Conversation with Eleanor Antin, San Diego, 2003

In this conversation, Eleanor Antin reflects on her relationship with feminism and how it influences her artwork. Many of her works are transformed into narratives involving invented female characters. Her early 1970s project, 100 Boots, is not overtly feminist but reflects the openness, narrative focus, and innovative distribution methods characteristic of that feminist era. Antin explains that she created the work after moving to California and trying to settle into a new environment while still staying connected to the conceptual art scene in New York. The project involved mailing images of black rubber boots positioned in various Southern California settings to a wide audience over two and a half years, culminating in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Antin reflects on the narrative complexity of her work: “A lot of the conceptual art guys—I say guys advisedly because they were guys—liked the sort of Pop Art elements, these sort of everyday trashy objects, but the narrative was totally unreadable by any of these people.” She describes how her work intersected with the political climate, particularly the Vietnam War, and how she intended 100 Boots to serve as a form of protest had she continued the project in Washington, D.C. Antin observes that younger artists often unknowingly echo the methods and ideas of her generation, suggesting the cyclical nature of artistic innovation and influence.

The interview touches on Antin’s subsequent works, such as her piece, Carving, which dealt with themes of body image and societal expectations of women. She contrasts this with her admiration of minimalist art, not for its geometries but for its staged qualities. Antin delves into the creative process of her persona, the King of Solana Beach, and her early performances where she read meditations as the King in high drag: “And I went out into the world and talked to my people with my breasts and my beard… I was talking about real, down-to-earth, awful problems.”

The conversation shifts to broader reflections on the feminist art movement, particularly in Southern California, which she found supportive and exciting. She mentions the inclusive yet naive idealism of the early feminist movement, which eventually fractured along lines of class, race, and other differences. Antin describes early collaborative projects with the feminist improvisation group in San Diego: “So it was sort of performance and sculpture at the same time. And then we would find our way to a natural ending, like a piece of Pauline Oliveros, in which you come together and then come to all sorts of different climaxes… then you come to some sort of crescendo at some point and then… you somehow know when it’s over.”