Ana Mendieta

Portrait of Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta a famous artist of the twentieth century had accomplished so much in such a little amount of time. Her story begins in Havana, Cuba in 1948, the origin of her birthplace. She was always interested in art and eventually decided to pursue it. “She studied art at the University of Iowa, met many avant-garde New York artists, and eventually moved to New York after graduation” (Guerilla Girls 89). Her work was considered very conceptual and performance based. She was interested in ritual and so her work was made using her body and the objects she used became her art (Guerilla Girls 89). Displaced from her homeland as a result of the conditions going on in Cuba at the time with Fidel Castro and exiled to the United States, she had a very different cultural perspective when it came to making art.

Ana Mendieta, along with other female artist of the time created performance art that was meant to challenge the spectator and think about important issues that were going on at the time. “Mendieta’s artistic roots lay in feminism and in the anti-commodification tendencies of earth, performance, and process work in the 1970s (Chadwick 372). One of her first perfomances was in 1973, where she used blood to protest against rape. People who saw her work were shocked at the statements she was making. She was facinated by violence and definitely projected it in her blood series. These are said to be the most intense and powerful works done by her. "Untitled (Rape Scene)" (1973) is the record of a performance/ installation Mendieta created in her apartment in Iowa to recreate the scene of a real violent rape-murder of a young woman that March that had been reported in detail in the press. Although the image immediately suggests a feminist politics, a statement against violence against women, when coupled with the series of slides shown in a vitrine nearby of Untitled (People Looking at Blood, Moffit) (1973), rows of mundane street shots of ordinary passersby in front of a doorway where Mendieta spread animal blood, the effect is not a condemnation of violence, but a sense of detachment and displacement (Brookylnrail).

Untitled (Facial
Hair Transplants)

"In the series of headshots dubbed Untitled (Facial Cosmetic Variations) (1972), Mendieta grotesquely transforms her visage with stockings pulled over her head, torn in different places, caked on makeup, wigs, and distorted expressions; while the related series Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants) (1972) documents the transfer of fellow student Morty Sklar’s beard to Mendieta’s face. Although Mendieta appears in both projects, two of very few works in which her face is visible, she is not revealed in any traditional sense of a self-portrait" (Brooklynrail).

Silueta Series 

Her most famous well known work was when “she began imposing the traces of her five-foot body on the earth in the environs of Iowa City, Iowa, Oaxaca, Mexico and other sites, outlining it with ignited gunpowder, stones, flowers, and fireworks or having herself bound in strips of cloth and buried in mud and rocks” (Chadwick 372). All her materials that she works with are natural and can be found in nature. The cool clear water running over her body, face down, head turned to the sky away from the camera in "Untitled (Creek)" (1974) captures a silueta of water, possible only by the body’s interruption of the natural flow of the creek. In The Tree of Life series that marks the beginning of the Siluetas, Mendieta incorporated her body into the landscape by covering herself with mud or flowers and grass, making a raised impression against a tree or in a field. The scale of the works never exceeds the scale of the body, and the effect is an overwhelming sense of intimacy: with the land, with the viewer, with her own body" (Brooklynrail).

Tragically, Ana Mendieta died at age thirty-six, the result of a fall from an apartment window in New York in 1985. She left over 200 photographs documenting her body works, and a generation indebted to her innovation and ideals. Her husband Carl Andre was with her during the time of death and he was believed to have murdered her after they got into an arguement. "In the wee hours of the morning of Sept. 8, 1985, Carl Andre, a successful avant-garde sculptor, argued with his artist wife, Ana Mendieta, who then somehow ''went out of the window'' (Mr. Andre's phrase during his emergency call to 911) of their 34th-floor Greenwich Village apartment. She may have committed suicide, as Mr. Andre claimed, or he may very well have thrown her, since she weighed only 93 pounds compared to his 175. There were no eyewitnesses. A doorman in the street below had heard a woman screaming ''No, no, no, no,'' then the explosive thud of Ana Mendieta's body landing on the roof of an all-night delicatessen. The bedroom from which she plunged was in disarray, Mr. Andre had what appeared to be fresh scratches on his nose and forearm, and his story to the police differed from his recorded statements to the 911 operator an hour or so earlier. The police arrested him" (New York Times). Her death was mourned by millions because the world had suffered the loss of one of their most successful, creative and inspirational artists.  

                                                                 Bibliography

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 2002.

Business.'', Vincent Patrick; Vincent Patrick Is The Author Of The Novels ''the Pope Of Greenwich Village'' And ''family. "A DEATH IN THE ART WORLD." The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 June 1990. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/books/a-death-in-the-art-world.html>.

Heuer, Megan. "The Brooklyn Rail." Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance. Brooklyn Rail, 2005. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://www.brooklynrail.org/2004/09/art/ana-mendieta-earth-body-sculpture-and-pe>.

The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.