Agnes Martin
Charlotte Posenenske
Laurie Parsons
Lee Lozano
All said no to the art world—in varying degrees. But here’s someone that also felt the frustration and constraints of society but said “Yes, but my way!”
Mierle Laderman Ukeles (b. 1939) has delivered many talks over the years, and this is her script:
I became an artist to be free
To have the levels of freedom that I received from my western culture artist heroes
Freedom to act within the artwork, from my uncle Jackson Pollock
Freedom to name, from my grandfather Marcel Duchamp
Freedom to pass from one dimension to another, from my uncle Mark Rothko
…you might notice the genders
Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968)
Jackson Pollock (1912 – 1956)
Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970)
In 1968 Ukeles had a baby and became a “maintenance worker” as she describes it and she realized that Jackson, Marcel, and Mark didn’t change diapers.
I had fought so hard to gain their freedom, the scales of their freedom
I fell out of their picture
I was powerful, giving life and keeping life alive
and learning the mind-bending boredom of repetitive task work
At times I felt my well-educated brain was going to blow out the top of my head
“Goodbye” it was saying to me as I changed yet another diaper
I wasn’t made for this!
Some Quick Notes:
Duchamp…is the guy who submitted “Fountain”, a urinal, to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917. This was not a juried exhibition, everything was supposed to be displayed, yet Duchamp was prohibited from displaying this non-art object, a “readymade.” Duchamp introduced the idea that anything can be art—you just have to declare it as such. Ukeles went beyond Duchamp’s idea of the readymade by including “found actions” and everyday activities as art.
Pollock…is the guy who did the drip paintings, introduced the idea of action painting, of using one’s whole body to paint.
Rothko…is the guy known for paintings consisting of “soft, rectangular forms floating on a stained field of colour”, and who believed paintings could transmit a spiritual and psychological presence.
Back to Ukeles.
If I am the boss of my freedom, then I name “Maintenance Art”, “Necessity Art”, “Survival Art”
Why?
Because I am the artist and I say so.
I, me, the artist, need to survive
It is art, and art history, that needs to change.1
In a quiet rage, in October 1969, her ideas all came together in a four-page Manifesto (Maintenance Art Manifesto) that lays out her ideas of Maintenance Art and that would prove instrumental in guiding her work.
Some Key Projects by Ukeles from then on:
1973 – Dress to Go Out/Undressing to Go In: a documentation of her labour in the home as a mother. Consisted of 95 gelatin silver prints mounted on foam core with chain and dust rag.
1973 – Washing / Tracks/ Maintenance, Outside: as part of this project, Ukeles washes the steps of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, a four hour performance that recalls Jackson Pollock’s action painting but where the outside staircase and the sidewalk are her canvas, the mop her brush, water and soap her medium. Ukeles expands her concept of maintenance art to include maintenance tasks performed in institutions and the public sphere. In this work, Ukeles exposes the authority and power within the art museum, of maintenance workers that keep the museum clean (necessary work) but are invisible and underpaid. The work is documented in photographs. Watch a five-minute video about this work and the artist.
1976 – I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day: Consisted of 720 Polaroid photographs, covering an entire wall, that capture 300 maintenance workers (maids, security guards, and repairmen) at work. Ukles asked the maintenance workers to devote one hour of their shift to making Maintenance Art giving them the freedom to re-frame what they were doing as art (hello Duchamp). The work makes visible hidden essential labour and the invisible workers, which are rarely respected.
1978-80 – Touch Sanitation: In this work, Ukeles continues to expand on maintenance work by exposing the maintenance system of a city. Ukeles met with over 8500 employees of the New York Sanitation Department. She shook the hand of each employee (at that time all male) saying, “Thank you for keeping New York City alive.” In addition to the action, she documented the encounters on a map, recorded her conversations with the workers, and later also shared some of the workers’ private stories. The sanitation department provided Ukles with a driver and a guide for the entire year. She received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts of just over $3000 US which she had to budget carefully to cover the expenses of the recordings. In this work, Ukles was performing a kind of social art practice.
1989-present – Landing: Ukeles continues her long-term relationship with City Planning divisions. She has been working on an “earthwork” piece, a reclamation project of the 2200-acre site of the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, NY, which aims to make the site into an accessible artwork and open space. A key point about this work for Ukeles is that it is accessible land/earth art unlike many other earthworks which require expensive travel to experience them. The city will provide transport to the site.
The Personal is Political
Ukeles persevered, seemed to maintain a sense of humour (you get this from her talks), and saw possibility were there seemed to be none—she made motherhood and caretaking her artwork and expanded to maintenance work done by others. How did her work affect her relationship with her husband—this isn’t something you would usually think about with male artists, and this is precisely where it is worth mentioning that the personal is political. What happens in the home is a reflection of societal norms and society needs to change to improve the situation of women in the home, as caretakers, as professionals, as workers, as human beings. This was the political argument that emerged in second wave feminism in the late 1960s and that many women artists, including Ukeles, addressed in their work.
If Duchamp helped Ukeles rethink how she could redefine art and motherhood, then hopefully Ukeles is a role model for artists who also happen to be women and mothers. But role models aside, the issue of how to manage being an artist, motherhood, and work is still a challenge today. More recently, the topic of artist mothers, academic labour and motherhood, was the focus of conversations organized by Art Mamas (a Vancouver-based group of artist mothers) and Access Gallery in Vancouver in 2021.2
If we’re still having these conversations, then obviously, there’s more work to do, but doing it alone should not be the only option, which is why a group like Art Mamas makes a lot of sense.
I have quoted Ukeles from a lecture she delivered in 2013 at UCLA.
Although I am not a mother, I attended one of the Zoom conversations, Precarious Academic Labour and Motherhood, and found it still to be very relatable. Art Mamas is planning to produce a final publication of all the conversations. See a list of the conversations here.
Visit the Art Mamas website.