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A Further Look

Roughly a month ago I chose Lynda Benglis as the artist I would research for my final Art History project. At first I did not know what I was getting myself into, as all of her work seemed so obscure in comparison to the art and artists we had looked at in class. Her colors varied from metallic to pungent to pastels and were coated in wax, glitter and glaze. Her scales ranged from the size of a human head to the size of a human body, with forms that were mounted on walls and others that sprawled out on floors. There was a certain carelessness I noticed with her work, or at least a carelessness of what critiques had to say. There was a certain degree of bravery in many of Benglis’s series which appeared in the late 60’s and 70’s and through the 21st century, as her art worked in reaction to a male-dominated art market as well as previous movements such as minimalism and pop art.

All of the sources I used to research Benglis came from online, either scholarly articles, information sites, YouTube documentaries and interviews, art critiques or other blogs. Transcribing interviews definitely helped to give me the most context for her pieces, and also listening to her give explanations in her own words helped me to feel more connected to her work. However, all the sites used helped to give me almost equal amounts of information which guided me in the writing process and also helped my personal visual analysis of each of her pieces. If there had been more time to read through books and art magazines I may have made use of other sources; however, internet sources were much more accessible and also supplied me with very current information.

At the end of this project I feel like my opinions of Benglis and reactions towards her work have certainly changed. In the beginning there were actually pieces I avoided looking at because they made me uncomfortable. In particular, anything from the Pinto Series. When I was uncertain of how they were constructed or what they were made of I would always scroll the page past them because they reminded me of scabs, fungus, mold, old bandages, worms, scrapes and other unpleasant imagery. Once I learned that these “wax paintings” were made from wooden panels covered in layers of dripped, colored wax, I became much more comfortable with their presence. In the beginning I avoided including them in my presentation, but at this point I feel a strange adoration for them. On a different note, pieces that I had been fascinated since the beginning of my research were those of the Fallen Painting series. These were installations that toyed with traditional ideas of painting and even minimalist sculpture. Fallen Paintings were a beautiful conglomeration of artistic methods and movements that traditionally would never be put together, yet Benglis’s technique gave the work meaning and sense. In addition to Fallen Paintings, another series of Benglis’s that I appreciated and simultaneously did not expect was The Manu Series. What I found through The Manu series was that Benglis spent over thirty years traveling back and forth between India, which she considers her second home. This context opened a whole new realm for understanding the shapes, colors and forms incorporated in Benglis’s work.

Conclusively I could not have been happier to have chosen Lynda Benglis because her work opened my perspective to what could be considered great art. Her innovative, rather tongue-in-cheek work energized my understanding of contemporary art and left me wanting to discover other artists of the like.

Lynda Benglis: An Introduction

Self-considered a small-town girl, Lynda Benglis was raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana where she spent her early years before heading to New Orleans’s Sophie-Newcomb College to pursue her interests in sculpture, ceramics and painting. After graduating with distinction in both painting and ceramics, Benglis relocated to New York where she found work in galleries and connections to other artists. There she began working with what she considered “wax painting,” as it incorporated her appreciation for the manipulation of surface, linear form and gesture. Interested in further exploring concepts associated with painting such as texture, form, space, and dimension, Benglis began experimenting with polyurethane, latex, and rubber.

Her curiosity of where the gesture of the work could take the material led her to create her most trademark series of installations which began showing on the east coast as well as in Western Europe. The series premiered in 1966 with Benglis’s “fallen paintings,” which were works made out of poured pigment latex that sat on the floor of the gallery. Fallen paintings in particular were space specific, as Benglis would go to the gallery with her materials to pour paint on the gallery floor instead of preparing anything in her studio. Fallen paintings both mocked and paid homage to Pollock’s drip paintings. Later in the series Benglis made use of polyurethane to create installations that were both formally and experientially unusual for her time, as the pieces were abstract but also references to things in the natural world. People often describe the Poured Painting installations as seeming like caves from science fiction landscapes that give a sense of being in the unknown. In the 70’s Benglis introduced her bow-tied and knotted wall reliefs, appearing both hand-made in construction yet decorated with bright glazes and sparkles which conjured the glamour of commercial culture at the time. Other series included the Peacock Series, Pedmarks and various forms of media which all encompasses a feminist theme.

During the time of Benglis, minimalism and pop art were the most prominent movements which both inspired her and served as context to react against. Unlike minimalist, she was not interested in taking her art to a final, deductive conclusion, as she felt art should be excessive and about more, not less. In addition to the movements of her time, Benglis idolized artists from the 1950’s such as Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler who pioneered art as being an active experience. For Pollock, Frankenthaler and Benglis art was created by moving around the surface and dripping or pouring down materials which later the audience could interact with by walking around themselves. Aside from her installations that both embodied and digressed from previous movements and those current to her time, Benglis’s work in film and photography contributed to her image as a feminist icon of the 1960’s and 70’s. While she considers her most famous photograph, “Centerfold,” a piece of art, some have argued it to be an advertisement, others pornography, as Benglis is naked and oiled, firmly holding a cast-latex, double-ended dildo between her thighs.

As for personal artist statements, there is a certain confusion and whimsy about Benglis, as most of her work is three dimensional, yet she strictly considers herself a painter simply because she does not make use of glue. She describes her work as being “about nature, and mankind is nature but it is also about feelings…” a statement which is reflected in the organic structure and natural flow of her installations. She explains that through her creations she is not depicting something, but rather making a feeling or making a form. Believing that edges often effect the way people read images, such as how people read cloud forms of tree forms or landscape forms based on their edges, Benglis intentionally included many curving, flowing, twisting edges in her pieces so that the viewer questions exactly what it is that they are seeing. Conclusively, Lynda Benglis is a post-minimalist contemporary artist whose work reflects sentiments of “anti-form” in both the artistic sense and social political realms. Benglis’s work continually creates new form and format for art, thought and reaction.

Let's Go to the Gallery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM7zZm6QlQc

The Manu Series; A Look at India through Lynda Benglis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mopnQEyz0TA

http://www.vdb.org/titles/female-sensibility

Like her other works with media, Female Sensibility’s shock value came in the almost pornographic representation of women that Benglis produces, but anyone engaged in feminist theory would hopefully recognize that this piece is satirical and aims to draw attention to the flaws of the “male gaze.” As the video persists it becomes increasingly clear that the women are not engaged in a pleasurable act, but instead are just acting as objects of the camera which is being directed by a man. Benglis uses Female Sensibility to critique the objectification of and control over women that was present during the film’s debut.

Falling under the same series as Pedmarks, Cloak-Wave is structured with layered, arched shapes which seem both industrial because of their heaviness and organic because of their flow. The sculpture measures 85 ½ x 86 x 42 ½ inches, asserting its human-enfolding presence in either indoor or outdoor spaces. Cloak-Wave’s placement is versatile as it has been installed in both gardens where the viewer is aware of its connections to nature, but also in museums where the sterility and modernity of the piece becomes more pronounced.

Due to her interest in the manipulation of forms, Benglis first started producing a series of waxed-based objects, in particular Embryo I which appeared in 1967. She referred to these reliefs as “wax-paintings” which contested the previous criteria for paintings, inclusive of paint and a flat canvas surface. In contrast, the wax reliefs are stretched out three-dimensional panels, layered with ridges and grooves of homemade wax that both give aesthetic interest to the piece itself and cast tree-like shadows when in light. Embryo I, part of the Pinto series, was created in response to minimalist and pop art which she believed “lacked a sense of theatre” and was too deductive when instead “art should be about more.” In general pieces in this series measure roughly the length of a human arm, and the wax is said to resemble the smooth qualities of human skin, again contributing to the anthropomorphic qualities seen in much of Benglis’s work.

For thirty years Benglis has been traveling back and forth to India, where she lives with her life partner, Anand Sarabhai. She describes India as being where she feels most at home, mainly because “everywhere else is colorless.” India was also where she found inspiration for her Manu series, made in 2008, comprised by a series of sculptures created by manipulating a mixture of beeswax, microcrystalline and carnoba (a hardener) and casting the forms into stainless steel. When placed next to each other the sculptures seem reminiscent of elongated, melting candles or flash-frozen liquid, splashed into verticality. The pieces were created as an experiment of form and how it can be stretched and squeezed, leading to different flows and reflections seen in the final product.

One of her more recent pieces, Pi Tangerine was made in 2009 after Benglis had been experimenting with the texture and form found in her earlier polyurethane pieces. Pi Tangerine was crafted from Benglis’s fascination with the spherical form, appearing like brains, eggs, hemispheres, and other anthropomorphic shapes. Personally I believe these wall reliefs are like sculptural imitations of Mark Rothko’s work, minimal yet eye-catching color with an almost glowing center which invites the audience’s sustained gaze. Later on Benglis cast similar pieces of the series into bronze, which appeared more like helmets or animalistic shells.

lyndabenglis

ATTENTION

This blog was created in devotion to the contemporary artist, Lynda Benglis, and her work that has continually colored our world with modern thought and form.

Similar to Centerfold, the two framed series of Polaroids that comprise Secret #3 question ideas of sexuality, sexual stereotypes and gender stereotypes which were coming into discussion during the feminist movement of the 1970’s. Various sexualized yet playful stances were acted out during the photo-shoot which featured Benglis, Robert Morris and Ray Johnson. The photographs of course gained notoriety for their promiscuity, yet achieved Benglis’s goals of questioning current norms of gender and sexuality through the artistic format of photography. The idea of fluidity also comes into play as the dildo is in the hands of a male on the right, but on the left it is in Benglis’s clutch, allowing the mind to explore roles of dominance and how roles can constantly change. In addition, a degree of performativity and mischievousness was achieved when both Benglis and Morris wore sunglasses almost like masks, reassuring the audience that they can be taken off, just like gender roles.

In an attempt to explore the Abstract Expressionist concept of gesture, Benglis erected Migrating Pedmarks to pay homage to the concept in a three-dimensional format. To create the sculpture Benglis began with large rectangles of clay which were twisted and manipulated with piercings and marks. To achieve the puzzle-piece structure, Benglis disassembled the rectangles and reassembled different pieces together, separate from the original construction. Migrating Pedmarks could be seen as a minimalist sculpture, as it only plays with lines, shape and minimal color; however, Benglis’s very own fingerprints appear in the clay itself, making the piece significantly less industrial and instead quite personal.

Beginning in 1979 Benglis began her Peacock series, in which she created fan-like shapes out of mesh, decorated with beads, thread, tassels, pipe-cleaners and wire. Playful in nature, the Peacock Fans react against minimalism and pop-art by using items found in consumer-culture to create a piece which is hand-made and yet again asks the question “what constitutes a sculpture?” The Peacock series is also a play on feminism as many of the items used to create the fans are house-hold items traditionally associated with women. By incorporating these materials into her pieces, Benglis asserts that women exist in art just as much as men, but with a refreshed perspective on the rules.

In response to the unruly critique Benglis received for her overtly feminist publication of Centerfold, the artist created a series of five different versions of the lead dildo she posed with in the photograph. Could it be mere coincidence that exactly five dildos appeared as there were five complaining Artforum editors? Or could it be that Benglis had a perverse, hilarious sense of wit? By bending them slightly in the center Benglis accomplished two goals; one, achieving a semi-realistic anthropomorphic shape and two, when mounted to a wall and lit, the dildo casts a shadow that appears to be smiling. Through her creation of Smile, Benglis slyly mocked her critiques while still distilling her feminist manifesto.

Part of the same Poured Painting series, Benglis’s 1971 creation of Phantom appears like any other of her polyurethane foam pieces…until the lights are turned off. In this 102 x 420 x 96 inch installation of five cave-like spills, Benglis strategically mixed in phosphorescent pigments so that the white polyurethane absorbs energy when the lights are on and glows science-fiction green when the gallery is dark. To achieve this affect, lights in the gallery ran on a timer so no human interaction, aside from setting the timer, was involved during the change of the art. Due to this element of surprise – this element of unexpected visual interaction – Phantom is not only a post-minimalist abstract sculpture, but a piece of performance art as well. For the piece to have its full effect, an audience is required to watch its change.

Measuring in at 67x59 3/16x60 inches, Benglis’s Wing stands attached to the wall at a height of nearly 8 feet and hovers about three feet above the floor. Before cast into aluminum, Wing started out like all other pieces of the Poured Painting series, which are site-specific arrangements of chicken-wire and plastic that polyurethane is poured over, layered and left to dry. Once completely hardened, Benglis and her assistants would remove the wire and plastic skeleton from underneath and were left with a frozen-in-flow arrangement of foam. By taking an existing piece of poured polyurethane, Benglis casted her work into aluminum, allowing Wing to exist in a more traditional sculptural material, yet as it hangs in suspense the piece inherently questions the science behind itself; in which direction is the material flowing, how did gravity effect its final outcome, and from which angle is it meant to be looked at? These questions are part of the concept behind Benglis’s poured paintings, as she often wondered how things change through the human comprehension of gravity and form. In an interview about her gravity-defying installations, she asks the rhetorical question “If a waterfall freezes, how do you really read it? You can read it going up or down, but how do you really read it?” These are the questions she leaves up to her audience to answer as they observe Wing and other poured paintings of her series.

Originating from the concept of her sculpture done in India of a two-headed snake, Benglis’s series of Sparkle Knots appeared in the early 70’s as she depicted embryonic growth and implosions and explosions of energy. Beginning with aluminum screen and bunted cotton, Benglis formed rope-like structures which were bent and coiled into knots, later coated with plaster, acrylic paint and sparkles. Some knots appear less colorful than others, decorated with more muted shades of greys and soft hints of gold, silver and copper, while other knots are covered in glitter and splattered colors to rebel against the purity found in formalism. Sparkle Knot IV, Sparkle Knot V, and 1973 PSI are all part of Benglis’s abstract sculptures which focus on their own oozing, visceral, tangled form to elude to objects found in nature and human anatomy. Ultimately the sparkle knot wall relief series rejects minimalism as the knots remain attached to the artist by appearing hand-made.

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