Eunice Golden (born 1927) is an American

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

from New York City, known for exploring sexuality using the male nude. Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art,

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

Bronx Museum of the Arts The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), also called the Bronx Museum of Art or simply the Bronx Museum, is an American cultural institution located in Concourse, Bronx, New York. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th-century works created by A ...

, Westbeth Gallery, and SOHO20 Gallery.

Early life, education, and political involvement

Eunice Golden's father fled Russia after a pogrom and her mother was the American-born daughter of Russian immigrants. She was raised in Brooklyn. Golden studied psychology at the University of Wisconsin before leaving school to focus on her art. She rebelled against the

patriarchal Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of Dominance hierarchy, dominance and Social privilege, privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical Anthropology, anthropological term for families or clans controll ...

views of her father and sought "to demystify the male nude and sexuality," as noted by the art historian Gail Levin. Golden's work paralleled ideas that emerged in women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1971, Golden joined the Ad Hoc Women Artists' Committee (est. 1970), a subgroup of the Art Workers' Coalition that picketed the Whitney Museum of American Art in a series of actions over four months. In 1973, Golden joined the "Fight Censorship Group," which was organized by

Anita Steckel Anita Slavin Arkin Steckel (February 24, 1930 – March 16, 2012) was an American feminist artist known for paintings and photomontages with sexual imagery. She was also the founder of the arts organization "The Fight Censorship Group", whose othe ...

in response to restrictions imposed on the sexually explicit works in Steckel's solo exhibition, ''The Sexual Politics of Feminist Art'' (1973), at

Rockland Community College Rockland Community College (RCC) is a public community college in the town of Ramapo, New York in Rockland County. It is part of the State University of New York. The college, established in 1959, became the 18th community college to join the S ...

. In addition to Steckel and Golden, "Fight Censorship" included

Judith Bernstein Judith Bernstein (born October 14, 1942) is a New York artist best known for her phallic drawings and paintings. Bernstein uses her art as a vehicle for her outspoken feminist and anti-war activism, provocatively drawing psychological links betwee ...

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...

, Martha Edelheit, Joan Glueckman, Juanita McNeely,

Barbara Nessim Barbara Nessim (born 1939) is an American artist, illustrator, and educator. Early life Nessim was born in New York City in 1939. Motivated by art from a young age, she studied at the Pratt Institute in New York from 1956 to 1960. After graduat ...

Joan Semmel Joan Semmel (born October 19, 1932) is an American feminist painter, professor, and writer. She is best known for her large scale realistic nude self portraits as seen from her perspective looking down. Education and political involvement Semmel ...

, Anne Sharpe, and

Hannah Wilke Hannah Wilke (born Arlene Hannah Butter; March 7, 1940 – January 28, 1993) was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist. Wilke's work is known for exploring issues of feminism, sexuality and femininity. B ...

. Also in 1973, Golden was a founding member of the all-women cooperative art gallery SOHO20, where her work was exhibited until 1981.

Work

Golden's paintings in the 1960s and 1970s focused on the male nude as a way to explore sexuality, struggle, and desire. She later explained that her early paintings of the male anatomy were not "heretical" or "revolutionary" but "a stream of consciousness outpouring of emotionally and sensually charged images that reflected who I was: a heterosexual woman with erotic needs and fantasies, yet struggling to redefine myself. ... In retrospect, I saw that I had unwittingly addressed, on a subliminal level, ideologies, experiences, and perceptions of a broad audience." By the mid-1970s, Golden's feminist position was necessary to understand the larger impact of her erotic work. In particular, her ''Male Landscapes'' addressed the "phallacy" of male power as Golden's voyeuristic role reversed the erotic gaze from the long-established notion of the male as viewer and female as sexualized object. The art critic Peter Frank recognized the "visual power" her ''Male Landscapes'' as "quite compelling." In 1977, her ''Landscape #160'' was included in ''Nothing But Nudes'', an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and was praised in Art International by

Carter Ratcliff Carter Ratcliff (born 1941 in Seattle, Washington) is an American art critic, writer and poet. His books on art include "John Singer Sargent" (Abbeville Press, 1982); "Robert Longo" ( Rizzoli, 1985); "The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Post ...

. In 1973, Golden began to explore performance, body-art, photography and film. Her group of films, ''Blue Bananas and Other Meats'' (1973), extends the painted ''Male Landscapes'' into performances in which the male body is covered with an assortment of foods, much like the ''Spring Banquet'' by the Surrealist artist

Meret Oppenheim In Egyptian mythology, Meret (also spelled Mert) was a goddess who was strongly associated with rejoicing, such as singing and dancing. In myth Meret was a token wife occasionally given to Hapy, the god of the Nile. Her name being a reference ...

. In the 1980s, her work focused on portraits and satiric anthropomorphic studies. In the 1990s she completed her ''Swimmers'' series, which was centered around the closeness of mother and child. Golden's work was included in the 2022 exhibition ''Women Painting Women'' at the

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (widely referred to as The Modern) is an art museum of post-World War II art in Fort Worth, Texas with a collection of international modern and contemporary art. Founded in 1892, The Modern is located in the c ...

Publications

* Golden,Eunice; Kenny, Kay (Spring-Summer 1982). "Sexuality in Art: Two Decades from a Feminist Perspective." ''

Woman's Art Journal The ''Woman's Art Journal'' (''WAJ'') is a feminist art history journal that focuses on women in the visual arts. The journal also serves as a forum "for critical analysis of contemporary art issues as they relate to women." Overview The ''Woman ...

'' 3 (1):14-15. * Golden, Eunice (Spring 1981)
"The Male Nude in Women’s Art—Dialectics of a Feminist Iconography."

Heresies Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

#12, 3 (4): 40–42. * Golden, Eunice (May–June 1975). "On the Censorship of Phallic Imagery." ''Artworkers News''. p. 3. * Golden, Eunice (April 1967). "On the Business of Art." ''Artworkers News''. p. 26.

References

External links

*
Eunice Golden Papers, 1945-2002, 1963-1979, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
{{DEFAULTSORT:Golden, Eunice 1927 births Living people American feminists American erotic artists American women painters Painters from New York City Feminist artists 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists