Barbara Ann Rosenthal (born 1948) is an American avant-garde and conceptual artist, writer, and performance artist. She is known for her interdisciplinary and existential works.[1][2]
Rosenthal's multimedia work combines X-rays, brain scans, and text drawn from journals and the clothing she wears.[3] Her work often explores existential themes and has been noted for its philosophical underpinnings.[4] In 2021, her archives were acquired by Queens College.[5]
She has used pseudonyms such as "Homo Futurus," the title of one of her books,[6] and "Cassandra-on-the-Hudson,"[7] which reference themes in her creative work.[8] In 2022, she trademarked "Homo Futurus."[9]
Barbara Rosenthal was born in The Bronx in 1948.[11]
At the age of 11, Rosenthal wrote a weekly column for her town newspaper, The Franklin Square Bulletin.[12]
Education and early career
Rosenthal started her education at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1963, where she studied figure drawing and painting with instructor Isaac Soyer.[13] From 1964-1966, she continued her education at the Art Students League.[11][13]
As a writer, Barbara Rosenthal produces short- and long-form works, including poetry, novels, art criticism, and essays.[18][1] Her fiction, like her visual art, tends to present a grim worldview, depicting surreal surroundings in which a lone individual faces incomprehensible situations.[19] Rosenthal is a regular contributor to NY Arts Magazine and is known for her stand against art as advocacy, which she labels "retrograde."[20] She says that she opposes many prevailing political, cultural, and feminist trends in contemporary art.[20]
Rosenthal's performance art has utilized installation, projections, voice, music, and abstract sound to convey themes of individuality, identity, and time.[2]
Her first performance/installation, "Self-Portrait Room," was performed in 1968.[22] From 1976 to 1984, she performed in videos by placing a stationary camera in front of a single-action life situation. Rosenthal's ventriloquism video, How Much Does The Monkey Count, was made in 1988 and was reprised at CBGB in 1991[23] and the Living Theater in 1992.
From 1976 to 1996, she was the leading female actor in the Super-8 films by Bill Creston. Seven other films produced by Rosenthal were also screened at The Museum of Modern Art in 1989.[24][25]
In 2005, Rosenthal crashed the Performa05 Festival in NY with Existential Interact wearing her image-text "Button Pin Shirts" and handing out Provocation Cards in front of the Guggenheim Museum and White Box Gallery in New York.[26] This interaction was performed at various iconic street locations across several cities in the United States and abroad. She represented the United States in both performance and text-based art at the Tina B. Prague Contemporary Art Festival in 2009 and 2010.[27]
Rosenthal’s project Existential Interact was featured in a full-page spread in the 2011 issue of Emergency Index, an annual documentation of performance art.[28] In 2013, Rosenthal began including video morphs in her work, beginning in I’m Growing Up, which was performed at Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn and at AudioPollen in Brisbane, Australia.[2]
Photography
Rosenthal is noted for her photography.[8] From 1978 to 1988, she also worked as a photojournalist at New York newspapers including The New York Post and the Village Voice.[29][30] Until 2005, she exclusively shot in black and white, which she hand-processed and printed in her darkroom. Since 2006, she has also worked with color film, continuing to hand-process black and white film while sending the color film to a commercial lab. However, she scans and digitally prints both types of negatives.[31][32]
Her work is most often shown in art galleries. In the past few years, she has had solo or two-person photography shows in several locations across the globe. Additionally, about 200 of her Surreal Photographs have been published by Visual Studies Workshop Press in offset books.
Video
Since 1976, Rosenthal has made over 100 videos. She has worked in different formats as the technology has changed, including 1/2" open reel, 3/4-Umatic, VHS, mini-DV, and HD.[33]
The first works, The Haircut and The Bath, began with 1/2" open reel portapak partnering with Bill Creston.[34] In 1982, she won a Festival Prize for Helen Webster: Cancer and Self-Discovery at the Global Village Video Festival in New York.[35] In 1988, her videos Leah Gluck: Victim of the Twins Experiments and Women in the Camps were shown in the installation at The Jewish Museum, New York.[36]
Besides partnering in New York and Missouri with Bill Creston in her early videos,[33] as well as his films,[24] she has partnered in Berlin, Germany with DJ RoBeat for several of her videos and live performances since 2008.[8]
Art philosophy
In 1992 Rosenthal said that many "dictums ... guide [her] production: that pattern serve as color; that as few materials are used as possible; that as little space is used as possible … that it engages a viewer differently from separate vantages; that it reaches several centers of the psyche simultaneously; so a viewer is left with room to freely associate; that mystery is always present; that it does not advocate; that it does not mimic past successes … that it be available to everyone and that it be both produced and priced at lowest possible cost."[37]
Major collections
The largest holdings of Rosenthal's works in Europe are at Artpool Art Research Center[38] and the Tate Britain Library, London, England. The largest American holdings of her work are in The Dadabase Collection of The Museum of Modern Art[39] and The Whitney Museum of American Art.[40] Her archives, including over one hundred volumes of workbooks and Journals and fifty drafts of her unpublished novel, "Wish For Amnesia", are currently housed at eMediaLoft.org, NYC and bequeathed to the Special Collections of the Hunt Library at Carnegie-Mellon University upon her death.[41]
Grants, honors, and awards
In 2013, Barbara Rosenthal received participation in the New Museum's XFR-STN Transfer Station media archiving project.[42]
In 2006, Rosenthal received an Artist's Residency from the Red Gate Gallery, in Beijing.[43] Other residencies include: Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, NY in 2000; Amiga Computer Video Imaging Residency Grant at Adaptors/Brooklyn, NY, in 1996; Electronic Arts Grant Video Residency, Experimental TV Center, Owego, NY in 1989, 1990 and 1991;[44][45]Harvestworks Audio-Video Residency, NYC in 1988; and Video Arts Residency at Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT in 1988.
Rosenthal's monetary awards have included a Media Presentation Grant from Experimental TV Center, Owego, NY in 2000;[46] Finishing Funds from Film Bureau in NYC 1991; a New York State Council on the Arts Video Facility Subsidy Grant at Margolis/Brown Adaptors, Brooklyn, NY in 1998; a Finishing Funds Grant from Media Bureau/The Kitchen in NYC, in 1988; three Artists Space/Artists Grants in NYC 1986, 89 and 90; and a Creative Arts for Public Service C.A.P.S. Grant in Video, New York State, in 1984.[11]
Rosenthal received a Medal of Honor from the Brussels Ministry of Culture, Brussels, Belgium, in 1990. Rosenthal received a Global Village Documentary Festival Award in NYC in 1983. She has been listed as a Fiction Writer, Poet, and Spoken Word Artist by Poets & Writers, NYC, since 1986.[47] She was elected membership in Pi Delta Epsilon National Publications Honor Society, USA, in 1970.
↑ Mind-Roaming Journeys: Surreal Performances With Projection, Text and Voice, Mon, 09 September 2013 // 07:00 PM, Bowery Poetry, 308 Bowery, NYC "Bowery Arts + Science". Archived from the original on 2013-11-16. Retrieved 2013-11-14.
1 2 Carswell, Clare (October–November 2008). "Existential Interaction". NYArts Magazine. New York, NY.
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Coleman, A.D., "Revising Revisionism: Footnotes to the Current Fantasy", Center Quarterly, Woodstock, NY, Winter 1985-86
Dargis, Manohla, "Countercurrents: Change of Direction", Village Voice, New York, NY, August 16, 1988
Handy, Ellen, "Passing Moments, Memory Traces and Light Images", Photography Quarterly, Woodstock, NY, Spring 1995
Handy, Ellen, "Time and Memory: The Limits of Photography", Center Photography Quarterly, Woodstock, NY, 1994
Handy, Ellen, "Time and Memory, Video Art and Identity", Catalogue, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY, 1988
Hoffberg, Judith, Review of "Button Pins: Nice", Umbrella Magazine, Los Angeles, CA, 1995
Hoffberg, Judith A., "Three From Barbara Rosenthal", Umbrella, Santa Monica, CA, 2000
Hoffberg, Judith A., "Reviews: One 4-Word Book/Four 1-Word Books", Umbrella, Santa Monica, CA, 1995
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Myers, George, Jr., "Cretan Bull Dancers: Carolee Schneemann, Terry Kennedy, Irene Siegel, Linda Montano & Barbara Rosenthal," Introduction to Modern Times, Lunchroom Press, East Lansing, MI, 1982
Sorgatz, Michael, "Profile Barbara Rosenthal", Art in New York City", Online, February, 2012
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