From sensitivities to styles to subject matter, art is arguably more diverse today than at any time in history.
While many facets can be traced to antecedents, at least one artistic strain seems unique to our time: work that delves into disillusionment, alienation and angst.
While artists such as Goya confronted the dark side of human behavior, they rarely if ever dealt with the anxiety and sense of detachment that seem so much a part of contemporary life, especially in the aftermath of the world-altering events of Sept. 11, 2001.
A traveling exhibition continuing through July 24 at the Aspen Art Museum wrestles with many of these unsettling realities of contemporary life, specifically those surrounding what it means to be a woman in what might be called the post-feminist age.
This is the era of the “girl” – a word heard all the time in au courant expressions such as “You go, girl.” In this spirit, this exhibition is titled “Girls’ Night Out,” drawing on a another popular catchphrase.
“The use of the term ‘girl,’ when applied to grown women, was considered patronizing and demeaning,” writes Elizabeth Armstrong, deputy director for programs and chief curator of the Orange County Museum of Art in California, where the exhibition originated.
“In recent years, the word ‘girl’ has been reclaimed by a wide range of young women from political activists to those working in the mass media.”
But in dealing with this notion, Armstrong and co-curator Irene Hofmann, with perhaps one or two exceptions, have found little to smile about. Instead of the light and upbeat, they have turned toward the disquieting and disorienting, a word that reappears several times in the catalog.
A key work in the exhibition, for example, is the 7 1/2-minute video, “Thriller” by Salla Tykkä of Helsinki. It is an eerie, enigmatic and fractured story which includes a sexually awakening teenager, who methodically picks up a rifle leaning against a wall and shoots a lamb outside in the snow.
A set of photographs by Rineke Dijkstra of Amsterdam portrays a girl named Almerisa at six moments in her childhood from 1994 through 2003. Instead of the warm, hopeful tone one might envision for such a series, these stark images evoke pessimism and doubt about change and the future.
Elina Brotherus of Paris depicts herself unglamorously squatting naked in a tiny square tub. The photographic self-portrait is called “Femme à sa Toilette (Woman Bathing),” mockingly alluding to romanticized works of the same title by Degas and others.
If explorations of female identity dominate this show, these pieces also deal with notions of perception and awareness. Many images have been posed or staged, raising provocative questions about the honesty and dishonesty, the reality and unreality of what is depicted.
“Girls’ Night Out” can in many ways be seen as a timely complement to “Will Boys Be Boys?” an exhibition recently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver. But the Aspen offering – more focused and cohesive – proves considerably more successful.
The co-curators wisely restricted themselves to two closely related media, photography and video, and limited the number of artists they included to just 10 – all born in the 1950s, ’60s or ’70s. None has reached blue-chip status yet, but all are influential artists with fast-growing résumés.
They have emerged in the wake of such artistic trailblazers as Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman and Hannah Wilke and are living in a time when many aspects of gender equality are finally beginning to be taken for granted.
“Girls’ Night Out” contains 52 works, a large number for the museum’s two compact galleries. Parts of the exhibition seem a bit crowded. Even at that size, the show has been condensed somewhat from its original form, but the essential essence remains intact.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
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“ART AND SCIENCE” “The Convergence of Art and Science,” an exhibition running through Aug. 12 at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, 201 S. College Ave., explores what the two disciplines have in common. 970-482-2787.
“NEHUEN: MAPUCHE POWER” This ambitious show, which continues through Sept. 25 at the Museo de las Américas, 861 Santa Fe Drive, focuses on past and present art of the Mapuche, a little-known indigenous people of southern Chile and Argentina. 303-571-4401.
“NO BOUNDARIES” About a dozen modern and contemporary examples from the fine collection of textiles at the Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, have been chosen for this show running through July 17. 720-865-5000.
-Kyle MacMillan
