10 women artists from the 80s who helped define contemporary art

Over the course of Women’s History Month in March, the National Museum of Women in the Arts utilized the hashtag #5WomenArtists to shed light on the under representation of women in museums and galleries.

That’s when I realized I couldn’t name as many women artists as I thought I could.

I moved to Washington, D.C., almost five years ago and I frequently take advantage of the free admission to Smithsonian museums around the city. One of my favorite is the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. We are teaming up with the museum around their “Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s” exhibit that was on display this winter.

We decided to profile 10 women in the exhibit, from the anonymous activist artist group the Guerrilla Girls, to the renowned typographer Barbara Kruger. Below, we take a look at these women, their art and who is inspiring them in the art world.

Adrian Piper

Adrian Piper is a conceptual artist and philosopher who has been creating art since the 1960s. She is constantly challenging assumptions and cultural biases surrounding race and gender. She draws inspiration from her own experiences. She is a light-skinned black woman and “has often been ostracized from the art world for her race and sex,” according to past interviews. Her work would frequently include ads from the New York Times that she added charcoal drawings to, in order to contrast the advertisements to confront racism.

Annette Lemieux

Annette Lemieux is a multimedia conceptual artist. She finds images from pop culture throughout history to discuss and question their effect on the present. In her piece above, “Courting Death,” she appropriated this image from a 1944 Life magazine. “It shows what is supposedly a Japanese soldier’s skull, sent as a gift to her from her boyfriend in the service. The work is a meditation on love and loss recontextualized in the era of the commodity. It brilliantly explores the image of longing and vocabularies of emotion in the midst of the rampant commercialization in the 1980,” according to the Hirshhorn.

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is famous for bold, typographic photomontages that immerse the viewer in language. Kruger’s work is highly informed by her background in graphic design and photo editing. Her work challenges the thoughts behind consumerism and desire by taking photos from media and overlaying red and white words and phrases over them. These juxtapositions invite the viewer to think twice about meaning behind them.

She completed a permanent installation in 2012 for the lower level of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Her piece, “Belief + Doubt” fills the entire space, including the sides of the escalators are wrapped in text-printed vinyl addressing conflicting perceptions of democracy, power and belief.

Carole Ann Klonarides

Video artist Carol Ann Klonarides started an art video production company in the 1980s and created a documentary about women artists. Her piece, “MICA-TV” is a collaboration with producer Michael Owen. According to the Hirshhorn, in 1983, “MICA-TV” shot a high-gloss commercial about artist R.M. Fischer’s lamp sculpture. She currently works as a curator and art adviser.

Erika Rothenberg

Erika Rothenberg likes to explore humor and irony in her work. She also uses advertising strategies and styles that she honed while working as an art director at advertising company McCann Erickson early in her career. Her installation, “Freedom of Expression Products,” is on display in the Brand New 80’s exhibit at the Hirshhorn. A few of her “Freedom of Expression Products” include “anti-apathy ointment,” “pro-test pill” and “offend mouthwash.” When she exhibited the work in the storefront window of the New Museum in New York, it triggered a violent response — the glass window was smashed and the products on display were ransacked.

When asked about who is creating great work in the art world, Rothenberg responded with, “There are so many fierce, unique women and women-identified artists out there. I can’t bring myself to pick just one. Instead, I’d like to give a shout out to the people behind Not Surprised who are holding the art world accountable for misconduct and abuse. “

Gretchen Bender

Gretchen Bender blurred the lines between commercial culture and art. Her most famous works were multichannel choreographies of recycled television imagery, which she called “electronic theater.” Her career started after she joined a protest on the steps of the Smithsonian in the ’80s which drew attention to the lack of women artists in museums. Bender died in 2004, but her work increasingly gains attention.

Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. Over 55 people have been members over the years, according to their website. Since 1985, the group has exposed sexual and racial discrimination in the art world and culture at large. They protect their identities by wearing gorilla masks in public and by using pseudonyms taken from deceased women artists such as sculptor Kathe Kollwitz and painter Frida Kahlo. “We’ve discovered that ridicule and humiliation, backed up by irrefutable information, can disarm the powers that be, put them on the spot, and force them to examine themselves,” according to the Guerrilla Girls website.

Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer is a neo-conceptual artist, who focuses her art on ideas in public spaces and text-based work. “Her words have become a rallying cry for thoughtful, eloquent protest,” according to the Hirshhorn. Early in her career, she wheatpasted her work around New York City. Her piece, “Inflammatory Essays,” is on view at the Hirshhorn. These short texts of 100 words were mass-produced and cover a variety of subjects: power, social control, abuse, consumption and sex. An example is: “Don’t talk down to me. Don’t be polite to me. Don’t try to make me feel nice. Don’t relax. I’ll cut the smile off your face. You think I don’t know what’s going on. You think I’m afraid to react. The joke’s on you. I’m biding my time, looking for the spot. You think no one can reach you, no one can have what you have. I’ve been planning while you’re playing. I’ve been saving while you’re spending. The game is almost over so it’s time you acknowledge me. Do you want to fall not ever know who took you?”

Jessica Diamond

Jessica Diamond had her first solo show nearly 30 years ago. She created her piece, “T.V. Telepathy” which shouts the words “Eat Sugar, Spend Money” at the viewer in 1989. It is one of the exhibit’s most photographed pieces. Diamond is a conceptual artist who is known for her large-scale, text-based wall paintings. She likes to explore themes of commercialism and sex in her work. Her work has explored various themes and subject matter, including art, sex, capitalism, the cinema, etc.

When asked about who is creating great work in the art world, Diamond responded with, “I’d be honored to give a shout out to the revolutionary pioneer filmmaker Alice Guy (1873-1968), the creator of 1000 films, many of which were incorrectly credited to men, or lost. In fact, I’ve mentioned Alice Guy in an artwork currently exhibited in NYC, “Words At Play: B, Lee, And Double E, Cinematic Letters Converge Mystically…” The Lily featured Alice Guy in #31Days31Firsts during Women’s History Month.

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler’s work spans video, photo montages, installations, text and photography. Her work explores issues from everyday life and how those issues affect women. In her piece, “Martha Rosler Reads ‘Vogue,’” Rosler reads a 1982 copy of Vogue, while commenting on the content and “criticizing its empty promises and underlying commercialism, alluding to the poor working conditions under which fashion labels were produced in third-world countries, and offering an in-depth analysis of media politics from a feminist perspective,” according to the Hirshhorn.

When asked about who is creating great work in the art world, Rothenberg responded with, “I wouldn’t be alone in naming LaToya Ruby Frazier. Her brilliant and affective photographs help her get across her passionate advocacy for poor and underserved communities of color in the United States and the persistent failures of government and industry to treat poor people, especially people of color, as equal citizens. Her focus on black women, in particular those in her own family in a small rust-belt town in Pennsylvania, show her embeddedness in local networks of love and support and further underlines not only her understanding of the cost of such failures but also the women’s strength in the face of grim adversity.”

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLSmusOeqWahlJq7tbXTsmZqaF2svK6xzWaYq6yZqMG0ecWrpqZlpJ2yboSPrGSwoJ9itaa4z56bZpyVm7avsYycpqeslaK9sL7Aq7BmmaKpfA%3D%3D