sᴇʟᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴀʀᴛᴡᴏʀᴋ: ᴍᴀʀᴛʜᴀ ʀᴏsʟᴇʀ, ʀᴇᴅ sᴛʀɪᴘᴇ ᴋɪᴛᴄʜᴇɴ, ғʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ sᴇʀɪᴇs "ʜᴏᴜsᴇ ʙᴇᴀᴜᴛɪғᴜʟ: ʙʀɪɴɢɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ ʜᴏᴍᴇ" ᴄ. 1967-72

                70 - 73

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          Rosler's Career

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Martha Rosler born in Brooklyn, NY

(objected to publishing her birthday because she believes

that including it commodifies living artists in a way not 

applied to other professions)

but it's July 29, 1943 if you just google it

1965 - graduated from Brooklyn College 

1968 - 1980 lived in California

1974 - receive master's degree in fine art from University

of California, San Diego

spent number of years in San Francisco before going back

to NY

both San Diego and San Francisco were hotbeds of 

feminist and antiwar movements, Rosler involved as an

artist and activist

mid 1960s - began making photomontages by cutting photo

images from magazines and newspapers and rearranging 

them into new works

1966-1972 - series Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No

Pain, deconstructs mainstream representation of women

some merge female bodies with kitchen appliances

others take clippings from popular porn magazines and

insert them into lingerie ads or arrange them into wallpaper

also took aim at institutions of art in her montages

Vacuuming Pop Art, or Woman with Vacuum - a woman

vacuuming hallway populated with well known works of

Pop Art, hints at both the exclusion of women from the art

movement and confinement to domestic roles as representing

their marginalization

impeccably assembled, remains complex and aesthetically

compelling while communicating social critism

early 1970s - took up fairly new medium of video art

1975 - Semiotics of the Kitchen, remains her best known 

work, 6 minutes long, black and white

Rosler standing in a kitchen, illustrating alphabet from A-Z

demonstrations become increasingly violent and humorous

challenged the image of contented housewife

A - apron, E - egg beater, F - fork,

only use body for last few letters

Z - knife gesture in Zorro motion

commentary on how the semiotics of the kitchen (the symbolic

language that defines the space) is a tool of women's

oppression, which can be harnessed and undermined

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   Historical Development

         of Photomontage

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first innovators: Berlin based Dadaist artists Raoul Hausmann,

Hannah Hoch, George Grosz, John Heartfield

Paris - Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque experimented with

Cubist cut paper collage as early as 1912

radical invention that brought scraps of mass culture, whether

newspaper clippings of bits of wall paper, into fine art

in Berlin, Dadaist looked for way to intervene in mass culture 

and criticize bourgeois establishment, turn to new photography

magazines along with photos in newspapers

excise and borrow photo images as Picasso and Braque did

with texts and patterns

unclear who started it (all 4 claimed it), all used the medium for

its political potential

1919 - Hannah Hoch, large scale montage Cut with the Kitchen

Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch

in Germany, combine images of leisure with portrait of political

figures, poke fun at Weimar Government

Rosler's photomontage allude to more recent precedent than

Dada, namely British artist Richard Hamilton's 1956 montage

Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so

appealing? often referred to as first work of Pop Art

domestic interior as base, paste images on top, including a 

painting by Pollock (as a rug), proportionally tiny woman

vacuuming staircase (ref for Rosler's feminist montages later)

Dadaists use montage to critique society, Hamilton left 

question of criticism more ambiguous

Pop art characterized by ambivalent attitude

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                Analysis

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1967 - midst of Vietnam War

began photomontage series House Beautiful: Bringing the

War Home

combines high modernist design from "shelter magazines" 

showing impressive domestic interior with photojournalistic

images of Vietnam War from newspapers and Life (current

events magazine)

Red Stripe Kitchen - show pristine white kitchen with wrap

around countertop and cherry red dinnerware, black appliances,

white, black, red palette invoke modernist design and Russian

Constructivist montage

in background: 2 soldiers hunched over, looking for something

jarring juxtaposition literally "brings war home"

highlight absurdity og advertising and valorizing aesthetic

modernism in homes, while American soldiers invade the homes

of others abroad

Balloons - pile of balloons in corner of living room

shows Vietnamese woman carrying injured, half clothed infant

up the stairs of the house

"living room war" - Vietnam War is first American military

conflict people watch unfolding on TV from their living rooms

echoing Dadaist John Heartfield's publication of photomontages

on cover of German magazine Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung

(Worker's Illustrated Magazine), Rosler publish "House

Beautiful" montages in 1960s underground newspapers to

publish literature opposing Vietnam War

reinserting her images into media she took component parts from

primary mode of distribution: black and white photocopies of

her works, hand out at demonstrations

on one hand critical of ability of mainstream media to mobilize

Americans against her perceived unjust and brutal war

decision to hand out multiple montages and publish in newspapers 

(rather than exhibit as singular artworks) speak to persistent

faith in ability of mass reproduction and communication to

effect change