Rosy Moorhead
WVoN features editor 

“The past is never totally past.

“What we did in the 70s has turned out to be of interest continually… I am still trying, through the work I make, to model an open society where everyone can participate equally and can speak and be heard.”

That is according to Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, one of the co-founders of the Woman’s Building (WB), the centre for feminist artists and art co-operatives in Los Angeles that was at the heart of the feminist art movement of the 1970s, and whose work and members are currently being celebrated in an exhibition in LA.

But why a ‘woman’s building’?

In 1973, artist Judy Chicago and art historian Arlene Raven founded the WB with de Bretteville, and for over two decades it helped shape the regional and international cultural landscapes.

De Bretteville says they needed a woman’s building because:

“The social and political movements of the late 60s had already created a strong, informed distrust of power structures in general in Asia and Europe as well as in the United States. The resurgence of feminism put the position of women into question.

“Women made consciousness-raising groups to have private places to share their experiences and move from talking to action.”

De Bretteville had been living in Italy in May ’68 when France was hit with the largest ever general strike, bringing the economy to a virtual standstill and causing a shake-up of ‘old society’.

‘Power to the people’ became a widespread perspective.

She returned to the States and began working for a new college, Cal Arts, part of the Chouinard Art School in LA, doing design work that was informed by the late ’60s principle of upending the order of things –resistance to authority, speaking truth to power, dismantling hierarchical structures in design, and making design that was equalized and participatory and engaged with the world at large.

Through extensive public performances, site-specific work, networking with political activists and collaborations, the feminist art movement at the WB raised consciousness, invited dialogue and transformed culture.

It also handed women their rightful claim to the role of ‘artist’ by inspiring and allowing members to create a community of women who saw art as a powerful tool for social change, and shared this vision with the public.

“Making what we did public enlarged the subjects and forms of art being discussed in public places.

“We called ourselves ‘a public center of women’s culture’ and our exhibitions, publications and performances invited everyone to see and discuss what was previously hidden in the private sphere.

“The more people begin to discuss, understand, learn and respect what it is that women are, do and want, the more enriched and diversified the public conversation.

“The idea is that, as diversity among us becomes more visible and our contributions are valued, new perceptions, beliefs and behaviors potentially transform the world in which we live.

“The ideal is an equitable society where gender and difference enhance and enrich all of us and no longer diminish and divide us.”

Throughout the Woman’s Building, women were transforming their ideas and experiences into words, images, performances, videos, posters, books, postcards.

The centre held exhibitions of many different kinds, women’s studies classes (at a time when no university or college offered such a thing), film-making classes, conferences by women on the work of women.

“We never were just one thing, one kind of woman, one kind of anything,” de Bretteville says.

“It was essential to encourage each woman to learn to do what she wanted, and to represent herself and her work in any way she wanted.

“A particular part of my vision had to do with making part of the private public; women’s voices had not been heard unmediated by others.”

She gives the example of incest – even now a difficult, if not taboo, subject.

“When it became clear that incest had not been spoken about in public, we did an exhibition of work by women regarding it.

“A reporter [from the LA Times] told me that our exhibition on Surviving Incest enabled her to write an article on this subject – a subject they had never covered before.”

De Bretteville remembers the sorts of projects that she particularly enjoyed – those which involved women engaging with each other and with the city in which they lived.

One such project involved asking women to identify places in the city where they felt uncomfortable, or unjustly treated, and then making print materials expressing that feeling. The works were put up in those locations to engage the site’s owners and users.

Doin’ It In Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building surveys the work of the WB’s ground-breaking feminist artists, designers and artist collectives.

The exhibition was originally scheduled to close in January but, due to popular demand, had to be extended for another month.

“This exhibition has an abundance of materials, documentation and images from 1971-1990 and beyond that very few people would have seen,” says de Bretteville, “so I am not surprised that many people want more time to be able to look and think and talk about what they are seeing and reading.”

The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980, an unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty, that brings together more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California to tell the story of the birth of the LA art scene.

While the WB as a physical place has not existed since 1990, de Bretteville says she still identifies with women everywhere.

“There is a part of feminism that is hard-wired and expressed by paying attention to how women are treated wherever they are in the world.”

Does she miss the Woman’s Building? It takes her some time to formulate an answer.

“Yes,” she eventually says. “I felt a sense of longing for what was lost. For there to no longer be the Woman’s Building as a physical and cultural presence in the city mattered.

“The building was more than ‘a room of one’s own’ – the place itself mattered, as a symbol and a place in the city.

“It was a physical expression of each woman’s connection, commitment and contribution to life and work beyond the private home. It was a vision of a world beyond patriarchy and the professional system run by greed.

“It made the transformation of society real, tangible — even while it was an idealistic vision of the future.

“And yes, each of the women moved on, bringing with her that part of the Building that meant the most, how each of us saw it, and sees it now — the ‘it’ that they are still doin’ – including me!”

Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building is at the Otis College of Art and Design in downtown LA until February 26.