!Women Art Revolution (2010) - full transcript

[ Women, A Cappella ] ♪ I've got no secrets kickin' up from behind ♪

♪ We keep no secrets We play right in time ♪

♪ Your time is gonna come

- ♪ I think I hear it now - [ Bell Dings ]

♪♪ [ Band ]

[ Woman Narrating ] In the late 1960s, a few women artists formed a coalition...

and named it WAR-- Women Artists in Revolution.

♪ We come together in this garden for a day ♪

♪ Your time is gonna come

♪ I think I hear it now

[ Narrator ] And you have to ask yourself...



why it was necessary for them to do this in the first place.

The books that you read
in those days...

were written in a way
that denigrated
women artists,

if they even
mentioned them.

As an undergraduate
at Harvard University,

I don't think there was
a single woman artist...

whose work was ever discussed
in any one of my classes.

♪ Your time is gonna come ♪

When you're a woman,
it's hard to tell
that you're being censored...

when you're not in a museum
to begin with.

[ Narrator ] Can you name three women artists?

[ Interviewer ]
Who's a woman artist?

Um, Frida Kahlo.

That's one.Yeah?



Uh, Frida.

Oh.

[ Narrator ] Can anyone name three women artists?

- I need two more women artists.
- Two more women artists.

Yes. A female.

[ Narrator ] This film is peppered with images...

that for years you were prevented from seeing...

because there was no access to them.

This film is the remains of an insistent history...

that refuses to wait any longer to be told.

[ Woman ] ♪ There's a war in the world

♪ Yes, there is Yes, there is ♪

♪ There's a war in the world

♪ Yes, there is Yes, there is ♪♪

[ Narrator ] 1968.

One year after the summer of love,

America was still in Vietnam.

While at home, the Black Panthers, civil rights and free speech movements...

were only part of the subterranean agitations.

[ Joan Baez ] ♪ We shall overcome someday ♪

Another revolution was in progress.

There was a moral fervor to gather the fractured,

displaced and scattered remnants of the conditions of obscurity.

I was a freshly radicalized graduate student at Berkeley...

during the free speech movement.

I came from Cleveland and was expected to return,

but, after Berkeley, there was no turning back.

I felt an urgency to capture that moment,

to hold on to that experience.

I wasn't about to trust my own memory,

which was fragile even then.

So with a borrowed camera, I shot people that came through my living room...

right here on this very sofa
35 years ago.

One of the earliest feminist demonstrations...

was staged at the 1968 Miss America contest,

which was a symbol for women who measured up...

or didn't measure up to artificial standards.

[ Male Announcer ] The new Miss America stands 5 feet 7,

weighs 125 pounds...

and measures 36-24 1/2-36.

Police arrested a young woman inside the Atlantic City Convention Hall.

Police said the woman was spraying a foul-smelling vapor...

about 20 yards from the end of the runway.

[ Woman ] ♪ We're gonna ask all our sisters here ♪

♪ To come and join the fight

♪ Don't need no Miss America no more ♪♪

[ Leeson Narrating ] And it was at that precarious moment in history...

[ Siren Wailing ] that art and politics fused...

and then transfused...

into the blocked cultural arteries of the time.

It was a weeklong protest
of art events
against the Vietnam War.

I used a formation
from my war piece.

And we snaked
through the streets of SoHo
with black armbands.

[ Ron Dellums ] The politics of 1970 must clearly say to all American people...

that the walls between the races and the walls between the classes...

must come crashing down.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Judy Cohen-Garrowitz was inspired by the Black Panthers...

when she changed her last name to Chicago.

[ Chicago ]
So we adapted the forms
of the Black Panthers...

before we developed
our own forms.

No, it was absolutely true.

I didn't feel like I had
a name, you know, and I wanted
to make some statement,

some kind of symbolic statement
about the fact that I was taking
control of my own destiny.

I was fighting it out,
pretty much alone and isolated.

[ Leeson Narrating ] I shot wherever and whenever I could.

This clip of Judy Chicago was shot in a bathroom at Hayward State,

where we were able to get good sound.

Uh, let's see if I can think
back that far, Lynn.

Now, we're going back
into the end of the '60s, okay?

There were almost no women
artists who were visible at all.

[ Lesson Narrating ] We all thought we were alone.

Some friends said to me,

"If anybody can tell you,
you know,

what galleries you can go to or
what you can do with this stuff,

go to Leo Castelli."

So like a fool,
I made an appointment.
[ Laughing ]

And I went
to the uptown gallery,
but of course he didn't see me.

Ivan Karp saw me.

And I was wearing
high-heeled boots at the time,

and so I was, you know,
really kinda tall.

And Ivan is small.

And there were these sculpture
stands all around the place,

and he didn't have me
put my big tablet--

24-by-36-- on this.

He had me put it on the floor.

So every time I turned a page,

it was like I was genuflecting
to this guy, you know?

I felt humiliated.

And then he said-- he said,

"What'd you bring these
to me for?"

I learned to, you know,

look into a lot of facets
of the real world...

and what it meant
to be a woman artist...

in the society
and in the art world.

And as it was--
it was pretty tough.

Women aspiring to success
in the male-dominated art world,
as we know,

must work much harder at it...

and will be defined
as second-rate
for the most part.

It was sort of
a built-in attitude
within the institutions...

that it was acceptable,
normal and preferable...

to have all-white-male shows.

So, coming up against that,
both as a black person
and as a woman,

was very daunting
because it had to do
with basic attitudes.

[ Leeson Narrating ] The people I was meeting didn't realize that I was recording...

and that they were creating much of what would become...

part of the feminist art movement.

But we all felt something transformative was occurring...

and that we were a part of it.

One voice, and then another,

became a chorus,

syncopated into a movement,

became a revolution.

These works are relics of resistance...

and very different from the work...

that was being exhibited in museums and galleries...

or was taught about in art schools and universities.

[ Camera Whirring ]

[ Man ]
Minimalism was the prevailing
tendency at that time.

The whole ethos
of minimalist art...

was to arrive
at an ever-purer notion
of what an object could be.

[ Baca ] I stepped forth
from the university
trying to figure out how,

trained as a minimalist painter,

I was going to make
my work relevant to people
I loved and cared about.

And there was that incredible
disjunction at that point...

between content
and the notion of making art.

In other words,
art was content-less.

It was free
and devoid of politics.

And that was a higher form.

When you have a culture...

in a state of grave agitation,

where people are marching
by the hundreds of thousands
in the streets--

Come alive, brothers!
We are waiting for you!

And the leading artistic
activity of the day is mute...

because of the way
that that art is construed
as an intellectual pursuit.

[ Leeson Narrating ] The growing tensions between minimal and feminist art...

are expressed in this performance...

where one artist represents minimal art...

and the other feminist art...

as they wrestle for domination...

to the background drone of minimal art rhetoric.

[ Man Reading, Indistinct ]

[ Screams ]

[ Man Continues ]

Art had reached an impasse...

that American culture
was already breaking through.

There had to be an invention
of a new kind of art,

and that's exactly when feminism
starts in the art world.

♪ There's a war in the world Yes, there is ♪

In cooperation with
the armed forces
of South Vietnam,

attacks are being launched
this week...

to clean out
major enemy sanctuaries
on the Cambodian-Vietnam border.

[ Bell Clanging ]

[ Male Announcer ] The National Guard is called out to restore order at Kent State in Ohio.

[ Man On Bullhorn ] Leave this area immediately.

[ Announcer ] Guardsmen, harassed by rock-throwing and name-calling,

fire into a group of students.

[ Woman ]
What really spurred me
to do performances...

was around 1970
when the killings
at Kent State happened...

and Nixon invaded Cambodia.

I got a sense of the immediacy
of these issues in my life...

that made me feel
as though the work I had done
up to that point...

was just not adequate
to express my current concerns.

And so I felt the need
to move out into the world...

and also the need to be more
concrete and confrontational...

in my interactions with people
through my work.

♪♪ [ Woman Singing Rock ]

[ Leeson Narrating ] In protest to the invasion of Cambodia,

the artist Robert Morris closed his exhibition at the Whitney.

Robert Rauschenberg and Carl Andre withdrew their work from the Venice Biennale,

and together they opened a Biennale-in-Exile in New York City.

But the artists in this exhibition were only white men.

They said,
"This show can't include women!"

Well, we just got mad,
and we said, "We're mad!
We're not taking it anymore!"

[ Leeson Narrating ] Faith contacted the organizers...

and threatened to demonstrate if they didn't integrate the exhibition.

[ Ringgold ]
And that was the first action.

And that was done
by a group called WSABAL--

Women, Students and Artists
for Black Art Liberation.

That group was actually
just me and my daughter
Michelle Wallace.

Those were the days
when two people
could raise a lot of hell.

And make everybody think
we were 35,000 people.
You know what I mean?

[ Leeson Narrating ] Between May and September 1970,

simultaneously and spontaneously,

other creative actions for integration surfaced throughout the country.

We had already picketed
the Corcoran Gallery's
Biennial...

for having
an all-male exhibition...

right at the time
when people were beginning
to have a discussion about this.

And we organized that
at my house,

and the conference used
one of my bedrooms...

as our headquarters.

[ Bell Dings ]

It was a sculpture annual,
and people said,

"There are no women
who make sculpture"--
the usual silly business.

We did a big demonstration
around the Whitney Annual.

We picketed every Saturday.

We had women's slides projected
on the outside of the Whitney
at the opening.

We faked a press release...

that went out to all the media
on Whitney stationery...

saying that the Whitney
was so pleased
to be the first museum...

to acknowledge that women
artists have been neglected...

and have 50% women
and 50% nonwhites.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Those slides were projected on the outside of the museum.

Artists placed eggs inside the exhibition space.

Faith painted her eggs black...

and wrote "50%" on them.

They went nuts!

You realize that little changes
make big changes.

I eventually wrote the song--
"Stand up
for what you want to do.

Stand up, there's no one
telling you how to stand up.

Stand up when people
put you down.

Stand up and dance
above the ground.

You've gotta stand up.
You've gotta stand up."

This isn't a microphone.

"Disposable objects, society,

consumer reports,
lives of certainty.

Exposing the truth
is like nudity,

so stand up,
you've got to stand up."

The Los Angeles County Museum
was planning
an "art and technology" show,

and the red flag
was the cover of the catalog,

with a grid
with 50 heads of men on it.

We went to the museum...

and counted the works
on the walls.

We embarrassed them,
and they felt they had
to negotiate.

[ Bell Dings ]

What was A.I.R.?
Well, it was the first
women's cooperative.

It was very hard to find a show
of women's work in SoHo.

We rented a ground-floor loft
on Wooster Street.

I think it was
97 Wooster Street.

And we gutted the inside,
and we built with our own hands
the gallery.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Judy Chicago began the very first feminist art program...

at Fresno State College in 1970.

A Room of One's Own,
Sisterhood Is Powerful
and The Dialectic of Sex.

How many people
have read all three books?

We didn't study men at all,
figuring that everybody
had studied men plenty.

So we were all into
remedial education--

learning our own history,
our own heritage.

How to meet a gallery,
how to present yourself
to the world, you know.

All of these things
that men artists do.

We found pictures.
We photographed them.
We made slide libraries.

We would meet every week
and we would choose a subject,

and then what we tried to do
was make art out of it.

[ Chicago ]
I remember asking my students...

how many of them had been raped,

and being just totally shocked
when, like,

a quarter or half of them
raised their hands.

It was all discovery
about what our true experiences
had been.

I was really scared.
You know, I had no idea
what I was getting myself into,

but I was impelled to do it.

There was, as we went along,

a lot of hostility
and kind of jealousy, I think,

that began to develop
about that program.

We were sitting on the platform
talking about these ideas,

and this man came up
from the audience
and started threatening me.

[ Lacy ]
Some man jumped up onstage
and slugged her.

I discovered that it was easier
to get access to the subject
matter through performance.

Most women knew how to act out.

Even if they didn't have
any experience performing,

they were experienced
at performing roles in society.

[ Singsongy ]
Will you help me
do the dishes?

[ Low Voice ]
Help you do the dishes?

Well, they're your dishes
as much as mine.

But you don't have a--
[ Bleeps ]

We all learned how to make art
from our own point of view
as women in that year.

And then we went to CalArts.

My husband Paul Brock
was the dean of CalArts.

He proposed that Judy
be made a member of his faculty.

I was already a member.

Mimi Schapiro and Judy Chicago
had organized
this big conference.

It was a weekend at CalArts.

And during that conference,
they invited women
from all over the country...

to come and show slides
and talk about their work.

And that's all we did
for three days.
It was very simple.

Lynn, what we found out was...

that our slides were moved out
all over the country.

They were copied!
It was like
an underground railroad.

The women in America
were just waiting
to be released.

When I saw those slides,

after decades of having felt
that to be an artist is
to be a man,

it was like a veil had lifted.

Women were able
to enter the art structure...

through performance.

Performance art
is this strange,
amorphous area...

that attracts hybrids
from every discipline.

It remains
this peculiar place...

that people can be
extremely experimental.

[ Schapiro ]
We started the whole
consciousness-raising concept...

on the idea of the grape theory.

One person tells another person,
another person
tells a third person,

and pretty soon you've got
a group, and you can start
talking to each other.

And there's a wholeness
about that.

I remember being in
this consciousness-raising group
and looking around the room.

They were all white women.

And I was really fascinated
by the fact
that all of these women...

had made the determinations that
I was in the process of making--

choosing to focus on their work,

choosing perhaps not to be wives
in the traditional sense.

By facing up to the way
the micro-politics of power
within the family...

have shaped women
and their responses.

I think I was very scared
by the anger all of them
were expressing, and the rage.

I was very recently married,
and I was feeling
very conflictual...

about how one had to suddenly
be angry about men.

Naturally, as a result,
I had to leave my husband,

as so many of us did.

Everyone's opinion
counted equally.

That was both wonderful
and a total nightmare.

And sometimes
it just simply ground to a halt.

But when it didn't
grind to a halt,

then you could sometimes
get a kind of combustion,

a kind
of nitroglycerin effect...

that shot off all kinds
of new directions and ideas
in really productive ways.

What we found
was a whole different way
to talk about work.

And I discovered very quickly,
it wasn't the way
the boys talked about art,

that we talked about
things like content--

how much of the feminist
movement, period, was
about giving us permission...

to let us be
who we think we are.

That simple.

I stopped doing the dishes,
making the three meals a day,

the laundry
and the housecleaning and so on.

The process of personal
liberation for me resulted
in the breakup of my marriage.

So that was my first
introduction to feminism.

And there was a second stage
of that in which after--

right after-- a few days
after I left my marriage,
I was raped.

And that experience
was highly politicizing for me.

And I became very strongly
connected to the fact...

that I wanted all of my energy--

my professional energies,
my personal energies,
my political energies--

to be integrated in the struggle
for women's liberation.

[ Leeson Narrating ] In America, the statistics are that...

every two minutes, a woman is raped.

Like Arlene, early in my life,

I became part of that statistic,

and thereafter cautiously sidestepped the associated land mines...

of depreciated dignity and self-worth.

Through consciousness-raising,

came some of the early feminist literature--Apron.

likeThe Politics
of Housework...

and philosophical slogans like "The personal is the political."

Bowl.

[ Rosler ]
All these gestures and utensils
actually are a sign...

Other meanings escape,

and you see a kind of madness...

and anger contained,
but explosive.

With each letter,
there's a certain kind
of confrontationalism...

which I discovered quickly
that many men found frightening.Dish.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Overlays of personal history...

led to internal conflicts of breaking with traditional roles.

[ Women's Voices Overlapping ]

[ Woman ] But I just felt it was fashion,

so I was, like, the best mother you could possibly be,

the best house cleaner,
the best cook.

[ Woman #2 ] I never seem to have more than 20 minutes at a time for myself,

and slowly, painting just faded away.

There was an enormous collection
of very exciting people...

who were passing all
of this inspiration
on down to their students.

When I got to CalArts,
it was, like, "Gee,
this is pretty squeaky clean."

And it struck me as a kind
of intellectualized version
of minimalism.

The women's program
had been very influential.

This messiness was feminine,
it was hysterical,

it was really looked down upon.

Around this time,
you also have role-playing
and gender swapping.

♪♪ [ Women Vocalizing ]

[ Antin ] I was interested
what would my male self--

Naturally,
I've told you I'm vain,

so I wanted to be the most
handsomest male self.

And you know,
in my tape I discovered
I was a king with my small face.

But a king has
to have a kingdom,

so I went out into the world...

and conversed with my people--
the citizens of Solano Beach.

[ Camera Shutter Clicks ]

[ Leeson Narrating ] I considered for a long time...

whether or not to include my own work in this film.

But I decided not to continue the legacy of omission,

so here I am.

♪ Your time is gonna come

♪ I think I hear it now

From 1973 to 1979-- nearly a decade--

I lived as a fictional person.

Roberta had a driver's license, saw a psychiatrist...

and had better credit than I did.

The fragments of her life emerged, like the fragments of this film,

to eventually show a portrait of what it was like...

to experience alienation, rejection and loneliness.

Roberta put ads in newspapers to meet roommates,

and, as she met them, she became part of their reality...

just as they became part of her fiction.

She was a fractured identity, a virtual person...

captured in a time frame,

waiting for her history to congeal.

Roberta was my own flipped effigy.

She was a mirror of culture.

So we made art in which we created identities,

even fictional histories,

which were better than none at all.

The personal became the political,

and the very personal became art.

We were juggling identities, living encrypted lives...

covertly as artists,

beneath the surface of visibility.

Race became the subject and the content of art that was produced.

For example,

it's our problem
if you feel that I'm making
an unnecessary fuss...

about my racial identity...

if you don't see why I have
to announce it this way.

Well, if you feel
that my letting people know
I'm not white...

is making an unnecessary fuss,

you must feel that the right and proper course of action for me to take...

is to pass for white.

This was in the '40s,
so it was during segregation.

I was one of the few
black children in kindergarten,

if not the only one
in this particular one,
in Philadelphia.

They had "potty time,"

and I remember one of
the white teachers believed...

that whites and blacks should
not use the same bathroom.

And so what she did was tie me
to the cot with sheets.

I remember it vividly. I
remember lying there and I said,
"I'm not gonna pee on myself."

I'm a little kid.

And I talk
about this experience,
which is always a shock...

'cause people can't believe
this happened, but it did.

And I told stories about
experiences my mother had...

and experiences I had
with racism.

But I play both parts.

You ungrateful little--

After all we've done for you.

You know, we don't believe
in your symbols.

You must use our symbols.

They're not valid
unless we validate them.

You really must be paranoid.

I have never had
an experience like that.

But then, of course,
I'm free, white and 21.

People were offended by it,
were very angry about it.

I first showed the tape
at A.I.R....

in the Dialectics
of Isolation exhibition
that Ana Mendieta curated.

[ Leeson Narrating ] A political exile from Cuba,

the feminist artist Ana Mendieta...

met and married the minimal artist Carl Andre.

CalArts in 1972,

I showed photographs
of myself...

dressing as a man
trying to look like a woman,

photographs using makeup
to beautify and then
to deform my face.

And then Judy said,
"Well, what do you think
of the work that you see here?"

And there were flowers
and breasts all over the walls,

and I thought it was hideous.

So I said,
"It looks prescriptive to me."

And then she said--

[ Screaming ]
"Don't you understand
what we're trying to do here?

We're trying to support
these young women!"

So, uh, I started crying.

I completely lost it
and just, you know--

I couldn't believe that
a feminist could act like this.

And to this day,
I haven't forgiven Judy Chicago
for making me cry.

In China, they have
study groups. They have
consciousness-raising groups.

They read theory. They read Mao,
they read Marx, they read Lenin!

It's, like, you say,
"How do I make change?"
and we tell you,

and you say,
"Oh, I don't wanna do all that.
That won't make change!"

And we say to you,
"Those of us who are effectively
making change are not ignorant.

Those people who have ever made
change in the history of the
human race were not ignorant,

and nobody who is ignorant
will ever make change!"

Unfortunately,
because of some moves
that Judy made--

like locking the door
of the program--

this exacerbated the hostility.

That is one of the reasons
women are not able to translate
their aspirations into reality--

because they are embedded
in remaining ignorant,

and it pisses me off.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Twenty-one students in the Feminist Art program at Cal Arts,

under the supervision of Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro,

createdWomanhouse,

which transformed a vacant Hollywood home...

into a feminist artwork.

The first year that I was
teaching with Judy Chicago
and Miriam Schapiro,

I found it to be difficult
because they were not
speaking to each other.

Womanhousehad already happened.

That was kind of the finale
of the excitement.

Being able to actually address
women's educational needs
within an institution...

that supposedly was committed
to that, that was
wonderful and thrilling.

But of course, it didn't work.

So we decided to leave and
had an idea to do a brochure...

in which we would be standing
inside of trash cans...

throwing away old art history
and old art...

and pulling out
feminist art history and art,

and went to our friend
Sheila de Bretteville...

to see if she would assist us
with the brochure.

And she thought
that was just the worst idea
she'd ever heard.

[ Leeson ] At the core
of what your design sense is,
is political.

Lynn, I love that you see it
as political!
I see it as very political.

The independence
of having our own institution
is a really heady experience.

You don't have to ask permission
from anyone.

You just do it.

And I like very much
having an idea
and just going ahead with it.

If it's not right,
we'll adjust it later.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven and Sheila de Bretteville...

left CalArts and formed the Feminist Studio Workshop,

and they held the first classes in Sheila's living room.

Eventually, they founded their own building.

[ De Bretteville ] We found
a building that had a tremendous
amount of dignity and presence,

except it was
like nobody else was there
'cause it was like warehouses.

It wasn't chic.
And right over the bridge
is Lincoln Heights,

which Judy Baca had said,
"Oh, these are two gangs.

They're gonna see
all these women
and fight with us."

I said, "I don't think so."

I have a good relationship
to taking chances.

♪♪ [ Woman Vocalizing ]

♪ Standing in the way of control ♪

♪ Gotta live your life surviving the only way that you know ♪

♪ Know ♪

[ Leeson Narrating ] The Equal Rights Amendment was passed in the House of Representatives,

and there was a buoyancy about new possibilities.

I was able to travel
and to lecture
at different schools...

and see what was happening,
like, in Minneapolis
and Chicago and Atlanta.

I was able to go
to the Women's Building.

So, some of us were doing
cross-pollination.

We were all so excited to
begin this endeavor together...

that anything that was a barrier
or an impediment or a glitch...

was just a barrier, impediment
or a glitch for you to solve.

And we did.

I mean it's hard.
This will make me
very emotional.

It just hurts to not have money
when you want things so badly.

And I-- It makes me identify
with who doesn't have money.

The sense of limitation
that economics makes...

is so powerful and, in a way,

I think we used it wrong then.

We saw that as, you know,

"The dominant culture
not letting us have
what we have"...

instead of the identification
with people who don't have.

I think there wasn't
enough identification with that,

and it made--
it made it peculiar...

to be so lacking in funds
and so unable to get them...

and so unable to do...

some of the things
we wanted to do.

That's just hard.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Consciousness surfaced from the inside out.

♪♪ [ Woman Singing ]

Traumas dissolved through the pores of the skin,

and the body became the body politic.

[ Woman ]
There's a long tradition
of the woman being looked upon.

When feminist performance began,
it literally was
the looking back.

Martha Rosler, for instance.

Thirty-four and a half.
That's above standard.

[ Whistle Blows ]

She's measured ruthlessly,

but it made you think
of how women are
measured ruthlessly.

Mid-thigh girth is 19 inches.
That's standard.

[ Bell Rings ]

It is about constraints.

[ Male Announcer ] Miss America stands 5 feet 7, weighs 125 pounds--

[ Leeson Narrating ] The ability to challenge cultural presumptions...

was in itself a triumph.

There were some works I did
that suddenly pulled it all
together, and it felt right.

[ Camera Shutter Clicking ]

[ Antin ]
I put up all these
naked pictures of me.

148 or something.

I looked at that
and I was shaking,
and I said,

"Oh, my God.
They're not gonna
take me seriously.

I'm so fucking obviously
a woman."

And I remember going outside
and taking a walk...

and saying,

"Well, you know, fuck 'em,
you know? That's me."

♪♪ [ Women Vocalizing ]

[ Leeson Narrating ] Ana Mendieta stressed the temporal nature...

and frailty of the female body.

I think that that
was not only an art expression,

but that was
a political expression...

of how she felt
about violence...

and the vulnerability
of women's bodies.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Violence is embedded in much of this art,

like the blood-filled corpses of Ana Mendieta'sEarth Works...

or her tears for unknown horrors still to come.

[ Smith ]
The rumor went around
almost immediately...

that I was gonna be
in this room naked, which I was.

But guys could come in,
and I would make love
with every one of them.

And this is exactly contrary
to the meaning of the piece
or what I was going to do.

The women got
very upset about it,

but they thought that, I guess,
I was completely a victim.

But there have been other women
who've done performance pieces,

such as Yoko Ono
and Marina Abramovic,

in which they really were
victims,

'cause by the rules
of their piece,
they could not...

interact or protect themselves.

[ Leeson Narrating ] In the performanceCut Piece,

Yoko Ono sat motionless on a stage...

after inviting the audience to cut away her clothing.

Self-inflicted wounds and exposed vulnerability...

reflect a culture of rage and aggression.

[ Rainer ]
The women's movement gave me
permission to start moving...

into my experiences as a woman.

It was a series of gestures
that went--

And that act of covering...

that part of the body,
touching oneself there,

as far as I knew, no one
had ever done that before.

In fact, a friend of mine,
a dancer,

said when she saw that,
she gasped.

Instead of the female body
being the enemy of an artist
or the muse for an artist,

suddenly it really became
not just the stuff of work,
but the tool of work.

[ Schneemann ]
The real struggle with my work
was to potentially introduce...

or penetrate my culture
with different meanings
of the female body...

and the female attributes
of that body.

But it was the body
in conjunction...

and as an extension
of my materials as a painter.

So the body itself was
subjected to the materials...

that I, as a painter,
was using in the constructions.

It was painted, it was greased,
it was oiled, it was chalked.

It was covered in ropes,
it was collaged.

They all said it was
like a kind of pornography,

and if I wanted to paint,
I should paint.

It was an imaginative leap...

to think that women could
represent sexuality
on the screen...

without somehow
being either condemned by it,

without it being career suicide,

without being laughed at
or without being attacked
by other women,

because that wasn't any nicer.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Media was challenged.

Tactics included revising projected, idealized images.

♪♪ [ Theme ]

[ Man ] ♪ Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman

♪ Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman ♪

♪ Wonder Woman ♪

Or scrutinizing and rupturing the forms of media transmission.

Or claiming the copyright itself to the mediated image.

[ Man ]
Now go back to a profile.

Now move your whole head
forward slowly.

Forward. No, this way.

Oh.

Forward. Okay, stop.

Mm-hmm.Good.

Now just let your whole body
settle down.[ Man #2 ] I like that.

That's good.That's nice.

[ Man #1 ]
Okay.

Now, uh--

You want just the straight,
uh, profile and full face?

Yeah, I got an idea
of what we can do.

Play this tape
on this machine now...

and then take a photograph
of what I'm doing, okay?

[ Leeson Narrating ] Media became a platform...

for articulating private battlefields.

My video diaries were a way to, finally, hear myself.

There were things
that happened that...

you weren't supposed
to talk about.

When I was small, there would be
these episodes of batterings.

And I would go up to my attic...

and retreat into other people
that had a voice,

since I had lost my own.

[ Woman Whispering ]
You're not supposed
to talk about it.

[ Leeson Narrating ] My art was a zone of safety and survival.

Part of the reason
that the feminist art movement
could happen...

was that there were feminists
writing about art.

[ Leeson Narrating ] I created three fictional critics.

Their names were Herbert Goode, Prudence Juris and Gay Abandon.

And these fictional critics wrote about my work.

The articles got published in prestigious journals,

and I took the published articles into galleries.

And that's how I got my first exhibition.

There were women
starting magazines.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Magazines were self-published--

Chrysalis on the West Coast,
Heresies on the East Coast...

and many others throughout the country.

[ Kozloff ]
The first meeting
of the group...

that was to become Heresies
was actually in this loft.

We literally took it out
to the bookstores ourselves.

We did distribution.
We did mailing.

[ Hammond ]
Issue Number 3
was "Lesbian Art and Artists."

In editing that issue,
one of the things
that came up right away...

was how little
there was out there.

It was very hard getting women
to, in a way, you know--

in a sense,
almost come out as artists.

Not come out as lesbians,
but to come out as artists.

Because the lesbian separatist
community was anti-art.
It was bourgeois.

[ Camera Shutter Clicks ]

My sense
of the feminist movement then...

was that women were kind of
storming the art world.

We were trying it all out.
We were giving birth to it.[ Leeson, Indistinct ]

Pardon?Inventing it.

It was excitement.
It was empowering.

It was a lot of fucking work.

It was such an explosive time,
where all of this
was really getting sorted out.

There wasn't an ideology yet.
There wasn't a prescriptive way
of doing things.

And half the intoxication was
that we were there helping
to figure it out.

I started Franklin Furnace
after moving
to New York-- 1974--

because my work
had been marginalized.

So I thought to start
an institution that would show
marginalized work.

♪ ...you wanna sit on my face

Feminism in the '70s
was an exercise in trying
to do something...

that you knew full well
was probably not gonna work.

But you had to do it anyway,
or you were gonna go nuts.

We started the Woman's Building,
and, after a year,
I left that...

because I had become
strengthened...

in my own sense of what I wanted
to do and be as an artist.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Three years after leaving, Judy completedThe Dinner Party.

[ Chicago ] There's 39 place settings at the table-- 13 on each side.

Each of the place settings represents...

a woman of achievement from Western civilization.

Over 400 people came from all over the United States,

from as far away as Australia, to work on the project.

In 1979, when The Dinner Party
opened in San Francisco--
when it premiered--

it wasn't just The Dinner Party
in the museum.

You got to see a glimpse
of what it would actually mean
to have a feminist society.

The museum was full of
poetry readings, performances,
discourse, excitement.

I'm doin' pretty good.
This is fun.

-[ Laughing ] Finally, it's fun.
-I know it.

[ Man ] ..."would bring
world peace and equality
between women and men."

"Liberated motherhood
would retrieve"-- Hmm.

Yes. Not having to have
babies all the time.

We're never ourselves.That's very flamboyant.

I have a chance to work
to bring other women to Yale...

and to enhance
a feminist presence at Yale...

and to be the kind of person
I am here there.

I felt the need to have a more
total commitment to women...

and to work
for more long-range goals.

And I also was beginning,
at the time,
to put out to the public...

the work I had been doing
on lesbian artists...

and to republicize myself
as a lesbian.

♪♪ [ Woman Singing, Indistinct ] [ Leeson Narrating ] Judy was having success in museums,

but others were taking the lessons of political activism directly to the streets.

These windows begin a series
that deal with aging.

They're also studies
of the people
that shop at Bonwit Teller.

I began a very long period of
time of straddling two lives--

the feminist information
and life that supported
my growth as a woman...

and my community life, which
was within the Latino community,

as I worked intently
in the neighborhoods.

And they never really met.

[ Baca ] The concept of the mural...

was to bring a group of youths together from different neighborhoods...

who had had trouble with the police...

and have them try to accomplish something together...

that was greater than any one of them individually.

And so we attempted to paint the longest mural in the world.

But the idea was that we would paint the history of California...

and put particular emphasis on the part of history...

that had been left out in history books.

These kids are known for not getting along with each other,

so we didn't know what was going to happen.

It was an experiment, and we think it worked.

[ Baca ]
Suzanne Lacy was trying
to figure out how the media...

could come to the services
of putting information
to the public about rape.

The media surround at that
point in time was all fear--

showing women how to retreat,
to hide, to barricade,
to defend...

around this manipulation
of information
on slaughter basically--

sexual slaughter of women.

And we wanted to interrupt
that flow in the media
with another image.

[ Lacy ] I am here for the 388 women who have been raped in Los Angeles...

between October 18
and November 29.

[ Labowitz ] The thing
that I really have learned, and
I'm gaining more confidence in,

is the potential of artists
as image makers to really make
a change in society...

in terms of the images
that they project of women.

And that that's just
as important...

as a political organization
and the things that they make.

We were sitting over coffee
in Venice,
looking at the newspaper,

and just said,
"This is it. We've had enough.

We have enough women around us.
We have other options.

We're going to organize
and do something...

to show the women of L.A.
that they don't need
to be afraid."

[ Leeson Narrating ] Suddenly it was 1980--

[ Film Projector Rolling ]

[ Brakes Screeching ]

and it was as if time was sliding backwards,

rewinding history in the process.

The Feminist Studio Workshop closed, and the first cases of AIDS were reported.

The E.R.A. was defeated in the Senate.

The planet's rage and disrepair were background white noise to our own private apocalypse.

A subculture that was no longer content with remaining a footnote...

sought to become an implicit part of the cultural narrative.

In 1984, the Museum
of Modern Art
opened an exhibition...

called An International Survey
of Painting and Sculpture.

And in this exhibition,
there were 169 artists.

Very few were women
or people of color.

And we realized that we had
so much more to go.

So the Women's Caucus
for Art called a demonstration
in front of the museum.

I remember
that Frida Kahlo and I--

the Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo
and I, Kathe Kollwitz--

went to this demonstration.

So we're walking around
on a picket line, and nobody
paid any attention to it.

We had this idea to do
a kind of political art...

that didn't just point
to something and complain
and say, "This is wrong."

We had an idea to try
to twist issues around
and use facts and humor...

and change people's minds
about the issues.

This particular member
misspelled "Guerrilla"
as "Gorilla,"

and so that was where the idea
of the masks came forth,
and here we are.

[ Woman: New Wave ] ♪ She's so gorgeous

♪ You can always find me lyin' on the floor ♪

♪ Just to see her perfection from underneath ♪

♪ She's so sweet Her intellect's superior ♪

♪ Makes me want to reach into the interior of her skull ♪

♪ All of her thoughts are complicated, brilliant,
sheer genius ♪

♪ Would make other girls act kinda mean ♪

♪ Just knowin' they're smarter-- ♪♪

Artists and critics,
museum people, writers...

were part of the fact that women
were not being shown.

So we targeted them.

We named names, and that was
an extraordinary thing.

Not just generalize,
but specific names.

We gave report cards--

how many people in this gallery
are women?

[ Kollwitz ]
We fingered one group
after another.

We went after
artists themselves-- [ Siren Wailing ]

successful male artists.

They've gotta speak up
about this.

We travel in the dark of night,
in the mists.

It could be everybody.
The person next to you
could be a Guerrilla Girl,

so it's not clear who is
and isn't, and hopefully
it will stay that way.

[ Laughing ]
The penis count at the Met.

Someone had to do it,
and we were the ones.

[ Guerrilla Girl #2 ]
We made them, through
the posters, accountable--

for how many women were
in galleries, how many women
were in exhibitions,

how much money
women were making.

And we did it through humor
so that all of us could laugh.

The feminists of the '70s
had been earnest
and breast-beating,

and it just didn't work.

The bra-burning didn't actually
effect social change.

[ Guerrilla Girl #3 ]
It was so difficult to be female
in the '60s and '70s.

To do feminist work was just
the most profound leap
of courage.

[ Guerrilla Girl #2 ]
I think the influence
of the feminist movement...

on the art world
and on culture...

was the most profound thing
that happened in the last half
of the 20th century.

If the collectors
were really smart about it,

they would purchase
females' artwork...

because it's totally
undervalued--Mm-hmm, and it's an investment.

Yeah. It's a huge investment.

And remember that one poster
we did where we named,
I don't know,

like, 150 women artists
that you could purchase...

for one male artist.Yeah.

That was a good poster.That was a great poster.

They're mostly business people.
I'm just surprised they haven't
caught on to that yet.

Tenets in the art world that
we believed were inviolate...

proved to be just the prejudices
of the people in power.

[ Leeson Narrating ] But the existing power structure was shifting.

[ Tucker ]
The Whitney contacted me.

I was the first woman
they had hired--

except for Margaret McKellar,
the registrar--

the first woman since
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney...

and certainly the first
woman in any--
in a curatorial position.

Came through the '60s.
Had read, you know,
all the writings of Bobby Seale.

I was supposed to, you know,
make a change--

go into the belly of the beast,
make an impact.

I want to change the power
structures that create
inequities in the first place.

Curatorial work was
where you really
want to be in museums...

because you affect
the collection, which stands.

There's an interesting
feminist story in this.

Because in those days,
David Salinger
was the president,

and he interviewed both me
and James Monte.

And he asked questions
that are illegal nowadays.

He wanted to know
if I had a boyfriend,
if I intended to get married,

what I thought about a family--
um, really amazing stuff.

How old I was.

And at some point
I just stopped him,
and I said, "Oh, okay.

Let me tell you why you don't
want to hire a woman.

You know, first,
no man will ever be able
to work for me.

Secondly, we know
that women can't do budgets.

And third, once a month,
I'll go crazy and nobody
will be able to get near me."

And he actually laughed.

They hired us both.

But they hired me at $2,000
less a year, which at that time
was considerable.

So I went in
to see my director and I said,

"This is what's happening,
and you've gotta change it."

And he said, "Well, you know"--
The budget, the budget,
the budget.

And I said, "The New York Times,
the New York Post,
the DailyNews."

So it got changed.

I feel like I'm in
the Witness Protection Program,

concealing my identity because
I don't wanna be whacked
by the art mafia.

[ Leeson ]
Do you think that the art mafia
really would punish someone...

if they found out that
they were the ones who were
putting out these statistics?

Yes. Well, I think actually
any subversive voice is
in danger of being punished.

I think that's true anywhere.

I remember when Susan Stamberg
interviewed me...

when the piece opened
in the San Francisco Museum.

And she said, "Well, Judy,
what are you going to do
when the controversy starts?"

And I go, "Controversy?
What controversy?"

I mean, 5,000 people
came to the opening.

People were giving me
necklaces and flowers.

I mean, it was just
this incredible, festive,

gala celebration
of women's achievement...

and, you know, my achievement
and our achievement.

And I thought-- whew!
You know, fantastic.

We really are at a moment
in history where women
can enter the culture,

we can be ourselves,
we can in fact bring our point
of view into the world.

Ha, ha, ha!

Nobody was prepared
for the ferocity of the assault
on The Dinner Party--

not anybody associated
with The Dinner Party
and not me.

Museum after museum backed out
of exhibiting The Dinner Party.

On the floor of Congress,
people were speaking
against this work of art...

that most
of them had never seen.

...smash your face till it bled,
you get a letter of reproach.

And now we have
this pornographic art.

I mean, three-dimensional
ceramic art...

of 39 women's, uh,
vaginal area--
their genitalia--

served up on plates
that requires a whole room.

...in order to display
weird sexual art.

I'm a poet, and I do
have trouble with this,
'cause it's not art!

It is not art. It's pornography!

Pornographic art--
Military weapons
that look like phallic symbols,

capable of doing nothing
but destroying human life
on this planet!

You wanna talk
about pornography?

You wanna talk about deadly art?

We deal with pornography
every single day!

That's not the issue.

They're not going to display
a mobile M.X. missile
or a B-2 bomber.

They're gonna feature a work
that has 39 elaborate
place settings...

depicting female vaginas.

I came to this body
against the backdrop
of the Civil Rights movement,

and people said,
"Challenge, come here
so that you can speak out."

Look at this garbage.

Art is a precious expression
of the First Amendment
to the Constitution.

For Congress to spend an hour
and 27 minutes discussing The Dinner Party?

I mean, when are they
running the country?

123 members voting
in the negative
and one member voting "present,"

the amendment is agreed to.

All men discussed
the future of The Dinner Party.
Not one woman spoke up.

Men determined and decided
that The Dinner Party
was not going to enter history.

[ Leeson ]
And why did you leave?

Oh, why did I leave the Whitney?
I got fired.

Why did I get fired?
I have no idea.

I have no idea,
because he couldn't give me
a straight answer either.

But I suspect
it was maybe because
I was more than just competent.

That's my joke, you know.

It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because--

Although it was extremely
painful, because I was there
for eight years.

And I loved the institution.
Loved it.

That was hard. That was hard.

But I got over it. [ Laughing ]
I just got over it.

Because I'm a refugee
from the Nazis...

and because I came here
and was adopted by this country
and became naturalized.

A country which I had, you know,
such admiration for.

Here's a land that was really
one of the only countries
in the world...

where you could totally,
totally, freely express yourself
in every way.

And to see these kinds of things
being eroded and nibbled at...

and that these forces
are really and truly trying
to destroy that,

is to me
just immensely frightening.

The kinds of systemic battle
lines that were drawn
were really clear...

at the time
of Ana Mendieta's death.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Ana Mendieta fell to her death from a 34th-floor window.

Her husband, the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre,

was charged with second-degree murder.

[ Rich ] Some of the best-known
feminist art critics
and feminist artists...

wouldn't come to her defense.

They were too connected
to Carl Andre from
the early days of minimalism...

to be willing to go against
that male establishment...

that immediately
closed ranks around him.

All of the male artists
that put up the money...

for his very expensive
defense attorney--

Rauschenberg,
all the rest of them.

Even the Guerrilla Girls
were so split by differences...

that they weren't even able
to put out a fucking poster
in her defense.

That was a sad moment
for what's happened.

[ Crack Splitting ]

[ Leeson Narrating ] Andre was acquitted.

[ Butler ] There was a lot of
activism, both in the art world,
and certainly in the culture,

around the Anita Hill-Clarence
Thomas hearings.

And out of that grew
the Women's Action Coalition.

[ Sirens Wailing ] [ Fire Raging ]

And there were protests
going on around
the downtown Guggenheim...

when that opened in New York
with one woman artist
represented.

[ Crowd Chanting, Indistinct ]

[ Leeson Narrating ] When the Guggenheim opened its first exhibition in SoHo...

that included only one woman artist and Carl Andre,

outraged WAC protestors stormed the museum,

and, in a symbolic gesture,

placed photographs of Mendieta over Andre's sculpture.

[ Crowd Chanting ]
Where's Ana? Ask Carl!
Where's Ana? Ask Carl!

Where's Ana? Ask Carl!

[ Chanting Continues ]

♪♪ [ Women Singing, Indistinct ]

♪ Picture yourself You are not beautiful ♪

♪ And picture yourself alive, alive, alive ♪

♪ Alive, alive ♪

[ Leeson Narrating ] Marcia Tucker organized the Bad Girls exhibition in New York.

Others followed in Los Angeles and London.

I was seeing a lot of work
that was really funny...

and was about somehow subverting
some of the, uh, the methods...

or some of the attitudes
that created sexism.

Gee, people hated that show.

It was amazing!

On my Web site,
I have an endless scroll
of all my bad reviews.

Humor is the single most
subversive weapon we have.

The reactions to the exhibition
I organized at the UCLA
Hammer Museum in 1996--

which was called Sexual
Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party
and Feminist Art History--

were deeply disturbing
and upsetting.

A certain coalition
of Los Angeles art critics...

wrote these
incredibly hostile reviews.

It also incited negativity
on the part
of older feminists...

living primarily in New York.

[ Leeson Narrating ] External frustrations mounted and triggered internal animosity.

When women were isolated
from the rest of society...

and marginalized on account
of being-- feminism,

this infighting started
to take place.

I think it was Miriam Schapiro,
but it may have been Judy too.
I don't know.

Started speaking
very badly about--
I think it was Barbara Kruger...

or one of the more famous ones.

And I remember getting up
and objecting publicly.

A damage that's inherent
within an artwork,
they call "inherent vice."

I think these conflicts are
a kind of an inherent vice that
you'll have no matter what...

because the playing field itself
has never been level.

Look at what low esteem Carolee
Schneemann or Hannah Wilke were
held by a lot of women artists.

Like,
"Oh, you shouldn't do that.

You shouldn't make a spectacle
of yourself like that."

A lot of us
who survived those fights--

bloodied, but, you know,
relatively unscarred--

are kind of like the old C.I.A.
and K.G.B. agents
that get together for reunions.

Who else knows
what we were fighting over?

Who else is interested
in these issues...

that have really been
consigned to a sort of
historic scrap pile...

that people don't seem all
that concerned about anymore?

The feminist art movement
was always incredibly
heterogeneous and...

richly conflicted,

and that's what made it the most
important political movement
in the art world...

in the contemporary period.

My students react against
feminism and feminist art,

and they take up the worst
of 1950s behavior of women.

I go back to the 1950s and think
of how we were raised,

and I see young girls
mimicking that.

I do. It's horrifying.

That term has become
kind of a red herring...

that now gets brought out
by major institutions
to kind of--

"Oh, well, now we've done
our feminist show
and we can move on."

I don't think
feminism successfully
changed the structures...

through which art is made, sold,
displayed and written about.

I think for complex and maybe
in some ways obvious reasons,

I think a lot of women
just wanted to be included.

I think there's a fear
within my generation...

that identifying
with feminism is a limitation
and not a foundation.

[ Leeson Narrating ] What really was limiting was the access to information...

about the values and philosophy that was implicit in this movement.

Ideas introduced in the '70s were amplified by younger artists of the '80s.

[ Rosler ]
Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger
and Jenny Holzer...

were among the most important
figures in the art world
of the '80s.

And it's not an accident
that they were there
speaking truth to power...

while you had these guys
flinging broken dishes
on their canvases.

[ Women ] ♪ We keep no secrets

[ Leeson Narrating ] Some young artists experienced a transgenerational haunting,

as if a legacy was passed down to them in secret.

♪♪ [ Vocalizing ]

I made this pamphlet that said:
"A challenge and a promise.

Girl, if you make a movie
and send it to me,

I promise I'll send you back
your movie...

with nine other movies
made by nine other women."

♪♪ [ Vocalizing ][ Woman ]
Mira Schor was my professor,

and she looked at my work
and she said to me,

"Have you ever heard
of Ana Mendieta...

or Hannah Wilke
or Carolee Schneemann?"

I hadn't, and I went
straight to the library,

and I couldn't find
one thing on those women.

I had to ask myself why,
when I went to the library,
was there nothing there?

And so Mira ended up
bringing me her catalogs
and clippings from home.

And I looked at this work
and I thought, "I'm making
the work of the '70s."

[ Laughing ]

Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen--I remember watching that--

Dish.

and just being completely
blown away by the critique.

The art I'm doing currently
is very related
to the feminist movement...

in terms of how I consider
the body.

[ Slide Projector Clicking ]

[ Leeson Narrating ] History is fragile.

It clings to the most obvious evidence that remains.

This film is patched together like a quilt from people I could access,

events that I heard about,

and it represents only a nanocell in the D.N.A. of an international experience,

most of which is not included.

I know how much is left out of this film.

What questions are asked in determining histories?

Perhaps more importantly, what questions aren't asked?

Some of the things
that you're asking are
the things that got left out.

The connection
to the late '60s movements
I think gets left out.

One of the things
the film does is to open up
a set of problems...

that the 1970s raised
without solving them.

And I think that's one
of the important parts
of feminist practice--

is not to shut down
the questions.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Time is an active ingredient in the composition of any history.

♪♪ [ Women Singing, Indistinct ]

One of the vestiges of freedom that we all have as human beings...

is to choose our attitudes, despite adversity...

♪♪ [ Continues ]

to choose to refresh and rescript every circumstance...

into sustained and creative opportunities.

On the cusp of every potential disaster, there was a reinvention...

and an absolute resolve to preserve an enduring future.

I began to shoot this film 40 years ago.

I've been waiting all this time for the right ending.

[ Leeson ]
Marcia, how long
did it take you...

to accomplish your dream
of opening the New Museum?

Well, over a weekend basically.

No. I got fired in December.

I packed up my stuff,

and I left just
before New Year's weekend.

And I rented this little space
in the Fine Arts Building,

and then I opened the space--
open for business--
the day after New Year's.

I took the model for the museum
from consciousness-raising
groups, community groups.

I learned a lot from feminism.

[ Leeson Narrating ] Over the weekend between December 1976 and January 1977,

as she modestly says,

Marcia Tucker created the New Museum,

a still thriving exhibition space for contemporary art in New York.

[ Gavel Raps ]

House will be in order.

[ Grode ]
One of the great successes...

was having the Hollywood Women's
Political Committee...

impress upon the Senate of the
United States that even though
the House of Representatives...

had decided
to actually put forth a bill...

keeping The Dinner Party
from being shown
in Washington, D.C.--

When this very powerful
group of women...

let it be known
to the senators who they had
supported for years...

that this was not to happen,

it died right then and there
in the Senate.

It was an incredible moment,

a moment that probably people
will never really know about,

but nonetheless was proof
to us how political
it sometimes had to be.

In 1992, the Women's Action
Coalition was formed to
mobilize and do activist work...

around cultural issues
and issues of parity
within the art world.

So, it was this kind of full
circle moment of activism.

[ Leeson Narrating ] In 2006, Connie Butler organized an exhibition...

that opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

[ Butler ] The exhibition has
a title. It's called WACK!
Art and the Feminist Revolution.

Many of the artists said,
"You know, it's gonna be
career suicide."

[ Woman ] ♪ There's a war on the poor

♪ Yes, there is Yes, there is ♪

I'm not sure
that the art world can absorb
this much art by women,

this much really strong,
powerful, sociopolitical art
by women.

♪ Are they criminalizing me?

♪ But the war will be over when we've won ♪

♪ Yes, it will ♪

[ Rosler ]
What's important
about the WACK! show...

is that it's the beginning
of rectification...

of a completely falsified
history of that era...

which tried to reduce,
contain and fragment
the production of women.

[ Both Laughing ]

[ Leeson ]
How do you feel about having
this in the museum, Judith?

I thought I'd never see it here
in my whole life.

[ Leeson ]
What is that?

These are my horns.

I grow them periodically
for special events.

[ Laughter ]

What about the show?

It's incredible.

It's an irreducible
transformation of our history.

You know, I'm thrilled.

I actually confess I didn't
think such an enormous
exhibition would come of it,

which is one
of the exciting things.

I intend to come back to this
show probably another 10 times
before I leave the country...

because there's so many hours
of video,

and there's just always
something else that needs to be
looked at a little bit more.

[ Leeson Narrating ] When artists are battling for space in the cultural memory,

omission-- or even worse, eradication-- becomes a kind of murder.

♪♪ [ Women Singing, Indistinct ]

[ Butler ]
I have been overwhelmed
by the reaction to it.

[ Leeson Narrating ] The WACK! exhibition traveled to several cities...

and spawned hundreds of satellite exhibitions and reunions.

The Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art,

and the Feminist Art Project opened at Rutgers University.

This is what the timeline of this film looks like.

I realized that the timeline for this film is, in fact, my own timeline.

[ Chattering ]

Publishing articles about myself resulted in an exhibition,

and, in 1975, I actually sold some work.

When the buyer learned that I was female, he returned the work,

saying buying women artists was a bad investment.

I sold nothing for the next 17 years.

Work accumulated and was stored under beds or in closets.

To preserve it, I offered to donate these pieces, plus 50 others, to a local museum.

They rejected it. They said it wasn't art and that I didn't know my place,

and, if I didn't take it back in three days, they would destroy it.

Thirty-five years later,

that work was appraised for 9,000 times the original sale price.

And it was that sale, along with some enlightened philanthropists,

that enabled the completion of this film.

I trust that each successive generation will recreate itself.

Women of the '70s worked
very hard for something
that I'm benefiting from,

that I feel like I have support,
that I'm part of a dialogue.

We still have the capacity
to respond to our own context
in making art.

That relentless communication
on a visual level
is very powerful.

Things have changed a lot.

I think we still have
a lot of work to do.

[ Leeson Narrating ] A legacy is a gift to the future.

The permanent manifestation
of women's community
is very important to me.

I can't believe it,

but this last year
in my career was the best,

at the age of 81.

So if we suffer and make it
into art, sometimes that makes
sense out of suffering,

and the pain becomes a work
that possibly also gets us
out of our own tragedy.

Every woman's fame,
every woman's success,
is all of our success.

[ Women ] ♪ We come together in this garden for a day ♪

♪ Your time is gonna come

♪ I think I hear it now

♪♪ [ Rock Ballad Continues ]

All of the hundreds of hours I've collected for this film...

will be accessible online.

There are no outtakes.

And on the RAW/WAR site,

future generations will be able to add their stories to this evolving history.

♪♪ [ Women Vocalizing ]

♪ Your time is gonna come

♪ I think I hear it now

♪ Your time is gonna come

♪ I think I hear it now

♪♪ [ Continues, Indistinct ]

♪♪ [ Rock ]

People really believed
that an individual,

you know, in consort
with other persons,

could change the world.

And then so we did too.

♪ Anyone can

♪ All you have to do
is try ♪

♪ Spread your arms
to reach the sky ♪

♪ And you'll know
the reason why ♪

♪ Anyone can fly ♪

[ Person Applauding ]