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 abstract painting with a face, geometric shapes, and vibrant patterns. A sun-like circle and a mix of blue, orange, and red hues.

Untitled (Women's Faces) depicts two figures as integral parts of a geometric landscape. The curved lines that define one woman's hair may also be read as a flowing river, while the stripes running across the other's face and chest resemble furrows of freshly seeded soil. Linda Lomahaftewa sought to honor her Hopi and Choctaw culture through artmaking, while also developing a personal visual language that incorporated the psychedelic aesthetics of California's Bay Area, where Lomahaftewa was studying painting at the time.

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

The Big Rip-Up

9

Linda Lomahaftewa, Untitled (Women's Faces), 1965–71

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