Barbara DeGenevieve explained

Barbara DeGenevieve
Birth Date:21 May 1947
Birth Place:Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, United States
Death Place:Chicago, Illinois, United States
Alma Mater:University of New Mexico
Known For:Photography, video, and performance art
Notable Works:The Panhandler Project,

Barbara DeGenevieve (1947 - 2014) was an American interdisciplinary artist who worked in photography, video, and performance. She lectured widely on her work and on subjects including human sexuality, gender, transsexuality, censorship, ethics, and pornography. Her writing on these subjects have been published in art, photographic, and scholarly journals, and her work has been exhibited internationally.

Early life

DeGenevieve studied photography at the University of New Mexico receiving her MFA in 1980, and began teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign immediately following. She taught at San Jose State University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of Art before joining the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. DeGenevieve was a professor and chair of the Department of Photography at the School of the Art Institute.[1]

Career

Much of DeGenevieve's art explored the connections among dominance, power, and sex, including their inverse relationships. This led DeGenevieve into controversy, particularly during the National Endowment for the Arts funding scandals of the early 1990s (widely known as "the culture wars") when she, Andres Serrano, and Merry Alpern were stripped of their grants from the NEA in 1994.[2] She spoke on many occasions on issues of censorship as a direct result. On some occasions she used performative texts or poems, gothic costume, and theatrical tactics to amplify her point. She might speak in character as parody or as the subject of her discourse, but always with a sense of humor and charity for her subject.

She continued to court controversy, having established an interdisciplinary and new media arts program at SAIC that instructs students on constructing sexually graphic artworks. She spoke at conferences about her students' work, some of which existed in legal gray areas. In 2010 at the College Art Association she noted:

"Artists like myself and these students who do work that straddles some dangerous lines, such as the possibility of having the work considered obscene and therefore illegal, need to realize that the idea of free speech does not extend to sexual images. Although anathema to any artist, there is a self-monitoring (if not a self-censorship) that now occurs, and must occur to some extent in order for artists to protect themselves from the vagaries of the “fuzzy logic” employed in the interpretation of lens-derived imagery that is sexual in nature." [3]
DeGenevieve's works "showed everyone the rowdy, the provocative. How art should get in your face, really startle you. You should gasp."[4] DeGenevieve photographed five homeless black men from Chicago nude in a hotel room, which received wide recognition for her voices given to the social issues on race, gender and class.[5] [6]

DeGenevieve won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (Visual Artist Fellowship); Art Matters Foundation Fellowship; and the Illinois Arts Council. Her critical and artistic works have been published in Exposure, SF Camerawork Magazine, and P-Form. Ezell Gallery, Chicago, represents her photographic work.[7]

DeGenevieve was born in on May 21, 1947 and died of cervical cancer on August 9, 2014.[8]

Selected exhibitions

Selected works

Selected essays

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: About - Barbara DeGenevieve. 2020-06-11. cargocollective.com. en.
  2. News: Endowment Ends Program Helping Individual Artists. Schemo. Diana Jean. November 3, 1994. The New York Times. February 27, 2017.
  3. Web site: 2013-03-24. Fuzzy Logic: "I know it when I see it" and other hazards for artists. 2020-06-11. NMC Media-N. en-US.
  4. Web site: Barbara DeGenevieve, provocative artist, dies. Tribune. Chicago. Chicago Tribune. 25 August 2014 . 2016-03-05.
  5. Web site: Degenevieve, Barbara. Museum of Contemporary Photography. 2016-03-05.
  6. Book: Dennis . Kelly . Art/Porn: A History of Seeing and Touching . 2009 . Berg, Ltd. . Oxford and New York . 9781847880673 . 183–94.
  7. "Network cultures
  8. Web site: Barbara DeGenevieve, provocative artist, dies. Eltagouri. Marwa. Chicago Tribune. 25 August 2014 . 2016-03-05.
  9. Web site: Barbara DeGenevieve: Medusa's Cave. Iceberg Projects. 6 March 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160306043016/http://icebergchicago.com/barbara-degenevieve-medusa%E2%80%99s-cave---iceberg-projects.html. 6 March 2016. dead.
  10. Web site: Dean Jensen Gallery. Kissy-Kissy. 5 March 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160309043321/http://www.deanjensengallery.com/kissy4.htm. 9 March 2016. dead.
  11. Web site: Weinstein. Michael A.. Beyond the Binaries: Crossing the Boundaries of Identity Politics. Gallery 400. University of Illinois at Chicago. 5 March 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160306042056/http://gallery400.uic.edu/system/resources/BAhbBlsHOgZmSSIyMjAxMS8xMC8xOS8xMF80MV8yNl8zM19PYmplY3RpZnlpbmdfRXNzYXkucGRmBjoGRVQ/Objectifying%20Essay.pdf. 6 March 2016. dead.
  12. Web site: I Smell Sex. Visual AIDS. 6 March 2016.
  13. Sherlock, Maureen P. (1998) Published on the occasion of an exhibition organized and presented by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Sheboygan, Wisconsin: John Michael Kohler Arts Center. p. 22
  14. Web site: DeGenevieve. Barbara. Images from Boys of Albuquerque. fStopped. 6 March 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160306153954/http://fstoppedblog.com/post/24037457906/barbaradegenevieve. 6 March 2016. dead.
  15. Web site: DeGenevieve. Barbara. Porn Poetry. Cargo Collective. 6 March 2016.
  16. Web site: The Panhandler Project (video documentation). Reframing Photography. Routledge. 6 March 2016.
  17. Web site: DeGenevieve. Barbara. Desperado. Vimeo.

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