Eleanor Antin on Feminism and American Empire | INTERVIEWS

Why It Matters

Antin’s blend of feminist performance with a Roman‑empire critique reframes contemporary art as a vehicle for political insight, influencing how creators and scholars address power, gender, and cultural decay.

Key Takeaways

• Antin migrated from New York to Southern California, joining UC art community
• She collaborated with feminist performance artists, including Judy Chicago and Linda Montano
• Antin created large-scale works using puppets, paper dolls, and 40‑person casts
• She likens the United States to a decaying Roman empire
• The logistical challenges of remote production inspired her to write a memoir

Summary

The interview centers on artist Eleanor Antin’s evolution from a New York‑based figure to a pivotal presence in Southern California’s academic and feminist performance circles. After teaching at UC Irvine and UC San Diego, she embedded herself in a vibrant community that included musicians, performance artists, and pioneering feminists such as Judy Chicago and Linda Montano.

Antin describes how she staged expansive productions—often employing 40‑person ensembles, large puppets, and paper‑doll characters she invented herself. She recounts the practical hurdles of coordinating remote printing, FedEx deliveries, and dialect work, noting that these logistical strains eventually pushed her toward memoir writing. Her artistic practice remained rooted in a fascination with ancient Greece and Rome, which she uses as a lens to critique contemporary power structures.

A striking moment comes when Antin equates the United States to a “decaying Roman empire,” invoking the image of Pompeii’s affluent yet precariously situated citizens to illustrate America’s wealth perched on looming disaster. She also humorously admits her poor dialect skills, underscoring the performative trial-and-error inherent in her work.

Antin’s reflections highlight how feminist performance art can serve as both a personal narrative and a broader geopolitical commentary. Her synthesis of historical analogy, large‑scale collaboration, and autobiographical writing offers a template for artists seeking to interrogate empire, gender, and cultural production in today’s volatile climate.

Original Description

Artforum’s video archive includes more than 200 videos with leading artists dating back to year 2009. In this interview, Eleanor Antin discusses her artistic origins, the ruins of Pompeii, and life on the brink of disaster, drawing parallels between the Roman Empire and the United States.

Over the course of her sixty-year career, Eleanor Antin has inhabited many roles. Born in the Bronx in 1935, Antin was a poet and actress in New York before moving to Southern California in 1968 and establishing a conceptual art practice informed by feminism. Her interdisciplinary artworks dissolve the boundaries between theater, performance, and art; they also question the boundaries of the self, featuring different “selves” including the King of Solana Beach, Eleanor Nightingale, and Eleanora Antinova.