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Fresno State helped birth feminist art

Published online on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009

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I know for a fact there are female artists out there who are a little tired of the attention that has been lavished over the years on Judy Chicago, who in 1970 founded the nation's first feminist art program at California State University, Fresno. It's as if mainstream culture needed one name it could latch onto and file under the category "pioneering feminist artist," and we all settled on Chicago, whose talent and passion -- not to mention brilliance in marketing her image -- catapulted her into that vaunted position.

I mention this not because I'm anti-Chicago. (I marveled at her "The Dinner Party" when I saw it at the Brooklyn Museum.) Nor are most of those female artists I'm talking about. There's a reason Chicago became an icon in the art world.

But as an important new exhibition at Fresno State makes abundantly clear, there was a lot more feminist art going on at the Fresno State campus than just Chicago's.

The key to "A Studio of Their Own: The Legacy of the Fresno Feminist Experiment, 1970," curated with much care and scholarship by Laura Meyer, is that it concentrates exclusively on the students who made up Chicago's groundbreaking all-female class -- a collaborative group that was a formative part of Chicago's development as superstar artist.

The exhibition at the Conley Art Gallery, which continues through Oct. 9, features 10 artists, nine of whom were original members of that Fresno State class. It includes works from the original era as well as some contemporary pieces.

It might come as a surprise for some people to learn that Fresno State had a key role in the birth of the feminist art movement. It certainly wasn't planned that way. The university happened to be in the right place at the right time when it invited Chicago to Fresno during the 1970-71 school year.

Chicago, who up until that time had competed squarely in the art world of men with her minimalist sculptures, proposed a "women's sculpture class" that quickly became an intensely collaborative enterprise.

The 15 women in the class pursued different genres, but they were bound together by a common passion.

Though affiliated with the university, the women decided to band together off campus and open their own studio -- hence the exhibition's title. They picked a building near the Fresno Fairgrounds that served as a sort of command center for their artists' cooperative, including a "rap room" in which they talked through hot topics of the day.

Prominent local artist Nancy Youdelman, who now teaches at Fresno State, was originally a theater major interested in costuming before getting swept into Chicago's circle.

In early photographic works, Youdelman collaborated with other students to explore women's roles in a male-dominated world. She used her costume skills to contribute to a series of photos titled "Kewpie Doll," "Bride" and "Las Vegas Whore" that explored some of these prominent female stereotypes.

From her interest in costuming, Youdelman branched into the clothing-dominated artworks for which she's known. She is a prominent figure in the exhibition along with such highly regarded professional artists as Faith Wilding, Karen LeCocq and Suzanne Lacy. Meyer, the curator, also made sure to include members of the original class that went on to other careers.

What you don't get is anything by Chicago herself. Meyer, the curator, made a conscious effort to focus on the students' role in all this. She's convinced that in small but substantial ways, they had important influences on their teacher and helped change what Meyer calls "the dominant paradigms defining the relationship between art, personal identity, and social values."

The Chicago era didn't last long at Fresno State. After her guest professorship ended, she headed to the newly formed California Institute for the Arts and went on to organize "Womanhouse," one of the first-ever feminist art exhibitions. Nine of her 15 students followed her to Cal Arts.

The frustrating thing is that in the history of the feminist art movement, which is just now being written, scholars tend to forget about that formative Fresno year, Meyer says. And she's determined to change that.

"It all started here," she says, "and I'm trying to make sure people know."