Barbara Turner Smith (born 1931 in
Pasadena, California) is an American artist known for her
performance art
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
in the late 1960s, exploring themes of food, nurturing, the body, spirituality, and sexuality. Smith was part of the Feminist Movement in Southern California in the 1970s, and has collaborated in her work with scientists and other artists. Her work has been widely exhibited and collected by major museums including the
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa.
The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...
, the
Hammer Museum,
MOCA,
LACMA
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum).
LACMA was founded in 196 ...
, and the
Art Institute of Chicago.
Education
She studied painting,
art history
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...
and religion as an undergraduate at
Pomona College
Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...
, graduating in 1953.
In 1965, after raising three children, she returned to study at
Chouinard Art Institute
The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard (1879–1969) in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In 1961, Walt and Roy Disney guided the merger of the Chouinard Art I ...
, making ''The Black Glass Paintings'', a series of primarily black surfaces under glass. She received her MFA from
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...
in 1971. During her time at UC Irvine, Smith and other artists such as
Nancy Buchanan and
Chris Burden
Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including ''Shoot'' (1971), where he arranged ...
founded F-Space, the experimental art gallery where she launched her career as a performance artist (this is also where Burden’s notorious ''
Shoot
In botany, a plant shoot consists of any plant stem together with its appendages, leaves and lateral buds, flowering stems, and flower buds. The new growth from seed germination that grows upward is a shoot where leaves will develop. In the sp ...
'' (1971) was staged).
Artworks and exhibitions
Tracking her transition from housewife to artist,
Smith's early work focused on
collaged photographs of herself and her three children, impressions of portions of her body, and articles of clothing into her self-published photocopied artist books, made on a
Xerox 914
The Xerox 914 was the first successful commercial plain paper copier. Introduced in 1959 by the Haloid/Xerox company. It revolutionized the document-copying industry. The culmination of inventor Chester Carlson's work on the xerographic process ...
that she leased and kept in her living room.
Titles like ''Broken Heart'', ''Bond'', ''Undies'' and ''Do Not Touch'' suggest the personal nature of her subject matter. As her marriage disintegrated in the late 1960s, autobiography and the creation of community by means of interaction with her audience became central to Smith’s art. She began to explore themes of “the body, food, nurturing, female desire, heterosexual relationships, sexuality, religion, spiritual transformation, love, and death."
Smith is best known for her performance work in the late 1960s that was at the forefront of feminist, body, and performance art. Cardinal performances by Smith include: ''Ritual Meal'' (1969), a dinner party where guests dressed in scrubs and ate with surgical instruments with footage of the space, nudes, and surgery played overhead;
''Celebration of the Holy Squash'' (1971), where Smith created an entire religion out of a vegetable husk, left over from a communal meal;
''Feed Me'' (1973), where she sat naked on a mattress in a bathroom during a performance festival with a selection of "food, wine, marijuana, and massage oil",
while a looped recording played "feed me";
''Birthdaze'' (1981), performed on Smith's 50th birthday, wherein she enacted her life story in relation to the male avant-garde;
and ''The 21st Century Odyssey'' (1991–1993), a collaboration between herself and
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
professor and scientist
Roy Walford, a
Biospherian and (at the time) Smith's partner. During the performance, she traveled the world and transmitted her performances back to the Biosphere 2, where Walford lived at the time, and the Biospherians responded.
A retrospective exhibition of her work, "The 21st Century Odyssey Part II: The Performances of Barbara T. Smith" was shown at the
Pomona College Museum of Art in 2005, and later traveled to the Kennedy Museum of Art at Ohio University. Her ''Trunk Piece'', along with video footage from past performances, were a part of the
Orange County Museum of Art
The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration ...
's permanent collection exhibition "Art Since the 1960s: California Experiments" (July 15, 2007 – September 14, 2008). Her ''Field Piece'' (1968–1972) was the central work of a show at The Box gallery in Los Angeles (November 17, 2007 – January 5, 2008).
Teaching experience
In addition to her art practice, Smith has taught courses in performance, art history, sculpture, painting, and drawing at many institutions, including USC, Otis College of Art and Design, UCSD, UC Irvine, UCLA, San Francisco Art Institute, Illinois State University, Ohio State University, and Johnston College at the University of Redlands.
Selected collections
* The J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute
* MOCA Los Angeles
* The Hammer Museum
* LACMA
* Pomona College Museum of Art
* The Art Institute of Chicago
* Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France
Awards
* Civitella Rancieri Visual Arts Fellowship in Umbria, Italy: 2014
* Durfee Foundation: 2005, 2009
* Women's Caucus for Art, Lifetime Achievement Award: 1999
* National Endowment for the Arts: 1973, 1974, 1979, 1985
* Women's Building Award, Vesta Award for Performance Art: 1983
Notes
External links
*Finding Aid for
Barbara T. Smith papers at the Getty Research Institute
Barbara T. Smith, Remnants: Artworks from 1965–1972Orange County Museum of ArtBarbara T. Smith: Field Piece Catalogue published by CIRRUS of installation/performance, ''Field Piece'' 1971
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Barbara T.
Living people
American installation artists
American video artists
Body art
Postmodern artists
Performance art in Los Angeles
Feminist artists
Artists from California
Pomona College alumni
University of California, Irvine alumni
American performance artists
1931 births
20th-century American women artists
21st-century American women