BODY-SWAPPING ARMOR - Linda Stein

BODY-SWAPPING
ARMOR
FRONT COVER: FIG. 1. KNIGHT OF TOMORROW 542. 2005. WOOD, METAL, STONE. 80” X 24” X 17” SIEMENS COLLECTION
IN THE PROCESS OF BEING CONVERTED TO BRONZE IN A LIMITED EDITION
ABOVE: FIG. 2. SELF PORTRAIT WITH BLADES 197. 1993. PHOTO MONTAGE. 8” X 10”
FRONT COVER: FIG. Heroic Compassion 665. 2009
wood, metal, paper, and mixed media. 65" × 18" × 14" on mannequin
NEW WORKS
BY
LINDA STEIN
SEPTEMBER 10 - OCTOBER 24, 2009
FLOMENHAFT GALLERY
NEW YORK

FRONT COVER: Fig. 1. Heroic Compassion 665. 2009.
wood, metal, paper, and mixed media. 65" × 18" × 14"
THIS PAGE: Fig. 2. Power 581. 2007.
wood, metal, stone. 48" × 16" × 8"
BODY-SWAPPING, EMPOWERMENT AND EMPATHY:
LINDA STEIN’S RECENT SCULPTURE
By Margo Hobbs Thompson 1
As she concluded her May 2009 keynote address to the National Association
of Women Artists, Linda Stein remarked, “Gender constructions and gender
constrictions. How do we find the courage, the bravery to break these
molds?” 2 Her series of Knights, begun in 2002, guides the viewer toward
empowerment in the face of sexism, homophobia, racism, and other
forms of institutionalized oppression. Since 2007, the Knights have
evolved from static totemic personages mounted on the wall to
suits of armor animated by their wearers. They are trickster figures
in their shape-shifting potentialities. Stein encourages the viewer
to imagine what it is like to slip into another skin, to swap bodies
and shift genders.
The oldest work on view, Knight of Wishing 557 [fig. 3] is an excellent
example of the hieratic figures Stein made to hang on the wall, like
guardians. As it did for so many, the destruction of the World Trade
Center towers on September 11, 2001 had a profound effect on
Stein, whose studio was within earshot of the planes exploding
and who ran north, holding hands with her studio assistants, to
escape what she feared was a bomb attack. She witnessed the
towers’ collapse. In the aftermath of that day, Adorno’s remark
about the barbarity of writing poetry after Auschwitz seemed newly
relevant; 3 Stein, like others in the fine arts and literature, found it
difficult to resume her creative work and did not make sculpture for a
year afterwards. When she returned to the studio, she discovered that
she no longer worked abstractly, but sculpted vertical forms that were
figurative and undeniably, if unintentionally, feminine. She has explored
and refined these guardians or shields in the years since in a dialectical
process in which every work answers some formal or philosophical
questions while it poses new ones. Power 581 [fig. 2] and Knight of Wishing
557 [fig. 3] look as though they have been salvaged from a ruined site,
formed out of urban debris fused by intense heat and compression. The hard
surfaces of the embedded metal and stone bring to mind the trinitite produced
when New Mexico sand melted under the force of atomic test blasts, or the
petrified relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The dense conglomeration of material
makes these figures heavy and impenetrable, like a suit of armor—hence Knights.
Fig. 3. Knight of Wishing 557. 2006. wood, metal, stone, leather. 48" × 16" × 6"
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4
Figs. 4-6. Knight at Ease 652. 2009. wood, metal, leather,
paper, archival inks plus velcro straps. 46" × 17" × 10"
More recent works, such as Knight at Ease 652
[figs. 4-6] and Heroic Compassion 665 [fig. 1,
front cover], are meant to be worn, with divided
articulated legs and adjustable Velcro straps [fig. 7].
They still resemble armor, but for mobile samurai
warriors 4 , not medieval gallants. The materials are
densely packed and incorporate elements that
demand to be read and decoded: found security
badges and an Asian deity in Heroic Compassion,
and comic strips and commercial texts in Knight
at Ease. The dominant iconography is feminine:
Stein incorporates images of the DC Comics
hero Wonder Woman and the anime Princess
Mononoke. But on the whole, these suits of armor
are androgynous; as Jann Matlock observed in her
2007 article on Stein, armor situates the wearer
outside expected gender categories—Joan of Arc,
for example, was unwomanly but not masculine in
her armor. 5 Stein enhances this gender ambiguity
by making the Knights’ waists slender but not
hourglass shaped, and their pectorals prominent
but not breast-like. Their pubic areas offer no
clues. 6
Fig. 7. Interactive performance with Pilobolus Dancer,
Josie M. Coyoc, and others moving to music wearing
Knights at Stein’s NAWA exhibition in 2009
Stein takes gender seriously, as an artist and as an
activist. In this regard, her work bears comparison
with some of the feminist artists whom curators
and art historians have recently reconsidered in
Figs. 8-9. Stein channels Wonder Woman and
imagines her thoughts in today’s world
exhibitions such as WACK! Art and the Feminist
Revolution and Global Feminisms. 7 Printmaker
and installation artist Nancy Spero, for example,
made a commitment in the mid-1970s to picture
only female figures and to represent women as
protagonists. Like Spero, Stein is interested in
female empowerment and she references feminine
archetypes. She is more concerned than Spero,
however, in exploring the borders and limits that
define gender: its construction and constraints.
Dara Birnbaum’s 1978 video, Technology/
Transformation: Wonder Woman seems at first
to share, if not predict, Stein’s fascination with
the female super-hero. But Birnbaum’s work—of
which Stein was until recently unaware—is above
all a critique of the mass media’s objectification
of women, and she neither liberates the media
icon nor explores the archetype she represents.
Stein locates Wonder Woman’s value as a role
model, and through her examines her own
Fig. 10. Another example of remarks that
Wonder Woman might currently hear
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artistic project. As a life-long pacifist, Stein
was discomfited to recognize that her figurative
sculptures were warriors especially in the context
of the masculinization of the so-called war on terror
that escalated after 9/11. Wonder Woman offered
an alternative: she was a defender of those who
needed her protection without being bellicose.
Stein adapted other heroines in her pantheon
of strong and benevolent protectors: the Asian
goddess of mercy Kannon or Kuan-yin (referred
to by several different names, and who in some
cultures is both man and woman) who answers
all appeals and alleviates suffering, and the anime
Princess Mononoke (from the 1997 film by Hayao
Miyazaki) who was raised by wolves and fights on
the side of the animals against human destruction
of her beloved forest [fig. 11]. Stein’s Knights are not
just symbolic guardians in the uneasy, post-9/11
world: they articulate new gender positions where
strength and mercy do not belong exclusively to
one sex or the other.
Wonder Woman’s creator set himself a similar
task in 1941 when he imagined his heroine
as both strong and alluring. William Moulton
Fig. 11. Stein with her favorite icons:
Wonder Woman, Mononoke, and Kannon
Marston drew upon Greek mythology for his
Amazon princess, whom he endowed with
attributes belonging to goddesses, gods, and
heroes: Athena’s wisdom, Aphrodite’s beauty,
Hermes’ fleetness, and Herakles’ strength. She
leaves the land of the Amazons, Paradise Island,
with her bullet-deflecting bracelets, invisible
telekinetic plane, and golden lasso of obedience
(later the lasso of truth) to bring peace and justice
to the world of men. 8 An important contradiction
informs Wonder Woman’s genesis, which Kelli E.
Stanley explores in her 2005 analysis of the comic
book super-hero. Female warriors were forbidden
in patriarchal cultures like ancient Greece, yet
the mythical Amazon was adopted to legitimize
Athenian authority; the Amazon, who in her very
nature was opposed to patriarchy, was the Other by
and through which the patriarchy defined itself. The
latter-day Amazon Wonder Woman, at once taboo
and desired, metamorphosed over the decades
“to reflect nothing less than the confusion, fear,
and constant reformation of American ideals about
American women” according to Stanley. 9 As Stein
has mobilized her once more, we might ask what
Wonder Woman signifies in the post-9/11 age, what
ideals of American womanhood she reflects. How
does she embody these ideals, and to what extent
does she subvert them?
In Stein’s hands, Wonder Woman advances the
artist’s intention to recognize feminine strength
and valor that are disavowed in the masculine
and feminine positions that structure our society.
Stein, in her NAWA address and elsewhere,
speaks movingly of the way gender stereotypes
were reified after 9/11 in the media and official
discourse to make all the heroes men (soldiers
and first responders), and the victims women (the
9/11 widows most prominently). Fundamentally,
Stein’s recent art is about disturbing the binaries
that organize our society and that we accept
unquestioningly as natural. The masculine and
feminine polarities that she investigates are easily
mapped onto other structuring dichotomies in
which each term has gender connotations: public
and private, culture and nature, mind and body.
This last is a compelling pair to consider for its
philosophical implications, an argument Elizabeth
Fig. 12. Detail of Breaking News 638
Fig. 13. Breaking News 638. 2008. paper,
archival inks, wood. 78" × 24" × 11"
7

8
Grosz develops in her book Volatile Bodies. For
Grosz, the body and gendered subjectivity are
tightly interlinked in all fields of knowledge. 10
She calls for a complete rethinking of the body
that would acknowledge its centrality to cultural
and subjective formations and predicts the
repercussions: “developing alternative accounts
of the body may create upheavals in the structure
of existing knowledges, not to mention in the
relations of power governing the interactions
of the two sexes.” 11 In short, Grosz believes
that reconceptualizing the body will lead to the
realization that the masculine/feminine relationship
is complex and mutually implicated, not a polarized
binary and that this in turn will undermine the
patriarchal system that places constraints on
women and men, and their bodies, alike. 12 Grosz
sketches a set of considerations and concerns that
attend a feminist rethinking of the body, and several
of these help to illuminate Stein’s project.
Stein explores “embodied subjectivity” with her
wearable Knights, a term Grosz favors because
it stresses the interdependence of the mind and
body. 13 The Knights stage an experience of the
tight connection between mind and body: wearing
one, the viewer may find herself suffused with
a new consciousness that originates in the new
body she has taken on. This new sensation is
dramatically recorded in the videotapes Stein has
made of visitors to her studio trying on various
Knights. 14 A man wearing W 629 reported, “I feel
stronger … I feel more of a sense of power. I feel
like I’m protected and safe.” Another man wearing
the same piece expounded, “Wow, I feel like a
pregnant woman” as he caressed the swelling
metal belly of the sculpture. “I feel like I’ve got a
really big womb … like an earth mother” [fig. 14].
Jann Matlock and Ann V. Bible have both written
about the haptic quality of Stein’s sculpture. 15
Art historian Linda Nochlin associated a haptic,
or touch-based approach to space with art by
women. 16 More provocatively, film historian Laura
U. Marks advanced a concept of “haptic visuality”
to describe a feminist mode of video art that
avoided the problematic male gaze by activating
other senses in the viewer besides sight. She drew
upon the theories of early 20 th -century art historian
Alois Reigl, who posited that art advanced as it
abandoned tactile physicality in favor of visual
space. By reviving the haptic, Marks argued,
feminists undermined the very logic of art history
Fig. 14. W 629 worn by Stephen Goldman
during filming by Stein at The Art Club in 2008
that excluded women’s art. 17 In a presupposed
hierarchy of senses, sight is less corporeal, more
spiritual, and touch is more bound to the body.
Reigl’s progression towards visuality traces a mindbody
split; the aesthetic experience is increasingly
cereberal as the eyes become the privileged
means of apprehension. Stein’s use of the haptic
as a mode of address is evident in the gloriously
tactile surfaces of her Knights with their varied
textures and materials. Engaging the viewer’s body
imaginatively or literally, in the pieces to be worn,
Stein incorporates alternatives to the primacy of
visuality for understanding her sculptures and
reactivates the viewer’s sense of embodiment.
Art historian David Getsy, in his book on Victorian
sculpture and aesthetic theory Body Doubles,
15
17
19
Figs. 15-21. Vestment 628. 2008. wood, metal. 52" × 18" × 6"
plus 12" Lucite extensions resting on shoulders.
Worn by Linda Stein, Carole Hyatt, Rob Okun,
Elizabeth A. Sackler, Sallie Bingham and Merle Hoffman
16
18
20
Fig. 21
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10
Fig. 22. Installation of variable dimensions.
LEFT SCULPTURE: Knight of Courage 655. 2009. wood, metal, leather, paper, archival inks plus velcro straps. 45" × 16" × 9"
RIGHT SCULPTURE: Silver Knight 666. 2009. wood, metal, leather, paper, archival inks plus velcro straps. 47" × 17" × 12"
Figs. 23-24. Front & side views of Heroic Compassion 665. 2009. wood, metal, paper, and mixed media. 65" × 18" × 14"
11

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identified the trace of sculptural experience left to
the viewer’s memory as an imago, not an image.
While a picture may be recalled instantly and
fully as an image, a sculpture resists such mental
summary, because encountering a sculpture is a
haptic and temporal experience, not only visual. An
imago, a term Getsy borrowed from psychology, is
“a nexus in which memories, perceptions, bodily
sensations, and tangential associations all engage
and play.” 18 The power of Stein’s Knights to fully
engage the viewer’s body and through it the psyche
in this way is clearly expressed in the videotapes of
studio visitors wearing Vestment 628 [fig. 21]. For
one woman, it triggered memories of her mother’s
recent death in a profoundly experiential way: “This
feels like turning into a corpse. … It’s as if part of
my body is starting to calcify and become cold…
so I don’t like this, can you get it off!” [fig. 20] But
for a male visitor, the experience was enlighteningly
androgynous: “There’s a celebratory feeling … and
simultaneously there’s a feeling of hmm, this is a
tough row to hoe, being female” [fig. 17].
These two strong and distinct reactions to the
same sculpture demonstrate that Stein’s Knights
do not prescribe a singular new ideal body type,
and the artist thus avoids the philosophical misstep
of replacing the terms of hegemony while its
oppressive framework remains unaltered. Grosz
cautions that a hegemonic norm or ideal based
on a single body type must not be produced as a
substitute for the existing corporeal ideal (which
is masculine, white, bourgeois, young, and able);
she prefers a field of types, each with its own
specificity, non-homogenous, and multiple. 19
Swapping matriarchy for patriarchy, as in some
Goddess art from the 1970s and in Judy Chicago’s
Dinner Party of 1979, has contributed to judgments
of feminist art as simplistic and essentialist.
Substituting powerful women for powerful men—
Wonder Woman for Superman, say—tends to leave
the hierarchical structure, and the constitutive
power relations, in place. The Knights offer an ideal
in that the artist intends them to uplift, to convey
a positive message of peace and protection, but
the principles take a variety of physical forms. In
Heroic Line-Up 599 [fig. 25], for example, Stein’s
Fig. 25. Heroic Line-Up 599. 2007. 3-D collage
with archival inks on paper. 42" × 21" × 3".
Also, limited edition archival print, 9" × 12"
patron saints are on prominent display: Wonder
Woman is arrayed across the sculpture’s chest,
Princess Mononoke across the hips. Here are
two versions of an empowered female figure, the
gamine princess and the voluptuous super-hero,
and the sculptural form they compose resembles
neither body type but is instead androgynous,
lacking secondary sexual characteristics. As
noted previously, armor allows gender to be
transcended, if temporarily. Silver Knight 666
[figs. 23-24] is not obviously feminine, despite the
rounded pectorals and images of Wonder Woman,
nor definitively masculine, although the torso is
broad and powerful. With these and other pieces,
Stein seems to be working out the problem of
embodied subjectivity and body ideals by insisting
that morphology does not predict gender or its
formative stereotypes.
Despite the fluidity of gender that Stein represents
as an alternative to the dominant ideal that, in
Grosz’s words, “may be undermined through
a defiant affirmation of a multiplicity, a field
of differences, of other kinds of bodies and
subjectivities,” 20 her Knights are also visibly
inscribed by social forces. Indeed, the recognizable
materials and the slightly legible texts
remind the viewer that culture produces the
body and redefining the body produces a shift in
gendered subjectivity—which in turn may transform
culture. Knights like Heroic Compassion 665
make literal the way culture defines the body with
its repetition of images of Wonder Woman and
proliferation of texts, which the artist explains are
not superficially applied to the sculptural form but
materially constitute that form and are effectively
identical with it. Image and text, the materials of
cultural reproduction, produce the tangible body.
Stein’s sculptures, in turn, work on the viewer’s
body, through the imago they produce in memory
and when they are worn in the staged encounter
Stein calls Body-Swapping. The artist takes
advantage of sculpture’s haptic qualities, its scale
and tactility, to create surrogate bodies. Trying
on new bodily constructions and constraints, the
viewer may experience a shift in her embodied
subjectivity. This is not to say that a different
gender identification ensues, but rather that
wearing Stein’s Knights allows one to explore the
contours of one’s gendered subjectivity. Suited
up in Stein’s armor, the viewer experiences
empathy with other corporeal types. From this new
perspective, the viewer may imagine upheavals
in existing knowledge structures, new power
relationships among the genders. 0
Fig. 26. The Power to Protect. Rosen Museum, 2006
Fig. 27. Knight of New Thoughts 667. 2009.
wood, metallic paper, leather, metal, fiber. 41" × 15" × 8"
13

Fig. 28.
Wonder Woman 632.
2008. wood,
acrylicized paper,
archival inks.
76" × 20" × 9"
Figs. 29-30. LEFT: Dancer Kate Kennedy in a 2009 interactive performance
at Le Petit Versailles. RIGHT: Shaman 635. 2008. Bronze. 49" × 16" × 8"
Fig 31. River Knight 608. 2008. wood, metal, stone. 45" × 15" × 9"
Fig. 32. Asian Armature 570.
2006. wood. 71" × 21" × 5"
Fig. 33. Wonder Woman 632. 2008. wood,
acrylicized paper, archival inks. 76" × 20" × 9"
Fig. 34. Knight of Tomorrow 630. 2007. bronze. 78" × 25" × 14" with detail.
Sited outdoors in the Adelphi University 2008-10 Biennial
Fig. 35. Knight of Healing 614. 2008. wood,metal,stone. 20" × 6" × 3"
Fig. 36. Lotus Knight 603. 2007. wood,
Fig. 37. Black Guard 633. 2008.
Fig. 38. Heroes 592. 2007.
wood, acrylicized paper,
archival inks. 78" × 40" × 10"
14 acrylicized paper, archival inks. 78" × 21" × 8"
wood, bone, resin. 57" × 18" × 6"
15

Fig. 39. Heroic Journey 602. 2007.
3-D collage with archival inks. 42" × 14" × 4"
16
Fig. 40. Wall-F 642. 2008. paper,
archival inks, wood, metal, foamcore. 58" × 19" × 5"
Fig. 41. Shaman 575. 2006.
wood, metal, stone.
49" × 16" × 8"
Fig. 42. E.R. 631. 2008.
wood, metal, stone.
73" × 24" × 13"
Fig. 43. Strength 596. 2007.
wood, acrylicized paper,
archival inks. 23" × 5" × 3"
Fig. 44. Security Knight 646.
2009. wood, metal, leather, paper,
archival inks. 57" × 18" × 6"
Fig. 45. Country Knight 643. 2008. paper, archival inks,
wood, metal, foamcore. 58" × 19" × 5"
17

ABRIDGED BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES, JANUARY 2006 - SEPTEMBER 2009
As Founder/President of the non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation, HAVE ART: WILL
TRAVEL! Inc. (HAWT), Linda Stein’s focus has been to encourage constructive
and empowering male and female gender roles leading to Peace and Equality.
As art editor of On The Issues Magazine, and in her other writings and
lectures, Stein exposes and highlights sexism in the art world and beyond.
For more complete information, see Stein’s archives housed at Smith College:
www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/ssc/visit.html, or go to her website: www.LindaStein.com,
or see her last catalog “The Power to Protect: Sculpture of Linda
Stein:” www.Amazon.com, or go to www.HaveArtWillTravel.org.
Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2009 BODY-SWAPPING ARMOR, Flomenhaft
Gallery, Chelsea, NY • LINDA STEIN SCULPTURE--STRONG SUIT: ARMOR
AS SECOND SKIN, National Association of Women Artists, Manhattan, NY •
2007 ECcentric BODIES, Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries, Rutgers
University, New Brunswick, NJ • LINDA STEIN - THE POWER TO PROTECT:
SCULPTURE OF LINDA STEIN, Nathan D. Rosen Museum, Boca Raton, FL
• 2006 LINDA STEIN - KNIGHTS, SOFA, Chicago, IL, Longstreth Goldberg
Art, Naples, FL • LINDA STEIN - WOMEN WARRIORS: THE YIN AND YANG,
Flomenhaft Gallery, NY • LINDA STEIN - SCULPTURE OF THE HEROIC
WOMAN, Anita Shapolsky Gallery, Jim Thorpe, PA • LINDA STEIN - WON-
DER WOMAN REBORN, The Art Mission Gallery, Binghamton, NY • LINDA
STEIN - HEROIC VISIONS, Longstreth Goldberg Art, Naples, FL
Selected Group Exhibitions: 2009 VISIBILITIES, Birmingham-Southern
College, AL • SALON 2009, Flomenhaft Gallery, NY • GALLERY ARTISTS,
Longstreth Goldberg Art, Naples, FL • 2008 NOBIS SOLO, Tabla Rasa Gallery,
Brooklyn, NY • GALLERY GANG 2ND BIENNIAL, Flomenhaft Gallery,
Chelsea, NY • 2007 WOMEN’S WORK: HOMAGE TO FEMINIST ART, Tabla
Rasa Gallery, Brooklyn, NY • WORKS ON PAPER - Flomenhaft Gallery, NY
Selected Public Art: Le Petite Versailles, NY, Outdoor Exhibit and Body-
Swapping Performance • Adelphi University, NY, 2008 Outdoor Biennial •
International Design Center, Southwest FL • Portland State University, OR
Education: Master’s Degree, Pratt Institute, NY • Bachelor’s Degree (Cum
Laude), Queens College, NY • Pratt Graphics Center, NY • Art Students
League, NY • School of Visual Arts, NY
Press: Newspapers, Magazines & Journals: Journal of Lesbian Studies;
“Ruptures of Vulnerability: Linda Stein’s Knight Series,” by Ann V. Bible (forthcoming)
• 2009 Summer, ARTnews, “Flomenhaft,” by Mona Molarsky, p. 129
• Jun 24 - 30, The Villager, “Questioning gender, confronting fear: Tribeca
sculptor conceives armor as empowering corrective,” by Elena Mancini, p.
34 • May 14, The East Hampton Star, “Linda Stein’s Body Armor,” by Elise
D’Haene, p.C2 • Apr 16, The East Hampton Star, “Linda Stein’s Strong Suit
at The Art Club,” by Elise D’Haene, p.C2 • Spring, Voice Male, “How Linda
Stein’s Knights Safeguard Our Days,” by Jann Matlock and Joan Marter, pgs
25-27 • Mar 15, NY Art Examiner, “Wonder Woman is Making a Movie in
Manhattan,” by LA Slugocki • 2008 Sept 25; East Hampton Star; “Linda
Stein: The Art of Soft Power”; pg C2 • Fall; Bitch Magazine; “ Lady of The
Knights: Linda Stein and the Art of Soft Power”; by Amy Wolf, 3 black & white
photos • May; On The Issues Magazine; “Linda Stein Knights;” by Linda
Stein, Art Editor, color photos • Mar; Curve Magazine; “Q+A Linda Stein”; by
Stephanie Schroeder, 1 color photo, p. 69 • Jan/Feb; Sculpture Magazine;
“Linda Stein, Nathan D. Rosen Gallery, Boca Raton, FL;” by Skip Sheffield •
Jan 12; Los Angeles Times; “Give Borat the boot”; by Linda Stein • Jan 4;
Los Angeles Times; “Dissecting the Tao of ‘Borat’ -- did we learn?;” By Hillel
Felman • 2007 Fall, Feminist Studies, “Vestiges of New Battles: Linda Stein
Sculpture after 9/11,” by Jann Matlock • Jul 8, The NY Times, “Women’s
Bodies as Art, Wrinkles and All,” by Benjamin Genocchio, 1 photo • Jun 14,
BBC News, “Artist gets even after Borat hoax,” By Ian Youngs • wikipedia.
org, “Linda Stein” • Mar, The Boca Raton Observer, “Sculptor Linda Stein’s
Warrior Women, The safety of objects,” by Robin Gelfand, p. 64-67 • Jan
28, Sun-Sentinel “The Power to Protect” By Emma Trelles, Critics Choice,
Arts Section • Jan 14, Boca Raton News “The Power to Protect: Sculpture
of Linda Stein” by Reshma Kirpalani, Society and the Arts p. 10 • Jan 8,
Boca Raton News Online “Linda Stein, ‘The Woman Who Stood Up To Borat,’
Introduces ‘Warrior Woman’ at Rosen Gallery”, by Skip Sheffield • Jan 7,
New Times Broward-Palm Beach “Make Benefit Glorious Boca”, by Lewis
Goldberg • 2006 Feminists Who Changed America, “Linda Stein”, Barbara
J. Love, p. 443 • Dec 20, artknowledgenews.com “‘The Power to Protect:
Sculpture of Linda Stein’ at the Nathan D. Rosen Museum” • Nov 30, Rolling
Stone, “The Man Behind The Moustache” by Neil Strauss, Stein photo
& highlights p. 64 • Nov 27, Us Weekly, “Borat’s Angry Costars, Not very
nice! The film’s unwitting dupes cry foul, Femme Fury,” by Mark Cina, p. 79
• Nov 24, The Guardian, “The Borat Backlash,” By Patrick Barkham • Nov
18
17 - 23, Chelsea Now/Downtown Express, Linda Stein’s defensive armor, by
Ellison Walcott, p. 29 • Nov 16, Stern Magazine, “War doch nur Spaß”, by
Michael Streck, p. 192 - 193 • Nov 15, Globus, Croatia, “AMERIKANCI NA
UDARU LAŽNOG KAZAHSTANSKOG NOVINARA,” By Karmen Begovic, p.
29 • Nov 10, Salon.com, “What’s real in ‘Borat’?,” By David Marese and Willa
Paskin • Nov 9, London Times, “Borat’s ‘victims’ fail to see the funny side,”
by Kevin Maher • Oct 26, Metro NY, “Borat interview shows artist’s flair,” by
Heidi Patalano, p. 11 • Oct 24, Huffington Post, “Duped Borat Interviewee:
‘He Owes Me One’...” • Oct 24, Slate.com, “Borat Tricked Me! Can’t I sue
him or something?,” by Daniel Engber • Oct 23, BBC News, “How Borat
hoaxed America,” by Ian Youngs • Oct 19, The East Hampton Star, “Sculptor
Gets A Movie Role: Bamboozled by HBO’s appallingly gauche ‘Borat’,” by
Sheridan Sansegundo • Oct 16, Newsweek, “Behind the Schemes,” by Devin
Gordon, p.74-75. • Oct 13, Downtown Express, “How I was duped by Ali G.,”
by Linda Stein, cover and p.29-30. • Oct 9, NY Post, “The Borat Trap’s Big
Catch: How a fake Kazakh fooled a feminist,” by Andrea Peyser, p.11. • Jun
21, Times News, Something for everyone at new Jim Thorpe exhibit, by Karen
Cimms • May, ARTnews, Vol. 105, No. 5, Linda Stein, Longstreth Goldberg
Art, Naples, FL, by Donald Miller, pgs. 171-172 • Summer, CALYX, A Journal
of Art and Literature by Women, Vol. 23, No. 2, “Linda Stein Knights: A
Sculpture Series after 9/11,” Essay by The Artsist, Front and Back Cover with
color photos, p. 75-79, includes four photographs. • May-Jun, Harvard GLR/
Worldwide Magazine, Vol. XIII, No. 3, “Linda Stein: Sculptor of the ‘Warrior
Woman,’” Linda Stein interviewed by Dr. Helen Hardacre, Text and 4 color
photos on p. 30-31 • Apr 6, Press & Sun Bulletin, color photo on cover of
“Good Times” entertainment section, “Artist Chat Tonight” text and photo
on p. 3. • Spring, The Bridge, Vol. 1, Issue 4, “Sculpture evokes benevolent
power,” text and photo on p. 34.
Selected Essays for Exhibition Catalogs: 2009 MARGO HOBBS THOMP-
SON - Body Swapping Empowerment and Empathy: Linda Stein’s recent
sculpture • 2006 JOAN MARTER - Regarding Stein’s Knights and Glyphs •
HELEN HARDACRE - Power and Protection: Japanese/American Crossroads
and the Impact of 9/11 on the Sculpture of Linda Stein.
Book References: 2007 Baumgardner, Jennifer. Look Both Ways: Bisexual
Politics. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. • Napier, Susan J. From
Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the
West. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 211. • 2006 Love, Barbara J. Feminists
Who Changed America, 1963-1975. Nancy F. Cott. Urbana Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 2006, p. 443
Lectures/Presentations: 2009, Oct, “The Chance To Be Brave, The Courage
To Dare”, Powerpoint presentation by Linda Stein, Elizabeth A. Sackler
Wing of Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum. • Sept, Pollock-Krasner House,
East Hampton, NY • May, “The Chance To Be Brave, The Courage To Dare”,
Keynote address and Powerpoint presentation by Linda Stein for the National
Association of Women Artists, National Arts Club, Gramercy Park, NY •
Apr, Masculinity/Femininity (Part II) dialogue between Linda Stein & Michael
Kimmel: , The Art Club, Tribeca, NY • Feb, Linda Stein & Rob Okun: Masculinity/Femininity
(Part I), The Art Club, Tribeca, NY • 2007 Aug, Linda Stein:
Art in the Age of Popular Culture, Harvard Project for Asian and International
Relations, Convention Center, Beijing, China • Jul, The Power to Protect:
Sculpture of Linda Stein, East Hampton Artist Alliance, Ashawagh Hall, East
Hampton, NY • Jan, The Power to Protect: Sculpture of Linda Stein, Nathan
D. Rosen Museum, Boca Raton, FL • Jun, Linda Stein’s Knights of Protection
after 9/11: A Comparison with Wonder Woman, Princess Mononoke and
Kannon, Tuebingen Museum, Tuebingen, Germany • May, Power and Protection:
Japanese and American Crossroads in the Sculpture of Linda Stein,
Miho Museum, Kyoto, Japan • Apr Wonder Woman Reborn: The Sculpture of
Linda Stein, Roberson Museum, Binghamton, NY
TV and Movie Appearances: 2009 Aug 7, “Kulturplatz” with Eva Wannenmacher,
Schweizer Fernsehen (Swiss TV) • 2007 Apr 13, E! Entertainment •
Jan 24, WXEL, repeated on Feb 7th • 2006 Nov 15, “The Early Show,” CBS
• Nov 13, Reuters • Nov 13, “The Situation Room with Paula Zahn,” CNN
• Nov 12, “World News Sunday,” ABC • Nov 10, “Nightline,” ABC • Nov 3,
Linda Stein appears in “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” 20th Century Fox • Oct 24-25, “Inside
Edition,” Fox TV • Oct 9, CNBC, “The Big Idea” by Donny Deutch • Apr,
“The New Yorkers,” Channel 26. • “Linda Stein’s Sculpture,” LTV Long Island
Television, 50 minute interview by Haim Mizrahi
Radio Interviews: 2007 Jun 18, “The Breakfast Show” Newstalk Radio,
Ireland • Jun 15, “As it happens,” CBC Radio 1 • 2006 Dec 18, WBAI Cat
Radio Café, NY Radio, by Janet Coleman • Nov 14, Detroit Radio • Nov 10,
“The Morning Mess,” 93.1 WNOU-FM, Indianapolis, IN
ENDNOTES
1. Dr. Margo Hobbs Thompson is Assistant
Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History
at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
She has published on gender and art in n.
paradoxa, Genders, and GLQ.
2. Stein’s PowerPoint lecture, “The Chance to Be
Brave, The Courage to Dare” was delivered at the
National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, New York
City, May 20, 2009.
3. Theodor Adorno was a German philosopher
associated with the Frankfurt School of neo-
Marxian social research. He made the statement in
“An Essay on Cultural Criticism and Society” (1949;
repr. in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber,
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967).
4. Note that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York City is exhibiting “Art of the Samurai:
Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156–1868,”
from October 21, 2009–January 10, 2010
5. Jann Matlock, “Vestiges of New Battles: Linda
Stein’s Sculpture after 9/11,” Feminist Studies 3, no.
33 (Fall 2007), 569.
6. During her lectures, Stein often asks young
children “Is this sculpture a boy or a girl? What
makes you think that?”
7. Organized by curator Cornelia Butler,
WACK! opened at the Los Angeles Museum
of Contemporary Art in 2007 and traveled to
the National Museum of Women in the Arts in
Washington, DC, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center
in New York City, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Art historian Linda Nochlin and Maura Reilly,
Founding Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler
Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum,
curated Global Feminisms, opening at the Brooklyn
Museum in 2007.
8. Kelli E. Stanley, “ ‘Suffering Sappho!’: Wonder
Woman and the (Re)Invention of the Feminine
Ideal,” Helios 32, no. 2 (2005), 145, 147.
9. Stanley, 145.
10. Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward
a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1994), 19.
11. Grosz, 20.
12. Grosz, 20-1.
13. Grosz, 21-2.
14. Stein’s video Body-Swapping is
accessible from YouTube: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=shOqGEvwwHg
15. Matlock as in first footnote; Ann V. Bible,
“Ruptures of Vulnerability: Linda Stein’s Knight
Series,” Journal of Lesbian Studies, forthcoming
2010.
16. Matlock, 586.
17. Laura U. Marks, “Video Haptics and Erotics,”
Screen 39, no. 4 (Winter 1998), 332, 335.
18. David J. Getsy, Body Doubles: Sculpture in
Britain, 1877-1905 (The Paul Mellon Centre for
Studies in British Art. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2004), 37.
19. Grosz, 22-3.
20. Grosz, 19.
CREDITS
Fig. 46. Wonder Woman video in progress, Title Screen, 2009.
Catalogue Production: Matt Lopez
Catalogue Photography: D. James Dee, New York;
Stein Studios, New York
ISBN: 978-0-9790762-1-3
Exhibition Coordinator: Eleanor Flomenhaft,
Flomenhaft Gallery, New York
© 2009 Linda Stein
All rights reserved
Fig. 47. Stein at work. 2006
BACK COVER: Fig. 48. Boxing Ring W 650. 2009. wood and metal. 49" × 18" × 6"
547 W. 27th St., New York, NY 10001
212.268.4952 flomanhaftgallery.com
547 W. 27th St., New York, NY 10001
212.268.4952 212.268.4952 flomanhaftgallery.com
flomanhaftgallery.com
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ISBN: 978-0-9790762-1-3