![]() Hesse spoke about absurdity and repetition. At the same time, I was aware that many of the women artists whom I admired, including Eva Hesse, were moving beyond Minimalism’s reductive strictures by investing elements of the body and gesture into abstract forms. I used a priori structures that allowed the work to evolve into a form with specific logic. I was fascinated with gestalt theory, which I applied to my work by thinking of my large installation-drawings as representing complete forms consisting of individual parts. ND: In the early 1970s, minimal forms and symmetry captivated me. We met frequently and had heated arguments as well as great discussions.ĮAK: Initially you made paintings and drawings and had a penchant for Minimalism, as evident in Untitled (1975). The AACM (the jazz ensemble Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and Henry Threadgill performed often. We hosted exhibitions and performances by artists from around the country. functioned like Artists Space in New York. were instrumental in helping me to focus on my work and engage with the arts community. The two years I belonged were significant because my personal life was in free fall, and the artists at N.A.M.E. received funding to create a space showing experimental work it became a platform for unconventional work in Chicago. The National Endowment for the Arts had just begun a program to fund artists’ collectives, and N.A.M.E. Shortly afterwards, I was invited to join the collective, which was formed in 1973 by a group of recent SAIC graduates. ND: Just as I was about to graduate from SAIC, I met members of N.A.M.E., including Jerry Saltz and Barry Holden. Latex, cotton, rope, and rubber, 60 x 96 x 60 in.ĮAK: I understand that you were a member of the nonprofit artists’ collective N.A.M.E. ![]() From that point forward, I only studied with visiting women artists, including Joyce Kozloff and Nancy Spero. ![]() These combined elements became a focus for years. This was my first piece connecting large-scale, bilateral symmetry, and curved forms. I began working with the gestures of my body and hand. At the end of the year, I decided to take classes over the summer, during which I had my first breakthrough. I was fortunate to work with Whitney Halstead during my first year at SAIC in 1973 he was a demanding advisor. She urged women artists to form a gallery to exhibit their work. In 1973, Judy Chicago came to Chicago to speak about Womanhouse. The world was changing, and women were in revolt, leaving their marriages and sometimes their children to pursue their art. Nancy Davidson: The 1970s were a very heady time to be making art in graduate school and exhibiting. How did these experiences influence your work? King: You studied at the University of Illinois Circle Campus and received an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), working with Whitney Halstead, who supported the Chicago Imagists, and with Nancy Spero, Joyce Kozloff, and Harmony Hammond. Their soft, lightweight, and erotically pliable characteristics serve as a purposely feminist retort to the rigidity and heaviness of male-dominated Minimalism, while comic and grotesque elements operate as “Rabelaisian” tools of celebration and social critique. Davidson’s carnival of unruly forms, inspired by everything from Eva Hesse to pop-culture icons like Mae West and cowgirls, to ancient goddesses of the Mediterranean, turn expectations upside down, seducing viewers into examining what lies beneath the surface.Įlaine A. These quirky, vibrantly colored inflatables lightheartedly blend absurdity and humor, but they also raise social and political issues in an upbeat, playful manner. Though Nancy Davidson has worked in multiple mediums over the course of her prolific career, she is best known for her enormous, flamboyant sculptures made of latex balloons and vinyl-coated nylon.
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