Sisterhood is powerful again. Last spring's "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" at MOCA gave rise to an explosion of woman-centered exhibitions throughout the Southland. Now, a new public art initiative takes feminism back to the streets.
Cindy Sherman's billboards of herself as a faux B-movie star loom over Hollywood & Highland. Jenny Holzer's grids of neon colored posters plaster quotations from revolutionary leaders all over town. Louise Lawler fills the Huntington Library's botanical gardens with birdcalls based on the names of famous male artists. And on video billboards on Sunset Boulevard and at LACMA West, Barbara Kruger's "Plenty" is a montage of images and text messages for passing drivers.
The works are part of "Women in the City," a "viral public art exhibition" in the streets of Los Angeles that unfolds throughout the month. Featuring Sherman, Holzer, Lawler and Kruger, the project is intended to celebrate the first generation of women artists to attain widespread success in the art world and to bring their work to an even larger audience.
"In a moment in which art is becoming the king, the queen of the commodities," says curator Emi Fontana, it's important "to have a show that has nothing to sell, just for people to enjoy and to confront it and to be provoked." She sees the project as a way to mark the advances women have made, not just in the art world, but in all spheres of public life.
For the most part, "Women in the City" revisits works from the '70s and '80s (Kruger is the only artist to make a new piece specifically for the show). In some cases it simply re-presents works that were originally intended as outdoor installations; in others it translates works intended for the gallery into public spaces.
Holzer's "Truisms," a series of cliche-sounding yet subtly provocative sentences such as "Abuse of power comes as no surprise" and "Decadence can be an end in itself" will appear in its original form, animated on LED and video screens at Hollywood & Highland and on a marquee at the Roosevelt Hotel.
Usually presented as 8-by-10 photographs, Cindy Sherman's "Untitled Film Stills" have never appeared on billboards before (in fact, they represent Sherman's first public project). Two of the images went up at Hollywood & Highland last week, and two more will appear later in the month, one on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, the other at Wilshire and Fairfax.
