Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

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Before the women’s liberation movement entered wider public consciousness in the early 1970s, women artists were creating an early feminist aesthetic and imagining new fields of possibility for themselves and their work. For historic Surrealists, the radical juxtapositions made possible by collage were appealing for their apparent capacity to communicate unconscious thoughts and desires. For the protofeminists of the 1960s, collage offered a way to highlight the myriad social, political, and psychological expectations imposed on women. This technique allowed them to combine abstraction with representational forms in order to convey the complexity of their personal experiences. Although the presence of sexual content meant their work was often sensationalized as “erotic art,” such artists held an expansive set of concerns, from gender and sexuality to objectification and artifice. As the experimental filmmaker and photographer Barbara Hammer would later reflect: “I was swept up with the energies and dreams of a feminist revolution. We could make a new world where everyone was equal. We believed it, and we tried our best to live it.”

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Colorful dress with abstract, geometric faces and shapes in pink, green, purple, and gold fabric patches.

Sculptor, painter, and self-taught fashion designer Jae Jarrell has been creating one-of-a-kind, wearable works that celebrate Black culture and family life since the late 1950s. As a co-founder of the Black Arts Movement's Chicago-based collective AfriCOBRA (founded 1968), she worked to promote accessible art experiences and cultural pride within Black communities. Drawing upon the group's signature Coolade colors (a play on the fruit-flavored drink mix Kool-Aid), using materials typically associated with "women's work," and taking inspiration from African designs, Jarrell imagined a revolutionary aesthetic carried on the body and grounded in joy and family.

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

The Big Rip-Up

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Jae Jarrell, Ebony Family, c. 1968

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