Stephanie A. Karamitsos, The Art of Janine Antoni (dissertation)

429 Pages·2006·5.1 MB·English

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

The Art of Janine Antoni:
Labor, Gender and the Object of Performance

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Performance Studies

By

Stephanie Ann Karamitsos

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

June 2006

Volume I
© Copyright by Stephanie Ann Karamitsos 2005
All Rights Reserved

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ABSTRACT
The Art of Janine Antoni: Labor, Gender and the Object of Performance
Stephanie A. Karamitsos

The art of Janine Antoni (b. 1964) is prodigious in its multiplicity, multi-
layered in its concerns and allusions, and special in its performative character,
expanding upon and pointing beyond established artistic strategies and
categories. This study provides historical perspective to situate Antoni’s work
and recognize its specific contributions. Joseph Beuys’s pioneering efforts
marked a trend toward “dematerializing” art. The term “object art” became part of
a historical shift in artistic practices, as some artists appeared to dispense with
the object altogether, requiring new approaches to making and thinking about art.
Antoni shares Beuys’s interest in performance and the use of non-art materials.
While Beuys had a specific utopian political program, imagining art-making as
model for a new world and way of life, Antoni has identified her work with
feminism.
Antoni’s work explores conditions of labor, art and society and their
interrelationship, demonstrating how art is not simply about but of the world.
While Antoni’s work is not dedicated to eliminating or maintaining the separation
between art and life, it grants the distinction as a condition of modern or
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postmodern society. While art is not simply reducible to social categories, it is
related to and shaped by them in specific ways. Antoni’s work explores
categories of artistic production in the context of the social value and mediating
role of labor in modern society, where labor is peculiarly social and provides
categories for elaborating subjectivity (cf. Moishe Postone, 1993).
Antoni’s work has a critical relationship to historical feminist art and
discourse, challenging the views of some critics that miss the more sophisticated
aspects of her artistic strategies, which illuminate and seek to grasp issues of
gender in broader and deeper social context. Similarly, Antoni’s art relies on the
legacy of Minimalism, while pointing beyond it. Antoni elaborates on minimalist
forms and strategies; in each of Antoni’s works, “medium” is aligned with
laborious “method.” She complicates the original goal of viewer self-awareness
with her uniquely performative approach. While engaging such critical
performance, Antoni’s work remains committed to transformative production as
the practice of art.
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Acknowledgments
It is much easier to truly recognize the many and important contributions of
others after being able to step back for a moment from an endeavor such as this.
Those from Northwestern University include, first and foremost, my dissertation
advisor and chair Mary Zimmerman and the late Dwight Conquergood. I also
very much appreciate the efforts of the rest of my committee, Frank Galati and
Angela Rosenthal. I am grateful not only for the opportunity to work with
Professor Rosenthal when she was at Northwestern, but for her very generous
participation beyond her affiliation here. And, of course, I will always remember
the kind assistance of Alan Shefsky, who does so much for everyone in
Performance Studies.
I am very pleased and thankful for the opportunity to participate in
graduate seminars at the University of Chicago with Moishe Postone and
Kenneth Warren. I also am very grateful for the friendship and mentoring of
Adolph Reed, who first encouraged me to go back to graduate school.
I would very much like to thank the artist herself, Janine Antoni, who has
been most generous in working with me. I also am grateful to Luhring Augustine
and the kind assistance of the archivist there, Caroline Burghardt.
I owe a very deep personal debt to friends. Thank you so much Crystal,
Daniel, Reinessa, Mary Testa and Richard Berg. I am profoundly grateful to all of
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my immediate family for seeing me through this—including our newest family
member Maria Fotinopoulos.
Toward the goal of completing this project, I must save my deepest
personal thanks for my very dear friend and closest colleague, Christopher
Cutrone. His intellectual, emotional and practical support were required to see
me through this. Thank you for everything, Chris.

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In loving memory of my mother

Mary A. Karamitsos
(1931-2005)
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Table of Contents
VOLUME I
Abstract iii
Acknowledgments v
Dedication vii
List of Illustrations x

Chapter I: Introduction 1
Theoretical background and premises 3
Antoni’s Background and Career 8
Antoni and abstract labor 35
Outline of chapters 39
Chapter II: Art and Theory: Premises and Problems 43
The Interdisciplinary and the Dialectical 43
The Problem of Defining Art 47
The Crisis of Art: Modernism(s) and More 50
Historical Frameworks and Framing the Historical 64
Chapter III: Reading Antoni: Four Works 78
Butterfly Kisses 84
Slumber 91
Lick and Lather 109
Gnaw 136
Chapter IV: Janine Antoni and Joseph Beuys 156
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VOLUME II
Chapter V: Antoni, Gender and Feminist Discourse 190
Antoni Amid the Feminists 191
Gender Illusions: Mom and Dad 209
Feminine morphology, mythology and Antoni’s Cradle 218
Collaboration: Target (Do It Yourself) 226
Collaboration: Womanhouse 239
Situating Gender and Femininity 249
Chapter VI: Antoni: More or Less Minimalist 269
Wherefore Minimalism 270
Feminism takes on the minimalist “problem” 280
Narrow Vision Feminism 295
Minimalism: Discourse and Beyond 300
Minimalism: Objects and Contexts 312
Situating Gender and Masculinity 327
Conclusion 337
Illustrations: Works by Antoni 354
Bibliography 376
Appendix: Illustrations: works by various artists 390
ix
List of Illustrations

Works by Janine Antoni (alphabetical by title) 354
and 355
Butterfly Kisses 356
Chocolate Gnaw 357
Cradle 358
Eureka 359
Grope 360
Lard Gnaw 361
Lick and Lather 362
Lipstick Display 364
Loving Care 365
Mom and Dad 366
Moor 369
Slumber 371
Unveiling 374
Wean 375
x