visting artist :: eleanor antin

Currently a professor emeritus of UCSD, Eleanor Antin has worked as an artist since the 1960's creating film, installation and performance. She moved from NY to San Diego in the late 60's and became sick of the trans-american commute that was required to still be active in the NY art scene. Her solution was to create her own art community by creating a series of postcards entitled "100 Boots" and mailing them to thousands of people from pooled art mailing lists. This example of an early virtual community garnered her a "following" and resulted in a show at the MOMA two years later.

I related to Antin's performance art as a precursor to the online persona. She invented alternate idenities and performed as them in venues (including the Venice Biennale) and public spaces. Her personas included the gender-bending King (her idealized version of the perfect man), the Silent Movie Director, the Ballerina (most wonderful female self) and the nurse (the most depressed woman she could think of). Although this work was considered innovative for the 1970's it is common in today's virtual communities to invent alternate identities and to act them out in the virtual space.

Antin's most recent work is a series of large-format "painting-like" photographs depicting life in Rome. Although there is obvious social commentary on Rome's empire, and correlations can be made to our US government today, overall I think the work is "fluffy." Which made sense after Antin admitted that she "loved the rococo" -which was arguably the most fluffy crap ever produced. I was disappointed that when asked, Antin said she would not consider mailing the Rome series out as postcards. Reasons against revolved around the same old rhetoric - they were meant to be viewed large, they are meant to be seen (AND SOLD) in an established gallery, yada yada yada. I just thought it would be a perfect ending to her art career since the community she created though the mail was what gave her a start.