

While reading about Ana Mendieta, I realized that the male-dominated, “dematerialization” trend in art that started in the 1960’s is something that I am interested in further exploring and analyzing through the art of Ana Mendieta and Robert Smithson. I will focus on how Mendieta’s use of negative space and her body in land art has left her in the shadow of Smithson’s aggressive manipulation and fabrication of the earth in art history.
As Blocker mentions in her text, “Where Is Ana Mendieta?” the post 1960’s trend amongst artists was to eliminate the art object and redefine the “art experience” for a variety of different reasons.
“…artists, inflamed over the economic involvement of art institutions in the Vietnam War, distrustful of the commodification of art, or angered by the racism, sexism, and elitism of gallery and museum exhibitions, tested a variety of ways to democratize and disseminate the art experience. Conceptual art, earthworks, installations, video, body art, and performance all worked actively to redefine the spaces in which art was viewed and to integrate the audience into the process of artistic production.” (pg. 5).
In this way, the artists of this time period were critiquing the art world itself, attempting to redefine what art was traditionally known as; the commoditized object. Mendieta’s work was especially engaging to read about in this article, since her work was about the absence of her human form imprinted in the earth, something that could not be removed from it’s site specific location and sold as a commodity. Other artists were interested in this subversion of the art as “object” as well, taking the exhibition of artwork out of the traditional gallery or museum and creating art experiences elsewhere.
While I was reading about this historical account of the 1970’s anti-commodity “earth art” movement, I realized that in the past, Mendieta was only vaguely discussed as a contributing artist to this movement in my various art history classes. When I first learned about earth art, I studied Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Robert Morris’ Observatory in the Netherlands, and Andy Goldsworthy’s handmade walkways and flower sculptures. While I think all of these artists have made interesting work that should be discussed and studied, I find it somewhat offensive that Ana Mendieta was mostly left out of this dialogue, especially since she was making equally important and engaging work as her male colleagues. Although there was this movement to eliminate the sexism and racism in the art world, the traditionally white, male-dominated practice still seems to take precedent. I think this realization lends itself well to the title of Blocker’s article, “Where is Ana Mendieta?” Why do I not remember learning about Ana Mendita? Why do I remember the endless hours I spent watching the Spiral Jetty film in both art history and film classes, but do not remember looking at any film documentation or slides of Mendieta’s work?
Perhaps the answer lies in the two different ways in which the two artists were making their art. While Mendieta certainly manipulated the earth to make her work (carving out an impression of her silhouette in the ground, setting the earth ablaze, etc), the finality of the piece focused more on the negative space that her body took up within the earth, creating an interesting union between herself and the land. As Blocker states, Mendieta influenced a kind of anthropomorphism with the earth. “To anthropomorphize the earth is to endow it with sentience, desire, and identity; it is to think of earth more than merely a sculptural material.” (pg. 18). While Mendieta worked with the earth in a somewhat spiritual exchange, Smithson was using the earth solely as sculptural material. His piece Spiral Jetty is less about the union of the artist and the earth and more about the power struggle between man and nature: man builds structure by manipulating the earth and, over time, the earth changes that structure through erosion and natural decay.
Posner reflects on the exchange between the self and world in her text, “The Self and The World: Negotiating Boundaries in the Art of Yayoi Kusama, Ana Mendieta, and Francesca Woodman.”
“As the projected site of heterosexual male desire, women Surrealists had to struggle to liberate themselves from the passive object position and assume the role of active subject. To reclaim their own image, unlike their male counterparts, these artists explored their inner life and external reality through frequent recourse to the self-portrait or self-representation.” (pg. 159).
This exploration of the self in female artists’ work perhaps seemed less intellectual and more emotional in the eyes of critics. While perhaps Smithson represented the “powerful-yet-humble” artist working with the earth, Mendieta potentially represented the female artist exploring the earth and her connection to it, a notion that could be seen as flighty or unstable.
Both artists were working in a time when the larger community of artists were working against the traditional modes of art-making and both were certainly influential in their contribution to the anti-commodity movement. While I do appreciate Smithson’s work, I am somewhat resentful of the fact that women like Mendieta can still be overlooked in the art history classroom as important contributors to this specific art movement of the 1970’s.
*Mendieta photo taken from http://reconstruction.eserver.org
*Smithson photo taken from http://www2.warwick.ac.uk