Making history S.D. artist Eleanor Antin uses the past to give a ...

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Her exhibition and performance history is long, including numerousNew York solo shows, inclusion in the 1989 Whitney Biennial and afull-scale retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in1999. The San Diego Museum of Art has co-published a book (withPrestel) to coincide with its new show, containing a livelyinterview with the artist (the interviewer is the distinguishedphoto historian Max Kozloff) and essays by the show's curator,Betti-Sue Hertz, and art historian Amelia Jones. Also included aresome of the artist's writings.
History as a subject is nothing new in Antin's art. Hertz shows ushow persistent a passion this has been for the artist, by includinga generous amount of photographs and writings from Antin's earlierprojects.
Antin relished inserting herself into the past, blurring fact andfiction in quintessential postmodern fashion. Antin turned herselfinto a stand-in for Florence Nightingale in the “Angel ofMercy” series from 1977 (“Myself – 1854”),dressed in period costume and posing in a photograph that looks asif it was printed back in the mid-19th century. Nightingale wasfamous for her pioneering nursing practices during the Crimean Warand some of the photographs are staged scenes meant to evoke thatstruggle, with men in tents and corpses on the battlefield,complete with sepia tones and carefully handwritten captions.
Such pictures were part of larger projects that includedperformances and videos – and she assumed these roles withhumor, wit and serious intent in equal measure. There was EleanoraAntinova, an invented identity of a black ballerina in SergeiDiaghilev's Ballets Russes. Antin posed as her in photographs,appeared on tape and on stage and wrote “Recollections of MyLife With Diaghilev.”
These photographs from 1976-77 – black-and-white, of course,since the time period is supposed to be the early 20th century– seem perfectly calibrated to their moment, with Antin inelaborate costume for a production of “Pocahontas” inone image and “Prisoner of Persia” in another. Theposes are campy, even as they look utterly serious.
Part of the pleasure in seeing Antin's historical sendups is tosense just how much fun she was having once she put an identity inmotion. It's as if she's channeling Nightingale when she poses asher. And when she's playing the part of Antinova in “From theArchives of Modern Art” (1987) – a video playscontinuously in the museum's galleries – you can't help butsmile seeing her doing a melodramatic dance by the ocean's edge.
But this is serious fun, too. Of course, she's commenting,indirectly, on the marginalization of women and blacks in theannals of early 20th century avant-garde culture. Though Antinovais fictional, the point is still how she has been written out ofhistory. That's why she is supposedly obscure. And giving thisprominence to her story slyly makes the point that it's Diaghilevwho we know about, not his dancers.
Antin ups the production ante considerably with her forays intoGreek and Roman history and mythology. It's not simply the scale ofthe pictures that increases but the use of scenic backdrops, propsand a large cast of “performers.”
These pictures are visual theater, recastings of ancient historyand story. They are connected to the tradition of tableaux vivantes– in which people in costume pose to evoke paintings –as well as to history paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries,early narrative photography by the likes of Julia Margaret Cameronand Oscar Rejlander, and Hollywood epics.
The museum has done a deft job of interjecting this theatricaldimension of her art into the exhibition's design. Pseudo-pillars,kitschy gilded statues and a replica of part of a detail fromCatherine the Great's palace are installed in the galleries, nearthe pictures in which they appear.
These pictures divide into three series: “The Last Days ofPompeii” (2001), “Roman Allegories” (2004) and“Helen's Odyssey” (2007).
The idea of a place unaware of its dark fate hovers around thePompeii pictures. In “The Banquet,” revelers aresitting and reclining on and around a lavish table. To one side ofthem is a separate vignette – of one gladiator who has slainanother. You can't be sure if this is some form of entertainmentthey are presently ignoring or a kind of reminder of the militarymight that buttresses their leisurely lifestyle. The ambiguity iseffective, too.
There's an atmosphere of leisure culture in many of these picturesand bacchanalian partying in some. In “A HotAfternoon,” a small crowd watches a pair of wrestlers in abeautiful setting. Of course, the sunny scene and the landscapemake us think of Southern California. And like Pompeii, our regionhas its sources of potential natural catastrophe. But the series isalso about the folly of thinking our culture is more immune to thepitfalls of nature or history.
Antin constructs images set in another era that create parallelswith ours. A perfect example is “The Golden Death,”which has a source in an image by the late Victorian painterLawrence Alma-Tadema. She retools his “The Roses ofHeliogabalus.” In the painting, the people at a banquet dieby suffocation beneath mountains of flower petals, In Antin'sversion, they are buried alive in coins. It's a comically tragicfate.
“Helen's Odyssey” looks at Homer's “TheOdyssey” from a female perspective, which is virtually absentin his epic tale. It's not a recasting of the story so much as alook at her as a female archetype, both used and abused in history.In fact, Antin divides her into two archetypes, the same typesoften employed in plays and movies. There's the blonde Helen, withher cheery female beauty and implied innocence along with thedark-haired Helen, who broods and seems to smolder with passion,anger and hints of peril.
In one of the most witty of these pictures, “CastingCall,” both Helens are auditioning for the part. The painterlooks them over, with blind Homer by his side. The scene is sillybut disquieting. It draws attention to the idea that everyone inthe picture is playing a part and that the artist will eventuallycreate an image using the Helen he likes best.
There is the additional implication that the way artists have usedmodels, in the long history of literature and painting, has shapedand mirrored the roles that men and women actually play in life.Antin's involving photographs are visual fictions about the makingof society as well as art. But by looking at old sources andreinventing them, she has also cast the relationship betweenhistory and the present into high relief.

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