5 things Martha Rosler taught us about war, women and cooking

“Pretty much everyone hated my work when I made it, except for feminists,” Martha Rosler told the New York Times earlier this month. Like with many great artists, Rosler’s work might not have been appreciated when it was first made, but with a major retrospective, entitled Irrespective, currently showing at New York’s Jewish Museum, it looks like her time is definitely now. Famed for her unique brand of protest art produced since the ’60s to the present day, Rosler tackles political causes from the Vietnam War to the American feminist movement with photomontage that evokes the energy of Dada. In this sense, she’s not the first to use collage for political ends – Hannah Höch had it pretty well covered in 1920s Germany – but she’s impressive in her ability to turn her hand to different mediums (including film, installation and photography also, and instilling each with vital matters of social justice. Along the way, she’s taught us many lessons about engaging with contemporary politics, so, we decided to take a look back at some of our favourite Rosler creations, and recap on what we’ve learned from her about sticking it to the man.

One cause is not enough

Political movements, especially female-centric ones, are always being told to hold off protests and focus on the greater good – the American feminist movement of the 1960s was no exception and was advised to help the Vietnam War effort. Martha Rosler’s photomontages, however, address multiple political issues simultaneously, proving you don’t need to choose one social cause to support at a time, because, let’s face it, there’re always plenty terrible things going on in the world. Her collection House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home is a perfect example, combining mass media images of the Vietnam War with satirical domestic interiors and picture-perfect housewives, a juxtaposition which simultaneously critiques American involvement in Vietnam, the superficiality of the “American Dream” and dated gender stereotypes. Though, ironically, Rosler’s trinity of themes does validate one age old stereotype – women sure are good at multitasking.

Try new things…

Although Rosler is arguably best known for her critical, antiwar collages harking back to the politically-charged days of Dada, she also fearlessly embraced new mediums to achieve similar satirical ends. Rosler was part of the first generation to use consumer-oriented video equipment for art, and her seminal short film Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), pokes fun at popular domestic TV programmes like those starring Julia Child as well as late-night cooking shows.

… but never be afraid to go back to tried and tested methods

With the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan bearing many parallels to America’s interference in Vietnam, Rosler returned to combining consumerist imagery with graphic war scenes to create jarring photomontages, and highlight the terrors, often ignored by a superficial Western society, in the early twentieth century. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Her work Photo Op (2004), for example, is one of the most haunting and insightful of her anti-Afghanistan/Iraq works. A peroxide blonde glamour girl,  à la Paris Hilton, poses for a selfie in her designer home, ignorant of the shadows of tanks, armed soldiers and IEDs just outside her windows, not to mention the two blood spattered girls collapsed on her perfectly appointed chairs. Whilst the antiwar message screams from this potent photomontage, Rosler’s work still comments on women’s roles. The female protagonist of the image may no longer be restricted to wearing A-line skirts and wielding a hoover, she’s still a product of societal expectations. She’s draped in a satin minidress that clings to her defined derrière, and is consumed by the picture of a man on her phone, suggesting that traditional gender power dynamics haven’t changed as much as we’d like to think.   

Reading is the key to knowledge

In her series Off the Shelf  Rosler displays photographs of a variety of books from her travelling library. The titles and subjects are varied and far reaching and include everything from science fiction novels to meditations on the history of slavery, showing that Rosler hit the library hard to develop the well-informed opinions that permeate her artworks.

Don’t get complacent

Rosler’s recent works prove that the fight against social injustice is never over. Vietnam may be over and the fighting may have changed in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Rosler continues to critique society’s agenda. For her next target, she’s chosen Donald Trump in Point ‘n’ Shoot (2016), which combines an image of the then presidential candidate with a disturbing quote from his campaign rally –“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters” – and the names of unarmed Americans of colour who have died in police custody.  Sometimes, you don’t have to tell people what you think about policy; giving them a platform can be a great way to capture them shooting themselves in the foot.

“Martha Rosler: Irrespective” runs at The Jewish Museum, New York through 3rd March 2019.

All works by Martha Rosler, courtesy of The Jewish Museum.