12 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE_October
Nicole Eisenman is not really a bad girl
by John Chaich
Nicole Eisenman came into the art world as queer identity came out in fresh, often radical voices like Queer Nation and Lesbian Avengers. Her murals, installations and drawings often reflect such political orgies. Combining familiar cartoon with classical form, the 34-year-old Eisenman fuses the historic with the contemporary, the masculine with the feminine, the truthful with the sarcastic. Not unlike her Pop predecessors, Eisenman is unafraid to laugh at her world or herself. Placed in the Whitney Museum's 1995 biennial show, her "Exploding Whitney" depicts museum visitors and staff as they struggle to survive in the museum's ruins. In self-portraits and other works, she represents herself as a remote control or as the Village of the Damned.
The New York Times has called her work "among the smartest, funniest, most innovative solo exhibitions." Worldwide, she has appeared in shows such as The American Century Art and Culture 1900-2000, currently on view at the Whitney Museum, and the various Bad Girl shows that earned her such a label.
If Nicole Eisenman is a bad girl, she is neither naughty schoolgirl nor domineering headmistress. She's the kid in the desk next to you who's lost in her doodling, more spit than sugar or spice.
John (haich: Radical, lesbian, feminist. bad girl. Throughout your career, you've been touted as a cutting edge queer artist. Do you embrace or avoid these labels?
Nicole Eisenmann: I don't try to avoid the labels-I'd drive myself crazy fighting itbut I certainly don't put labels on myself.
Speaking of mad girls. Clevelanders recently had the chance to see Holl. Hughes perform her latest piece. Preaching to the Proverted. Many associate her with her battle with the National Endowment from the Arts. You've had your own battles with censorship. How do you relate to her experience?
God. I am just learning about that NEA Four experience. At the time, it didn't really register because I was in college and I was totally self-absorbed. I was never very politically minded, I couldn't relate because I couldn't see myself in that position, and I didn't understand at the time how the issues could also be my issues. It hit me in a deeply personal way how screwed up it is when I had my own incident with censorship in 1997.
Your mural, Underwater Film Shoot, was censored by Florida State University's Wolfsonian Museum in Miami because of its lesbian content. Tell us about the piece and what happened?
It's a picture of an underwater film shoot, and what the cameramen are filming is a lesbian daisy chain. Although the museum had looked at sketches-my sketches are usually pretty vague and you can't really tell what's going on--I didn't think for a second that they'd have an issue with it.
So I painted it and got reprimanded by the museum staff upon its completion. They
Nicole Eisenman in her studio
were really upset and thought that I had sneaked it by them. I was shocked. They came on like a steamroller, they made it seem like if I didn't change the mural, the museum would have to close down. I changed it and compromised my mural.
You decided to work with them in alter TH YOUR Own work?
I took a picture of the offending area and went through it with them limb by limb and said, "Okay I'll take this hand off of this breast if you let me keep that foot in that crotch." It was a negotiation that went on for a couple of days. I was really upset but made the made the changes anyway, I went back to New York and the next day woke up and thought, "Oh my God, what did I just do."
What did you do?
I asked them to put a sign up that said that the mural has been changed at the request of the museum. They wanted the sex toned down because the museum gets its money through outreach funding, and they didn't want to offend children.
They didn't put the sign up, so I got a lawyer and it turned into a big deal in the press down there. I was disappointed in some of the other art institutions in Miami that didn't want to voice an opinion.
Did other queer artists support you? Yeah, once I got back to New York. But not a lot of people knew about it—not that many people know about the Wolfsonion Museum. Anyhow, we settled it. They ended up putting a sign up that said changes had been made on the mural, but they never took responsibility for asking me to make the changes.
The whole experience cued me to the fact that I live in a very protected, art-friendly environment in New York, and outside the jaded art world, art still has the power to elicit very strong reactions. The last thing I'd ever think of in making my work is to offend someone, yet it happens, and that bums me
out.
Support System for Women I-IV, No. 1, 1998, Oil on board. Courtesy Jack Tilton Gallery, NY (2)
Shock is a word commonly associated with your work, but you shock people through hu-
mor.
Humor is part of my work like handwriting-ya can't help how it comes out. It definitely makes things more palatable: It takes the viewer in the front door, but once you're inside you're like, "What the hell, where am I?"
Revealing the truth behind the humor?
It makes me think of some quote I heard once that if comedians didn't have a sense of hu-
ERMA ESTWICK
mor, they'd be the saddest people in the world. Humor is a really good device to express yourself in an approachable way so that you're not going to alienate your audi-
ence.
Do you think that humor is an important tool for queer people?
Absolutely. I think, in general, in order to survive in this culture you have to have a sense of humor. It may be different now for
Jetcrash, 1996, Oil on paper.
kids who can come out into a world where they have lots of out role models, but still its a tough road-gays need to have humor as a coping device.
Did you ever get backlash from other lesbians about your work itself?
Occasionally lesbians and gays will get down on me for not being more gay in my work, like the piece I did at the Whitney didn't have any sex in it, and I guess some people think I chickened out. Most negative backlash I've probably blocked out.
A lot of my work has been about lesbian sexuality and a kind of straight perversion of what lesbian fantasy is. Some my work was misread by people who thought I hated men because of the castration images, and I was just like, "Geez, that's so wrong."
Some artists may have an agenda while creating their work, while you seem very ‚process-oriented, not unlike coming out
itself.
I love drawing. Most of the time, I have no idea what its going to look like when I start a piece-it's a very loose way of approaching drawing or an installation. I love the creative process: it's fascinating.
It takes me a long time to process my own work. I do a slide show now to schools, and when I look at my own work, I see what everyone has been saying for years that my art is really tough. I have a hard time showing some of my own slides. I'm shy about it. My art comes from such a subconscious place that it takes me a really long time to truly see it.
Nicole Eisenman appears at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art on Sunday, October 31 at noon. The panel discussion, also featuring Tom Sachs and Christian Schumann and moderated by the Whitney Museum's Beth Venn, will explore the influence of Pop Art in art today. Call 216421-8671, ext. 21 for more information.
John Chaich is programs manager for the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art.