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Smith (Barbara T.) papers
2014.M.14
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Contributing Institution: Special Collections
Title: Barbara T. Smith papers
Creator: Distel, Herbert
Creator: Baldessari, John, 1931-
Creator: Rosenthal, Rachel, 1926-2015
Creator: Chicago, Judy, 1939-
Creator: Castelli, Leo
Creator: Kaprow, Allan
Creator: McMillan, Jerry, 1936-
Creator: Lacy, Suzanne
Creator: Smith, Barbara Turner, 1931-
Creator: Burden, Chris, 1946-2015
Creator: Buchanan, Nancy, 1946-
Creator: Cotton, Paul, 1939-
Creator: Antin, Eleanor
Creator: Schneemann, Carolee, 1939-2019
Creator: Dakin, Susanna
Creator: McCarthy, Paul, 1945-
Identifier/Call Number: 2014.M.14
Physical Description: 187.4 Linear Feet(362 boxes, 9 flatfiles)
Date (inclusive): 1927-2012, undated, bulk 1948-2012
Date (bulk): 1948-2012
Abstract: Barbara Turner Smith (American, born 1931) is one of the most influential figures in the history of performance and feminist
art in Southern California. Her work – which has taken the varied forms of painting, drawing, installation, video, performance,
and artists' books, and often involves her own body – explores concepts that strike at the core of human nature, including
male and female sexuality, physical and spiritual sustenance, ecology, technology, and death. The archive, which offers an
exceptionally rich resource for Smith's highly personal artistic practice, contains 160 diaries, 54 sketchbooks, hundreds
of drawings, more than 850 vintage prints, thousands of negatives and contact sheets, approximately 90 films and 1100 audio
and video tapes, in addition to all the notes, plans, and archival records related to her artistic projects from her student
days forward. The archive encompasses not only Smith's career as an artist, but also her work as a writer, teacher, and advocate
of the arts in Los Angeles.
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
catalog record for this collection. Click here for the
access policy .
Language of Material: Collection material is primarily in English with some material in other languages.
The collection is arranged in six series: Series I. Personal papers, 1949-2011, undated; Series II. Artworks, early 1940s-1994,
2003, 2009, undated; Series III. Project files, 1960s-2012, undated; Series IV. Professional files, 1948-2012, undated; Series
V. Photographs, 1959-2009, undated; Series VI. Audiovisual materials, 1927, 1935-1941, 1967-2011, undated.
Barbara Turner Smith (born in Pasadena, California in 1931) has been at the forefront of artistic movements in California
for over fifty years, particularly in the areas of performance and feminist art. Her work – which has taken the varied forms
of painting, drawing, installation, video, performance, and artists' books, and often involves her own body as a vehicle for
her art – explores concepts that strikes at the core of human nature, including male and female sexuality, physical and spiritual
sustenance, ecology, technology, and death.
Smith grew up in a traditional, upper-middle-class Presbyterian family in Pasadena, where she was expected to embrace the
role available to most women in the 1950s – that of wife and mother. She attended Pomona College, receiving a degree in painting
in 1953. She married a fellow Pomona student in 1951 and spent the rest of the decade raising three children. Smith suffered
from depression after the birth of her first two children and began seeing a therapist who encouraged her to explore her intellectual
interests. In 1960, Smith started volunteering at the Pasadena Art Museum, where she came into contact with its innovative
director, Tom Leavitt, curator Walter Hopps, and artists such as Ed Ruscha, Joe Goode, Larry Bell, and later, Allan Kaprow.
In 1965, Smith enrolled in postgraduate courses at Chouinard Art Institute, where her classes with Conner Everts and Emerson
Woelffer were especially influential. Still employing paint as her medium of choice, Smith executed a series of large black
canvases set behind sheets of glass and contained within aluminum frames. The combination of black paint and glass created
a mirrored surface, such that viewers were confronted by their reflections. These works demonstrate Smith's sophisticated
distillation of minimalism and Light & Space art, along with her anticipation of more conceptual practices. Concurrently,
Smith produced 38
Coffins – black-bound artists' books produced on a Xerox machine that she had leased and installed in her living room. She placed
objects such as fabrics, photographs, drawings, foodstuffs and part of her body onto the Xerox plate. These highly personal
and intimate works presage not only Smith's use of the body as an artistic medium, but also the emergence of both feminism
and performance art in Southern California in general.
The late 1960s were a transformative time for Smith. In 1968, she divorced and soon lost custody of her children. That same
year, she attended a workshop with Alex Hay, an experimental dancer and member of the ground-breaking Judson Dance Theatre
in New York. Working on Hay's pieces, Smith was encouraged to explore more spontaneous and ephemeral notions of art. Another
participant in the workshop, the collector and artistic entrepreneur Stanley Grinstein, became the catalyst for Smith's segue
into the creation of performances when he hosted her work
Ritual Meal (1969) at his home. Sixteen guests were invited to dine and were greeted by an array of costumed characters and seated amidst
the sounds of Smith's pre-recorded voice, an anxious heartbeat, and loud gongs. Clothed in medical gowns, the guests were
then served a six-course meal, but offered only surgical tools and test tubes with which to eat and drink.
Ritual Meal was followed by other works involving food such as
Mass Meal (1969) and
White Meal (1971), each of which evoked similar notions of ritual, community, attraction and disgust.
In 1969, Smith enrolled in the inaugural class of the newly-established MFA program at the University of California, Irvine.
UCI provided an arena in which Smith could explore her work within a community of like-minded artists. With fellow students
Chris Burden and Nancy Buchanan she formed and ran the non-profit gallery F Space in Santa Ana, which played host to several
of Smith's important early installations and performances, such as
Field Piece (1968-1972) which comprised a bed of 9-foot-tall translucent resin shafts that resembled enlarged blades of grass. At the
prompting of human weight, a hidden network of cables and triggers caused lights beneath the blades to illuminate, creating
a warm, ethereal glow. Smith's use of industrial materials and electronics put
Field Piece in direct dialogue with early examples of Light & Space art. In contrast to the autonomous sculptures of Larry Bell, Peter
Alexander, and her professor, Robert Irwin, Smith's invitation to walk upon, lie upon, and touch the artwork generated a communal
sensory experience, marking
Field Piece as a prominent early example of interactive, technology-based art.
For her most infamous work,
Feed Me (1973), Smith placed her own nude body at the center of the piece, as she spent one full night in the bathroom of the Museum
of Conceptual Art in San Francisco surrounded by an array of objects including perfume, body oils, beads, food, wine, books,
items of clothing, and marijuana. One by one, visitors were invited to enter the charged, temple-like space, greeted by Smith
and a recording of her voice chanting the words "feed me." As numerous scholars have written,
Feed Me turned the tables on the traditional role of women as objects of art. Embodying the figure of the reclining, passive female
nude herself, Smith constructed a dynamic in which visitors had to conform to a situation she had orchestrated. This intermingling
of sexuality and power continued to factor into much of Smith's subsequent work.
In the early 1970s, Smith became deeply engaged with the eastern traditions of Buddhism, Zen meditation, yoga and Tantrism,
as well as Native American rituals, shamanism and mystic practices. These influences appeared in numerous performances, such
as
Pure Food (1973), in which the artist meditated in a field for eight hours, "absorbing only cosmic rays and sound." Other performances
in the 1970s tested the body's limits while also exploring the emergence of performance as a new medium for art.Smith's engagement
with notions of ritual and mysticism continued into the 1980s, and were joined by an attention to global ecologies, technology
and tourism. For the long-term project
The 21st Century Odyssey (1991-1993), Smith used nascent video-phone technology to keep in contact with her partner, Dr. Roy Walford, who was on a
two-year assignment within Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Smith travelled to far-flung sites in countries such as Thailand, India,
Nepal, Australia, and Norway, taking on the mythical role of Odysseus while Walford awaited her safe return.
Barbara T. Smith's legacy must also be considered in tandem with her numerous writings and her active role as an advocate
for Los Angeles-area artists and institutions. Smith has an important body of critical writings that ranges from early reviews
of exhibitions in Pasadena in the 1960s to articles in prominent art publications such as
Artweek,
Artforum,
LAICA Journal and
High Performance. In addition to founding F Space, Smith played a key role in several other Los Angeles organizations. She was a highly active
member of the LA branch of Experiments in Art & Technology, and she was a founding member, with Paul McCarthy and Linda Burnham,
of the Highland Art Agents, a group that organized performance events across Los Angeles. As a founding board member of the
Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA), Smith channeled her untiring support for new voices into an advisory capacity
for the city's first major space dedicated to contemporary art.Long viewed by other artists as a central figure in the development
of performance, Smith's representation by The Box gallery since 2007, and her prominent inclusion in nine of the Pacific Standard
Time exhibitions from 2011 to 2012, has advanced the public's understanding and appreciation of Smith's continually evolving
artist career.
This note is drawn from a text compiled by Glenn Phillips, with the assistance of Claire Rifelj.
Scope and Contents of Collection
Barbara T. Smith's archive offers an exceptionally rich resource on Smith's highly personal artistic practice, containing
160 diaries, 54 sketchbooks, hundreds of drawings, more than 850 vintage prints, thousands of negatives and contact sheets,
approximately 90 films, 1100 audio and video tapes, in addition to all the notes, plans, and archival records related to her
artistic projects from student days forward. The archive encompasses not only Smith's career as an artist, but also her work
as a writer, teacher, and advocate of the arts in Los Angeles.
Series I. Personal papers includes Smith's diaries from the 1950s to 2009, her extensive personal correspondence from the
1950s to 2011 and miscellaneous documents related to private matters.
Series II. Artworks includes finished and unfinished artworks and related material, such as artists' books, drawings, paintings,
prints, sketchbooks, Xerox artworks and poetry.
Series III. Project files includes documents regarding the production of artworks, performances and exhibitions, as well as
graphic design projects, lectures, symposia, travels, grant and funding applications, originally arranged together by the
artist. It includes projects Smith participated in or curated, and material as various as photographs, sketches, drawings,
notes, charts, diagrams, storyboards, receipts, correspondence, and exhibition ephemera.
Series IV. Professional files includes material related to other activities Smith carried on through decades, most notably
teaching, writing, and her role as a prominent advocator for artists in Los Angeles. It includes a collection of artist files
(comprising press clippings, gallery ephemera, and correspondence), press clippings of articles about or written by Smith,
research files on topics as varied as religions, environment, sexuality and women's organizations, files regarding her various
teaching appointments and the workshops she organized, and some miscellaneous papers.
Series V. Photographs includes Smith's prints, contact sheets, negatives, transparencies and slides documenting her projects,
her private life, and many topics of interest to her.
Series VI. Audiovisual materials includes a vast personal section comprising Smith's father's family films, audio recordings
of psychic readings and therapy, as well as film reels documenting daily life. The largest section includes recordings of
Smith's performances, her video works and source materials used in the performances themselves. Many films and tapes had been
copied by Smith in various formats, thus the archive frequently includes different copies and transfers of the same original
film reel or tape. Audio visual material in this series is unavailable until reformatted.
The archive is open for use by qualified researchers with the following exceptions: audio visual materials and data disks
are unavailable until reformatted. Film reels F88-F91 are unavailable pending conservation treatment. Boxes 354-355 are restricted
due to fragility; contact the repository to request digital imaging. Box 64 is sealed due to privacy issues.
Acquired in 2014.
Barbara T. Smith
Coffin series and related material, 1965-1976 (2013.M.23), comprises a unique set of twenty-five hand-bound artists' books documenting
Barbara T. Smith's experiments with an early Xerox 914 copy machine between 1965 and 1966; and a set of working materials
and works related to the
Coffin series.
Processed by Pietro Rigolo between September 2014 and December 2015. In 2024, Sara McGillivray integrated ADD1, consisting
of two boxes of yearbooks.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
Barbara T. Smith papers, 1927-2012, bulk 1948-2012, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2014.M.14.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2014m14
Selected audio and video recordings are being digitized and made available online. Connect to
selected audio and video recordings from Series VI.A Personal and to
selected audio and video recordings from Series VI.B Projects .
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Diaries -- United States -- 20th century
Diaries -- United States -- 21st century
Letters (correspondence) -- United States -- 20th century
Black-and-white prints (photographs)
Gelatin silver prints -- United States -- 20th century
Audiocasettes -- United States -- 20th century
Audiotapes -- 20th century
Video recordings -- United States -- 20th century
Video recordings
Video art -- California -- Los Angeles
Video art -- 20th century
Installations (Art)
Computer drawings -- California -- 20th century
Sketchbooks -- California -- 20th century
Drawings -- United States -- 20th century
Performance art -- 20th century
Performance art
Performance art -- California -- Los Angeles
Artists -- California -- History -- 20th century
Artists -- California -- Los Angeles
Artists -- California
Artists -- California -- Interviews
Artists -- California -- Portraits
Videotapes
Videodiscs (video recording disks)
Videocassettes -- United States -- 20th century
Videocassettes -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Artists -- 20th century -- Correspondence
Videotapes -- United States -- Los Angeles -- 21st century
Videotapes -- United States -- 20th century
Videotapes -- California -- Los Angeles -- 21st century
Art, American -- California -- 20th century
Floppy disks
Art, American -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Artists books -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Performance art -- United States -- 20th century
Performance art -- Periodicals
Art, American -- 20th century
Women artists -- Archives