Feminine Moments

Harmony Hammond by Judith Cooper, 2010

“I helped found the feminist art movement in New York in the early 1970s, contributing to and benefiting from the incredible energy that existed at that time. There was a sense of excitement, of making something happen, of creating change. Since then, I have continued making work, writing, teaching, lecturing and contributing to various feminist, lesbian and queer art projects over the years.” – Harmony Hammond, March 2011

Heresies collaborative poster for Lesbian Art & Artists, 1977 – courtesy of Harmony Hammond

Interview With Harmony Hammond
American artist and lesbian Harmony Hammond was interviewed by Carlos Motta, March 2011. In the interview she talks about her life coming out as a lesbian artist in the 1970s, being an active member of an American network of lesbian/queer artist, and developing herself & her art to where she stands as an artist today.

You can download an edited text version of the video interview at the We Who Feel Differently website. The interview gives you a wonderfull insight into the herstory of the feminist art movement in New York in the 70s, where Harmony Hammond curated A Lesbian Show January 21 – February 11, 1978 at 112 workshop INC. Greene St. New York and was a founding member of the feminist art magazine Heresies.

Cover of Heresies – Lesbian Art and Artists, 1977 – courtesy of Harmony Hammond

About Harmony Hammond
Harmony Hammond is a visual artist, art writer and independent curator, who lives and works in Galisteo, New Mexico, USA. She is one of the pioneers of the American feminist art movement, she lectures a lot, writes and publishes extensively on feminist art, lesbian art, and the cultural representation of “difference”. You may find her reviews in Art in America and the Albuquerque Journal North. She has had over 40 solo exhibitions and her work has been shown internationally and her ground-breaking book Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History (Rizzoli, 2000) received a Lambda Literary Award.

Related Link
Harmony Hammond’s website
The We Who Feel Differently website.

French lesbian photographer Claude Cahun’s surrealist works are growing more and more popular. Go see the latest retrospective of her works in Barcelona:

Claude Cahun
28 October 2011 to 2 February 2012 at
Centre de Imatge, Barcelona, Spain

“After many years of relative obscurity, the photographs of Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob, 1894-1954) are now very much at the forefront of art history. They have featured in numerous exhibitions over the last twenty years and been the subject of many studies. This retrospective, the first to be organised on this scale in sixteen years, sets out to show the diversity and essential unity of her art, but also to place it in the context of the artist’s intellectual development, the boldness and singularity of which significantly inform today’s scene.
This exhibition was organized by Jeu de Paume, París, and coproduced with La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, and The Art Institute of Chicago.” – Centre de Imatge

“Lizzie Thynne’s film ‘Playing a Part: the story of Claude Cahun’ is showing from 28 October 2011 to 2 February 2012 at Centre de Imatge, the major contemporary art gallery of Barcelona, as part of the touring solo show of the surrealist artist, Cahun’s, work. The show has moved from the Jeu de Paume in Paris where it closed in September after a very successful run which attracted over 77,000 visitors. The exhibition continues to the Art Institute of Chicago in Spring.” – the blog of University of Sussex

Related Link
Lesbian Art Herstory: Claude Cahun

Lenore Chinn on Bernice Bing from Rehistoricizing.org on Vimeo.

Bernice Bing (1936-1998) a Chinese American Painter and Queer Artist
Bernice Bing was a third-generation American Chinese born in Chinatown, San Francisco in 1936. In 1958, Bernice attended California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, but she soon transferred to the San Francisco Art Institute where she studied painting. In 1961 she graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a Masters in Fine Arts degree. Later as a resident artist at Esalen in 1967, she was among the first to study New Age psychology. Later in her life she became a practicing Buddhist.

Bernice Lee Bing entered the San Francisco Bay Area art scene in the 1960s and she were to be there as an active artist and community activist until her death in 1998. As an Asian American artist and queer woman she visualized her dual heritage through abstract expressionism, Chinese calligraphy and painting. Bernice Bing states:

Existentialism was the first influence that persuaded me toward the abstract expressionist school of painting. The philosophical bases of existentialism – one’s responsibility for making one’s own nature as well as personal freedom, independent decision making, and the importance of commitment – were to me the attitude of the abstract way of painting. — Bernice Bing, 1998, Asian American Women’s Artists Association Catalogue

For 4-5 years in the early 1980s Bing was the Director, Program Director and Building Manager of South of Market Cultural Center (SOMAR), run under the San Francisco Arts Commission; SOMAR is one of four cultural centers at this time. She is also known for her active involvement in the Asian American Women Artists Association in the 1990s.

Selected Bibliography
Bernice Bing
Roth, Moira and Diane Tani, eds.
Exh. cat. Berkeley: Visibility Press, 1991.

Completing the Circle: Six Artists
Edited by Florence Wong and George Rivera

Related Links
Samples of Bernice Bing’s works
Bernice Bing’s Artist Statement

Claude Cahun, do I need to say any more? We all love French lesbian artist Claude Cahun (1894-1954) for her early innovative and eccentric art works made in the 1920s and 1930s. – Enjoy the above slideshow!

Related Link
Learn more about Claude Cahun at Wikipedia: Claude Cahun

Art Herstory:
German bisexual artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) is best known for her photomontages, though she also made drawings and paintings. Between 1912 and 1920, she studied art at the Kunstgewerbeschule Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg School of Applied Arts) and the Unterrichtsanstalt des königlichen Kunstgewerbemuseums (School of the Royal Museum of Applied Arts) in Berlin.

The Dada movement flourished between 1916 and 1922 in Zurich, New York, Cologne, Hanover, Berlin, and Paris and as members of the Berlin Dada, Hannah Höch developed her art of photomontage (photographic images collaged onto paper) as a tool of artistic commentary on the Western society.

In 1926 Höch entered into a relationship with the Dutch writer and linguist Til Brugman (ca 1888-1958). They remained together for nine years, living in The Hague from 1926 to 1929, then in Berlin. The two women collaborated on some projects, including a book, Scheingehacktes (1935), for which Hannah made the images and Til the text.

When the Hitler regime seized power. Hannah Höch was defamed as a “Cultural Bolshevist” in 1934 and prohibited from exhibiting her work. In 1935 she separated from Till Burgmann. During the 1940s and 1950s, Hannah Höch explored non-objective abstraction. Between 1963 and 1973, she returned to images of women as her central theme. However the Nature was a life long love and inspiration to her. Her garden house in Heiligensee near Berlin, where she lived for 40 years, is now protected by the German Stiftung Denkmalschutz as a cultural heritage home.

Read more about the men in Hannah Höch’s life and her involvement with the women’s movement in the 1920s at Wikipedia: Hannah Höch

Selected Books
Some of the latest monographs and exhibition catalogues about Hannah Höch’s works are:

Schrankenlose Freiheit für Hannah Höch
by Cara Schweitzer
Publisher: Osburg Verlag (May 2011)
Language: German
ISBN-10: 3940731641
ISBN-13: 978-3940731647

Hannah Hoch: Picture Book
by Hannah Hoch and Gunda Luyken
Publisher: The Green Box Kunstedition (15 Aug 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3941644130
ISBN-13: 978-3941644137

Hannah Höch: Aller Anfang ist DADA!
Museum Jean Tinguely Basel; Hannah Hoch; Berlinische Galerie; Ralf Burmeister
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Verlag (April 2007)
ISBN-10: 3775719199
ISBN-13: 978-3775719193

Hannah Hoch: Album
by Gunda Luyken
Publisher: Hatje Cantz; Bilingual edition (1 Jun 2004)
Language: German
ISBN-10: 3775714278
ISBN-13: 978-3775714273