Chicago was born Judith Cohen in 1939 in Chicago, Illinois to parents Arthur and Mary Cohen. At an early age she showed an interest in art, which was encouraged by her parents who registered her for art classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She eventually enrolled at UCLA where the changing social landscape there would greatly influence the art she would come to create. In 1961 she married Jerry Gerowitz, whose surname she went by until 1970. Her husband unexpectedly died in a car crash in 1963, which prompted Chicago to continue to use his name. In a 1970 ad for Art Forum, Chicago under went another personal and professional transformation by unveiling her new self-given name taken from her home city, Chicago. The advertisement doubled as an announcement of her name change and also for an exhibition at California State College at Fullerton. This re-naming process marked a new period in Chicago’s life, which embraced the feminist movement and many of the community based tactics that came with it.

The trajectory of the show considers a ten year span in which Chicago underwent various personal and artistic changes. While in graduate school Chicago was famously criticized by a male professor for producing images that were too “womb and breast like,” which can be seen in pieces such as Mother Superette. She responded to this criticism by creating work for both her graduate thesis and work she would eventually produce for Rolf Nelson Gallery, which deviated from these forms. As the wall text notes, “she focused on painted sculptures in keeping with more geometric forms of East coast minimalism, incorporating the slick surfaces and lush colors that would come to define California’s Finish Fetish style.” Chicago would continue to use this approach to her art making process by repressing the more feminized imagery she had been inclined to make earlier in her career while adopting different approaches to her work. In many of the pieces from this era, a juxtaposition between non-traditional materials and practices can be seen. Chicago received training through an auto body school to study car painting techniques, which at the time was still considered to be a male-dominated space. She also learned to cast fiberglass and mastered the use of a variety of power tools in an effort to both inhabit these male spaces while also adding to her repertoire as an artist. These works were addressing her experiences as woman while simultaneously responding to the cultural and social realities of this time.

Chicago’s 2011 piece Birth Hood for example, which is a recreation of the 1964 original, illustrates the two worlds she was inhabiting at this time. The sculpture uses a car hood that was fabricated by Chicago. She then used auto body paint to create lush colors and biomorphic shapes that incorporated her own imagery and many of the car culture trends in L.A. at this time. This piece as well as many others featured in the exhibition showcases the development of the L.A. Finish Fetish moment. This art movement was occurring directly along side second wave feminism and consciousness-raising groups as well as the emergent car and counter culture.

Although Chicago’s work always contained female imagery within it, the shift from the late 1960s to the 1970s is striking. These later works would lay the foundation for The Dinner Party and can be seen in many of the paintings, drawings and performances from this era. By Chicago taking up China painting in 1972 for example, speaks to both her ingenious approach to non-traditional art practices while also embracing the more feminized elements to her work. Chicago’s 1973 Into the Darkness drawing features several petal-like layers varying in color from pink to green amidst a darkened center. Chicago would go onto create a series of related drawings, lithographs and paintings, which reflected this imagery and seemed to directly respond to the female form, while also gesturing towards the work of Georgia O’Keefe.

While I enjoyed the show overall, two things were missing for me. The first was an acknowledgment of the kind of privileged space Chicago inhabited at this time, despite the overt sexism she faced in male-dominated art and social spaces. The second missing factor was the lack of a dialogue her work had with many female artists of color who were emerging at this same time. Despite these shortcomings, “Chicago in L.A.” is an exciting representation of feminist art from this era, and is helping to expose the next generation of artists to Chicago’s work.

By Anni Irish

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Following several long introductions, Professor Spivak finally rose from her chair to address the packed room. She donned a deep blue sari with green accents, and dark glasses that hung from a chain around her neck emphasized her close-cropped haircut. She began with some opening comments on the situation in Syria, then shifted to a discussion about the Patrice Lumamba regime that ruled the Congo until 1961, and the larger social and political implications this had within Africa and Europe. From here she moved onto talking about the ways in which democracy and representation function on a global scale and began to discuss her experiences working with rural teachers in India several years ago. Professor Spivak went onto speak for over ninety minutes circling around these various topics in a complicated way. I was astounded at both the length of time she lectured for but also the passionate way she discussed the various issues she was presenting on.

It is Professor Spivak’s passion and extreme intellect that have formed the basis of her career.  At the age of thirty-four, she translated Derrida’s famous book Of Grammatology from French to English.  She went on to earn her PhD from Cornell University and became the first woman of color to receive the title of University Professor at Columbia University in 2007.  Her 1988 article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is what many consider to be the foundational text of post- colonial studies. She has also been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary doctorates including the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Art and Philosophy, and this year she was awarded the Padma Bhushan award by the Republic of India for English and Literature.

Given the political and social headiness of the lecture, one element I kept returning to was a brief comment Professor Spivak made about “training the imagination.” She said this within a larger conversation surrounding knowledge production and who “the producers of knowledge” are. Although this comment was referenced within a larger discussion about issues within education systems world-wide, it also seemed to offer a possible solution to these existing concerns. During the question and answer period following the lecture, one person asked what Professor Spivak meant by “the training of the imagination.” While she did not entirely nail down a working definition of this, it did leave a space open for a myriad of alternative possibilities to arise from.

I saw her comment as an opportunity to expand both upon my own academic and artistic training, and also where this might be present within an educational context today. My “training” first took place at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I then went on to receive two Masters within the humanities: one in Gender and Cultural Studies and a second in Performance Studies. Over time, I began to notice that some of the foundational components I learned in art school, such as to think critically about the world around, and to find inspiration in the everyday, were so much apart of my writing and artistic practice that it had become almost ingrained within my psyche. Although these key ingredients were something I was both taught to do and naturally gravitated towards, there does seem to be a growing need within in academia for individuals to be taught to think creatively.

In many ways, I think that Professor Spivak is urging us to continue to look beyond what the obvious solutions may be and to strive for more creative, effective strategies to solve issues on a macro and micro level. To train the imagination is to both develop a craft, but to also be able to integrate these skills into the quotidian. Within training the imagination, we must also un-train ourselves of habits, preconceived notions, and anxiety of the unknown. Everyone posses an imagination and can be taught to think creatively, but we also must be taught how not to feel self-conscious about this process and what may come with it.

While there are various overlaps that occur within the humanities and the arts in terms of the kinds of education people receive, there is also a need to extend beyond these bounds. Creativity training is needed on every level of the educational spectrum. It can serve both to foster new ideas and to develop problem-solving skills that reach beyond the immediate things at hand. Training the imagination is not only about developing new techniques within the sciences, humanities, and new forms of art, it is also about teaching the next generation of artist and academics to continue to strive beyond what is currently known.

By Anni Irish

The full lecture can be seen here:

Democracy and Representation, a talk by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak from Media, Culture, Communication on Vimeo.

The post Experiencing Gayatri Spivak: Training the Imagination appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.