ITHACA REGAINED

GREEK ARTISTS IN NEW YORK

Lynda Benglis

Tempest (Juliet), 1990
Stainless steel mesh and aluminum, 84 x 78 x 18 inches

An eminent sculptor and videomaker for more than three decades, Lynda Benglis produced a pioneering body of feminist video in the 1970s. Immediate and visceral, Benglis's video work confronts issues raised by feminist theory, including the representation of women, the role of the spectator, and female sexuality. Over a 35-year-long career she has almost single-handedly articulated what could be called the erotics of Anti-Form. Her work is about movement, but movement of a particularly Dionysian sort -- her materials flow and drip, they sparkle and shine, they twist and turn into amorous postures. In contrast to the masculine discipline of Minimalism, Benglis brings a distinctly female focus to the Postminimalist "process and materials" sensibility that succeeded it, as Robert G. Edelman noted.

Born in 1941 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, her ancestors came from Kastellorizo, an island off the Anatolian coast, where Benglis owns a home. In her work, formal and emotional relationships to ancient Greek or Byzantine art are found in the Caryatids on the Acropolis and the gold and gilded elements of the Greek Orthodox religion.

She studied art at Newcomb College in New Orleans, and in the early 1960s moved to the East Coast, where she was profoundly affected by the Abstract Expressionists in New York.