Eunice Golden

Eunice Golden (born 1927) is an American feminist painter from New York City. She is best known for exploring sexuality using the male nude.^[1] Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Westbeth Gallery, and the SOHO20 Gallery, among others.

Education and political involvement

Golden pursued a degree Psychology at the University of Wisconsin before leaving school to focus on her art.^[2] In the 1960s Golden's dramatic artwork converged with and paralleled the ideas expressed by the women's liberation movement. In 1971, Golden joined the Ad Hoc Committee for Women’s Art spearheaded by Lucy Lippard. In 1973, she joined the group Fight Censorship, whose other members included Anita Steckel, Hannah Wilke, Louise Bourgeois, Judith Bernstein, Martha Edelheit, Juanita McNeely, Barbara Nessim, Anne Sharpe and Joan Semmel.^[3] Golden was a founding member of the all-women co-op gallery SOHO20, where her work was exhibited for nearly a decade.^[2][4]

Work

Golden's early output conveys the political anger, antic humor and conceptual experimentation that characterized the early women's liberation movement. Her paintings in the 1960s and 1970s focused on the male nude as a way to explore sexuality, struggle, and desire.^[3][5][6][7] Golden's controversial and radical work challenged entrenched ideologies. In 1977, The Whitney included her signature work, "Landscape 160" in "Nothing But Nudes", which was applauded in Art International by Carter Ratcliff. In 1973 she began exploring performance, body-art, photography and film.^[8] In the 1980s her work focused on portraits and satiric anthropomorphic studies. In the 1990s she completed her "Swimmers" series which was centered around the closeness of mother and child.^[9][10] Golden is part of the same artistic movement as David Salle, Julian Schnabel, and Louisa Chase.^[1]

As a feminist artists, she has spoken publicly about being a feminist and being an artist. "In the 1960's, while painting the male anatomy, I didn't consider that it would be construed as heretical and revolutionary. Stifled by the existing definitions of wife and mother, this work was a stream of consciousness outpouring of emotionally and sensually charged images that reflected who I was: a heterosexual woman with erotic needs and fantasies, yet struggling to redefine myself. My artistic intention was not political. In retrospect, I saw that I had unwittingly addressed, on a subliminal level, ideologies, experiences, and perceptions of a broad audience. Suddenly I was engaged in dialogue, thrust against a backdrop of controversy and censorship. I catapulted into the women's movement, wrestling with the salient socio-political issues regarding cultural and political change. Many feminist artists were asserting their experiences by creating "central core imagery" which was decidedly autoerotic. My work, "Male Landscapes", addressed the "phallacy" of male power – its vulnerability to and dependence on a female audience. I as a woman became the voyeur – my powerful erotic gaze was fixed upon the male – which was a strike against the historical bias of the male nude as a subject for women artists. As my work evolved, the body remained the vehicle, the experience-acquiring medium, and the very core of my art. I conceived the human form as a landscape where sensual and spiritual messages leap and interconnect – a psychosexual Gestalt where the wires of our human architecture spark with vital physicality, powerful emotions, and an energizing erotic force. Distance is eliminated and the viewer's own experience is ignited. Body experience is central to an understanding of my photographic and cinematic works. Here I explore the flesh as a canvas – embellished with paint, text, and food. All these works have aspects of symbolic behavior, expressing the basic and primal, and the universal nature of rituals. There exists a strong continuity within my oeuvre. The "Male Landscapes" made the sexual colossal, yet intimate. Works that followed capture the immediacy of closeness, from the portraits of mother/son/daughter, to the anthropomorphic studies, and the swimmer's series which was influenced by the untimely death of my son. In current works, I have delved into yet another metamorphosis of visceral sensation in surreal abstract forms. For all the apparent differences in style, content, or technique, the common thread in all my work is the power of intimacy.^[11]"

Most of her works are very sexual and blunt. Her earlier works, like the "Crucifixtion #1" and "Purple Sky", her earlier works were very sexual. Her other works consists of different types of landscapes that were generated from human bodies, especially those of males'. Her more recents works are more symbolic. Her "Flora" project is very symbolic. Just like "Birds of Paradise" and Sunflower 1". She has others works like "the Metamorphosis project" are just as symbolic.

Selected exhibitions

• "Concept, Performance, Documentation, Language" Group Show of Women Artists at the Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York City, 2016.^[12]
• "Blue Bananas and Other Meats" Film Screening at Pollack-Krasner House, East Hampton, NY, 2010.^[13]
• "Paintings, Drawings, Photoworks from the late 1960s and 1970s" at Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York City, 2003.^[14]
• "Personal and Political: The Women's Art Movement, 1969-1975'' at Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, 2002.^[15]
• “Sometimes in Nature” Clayton Liberatore Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, 2002.^[14]
• “The Swimmers” Clayton Liberatore Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, 2001.^[16]
• “Three Decades: 1970-2000” Westbeth Gallery, NYC, 2000.^[17]
• “Abstract Paintings", Prism Gallery, Port Jefferson, NY, 1998.^[14]
• “Creatures” Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, 1994.^[14]
• “Contemporary Crafts” Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY, 1991-1992.^[14]
• "Primal Creatures" Westbeth Gallery, NYC, 1983.^[14]
• "Dreamscapes" SOHO20 Gallery, NYC, 1980.^[14]
• "The Past Ten Years" Fairleigh Dickinson University, Ed. Wms. Gallery, Hackensack, NJ, 1979.^[14]
• "Portraits" SOHO20 Gallery, NYC, 1979.^[14]
• "Body-Landscapes" Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 1977.^[14]
• "Body-Landscapes" University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, 1976.^[14]
• "Body-Landscapes" SOHO20 Gallery, NYC, 1976.^[14]
• “ Diagrams and Tapestries” (photoworks, body art), “Blue Bananas and Other Meats” (film) and “Penelope’s Odyssey,” SOHO20 Gallery, 1974.^[14]
• Metamorphosis Series/Rape Series, SOHO20 Gallery, NYC, 1973.^[14]
• Metamorphosis Series/Rape Series, Westbeth Gallery, NYC, 1973.^[14]
• "Overview 1968-1973" (paintings, drawings, installations/performance, film), Westbeth Gallery, NYC, 1971.^[14]
• "Recent Paintings and Works on Paper" Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, 1969.^[14]
• "Recent Paintings and Drawings" Mari Galleries, Larchmont, NY, 1967.^[14]
• "Paintings, Drawings, Collages" Gallery 84, NYC, 1967.^[14]

Publications

• “Views by Women Artists; Sexuality in Art: Two Decades From A Feminist Perspective” Woman’s Art Journal, Spring/Summer 1982.^[18]
• “The Male Nude in Women’s Art – Dialectics of a Feminist Iconography,” Heresies, Spring, Issue 12, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1981.^[19]
• "On the Business of Art" Artworkers News, Foundation for the Community of Artists, NYC, April 1967, p. 26.
• "On the Censorship of Phallic Imagery" Artworkers News, Foundation for the Community of Artists, NYC, May/June 1975, p. 3.

References

External links

• Official website
• Eunice Golden Artists File, Detroit Institute of Arts
• Eunice Golden Papers, 1945-2002, 1963-1979, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
• Eunice Golden Artists File, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Library