As
Federal Reserve officials gather to issue their monthly assessment of
the world's largest economy, a new study lays bare the extent to which
many small firms are pressed for cash.
"Most small businesses are
operating on very small margins," Diana Farrell, CEO of the JPMorgan
Chase Institute, an in-house think tank that uses data from the bank to
analyze the economy. "The small business sector is less full of future
Googles and Ubers and tons and tons of very small operators living month
to month," she said in a phone interview.
The
companies in question may be small, but they represent an outsized
share of the U.S. economy. According to the Small Business and
Entrepreneurship Council, they account for roughly 50 percent of gross
domestic product and more than 50 percent of new job creation — a metric
that's closely watched by the Fed in determining whether the economy
can withstand a constriction in financing conditions. Yet even
though they're contributing a great deal to the economy there remains
ignorance about their financial health, Farrell added. On
average, the companies surveyed have just 27 days worth of cash
reserves — or money to cover expenses if inflows suddenly stopped
— according to the JPMorgan study, which analyzed 470 million
transactions by 570,000 small business last year. Restaurants typically
hold the smallest cash buffers, with just 16 days of reserves, while the
real-estate sector boasts the biggest, at 47 days.
JPMorgan Chase Institute
Small
businesses attempting to expand (or just keep their head above water)
may find it difficult to build up reserves, with daily income outpacing
expenditure by just $7, according to JPMorgan's study.
The findings come as small-business optimism appears to be stagnating in
the U.S., with the National Federation of Independent Business's (NFIB)
Small Business Optimism Index dropping 0.2 percentage points to 94.4 in
August. That's running below its 42-year average of 98.
"Political
uncertainty two months ahead of the presidential election could be
distorting small business sentiment," Carl Riccadonna, Bloomberg
Intelligence Chief Economist, wrote in a report earlier this month. "A
sharp drop in the economic outlook and hiring plans weighed on overall
business optimism, pushing the headline NFIB Small Business Optimism
Index lower in August."
Some 39
percent of small business owners cited the political climate as a
reason not to expand — an all-time high, according to the NFIB.
Uncertainty over government policy, as well as the wider economy, also
hit record highs last month. Still, the JPMorgan Institute's Farrell
suggests small businesses should focus the things they have control over
rather than taxes or regulatory changes, for instance.
"What
most small businesses should be thinking about is having a clear sense
of what their liquidity picture is," she said. "This is an immediate
thing that would impact a large swath of small businesses that they
themselves can act on."
Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.LEARN MORE
Concocting a
reliable “recipe for success” is about as likely as finding that one
missing sock, not filling up on appetizers before Thanksgiving dinner,
and seeing the Chicago Cubs win the World Series. (Oh, wait.)
And yet, in her new book, Raising an Entrepreneur,
Margot Machol Bisnow sought to crack the perplexing parenting code of
what makes certain children thrive and excel. Bisnow interviewed dozens
of people—and their mothers—who have found success in fields ranging
from athletics and entertainment to business and fashion. And it turns
out the founder of Under Armour, the talent manager who discovered
Justin Bieber, and a former leader in the United Nations have something
in common. Beyond the fact that Kevin Plank, Scooter Braun, and
Elizabeth McKee Gore are successful entrepreneurs, all three—and scores
of others like them—had supportive parents who believed in them.
I
talked with Bisnow about the commonalities she found in the parenting
styles of successful entrepreneurs, her own experiences as a mother, and
the ways she thinks the school system could be improved to foster the
spirit of innovation in all students. Below is a lightly edited version
of our conversation.
Hayley Glatter:
Your book really focused on the mothers of the successful entrepreneurs
and some of the paths that they took to success. In the book, you
described an entrepreneur as someone who “turns a passion into a
project.” Can you talk a little bit more about what, exactly, that
means?
Margot Machol Bisnow: I
think most people, when they think of an entrepreneur, they think of
some tech geek. And to me, it's important to expand the definition so
it's anybody who starts something. So in this book, I have people who've
started for-profit companies, and—by the way—a wide variety, not just
tech but shops or any kind of for-profit company. It's people who've
started nonprofits. It's people who've started profits for purpose,
which is what they call TOMS Shoes. It's artists, it's activists. It's
even intrapreneurs, people who started large projects within bigger
organizations.
The point of my book is that, and
it was also hugely important to me, I didn't want to just go out and
interview the people who started the 10 biggest companies in America
because, let's face it, most people are not going to end up being Mark
Zuckerberg. But I do think it's possible to start something and to turn
your passion into a project and to make a fulfilled and happy life out
of it. Maybe it'll be a billion-dollar company, and maybe you'll have
five employees. So I wanted to have a huge range, and whatever your
interest is, whether it's music, whether it's making things, whether
it's fixing things, whether it's computers, whether it's art, whether
it's helping people in other countries, whatever you want to do, I think
it's important for you to know that you can start something and you can
be your own boss.
HG:
How did you go about selecting from that huge swath of potential
stories and hone in on who you wanted to talk to for the book?
MB:
My goal was to have a very diverse group. I wanted half men and half
women. I wanted it completely diverse in that sense, but I also wanted
half men, half women, every race, every ethnicity, every family
background, every family income—from single moms barely making it to
upper-middle class where they could lend their kids $10,000 to get
started.
HG: And what sorts of commonalities did you find? MB:
I ended up with 10 rules, and I have five to eight stories illustrating
each rule. I would say all of the 60 entrepreneurs pretty much followed
seven, eight, nine of the rules. In addition, there was one rule that
every single person I talked to followed, and it's the overarching theme
of the book. Every person that I talked to had a parent, usually a mom,
who believed in them. And you'll say, “Well, every parent believes in
their child.” But, no, and this is so important to me, I think every
parent loves their child, I think every parent wants their child to be
happy and successful, but I think most parents believe if their child
follows their heart, then they can't make a living.
And
I think many parents are saying to themselves, “When I grew up in the
‘70s and ‘80s, there was a path that worked.” You had to study every one
of your subjects in high school and get good grades in every class. You
had to have a broad group of outside interests and join lots of clubs.
And you had to have an SAT tutor and do well on your SATs. You had to
get into a good college. And you had to get good grades in every single
one of your classes in college, and you had to graduate from college.
And probably you had to go on to a graduate school, and then you had to
get into a really great company.
And
that works for some kids, but it just doesn't work for others. And I
want to tell all the parents who have kids that that doesn't work for
that it's ok, that there's another route, and that they can trust their
child and let their child pursue their passion and they'll be fine.
HG: What do you think sets this parenting style apart from a lot of the other things that we've seen in the past?
MB:
I think it's harder because you actually have to listen to your child.
Instead of being this tiger mom that decided in advance what your child
has to do and forcing it on them, or a helicopter parent who hovers and
insists that their child do the things that they think are necessary,
this requires listening to your child. It requires watching your child,
seeing what your child's strengths are and what makes your child happy,
and then supporting that and trusting the process. It requires trusting
your child and backing off a bit and letting them pursue that passion
even if it's something you know nothing about.
HG:
You mention in the book that you have experience fostering this
entrepreneurial spirit in your own sons. Can you talk about that?
MB:
I say at the end of the book that there's a lot of things I know now
that I didn't know at the time. I certainly wasn't trying to foster
entrepreneurial kids—I barely knew what an entrepreneur was. But I did
respect my children's passions. Both of our kids had passions in areas
that my husband and I knew nothing about. I say in the book that if
either of our kids had been remotely interested in law ... or any of the
things that we're knowledgeable about, we would have just been all over
them with advice and suggestions. So I think it turned out to be really
serendipitous that both our kids developed passions in areas we
actually knew nothing about.
Our
oldest son, Elliott, was a tennis player. That's basically all he did
for 10 years. We would go to these tournaments with the top 100 kids in
the country and we would be the only parents there who didn't play
tennis and barely knew the rules. And this is just something he wanted
to do and he insisted on and we supported him. The consequence was that
he had to figure out what racket to get, he had to figure out what coach
to train with, he had to figure out what tournaments to enter. He just
had to figure out all this stuff and he had to be in charge of it, and
even though he does nothing with tennis anymore, the qualities that he
developed held him in good stead.
Then our
younger son was passionate about music, and in particular about writing
music. And again, we knew nothing about music, we don't play
instruments. And he had to figure out what instruments to study, what
teachers to study with. He put out a CD when he was in high school. He
had to figure out who to do it with and how to do it and make all sorts
of decisions about things I don't even understand and what kind of music
software to buy and all that kind of stuff. It just worked out really
well that our kids had passions in areas where we couldn't help them.
HG:
You talked a little bit about how your older son said that he didn't
really love school and that it wasn't something that got him excited as a
kid, and you do hone in on the topic of education in your book. So were
there any patterns that emerged among the entrepreneurs that you spoke
to—as well as their parents—in terms of their school experiences?
MB:
No. I would say one of the things I love is that there are not patterns
in general. Everybody's unique and the point of the book is you can't
say, “Oh, that's how that person did it, so that's how I'm going to make
my kid do it.” You have to listen to your kids, you have to watch your
kids.
There were entrepreneurs who I talked to
and their moms who were just academic superstars. I would say a third of
these kids breezed through school. It was easy for them, they were
great students, but not all of them.
So
the point is, if you have a kid who's a great student, who loves
school, who's doing well, who's happy, who's thriving, that's fantastic.
That's great. But what if you don't? What if you have a kid who's
unhappy, who has a different learning style, who doesn't fit into that
school. Then you have to work around that. You kind of have to figure
out what your kid needs, and you have to be there for them and support
them.
HG: In the book itself,
you wrote that schools “reward behavior that is diametrically opposed”
to entrepreneurial success. Can you elaborate on that and what
structures of today's school system you are referring to with that
statement?
MB: I think, of
course not every school and of course not every teacher, but I think
there are certainly the inclinations among many schools to reward kids
for regurgitating information they've been given in certain ways. That
works for a lot of kids, and it doesn't work for other kids.
Entrepreneurs are often people who challenge the status quo, who look at
things differently, who look outside the box.
One
of the kids is Benny Blanco, who's become one of the country's top
songwriters and has written over 15 number-one songs. His mom said when
he was in kindergarten, the teacher used to call her every week and say,
“Benny won't sit in the circle.” And she used to say, “So?” Which I
thought was amazing, because I would have sort of freaked out.
Some
of the parents found ways around it. Adam Braun's mom got a call from
his teacher who said, “Adam can't sit still,” and she said, “Can you
have him sit in the last row of the class and then if he has to stand
up, then it won't bother people?” And then the teacher said, “Oh, yeah, I
guess we can do that.”
I think there are schools, especially charter schools, who are now trying to work with kids to be more creative.
HG:
What do you think, based on your interviews, schools should be doing to
encourage kids to become entrepreneurs and be more creative?
MB:
Let me make it clear that I am not an educator. I don't want to
dictate. But I look at places like the Blue School that was started by
the Blue Man Group out of New York City, and everything they do is to
spark creativity. And everything they do is to encourage children to
explore and discover and create. My kids went to pretty traditional
schools, but I've talked to people who've had their kids in charter
schools where everything is much more creative, and I think it depends
on the child. Some kids thrive with structure and some kids thrive when
they can have an opportunity to be more creative. I think the job of a
parent is to make sure your kid is in a school that works for them.
The
other thing, and it comes back to what we were talking about, suppose
you have a child that's really good in something and not so good in
other things. If you say to that child, “If you don't get A’s in all
your subjects, you'll be a disappointment,” you're sending one lesson to
that child. If what you say to the child is, “I'm so incredibly proud
of you for the beautiful song you wrote. Maybe you should try to work a
little harder on some of your other subjects, but what you did is
fantastic, and we're so proud of you for all the effort you put into the
thing you love,” you're communicating something different.
One
of the parents said to me, "In a company, we don't say to people,
'You're so good at accounting, we think we're going to put you in human
resources,' but in a sense, this is what we do to our kids." We say,
"You're so good at computers, stop spending so much time at computers
and start spending more time studying your history." I think it's
important for parents to praise their kids for what they have done as
opposed to being upset with them if they've tried their best and they're
just not very good in some areas.
HG: Is there anything else you wanted to add that we didn't get to?
MB: Well, the only other thing that I would say is, I was so struck by the December Atlanticcover story
on the Silicon Valley suicides. It's really one of the most powerful
stories I've ever read, and it's a story about how all these high-school
kids in Silicon Valley are walking in front of trains. And they
interviewed people in these classes, and [a large number of the
students] said they had serious suicidal thoughts. And they interviewed
people who said these kids believe there is but one path to a successful
life, and that path is very narrow. What I hope the book does is shout
that there's another approach to life. I want parents to lighten up and
realize there isn't just one path to a successful life and not pile so
much pressure onto their kids to perform in areas that maybe aren’t
their natural talent and praise them for their efforts in the things
their children love and are good at.
Betty Tompkins on Her “Fuck” Paintings, Art Talk, and Being Discovered by Jerry Saltz
Artsy Editorial
By Tess Thackara
Apr 16th, 2015 12:37 pm
Photo by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
When Betty Tompkins first
moved into Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood in the 1970s, it was a
rundown, high-crime district reeling from the city’s economic decline
and exodus of industrial manufacturing plants. “There was nobody else
living here,” Tompkins recalls, sitting in her studio loft in the same
neighborhood today, now across from the Apple store and overlooking the
throngs of tourists that beat a path through the shopping mecca day and
night. “The idea that regular people would want to take over these
disgusting spaces and build from scratch—that had not caught on.”
Before
“gentrification” had entered the general lexicon, artists moved into
the area to capitalize on cheap space, despite it being a less than
hospitable environment, especially for women. “At the time, this was a
factory neighborhood and we were a clear minority, so to walk on the
streets in the daytime was an adventure in misogyny. There were probably
artists on every block. We had a whistle system; if you were out at
night and you were in trouble, you blew your whistle.”
It
was back then that Tompkins, now 69 years old, composed the first of
the large-scale, soft-focus grisaille compositions of closely cropped
sexual scenes that she is known for. Among the canvases propped up
against the walls of her Prince Street studio on the day I visit is one
of an abstract dark mass framed by hands and an orifice, elements that
organize themselves in the mind’s eye to form a mouth covering an erect
penis. Nearby there are several others featuring curving, intersecting
lines that coalesce into images of female genitalia when viewed at a
distance—all with the hazy quality achieved with an airbrush. For
Tompkins, who is ebullient and excitable in person, dressed in black
sweats with a wild mop of curly hair, it’s this elastic quality that
interests her.
“If you walk up close,” she tells me, beckoning me
to the painting’s surface, “this is the distance where painters normally
paint. It’s an arm’s length away plus a couple of inches, but there’s
nothing there. The image dissipates, you have no idea what you’re
looking at. And as you step back, the image starts to cohere. It’s a
different painting wherever you’re standing. I really love that.” This
sense of dialogue with the paintings—of becoming absorbed in their soft
forms before resolving them into discernible images that give “a subject
matter kick,” as Tompkins describes it, is where their power resides.
Yet
for some three decades the artist was largely overlooked. “I was going
around to all of these shows every month, and I found most of the shows
to be really boring,” Tompkins remembers of her early days in the New
York art world. “They were all by men, of course. Every dealer that I
spoke to said, ‘Come back in 10 years when you’ve found your voice,’
because that’s what they were used to—Hoffman and de Kooning, all these
Abstract Expressionist guys, they didn’t have their first shows until
they were somewhere in their 40s to 50s. Some of the dealers said, ‘And
don’t come back then either because we don’t show women.’ It was
actually very freeing to me. I had no expectations.”
Photo by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
Photo by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
In
an era when second-wave feminist artists were creating work
collectively, Tompkins set out on her own. “I had grown up on the
political left as a child,” she reflects. “My father was the head of the
Progressive Party in Philadelphia, which was very far-left. And I’d had
enough. I didn’t like how groups dealt with semantics and split hairs,
and would have huge fights instead of coming together... I saw that as a
big failing.” Did she consider herself a feminist, back then? “Oh, I
thought I was one, but I never went to the meetings. And according to
historical perspective, if you didn’t read the books and go to the
discussion groups and the meetings, you’re not actually considered a
feminist.”
Photo by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
While
Tompkins’s work was no less subversive than that of her feminist
peers—her paintings of masturbation and penetration inverted the male
gaze and addressed taboo themes of female desire—she was driven not by
an agenda, but by passion and curiosity, unhindered by the expectations
of her sex. The subject matter for her “Fuck” paintings arose
intuitively, in response to the discovery of her first husband’s porn
images. “One day I’m looking at them, and I’m like, ‘You know, if you
take out all of this crap, you’ve got a really beautiful arrangement of
something.’” Porn, often of a vintage ilk, would continue to be her
source for the series.
Photos by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
Tompkins
speaks in equally frank and uncomplicated terms about the moment that
language entered her practice. “It was in the late 1970s, and conceptual
art was really very big. I got so disgusted with the articles about it,
because they were written in gobbledy-gook. You know, art talk. I would
get so pissed off, I would take my art magazines and throw them against
the wall!,” she says. “One day, I said: People want things to read?
Let’s write something. So I just started writing, ‘COW, COW, COW, COW.’”
Photo by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
This
led to her stamp paintings—images composed with manual word stamps,
applied serially to the canvas in various tonal shades—and, later, to
“Woman Words,” a project begun in 2002 and repeated in 2013, in which
Tompkins invited members of the public to send her verbal descriptors of
women. The response was staggering; she received 1,500 unique words and
phrases in seven languages to her first appeal alone. “The four most
often repeated words were the same in both groups: ‘bitch,’ ‘cunt,’
‘slut,’ and ‘mother,’” she says matter-of-factly, sliding open a drawer
and pulling out a small pile of scrapbook pages, torn from their
bindings, each painted in black and overlaid with short descriptions of
women in bold white text. These, along with two of her paintings, will
be on view next week at Art Brussels, where they’ll be paired with the work of the young French painter Lucas Jardin in
a special installation titled “A Sight for Sore Eyes”—the latest
edition of #ArtsyTakeover, a project in which artists collaborate with
Artsy to reimagine the art fair booth.
Photo by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
Photo by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
‘Behind Every Great Man’ and ‘Weaker Sex’ (both 2015) courtesy of the artist.
Fairgoers
may well be familiar with her work now, but recognition came late to
Tompkins. It wasn’t until 2003 that her remaining “Fuck” paintings were
uncovered from beneath the artist’s pool table, applied to stretchers,
and exhibited—thanks in large part to art critic Jerry Saltz. The story
goes something like this: It was the ’90s, and Tompkins heard through
the grapevine that Saltz was curating a show about sex; on a whim, she
sent him some of her slides. Resounding silence. A couple of years later
she got a call from New York dealer Mitchell Algus, after those same
slides turned up on his desk. Algus hosted a solo show of her work soon
after.
“I only did nine of the original paintings, “ she
recalls, “and one got destroyed. It got a rip in it. I knew nothing
about conserving paintings or getting them fixed—and I didn’t have any
money anyway—so out in the trash it went. And then there were eight.”
Two were sold early, one to Jack Klein, “one of the biggest landlords in
SoHo,” she says, “who had amassed this incredible collection by being
the landlord of people like Tom Wesselmann, and taking rent in trade.”
Four were sold by Algus, and Tompkins kept two for herself.
Photo by Emily Johnston for Artsy.
In
recent years, Tompkins has picked up her airbrush and returned to her
“Fuck” paintings once more, to considerable success—both with the old
guard, as seen in her 2012 exhibition with Brussels bastion Rodolphe Janssen,
and a younger New York crowd. This past winter saw her solo show at
Meatpacking gallery 55 Gansevoort, and in the coming months her works
will be included at NADA with LES gallery Louis B. James
and at the Bruce High Quality Foundation University’s new space this
fall. “It was like my hand knew what to do,” she remembers, “It
was going: At last! Welcome back! Ta-da!”
—Tess Thackara Betty Tompkins’s work will be on view at the Artsy booth at Art Brussels from April 25th – 27th, 2015.
The Beauty of Donna Huanca’s Body Art Is More Than Skin Deep
Artsy Editorial
By Charlotte Jansen
Sep 16th, 2016 6:56 pm
Performance view of “Donna Huanca: Surrogate Painteen,” 2016. Photo courtesy of Peres Projects, Berlin.
Amid
the cosmopolitan chaos of London this fall, the New York artist Donna
Huanca is creating space for meditative contemplation. As Frieze Week
sets in, the Zabludowicz Collection in London will be taken over by
Huanca’s army of nearly-nude, pastel-painted models, who will be
enshrined in a three-floor Perspex structure the artist has built. As
they press and rub their bodies against the transparent walls, they’ll
create a painting, which will evolve over the course of the exhibition
with the gradual build up of their imprints.
They’ll move
“glacially,” Huanca tells me, as they move through the structure and
drape articles of clothing on sculptures that resemble rocks and
minerals. For those who witness Huanca’s hypnotic, hybrid works, you can
expect to experience something between the aftermath of an acid rave
and the spiritual ceremony of an ancient ritual. “I am creating seven
points of entry that will deepen as you infiltrate the space—as in the
layers of the skin,” the artist tells me. As they pass through the
exhibition, visitors will be guided by a sound installation that
responds to the presence of bodies.
Huanca has been holed up in a
studio in Berlin all summer, working on this major new project, as well
as a September solo show at Peres Projects in Berlin. The London show
will be Huanca’s first solo show in the U.K., and the first
performance-led work the Zabludowicz Collection has ever commissioned.
Whereas in previous productions—like her 2015 “Polystrene Braces” at
Riga’s kim? Contemporary Art Centre, or “Echo Implant” at the
now-defunct Joe Sheftel Gallery in New York—she incorporated live models
into the creation of her static paintings and sculptures, in a manner
that recalls the “Anthropometries” of Yves Klein, these new exhibitions
represent fresh terrain for the American artist, both in terms of
duration and execution. For the Zabludowicz show, for example, she’s
worked closely with the performers who will enliven the exhibition and
bring her new “Skin Paintings” to life. She’s taught them to paint
themselves for the duration of the the exhibition, and although their
movements have been choreographed, they have a certain autonomy that
represents an evolution in the artist’s work.
Performance view of “Donna Huanca: Surrogate Painteen,” 2016. Photo courtesy of Peres Projects, Berlin.
In
her solo show that opened at Peres Projects earlier this month, titled
“Surrogate Painteen,” Huanca’s models, somewhat cyborg-like with their
impassive gazes, confront large-scale paintings and sculptures more
directly, sitting and lying on top of them, facing them and touching
them—activating them. And although the body is supremely central to both
shows, Huanca is less concerned with body politics than with the idea
of the body as another surface or material. In the same way she reworks
textiles and fabrics that make up her sculptures, or layers of
printmaking and acrylics in her paintings, Huanca deconstructs and
fragments the body, to dismantle and recycle it into a genderfluid,
post-human device that is no longer limited by interpretations of
identity.
This approach may also explains the artist’s ongoing
interest in the synthetic substances she employs in her paintings and
sculptures—highly textural and symbolically rich substances like
pantyhose, velvet, metal, silicon, and leather. In a number of her
exhibitions, Huanca has referenced the lyrics of a song by British punk
band X-Ray Spex, The Day The World Turned Day-Glo, which alludes
to many of the materials Huanca favors—latex, rubber, rayon, nylon, and
Perspex, also among them. And yet, color is equally central to Huanca’s
experiential exhibitions. “The DNA of the earth; gems, minerals,
meteorites, desert landscapes; and hallucinatory states have all taught
me about color and its effects on mood,” Huanca explains. These intense
studies have led her to employ a psychotropic palette of purple, blue,
pink, and green hues, which she applies across her new paintings,
sculptures, and the bodies of performers.
Huanca’s works prompt us
to reflect on the relationship between visual aesthetics and identity.
It’s one of the oldest conundrums of the history of art, but it’s as
relevant as ever nowadays, when identity is duplicitous. Huanca asks the
viewer to challenge what Amelia Jones refers to as the “politics of
visuality” in her seminal book Body Art/Performing the Subject (1998).
Performance view of “Donna Huanca: Surrogate Painteen,” 2016. Photo courtesy of Peres Projects, Berlin.
Throughout
her shows, skin has been an overarching motif for Huanca. The body’s
largest organ, skin contains a whole biological and cultural history
within its layers—in a way, similar to the pigments of paint in an
artwork, fibers in clothes, or the architectural makeup of a building.
It’s apt that the Zabludowicz space inhabits a historic 19th-century
building that previously housed a Methodist Church and a drama school.
Site is another key element that remains consistent for Huanca. “All my
works are sensitive to their environment—perhaps an attempt to take
possession of a space. It is impossible for me to ignore the context the
works are born in,” Huanca explains.
While the effect of the work
has so much to do with the impact of the physical experience—the
sounds, smells, motion, and color she orchestrates—I wonder how Huanca
feels about audiences viewing her exhibitions online? “Documentation is
the way most people experience art nowadays, flattened and immediate,”
she concedes. “I am aware of this and consider the documentation an
important part, giving the virtual audience a separate layer of
experiencing the work.” However, while Huanca offers us the notion of a
realm beyond the body, her living, breathing, moving artwork depends on
exchange, a communal coming together of physical bodies, objects, and
materials. In the words of X-ray Specs, “I live off you/ And you live
off me/ And the whole world/Lives off of everybody.”
The Women Who Championed Sexually Explicit Art in the ’90s Are Relevant as Ever
Artsy Editorial
By Casey Lesser
Sep 20th, 2016 12:09 am
Patricia Cronin, girls, 1993. Courtesy of David and Monica Zwirner, New York. Image courtesy of Maccarone.
In the summer of 1991, as residents at Skowhegan, the young artists Ellen Cantor and Patricia Cronin shared
a strong desire to reclaim female sexuality from the male-dominated art
world. “The art world and art history were telling us that sexualized
images of women were made by men, for the consumption of men,” Cronin
says. “We were young, we were ambitious, we were both making really
sexualized work, and we thought, who is our community? Who will be part
of a group to redefine female sexuality from a woman’s point of view?”
They
returned to New York that fall and scoured the city for fellow female
artists working in the same vein. Two years later, their efforts
culminated in a 1993 group show at David Zwirner,
“Coming to Power: 25 Years of Sexually X-Plicit Art By Women.” This
fall, the pioneering feminist show is seeing a revival, with new
curators, Pati Hertling and Julie Tolentino, a new gallery, Maccarone in
New York, and a fresh performance program of queer and trans artists.
Did the show have an impact in its own time? And how has creating
sexually explicit art changed for women artists in the 23 years since?
The
idea of staging a show was planted in Cantor’s and Cronin’s minds by
one of their teachers at Skowhegan that summer, the feminist painter Joan Semmel.
“She’d been a longtime art hero of mine,” Cronin says. She and Cantor
sought her advice about how to advance their careers and pursue sexual
imagery. “I was making sexual work from the early ’70s,” Semmel, now 83,
recalls. “First I had done a whole series of outright sex images, then I
went into the nude self-image—and that’s where I live.”
Left: Alice Neel, Nadya Nude, 1933. Courtesy of the Estate of Alice Neel; Right: Carolee Schneemann, Eye Body (From 36 Transformative Actions for Camera), 1963/1985. Photo by Erro, courtesy of P.P.O.W. and private collection. Images courtesy of Maccarone.
Semmel
remembers Cantor and Cronin as young students. “Ellen looked like a
punk street kid, and Pattie like a girl just out of a school uniform,”
she says. “But they were both hard-nosed and realistic about the
difficulties of being taken seriously, and entering the art world.”
Following
the ’70s, when women artists gained recognition and feminist art came
to prominence, the New York art scene changed for the worse again, she
explains. Its focus returned to the “macho work” and male artists who
had driven contemporary art before. “The competition was fierce, and the
women were sidelined again, not even able to get a foot in the door,”
she says. “Women students were extremely frustrated, a lot of them
wouldn’t even identify as feminist. They saw what was happening at the
time—they would almost be blacklisted.”
Before
they found a gallery for the show, the pair had a falling out. Cronin
found herself busy with other work and walked away from the project.
Cantor (who died of cancer in 2013) was introduced to the young
gallerist David Zwirner, who had just opened his first gallery on Greene
Street earlier that year. “Coming to Power” would be his third show
there, with Cantor as curator.
In addition to Cantor, Cronin, and Semmel, the show included pioneers like Louise Bourgeois, Alice Neel, Hannah Wilke, and Yoko Ono, and younger artists like Marilyn Minter, Nancy Grossman, Nicole Eisenman, and Lorraine O’Grady.
It featured over two dozen artists, plus a performance program that
included former porn stars Cicciolina and Candida Royalle. The art
historian Linda Nochlin was among the artists and scholars who
contributed critical essays to the show’s catalogue.
The
artists involved remember the show as a success. “It was a difficult
time, but the show seemed to have some traction,” Semmel says. “There
were names of some fairly prominent women at that time, a good gallery
gave it a certain validation, and then thematically it caught the
attention of a lot of journalists. Sex coupled with feminism was a
potent brew, and evidently still is.”
Minter
agrees the show meant progress. “I think it was a step in the right
direction, for women to own sexuality, but we were all fairly young,”
she says. She recalls that the female generation before her had
struggled to gain acceptance. “People like Carolee Schneemann, Hannah Wilke, and Lynda Benglis had
been criticized so badly,” she says. “They were basically slut-shamed.”
At the time, Minter herself had received criticism for the work she’d
made that was inspired by hardcore pornography.
Cantor and Cronin formed a reading group that included Minter, Pat Hearn, Linda Yablonsky, Peggy Ahwesh,
and others who were, in Minter’s words, “making transgressive imagery.”
In addition to raising consciousness through readings like Carole
Vance’s Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (1984),
the group functioned as a supportive community. “Women owning sexuality,
especially when they’re young and beautiful, there’s just such
prejudice against that, even today,” Minter explains, and adds, “but old
ladies can do anything.”
Left: Marilyn Minter, Flurry, 1994. Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York; Right: Zoe Leonard, Frontal View Geoffrey Benne Fashion Show, 1990. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Images courtesy of Maccarone.
This
point rings true in the present moment, when many of the artists
included in the original show are now revered. Other women, like Betty Tompkins,
known for her large-scale “Fuck Paintings,” have developed a following
among the millennial set. In addition to Maccarone’s revival of “Coming
to Power,” a slew of upcoming solo shows, at museums and galleries, are
dedicated to these trailblazing women.
Minter will have solo shows at the Brooklyn Museum and Salon 94 later this fall; Schneemann has concurrent gallery shows at Galerie Lelong and P.P.O.W opening in October; Semmel, Benglis, and Zoe Leonard each have new solo shows in New York galleries this September, at Alexander Gray Associates, Cheim & Read, and Hauser & Wirth, respectively; and Cantor’s work is being shown at Foxy Production, NYU’s 80WSE Gallery, and Participant Inc. this fall alone—not to mention recent renewed interest in Nicole Eisenman, Judith Bernstein, and Yoko Ono, among others. MoMA will also screen the world premiere of Cantor’s film Pinochet Porn (2008–2016) on October 31st.
“I
have been working with sexual content for over 50 years and in the
beginning it was an immense struggle for my peers and myself to gain
access to the system,” Judith Bernstein says. “Fortunately, the times
are changing. Now my work has been shown in museums and galleries all
over the world.” She notes that her works are especially well-received
in Europe, “where sex is not viewed as puritanically as in the U.S.” Her
show at Mary Boone in
January, aptly titled “Dicks of Death,” was entirely devoted to phallic
paintings and drawings—subject matter that she began to engage with in
the ’60s and has continued into the present, this time to comment on the
military industrial complex.
“They may own it in a bodily
fashion, but men don’t exclusively own the phallus,” Bernstein asserts.
“Women who work with sexual imagery are often lumped together, but our
aesthetics and messages can be very different. I am now observing women
through my ‘Birth of the Universe’ series, which deals with the Big
Bang, with women at the center, and the birthing process. Sexuality is
on a rotating continuum.” She describes a new painting called The Voyeurs (2015), which pictures a large vagina, as a self-portrait. “Now all eyes are on me!” she exclaims.
All
eyes are also on Semmel, in her show of large-scale, nude
self-portraits that opened last week. Semmel moved to New York in 1970,
and amid the unrest and activism around the Vietnam War, Civil Rights,
and the Women’s Liberation Movement, she sought to reach women through
her art, to offer them a release from sexual repression. She quit her
abstract painting practice and began to create intrepid
paintings—close-ups of interlocked couples in vibrant color (one of
which is in the show at Maccarone), and later, mesmerizing nude
self-portraits, which she’s been creating ever since.
“Things
have changed, but not that much,” Semmel says. “Things are better, but
they’re not where they need to be. [Sex] is an area of life that’s
primary for everybody, and it needs a lot more work.” Despite the
accomplishments of artists like Bernstein, Semmel, and Minter, younger
women are still having difficulty addressing sex in art.
Given
this, the revival of “Coming to Power” feels necessary. “All of the
artists in the show are defying this male perspective that has, and
does, describe female sexuality—whether it’s writ large in culture,
entertainment, advertising, literature, art, and then how that trickles
down to in between the sheets,” Cronin says. “It’s nothing short of
brave and urgent. This is still radical—which is good news and bad news,
actually.”
It’s
bad news because it’s an issue that women are still facing, and it can
construe these artists as “ahead of their time”—a qualifier that
ultimately, in this case, is diminishing. “I try to reject that language
because it tries to put a positive spin on this fact: Her time couldn’t see her,”
Cronin explains. “What decisions, life decisions, would these artists
have made if they were supported at the height of their time? It’s great
that women in their seventies and eighties are getting recognized, but
don’t you want to enjoy your life now, when you’re at your peak?”
Minter
believes the prevalence for slut-shaming young women, coupled with the
rise of social media, continues to stop young women from engaging in
sexual subject matter. “Culture is so vicious on the internet,” she
says, “there’s this kind of trolling. It’s a way of policing bodies, and
I think women owning the agency of sexuality makes people crazy. Other
women too, but definitely men.”
Today, it still takes courage for
younger generations of artists who don’t identify as heteronormative
males to represent sexuality through art. “I felt very strongly that
sexuality and all the things connected to it determine so much of what
comes afterward in one’s life,” Semmel muses. “If you start out in a way
that is oppressive, you’re going to end up with that kind of oppression
in other parts of life. Harassment has always been there, but nobody
ever talked about it.” She gives the example of Anita Hill. Her comments
also bring to mind Columbia undergrad Emma Sulkowicz and her senior
thesis performance Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–15), through which she drew attention to her own rape, and the massive issue of campus harassment across the U.S.
I
ask Cronin, who is now a professor at Brooklyn College, if she sees her
students exploring sexuality. She tells me that due to the difficulties
of finding success as a young artist, her students are drawn to market
trends, rather than pursuing experimental practices. To challenge this
behavior, she encourages them: “Focus on making art history. Don’t focus
on making art market history.” Cronin, whose most recent work, Shrine For Girls—a
site-specific installation that addresses the exploitation of women and
girls around the world—debuted during the Venice Biennale last summer
and traveled to the FLAG Art Foundation this summer, clearly speaks from experience.
Minter
has also found recent critical success, but in contrast to Cronin, her
work is often pigeonholed as being sexual in nature, regardless of her
intention. “When I first made my work, nobody wanted anything to do with
it, and now everybody wants to talk about how my work is very sexual,”
she says, “and more than half of it has nothing to do with sexuality,
but god forbid I paint a glass of water and it comes out ‘by sexual
artist Marilyn Minter.’” She emphasizes that although sexuality is an
innate part of being human, one that is vital to express, it’s not
something that can easily be put in a box. “Anytime you try to
categorize sexuality,” she says, “it will spit in your face.”
—Casey Lesser
“Coming to Power: 25 Years of Sexually X-Plicit Art By Women” is on view at Maccarone, New York, Sep. 9–Oct. 16, 2016.
