Lynda Benglis / Robert Morris 1973 - 1974 - Exhibitionmfc-michèle didier | Paris - Brussels - PARIS
From Thursday October 20 to Saturday November 19, 2011
Opening on October 19, 2011 from 6pm to 9pm
Lynda Benglis / Robert Morris, 1973 - 1974 is a proposal by Specific Object / David Platzker, New York.
In this project, Specific Object presents ephemera, magazine articles, and other artworks and supporting materials that lead up to, and include, Robert Morris' seminal chains and helmet Castelli-Sonnabend poster and Lynda Benglis' infamous Artforum advertisement, both of which appeared in 1974.
Photographed by Rosalind Krauss, Morris’ poster featured the artist nude from the waist up clad only in steel chains, wrist restraints, studded collar, sunglasses and a Germany style military field helmet. Benglis responded with a choreographed double page spread on pages 4 and 5 of the November 1974 issue of Artforum that became hyper-emblematic of an era: fully nude Benglis, clad only in sunglasses, holding an oversized rubber dildo extending from her own genitals.
The advertisement reverberated in both expected and unexpected ways – at once celebrated and condemned by feminists, feted and reviled by fellow artists, embraced and rebuffed by intellectuals, banned by some art schools and cited as inspiration by many art students, in short resulting in a seismic realignment within the artworld.
This exhibition examines, within context, the artworks and the reactions that comprise the immediate history following their first appearance in the hopes that visitors will reconsider the exchange separate from the artifice and mythology that has become inseparable from the work over the past thirty-five years.
From Thursday October 20 to Saturday November 19, 2011
Opening on October 19, 2011 from 6pm to 9pm
Lynda Benglis / Robert Morris, 1973 - 1974 is a proposal by Specific Object / David Platzker, New York.
In this project, Specific Object presents ephemera, magazine articles, and other artworks and supporting materials that lead up to, and include, Robert Morris' seminal chains and helmet Castelli-Sonnabend poster and Lynda Benglis' infamous Artforum advertisement, both of which appeared in 1974.
Photographed by Rosalind Krauss, Morris’ poster featured the artist nude from the waist up clad only in steel chains, wrist restraints, studded collar, sunglasses and a Germany style military field helmet. Benglis responded with a choreographed double page spread on pages 4 and 5 of the November 1974 issue of Artforum that became hyper-emblematic of an era: fully nude Benglis, clad only in sunglasses, holding an oversized rubber dildo extending from her own genitals.
The advertisement reverberated in both expected and unexpected ways – at once celebrated and condemned by feminists, feted and reviled by fellow artists, embraced and rebuffed by intellectuals, banned by some art schools and cited as inspiration by many art students, in short resulting in a seismic realignment within the artworld.
This exhibition examines, within context, the artworks and the reactions that comprise the immediate history following their first appearance in the hopes that visitors will reconsider the exchange separate from the artifice and mythology that has become inseparable from the work over the past thirty-five years.