Judy Seigel

Judy Seigel
Born	Judith Lee Aronson July 20, 1930 Brooklyn, New York, New York
May 10, 2017(2017-05-10) (aged 86)May 10, 2017(2017-05-10) (aged 86)
Resting place	Mount Eden Cemetery, Hawthorne, Westchester County, New York
🏳️ Nationality	American
🏫 Education	BFA, Cooper Union,1954 Graduate studies in photography, Pratt Institute, 1980
💼 Occupation

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Judy Seigel (1930–2017) was an American artist, photographer, writer, feminist, and activist. She was the founding editor both Women Artists News, and also The World Journal of Post-Factory Photography. She published two books: Mutiny and the Mainstream, and [Read My T-Shirt] for President... A True History of the Political Front - and Back. She taught photography at the Pratt Institute for fourteen years.

Seigel was a passionate activist for the preservation of her neighborhood, Greenwich Village, as well as an advocate of women's art.

According to Josephine Rodgers of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Seigel "...was as an illustrator for an advertising firm, a painter, a photographer, a writer, an editor, and a feminist activist" in New York City.

Early life and education

The daughter of Hortense and Gershon Aronson, Judith Lee Aronson was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on July 20, 1930. Her family moved to Scarsdale, where she graduated from high school in 1947. She went to Northwestern University and the Art Institute of Chicago, and met Morton Seigel in 1947. They married on December 25, 1951.

Judy Seigel graduated from Cooper Union in 1954, with BFA retroactively bestowed in in 1978, after the School of Art was accredited to offer degrees.

Entering the world of New York advertising, Seigel became a graphic artist, working as a staff illustrator at a New York ad agency, then free-lancing children's books. Known for her experimental techniques, she earned places in three annual awards of the field: the Graphis Annual (The International Annual of Advertising and Editorial Graphics), the Society of Illustrators Annual Exhibition, and the Art Directors Club Award.

From 1959 to the early 1965, the Seigels moved to  Switzerland while Morton earned a medical degree and, "To support the family — their children were born in Switzerland — Judy did freelance illustrations." Publisher Cynthia Navaretta described Seigel's dissatisfaction with "carrying out other people's ideas, as well as the loss of quality in reproduction", and her commitment to make "art she deeply cared about". In Europe, she began painting oil landscapes in impressionistic style. As soon as family finances allowed, on their return to the United States Seigel was painting full time.

After a Fauvism period doing cityscapes, Seigel began using acrylics in abstract and pattern-based ways. She viewed a 1968 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, "Photography into Printmaking", that demonstrated solarizing and infrared photography, with effects resembling some of her painting techniques. Ten years later, she became interested in photography to document the street literature appearing on T-shirts, shooting some 1,600 "T-shirts of 1978" Images, which she printed in a basement darkroom originally set up by her son.

Photography

In 1980, Seigel took graduate studies in photography at the Pratt Institute. She taught photography at Pratt for fourteen years, 1980–1994.

Seigel's sub-basement darkroom was one of four darkrooms described by Modern Photography in 1988: "Seigel's darkroom may look like a dungeon, but it does the job. Much of the furniture comes from fleamarkets and throw-aways. To accommodate the height of her Omega C23 enlarger, Seigel had a hole made in the ceiling." Seigel's printing process was described as working down one wall, with trays beside the enlarger for different strengths of developer. An under-counter tray served as an emergency counter, and opposite the enlarger was a table with a glass surface and a light for solarizing.

Seigel's paintings were exhibited at the Ward Nasse Gallery in 1977, and her 1985 Metal and Paint photo show was exhibited at the Port Washington Library. Malcom Preston wrote that Seigel had multiple techniques, including the Sabattier process, exposing a print to light during development. That process, Preston concluded, did not always add "controllable things to the work."

Kathleen Paradiso wrote, "Judy Seigel's recent photos have a lyrical quality, salted with technique, and just a pinch of camp". Paradiso described Seigel as, "hooked on darkroom experimentation, who took scrupulous notes, but could never quite control, or recreate, her discoveries", using beakers and a triple beam balance like a scientist.

Paradiso also summarized critics' reviews of Metal and Paint:

...Metal and Paint was enthusiastically received by critics and community alike. Newsday's Malcom Preston said that "Seigel has the best of both worlds," the "immediacy" of photography and the "sensuousness of painterly surfaces." He noted that as the viewer walks past the print, the tones change, and the images appear and disappear "in an approximation of kinetic work." Popular Photography's Natalie Canavor wrote, "Here's proof that photography's recognized boundaries have expanded sufficiently to obviate further debate about 'is it or isn't it photography.' " Metal and Paint is something new.

— Kathleen Paradiso

Writing, editing and publishing

Seigel was the founding editor of Women Artists Newsletter, which became Women Artists News (1975–1992).

In 1992, Seigel published her first book, Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975-1990, described by one review as a "way to get inside of artists' heads":

This book is just plain wonderful, with all the endearing cussedness of the mud-slinging love fest that is the New York art community. Sophistication, intelligence, pretense, honesty, ambition, elegance, paranoia, professionalism, humor, and anger all bubble along here in a great stew, the stock of which is devotion to art... Artist and photographer Judy Seigel, who assembled Mutiny, possesses not inconsiderable skills as a writer, along with independence of mind and willingness to speak it.

— Ann Lee Morgan

Seigel's 2006 book, [Read My T-Shirt] for President... A True History of the Political Front - and Back, consisted of photographs of "people in T-shirts with different texts, concentrating on political messages after taking part in the protests at the  2004 Republican National Convention". The book returned to the subject that first interested her in photography nearly twenty years earlier– "the street literature" breaking out in slogans on T-shirts in the 1970s. The Villager review described it as, "a retrospective of political T-shirts and their significance in society", the T-shirts pictured in the book as ranging from, "witty to profound to obscene".

Seigel also founded, edited, and published The World Journal of Post-Factory Photography (1998–2004). One reviewer wrote, "Post-Factory Photography is certainly the best underground do-it-yourself alternative-process photography magazine on the planet, containing no end of arcane information. The magazine quickly becomes an indispensable reference for anyone interested in alternative processes." Another said, "As the factory-made materials of modern photography fade from view, hand-applied media, new and old, take the field. The World Journal of Post-Factory Photography brings you 48 pages of information, inspiration, and news about this world-wide movement, from facts and formulas to personalities and history."

The PSA Journal reported,

In the field of "alternative" photography, a new periodical... is The World Journal of Post-Factory Photography... noting that soon all chemical-based media may become "alternative"... There are also articles on "Gum Control - an Introduction," basic gum bichromate (excellently explained and illustrated), a comparison of Van Dyke brown formulas, a piece on "Drawing on the Right Side of the Computer," which covers using a scanner instead of a camera, relevant book reviews, a comprehensive examination of "Sense & Sensitometry," and several pages listing sources of materials required for alternative photography.

— Sil Horwitz

Activism

Community activism

The Villager reported that Seigel was "a passionate advocate for the preservation of Greenwich Village", whose "relentless neighborhood advocacy and artistic endeavors were chronicled in The Villager..." Her letters to the editor also advocated waterfront preservation. In 1992, Seigel wrote, "We in the Village failed to stop the Port Authority from breaking environmental protection laws and city codes when it erected two ventilation towers at the end of Morton Street. These structures were ill-conceived, badly engineered and unnecessary (as independent consultants proved, to the concern of no one in city government)."

In 2004, Seigel led neighbors in protesting "and distributing pamphlets against what they believe is illegal commercial use of property... (which) she calls 'Hollywood on the Hudson' and said that the traffic, trailers, set lights, noise, cranes and parking issues associated with activity... cause a serious disruption to her and surrounding residents." For ten years, Seigel documented the problems, "with a camera, writing letters, staging protests, appealing to the Morton Street Block Association and... speaking at a Community Board 2 meeting." In 2009, Seigel and neighbors also rallied to advocate keeping local post offices open.

Art and feminism

Some of Seigel's activism took the form of letters to the editors of New York newspapers. For example, she disputied the claim that selling art on the streets was a constitutional matter. Seigel called it "schlock as free speech" and "the right to clog streets."

Seigel wrote more than once about the obscenity of the ways women are portrayed:

• She published an essay in Women Artist News critical of the University of Arizona's offering for sale some prints of nude photographs of women: "...It's hardly news that a large and lucrative market exists for material of this type. It is news when an institution of higher learning moves to cash in on it."
• She also sent letters to the editors of The Villager critical of Don Imus, who "..still thinks it's 'fun' and 'cool' to call women 'hos.' ...We can't necessarily blame Imus for being a moron, but we can blame his enablers, who are the real 'hos' ".
• She was critical of The New York Times article about a female professor's objection to Goya's Naked Maja being shown in the classroom: "...the professor's objection didn't involve simply the arousal of male fantasy, as Ms. Goldberg suggests, but the stereotype of woman as whore." Seigel wrote, "Throughout history, art has famously shown woman in two roles, saint or sinner, not only revealing but also creating a mind-set that affects us all... In the case of the Maja, whether or not the lady is a whore, she's naked female flesh on the wall, one of a long line of naked women in a culture in which, whatever movies show us, people in power still wear clothes".

Seigel complained about a story on Senator D'Mato's opposition to Medicaid payments for abortions: "Tom Goldstein tucks Senator D'Amato's opposition to Medicaid payments for abortions for victims of rape and incest into a brief list of 'conservative positions'... No amount of good Senator D'Amato might do could compensate for the damage of forced child bearing, particularly, if one can imagine it, after rape or incest, particularly for those at the level of Medicaid eligibility."

Seigel gave critiqued the editorial mindset of The New York Times:

• "Your story, 'Now Chosen, Chinese Girls Take to U.S.', about the adopted Chinese girls, was very affecting -- as was the description of families giving them homes and love, attempting to make them whole... I can't help noticing, also, that this beautiful upbeat story got little prominence in The Times. It should have had that upper left, page-one spot it seems to reserve for crime and tales of the depraved. It seems here that, for all its aspirations, The Times shares the mindset of the culture -- sadly."
• Seigel reviewed letters on the Book Review section: "Surely Robert Getchell's letter is a plant to get us to write to say that the author letters are the best part of the Book Review, a fascinating balance to the smart-aleck, lazy, mistaken, dumb, partisan or otherwise wrongheaded reviewer -- sometimes, we suspect, callow youth dismissing years of labor with a smooth sentence or two. If there's a reviewer reply, we have an actual exchange of ideas, or at least opinions..."

Publications

Books

• Seigel, Judy (January 1, 1992). Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975-199. Midmarch Arts Press. ISBN 978-1877675058. Search this book on
• Mandel, Charlotte (July 15, 1998). Sight Lines. Illustrated with black and white photographs by Judy Seigel. Midmarch Arts Press. ISBN 978-1877675270. Search this book on
• Seigel, Judy (January 1, 2006). [Read My T-Shirt] for President... A True History of the Political Front - and Back. Front and Back Press. ISBN 978-1877675607. Search this book on

Selected articles

• Seigel, Judy (Spring 1973). "Women's Panels at the C.A.A." The Feminist Art Journal. 2 (2): 10–11, 14 – via JSTOR.
• Seigel, Judy (June 1986). "Let's play house?". Women Artists News. 11: 13–15 – via JSTOR.
• Seigel, Judy (Fall 1987). "Beatrice Wood". Women Artists News. 12 (4/5): 9–11 – via JSTOR.
• Seigel, Judy (December 1991). "Dress for Duress". Women Artists News. 16/17: 74–74 – via EBSCO.
• Seigel, Judy (Spring 1993). "The Nipple Effect". Women Artists News Book Review. 18: 12–34 – via EBSCO.
• Seigel, Judy (Spring 1994). "Art and Psychoanalysis/the Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist". Women Artists News Book Review. 19: 3–36 – via EBSCO.

See also

• Feminist art criticism
• Feminist art movement in the United States
• Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics
• List of feminist art magazines
• Spectral sensitivity

External links

• Museum of Modern Art: Judy Seigel, American, 1930–2017, Pigeons, Village Square, 1980.

This article "Judy Seigel" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Judy Seigel. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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