Context: The Invisibility of the Female Avant-Garde and the Rise of a Female Tradition in Contemporary Art 

The seminar explores the long-time obscured biographies of pre- and post-war female artists and the social, political and material conditions that shaped their pioneering work. In the theoretical framework of contemporary feminist art history, we will look at case studies in a cultural-geographic comparison of artists from Western and Eastern Europe, USA and Latin America.
Nummer und TypBKM-BKM-Ko.19H.005 / Moduldurchführung
ModulKontext 
VeranstalterDepartement Fine Arts
LeitungAnke Kempkes
Anzahl Teilnehmendemaximal 17
ECTS3 Credits
LehrformSeminar
ZielgruppenBA Fine Arts Students
Lernziele / KompetenzenFeminist art history and theory
Introduction into related contemporary art practice
InhalteIn 1971 Linda Nochlin, feminist art historian of the first hour, published in ARTNews the provocative essay: "Why have there been no great women artist?" Focusing on the institutional exclusions of female artists predating the 20th century, Nochlin's question was deeply rhetorical: Her study challenged the invisible demarcations of the discipline of art history itself, revealing its meta-historical "naturalization" of patriarchal discourse as an intellectual distortion.
Expanding Nochlin's institutional critique into a contemporary perspective, I focus my study, which is the basis for this seminar, on the socio-political, material and production-based conditions for female artists of the prewar modern era (Bauhaus, Dada, Constructivism) and of the period of the 1960s and 70s neo-avant-garde (Pop-Surrealism, Minimal and Post Minimal).

Anke Kempkes is an international curator, scholar and art critic currently based in Warsaw. Since her studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 1991/92 she has contributed to international art publications, magazines and conferences. In 2004 she held the position of Chief Curator at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland.
From 2005-17 Kempkes ran an independent curatorial space, research centre and gallery in New York (Broadway1602). Since 2017 Kempkes is an independent curator of exhibitions in Europe with focus on Female Minimal and Post Minimal Art, and Queer Theatre and Performance Art. Kempkes currently works on a comparative study: The Invisibility of the Female Avant-Garde.
Bibliographie / LiteraturRecommended:

Linda Nochlin, "Why have there been no great women artist?", ARTNews, 1971: www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Nochlin-Linda_Why-Have-There-Been-No-Great-Women-Artists.pdf

Beatriz Preciado, "Contemporary to No One–our Extemporary", in: The Phantom Limb. Carol Rama and the History of Art, in: Anne Dressen, Teresa Grandas, Beatriz Preciado, The Passion according to Carol Rama, MACBA: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2014).

Griselda Pollock, "Old Bones and Cocktail Dresses: Louise Bourgeois and the question of Age", in: Oxford Art Journal (1999), Vol. 22, no. 2: Louise Bourgeois, 87.

"Katarzyna Kobro 1998-1951", Henry Moore Institute, Leeds/ Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, 1999

Cara Schweitzer, "Schrankenlose Freiheit fuer Hannah Höch", Berlin, 2011

Anke Kempkes,"Maria Bartuszova - Pioneer of Form: The Futurism of Women Avant- Gardists", in: Maria Bartuszova, "Provisional Forms", edited by Marta Dziewanska, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, 2014

Anke Kempkes, "Black Drips - Dark Matter - The Luxury Gap - Concept Individuel - Quarry Desert: The Incommensurable Contemporaneity of Alina Szapocznikow", in: Alina Szapocznikow, "Awkward Objects", Edited by Agata Jakubowska, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, 2009

"Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution", organized by Connie Butler/edited by Lisa Gabrielle Mark, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2007

"Rosemarie Castoro". Focus at Infinity, curated by Tanya Barson, MACBA Museu D'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2018
Leistungsnachweis / TestatanforderungMandatory attendance (minimum 80 %); active participation.
TermineTime: 09:15 - 17:00 o'clock

CW 40 (Monday to Friday): 30 September - 04 October
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