ART-PRESENTATION: Nancy Spero
Nancy Spero is regarded as a pioneering feminist artist whose work confronts social and political injustice with artistic ingenuity. Unapologetically feminist, anarchic in spirit, and tenaciously political, Nancy Spero in 1966, declared she would never again work with oil on canvas. It was, she said, too masculine a medium. While her work is now widely recognized, she worked in relative obscurity for almost 25 years, resisting the predominating inequality in the art world and beyond.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Lelong Archive
The exhibition “Maypole: Take No Prisoners” at Galerie Lelong presents the first installation in U.S.A. of Nancy Spero’s large-scale, 3-dimensional sculpture “Maypole: Take No Prisoners”. Initially the work was created for the grand entryway of the 52nd Biennale di Venezia, and provokes critical discussion about the cyclical nature of history, war, and its victims. Also on presentation are the sculpture “Kill Commies / Maypole” (1967), an early inspiration for the “Maypole: Take No Prisoners” and works on paper from the “The War Series”. Graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949, she married Leon Golub a few years later. Together they moved to Paris where, in domestic isolation, she painted while raising her three young sons. Her dark and existential series, “The Paris Black Paintings: Lovers, Prostitutes, Mothers and Children, Monsters: (1959-66) presaged the radical transformation of her art upon returning to the U.S. in 1964. Horrified by the war in Vietnam, Spero painted the “The War Series” (1966-70), a set of 150 drawings. These became some of her seminal works, bringing together the concept of war with the concept of sex and gender. In this series Spero used sexual imagery to shock the viewer into recognizing the relationships between sex and power, war and obscenity. Her outrage and anger was expressed in both art and action: she joined several activist groups including the Art Workers Coalition and Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) and also helped found the all-women’s cooperative gallery A.I.R. where she had her first solo New York exhibition, in 1973. “Maypole: Take No Prisoners” was Spero’s final major work before her death in 2009. It synthesizes several themes that Spero explored throughout her career and embraces the productive coexistence of anger and celebration. As a familiar centerpiece of traditional folk festivals, the maypole is presented as a continuation of Spero’s interest in “Victimage,” a term she coined to describe the transition from victim to protagonist. Over 200 decapitated heads, printed on cut aluminum and hanging from ribbons and metal chains, carry expressions of emotional anguish. Many are derived from elements of drawings from the “War Series”.
Info: Galerie Lelong, 528 West 26th Street, New York, Duration: 28/4-17/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.galerielelong.com
