Who's Bad?

Survey shows typically serve to disappoint. It is the nature of a beast that seeks to recommend the newest, the best and brightest to a vast audience which is often divided as to what is a legitimate and necessary adage to art history. One only need look at the mixed responses to Documenta IX (Eurocentric and exclusive) and the 1993 Whitney Biennial (inclusive to a fault), to ascertain the impossibility of satisfying the needs of a community by representing 'all' with 'some'. We asked critics, artists and gallerists to opine on the latest curatorial construction - 'Bad Girls'. Three shows, one theme, two countries. Shows that sought to free up women by devising a female replication of a brash posture which has often translated into success. While some enjoyed the notion of co-opting the 'Bad Boys' stance, others were less comfortable with the exhibitions' attempts to represent women in the arts as if they were all aligned as one. A show that purports to break the rules only creates another set. If 'Bad Girls' accomplishes anything it may signify the end to the temptation to gather together a group of diverse talents and hang a carnivalesque label around their necks.

I know it's an idea about attitude, but I don't think the concept worked. The title 'Bad Girls' stresses an infantile, naughty, rebellious posture whereas there was actually a very serious and powerful thrust to a lot of work in the show. I suppose it aimed at trying to finding a young audience who are going to respond because it feels trendy - the rationale being not to look didactic, agit-propish or oppressive when certain aspects of feminism could be seen to be all of these things.

There is a kind of anger, a very crude, loud aspect to some of this work, which is important because it refuses to let things lie. It's almost saying you can't afford to be complacent. That's a significant gesture in the face of the backlash embodied in the term 'PC'. Women still have an appalling self-image. They still cannot find themselves represented on any equal footing. I'm interested in the way that Spike Lee has used mass media to create black heroes and reveal an obscured history, and perhaps we can learn from this. Maybe advances could be made by disinterring the invisible histories of women. We are still very much in the heart of the struggle. Unfortunately the concept of 'Bad Girls' feels like a by-line for a fashion magazine, another item for a consumer society and that's problematic.

Iwona Blazwick is a curator and critic who lives in London.

I've never known an exhibition where so much discussion focused on the title. It was curious, since most titles are pretty terrible, and most exhibition concepts are really just crude pegs to facilitate real encounters between artworks and viewers. In this case, I did think it was a cheap hook, but as a marketing ploy, it worked - the audiences were extraordinary. Even so, I did feel ambivalent about my work being presented under the 'Bad Girls' rubric. To a large extent the title eclipsed any real debate around the work, which was a shame. At a conference at the ICA, the main area of discussion was the definition of a politically correct exhibition. It reminded me of the Labour party purging itself over and over again, and failing to tackle the real issues. Good old sisters ripping into each other yet again.

Helen Chadwick is an artist who lives in London.

The bi-coastal 'Bad Girls' museum package in the US illustrates an instance of extreme cultural anxiety. It incorporates the rupture between something radical which is occurring - the arrival of a generation of women who feel entitled to be artists, to be lesbian, to refuse motherhood, to denounce Euro-derivative aesthetics, to in a generalised sense, live for ourselves as freely as we can - and the backlash against us. Self-affirmative actions, beliefs, and art-making were wrought through intense personal and political struggles by some women during the 70s, but now constitute a point of departure, rather than a goal to be arrived at, for more women today. While cognisant that 'something is happening,' the museum apparatus retains its allegiance to the conservative economic and ideological basis of our society through its deployment of a curatorial framework constructed from a white, heterosexual, middle-class, 50s idea of what a woman is, can, or should be.

'Bad Girls' offers some of the artistic products of feminism's partial success in the form of an apology, a laugh. The 70s genesis of female-empowered art production has been elided and lesbian-affirmative art is censored through a combination of omission and misrepresentation (while 'gay boy' art is included, though also misrepresented). Rather than focusing the exhibition within an acknowledgement of a feminist historical continuum, or toward the current demands feminism is making on art and society, the curators try to appeal to the tritest cliché of male chauvinist charges - that feminists have no sense of humour. The girlie giggle, an unconscious social signifier women deliver as a sign that you (men) need not take us seriously, is put forward as the controlling rhetoric. This 'It's So Funny!' curatorial posture betrays both feminism and art: none of the artists included in this exhibition is either a failed or an aspiring comedian and all are undeservedly trivialised by this mockery.

Laura Cottingham is a critic who lives in New York.

Dear ICA/Wight Art Gallery/New Museum of Contemporary Art,

I hate to complain. A 'bad girl' wouldn't bother. She'd just give you the finger, and you'd love that, wouldn't you? Sharon Stone could re-enact the scene, Annie Leibovitz could take the photograph, a hand-picked committee could draft the wall label, the trustees could cheer as Naomi Wolf commented upon the acquisition in the New York Times, the curators could hover smugly around the piece at the opening, and then they could unceremoniously dump it after the closing. It was old news anyway, a token of the raunchiness of post-post-feminism. Just another anachronistic embarrassment amid the new sobriety of post-post-post-feminism. Most people know that art by women isn't a good long-term investment, anyway.

So listen, I won't complain. I'll just make a statement or two, though there's very little to say about 'Bad Girls' that isn't already insanely obvious. At once demeaning, insidious, simplistic, misogynistic and infantilising, the label is as multifarious as the gifted women it seeks to straightjacket. It is less about art than advertising. The art is, in fact, rendered invisible by the mushrooming phenomenon - or rather, by the bloated rhetoric thereof. The 'Bad Girls' phenomenon/trend/movement/whatever, testifies to the art world's long-standing (and easily appeased) appetite for novelty, especially if it's liberally flavoured with irreverence. Nothing, after all, goes down more easily and comes out the other end more quickly - as homogenous muck to be dispensed with once and for all - than novelty. Who could have possibly come up with a better strategy than this one for ensuring that subversive, feminist work won't be taken seriously? Hats off to you, I suppose - and caveat emptor to the rest of us.

Sincerely,

Susan Kandel

Susan Kandel is a critic who lives in Los Angeles.

I suppose the 'Bad Girls' curators were trying to reflect a loosening up within feminism and feminist visual culture, but the show looked like an old-fashioned idea of the avant-garde, which for women is always sex. I don't like to think that women's only way of expressing themselves is simply through showing themselves being sexual. I just get bored of it. There are more ways of being bad than exclusively focusing on sexuality. But it wasn't just a fault of this exhibition. A supposedly deviant sexuality has recently moved centre stage, which is fine - if people want to fuck each other with 18-inch dildos I'm very happy for them. I just don't want them to tell me that this is changing the world, because I don't think it is.

The problem with the focus on sex and desire is that it always ends up as an issue about the individual, but individuals cannot do that much about the crucial problems that face women. These issues are not particularly sexy - they are things like adequate provision for childcare. I know I sound like an old Marxist, but these problems can only be solved through some kind of collective action, not through fucking your girlfriend up the arse with a dildo. Even Riot Grrrls will eventually need someone to look after their babies while they go out rioting.

Suzanne Moore is a critic who lives in London.

This is a show that Esquire would dig. A friend sent me a flyer for it and she scrawled on the outside 'Pretty Horrible,' which I think might have been a more apt title for this show. Damn it's discouraging to know that female anger is still so threatening that sappy attempts like this rage on - to corral it, sanitise it, to heterosexualise it, to sell tickets and declare 'it's over', we did that last year.

Eileen Myles is a poet and critic who lives in New York.

'Bad Girls.' The title says it all. The New Museum and UCLA's Wight Art Gallery exhibitions take on feminism and the art world in broad, almost slapstick strokes. Irreverence mixed with acting-out was once upon a time considered baseline subversion. But that time wasn't the 90s, and inevitably there's a sense of nostalgia clinging to this show. A sense of retro infantilism, too: everything's not funny, and not everyone shares the humour, or the largesse, of this generous show that stretches definitions far enough to encompass the dubious inclusion of male artists and wants humour to have consequences beyond its rather accommodating means. Along the way, though, some deservedly championed and powerful work is getting a showing.

The show's not perfect. The show's not half bad. Its trashing is yet another exercise in déjà vu, this time back to the feminist brand of punitive polemic that once drove women right out of the 'women's movement,' rushing in terror for the exits, and more recently yielded the 'political correctness' of the 90s. In the era of Camille Paglia and Katie Roiphe, do I really want 'Bad Girls' as my target? No, I don't. This is not villainy, girls. Get real. It's a show that seeks to shake up some categories, and put a lot of work on display. Bahktinesque, if you like. It's a show by curators, not academics or activists. It doesn't claim to be prescriptive. And I, for one, am happy to see progressive women seize back the messy ground of 'political incorrectness' so well claimed by our mortal enemies.

B. Ruby Rich is a critic who lives in San Francisco.

Judging a two-part exhibition after seeing only the first half may seem unfair. It is possible, however, to grasp the curatorial premise of 'Bad Girls' from the first instalment (curatorial premises do not change half-way, do they?) And it is the very concept of the show - the so-called 'humorous approach' - that I find the most objectionable. Some artworks selected are genuinely funny, others are not. Embellishing everything in the fun-house, mass media atmosphere, and a barrage of Letterman-style (but not Letterman-quality) jokes on the subject, flattens, trivialises if not outright demeans the best, most complex art in the show. A major, well researched and historically sound show of women's work organised by a visible institution is desperately needed. Unfortunately, 'Bad Girls' does not fit the bill.

Magdalena Sawon is director of Postmasters Gallery, New York.

I never had a problem with the 'Bad Girls' title. It was one of the men at the ICA who argued that it infantilised women, but as the title was thought up by women I really disagree. I would also deny that it was marketing-driven, although it did work extremely well from that perspective. I think it's to do with women not being afraid, acknowledging their power and seeing how frightening it can be. Unfortunately I think this power is still seen by men as something that needs to be controlled.

'Bad Girls' was a license to be bad in the broadest sense. You can be bad by being provocative, or by being sexy. As most of our daily lives are influenced by sex, inevitably the subject comes into it. But it was also about being politically bad, about pointing a finger at the political correctness of 70s feminism. I know that some of the artists in the exhibition had problems being seen as 'bad girls', but if the title had something that caught people's imagination in a positive way, it's been worth doing.

Katy Sender is Director of Marketing at the ICA, London.

'Bad Girls'... what are they? I need to protect myself from shows like this, they make me ashamed. It's that kind of embarrassment you feel when your parents try disco dancing at a wedding reception or use slang words or something. You know they mean well but you wish they wouldn't...it's so inappropriate. Maybe I'm over sensitive, but there are harmless transgressions that can really give one the willies...such as the 'Bad Girls' concept, invented and enthusiastically embraced by the institutional circuit. It's out of touch and not so harmless either. Herding women together into big group shows is never a good idea, as it reinforces the perception that women are just a herd (or hoard), not individuals like males, with varying degrees of talent or potential for genius. An air of phoney camaraderie pervades the whole 'Bad Girls' endeavour. To encourage female bonding (networking) in a professional context is good, and needed for artistic growth and career development, but it's most effective when it is genuine and artist-driven, not idiotically forced into institutional parodies like this. The work is not 'bad' enough, it's creepily safe or academically naughty, neutralised further by the didactic museum context. The test for me is to think, if I were a man, a regular complacent art world guy, would I find any of this remotely unsettling, would it change the way I think? I doubt it.

Nicola Tyson is an artist and co-director of Trial Balloon gallery, New York.

The 'Bad Girls' title works in the same way as 'queer'. It takes words with pejorative connotations ('bad' and 'girl) and reclaims them as positive terms. National papers and magazines are now using the label as if everyone understands what it represents, and this is not my impression at all. As a movement, it seems to me tremendously healthy, and much more varied than feminism ever was. It's not about campaigning, it's not bound by rules; it's about a number of individual voices.

Of course, with such a catchy name for a show you run the risk of the artists' divergent voices becoming sanitised into a marketing triumph. But all of these artists can be seen as stepping over the mark, or entering taboo areas. They are all making work specifically dealing with women's experience, and I don't think a show with that focus could have been mounted five or six years ago. There's such a lot of interesting work being made now by women, and it's that vitality that made these shows possible. Eventually, the enormous attendance and press coverage do suggest that the whole exhibition had some resonance.

Nicola White is Exhibitions Director at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.

When the New Museum asked if they could have a 'piece' for the 'Bad Girls' show, my dealer said no. So I was surprised to find that I was included in the exhibition. Marcia Tucker got the 'piece' from a collector. All unbeknownst to me. When it comes to women's art shows I try to avoid controversy. I try to be more accommodating. But no means no.

Sue Williams is an artist who lives in New York.