The Giant Women Who Stomped on Art World Invisibility

A compact exhibition with a massive presence, Giant Women on New York at James Fuentes Gallery takes its name from a series of drawings and collages by Anita Steckel. In Steckel’s works, dating from 1969 to ’74, women the size of skyscrapers overtake New York City, their voluptuous curves challenging the authority of the phallic buildings.

The seven artists in the show, each represented by a single, exceptional work, were all part of the city’s landscape of feminist artists in the 1960s and ’70s. And all of their renderings of women — here, nude, in moments of intimacy and discomfort — serve as rejoinders to the artists’ invisibility in a male-dominated art world.

Every work in this one-room show could be in a museum, and all the artists are art-world heavyweights (Alice Neel, Louise Bourgeois, Nancy Spero) or should be (Joan Semmel, Martha Edelheit, Juanita McNeely, and Steckel). So it’s all the more poignant that the overriding sensibilities seem to be malaise, melancholy, and anxiety. 

In Neel’s “Ruth Nude” (1964), a blond woman sits with her legs open, exposing her vagina, but any sexual charge is diffused by her sideward, seemingly preoccupied glance. In an online talk about the painting, Helen Molesworth notes that “it is not the male gaze” at work here. At the same time, the relationship between the female artist and subject clearly hasn’t translated into the solid, grounded visual space of idealized feminism; Neel paints Ruth within an abstracted sphere, her outstretched hands looking for something to grip in the morass.

McNeely’s “Window Shadow: Chameleon on Woman’s Face” (1975) ratchets up the anxiety. A nude woman is suspended upside down, one arm reaching out, a pained expression on her face, and a chameleon sitting on her mouth. The diagonal, shadowy backdrop recalls film noir, except the shadows are lilac instead of black, suggesting feminine domesticity (underscored by the shapes of potted plants). It’s a terrifying image of a woman silenced and unmoored.

Even Joan Semmel’s erotically charged art is strangely cold here. Two intertwined crimson bodies crowding the space are bordered by clammy turquoise. Three women are sketched atop the main image, all looking sullen, as if we’re witnessing the afterlives of the sexual encounter.

In Steckel’s photo collage “Giant Women on New York (Coney Island)” (1973), an almost cartoonish drawing of a nude woman with the artist’s face lies across the Coney Island beach while people go about their business, unaware. Steckel, who regularly integrated humor and sexuality into her work, was among the most defiant feminist artists of her time. The importance of her messaging is just beginning to take root. Here, she adopts a different attitude toward women’s exclusion in the art world, and beyond: Because no one is interested in her, she can do what she wants, so she takes over the whole beach. Maybe Steckel’s strategy can be a lesson for all of us today.

Giant Women on New York continues at James Fuentes Gallery (52 White Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through April 19. The exhibition was organized by Laura Brown.