Lynda Benglis in Bowery studio. ca. 1981 Photo by Hans Namuth
“I think pleasure is very important in life. Art deals in pleasure.” Sitting in front of her “Graces” sculptures, tinged purple by the shadows of light through polyurethane, Lynda Benglis is emphatic about this. Speaking before the opening of a major retrospective at the Hepworth Wakefield, pleasure manifests itself throughout her work, not least in the range and tactility of materials used.
To many, Benglis is perhaps most famous for her iconic “Centrefold” piece of 1974. You might be familiar with the image. Wielding an impressively long dildo, and naked but for a pair of heart-shaped glasses and some impressive tan lines, the artist’s statement was a provocative “eff-you” to the male-dominated art scene of the time. The piece was actually a paid-for, two-page advert in “Art Forum”, and is briefly examined through archival material in the exhibition space. (“Centrefold” is placed next to one of the five bronze dildos she cast after the uproar; titled “Smile”, it gives you a good idea about her sense of humour.) The image has become an icon of 20th century feminist art, and rightly so, remaining as provocative now as it was forty years ago. Others might be aware of her deliciously tactile ‘fallen paintings’ and metal ‘pours.’ The influence of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings is a given here, although this is one shot through with the colours of an ice-cream parlour. Take that, minimalism!
This show is an excellent and timely showcase of the artist’s work, which has not, until now, been the subject of a major exhibition in the UK. Spanning fifty years of her career until the present moment, it divides the work into the locations that have influenced it. With studios in Santa Fe, Ahmedabad in India, Kastellorizo in Greece and New York City, Benglis’ work reflects the changing landscape through colour, texture and the materials used. That’s why the Hepworth Wakefield, with its boat-strewn river and sleek industrial edifice, feels so particularly suited. Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures are also happy neighbours.
Lynda Benglish 1970, originally published in Life. Feb. 1970. Photo by Henry Groskinsky. ©Life Inc. image courtesy the artist and Cheim & Read, New York.
Sleek’s personal favourites are the wax paintings and latex ‘pours,’ closely followed by her curiously arterial ceramics from New Mexico. The show also includes two video works, although there was a sense of being left wanting more. “Female Sensibility” (1973), in which she passionately kisses the artist Marylin Lenkowsky, is an unashamedly erotic piece. Ceramics, paper works, wax paintings, giant lanterns, and her carnivalesque fans, such as “Zanzidae: Peacock Series” (1979) also feature. The latter piece was inspired by the artist’s regular trips to India – a giddy wire fan of colours, threads and the sort of colourful plastic string that’s reminiscent of friendship bracelets.
The evocatively titled “Night Sherbert A” (1968) makes me think of dirty melted ice-cream: poured polyutherane foam and phosphorescence is painted in striking Day-Glo pigments, each colour appearing in two tones with small bubbles set into the surface. “Quartered Meteor” (1969/1975) is one of Benglis’ more extra-terrestrial ones. Reminiscent of molten lava frozen into a state of permanent ooze, it’s a deceptive object. The piece weighs a tonne, and yet I can’t help but think of the sticky pink mucus of the 1958 science fiction film “The Blob” (otherwise known as, appropriately, “The Molten Meteor”).
Lynda Benglis, Wing, 1970. Cast aluminium. Image courtesy the artist and Cheim & Read, New York.
As the show’s curator Andrew Bonacina tells us, the works on show reference both the body and nature. Her wax paintings, for example, layer carvings of encaustic pigmented bees wax and Damar resin in the form of totemic lozenges. They resemble tubular growths, or patches of mushrooms growing under the folds of a damp trunk. Benglis’ unusual ceramics are exceptionally bodily, reflecting the tell-tale signs of an artist grappling physically (and sensually) with her materials. There are thumb-prints, signs of dripping paint, and the shattered surfaces of lacquer. Several of these works resemble ruptured vessels or arteries, empty veins with the seeming buoyancy of something living and yet splitting right there at the seams.
At the end of a group discussion at the opening, Benglis gives us helpful suggestions for how we might think about these works. “Think of diving! Think of sea creatures! Think of rocks and caves!…Think of tying your shoelaces!” and “not knowing what to do sometimes and just doing it!” It’s probably one of the best statements I’ve heard an artist use about their work. And it works. These are works that make you want to get your hands dirty, maybe even scuff up your shoelaces.
Text by Sophia Satchell-Baeza
“Lynda Benglis” is on at Hepworth Wakefield until 1 July 2015
More: read a full interview with Lynda Benglis in the next issue of Sleek
More: review of “Adventures of The Black Square” on now at the Whitechapel