In 1964 a young female artist from Louisiana arrived in New York and began creating a body of work that subsequently turned the macho art world on its ear. This was Lynda Benglis, who was inspired by Jackson Pollock’s action painting and Helen Frankenthaler’s gestural art, among other things. Taking a physical approach to art-making, she also made self-presentation and performance part of her practice. A decade later, as the so-called second wave of feminism was cresting (spurred by Germaine Greer’s best-selling Female Eunuch, 1970), Benglis was marketing herself in confrontational photographs done as gallery announcements. In a postcard from 1974, she channels Betty Grable in a nearly nude photo by Annie Leibovitz. In an announcement from 1973, she strikes the pose of an Ivy League dandy, alongside her silver Porsche.

Benglis made the scene in every sense of the word. Among the early pieces she created that were noticed are what she called “fallen” paintings – alluding to their being off the wall as well as referencing fallen woman. For these, she used thick latex paint in bright colors (considered vulgar in the age of Minimalism, with its neutral palette) and which she poured straight from the cans onto the floor. She was among a group of artists, including Richard Serra and Joel Shapiro, who were reinventing sculpture, and contributing to a lively debate on the state of the arts, when the death of painting was a hot topic. In a retrospective of her work that opened last week at the New Museum, the broad scope of her career has been condensed into a tightly organized show that occupies the second floor and lobby galleries.

Her art supplies came from the streets, theatrical supply houses, and hardware stores, places that offered all kinds of alternatives to oils and canvas. Discarded fabrics were sewn and filled with stuff like chicken wire to hold their shapes, then painted with bright colors, and affixed with glitter. Her sculptures either hung from walls or flirted with corners. She used photography and video to challenge gender roles and bought advertising pages in Artforum in order to publish the now-famous double dildo photograph, thereby circumventing the magazine’s editorial process, which resuled in the departure of two of its top editors. What has become known as “the Artforum ad” created so much fallout that many discussions about her career still begin with, and often get hung up on, its retelling. Link. Link. Link. The retrospective covers and goes beyond this issue to present a broader picture of Benglis’s career.

Scenes from the media preview of Lynda Benglis at the New Museum, last Tuesday. Left: Chiron, 2009 and Ghost Shadow III, 2007. Right: Contraband, 1969. Photos: Peggy Roalf

In 1969, Benglis was invited to contribute a piece to the Whitney’s “Anti-Illusion” survey. She created the largest of her fallen paintings, Contraband (above, right), which is nearly ten feet long. When the curators insisted that it be placed on a pedestal, Benglis refused, and pulled the work from the show. In 2008 the Whitney purchased the piece, which is now on view at the New Museum.

Gender-bending inflected this early period, sometimes in subtle ways that combined with more overt messages designed to provoke thought or reaction. For example, she created gestural “masculine” looking sculptural forms that combined fun and colorful “feminine” materials, such as glitter and tulle. This was something new in art, and part of a new wave of artists using materials, methods, and subject matter that went against the grain.

Among the sculptures on view is a group of five ghostly form made of polyurethane foam embedded with phosphorescent pigments. Cantilevered off the walls of a dark gallery, the shapes, which embody the idea of a frozen gesture, are sexy, biological, and glowing in the dark as they do, seem to have floated up from the ocean’s floor. In a satellite show that runs through March 11^th at Salon 94 at Freemans Alley, just a few blocks away, are a trio of her recent fountains as well as a video of the fountain titled North South East West, commissioned by the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2009. Although nearly four decades separates Phantom from North South East West, they are evidently part of a continuum in the artist’s work, which is presently involved with fountains and water pieces.

Lynda Benglis continues at the New Museum through June 19th. 235 Bowery, opposite Prince Street, NY, NY. The exhibition, in its last stop on an international tour, was organized by the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands; Le Consortium, Dijon; Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; and the New Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a 450-page fully illustrated monograph.

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