American artist Nancy Spero (b.1929) concentrates on the depiction of
women: mythological women, movie women, tortured women. Inspired by
classical and modern sources, she collages and imprints her contemporary
goddesses on to long, papyrus-like friezes that scroll around museum
walls.
Her subject matter, which has ranged from the writings of Artaud to the
Vietnam War, mirrors her life. Working in Paris in the cultural ferment
of the 1960s, she moved to New York in the 1970s to co-establish the
feminist gallery A.I.R. and to join with artists and critics such as
Leon Golub, Robert Morris and Lucy R Lippard in forming the Art Workers'
Coalition. Since the 1980s she has attracted international acclaim, her
exquisite works giving form to feminist issues and new critical
discourses.
The Survey by Jon Bird, cultural theorist and curator of the first
British retrospective of Spero's work, discusses developments in her
practice since the 1950s. Contemporary art scholar and critic Jo Anna
Isaak talks with the artist about her life and work. Art historian
Sylvere Lotringer, Edtior of Semiotext(e) and author of Overexposed,
focuses on her 1993 installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In recognition of the impact Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove made on
her, Spero has chosen a scene from the screenplay; key excerpts from
Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity by feminist theorist
Alice Jardine on the place of women in a patriarchal culture complete
the Artist's Choice section. Also included are a selection of Spero's
own writings, many published here for the first time.
