Post 3: Harmonizing Feminist Art

"I helped found the feminist art movement in New York in the early 1970s, contributing to and benefiting from the incredible energy that existed at that time. There was a sense of excitement, of making something happen, of creating change."

 Harmony Hammond

 Heteronormativity is the social construction of norms that govern our society. This concept creates a default state of preconceived notions of how an individual should be, including, but not limited to one’s gender identity, sexual orientation, and biological sex. It is a strict reflection of social binaries that delegate straight, male/female gender, and heterosexual relationships as the natural alignment of being. Institutionalized heterosexuality is deeply embedded as societal “norms”, creating a heteronormative bias that has been and continues to be detrimental to individuals, communities, and collective cultures. Harmony Hammond addresses the challenges an institutionalized social construction can cause throughout her work as an artist, art writer, independent curator, professor, and feminist activist (HarmonyHammond).

Harmony Hammond. Bag XI, 1971.

After attending the University of Minnesota from 1963-67, Hammond and her then husband moved to New York City in the fall of 1969. She states in an interview inscribed by We Who Feel Differently, that, “The Stonewall Riot was in June 1969 so it was a time of political activism: Civil rights, anti-war protests, as well as the gay and feminist liberation movements. It was also a time when the downtown art world was very experimental” (WWFD). Hammond credits the feminist movement for allowing her to come out, both as an artist and as an individual. She joined an art CR (Consciousness Raising) group and in 1972 and she became the co-founder of A.I.R., the first women’s cooperative art gallery in New York. It was there in 1973, where Hammond presented her first solo show in NYC (Art in America). As a noted feminist, Hammond was significant in simultaneously contributing to both the feminist and lesbian art movements, she is quoted as declaring, “You know the WLM (Women Liberation Movement) saying, ‘Feminism is the theory, lesbianism the practice’” (WWFD). And Hammond followed through both in practice and in theory. By 1975 she began to teach at Sagaris an educational institute and think tank for radical feminist political thought and she also became a contributor to Heresies, a feminist publication on art and politics (HarmonyHammond).  

Wrappings: Essays on Feminism, Art and the Martial Arts, 

(TSL Press, 1984), a classic on 70s feminist art, is out-of-print.  

The feminist movement and those who identify as feminist seek a universal progression of the status of women and gender related issues. As a society, we are uncomfortable with what does not meet heteronormative standards. Moreover, heteronormativity is not inherently political as it is an inevitable social principle. Hammond profoundly identified with the political and cultural movements happening in New York during 1960s and 70s, she maintains that it was through these movements that she and others like her where influenced in their art. Hammond wrote the “Feminist Artist Statement”, affirming, “I was influenced by and contributed to early feminist art projects. I painted on blankets, curtains, and bedspreads recycled from women friends, literally putting my life in my art” (Brooklyn Museum). She continued to assess in her mission statement that it was post-modernism’s emphasis on representation, which resulted in a misinterpretation of period’s cultural influences and experimentation contributing to art that was both conceptual and abstract (Brooklyn Museum). In 1977, Hammond published an essay in the Heresies, becoming of the first people to initiate the conversation of where feminist artist belong in the context of abstraction (Chadwick, 366). She argued, “that abstract art, which has often been used to further myth of the artist as an alienated and isolated (male) genius and has absorbed an illusion of apolitical “objectivity”, might instead be seen in relation to a history of women’s visual culture which has often utilized abstraction” (Chadwick, 366). As the personal has always been political, Hammond did not only accentuate feminist artist, but she was significant in highlighting the lives and work of lesbian women.

Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History, 2000– 

“The first history of lesbian art in the United States, this volume documents works 

since 1970 within the context of gay culture and political activism.”

As a Guggenheim fellow, Hammond is no stranger to acclaim. Throughout her artistic career, her abstract paintings, sculptures, monotypes, and her politically driven work have all been displayed in her over 30 solo exhibitions. Hammond’s work has been presented in galleries, museums, and not-for-profit spaces all around the world. She is a recipient of two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, and she has accepted various other fellowships and awards (HarmonyHammond). In Hammond‘s essay, "M(art)ial Engagements", she establishes, “I look for moments of engagement in art and life. Art makes connections. It is a tool. It is a weapon. It makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Both [art and the martial arts] are about occupying and negotiating space, moving through it, with an awareness of how you affect the world around you, moving with intent and ethical responsibility” (Eli Ivey). As a contemporary figure who continues to educate and to be present in the art and lesbian communities, Hammond provides invaluable firsthand accounts of her work, life, and experiences.

Harmony Hammond in her studio in 2010, photo by Judith Cooper

Correspondingly, both her personal website and in Whitney Chadwick’s book, Women, Art, and Society, Hammond is identified as an individual who leads to deconstruct the notion of “otherness” (Chadwick 13).  In the introduction of her biography on her official website, it states, “Considered a pioneer of the feminist art movement, she lectures, writes and publishes extensively on feminist art, lesbian art, and the cultural representation of ‘difference’” (HarmonyHammond). And in Chadwick, Hammond is quoted as asserting, “I see art-making, especially that which comes from the margins of the mainstream, as a site of resistance, a way of interrupting and intervening in those historical and cultural fields that continually exclude me, a sort of gathering of forces on the borders. For the dominant hegemonic stances that has worked to silence and subdue gender and ethnic difference has also silenced difference based on sexual preference” (Chadwick 13). In the context of gender, there is not a single country in the modern world where women are granted complete and identical opportunities as men, and while there is continuous improvement in some areas, women are still disadvantaged economically, socially, and politically. Nonetheless, gender and sexual orientation are only part of the dynamics of discrimination – race, ethnicity, class, disability, and age are all vital in understanding the overall temperament of inequalities faced by an individual. This analytical device that is used for a deep understanding of the different levels discrimination is a paradigm called, intersectionality. This research method recognizes how gender intersects with other human and social characteristics to determine how those traits become a factor in the degree of subjugation that one faces. It illustrates the idea that, "different dimensions of social life cannot be separated into discrete or pure strands" (O’Neill, 79). It is a feminist based theory, which holds emphasis in the concept that not a single grouping of social identity is essentially more important than any other when it comes to classifying multiple levels of intolerance whether it is the art world or as a guide based on our societal norms. 

Works Cited:

Brooklyn Museum. "Harmony Hammond." Brooklyn Museum. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Feminist Art Base: Harmony Hammond, n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Fourth ed. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007. Print.

Eli Ivey, Paul. "Harmony Hammond." Harmony Hammond: In the Succeeding Silence. Queer Cultural Center, n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

"Harmony Hammond." HarmonyHammond. Narrative Biography, n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

O'Neill, Michel. Health Promotion in Canada: Critical Perspectives. Toronto: Canadia Scholars', 2007.

We Who Feel Differently. "We Who Feel Differently - Home." INTERVIEWS Harmony Hammond. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.