Barbara T. Smith

Barbara Turner Smith is an American artist known for her performance work in the late 1960s. She studied painting, art history and religion as an undergraduate at Pomona College, being graduated in 1953, and she received her MFA from University of California, Irvine in 1971. During her time at UC Irvine, Smith and other artist such as Nancy Buchanan, and Chris Burden, founded F-Space, the experimental art gallery where she launched her career as a performance artist (it was also where Burden’s notorious “Shoot” (1971) was staged).

In her early work, Smith collaged photographs of herself and her three children, impressions of portions of her body, and articles of clothing into her self-published Xeroxed books. Titles like “Broken Heart,” “Bond,” “Undies” and “Do Not Touch” suggest the personal nature of her subject matter. As her marriage disintegrated in the late 1960s, autobiography and the creation of community by means of interaction with her audience became central to Smith’s art. The themes she began to explore, “the body, food, nurturing, female desire, heterosexual relationships, sexuality, religion, spiritual transformation, love, and death." [ cite news |last=Calder |first=Diane |title=Barbara T. Smith |date=January 18, 2005 |url=http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2005/Articles0205/BTSmithA.html|work=Pomona College Museum of Art |accessdate=2008-01-02 ]

Smith is most known for her for her performance work in the late 1960s that was at the forefront of feminist, body, and performance art. Cardinal performances by Smith include: “Ritual Meal” (1969), “Celebration of the Holy Squash” (1971), “Feed Me” (1973), “Birthdaze” (1981) and “The 21st Century Odyssey” (1991- 1993).

A retrospective exhibition of her work, "The 21st Century Odyssey Part II: The Performances of Barbara T. Smith" was shown at the Pomona College Museum of Art in 2005, and later traveled to the Kennedy Museum of Art at Ohio University. Her "Trunk Piece," along with video footage from past performances, were a part of the Orange County Museum of Art's permanent collection exhibition "Art Since the 1960s: California Experiments" (July 15, 2007-September 14, 2008). [ cite news |title=Art Since the 1960s: California Experiments |url=http://www.ocma.net/index.html?page=current#Art_Since_the_1960s:_California_Experiments |work=Orange County Museum of Art |accessdate=2008-01-02 ] Her "Field Piece" (1968-1972) was the central work of a show at The Box gallery in Los Angeles (November 17, 2007-January 5, 2008). [ cite news |title=Critics' Picks |url=http://artforum.com/picks/section=la#picks19081 |work=Art Forum |accessdate=2008-01-02 ]

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External links

* [http://theboxla.com/exhibitions/past/barbara_smith/ Barbara T. Smith, Remnants: Artworks from 1965–1972]
* [http://www.ocma.net/ Orange County Museum of Art]