Heresies’ Heresies: Collaboration and Dispute in a Feminist Publication on Art and Politics

Abstract

In the 1970s magazines, journals and periodicals constituted an alternative public sphere for second wave feminism. These publications provide an index—and at times the only documentation—of the activities of the women’s art movement as well as its many iterations and divisions. This article addresses this imbalance, arguing that Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics (1977–1992) was exemplar of the radical political challenge feminism posed to the art world and culture more broadly. Launched in 1977 by the Heresies mother collective, which included Joan Braderman, Mary Beth Edelson, Lucy R. Lippard, Harmony Hammond and May Stevens among others, the magazine had thematic issues edited by different collectives and was comprised of material from an open call. Content ranged from poetry, to academic essays, to artworks both original and reproduced. This article considers the collaborative process of producing the magazine, which attempted to be inclusive, but in fact came to mirror the divisions—as well as political investments—of the broader women’s movement, alongside the dissensus the publication provoked and attempted to confront.

Keywords:

• feminist art
• art magazines
• feminist publications
• feminist publishing
• DIY publishing
• leftist feminism
• black feminism
• lesbian feminism

Notes

1 All issues of Heresies are available as black and white scans on heresiesfilmproject.org.

2 Sabra Moore (2016: 47–57), a contributor to Heresies from 1981 until 1992, described being excluded from another publication because they had already featured a woman artist in their last issue.

3 The statement is signed by Patsy Beckert, Joan Braderman, Mary Beth Edelson, Harmony Hammond, Elizabeth Hess, Joyce Kozloff, Arlene Ladden, Lippard, Mary Miss, Marty Pottenger, Miriam Schapiro, Joan Synder, Elke Solomon, Pat Steir, May Stevens, Michelle Stuart, Susana Torre, Elizabeth Weatherford, Sally Webster, and Nina Yankowtiz.

4 See Martha Rosler, Tron (Amputee), Goodbye to All That, no.3, 1970 and Vacation Getaway in Goodbye to All That, no.10, 1971.

5 The Combahee River Collective comprised: founders Barbara and Beverly Smith, author of the 1977 Collective Statement Demita Frazier, and Sharon Bourke, Gloria Akasha Hull, Eleanor Johnson, Audre Lorde, Chirlane McCray, and Margo Okazawa Rey. These statements were reprinted in Morris and Hockley (2017: 176–183).

6 See also Catherine Morris, ‘Struggling for Diversity in Heresies’, in Hockley and Morris (2017: 184–7).

7 The Heresies: Racism is the Issue collective were Vivian E. Browne, Cynthia Carr, Michele Godwin, Hattie Gossett, Carole Gregory, Sue Heinemann, Lucy R. Lippard, May Stevens, Cecilia Vicuña and Sylvia Witts Vitale.