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Home > VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS > The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991

The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991

Presented by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH)

January 20-April 15, 2012

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The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991

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The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston presents the survey exhibition The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991, on view January 21 through April 15. Opening reception: Friday, January 20, 7pm-9pm.

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is pleased to present The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991, a survey of leading women artists that examines the crucial feminist contribution to the development of deconstructivism in the 1970s and '80s. As the term suggests, deconstructivism involved taking apart and examining source material, generally borrowed from the mass media, to expose the ways commercial images reveal the mechanisms of power. Women had a particularly high stake in this kind of examination and were disproportionately represented among artists who practiced it. This exhibition is organized by Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York.

The exhibition includes 68 photographs, prints, paintings, videos, and installations by 22 artists and one artists' collaborative. The artists include: Judith Barry, Dara Birnbaum, Barbara Bloom, Sarah Charlesworth, the Guerrilla Girls, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Susan Hiller, Jenny Holzer, Deborah Kass, Mary Kelly, Silvia Kolbowski, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Adrian Piper, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Sturtevant, Carrie Mae Weems, and Hannah Wilke.

The mid-1970s saw the emergence of a potent artistic impulse to deconstruct the operations of cultural power, an impulse that is often understood, erroneously, to have been gender blind. The prevailing belief has been that following the identity-based, essentialist work of the late 1960s and early 1970s, progressive women artists put aside their differences with men to help them reveal how the mass media and global capitalism control visual culture. Their work was understood to suggest that authenticity and individuality were obsolete fictions, unsustainable in a media-saturated culture in which advertising, television, and the movies shape visual expression far more powerfully than individual agency. Sexual politics were seen to have submitted to a gender-free critique.

Hindsight helps reveal that this scenario is deeply flawed. Not only was the deconstructive impulse propelled in significant measure by women, but it reflected specifically female and highly individualized experiences of power--and constraint. The blatant misogyny of the movie and advertising industries, and the sexism of other cultural institutions and social structures, were significant motivators for launching attacks against them through such strategies as appropriation, simulation, masquerade, and pastiche. A chorus of varied voices--of decidedly plural feminisms--rose up from a wide variety of racial, economic, and cultural communities. In fact the deconstructive impulse helped reveal that gender identity and its representation were more complicated than generally had been recognized.

The exhibition is co-curated by Helaine Posner, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York and Nancy Princenthal, art critic and former Senior Editor at Art in America. The exhibition was presented at the Neuberger Museum of Art from January 14 - April 3rd, 2011 and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University from September 15 through December 31, 2011.

Pictured above: Laurie Simmons, Walking House, 1989. Gelatin silver print. 84 x 48 inches. Courtesy the artist. © Laurie Simmons.

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Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH)

5216 Montrose
Houston, TX 77006

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Free Event.

Times:

EFFECTIVE AUGUST 7, 2010:
New hours:
Wednesday - 11am-7pm
Thursday - 11am-9pm
Friday - 11am-7pm
Saturday and Sunday- 11am-6pm
Closed Monday and Tuesday

PUBLIC PROGRAMS
All events are free and open to the public, and take place at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston unless otherwise noted. For complete listings and current information, please check www.camh.org.

Opening Reception:
Friday, January 20
Member Preview: 6-7PM
Public Reception: 7-9PM
Help us celebrate the opening of this survey of leading women artists that examines the crucial feminist contribution to the development of deconstructivism in the 1970s and '80s. Reception with bar and food truck; cash only please.

Artists/Scholars Talk: Helaine Posner
Saturday, January 21
2PM
Join us for a closer look at the exhibition with Helaine Posner, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York. Past exhibitions by Posner include Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation (1998), Lorna Simpson (2006-2007), and Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels (2011-2012). She is co-author, with Nancy Princenthal, Eleanor Heartney, and Sue Scott, of After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art (2007).

Artists/Scholars Talk: Dr. Jenni Sorkin
Thursday, January 26, 6:30PM
Join us for a gallery walk-through of the exhibition with Dr. Jenni Sorkin, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art and Critical Studies, University of Houston. Dr. Sorkin's work examines the confluence of gender and material culture within modern and contemporary art history, theory, and criticism. Her writing has appeared in the New Art Examiner, Art Journal, Frieze, Modern Painters, among others. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Live Form: Craft as Participation, which examines the legacy of Black Mountain College, craft pedagogy, and the history of ceramics from 1952 to 1975.

Musiqa Loft Concert
Thursday, February 9, 6:30PM
Join us for the popular loft concert held by Musiqa, a nationally acclaimed contemporary music ensemble that takes a fresh look at the concert experience. Led by five composers, Musiqa creates programs that combine dance, poetry, theater, film, and visual arts with the finest modern repertoire. Cited by the Houston Chronicle as "five Lone Star classical musicians to make us proud," Musiqa will present a concert inspired by the exhibition The Deconstructive Impulse.

Film Screening: ¡Women Art Revolution (¡W.A.R), 2010 (82 minutes)*
Sunday, February 12, 5PM
*Special location: Brown Auditorium Theater, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet Street
The CAMH's Teen Council (TC) presents a special screening of the documentary ¡Women Art Revolution, directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson, participating artist in The Deconstructive Impulse. The film explores how the feminist art movement fused free speech and politics into an art that radically transformed the art and culture of our times. Members of the TC will lead an informal discussion immediately after the film.

Tickets will be available at www.mfah.org; CAMH members receive discounted ticket price at box office with membership card. Co-presented by the MFAH Film Department

Artists/Scholars Talk: Deborah Kass
Saturday, March 24, 2PM
Deborah Kass is an internationally-recognized artist whose painting examines the intersection of art history, popular culture, and the self. She received her BFA in painting at Carnegie-Mellon University. Her work is in the collections of institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, among others, and has been written about extensively in the New York Times, art press, and academic books. A survey show, Deborah Kass, The Warhol Project traveled across the country from 1999-2001. The Andy Warhol Museum is presenting a retrospective of her work, Deborah Kass, Before and Happily Ever After, in 2012. Her work is featured in The Deconstructive Impulse.

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