BARBARA CIUREJ & LINDSAY LOCHMAN | History of Art, 2024

We created these images in 1979-80 in response to the then prevailing art historical canon — the hierarchy of exclusively European male artists. The most widely used art survey book, the 1969 edition of History of Art by H.W. Janson, excluded all women artists, with the exception of one anonymous Greek vase painter. Only in 1987 were a scant number of significant women artists included in the revised editions. Our images of domestic apotheosis critiqued the assumption of women’s roles as passive objects of inspiration, rather than as potent forces with agency and responsibility. We proposed that the subjects of the most familiar works of art had their own agendas. By locating power within the domestic domain, we provided a more plausible context for the absence of women artists in the canon. Ongoing political and cultural friction prompted the reiteration of this work in 2024 in book form—History of Art by B. Ciurej and L. Lochman.

BIO

Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman collaborate on photographic projects that address the confluence of history, myth and popular culture. Their subject matter spans their gendered experience from adolescence to aging and expands into commentary on the social landscape. They employ staged photography, studio constructions, documentary, alternative processes and artists’ books in their practice.  Their work has been exhibited in the US and internationally and is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, H2Contempory Museum/Germany, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Walker Art Center, and Worcester Art Museum. Their artists' books are in the collections of the Yale Center for British Art, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Joan Flasch Artists Book Collection, and Bainbridge Island Arts Museum among others. In addition to their shared photographic practice, they are contributing editors to the photographic journal Lenscratch. They maintain studios in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois.