Eunice Golden

Eunice Golden (born 1927) is an American feminist painter from New York City, known for exploring sexuality using the male nude.[1] Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Westbeth Gallery, and SOHO20 Gallery, among others.[2]

Eunice Golden
Born1927 (age 93–94)
New York City, New York
NationalityAmerican
Known forPainting, photography, filmmaking
MovementFigurative art, feminist art

Early life, education, and political involvement

Eunice Golden's father fled Russia after a pogrom and her mother was the American-born daughter of Russian immigrants.[3] She was raised in Brooklyn.[3] Golden studied psychology at the University of Wisconsin before leaving school to focus on her art.[4] She rebelled against the patriarchal views of her father and sought "to demystify the male nude and sexuality," as noted by the art historian Gail Levin.[3] Golden's work paralleled ideas that emerged in women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.[4] In 1971, Golden joined the Ad Hoc Women Artists' Committee (est. 1970), a subgroup of the Art Workers' Coalition that picketed the Whitney Museum of American Art in a series of actions over four months.[5]

In 1973, Golden joined the "Fight Censorship Group," which was organized by Anita Steckel in response to restrictions imposed on the sexually explicit works in Steckel's solo exhibition, The Sexual Politics of Feminist Art (1973), at Rockland Community College.[3][6] In addition to Steckel and Golden, "Fight Censorship" included Judith Bernstein, Louise Bourgeois, Martha Edelheit, Joan Glueckman, Juanita McNeely, Barbara Nessim, Joan Semmel, Anne Sharpe, and Hannah Wilke.[3][7] Also in 1973, Golden was a founding member of the all-women cooperative art gallery SOHO20,[8] where her work was exhibited until 1981.[9]

Work

Golden's paintings in the 1960s and 1970s focused on the male nude as a way to explore sexuality, struggle, and desire.[7][10][11] She later explained that her early paintings of the male anatomy were not "heretical" or "revolutionary" but "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. ... In retrospect, I saw that I had unwittingly addressed, on a subliminal level, ideologies, experiences, and perceptions of a broad audience."[4] By the mid-1970s, Golden's feminist position was necessary to understand the larger impact of her erotic work.[12] In particular, her Male Landscapes addressed the "phallacy" of male power as Golden's voyeuristic role reversed the erotic gaze from the long-established notion of the male as viewer and female as sexualized object.[4] The art critic Peter Frank recognized the "visual power" her Male Landscapes as "quite compelling."[13] In 1977, her Landscape #160 was included in Nothing But Nudes, an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and was praised in Art International by Carter Ratcliff.[14]

In 1973, Golden began to explore performance, body-art, photography and film.[15] Her group of films, Blue Bananas and Other Meats (1973), extends the painted Male Landscapes into performances in which the male body is covered with an assortment of foods, much like the Spring Banquet by the Surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim.[16]

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.[1][17]

Exhibitions[2]

Selected solo exhibitions and film screenings
  • Blue Bananas and Other Meats (film screening), Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, NY, 2010[18]
  • Paintings, Drawings, Photoworks from the Late 1960s and 1970s, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY, 2003
  • Sometimes in Nature, Clayton Liberatore Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, 2002
  • The Swimmers, Clayton Liberatore Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, 2001[19]
  • Three Decades: 1970-2000, Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY, 2000[20]
  • Abstract Paintings, Prism Gallery, Port Jefferson, NY, 1998
  • Creatures, Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, 1994
  • Primal Creatures, Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY, 1983
  • Dreamscapes, SOHO20 Gallery, New York, NY, 1980
  • The Past Ten Years, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hackensack, NJ, 1979
  • Portraits, SOHO20 Gallery, New York, NY, 1979
  • Body-Landscapes Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 1977
  • Body-Landscapes, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, 1976
  • Body-Landscapes, SOHO20 Gallery, New York, NY, 1976
  • Eunice Golden, SOHO20 Gallery, New York, NY, 1974
  • Eunice Golden, SOHO20 Gallery, New York, NY, 1973
  • Metamorphosis Series/Rape Series, Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY, 1973
  • Overview 1968-1973. Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY, 1971
  • Recent Paintings and Works on Paper, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, 1969
  • Recent Paintings and Drawings, Mari Galleries, Larchmont, NY, 1967
  • Paintings, Drawings, Collages, Gallery 84, New York, NY, 1967

Selected group exhibitions
  • Concept, Performance, Documentation, Language, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY, 2016[21]
  • Sequence and Consequence, Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, NY, 2006
  • The F Word, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY, 2004
  • IDEA Photographic, After Modernism, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM, 2002-2003
  • Personal and Political: The Women's Art Movement, 1969-1975, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY, 2002[22]
  • Landscape Today: East End Views, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY, 1994
  • Contemporary Crafts, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY, 1991-1992

Publications

References
  1. "Parrish East End Stories: Artists of the East End". parrishart.org. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  2. "Eunice Golden: CV". www.eunicegolden.com. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  3. Levin, Gail (Fall 2007). "Censorship, Politics and Sexual Imagery in the Work of Jewish-American Feminist Artists". Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues: 63–96.
  4. "Feminist Art Base: Eunice Golden". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  5. Ault, Julie (ed.). Alternative New York, 1965-1985: A Cultural Politics Book for the Social Text Collective. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 28–29.
  6. "Anita Steckel: Fighting Censorship and Double Standards". Broad Strokes: National Museum of Women in the Arts. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  7. Butler, Cornelia H., ed. (2007). WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art.
  8. Broude, Norma; Garrard, Mary D., eds. (1994). The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
  9. "Eunice Golden, CV" (PDF). www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  10. Cotter, Holland (11 April 2003). "Art In Review: Eunice Golden". New York Times. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  11. Lavin, Talia (13 February 2015). "10 Amazing Female Artists and Their Male Muses". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  12. Heinemann, Susan (March 1974). "Reviews". Artforum. 12 (7): 79–80.
  13. Frank, Peter (13 December 1973). "On Art". SoHo Weekly News.
  14. Ratcliff, Carter (March–April 1977). "Remarks on the Nude". Art International. 21 (2): 60–65, 73.
  15. Davidov, Judith Fryer (1998). Women's Camera Work: Self/Body/Other in American Visual Culture. Duke University Press.
  16. Moore, Alan (March 1975). "Reviews". Artforum. 13 (7): 73.
  17. "The Swimmers 1992-99". www.eunicegolden.com. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
  18. Manning, Ronnie Miller (7 September 2010). "Springs News—Notes from Springs, September 8". www.27east.com. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  19. Littman, Brett (24 August 2000). "Opinion: The Many Faces of Cindy Sherman". East Hampton Star. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  20. Sansegundo, Sheridan (25 May 2000). "At The Galleries". East Hampton Star. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  21. "Press release for Concept, Performance, Documentation, Language". mitchellalgusgallery.com. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  22. Cotter, Holland (11 October 2002). "Art Review: Two Nods to Feminism, Long Snubbed by Curators". New York Times. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
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