My dissertation reframed the Danish artist Anna Ancher (1859-1935) by expanding the context in which the artist has been considered, to position her as a symbolist, modernist and independent artist. A revered and familiar artist in Denmark, most scholars discuss her paintings in association with the development of the art colony in Skagen, an important site of Denmark’s Modern Breakthrough in the 1880s. The represented image of Ancher in paintings by male colonists during this period indicated her centrality within the group, depicted her as a fashionable bourgeois wife and respectable mother, but simultaneously neglected to reference the development of her professional practice. By 1889, Ancher had sold major paintings and gained national and international recognition. Michael Ancher’s portrait of his wife in reform dress in Coming Home from Market (1902) signifies her freedom from conventional gender roles.

Despite her affiliation with the Skagen colony, Ancher matured as a painter during the 1890s after its heyday. At this time Danish Symbolism and Vitalism came to eclipse the Naturalist orientation of the prior decade. The painter’s study in Paris in 1889 and her contacts in cosmopolitan Copenhagen forged an avant-garde network that in many ways referenced, but also resisted, movements from the urban French center. An aesthetic that draws from the ostensibly contradictory and divergent ideas of Charles Baudelaire, Hans Christian Andersen and Friedrich Nietzsche can be found in Ancher’s painting, positioning her alongside other Danish Symbolists. Ancher was also a native of the Jutland peninsula, which experienced the growth of pietist movements and major shifts impacting agricultural labor. Ancher’s paintings of religion and harvest at the beginning of the twentieth century challenged contemporary French primitivist images of Breton peasants, especially those of Paul Gauguin. After 1900, Ancher’s increasingly abstract paintings of unoccupied interiors reflect the complex modernist shift in valuation of the dwelling and a new emphasis on minimal decoration and strong planar surfaces in the home as conducive to physical and psychological health. In her paintings of her own studio, Ancher challenged normative gendered divisions in the organization of the home and asserted her identity as an autonomous artist.

The graphics of Barbara Kruger resonate with me as a woman of the “long baby-boom generation” (born between 1945 and 1960) for whom fashion magazines and television news vied as authoritative representations of our ideal and lived bodies. Kruger’s resume and her professional affiliation with the fashion industry as a photographer and designer are manifest in typeface, photographic qualities and attention to artifice in the depicted model.[1] Your Body is a Battleground (Figure 1), abstracted from its specific political context, speaks not only to its historical context, but also the struggle of feminist theory to grapple with the material body.[2]

The textual reference to “battleground” is also provocative and consistent with Kruger’s description of herself as a “news addict.”[3] The image was designed as a poster for a Pro-Choice rally in Washington, D.C. held in April of 1989 (Figure 2). The military terminology echoes the phrasing used by Paul Houston to describe the rally. He identified “an escalation of political warfare,” met by the opposition with 4,000 white crosses planted in a staged “cemetery of the innocents.” 1989 was a peak period of protest over the body. The Los Angeles Times reported that nationwide 450 anti-abortion protestors had been arrested by October.[4] 1989 was also the year of Solidarity; the image resonated with democracy activists in Eastern Europe. The poster found its way onto monuments in Poland and Berlin.[5]

Like much of her work, Battleground’s artist arms herself with the very tools used to perpetuate gender difference in her assault. Kruger’s image repurposed fashion photography and manipulated the industry’s conventions for publishing layout and image. Likewise NOW (National Organization for Women) event organizers made effective use of media at the April rally. Celebrities Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Kelly McGillis and Cybil Shepherd supported the pro-choice platform. However, the media message was mixed. In the Los Angeles Times, the stars’ glamorous headshots get nearly as much copy space as Paul Houston’s report.[6] Although the article covered the rally in some depth, the feature was relegated to page one of “The View” section (D) rather than with national news where it belonged. Furthermore, the layout gave equal prominence to three “public interest” (aka female audience) stories: “Frequent Fliers: More Fast-track Couples Living a Tale of Two Cities;” “Aquatic Attraction: Poets, Pragmatists and Scholars Ponder the Inexplicable Appeal of Being Near Water;” and “Shoppers in Hot Pursuit of Bargains in Off-Price Stores.”

Kruger’s problematic relationship with media continues. Ariella Budick, a Newsday writer reviewed the artist’s Whitney retrospective in 2000. She accused Kruger of “shrillness,” a pejorative term used primarily to describe females, and of “braying” rather than “speaking,” metaphorically equating the artist with an ass. Budick condemned how Kruger’s voice became loud (or large), overt instead of subtle, and inserted political controversy into the museum gallery.[7] Not all critics take Budick’s position. Dorothy Spears perceptively acknowledged in 2010: “It's hard, walking through Barbara Kruger's current show at the Guild Hall museum here, not to see it as a critique of its likely audience.”[8] Although LACMA honored Kruger, along with Quentin Tarantino, at a “starry gala” her interrogations into the image of women received minor note in contrast to descriptions of the designer clothing worn by Salma Hayek Pinault or China Chow.[9]

[1] “Barbara Kruger,” The Art History Archive—Feminist Art http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-Kruger.html accessed 9 June 2015.

[2] Jo-Ann Wallace, "Where the Body is a Battleground: Materializing Gender in the Humanities." Resources for Feminist Research 29, no. 1 (Winter, 2002): 21-42. http://search.proquest.com/docview/194902320?accountid=14270. Wallace provides an excellent and insightful synopsis in the context of her investigation of how neuropsychiatric research might inform current feminist theory.

[3] Dorothy Spears, "Spelling Out our Flaws in Black and White," International Herald Tribune, Aug 28, 2010. http://search.proquest.com/docview/748033765?accountid=14270..

[4] "450 Arrested at Anti-Abortion Rallies," Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File), Oct 01, 1989. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1153784372?accountid=14270.

[5] Ariella Budick, "Art / the Writing's on the Wall / Barbara Kruger's Sharp Political Commentary Turns Shrill in Her Whitney Retrospective," Newsday, Jul 16, 2000, Combined editions. http://search.proquest.com/docview/279353967?accountid=14270.

[6] Paul Houston Times, "Abortion Rights Activists Rally Troops in D. C.," Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File), Apr 07, 1989. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1150161766?accountid=14270.

[7] Budick.

[8] Dorothy Spears, "Spelling Out our Flaws in Black and White," International Herald Tribune, Aug 28, 2010. http://search.proquest.com/docview/748033765?accountid=14270.

[9] BLOG: All the Rage: Quentin Tarantino, Barbara Kruger Honored at Starry LACMA Gala. Los Angeles: Newstex, 2014. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1627118789?accountid=14270.