Ana Mendieta & Andy Warhol

Ana Mendieta was a powerful feminist artist from Havana, Cuba who was born in 1948, when she was twelve years old her and her sister were sent to the U.S. by her parents for a better life. Ana Mendieta used nature to create art and she was a part of the body art movement and eventually became well known in the performance art movement as well. All of her work was based on the female form and she used her talent to shed light on the rape and violence against women. Her work is very beautiful and very powerful and since she used nature to create her work, in her early years, it was not something that you could keep. Although she lived most of her life in the United States, Ana Mendieta still felt that Cuba was her home and you can see that in the performances/videos she did because she would have traditional Cuban music playing in the background. It was clear that she felt strongly about the rights of women also because she showed it in her work. Not only was it based on the female form, but she did a performance in her apartment and took photographs to recreate the scene of a rape that happened on campus at school, she also often worked with blood and did a performance with her making dragged hand prints on a wall to represent the woman who was raped. The use of blood in her performances was important because it made what she was trying to depict a reality for viewers.

In Ways of Seeing by John Berger he states that, “A woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her” (page 46). This quote relates to the work of Ana Mendieta because her goal was to show people that the body of a woman is sacred like nature and to commit violent acts against a woman's body, you must first turn a woman into an object to lose the compassion human beings should have for one another. The acts of resistance in her work show us that she will not tolerate it any longer. A lot of the time, bystanders in a violent situation will not speak up or help the victim and I think that by using her body and blood to recreate these situations would have proved that that needs to change because the victims are people too.


Another very well known artist who is similar to Ana Mendieta, is Andy Warhol who is known for his pop art. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Czechoslovakian immigrant parents twenty years before Ana but like Ana, Warhol understood the feeling of not quite belonging here. After graduating from college, Warhol moved to New York years before Ana and had a successful career in commercial illustration. He made a huge impact on the art in America during his years of being famous because of his Campbell Soup/Coke bottle pop art works. Warhol took a basic household item and turned it into something worth looking at by repeating these images over and over again and changing the colors, he also did this with an image of Marilyn Monroe and in his famous Death and Disaster Series. The Death and Disaster Series featured photographs of different people on the day of their tragic deaths as well as the witnesses at the scenes. This is similar to Ana Mendieta because she too used her art to recreate death scenes in a way that people would not forget about.

"The socially adept individual must be intelligent, even-tempered, educated, and physically graceful. Such an individual would ideally be open but not shallow, honest without being earnest, and appear to be completely without guile, while not appearing to be naive" (Finkelstein, 79). This quote relates to Andy warhol because he was never the popular kid, he was ill growing up and could not go to school and when he went to college he did not date anyone or hang out with the social and outgoing crowds of people. However, he was very intelligent and educated. Being famous turned him into someone who was brutally honest and somewhat of a loner still. Ana Mendieta on the other hand, had many friends and she was graceful, even-tempered, and also educated.

The works of Warhol and Mendieta were very similar in the sense that they artistically created works that were very different from the work of the artists of their time. It was so groundbreaking, that they became very popular and well known. They both had a rough start in life but they chose to channel that pain and create something beautiful out of it. Andy Warhol made an oxidation painting series in which he used urine to create a pattern on a canvas; This of course, is similar to Ana Mendieta because she also used bodily fluid (blood) to create her work.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

Oxidation Painting

Copper metallic pigment and urine on canvas

Ana Mendieta (1976)

Silueta Series, Mexico

If you look closely at the Oxidation Painting by Warhol, the pattern he created which I am assuming was by chance, resembles the figure that Ana Mendieta created in her Silueta Series. 

Ana Mendieta (1972)

Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints)

Andy Warhol (1986)

Self Portrait no. 9

These images of Warhol and Mendieta are similar because they both altered the way that they actually look and became something that is not conventionally beautiful. "Women are depicted in a quite a different way from men- not because the feminine is different from the masculine- but because the "ideal" spectator is always assumed to be a male and the image of a woman is designed to flatter him" (Berger, 64). These self portraits portray both Mendieta and Warhol as different from the norm and in a lot of ways they were which is why they became such important figures in art. "We note certain physical features into calculated strategies of conduct. Such careful attention to detail expresses sensitivity to the physicality of the other as well as the importance we place on appearance" (Finkelstein, 107). Mendieta and Warhol are both iconic, and although their work is can be much different from one another, they still shared the same passion for making a difference in the world of art. 

References:

• Guggenheim, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/ana-mendieta.

• “Ana Mendieta Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-mendieta-ana.htm.

• “Andy Warhol (1928-1987) , Oxidation Painting.” , Oxidation Painting | Christie's, www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/andy-warhol-1928-1987-oxidation-painting-5074062-details.aspx.

• “Andy Warhol Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-warhol-andy.htm.

• Berger, John. Ways of Seeing ; a Book Made by John Berger. British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972.

• Finkelstein, Joanne. The Art of Self Invention: Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture. I.B. Tauris, 2007.