Lynda Benglis
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Lynda Benglis (born October 25, 1941) is an American
sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
and
visual artist The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts al ...
known especially for her wax paintings and poured
latex Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
sculptures. She maintains residences in New York City,
Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label=Tiwa language, Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. ...
,
Kastellorizo Kastellorizo or Castellorizo (; el, Καστελλόριζο, Kastellórizo), officially Megisti ( ''Megísti''), is a Greece, Greek island and Communities and Municipalities of Greece, municipality of the Dodecanese in the Eastern Mediterranean ...
, Greece, and
Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ; Gujarati: Amdavad ) is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 (per t ...
, India."Lynda Benglis"
''PBS'', Retrieved 15 April 2014.


Early life

Benglis was born on October 25, 1941 in
Lake Charles, Louisiana Lake Charles (French: ''Lac Charles'') is the fifth-largest incorporated city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the parish seat of Calcasieu Parish, located on Lake Charles, Prien Lake, and the Calcasieu River. Founded in 1861 in Calcasieu ...
.Kreimer, Julia
"Shape Shifter: Lynda Benglis"
''Art in America Magazine'', Retrieved 15 April 2014.
She is Greek-American. As a young child and in her early 20s, Benglis often traveled with her grandmother to Greece. She later described these travels as having been important to her work. In her 2015 interview with ''Ocula Magazine'', the artist said that her grandmother was a significant feminist icon for her:
Her husband died very early—1955. I was the first female grandchild—which is very important in Greece, as the women inherit the property. She was my godmother, as well as my grandmother. My grandmother travelled in her forties, and this was unusual and it impacted the way I was. It set a standard for me.
Growing up, her father Michael ran a building-materials business. Her mother was from Mississippi and was a preacher's daughter.Landi, Ann
"Getting Paint Off the Wall"
''ARTnews'', Retrieved 15 April 2014.
She is the eldest of five children.Belcove, Julie L

''The Financial Times'', Retrieved 15 April 2014.
Benglis attended
McNeese State University McNeese State University is a public university in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Founded in 1939 as Lake Charles Junior College, it was renamed McNeese Junior College after John McNeese, an early local educator. The present name was adopted in 1970. ...
in
Lake Charles, Louisiana Lake Charles (French: ''Lac Charles'') is the fifth-largest incorporated city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the parish seat of Calcasieu Parish, located on Lake Charles, Prien Lake, and the Calcasieu River. Founded in 1861 in Calcasieu ...
. She earned a BFA degree in 1964 from
Newcomb College H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, or Newcomb College, was the coordinate women's college of Tulane University located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It was founded by Josephine Louise Newcomb in 1886 in memory of her daughter. ...
in
New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster.
; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...
, which was then the women's college of
Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into ...
, where she studied ceramics and painting. Following graduation, she taught third grade at Jefferson Parish, in Louisiana. In 1964, Benglis moved to New York. Here she came in contact with many of the influential artists of the decade, such as
Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
,
Donald Judd Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...
,
Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...
,
Eva Hesse Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...
, and
Barnett Newman Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He has been critically regarded as one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, and one of the foremost color field painters. His paintings explore the sense o ...
. She went on to study painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. There she met the Scottish painter Gordon Hart, who was briefly to be her first husband. Benglis later stated that she married Hart to help him avoid the draft. She also took a job as an assistant to Klaus Kertess at the
Bykert Gallery Bykert Gallery was a contemporary art gallery in New York City between 1966 and 1975, run by Klaus Kertess (1940 - 2016) and Jeff Byers who had been classmates at Yale College, class of 1958. The gallery originally was located at 15 West West 57th ...
before moving on to work at the
Paula Cooper Gallery The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the ''Paula Johnson Gallery'', from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. ...
. In 1979 she met her life partner, Anand Sarabhai, the son of her hosts on a trip she made to
Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ; Gujarati: Amdavad ) is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 (per t ...
, India. Sarabhai died in February 2013.


Career

Benglis's work is noted for an unusual blend of organic imagery and confrontation with newer media incorporating influences such as
Barnett Newman Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He has been critically regarded as one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, and one of the foremost color field painters. His paintings explore the sense o ...
and
Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
. Her early work used materials such as beeswax before moving on to large
polyurethane Polyurethane (; often abbreviated PUR and PU) refers to a class of polymers composed of organic chemistry, organic units joined by carbamate (urethane) links. In contrast to other common polymers such as polyethylene and polystyrene, polyurethan ...
pieces in the 1970s and later to gold-leaf, zinc, and aluminum. The validity of much of her work was questioned until the 1980s due to its use of sensuality and physicality. Benglis' latex and polyurethane pours of the late 1960s and 1970s marked her entry into the New York art world. At the same time, she was also working on "small encaustic relief paintings". Like other artists such as
Yves Klein Yves Klein (; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein w ...
, Benglis's work resembled
Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
's flinging and dripping methods of painting. Works such as ''Fallen Painting'' (1968) inform the approach with what could be read as a feminist perspective. For this work, Benglis smeared
Day-Glo The Day-Glo Color Corp. (also styled as DayGlo) is a privately held American paint and pigments manufacturer based in Cleveland, Ohio. It was founded in 1946 by brothers Joseph and Robert Switzer and is currently owned by RPM International. It ...
paint across the gallery floor invoking "the depravity of the 'fallen' woman" or, from a feminist perspective, a "prone victim of phallic male desire." In her work ''Contraband'', she removed the use of a canvas altogether and created her work directly on the floor. These brightly colored organic floor pieces work to disrupt the male-dominated
minimalism In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
movement with their suggestiveness and openness.
The structure of the new medium itself played an important role in addressing questions about female identity in relation to art, pop culture, and dominant feminism movements at the time. In the 1970s, she turned to video as an extension of her sculptural work, producing over a dozen works between 1972 and 1977. Benglis dove into metal casting in the mid 1980s, most notably a series of public fountain projects. Benglis has been a professor or visiting artist at the
University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of Roc ...
(1970-1972),
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
(1975),
University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...
(1982),
School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...
(1985-1987).Heller, J., & Heller, N. (1995). North American women artists of the twentieth century: A biographical dictionary. New York: Garland.


''Artforum'' advertisement


History

Benglis felt underrepresented in the male-run artistic community and so confronted the "male ethos" in a series of magazine advertisements satirizing
pin-up girl A pin-up model (known as a pin-up girl for a female and less commonly male pin-up for a male) is a model whose mass-produced pictures see widespread appeal as part of popular culture. Pin-up models were variously glamour models, fashion models ...
s,
Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...
actresses, and traditional depictions of nude female models in canonical works of art. Benglis chose the medium of magazine advertisements as it allowed her complete control of an image rather than allowing it to be run through critical commentary. This series culminated with a particularly controversial one in the November 1974 issue of ''
Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...
'' featuring Benglis posing with a large plastic
dildo A dildo is a sex toy, often explicitly phallic in appearance, intended for sexual penetration or other sexual activity during masturbation or with sex partners. Dildos can be made from a number of materials and shaped like an erect human penis ...
and wearing only a pair of
sunglasses Sunglasses or sun glasses (informally called shades or sunnies; more names below) are a form of protective eyewear designed primarily to prevent bright sunlight and high-energy visible light from damaging or discomforting the eyes. They can s ...
promoting an upcoming exhibition of hers at the
Paula Cooper Gallery The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the ''Paula Johnson Gallery'', from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. ...
. Benglis paid $3,000 for the ''Artforum'' ad.Poundstone, William
"Dear Artforum: About That Lynda Benglis Ad..."
''ArtInfo'', Retrieved 15 April 2014.
One of her original ideas for the advertisement had been for her and collaborative partner Robert Morris to work together as a double pin-up, but eventually found that using a double dildo was sufficient as she found it to be "both male and female." Morris, too, put out an advertisement for his work in that month's ''Artforum'' which featured himself in full " butch" S&M regalia.


Theory

In this unmaking of the tradition of the passive female nude, Benglis was working in dialogue with popular discourse about gender and gender performativity published at the time of its execution.Frueh, Joanna. (1993). "The Body Through Women's Eyes". In Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. p. 190. . In particular, Benglis appears to be undermining
June Wayne June Claire Wayne (March 7, 1918 – August 23, 2011) was an American painter, printmaker, tapestry innovator, educator, and activist. She founded Tamarind Lithography Workshop (1960–1970), a then California-based nonprofit print shop dedicated ...
's theory of the "demonic myth" in which males, in assuming their gender identity, are responsible to a similar posturing and performativity as women, but instead of upholding "feminine" values of passivity, modesty, and gentility, they embody a guise of compensatory hyper-masculinity and heroic bravado. By adopting a phallus, Benglis physically and symbolically muddies the distinction made between these two types of gender performativity and ultimately overturns them, resulting in a positive assertion of femininity's sexual and cultural power.


Reception and criticism

Artist Barbara Wagner claims that Benglis shows that even with the appropriation of the phallus as a
Freudian Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...
sign of power, it does not cover her female identity and still emphasizes a female inferiority.
Rosalind Krauss Rosalind Epstein Krauss (born November 30, 1941) is an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography. As a critic ...
and other ''Artforum'' personnel attacked Benglis's work in the following month's issue of ''Artforum'' describing the advertisement as "exploitative" and "brutalizing". Critic
Cindy Nemser Cindy Heller Nemser (March 26, 1937 – January 26, 2021) was an American art historian and writer. Founder and editor of the ''Feminist Art Journal'', she was an activist and prominent figure in the feminist art movement and was best known for he ...
of The
Feminist Art Journal ''The Feminist Art Journal'' was an American magazine, published quarterly from 1972 to 1977. It was the first stable, widely read journal covering feminist art. By the time the final publication was produced, ''The Feminist Art Journal'' had a cir ...
dismissed the advertisement as well, claiming that the picture showed that Benglis had "so little confidence in her art that she had to resort to kinky cheesecake to push herself over the top." Morris's advertisement, however, generated little commentary, providing evidence for Benglis's view that male artists were encouraged to promote themselves, whereas women were chastised for doing so. Benglis eventually cast five lead sculptures of the dildo that she posed with on the ''Artforum'' cover, each entitled ''Smile'', one for each of the ''Artforum'' editors who wrote in to complain about her ad. In 2019, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' cited the work as one of the 25 works of art that defined the contemporary age.


Retrospectives, exhibitions, and surveys


2009 Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) Retrospective

Benglis's work was greatly neglected for a long time. However, in 2009, a 40-year retrospective organized by the Irish Museum of Modern Art served to recognize her career. The exhibit showed her in her true light as a main figure in contemporary art. Not only did it show her vast amount of her work, it showed her enthusiasm to take on charged subjects. The exhibition focused on the 1960s and 1970s, when her work was most involved with the link between painting and sculpture. It included the lozenge-shaped wall pieces of built up multicolored wax layers that Benglis started making in 1966 with which she honored
Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
's famous drip methods. It also included her knotted bowtie shaped wall reliefs of the 1970s and some of her videos. Her work from the 1980s and 1990s was also shown, represented by a few of her famous pleats, which involved her spraying liquid metal onto chicken wire skeletons, and two videos from each of the decades. In the stateside versions of the show more works from the 1980s and 1990s were shown including her ceramics. These pieces were made of clay and hand molded so that the viewers could feel the making of them- the extorting, folding, and throwing of the moist resistant material. Glazes seemed to be flung on in a causal manner, which brings to mind the abstract expressionism movement of art in which Benglis is involved. The ceramic pieces have a handmade quality that effect the senses both desire driven and dismal, while the colors suggest the glitz of commercial culture. Concentrating on Benglis's early work, the curators gave her a main position in the diverse art of the 70's, a time period that is seen as laying the groundwork for the wide range of expression that continues to grow to this day. Benglis's willingness and ability to mix up gendered tropes with her heroic scales and sparkly colorful finishes while laughing irreverently at views of every moral stripe set her apart from the common customs of feminism and the sexism of the art world. Her work is also deemed important for its meticulous grounding in process and materials used. Each piece produces its own physical understanding. "They provoke visceral reactions while playfully welcoming open ended associations and ambiguities."


2011 Show at the New Museum

In 2011, The New Museum organized a four-decade exhibition of Benglis's sculptural works with supplementary videos, Polaroids, and magazine clippings. The show received high praise in the New Yorker magazine, which warned viewers to "prepare to be floored."


2015 The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK

In 2015, The Hepworth Wakefield presented Benglis' first museum retrospective in the UK. It included over 50 works from across her career, and was structured around the influence of place on Benglis’ work, in particular her homes and studios in New York, New Mexico, Greece and India. Curated by Andrew Bonacina, it was described by Guardian critic Adrian Searle as "a revelation."


2012 Thomas Dane Gallery in London

This subsequent survey focused on the exploratory breadth of materials Benglis experimented with over the course of her career: polyurethane foam, glass, enamel, stainless steel, beeswax, and poured latex. It was her first major survey in the UK.


2015 Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York

Lynda Benglis: Water Sources was the first exhibition centered around the outdoor water fountains that Benglis has developed since the early 1980s. More broadly, this presentation took as its point of departure the interest in water and landscape that Benglis has explored throughout the last thirty years of her career.


2016 Cheim & Read in New York

In this new work presented at Cheim & Read Gallery in New York, Benglis turned to handmade paper, which she wrapped around thick wire armatures, often painting the sand-tone surface in bright, metallic colors offset by strokes of deep, coal-based black. At other times the paper was left virtually bare. As Nancy Princenthal writes in her essay published in the accompanying exhibition catalogue, these works reflect the environment in which they were made, the 'sere and windblown' landscape of Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a counterweight to the paper sculptures, Benglis also exhibited "The Fall Caught", a large-scale aluminum work made by applying spray foam instead of strips of handmade paper on the chicken wire armature, as well as a new series of spiraling, hand-built black ceramics called "Elephant Necklace".


2016 Thomas Brambilla gallery in Bergamo, Italy

In December 2016, Lynda Benglis had her very first solo show in Italy, titled "''Benglis and the Baroque''", a
Thomas Brambilla gallery
The exhibition included a series of large scale marble ''Torsos'' specially made for the show. "''Benglis and the Baroque"'' explored Benglis' long-held interest in Baroque sculpture; much like Gianlorenzo Bernini, Benglis seeks to freeze the intensity of the moment and merge beauty and sensuality in spectacular frozen gestures. Benglis' attention to materials and ongoing research into the "extravagant" are in full agreement with Baroque poetics.


2016 Bergen Assembly in Bergen, Norway

Throughout 2016, the Bergen Assembly in Bergen, Norway presented a cycle of events, publications, and exhibitions on the artistic practice of Lynda Benglis. Curated by Rhea Dall and Kristine Siegel, PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art.


2016 Museo International del Barroco in Puebla, Mexico

The Government of Puebla presented the work of Lynda Benglis as the second temporary exhibition, "Cuerpos, Materia y Alma: Las Esculturas de Lynda Benglis", at the International Museum of the Baroque. The exuberant forms, folds and contortions, variety of materials, textures and colors, in addition to the size of sculptures, expressed a new sensibility in neobaroque art: contemporary, daring and dynamic. Benglis's purpose was to engage in a dialogue with the architecture of Toyo Ito, the Museum's designer, and to express her fondness for Mexico.


2019 Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, Greece

NEON Organization for Culture and Development organized Lynda Benglis's first solo museum exhibition in a country that has played a major role in her life and vision:
Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
. The exhibition ''Lynda Benglis: In the Realm of the Senses'' unites 36 of the artist’s singular creations, spanning half a century from 1969 onwards.


2022 Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas

The
Nasher Sculpture Center Opened in 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is a museum in Dallas, Texas, that houses the Patsy and Raymond Nasher collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. It is located on a site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the Dallas Art ...
's 2022 summer exhibition titled ''Lynda Benglis'' "highlights three bodies of work in media as diverse as traditional bronze and decorative glitter." The exhibition highlights some of Benglis' more recent artistic creations.


Collaborations

Benglis created a series of prints as part of a collaboration with master printer Stan Baden with th
Print Research Institute of North Texas
at the
University of North Texas The University of North Texas (UNT) is a public research university in Denton, Texas. It was founded as a nonsectarian, coeducational, private teachers college in 1890 and was formally adopted by the state 11 years later."Denton Normal School," ...
.


Video work

During the 1970s, Benglis engaged in dialogues relating to the feminist movement through her art by pioneering a radical body of video work made up of fifteen videos. She turned to
video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...
in 1971 in order to explore a media that could more easily communicate her feminist politics. Benglis' performance-based videos confront issues of gender and identity by referencing the societal representation and construction of women and their sexuality as well as the interaction between viewer and artist, self and ambiguity. Though Benglis' sculptures reference sexuality through subtly eroticized materials and forms, her video work approaches the subject conceptually and more explicitly. Benglis's interest in human form found in her sculptural work is made present in her videos in through the consistent theme of self-reflexivity. Video offers a direct representation of a figure, a history of popular culture, and a way to illustrate bodies interacting in space, making it useful for feminist discourse. Benglis employs various technical manipulations of video as a medium to complicate the boundaries of visual form and highlight mediations of the self, including a recursive technique by filming television screens playing videos that she had filmed previously, often several layers deep. By doing so, she further exposes the interface between inner and outer realities by using and reproducing her own body and its image through video manipulations, interacting with her own image and voice, and confusing the viewer's perception of time and space. Consequently, Benglis's work destabilizes what are traditionally believed to be video's "inherent properties" such as liveness and "real" time, spatial orientation and relations, and separation of creator and creation. In 1971, Benglis began to collaborate with Robert Morris, and produced her first video work, ''Mumble'' (1972). Morris's ''Exchange'' (1973) also came out of this collaboration. ''Mumble'' features figures arranged in space across several screens. Often, the artist will announce the relation from them to the person from off camera, sometimes calling them multiple different names and labeling them with different, incompatible roles. The viewer becomes distrustful of the narrator, calling into question the role and authority of any voiceover speech. Other statements in this video are descriptions such as "Robin is weaving in the studio downstairs," and "the phone is ringing." The straightforward nature of these statements stands in contrast to the confusion created by the recursive screens. The viewer has no way of knowing if the phone is ringing while the artist is filming the final video, or when she was filming Morriss in the very bottom layer, or the layer in between. The warped sense of time and space works to question the privilege of visuality in such a strongly visual culture, offering a critique of television as a medium as well as the potential truthfulness of any image. Benglis completed four other videos in 1972, namely ''Noise'', ''Document'', ''Home Tapes Revised'', and ''On Screen''. All feature her recursive screen technique. ''Document'' and ''On Screen'' feature particularly strong feminist themes, and both feature the artist directly. ''Document'' features a progression undergone by the artist from directed to director, finishing with her writing copyright information juxtaposed to her own image. In this way, she reclaims and maintains control of her image, a feminist act for a female artist. Similarly, ''On Screen'' shows the artist making faces at the camera in recursive layers of video. She performs expressions reminiscent of ones that people make in a mirror when no one is looking, and then magnifies it threefold through repetition. In this way, she blocks the potential interpretation of her image and emotional state being present for others. One of her own more noted videos is ''Female Sensibility'' (1973), which shows the artist kissing and licking the face of fellow artist Marilyn Lenkowsky. Many other of Benglis's earlier solo films are highly technically manipulated, edited, and re-taped, thus blending present and past video sequences and selves to enhance the feeling of artifice. For instance, in ''Now'' (1973) the artist's face is recursively featured, but this time the self-evidencing frame of the television is cropped out. The artist superimposes a video of herself yelling commands such as "Now!" and "Start recording!" over an older video of herself apparently echoing the shout, blurring the line between documentary and performance while also making it difficult to tell which image of the artist is present, which is past, and which of these is therefore truly performing. In ''Noise'' (1972) Benglis employs mechanical reproduction and through looped feedback tapes. Throughout ''Noise'', she plays over several generations of similar taped images and soundtracks to introduce increasing amounts of distortion. The conversion of the looped and layered aural and visual components highlights the boundaries of intelligibility, resulting in the disassociation of sound and image. In ''On Screen'' (1972) Benglis visually implicates infinite regression of time and space, similarly manipulating generations of videotapes to confound the viewer's sense of time. The sequence of creation, presented as a gendered self-portrait, is heavily obscured by the layered repetition of aural and visual components. Through this exercise of audiovisual desynchronization, the notions of "original self" and "original production" are complicated by the layers of self-images presented simultaneously with layers of "self". In doing so, Benglis emphasizes that video as a medium is based upon mechanical reproduction, thus subverting the classical notion of authenticity and reproduction in fine art.


Selected works

Lynda Benglis' works distributed by the
Video Data Bank Video Data Bank (VDB) is an international video art distribution organization and resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois, VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chic ...
include: * ''The Amazing Bow Wow'' (1976), 30:07 min, color, sound * ''Collage'' (1973), 9:30 min, color, sound * ''Discrepancy'' (1973), 13:44 min, black and white, sound * ''Document'' (1972), 6:08 min, black and white, sound * ''Enclosure'' (1973), 07:23 min, black and white, sound * ''Female Sensibility'' (1973), 13:05 min, color, sound * ''The Grunions are Running'' (1973), 5:41, black and white, sound * ''Home Tape Revised'' (1972), 28:00 min, black and white, sound * ''How's Tricks'' (1976), 34:00 min, color, sound * ''Monitor'' (1999), 00:20 min, color, sound * ''Mumble'' (1972), 20:00 min, black and white, sound * ''Noise'' (1972), 07:15, black and white, sound * ''Now'' (1973), 11:45 min, color, sound * ''On Screen'' (1972), 7:45 min, black and white, sound


Exhibitions

On November 4, 2009, Benglis's first European retrospective opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, in Dublin, where it ran through January 24, 2010. It then moved to Le Consortium, in Dijon, France; the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence; and the New Museum, in New York. Between 1969 and 1995 Benglis held over 75 solo exhibitions of her work both in the United States and abroad. Benglis's work is held in collections including
The Guggenheim The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
, the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
, the
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) in the state of Arizona is a museum in the Old Town district of downtown Scottsdale, Arizona. The museum is dedicated to exhibiting modern works of art, design and architecture. The Museum has four ...
, the
High Museum The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...
,
New Orleans Museum of Art The New Orleans Museum of Art (or NOMA) is the oldest fine arts museum in the city of New Orleans. It is situated within City Park, a short distance from the intersection of Carrollton Avenue and Esplanade Avenue, and near the terminus of the ...
, the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
,
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
,
Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...
,
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
, the
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art,
National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...
and others.


Selected solo and group exhibitions

* 1970: Solo show, Paula Cooper gallery, New York. * 1971: Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. * 1971: ''Works for New Spaces'', Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. * 1973: ''Lynda Benglis Video Tapes'', Video Gallery, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York. * 1975: Fine Arts Center Gallery, State University of New York College at Oneonta, New York. * 1979: Georgia State University, Atlanta. * 1979: Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels. * 1980: Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Oregon. * 1981: Jacksonville Art Museum, Florida. * 1986: ''Natural Forms and Forces: Abstract Images in American Sculpture'', Hayden Gallery, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts * 1988: ''Lynda Benglis: Recent Sculpture and Works on Paper'', Cumberland Gallery, Nashville. * 1991: ''Dual Natures'', The High Museum of Art, Atlanta; traveled to Contemporary Arts Center & New Orleans Museum of Art; San Jose Museum of Art. * 1993: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. * 1993: ''Clothed and Unclothed: Recent Sculpture'', Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, Illinois. * 1993: ''From the Furnace'', Auckland City Art Center, Auckland, New Zealand. * 1995: Lynda Benglis in conjunction with "Chimera: Recent Ceramic Sculpture", Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. * 1997: Portland Art Museum, Oregon. * 1998: ''Lynda Benglis: Recent Sculpture'' and a Screening of "Female Sensibility" from 1973, Cheim & Readf, New York, September 12-October 10, 1998. * 1998: ''Dynamic Silhouette'', Kappatos Gallery, Athens, Greece. * 1998: Lynda Benglis: Selected Wall Reliefs, USF Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida. * 1999: ''Lynda Benglis'', Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York. * 1999: ''Lynda Benglis'', Cheim & Read, New York. * 2000: ''Weatherspoon Gallery'', University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina. * 2000: ''Stacked, Forced, Pinched: Clay and Bronze Works by Lynda Benglis'', Meadows Museum, Shreveport, Louisiana. * 2003: ''Lynda Benglis: Sculptures'', Bass Museum of Art, Miami, Florida. * 2007: "''WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution''",
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...
, March 4-July 16, 2007. * 2009: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. * 2009: Lynda Benglis, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; traveled to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Museum le Consortium, Dijon, France; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; New Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California. * 2009: ''Lynda Benglis'', Cheim & Read, New York, November 19-January 2, 2010. * 2010: ''Lynda Benglis'', Le Consortium, Dijon, France. * 2011: ''1973-1974, Lynda Benglis/Robert Morris'', gallery mfc-michèle didier, Paris. * 2011: ''Lynda Benglis,''
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...
* 2014: ''Lynda Benglis'', Cheim & Read, New York. * 2014: ''Lynda Benglis: Planar Device'', Thomas Dane, London, England. * 2015: ''Lynda Benglis: Water Sources'', Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York. * 2015: ''Lynda Benglis'', Hepworth Wakefield, 6 Feb - 1 July 2015, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK. * 2015: Solo Show,
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
, Minnesota. * 2016: ''Benglis and the Baroque'', Thomas Brambilla, Bergamo, Italy. * 2016: ''Lynda Benglis: Secrets,'' Bergen Assembly, KODE Art Museums of Bergen, Norway. * 2016: ''Lynda Benglis: New York,'' Cheim & Read, New York, September 8-October 22, 2016. * 2016: ''Lynda Benglis: Cuerpos, Materia y Alma: Los Esculturas de Lynda Benglis'', Museo International del Barroco, Puebla, Mexico. * 2016: ''Lynda Benglis'',
Aspen Art Museum Founded in 1979, the Aspen Art Museum (AAM) is a non-collecting contemporary art museum located in Aspen, Colorado. AAM exhibitions include drawings, paintings, sculptures, multimedia installations and electronic media. Aspen Art Museum Building ...
, Aspen, Colorado. * 2016: ''Lynda Benglis: Glacier Burger'', Bergen Assembly, Bergen School of Architecture, Bergen, Norway. * 2016: ''Lynda Benglis: Primary Structures (Paula's Props)'', PRAXIS at Bergen Assembly 2016, KODE Art Museums of Bergen, Bergen Assembly, Bergen, Norway. * 2017: ''Lynda Benglis'', Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, California. * 2019: ''Lynda Benglis: In The Realm of the Senses,'' presented by NEON Organization at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece. * 2019: ''Lynda Benglis: Spettri,'' Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, Italy. * 2020: ''Lynda Benglis'',
National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
, Washington, DC, March 22, 2020 – January 24, 2021.


Recognition

Mary Beth Edelson Mary Beth Edelson (born Mary Elizabeth Johnson) (6 February 1933 - 20 April 2021) was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists." Edelson was a printmaker, book art ...
's ''Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper'' (1972) appropriated
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
’s ''The Last Supper'', with the heads of notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles. Benglis was among those notable women artists. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the
feminist art movement The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of contemporary ar ...
." Benglis won a Yale-Norfolk Summer School Scholarship in 1963, and a
Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920 ...
scholarship in 1965. In 1975 Benglis was awarded with a
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
. She has also received two grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
, one in 1979 and the other in 1990. Benglis has been awarded a Minos Beach Art Symposium grant, a grant from the Delphi Art Symposium, a grant from the Olympiad of Art Sculpture Park (Korea), all in 1988. Benglis received a grant from the National Council of Art Administration in 1989. In 2000 Benglis was awarded an honorary doctorate from the
Kansas City Art Institute The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and Higher Learning Commission. It has approxi ...
. In 2017 The International Sculpture Center awarded artists Lynda Benglis and Tony Cragg for the 2017 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award.


References


External links


Lynda Benglis in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art

Lynda Benglis
in the New Museum archive
Lynda Benglis
in th
Video Data Bank

Lynda Benglis on Ghost Dance, MoMA Audio


* ttps://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-lynda-benglis-15741 Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution: Oral History Interview {{DEFAULTSORT:Benglis, Lynda 1941 births American contemporary painters 20th-century American sculptors American people of Greek descent American women sculptors Living people Artists from Louisiana Feminist artists People from Lake Charles, Louisiana American women painters 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists American expatriates in Greece American expatriates in India Brooklyn Museum Art School alumni 21st-century American sculptors H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College alumni Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters