The New York Adventure | to water

The recently published article about Joseph Beuys’ lecture at Gießener Kunstgeschichte in January 1981 has evoked many memories. Also of the New York excursion in September 1981, which was made possible by the sale of the lecture hall blackboard described by Beuys to a collector. An exhibition in the institute under the title “Women Artists from New York” became possible in the spring of 1982.

Following the lecture by Joseph Beuys in Giessen, four students of art history took the opportunity in 1981 to get to know the New York art scene better. They flew there four weeks before the others, looking for inexpensive accommodation from which they conquered the city with its many art studios. The first contacts were made by Donald Kuspit, a renowned American art historian who had given lectures on contemporary art in the USA for a semester in Giessen.

Beuys-Tafel sale financed flights

“I can’t remember whether he also introduced women artists in his lectures, at least he knew a lot of them. He was in the current scene. «Which was not true of German art historians at the time, as they hardly got involved in abstract contemporary art. “That was part of the new thing that Prof. Böhm and Dr. Growe had brought with us that we were concerned with artistic modernism, that we were looking for conversation with artists. However, women artists weren’t part of them either, ”says Dr. Susanne Ließegang, who dared the adventure of New York at the time.

“To be honest, even here in Giessen and Germany we didn’t know any female artists back then, had never been to their studios.” The leap into the unknown was a multiple, but worthwhile one, as the extensive collection from the catalogs we brought with us shows , Information flyers and a video by a performance artist. Two of the artists even gave them prints that they handled carefully and brought home. These originals became the highlight of the otherwise documentary exhibition in the institute. They are prints by Nancy Spero and Linda Cunningham, both dealing with the female body and the history of women, each in their own way.

Visit to Nancy Spero’s studio

The women’s art movement in the US emerged in the 1960s as a result of the Women’s Lib movement. Everywhere women went in search of their own history, tried to be independent of male historiography, and in art to become independent of the male gaze. One of the first was Judy Chicago in California, whose “dinner party” was the focus of the media. “But women worked much more widely. Since the beginning of the 1970s there have been galleries that had been founded by women artists for women artists: AIR (Artist in Residence) and Soho 20. The women’s art scene there was years ahead of European developments, ”affirmed Ließegang.

The four students got to know impressive artists. The first was Nancy Spero, who became known for her anti-war paintings. “Nancy Spero opened the doors to other studios for us.” Like that of the performance artist Betsy Damon, the photorealistic painter Sylvia Sleigh, the sculptor Linda Cunningham with her bronze casts of body sheaths or the ceramicist Camille Billops, who did the first with her partner James Hatch and amassed a unique collection of art from black American cultural history to this day.

Nancy Spero was even ready to invite the entire university excursion group to her studio, since an originally planned studio visit did not materialize. “The excursion leaders’ enthusiasm was limited when we suggested it,” smiles Ließegang, “but they were reconciled by the fact that Spero had a joint studio with her husband Leon Golub.” And they knew it.

No photos taken from the excursion

The exhibition at the end of this winter semester was created by Susanne Ließegang and Ingrid Claßen, the other two women had left the university. And what is hard to imagine from today’s perspective: »We didn’t take photos in New York, that was just not common back then. We were also not aware of how special and therefore worthy of documentation our company was. It was a completely different time as far as the media was concerned. Just when you consider the communication, the type of appointment, everything. “

The theme of the exhibition in the rooms of the Gießener Kunstgeschichte was so unusual that not only did the Gießener Allgemeine report, but the hr also made a film for its cultural calendar. And for Ließegang it gave the impetus that she brought the action painter Barbara Heinisch for a university women’s week and organized an evening with videos of performances by Rebecca Horn. “I didn’t do more with the subject. From today’s point of view, which is of course a shame. «But she continues to deal with contemporary female artists: As the art officer at the university hospital.