Nancy Princenthal

Offering a radical rewriting of the history of contemporary art from a feminist perspective, four distinguished authors explore the lineages of performance, abstraction, craft and ecofeminism in ways that reveal the debt these important genres owe to the work of pioneering women artists. Tracing these influences over time, Mothers of Invention underscores the enormous impact of feminist ideas on the work of contemporary artists of all genders. The painters, sculptors and performance artists featured here have shaped ideas now dominating the art world: the vulnerability of the environment, the rise of activist art, the challenge to the reign of high technology (including digital culture), and the development of a new language of abstraction. Having demolished the linear narrative of modernism, the privileging of a white male ethnocentric vision, the division of high and low art and the separation of art from larger social issues, feminist artists laid the groundwork for the globalised, multi-media, postmodern art world of today. Illustrated with a spread of work from the last sixty years (and including contextual discussion of earlier practitioners), this book makes a compelling case for placing feminist art and artists at the heart of contemporary art.

Painter Katherine Bradford approaches abstraction and figurative painting in a wholly personal and unpredictable way. Her canvases, comprised of multiple thin, semi-transparent layers of acrylic paint, with hints of pentimenti, are built up over months and sometimes years. Drawn to aquatic themes, Bradford likens water to the act of painting both are immersive and wild, yet controllable. The work is populated by a cast of characters from swimmers and bathers to superman and superheroes and, most recently, mothers suspended in expanses of vibrant colour. These figures, who often defy society s expectations, oftentimes serve as surrogates for the artist herself: mother, painter, and lesbian coming of age at the turn of the twenty first century. The volume includes two substantive essays: by Jaime DeSimone, curator of the exhibition, and Nancy Princenthal, the well-known critic and historian who has devoted much of her writing to women artists. The book also includes an interview with the artist conducted by DeSimone and an extensive illustrated chronology of the artist s life.

The 1970s was a time of deep division and newfound freedoms. Galvanized by The Second Sex and The Feminine Mystique, the civil rights movement and the March on Washington, a new generation put their bodies on the line to protest injustice. Still, even in the heart of certain resistance movements, sexual violence against women had reached epidemic levels. Initially, it went largely unacknowledged. But some bold women artists and activists, including Yoko Ono, Ana Mendieta, Marina Abramovic, Adrian Piper, Suzanne Lacy, Nancy Spero and Jenny Holzer, fired up by women’s experiences and the climate of revolution, started a conversation about sexual violence that continues today. Some worked unannounced and unheralded, using the street as their theatre. Others managed to draw support from the highest levels of municipal power. Along the way, they changed the course of art, pioneering a form that came to be called simply performance. Award-winning author Nancy Princenthal takes on these enduring issues and weaves together a new history of performance, challenging us to re-examine the relationship between art and activism, and how we can apply the lessons of that turbulent era to today

Over the course of a career that spanned fifty years, Agnes Martin’s austere, serene work anticipated and helped to define Minimalism, even as she battled psychological crises and carved out a solitary existence in the American Southwest. ‘I paint with my back to the world’, she claimed; when she died at ninety-two, in Taos, New Mexico, it is said she had not read a newspaper in half a century. Here, for the first time, is an account of Martin’s extraordinary life, and a long- awaited critical discussion of her work. Nancy Princenthal tells her story chronologically – from Martin’s birth in Saskatchewan and her early days as an artist, living in derelict Manhattan shipping lofts with Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Ad Reinhardt and other artists as neighbours; to the seven years she stopped painting, just as her career was taking off, and the months she spent roaming the country in a pick-up truck; and her last thirty years, in Taos some of that time, in an adobe house she built with her own hands. Martin did not achieve recognition until she was in her late forties. Her work – pencilled grids on square canvases, washed with pale or neutral colours – at last receives the critical appraisal it deserves.

In honor of the Fabric Workshop and Museum’s 40th anniversary, Process and Practice tells a story of contemporary art at FWM that highlights process along with product. It documents FWM’s history of collaboration with established and emerging artists-in-residence since the 2002 publication of New Materials as New Media. Some of the over 30 artists featured include Mark Bradford, Ann Hamilton, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Richard Tuttle, Sarah Sze, Nick Cave, Theaster Gates, Joan Jonas and Trisha Brown, among many others. Also featured are essays by Nancy Princenthal, Patterson Sims and Susan Lubowsky Talbott, FWM’s current director.

Drawing on inspirations ranging from Buddhism and American modernist painting to psychedelia and Amy Winehouse, Brooklyn-based painter Chris Martin (born 1954) "lets the paintings make themselves," with often generously scaled canvases characterized by flat yet textured planes of bright, saturated color, frequently incorporating found materials and highly personal paper ephemera. The emphatic geometries of his paintings, which indicate his attachment to Piet Mondrian, are another signature touch, conveying a genially brash New York energy (Martin's practice came of age in 1980s New York, which saw the explosion of the East Village art scene, led by Keith Haring). This first full overview on Martin collects essays by Glenn O'Brien, Nancy Princenthal, Trinie Dalton and Dan Nadel.

In After the Revolution, the authors concluded that "The battles may not all have been won ...but barricades are gradually coming down, and work proceeds on all fronts in glorious profusion." Now, with The Reckoning, authors Eleanor Heartney, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal, and Sue Scott bring into focus the accomplishments of a new generation of women artists who have benefited from the ground-breaking efforts of their predecessors. Focusing on 2 4 of the most acclaimed international women artists born since 1960, the book is organized in four thematic sections. "Bad Girls" profiles artists whose work represents an assault on conventional notions of gender and racial difference. "History Lessons" offers reflections on the self in the context of history and globalization. "Spellbound" focuses on women's embrace of the irrational, the subjective, and the surreal, while "Domestic Disturbances" takes on women's conflicted relationship to home, family, and security. The book also examines how the institutions of the art world have changed, and how those changes affect the women artists of today. Written in lively prose and fully illustrated throughout, this remarkable book gives a uniquely informed account of the wonderful diversity of recent contemporary art by women.