America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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Learn Where the Meat Comes From

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Building upon the ethos of experimentation of the previous decade, many artists in the 1970s shifted away from making objects and began to embrace performative storytelling and body-oriented actions. Video technology—which was still in its infancy at the start of the decade—provided a groundbreaking new tool for personal expression, often giving voice to the disenfranchisement of women and people of color. While some of these artists were drawn to video’s formal and technical properties, others were among the generation of feminist artists who recognized the medium’s radical potential to appropriate the power structures of mass media. Suzanne Lacy’s Learn Where the Meat Comes From, for example, begins with the artist in a tastefully outfitted kitchen in a gentle parody of instructional cooking shows, such as the one popularized by Julia Child—and devolves into an absurdist, biting commentary on domestic work and the objectification of the female body. Lacy’s behavior alternately mimics that of both predator and prey, and by the end of the video the division between human and animal has all but dissolved; the hostess sits down to a properly set table complete with wine and salad and then proceeds to devour the cooked roast like a snarling, ravenous beast.

Other works in this chapter take up related concerns. Artists such as Eleanor Antin, Lynda Benglis, Joan Jonas, Cindy Sherman, and Hannah Wilke use their cameras—whether video or still—to confront themselves, exploring the boundaries of subjectivity. Others, including the Los Angeles−based collective Asco, Ulysses Jenkins, Howardena Pindell, and Martha Rosler work, like Lacy, to draw attention to the ways media shapes our perception of identity and to the inherent gender and racial biases that often accompany those depictions.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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SUZANNE LACY (B. 1945), LEARN WHERE THE MEAT COMES FROM, 1976

Film still of a woman holding a meat carcass.
Film still of a woman holding a meat carcass.

Suzanne Lacy (b. 1945), Learn Where the Meat Comes From, 1976. Video, color, sound, 14:20 min. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Film, Video, and New Media Committee 2014.142. © Suzanne Lacy, courtesy of Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org. Photograph by Raul Vega

Southern California in the 1970s was home to a strong feminist art movement, with many of the area’s art schools and universities becoming focal points of radical art. Suzanne Lacy first encountered the movement as an activist and psychology student at Fresno State University, where she studied with the feminist artist Judy Chicago. She continued working with Chicago at California Institute of the Arts, where she also studied with Allan Kaprow and explored the transformative possibilities of performance art. Calling upon viewers to participate in her work, Lacy was a pioneer in what would come to be known as Social Practice art. Her performances, videos, and social interventions addressed a broad spectrum of women’s issues, including rape, poverty, abuse, and class inequality.

Learn Where the Meat Comes From is part of Lacy’s Anatomy Lessons series. The title was taken from a cooking show by Julia Child, who exhorted her audience, “Taking the time to learn where the meat comes from will ensure your constant success.” Lacy follows to absurd and disturbing extremes Child’s instructions to imitate a lamb’s movements, becoming more animal-like as the video progresses.

Meat had featured in several of Lacy’s earlier works, and her own body was a recurring subject as well: the diagram of cuts of meat in the background of Learn Where the Meat Comes Fromrecalls the beef kidneys that Lacy nailed to the walls in her 1972 Ablutions performance as well as the legal contract she devised for selling her own body parts in Body Contract, the inaugural piece in the Anatomy Lessons series.

Excerpted from Whitney Museum of American Art: Handbook of the Collection (2015), p. 215. Published by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; distributed by Yale University Press.

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