The Brooklyn Rail

Why, in the late sixties and early seventies, did a group of women artists toss aside the era’s stale formalist orthodoxies to refashion themselves as witches, sorceresses, and sibyls? Why did they undertake private rituals that reconnected them with a pre-Christian earth mother and organize public performances that explored Indigenous spiritual practices centered on a mother goddess? Why did they dance naked in the moonlight, bury themselves in the earth, invoke snake deities, and paint their faces with menstrual blood? The activities of the adherents of what became known as the Goddess Movement were of a piece with the explosion of liberation movements, political protests, and counter-cultural experiments that rocked America and Europe in the Age of Aquarius. But they were also specific to these women’s desire to meld a feminist and ecological consciousness into a new conception of human society. Serving as a model for their dreams was the idea of an ancient matriarchy, real or mythical, organized around principles of reverence for nature, cooperation, and the interdependence of all living and nonliving things.

In the 1980s, the rise of deconstructive theory and changing ideas about feminism pushed these ideas into the background. The identification of women with nature had a retrograde ring, rife with essentialism, wishful thinking, and cultural appropriation. But today, the wheel has turned again. In the face of a warming planet, widespread social upheavals, and geopolitical disruptions, the visions of the Goddess artists no longer seem so naive and wrongheaded. Archaeological discoveries reinforce the possibility of a prehistoric matriarchy. The original movement’s conception of the Goddess as both male and female parallels today’s ideas about gender fluidity. The climate crisis is underscoring the urgent need for a different understanding of concepts like nature, progress, and technology. A more global art world has become receptive to non-Western conceptions of spirituality and nature. Threats to female autonomy by political and social institutions here and abroad have sparked renewed interest in icons of female power.

This Critics Page delves into various aspects, past and present, of the Goddess idea. As conceived of here, the Goddess is a fluid concept, not so much a personage as a set of ideas that signal a realignment of priorities. In these essays by both scholars and artists, the Goddess points to ways that we might reimagine our relationship with nature, society, and spirituality.

Charlene Spretnak was one of the early theoreticians of the Goddess movement. Here she outlines the larger historical context of the Goddess idea and examines the changing reputation of Marija Gimbutas, the archaeologist whose research was essential reading for the Goddess artists of the 1970s. Filmmaker Cheri Gaulke’s delightful short film Gloria’s Call (2018) pays homage to Gloria Orenstein, the pioneering feminist art historian whose friendship with Leonora Carrington and other female Surrealists led her to an embrace of the Goddess. Critic Cassandra Langer recounts her intellectual journey to a woman-centered art and explores the symbolism of the spiral as a metaphor for female empowerment and enlightenment. Critic Lara Pan suggests how a feminist approach to AI may help bring on a “Matriarchy of the Future.”

The contributing artists exemplify the diverse ways the Goddess idea has been transformed in the hands of twenty-first century artists. Saya Woolfalk in conversation with curator Alexandra Schwartz suggests what a “Matriarchy of the Future” might look like in her fully imagined “Empathic Universe.” Erika Harrsch explains how her work draws on a Mesoamerican cosmology that envisions the Goddess as the embodiment of the ecosystem. Ann McCoy presents the Virgin Mary both as a personal muse and an avatar of the Divine Feminine. Amalia Mesa-Bains explains how she drew on personal experience, Aztec mythology, and the Black Madonna of Montserrat in an installation that envisions a wild and disruptive Mother Nature. Morehshin Allahyari offers tribute to Huma, a fearsome female deity from the Middle East who brings both life and destruction to an unbalanced world. Angela Fraleigh looks beyond the historic vilification of the witch and finds instead a figure of healing and resistance to the most destructive impulses of contemporary patriarchy. And Rina Banerjee considers the Goddess in light of her own decolonization project.

The Goddess takes many forms in these submissions and becomes a way to contemplate such pressing issues as environmentalism, Indigeneity, neocolonialism, social justice, and gender fluidity. Taken together, the writers and artists here suggest how a deeper understanding of the Goddess idea reveals its powerful potential to remake the world.