Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Feminist Art Base: Eunice Golden

Born in New York City, Eunice Golden departed from her early studies in psychology at the University of Wisconsin to focus on her artwork. As a figurative expressionist, she eschewed pop and minimal art, and explored sexuality depicting the male nude. In the 1960’s, as her marriage was dissolving, Golden’s dramatic artwork converged with and paralleled the ideas expressed by the women’s liberation movement. In 1971, Golden joined the Ad Hoc Committee for Women’s Art spearheaded by Lucy Lippard. In 1973, she joined the Fight Censorship group and was a founder of the women’s co-op gallery Soho20, where her work was exhibited for nearly a decade. She attracted significant media attention including the New York Times, Art Forum, Ms. Magazine, and New York Magazine. Her revolutionary art, “Male Landscapes,” created a buzz among art historians who were documenting the emergence of feminist artists. “If feminism is a consideration in assessing Golden’s work, it is because she deals explicitly with sex.” As opposed to other women artists, Golden seriously questioned what it meant to be a woman. (Art Forum, 1974) Golden’s controversial and radical work challenged entrenched ideologies which excluded her from some museums and galleries. In 1973, a curator at the Whitney proposed her work for an exhibition, which was denied. Later, Golden met a male curator who was on the selection committee, and he accusingly said: “What makes you think you can paint male nudes better than men can?” Subsequently, in 1977, the Whitney did include her signature work, “Landscape 160”, in “Nothing But Nudes,” which was applauded in Art International by Carter Ratcliff. Throughout the 1980’s, Golden’s work evolved from body landscapes and portraits, to satiric anthropomorphic studies. She also wrote a seminal article on the male nude in Heresies. The untimely death of Golden’s son in the 1990’s had a profound and devastating impact. Golden sought refuge in East Hampton where she produced her elegiac, “Swimmers” series, based on the Mother and Child theme. This artistic departure was a rebirth in her life and work. A major retrospective was launched in 2000 at the Westbeth Gallery, NYC featuring three decades of Golden’s work. In 2003, Holland Cotter in the New York Times hailed Golden’s mini-survey of 1960’s and 1970’s work at the Mitchell Algus Gallery, Chelsea. In addition, Golden was included in “Personal & Political: The Women’s Art Movement 1969-1975,” at East Hampton’s Guild Hall Museum.

In the 1960’s, while painting the male anatomy, I didn’t consider that it would be construed as heretical and revolutionary. Stifled by the existing definitions of wife and mother, this work was a stream of consciousness outpouring of emotionally and sensually charged images that reflected who I was: a heterosexual woman with erotic needs and fantasies, yet struggling to redefine myself. My artistic intention was not political. In retrospect, I saw that I had unwittingly addressed, on a subliminal level, ideologies, experiences, and perceptions of a broad audience. Suddenly I was engaged in dialogue, thrust against a backdrop of controversy and censorship. I catapulted into the women’s movement, wrestling with the salient socio-political issues regarding cultural and political change. Many feminist artists were asserting their experiences by creating “central core imagery” which was decidedly autoerotic. My work, “Male Landscapes”, addressed the “phallacy” of male power – its vulnerability to and dependence on a female audience. I as a woman became the voyeur – my powerful erotic gaze was fixed upon the male – which was a strike against the historical bias of the male nude as a subject for women artists. As my work evolved, the body remained the vehicle, the experience-acquiring medium, and the very core of my art. I conceived the human form as a landscape where sensual and spiritual messages leap and interconnect – a psychosexual Gestalt where the wires of our human architecture spark with vital physicality, powerful emotions, and an energizing erotic force. Distance is eliminated and the viewer’s own experience is ignited. Body experience is central to an understanding of my photographic and cinematic works. Here I explore the flesh as a canvas – embellished with paint, text, and food. All these works have aspects of symbolic behavior, expressing the basic and primal, and the universal nature of rituals. There exists a strong continuity within my oeuvre. The “Male Landscapes” made the sexual colossal, yet intimate. Works that followed capture the immediacy of closeness, from the portraits of mother/son/daughter, to the anthropomorphic studies, and the swimmer’s series which was influenced by the untimely death of my son. In current works, I have delved into yet another metamorphosis of visceral sensation in surreal abstract forms. For all the apparent differences in style, content, or technique, the common thread in all my work is the power of intimacy. ? 2007 Eunice Golden