> 00:40:46,180 feminist were the cut-out men. 715 00:40:47,260 --> 00:40:49,020 If you're making work that's political, 716 00:40:49,020 --> 00:40:54,100 you have to use some ways of getting an audience to engage with it. 717 00:40:54,100 --> 00:40:58,700 And humour is one of the best ways, if you can do it, of doing that. 718 00:40:58,700 --> 00:41:01,260 The first cut-out man was a pastiche. 719 00:41:01,260 --> 00:41:04,460 It was a cut-out of Michelangelo's David 720 00:41:04,460 --> 00:41:08,460 with paint brushes instead of a penis 721 00:41:08,460 --> 00:41:09,580 that were four foot long. 722 00:41:09,580 --> 00:41:12,780 So, it was an art world fury - 723 00:41:12,780 --> 00:41:16,300 a fury against special genius men 724 00:41:16,300 --> 00:41:17,820 and white men in particular. 725 00:41:17,820 --> 00:41:22,820 And I think it was absolutely an act of feminist bravado 726 00:41:23,860 --> 00:41:25,940 to laugh at men, 727 00:41:25,940 --> 00:41:28,620 to laugh at what they thought they'd achieved, 728 00:41:28,620 --> 00:41:31,620 to laugh at what they thought they were, 729 00:41:31,620 --> 00:41:33,260 to laugh at their power, 730 00:41:33,260 --> 00:41:35,500 and to laugh at their success. 731 00:41:35,500 --> 00:41:39,380 Fired up, Lubaina submitted her work to a feminist exhibition being 732 00:41:39,380 --> 00:41:41,580 organised at the ICA. 733 00:41:41,580 --> 00:41:46,620 I made the first cut-out man and I tried to get that painting or that 734 00:41:46,820 --> 00:41:50,500 cut-out into a show called Women's Images Of Men, 735 00:41:50,500 --> 00:41:52,500 which was on at the ICA, 736 00:41:52,500 --> 00:41:55,180 and they didn't want it in the show. 737 00:41:55,180 --> 00:41:57,020 And that made me shift... 738 00:41:57,020 --> 00:41:59,740 That was a very kind of particular moment, 739 00:41:59,740 --> 00:42:02,580 where I understood that I wasn't having 740 00:42:02,580 --> 00:42:05,460 the same conversations, perhaps, 741 00:42:05,460 --> 00:42:08,940 as those women in that feminist art circle. 742 00:42:11,100 --> 00:42:13,860 I carried on making that series of works, 743 00:42:13,860 --> 00:42:15,940 and showed them at the Africa Centre 744 00:42:15,940 --> 00:42:18,260 and the reaction there was hilarity. 745 00:42:18,260 --> 00:42:21,900 I mean, I think, the African men thought they were very funny. 746 00:42:21,900 --> 00:42:24,940 All the women that I knew thought they were very funny. 747 00:42:24,940 --> 00:42:27,580 And I didn't care what anyone else thought. 748 00:42:27,580 --> 00:42:30,420 I think the reviews again were in 749 00:42:30,420 --> 00:42:33,500 things like City Limits and Time Out, 750 00:42:33,500 --> 00:42:36,660 and centred on the anger, 751 00:42:36,660 --> 00:42:39,340 so I think that was the beginning of 752 00:42:39,340 --> 00:42:43,420 people talking about me as an artist that was angry. 753 00:42:43,420 --> 00:42:46,980 There is a rage in Lubaina Himid and a justified rage. 754 00:42:46,980 --> 00:42:51,900 She recognised that the institutions were multiply 755 00:42:51,900 --> 00:42:56,900 hostile or multiply closed in their imaginations to women, 756 00:42:57,620 --> 00:43:00,580 but absolutely to the question of black women. 757 00:43:00,580 --> 00:43:02,700 Yes, I was angry. 758 00:43:02,700 --> 00:43:07,740 I could see that things were not equal and I could see that... 759 00:43:09,220 --> 00:43:14,100 ..it was going to take an awfully long time to redress the balance. 760 00:43:14,100 --> 00:43:17,140 Little did I know how long it was going to take. 761 00:43:17,140 --> 00:43:19,380 ..is Lubaina Himid. 762 00:43:19,380 --> 00:43:22,740 Lubaina won the Turner Prize in 2017. 763 00:43:22,740 --> 00:43:24,780 The first black woman to do so. 764 00:43:27,220 --> 00:43:29,140 To the arts and cultural historians 765 00:43:29,140 --> 00:43:31,740 who cared enough to write essays 766 00:43:31,740 --> 00:43:34,540 about my work for decades, thank you. 767 00:43:34,540 --> 00:43:37,020 You gave me sustenance in the wilderness years. 768 00:43:38,300 --> 00:43:42,700 Feminist artists are finally being recognised and celebrated, 769 00:43:42,700 --> 00:43:46,140 even if it has taken over 40 flippin' years. 770 00:43:50,100 --> 00:43:53,300 Carolee Schneemann has had to wait even longer. 771 00:43:54,500 --> 00:43:58,980 Now, rightfully seen as one of the first wave of feminist artists, 772 00:43:58,980 --> 00:44:02,580 she suffered criticism and censorship her entire career. 773 00:44:05,580 --> 00:44:08,660 Now 78, she's opening the very first 774 00:44:08,660 --> 00:44:11,740 retrospective of her work in America. 775 00:44:13,620 --> 00:44:17,780 This huge, wonderful exhibit that is such a complete 776 00:44:17,780 --> 00:44:22,740 revelation of all the different realms of my work opens tomorrow. 777 00:44:23,940 --> 00:44:24,980 It's incredible. 778 00:44:27,780 --> 00:44:30,700 The exhibition features 300 works, 779 00:44:30,700 --> 00:44:33,700 with the earliest dating back to 1955. 780 00:44:34,740 --> 00:44:37,020 Being a young woman painter was to 781 00:44:37,020 --> 00:44:40,820 live on the margins of masculine culture. 782 00:44:40,820 --> 00:44:44,500 So, people are so astonished by these early works. 783 00:44:44,500 --> 00:44:46,460 They've never seen them before. 784 00:44:46,460 --> 00:44:48,300 They've never seen them before 785 00:44:48,300 --> 00:44:52,980 because no-one had any interest whatsoever in showing them, 786 00:44:52,980 --> 00:44:57,060 or in giving me any authority as a visual artist. 787 00:44:57,060 --> 00:45:00,540 So, I've lived through all these years with 788 00:45:00,540 --> 00:45:04,780 my major sense of creative work remaining invisible. 789 00:45:06,020 --> 00:45:08,860 That's how I began to be an activist, 790 00:45:08,860 --> 00:45:11,940 and called a performance artist. 791 00:45:11,940 --> 00:45:14,940 A woman in the culture of privileged Europeans 792 00:45:14,940 --> 00:45:17,820 is first and foremost a sight to be looked at. 793 00:45:17,820 --> 00:45:20,140 In the nudes of European painting, 794 00:45:20,140 --> 00:45:22,420 we can discover some of the criteria 795 00:45:22,420 --> 00:45:25,060 and conventions by which women were judged. 796 00:45:25,060 --> 00:45:26,900 We can see how women were seen. 797 00:45:28,700 --> 00:45:29,780 What then is a nude? 798 00:45:32,620 --> 00:45:36,860 I was very concerned with the question, 799 00:45:36,860 --> 00:45:39,900 "Could I be both the subject, 800 00:45:39,900 --> 00:45:42,700 "a nude, and the artist 801 00:45:42,700 --> 00:45:47,620 "transforming the positions and proportions of that nude?" 802 00:45:50,100 --> 00:45:53,620 In 1963, frustrated by the lack of opportunities 803 00:45:53,620 --> 00:45:55,780 to exhibit her paintings, 804 00:45:55,780 --> 00:45:58,620 Carolee began to use her naked body 805 00:45:58,620 --> 00:46:02,020 to create a series of images called I Body. 806 00:46:03,500 --> 00:46:06,700 Could I just combine my body as a form of collage, 807 00:46:06,700 --> 00:46:10,300 as I took these photographs to different curators, and they said, 808 00:46:10,300 --> 00:46:14,900 "This is crap, if you want to paint, paint, put your clothes back on." 809 00:46:14,900 --> 00:46:17,100 But I didn't think that the body was 810 00:46:17,100 --> 00:46:19,860 going to dominate my materials the way it did. 811 00:46:21,460 --> 00:46:26,460 Having a vibrant, lively, sexualised body was considered unnatural. 812 00:46:28,540 --> 00:46:31,140 And obscene. And confusing. 813 00:46:32,860 --> 00:46:35,700 Disheartened, Carolee began to make films 814 00:46:35,700 --> 00:46:39,260 exploring female sexuality and physical pleasure. 815 00:46:39,260 --> 00:46:43,060 Her 1964 work, Meat Joy, is an erotic rite. 816 00:46:44,020 --> 00:46:45,820 I want to give a location, a space, 817 00:46:45,820 --> 00:46:47,740 a place between desire and experience. 818 00:46:49,140 --> 00:46:52,500 It's a very, very profoundly disturbing work and, you know, 819 00:46:52,500 --> 00:46:57,580 presents very stark questions about nudity and the body and animality. 820 00:46:59,620 --> 00:47:02,940 But then, also, using the body to ask interesting questions about the 821 00:47:02,940 --> 00:47:05,940 relationship between pornography and the nude. 822 00:47:07,380 --> 00:47:09,860 But the work Carolee is most famous, 823 00:47:09,860 --> 00:47:11,660 or perhaps infamous for, 824 00:47:11,660 --> 00:47:16,140 is a 1975 performance called Interior Scroll, 825 00:47:16,140 --> 00:47:19,460 a landmark moment in feminist art. 826 00:47:19,460 --> 00:47:24,460 Interior Scroll, which has made so much trouble in my life 827 00:47:25,420 --> 00:47:30,020 and probably prevented me from having a lot 828 00:47:30,020 --> 00:47:33,260 of nice teaching jobs, was simply a dream. 829 00:47:33,260 --> 00:47:38,300 It was a dream out of which I made a simple little drawing of a figure 830 00:47:39,340 --> 00:47:44,140 that looked like, um, you know, sort of a tampon configuration. 831 00:47:44,140 --> 00:47:48,620 Pulling a scroll out of her vagina, 832 00:47:48,620 --> 00:47:52,500 which had writing on it that was about interior knowledge. 833 00:47:54,220 --> 00:47:58,500 The source of forgotten or suppressed power 834 00:47:58,500 --> 00:48:00,740 within the woman's body, 835 00:48:00,740 --> 00:48:03,620 sending information as a text. 836 00:48:03,620 --> 00:48:05,180 It was very simple. 837 00:48:05,180 --> 00:48:07,180 So, I put the little drawing away 838 00:48:07,180 --> 00:48:09,420 and then quite a few years later, 839 00:48:09,420 --> 00:48:11,980 there was a feminist festival 840 00:48:11,980 --> 00:48:14,180 at which I was asked to do something, 841 00:48:14,180 --> 00:48:16,580 and I remembered the little scroll and I 842 00:48:16,580 --> 00:48:18,420 started writing out the text, 843 00:48:18,420 --> 00:48:22,980 and folding it up in these little narrow pieces of paper. 844 00:48:22,980 --> 00:48:27,980 And I thought, "Well, I could insert the text and read it as part of the 845 00:48:28,900 --> 00:48:30,420 "woman's performance event." 846 00:48:30,420 --> 00:48:32,020 I met a happy man 847 00:48:32,020 --> 00:48:35,180 A structuralist film-maker 848 00:48:36,220 --> 00:48:38,820 But don't call me that, it's something else I do 849 00:48:40,500 --> 00:48:42,900 He said we are fond of you 850 00:48:42,900 --> 00:48:45,060 You are charming 851 00:48:45,060 --> 00:48:47,820 But don't ask us to look at your films 852 00:48:47,820 --> 00:48:49,500 We cannot 853 00:48:49,500 --> 00:48:53,100 There are certain films we cannot look at: 854 00:48:53,100 --> 00:48:54,420 The personal clutter 855 00:48:55,380 --> 00:48:57,260 The persistence of feelings 856 00:48:57,260 --> 00:48:59,340 The hand-touch sensibility 857 00:48:59,340 --> 00:49:01,180 The diaristic indulgence 858 00:49:01,180 --> 00:49:02,780 The painterly mess 859 00:49:02,780 --> 00:49:04,140 The dense gestalt 860 00:49:04,140 --> 00:49:06,300 The primitive techniques 861 00:49:06,300 --> 00:49:10,420 I had no idea it would make so much controversy and... 862 00:49:11,740 --> 00:49:14,660 ..that it would continue to have a life of its own, 863 00:49:14,660 --> 00:49:17,540 dominating so many other aspects of the work. 864 00:49:17,540 --> 00:49:20,740 The idea that the body can be the source of creativity, 865 00:49:20,740 --> 00:49:23,860 that women are both procreative, 866 00:49:23,860 --> 00:49:26,380 they have babies that come out of their vaginas, 867 00:49:26,380 --> 00:49:28,580 and they also can be creative. 868 00:49:28,580 --> 00:49:33,580 So opening up a huge area that was both tantalising for women, 869 00:49:33,980 --> 00:49:38,580 feeling proud of their own agency, but also, you know, 870 00:49:38,580 --> 00:49:41,940 enormously threatening to a male elite. 871 00:49:41,940 --> 00:49:46,900 There are so many ways that my work was censored or vilified, 872 00:49:46,900 --> 00:49:50,580 but the most painful rejections for me 873 00:49:50,580 --> 00:49:54,100 came from feminist theoreticians, 874 00:49:54,100 --> 00:49:55,660 particularly in London, 875 00:49:55,660 --> 00:49:58,860 but often in the States, feminist theoreticians, 876 00:49:58,860 --> 00:50:02,380 who felt my work was narcissistic, indulgent... 877 00:50:04,180 --> 00:50:09,220 ..stupid, close to pornography, and playing into male fantasies, 878 00:50:09,340 --> 00:50:13,820 when they couldn't see that my work was actually challenging the 879 00:50:13,820 --> 00:50:17,180 suppressive conventions that we were all struggling against. 880 00:50:21,380 --> 00:50:24,660 Judy Chicago also faced public outrage 881 00:50:24,660 --> 00:50:28,580 and fierce vitriol in 1979 for the Dinner Party, 882 00:50:28,580 --> 00:50:32,580 a monumental sculpture celebrating great women in history. 883 00:50:33,660 --> 00:50:36,420 One critic described it as, "Mainly cliche, 884 00:50:36,420 --> 00:50:39,660 "with the colours of a Taiwanese souvenir factory." 885 00:50:41,300 --> 00:50:42,860 It was absolutely derided, 886 00:50:42,860 --> 00:50:45,300 particularly by many of the male critics, 887 00:50:45,300 --> 00:50:48,900 because it had shocking vaginal imagery, and included all sorts of 888 00:50:48,900 --> 00:50:51,940 techniques like ceramics and embroidery 889 00:50:51,940 --> 00:50:55,380 that were not regarded as fine art practices. 890 00:50:55,380 --> 00:50:57,980 And it was also collectively achieved 891 00:50:57,980 --> 00:50:59,900 by hundreds of female artists. 892 00:50:59,900 --> 00:51:04,940 So, it broke so many moulds and it set out to be an icon and indeed, 893 00:51:05,700 --> 00:51:07,340 you know, 50 years later, 894 00:51:07,340 --> 00:51:10,740 it still is one of the most important iconic works 895 00:51:10,740 --> 00:51:13,460 within the history of women's art practice. 896 00:51:13,460 --> 00:51:16,420 I think her work has to be seen as one of the greatest minimalist 897 00:51:16,420 --> 00:51:20,020 sculptures, the great triangle of the Dinner Party, 898 00:51:20,020 --> 00:51:24,580 but if we see it as this great formal work of art, 899 00:51:24,580 --> 00:51:26,140 with its layers and layers, 900 00:51:26,140 --> 00:51:28,940 and as well as the stitching, and then we add to it 901 00:51:28,940 --> 00:51:33,020 the fact that she used it as a kind of history lesson, 902 00:51:33,020 --> 00:51:37,740 she created the space in which women were talking to each other, 903 00:51:37,740 --> 00:51:40,380 so the very idea of like a Last Supper 904 00:51:40,380 --> 00:51:42,980 is like the first conversation. 905 00:51:42,980 --> 00:51:46,780 But it's not a them and us of the Last Supper, it's triangular. 906 00:51:46,780 --> 00:51:49,780 There's no hierarchy in a triangle. 907 00:51:49,780 --> 00:51:52,980 So there are so many layers to this, that simply to say, 908 00:51:52,980 --> 00:51:55,460 "She put a whole bunch of vaginas on the table", 909 00:51:55,460 --> 00:52:00,180 misses the power and the evidence of that power is the numbers of women 910 00:52:00,180 --> 00:52:04,660 who trekked in coaches all through the night, all over Canada, 911 00:52:04,660 --> 00:52:07,260 all over the States, just to see it. 912 00:52:09,780 --> 00:52:13,380 About 100,000 people saw the Dinner Party. 913 00:52:13,380 --> 00:52:17,340 It was the most successful show that the museum ever had. 914 00:52:17,340 --> 00:52:19,860 Despite the huge number of visitors, 915 00:52:19,860 --> 00:52:24,900 the Dinner Party endured a 26-year struggle to find a permanent home. 916 00:52:25,180 --> 00:52:28,060 I knew that there was resistance, 917 00:52:28,060 --> 00:52:31,500 but, you know, some bad resistance has been covered up 918 00:52:31,500 --> 00:52:36,540 by the kind of flood of women who have come out into visibility 919 00:52:36,860 --> 00:52:38,620 in the last ten years. 920 00:52:38,620 --> 00:52:42,660 Part of me believes that art can transcend barriers, 921 00:52:42,660 --> 00:52:44,900 art can cross over prejudice. 922 00:52:44,900 --> 00:52:49,700 Art can speak beyond, lead the society forward. 923 00:52:49,700 --> 00:52:51,300 That is the history of art. 924 00:52:51,300 --> 00:52:55,740 And if there is a huge audience for art, and people want to see it, 925 00:52:55,740 --> 00:52:57,900 and museums won't show it, what does that mean? 926 00:52:57,900 --> 00:52:59,460 What does that mean? 927 00:52:59,460 --> 00:53:02,100 It can only mean one thing, 928 00:53:02,100 --> 00:53:04,140 you can't play here. 929 00:53:04,140 --> 00:53:06,500 You know? No entry. 930 00:53:06,500 --> 00:53:09,660 It doesn't matter if you have this big audience, 931 00:53:09,660 --> 00:53:12,300 it doesn't matter if all these people want to see it, 932 00:53:12,300 --> 00:53:14,180 it doesn't matter if there's a hunger. 933 00:53:15,140 --> 00:53:17,740 A new wave of feminism is building. 934 00:53:22,820 --> 00:53:25,980 We are finally, as of 2018, realising 935 00:53:25,980 --> 00:53:29,660 how radical the women's movement has been. 936 00:53:29,660 --> 00:53:34,100 It is the most successful social movement in transforming the lives 937 00:53:34,100 --> 00:53:37,620 of 51% of the population, incompletely but phenomenally. 938 00:53:39,900 --> 00:53:43,300 The appetite for feminist art is now bigger than ever. 939 00:53:46,420 --> 00:53:50,140 Here at Frieze, one of the world's largest contemporary art fairs, 940 00:53:50,140 --> 00:53:52,820 the star exhibit is an area dedicated 941 00:53:52,820 --> 00:53:55,780 to the extreme edges of feminist art. 942 00:54:00,860 --> 00:54:03,540 The public seems to be very hungry to know more and 943 00:54:03,540 --> 00:54:06,780 to expand our own ideas about what is feminism, 944 00:54:06,780 --> 00:54:10,980 or is in fact feminism a plural word, not a monolith? 945 00:54:12,380 --> 00:54:15,020 The common denominator of all these artists, 946 00:54:15,020 --> 00:54:19,220 they all made work that had graphic sexual content, they were all... 947 00:54:19,220 --> 00:54:22,380 most of them censored at one point or another. 948 00:54:22,380 --> 00:54:26,060 They all challenged governmental restrictions of 949 00:54:26,060 --> 00:54:29,460 sexual free speech and obscenity laws in many ways. 950 00:54:29,460 --> 00:54:32,380 You know, in the words of Oscar Wilde, you know, 951 00:54:32,380 --> 00:54:34,780 we need rebellion to move society forward. 952 00:54:34,780 --> 00:54:38,420 And we need to do it looking backwards and forwards. 953 00:54:38,420 --> 00:54:41,140 So I think that's why this feminism, 954 00:54:41,140 --> 00:54:42,980 but understood as a plural, 955 00:54:42,980 --> 00:54:44,900 is so important today. 956 00:54:47,900 --> 00:54:52,620 That the art of these revolutionary women is only now being rediscovered 957 00:54:52,620 --> 00:54:57,620 says a lot about how far we've come and how much still needs to change. 958 00:55:00,940 --> 00:55:04,380 As long as women's history is consigned 959 00:55:04,380 --> 00:55:07,420 to the corners and the margins, 960 00:55:07,420 --> 00:55:10,700 as long as women's art is added on 961 00:55:10,700 --> 00:55:14,580 to the mainstream male narrative, 962 00:55:14,580 --> 00:55:17,020 women are disadvantaged, 963 00:55:17,020 --> 00:55:20,420 women artists are disadvantaged. 964 00:55:20,420 --> 00:55:23,380 The only way that's going to change 965 00:55:23,380 --> 00:55:26,340 is when young women can build on 966 00:55:26,340 --> 00:55:29,140 everything women have done before them. 967 00:55:30,700 --> 00:55:33,620 Back in London, a young artist is doing just that. 968 00:55:36,620 --> 00:55:41,620 Herstory is a project that uses feminist art to engage people of any 969 00:55:41,860 --> 00:55:46,900 gender with the women's history that has been systematically left out. 970 00:55:47,100 --> 00:55:50,940 So, I've been recreating Judy Chicago's Dinner Party 971 00:55:50,940 --> 00:55:55,980 to make us stronger and fuller and feel more present in our worlds. 972 00:55:55,980 --> 00:56:00,060 Where Judy Chicago has ceramic place settings, 973 00:56:00,060 --> 00:56:01,860 I've created these collages. 974 00:56:01,860 --> 00:56:06,180 MUSIC: Hong Kong Garden by Siouxsie And The Banshees 975 00:56:06,180 --> 00:56:09,140 Each participant researches a different artist, 976 00:56:09,140 --> 00:56:11,340 writing their version of her story. 977 00:56:11,340 --> 00:56:14,700 # While the population feeds 978 00:56:14,700 --> 00:56:17,100 # Junk floats on polluted water... # 979 00:56:17,100 --> 00:56:20,380 My name is Carolee Schneemann. 980 00:56:20,380 --> 00:56:22,500 If there is one thing you know about me, 981 00:56:22,500 --> 00:56:25,060 chances are is that in the 1970s 982 00:56:25,060 --> 00:56:29,700 I pulled a scroll out of my vagina and read the text on it aloud. 983 00:56:29,700 --> 00:56:31,260 And so... 984 00:56:31,260 --> 00:56:33,820 LAUGHTER 985 00:56:35,420 --> 00:56:37,380 APPLAUSE 986 00:56:39,340 --> 00:56:43,140 I want my work to be a bridge that has to be crossed by young feminists 987 00:56:43,140 --> 00:56:44,740 working with their bodies. 988 00:56:44,740 --> 00:56:47,300 And I want to celebrate the vagina. 989 00:56:50,660 --> 00:56:53,700 I think those women felt that they had waited long enough, 990 00:56:53,700 --> 00:56:56,060 that you could do things subtly and gently but, 991 00:56:56,060 --> 00:56:57,900 you know, nothing had happened. 992 00:56:57,900 --> 00:57:00,540 Shock tactics felt like the name of the game. 993 00:57:01,540 --> 00:57:04,180 My name is Mary Kelly and I'm an artist. 994 00:57:04,180 --> 00:57:06,260 For me, art didn't need to be sterile, 995 00:57:06,260 --> 00:57:09,500 and art and life didn't need to be separated. 996 00:57:09,500 --> 00:57:11,300 Because the personal is political. 997 00:57:14,220 --> 00:57:17,140 Talking about our bodies, talking about our life events, 998 00:57:17,140 --> 00:57:20,740 talking about our traumas, talking about our desires, 999 00:57:20,740 --> 00:57:21,940 has to be in the public, 1000 00:57:21,940 --> 00:57:24,060 but it already is in the public for men because 1001 00:57:24,060 --> 00:57:25,940 that's called culture. 1002 00:57:25,940 --> 00:57:27,740 I am Margaret Harrison. 1003 00:57:27,740 --> 00:57:29,820 Born in Yorkshire and one of the founders 1004 00:57:29,820 --> 00:57:31,820 of the Women's Liberation Art Group. 1005 00:57:31,820 --> 00:57:34,260 My work has made headlines and effected change. 1006 00:57:34,260 --> 00:57:36,100 For me, art and activism are one. 1007 00:57:37,780 --> 00:57:39,260 We have to learn from these women, 1008 00:57:39,260 --> 00:57:42,180 and we have to talk to these women and if it doesn't happen, 1009 00:57:42,180 --> 00:57:43,700 change starts to get harder. 1010 00:57:44,740 --> 00:57:46,940 My name is Judy Chicago. 1011 00:57:46,940 --> 00:57:51,940 It took me 26 years to find a permanent home for the Dinner Party. 1012 00:57:52,620 --> 00:57:54,500 But unless that happened, 1013 00:57:54,500 --> 00:57:57,460 it was in danger of repeating the story it recounted. 1014 00:57:57,460 --> 00:58:01,580 By which I mean, the repeated erasure of women from history. 1015 00:58:03,180 --> 00:58:05,300 They have had a very profound effect, 1016 00:58:05,300 --> 00:58:07,300 not just within the art world, 1017 00:58:07,300 --> 00:58:09,700 and changing the way art has functioned, 1018 00:58:09,700 --> 00:58:12,740 but actually in surfacing women's voices. 1019 00:58:14,700 --> 00:58:17,980 And finally, our voices are being heard. 1020 00:58:17,980 --> 00:58:20,420 Time's up! 1021 00:58:20,420 --> 00:58:23,300 London, what time is it? Time's up! 1022 00:58:23,300 --> 00:58:25,500 London, what time is it? Times's up! 1023 00:58:25,500 --> 00:58:28,100 CHEERING 1024 00:58:29,820 --> 00:58:34,620 # Just because 1025 00:58:34,620 --> 00:58:39,300 # I'm a woman 1026 00:58:47,300 --> 00:58:49,580 # I'm a woman. #