American Art in the 70s (21.09.2024-01.02.2025) von Valentina Schatzer | märz 2025
Judy Chicago’s Bloody Woman and Andy Warhol’s Urine on Linen
It’s not just any gallery in Paris showcasing US-American art from the 1970s in Europe. Thaddaeus Ropac, the gallery owner, has long-standing ties with many of the featured artists. Young and ambitious, Thaddaeus was one of the first to represent Andy Warhol (whom he met in New York in the 1980s), soon followed by Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Even though he may not have had much to offer them in the 1980s, these artists seem to have trusted him, and today we know that paid off: with five galleries worldwide, Thaddaeus Ropac would go on to become one of the most influential figures in the art world.
Expanded Horizons: American Art in the 70s brings together 21 influential American artists from the 1970s in the expansive spaces of Paris’ industrial area, Pantin. The diverse works are mesmerizing, demonstrating the variety of creative approaches that expanded the art scene of the 70s, and broadening the visitors understanding of how different 70s art and artists could be.
Robert Rauschenberg’s Bank Job (Spread) (1979), for example, one of his largest works, and James Rosenquist’s installation Horizon Home Sweet Home (1970) – a room framed with 27 panels (oil on canvas and aluminized polyester film) filled with knee-high fog – serve as focal points of the exhibition. They all challenged contemporary conceptions of art. Some did so through the use of so-called “poor” materials, like Joan Snyder, who – in paintings like Vanishing Theatre/The Cut (1974) – incorporated found objects such as chicken wire and fake fur. Others engaged deeply with physical space using their bodies as in David Hammons’s body prints that protested and confronted viewers with identity politics. Some, like Donald Judd, expanded their artistic practices spatially, abandoning the canvas entirely to work in three dimensions. Many artists created their work in response of their sociopolitical environments, protesting the Vietnam War, engaging with the civil rights movements, and contributing to the second wave of feminism.
While all artists on view challenged conventional viewing habits, two contrasting positions stand out: Andy Warhol and Judy Chicago. Warhol’s excessive machoism splashing human fluids on canvas contrasts sharply with Chicago’s feminizing landscape-through-soft-smoke-approach. Women and Smoke (1971-72), showcases an outdoor performance by Judy Chicago set in the striking Californian dessert. Women with nude bodies painted in purple, orange, and green mingled with clouds of the same colors, feminizing the landscape with fireworks and colored smoke. The smoke liberates the scene from formal structures, while its color is softening the environment. The performers were students of the country’s first-ever feminist art program, established by Chicago in 1970 at Fresno State College. The women sacrificed parts of themselves, metaphorically immolating under the open sky. At the time, Chicago was doing a lot of research into women’s history and the Hindu practice of Sati, where widows were forced to throw themselves onto funeral pyres. Chicago was interested in the concept of immolation, both forced and voluntary; and this was also a period when Buddhist monks in Vietnam were self-immolating to protest the war and its expansion into Cambodia.
“No, it doesn’t stink of piss,” the author thought as she almost pressed her nose against Warhol’s canvas. A monumental work of piss, nearly five meters long. Andy Warhol transformed bodily waste into art, turning the body into a brush. Laying the unstretched canvas on the floor, he had people literally splash and spray bodily fluids onto it, referencing and parodying Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. Piss Painting (1977-78) is beautifully poetic in its own way. The fading yellow hues and nuanced variations suggest a landscape that exists nowhere – or maybe in New York’s 1970s gay male and S&M underground clubs, where naked men lay beneath others to be urinated on.
The exhibition meets expectations of showcasing the diverse approaches of 1970s art. However, one might also argue that it feels somewhat loosely connected. In particular, it could have been more compelling to draw clearer links between artworks and artists, exploring recurring themes of feminism, sociopolitical issues, and psychological concepts – and not just through the lens of the 1970s. What remains striking, however, is the continued relevance of these works, as they expand the art-historical conversation and retain their provocative edge.
Andy Warhol, Piss Painting, 1977–78, Urin auf Leinen, 198,5 x 492,1 cm, Photo Credits: Valentina Schatzer
Judy Chicago, Woman with Red Flares from Women and Smoke, 1971–72, Photo Credits: Valentina Schatzer, Courtesy of the artist
Judy Chicago, Immolation from the On Fire Suite, 2013 and 2018 gedruckt, Pigmentdruck auf Papier, Rechte: Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Rechte: Flower archives
Judy Chicago, Smoke Bodies from the On Fire Suite, 2013 and 2018 gedruckt, Pigmentdruck auf Papier, Rechte: Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Rechte: Flower archives