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Nancy Spero
Nancy Spero, We are Pro-Choice, 1992, Color silkscreen, 16 x 25 1/2". President's Fund for Art Purchases
About the Artist
"Even when the work is celebratory I still hope it has subversion to it, in that all the protagonists are women. That it is we who are the activators. That is not the usual way of the world, but it's symbolic of the way the world could be." Nancy Spero (1)
"...Spero's persistence in questioning the images, forms and functions of her art resulted in a body of work that communicates joy, humanity and integrity." Susan Harris, Art in America (2)
"And words continue to do battle with images in one of my favorites, no doubt intended to inspire fear in male art critics: "Let the priest tremble, we're going to show them our sexts!"...Spero offers us an austere splendor: like Blake or Redon, she has gone through a black period and is only now blossoming into a brave new world of color. Yet what a pleasure it is to see an art that is not for immediate consumption but for the ages, a visionary art that is not just for girls but for Beuys, too." Brook Adams, Print Collector's Newsletter (3)
Nancy Spero is an artist who works in many media, from installation to object based art to printmaking, both traditional and experimental. We Are Pro-Choice is a print. Spero's work contains imagery drawn from a variety of sources, ancient history to fashion magazines, and is treated in a way that is not traditionally associated with print making. The print for her is the seed; she combines text, type, imagery and reworks her art, creating pieces that are initially prints but then become an amalgam of printing, drawing and painting. She over-prints, draws, types and paints on the prints. What is considered a finished print by most people is the starting point for Spero.
Also, Spero is concerned with work of a political nature. The depiction of the female form is one that has occupied her (maybe even preoccupied her) for a long time and, particularly, the idea of the female form being depicted by a male artist. She makes art that is freed from this "male gaze", art that is done by a woman for other women. This approach may be considered exclusive but really it is not. Anyone can approach the work and become involved with it. In the case of We Are Pro-Choice, it is a combination of images of women from the ages. They are removed from their historical context and plopped down on the page, almost delighting in their freedom. Spero has chosen the images and arranged them such that they activate the space in which they exist, exhibiting a freedom that comes from the unity of the female images shorn, by their seemingly random juxtaposition, of the baggage of the past.
Although it is whimsical, there is a message being broadcast, there is "subversion". In light of Spero's concerns, why are the women so happy? They have been given an ideal world, a blank page literally, in which to define themselves, as opposed to a world that, in Spero's terms, defines them. Their existence on the page and the vibrancy that comes from it is "symbolic of the way the world could be".
Notes
(1) Golub, Leon and Spero, Nancy, Leon Golub and Nancy Spero - War and Memory, (MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge), 1994, p.57
(2) Harris, Susan, Review, (Art in America, N.Y.), January 1997, p. 92
(3)Adams, Brook, Review, (Print Collector's Newsletter, Inc., N.Y.), vol. 17, March/April 1986, p. 11
Suggested Reading
Leon Golub and Nancy Spero - War and Memory, (MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge), 1994
Bird, Isaak and Lotringer, Nancy Spero, (Phaidon Press, Ltd., London), 1996
Michael Stevenson
Research Assistant
Graduate Student - Painting and Drawing
Spring