Intersection for the Arts: 'The Bodies Are Back' by Margaret Harrison

Gallery hours: Monday - Friday, 12-5pm

Margaret Harrison, renowned British artist and pioneer of feminist art, revisits the themes of her very early work exploring notions of the human body as an object of sexuality, consumption, and gaze. The Bodies Are Back consists of works on paper that Harrison produced in the late 1960's/early 1970's displayed alongside new works created for this show. In 1971, Harrison's work was instantly met with controversy and antagonism (the London police shut down her first solo exhibition the day after it opened feeling that its contents were too controversial). This controversy caused Harrison to abandon the issues and themes of this series. Now an established artist with work in the permanent collections of major international institutions, she is critically re-engaging with this body of work, continuing the dialogue that she began four decades ago.

Margaret Harrison studied at the Carlisle College of Art, England (1957-61), Royal Academy Schools, London (1961-64), and the Academy of Art in Perugia, Italy (1965). Until recently, she was a Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University and The Summer Arts Institute of California, held at U.C. Davis. In 1970, she was one of the founders of the first London Women’s Liberation Art Group. She came of age as an artist during the heady years of pop, minimal and conceptual work. She has produced bodies of work dealing with homeworkers, rape, domestic abuse, war's impact on women, fame and celebrity status, and beauty as depicted by the cosmetics industry. She has been an Artist in Residence at the New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York and a Fellow at the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.

Harrison has been featured in over 20 solo exhibitions, including ones mounted at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (New York, NY), The New Museum for Contemporary Art (New York, NY), Woodruff Art Center (Atlanta, GA), Beacon Street Gallery (Chicago, IL), Ruth Bloom Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), and Beverley Knowles Fine Art (London, UK). She has also been included in group exhibitions for the past three decades, including venues such as Santa Monica Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Capp Street Project, P.S. 1 (New York, NY), National Museum for Women in the Arts (Washington DC), Florence Bienale, Whitechapel Art Gallery (London), Institute for Contemporary Art (London), and Victoria & Albert Museum (London). Her work is in the public collections of the Tate Gallery, Arts Council of England, Künsthaus Zurich, Victoria & Albert Museum, and U.C. Davis. She has taught at Manchester Metropolitan University, U.C. Davis, California College of Arts and Crafts, St. Martin's School of Art, Newcastle College of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, and Goldsmith’s College at the University of London. Her work has been the subject of numerous critical essays and reviews, including ones published in The Village Voice, The New Yorker, Time Out, The Sacramento Bee, Artview, and the Guardian (UK). Noted theorists and historians Lucy Lippard, Penelope Shackelford, Suzanne Davies, and Peter Suchin have all written on Harrison’s work. Some of her early controversial drawings are currently showing as part of the traveling exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, an exhibition curated by Connie Butler, drawing curator of New York’s MoMA. The inaugural showing of WACK! was at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in 2007 and has traveled to the National Museum for Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington DC, MoMA in New York City, and the Vancouver Museum and Art Gallery. Drawings from this show were acquired by the Tate for their permanent collection. Harrison also recently participated in the 11th International Istanbul Biennial in Fall 2009. Exhibiting with 70 internationally renowned artists and artist collectives who have attracted acclaim in the contemporary art scene, Harrison was the sole British representative.

RELATED EVENTS:
Open Process Series: Clips and Conversation - 'THE HERETICS' and 'WOMEN ART REVOLUTION' Tue, Mar 2 | 7pm | $5 - $15 (FREE for current Intersection and/or BAWFM Members)

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Stylistically, Margaret Harrison's work is reminiscent of early 20th century comic and pin-up cartoon art- in color theory and line. Her style adheres to many traditional comic conventions, but she holds up a distorted mirror to contemporary society. Recognized as a pioneer of feminist art, her work explores not only the notions of female equality but also gender ambiguity and the arbitrary nature of absolute identity.

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"Sometime ago Intersection's curator/program director Kevin Chen gave me a peek at his image checklist for this show. It was fascinating to see so many (usually) macho superheroes re-imagined in this way. Anyone studying gender issues in pop culture should check it out."

In The News

Art that engages with the politics of gendered subjectivity frequently references the body. As Margaret Harrison understands fully, there are reasons for the prevalence of this thematic emphasis.

We sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between art and pornography, but throw in some bizarre gender-bending imagery and various plays on the depiction of women in art, pornography, and the media and the problem is infinitely compounded.

This is perhaps why Margaret Harrison's original 1971 exhibition of many of the works in The Bodies Are Back was shut down after one day. These works are - as the name indicates - back, along with newer works on similar themes at Intersection for the Arts.

Is satiric cheesecake still cheesecake? Is titillating imagery of voluptuous flesh bursting forth from peek-a-boo bras and garter belts pornographic even when it's delivered with a generous dose of irony and savage humor? This thorny dilemma, replete with alleged assaults on the gender of superheroes (more on that later), caught a 30ish, classically trained, feminist artist named Margaret Harrison in its clutches and threatened to derail her promising career. In 1971, the police shut down her first solo exhibition the day after it opened in London; a show that, in Harrison's words, "tread the fine line between irony, sexuality, transgender, transvestism, power, masculinity, objectification and exploitation."

Nearly 30 years after her show was shut down for indecency in London, feminist art pioneer Margaret Harrison returns with those original pieces plus some new ones. The exhibit, The Bodies Are Back, will be showing at Intersection for the Arts through March 27.

Granted, the voluptuous men and women who populate her saucy watercolor drawings are stalwarts of sexual ambivalence - superhero-like icons who are simultaneously humorous and starkly reflective of social mores - that wouldn't cause most contemporary art lovers to bat an eyelash. However, Harrison's first solo show as an emerging artist in 1971 was considered far too raunchy and subversive in its time, despite the heyday of the second-wave feminist movement.

Harrison first created the pieces included in "The Bodies Are Back" in the late 1960s and early '70s, and found her first solo show shut down by the police after one day; they felt it was too controversial. The images are still exciting, entirely contemporary, and ultimately timeless, like the fashion at a leather bar.

Despite dire predictions, including those from this writer, 2010 is shaping up to be a pretty good year for museum exhibitions.

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If you've always wondered how an influential feminist art show from the 1970s would read if it were suddenly transposed to a contemporary gallery, here's your chance to find out. Intersection for the Arts is hosting Margaret Harrison's "The Bodies Are Back," a collection of ribald watercolors and drawings that, as the curatorial statement says, explores "notions of the human body as an object of sexuality, consumption, and gaze."

'The Bodies Are Back' by Margaret Harrison - Now through April 16th!