Harmon Siegel

Feminists, On Your Feet!

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Abstract:

This essay argues that feminist body art estranged the relation of body to ground to critique the reclining nude. It deepens existing feminist engagement with body art by unpacking a further critical dimension to these artworks, not only the active/passive binary of male artists and female models but also a standing vs. lying opposition with deep art-historical roots.

I begin with Schneemann’s collaboration with Robert Morris, Site (1962). In that work, she posed as Manet’s Olympia, holding perfectly still as Morris walked before her, contrasting erectness with reclination as male to female. From there, I claim that this dyad also informed Interior Scroll (1975)–– in which the artist stood nude before an audience and removed a typed scroll from her vagina––and Up to and Including her Limits (1973-76)––in which she hung from a harness above a sheet of paper, which she marked as she swung back and forth.

Second, Lynda Benglis. I link her famous Artforum ad (1974)––in which the artist nude, standing tall with a double-headed dildo––to her gravity-defying poured sculptures––in which she poured latex over scaffolding, then removed the support. Again, we find erect, grounded posture contrasted with airborne horizontality, this time displaced from the body onto sculpture.

Third, Aura Rosenberg’s The Astrological Way (2012-13). For that series, the artist had nude couples paint one another’s bodies lie on a floor-bound sheet of black velvet, creating images of sex positions. She then mounted the paintings on the wall, substituting an impossible verticality for reclining sex as a dialectical reimagining of feminist erection.

Biography:

Harmon Siegel is an affiliate scholar at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and the author of Painting with Monet (Princeton, 2024). His writing on modern art and theory has appeared in venues such as Art Bulletin, American Art, and nonsite. He also writes as a critic, contributing regularly to Artforum and Texte zur Kunst. His current work argues for the naturalness of art, developing an interpretive approach he calls ecoformalism.