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In one attempt to capture the militant spirit of late 60’s feminist groups, Butler named her show, Wack! Like the highly politicised artists of her generation, Martha Rosler could not remain deaf to the various sorts of conflict that tear apart the world and which art cannot ignore. Cleaning the Drapes, for example, shows a woman brandishing a vacuum cleaner, slung over her shoulder, as if it were a microphone, against a trench scene. Above Pat Nixon, the wife of President Richard Nixon, who intensified the American presence in Vietnam, there appears a classic oval with the depiction of a female body riddled with bullets. This is the final scene from the film Bonnie and Clyde ; it is also one of the bloodiest death scenes in the history of the cinema. Neat and groomed, the First Lady is immune to the convulsions of this outlaw, even though the same social rules apply to both of them.
Martha was interested in themes of social justice long before they were brought to American screens. She attributes her preoccupation with social justice to her religious upbringing as an observant Jew. Therefore, although it is important to understand these pieces within the wider backdrop of anti-war sentiments, it is equally important to understand them within the context of Martha’s personal life. Martha stopped painting almost as soon as she became aware of the atrocities being committed in Vietnam.
Events
Martha Rosler was shocked by the intrusion of images of innate human barbarity. Many talents – well known and unknown – are in the show, and an illustrated catalog published by MOCA covers all the bases, however, in this article I’d like to focus on just one participating artist – Martha Rosler. Art and the Feminist Revolution, opens March 4th, 2007 at the Geffen Contemporary of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and runs until July 16th, 2007. Organized by MOCA curator Connie Butler, the show features artworks created from 1965 to 1980, by 100 women focused on the status and liberation of women.
Martha Rosler is most notable for her Bring the War Home series, created in the 1960s and 70s in response to the Vietnam War. The series comprises twenty photomontages that combine images of war from Life magazine with upper-class domestic interiors from House Beautiful. In Gladiators, one of Rosler’s current works from the Iraq series, the bourgeois home has not only turned out to be invaded, its interior has become inseparable from the mayhem outside its walls. In the living room of the spacious home depicted, a framed artwork hangs; a photo of bloodied Iraqi civilians heaped in a pile, a crystal-clear indication that we are living with the war in our daily lives without really seeing it. The quiet of the affluent residence has been shattered by a police officer, who is apparently arresting a member of the household while heavily armed U.S. soldiers conduct a search and destroy mission through the dwelling.
Patio View, from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home
That one of the soldiers is raising his automatic weapon towards the viewer is a disquieting reminder that the war has indeed – come home. During the 1970s, these images were distributed by the alternative and feminist press or as anti-war flyers, with Martha Rosler taking part in these actions. It was only in 1991 that she decided to show them in a gallery context to prevent their disappearance. The Vietnam War has long been characterised as “the living room war” because this was the first time mass media brought the horrors of war to peoples’ homes.
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Gallery actions
Instead, they functioned as political posters and were handed out during anti-war rallies and in magazines. However, Martha insisted that her photomontages should not have slogans because she wanted the images to speak for themselves. The physical act of cutting up enabled Martha to recode images and disrupt familiar spaces. Martha returned to the same subject matter in 2004 to depict the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Martha’s photomontages continue to evolve in response to the continuation of social injustices in society almost forty years on. A recurrent theme in these pieces is her use of windows to frame our gaze and guide us towards the horrors of the outside world.
Martha’s attempts to bring these two seemingly disparate worlds together reflected her desire to make people aware of the social injustices occurring over 8,500 miles away. She showcases how foreign warfare became intrinsic to definitions of the home in twentieth-century American politics. This enabled Martha to question why Americans were fighting a war over somewhere so far away.
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