Eleanor Antin is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 photographer, author, and artist working with video, film, performance, and drawing. Originally from New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, USA, she is currently based in Southern California

Southern California

Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...

 where she is a professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego

University of California, San Diego

The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...

. Antin is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Art and continues to exhibit internationally.

Biography

Born Eleanor Fineman in the Bronx, New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 on February 27, 1935 her parents emigrated in the 1930s from Rusch, a tiny town in Poland. Her father, Sol Fineman (1910–2004), was a socialist and atheist who worked in the garment industry in New York. Her mother, Jeanette Efron (1912–1994), a former actress in the Yiddish theater in Poland, was a communist and a creative entrepreneur. She went by the name Jeanette Fineman until she divorced and married the Hungarian poet and artist, Peter Moor, (ne Barna Josef, 1895–1989) and was thereafter known as Jeanette Barna. Eleanor had one sister, Marcia Goodman (1940–2003).

Eleanor attended Music and Art High School in New York as an art major, and City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 (CCNY), where she majored in writing and minored in art. From 1954–1956, she studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research and studied acting at the Tamara Daykarhanova School for the Stage. She was registered in Actors Equity and worked as an actress under the stage name Eleanor Barrett. In her last year of college she accepted an acting job with a traveling road company in William Inge’s Bus Stop. During this period, 1955–1958, Antin worked in various projects on the stage, including a stint with Ossie Davis, and also supported herself modeling for painters.

In 1958, Antin returned to CCNY and earned a Bachelors degree in creative writing and art. There she met the writer and critic, David Antin, whom she married in 1961. Their son Blaise was born in 1967 and is named after Blaise Cendrars, the modern French poet, novelist and art critic. In 1968 the family moved from New York to Southern California, where David began teaching at the University of California in San Diego. Eleanor taught at the University of California in Irvine (UCI) from 1974–1975, and was a professor at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) from 1975–2002.

Early works

In 1965 Eleanor Antin began what she considers her first mature work as a conceptual artist, Blood of a Poet Box. Using a wooden slide box, Antin filled it with one hundred glass slides containing blood specimens collected from one hundred poets. The piece took three years to complete (1965–1968) and was an homage to Jean Cocteau’s surrealist film of 1930, Le Sang d’un Poète (Blood of a Poet). Antin’s piece is an ironical play on the romantic ideal of the inner artist as being a poetic, creative soul who gives no less than his lifeblood to make art. Among the poets who donated specimens are Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jerome Rothenberg, Barbara Guest, and Yvonne Rainer.

1970s

In 1971 Antin devised 100 Boots, a conceptual work that bypassed the traditional gallery system by using the US postal service as a means of distribution. For this piece, Antin literally placed 100 boots in different Southern California settings and had the boots photographed in each scene. In this way, she created an ambiguous visual narrative that could be followed through the sequence of presentation. The photographs were printed as postcards and the individual postcards were mailed to approximately one thousand artists, writers, dancers, critics, libraries and art institutions at irregular intervals. These time intervals, ranging from 3 days to 5 weeks, were determined according to what Antin considered “the internal necessity of the narrative.” In this way, the boots became the heroic protagonists of this epic journey. The two and a half year endeavor officially became ART when they arrived at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for a solo exhibition from May 30 – July 8, 1973. The exhibition consisted of all 100 boots on display in their museum gallery “crash pad”, which was only viewable through a peephole and the crack of a slightly open door. The entire fifty-one black-and-white postcards, along with 21 new photographs of the boots in various settings around New York City, were hung in the galleries surrounding the crash pad.

In 1971, Antin also created a video piece titled Representational Painting where she recorded herself applying makeup to find a satisfactory representation of herself with which to face the world. This is one of her first works that addresses society’s pressure on women to adhere to the constantly changing definitions of beauty and fashion. This idea was expanded upon in a photographic, conceptual artwork titled CARVING: A Traditional Sculpture that Antin completed in 1972. CARVING consisted of a grid installation of 144 black-and-white photographs Antin took of her naked body depicting her weight loss over a 36-day period of dieting. Antin’s body becomes a sculptural work in progress documented through daily photographs from front, back and side views. The crux of this artwork lies in its physical manifestation of the sociological pressures put on females in modern, western society. Antin was inspired by how physical standards for women are continuously designed and re-designed according to trends, icons, fashions, and perceptions exuded in popular culture. Her method of carving her own body was a play on the hand of the sculptor, most often a male sculptor, in carving out the ideal physical dimensions and shape of the female form in classical art and putting that representation on a pedestal. Antin drew parallels between the hand of the male sculptor and the patriarchal hand of modern popular culture through their mutual ability to carve and define the standards of female beauty. These ideas provide a further meditation on the female as art object whose value is subject to the active gaze of the male viewer.

In her other well-known photographic series from the 1970s and 1980s such as The King of Solana Beach (1972–75), The Angel of Mercy (1976–78), and Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev (1974–89), Antin inhabits various fictional personas to comment on how history is often retold, reinterpreted and redefined as a result of new discoveries, subjective perceptions and memory. The past and the present are fully informed by one another, and are therefore malleable entities that change with time.

Antin’s work questions definers of identity – namely gender, race, age, and culture - through humorous and ironic stories told by fictional characters whose experiences are culled from documented historical events and sociological realities. Thus she inserts her own narratives, with its fusion of fact and fiction, into the annals of history and uses her reenactments as poignant reflections on societal standards, biases and ideals. For The King of Solana Beach, Antin took video and photographic portraits of herself dressed as a concerned, yet powerless King. After being exiled, the king was nostalgic for his long lost role as ruler and provider and took to the streets to reconnect with the land and people that were once his own. Bits of his past are pieced together through the photographic documentation, live performances, and delicate drawings and meditations that constitute his personal journal entries.

Angel of Mercy (1977) consists of two photo albums, The Nightingale Family Album and My Tour of Duty in the Crimea. These visual narratives imitate 19th century style sepia photographs and show Antin as Eleanor Nightingale, seeking to create a place of healing and caring amidst destruction and death. For this series, she is surrounded by a cast of soldiers and domesticated family, all set against the backdrop of the Crimean War (1853–1856). By presenting the nurse as nurturer and provider to dutiful men sacrificing their lives for their country, Antin is exposing the reality that women, even in positions of authority, were expected to nurture and provide for men. More importantly, this ironic, historical drama is being presented from the perspective of a woman, a perspective that would rarely be communicated during a period of war, as the focus is often on the experience of the soldiers.

The heroic identity of nurse Eleanor was first developed in several filmic works titled The Adventures of a Nurse (1976) and The Nurse and the Hijackers (1977) and later elaborated on for the Angel of Mercy series. These two preliminary films depict the nurse in comic melodramas involving men in positions of power and traditional female romantic roles. In The Adventures of a Nurse, little nurse Eleanor acts out stories about her childish bouts of puppy love with the men she encounters at work. The characters in her life are all portrayed with paper cut-outs, a reference to the manner in which young girls apply fictional dramas and perceptions of normalcy in life onto dolls and figurines as they grow and develop their sense of identity and reality. The Nurse and the Hijackers is a more ironic take on the story of amiable, little nurse Eleanor stuck on a plane hijacked by Middle East terrorists. In their attempt to assert their unaccepted beliefs through rebellion and destruction, the terrorists are ultimately stopped by Israeli commandos. Throughout all the melodrama and danger, nurse Eleanor smiles and stays true to her duties, thus maintaining her assigned role as the likeable, harmless, provider.

1980s

In Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev, 1919–1929 by Eleanora Antinova (1981), Antin once again adopts a fictional persona whose identity is equally informed by historical fact and her imagination. Antin’s character, Eleanora Antinova, is a conflicted, African American ballerina who performed with the prestigious Russian Ballet Russe troupe in the 1920s. Eventually she fell from stardom during the Great Depression and supported herself as an actress in American soft porn films. The contradictions within this character are multi-faceted in that she is an African American modernist living before the civil rights movement and does not have the body of a conventional ballerina, yet is dancing and choreographing for one of the most prestigious, internationally acclaimed and influential dance troupes from the first half of the 20th century.

This work consists of live performances, films, videos, installations, staged photographs, drawings, journal entries and reveries of the type-cast Antinova’s experiences as a dancer. She portrays herself dancing and mingling with the Ballet Russe troupe and cast as the exotic outsider in fictional performances such as The Prisoner of Persia, Before the Revolution, The Hebrews, Pocahontas, and L’Esclave. Following this ‘archive’ of past performances, is a documentation of Antinova’s fall from grace. This portion consists of black and white short films depicting her as a frivolous, flirtatious ballerina whose talents as a dancer are overlooked by her ability to inspire sexual attraction to her male counterparts. These short films are compiled onto a single, 18 minute videotape titled From the Archives of Modern Art (1987). The memoir Being Antinova records her life experiences in October 1980 when she darkened herself each day and “passed” in her daily life as a retired, aging, African American ballerina. In the theatrical performance Recollections of my Life with Diaghilev, she reminisces about her past accomplishments and romances as a talented, respected, revered ballerina from the Ballet Russe dance troupe.

The Last Night of Rasputin (1989) is both a performance and a silent film involving Antinova. The film is supposedly directed in 1924 by one of her long lost lovers, the fictional Russian Jewish film director Yevegny Antinov, and Antinova is cast as the lead. The performative portion of this work involves the now aged Antinova introducing the film to a live audience and reminiscing about her romance with Antinov during the glorious, early days of modernism and revolution in the Soviet Union. In 1991, Antin expanded on the persona of Antinov as director of The Man Without A World, a “lost” feature film made in 1928 and only recently "recovered". The story is an amalgam of silent film types, including The Dybbuk, a classic of the Jewish stage. In assuming the persona of Antinov and using the film as a historical artifact, Antin explores the lost era of silent film history and the doomed world of Jewish life in Eastern Europe prior to the Holocaust. Recalling the historical formats of early silent films, the melodramatic style of Yiddish theatre, and the drama of 1920s German expressionist cinema, Antin creates a fictional artifact that simulates a culture of individuals and lifestyles that have since perished.

1990s

Antin’s next work, Vilna Nights (1993), also deals with lost Jewish culture. This filmic installation consists of a stage set representing the ruins of a street in the Jewish ghetto in Vilna, the capital city of Lithuania and previously home to the largest population of Jews in Europe before the Holocaust. Through the frames of three separate windows in a bombed-out building, Antin cinematically depicts the lives of several different Eastern European Jews during World War II.

After Vilna Nights, Antin made a second filmic installation about loss, art, and artifice. In Minetta Lane: A Ghost Story (1995), she returns to the bohemian life of old Greenwich Village in New York. “Little Miriam” is the star of this ghost story, a phantom trickster who destroys a female painter’s abstract expressionist painting, causes malicious mischief for two lovers, and is responsible for the death of an old man.

Photographic series (2001-2007)

In her three most recent photographic series, The Last Days of Pompeii (2001), Roman Allegories (2004), and Helen’s Odyssey (2007), Antin weaves historical references into her interpretation of the contemporary American empire. These staged photographs are layered with choreographed historicism and mythology from the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome. These are filtered through the compositional styles of 19th-century French and English academic salon painting and kitschy Hollywood historical films.

The Last Days of Pompeii depicts scenes of opulent excess and impending doom. This series is inspired by the dramatic destruction of Pompeii, buried by the ashes of Mount Vesuvius, as a precursor to the downfall of the entire Roman Empire. Antin’s interpretation casts affluent, beautiful people enjoying the good life on the verge of annihilation. The photographs each tell a different story and several works – such as the Death of Petronius and the Golden Death - are derived from documented events or classical stories that have previously been depicted in visual or literary form. These dramas serve as meditations, dramatic representations, and possible warnings on the parallel lifestyles of the self-indulgent that existed in the Roman Empire and that still exist in the shrinking American Empire of today.

Emblematic characters—the beautiful Columbine, the Lover, the Trickster, an ex-gladiator Strong Man, the Poet, and a magical little girl - make appearances in her following series, Roman Allegories. This series uses visual narrative to depict dramatic moments inspired as much by Greek mythology as they are by the melodramas of present day soap operas. One follows the characters as they navigate their way through comic tragedy, doomed love affairs, and ultimately death.

Helen’s Odyssey is also inspired by Greek and Roman history and draws upon the conflicted identity of Helen of Troy, who was simultaneously revered for her intense beauty yet blamed for the inability of men to resist it. This series turns the classical story on its head by casting two individuals as Helen, each representing a different side to her identity. Both sides are simultaneously presented in various scenarios but are shown reacting differently in each one. Ultimately, the sexy, vengeful Helen becomes bored with the dramas and desires imposed on her and seals her own fate with the scandalous murder of Homer, the narrator from Greek history who verbally passed the original story of Helen of Troy down from generation to generation. Classic characters from the Trojan War and Greek mythology populate Antin’s contemporary, photographic takes and include Helen of Troy, Paris, Petronius, Agamemnon, Homer, the gods Hermes and Hades, and the goddesses Athena, Hera, Aphrodite and Persephone. These stock characters are recast to play contemporary versions of their original roles using 21st-century digital photography and the complex, conflicted dramas Antin has derived from history.

Recent projects

Antin’s most recent completed work is a written memoir titled Conversations with Stalin: Confessions of a Red Diaper Baby (2010). This book is a black comedy recounting little Elly’s childhood and teen years growing up in New York within a family of first generation Jewish, communist immigrants in the age of Stalin and in her personal pursuit of art, self, revolution, and sex.

Solo exhibitions

Information taken from the Feldman Gallery.

Performances that took place during an exhibition are indicated in a separate list below.

• 2009
  • Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels, Belgium, Classical Frieze, November 21.
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Classical Frieze, May 3-October 4.

• 2008
  • San Diego Art Museum, San Diego, CA, Eleanor Antin: Historical Takes, July 19-November 2.
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, Helen’s Odyssey, February 15-March 29.

• 2007
  • Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels, Belgium, The Empire of Signs, February 3-April 4.

• 2006
  • Erna Hecey Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, 100 Boots, April 6-May 6.

• 2005
  • Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy, Roman Allegories, 2005 & 100 Boots, 1971 – 73, April 20-May 28.
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, Roman Allegories, February 12-March 12.

• 2004
  • Mandeville Art Gallery, San Diego, CA, The Last Days of Pompeii, April 16-June 12.

• 2003
  • Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy, The Last Days of Pompeii, December 11-February 5.

• 2002
  • Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, The Last Days of Pompeii, September 7-October 12.
  • Galerie Hilger, Vienna, Austria, Eleanor Antin, June 8-August.
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, The Last Days of Pompeii, February 16-March 16.

• 2001
  • Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Center, University of Warwick, Warwick, England, Eleanor Antin: Real Time Streaming, October 6-December 1.
  • Arnolfini, Bristol, England, Eleanor Antin: Real Time Streaming, March 18-May 13.
  • Cornerhouse, Manchester, England, Eleanor Antin: Real Time Streaming, March 2-April 22.

• 2000
  • Fundacao das Descobertas, Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal, EleanorAntin/Harum Farocki, September 26-November 26.
  • The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University, St. Louis, MO, Eleanor Antin: A Retrospective, September 8-November 12.

• 1999
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Eleanor Antin Retrospective, May 23-August 30.

• 1998
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, Eleanor Antin: Portraits of Eight New York
  • Women, 1970 / Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Works, 1969–1979, May 8-June 13.

• 1997
  • Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, Eleanor Antin: Selections from the
  • Angel of Mercy, January 8-March 9.

• 1996
  • Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC, Eleanor Antin: Ghosts, May 4-July 28.

• 1995
  • Craig Krull Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 100 Boots Revisited.
  • Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, Minetta Lane - A Ghost Story, April 8- June 11. (film installation)
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, Minetta Lane - A Ghost Story, January 14- February 18. (film installation)

• 1991
  • San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, The Man Without a World.

• 1989
  • Artemisia, Chicago, IL, Retrospective of Photographic Works.

• 1988
  • MAG Galleries, Los Angeles, CA, Loves of a Ballerina. (film installation)
  • Installation Gallery, San Diego, CA, Loves of a Ballerina. (film installation)

• 1986
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, Loves of a Ballerina.

• 1983
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, El Desdichado. (El Desdichado)
  • Tortue Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev.

• 1982
  • Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN, Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev.
  • La Mamelle, San Francisco, CA. (Battle of the Bluffs) (video exhibition)
  • Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. (Women Artists Series, 1982–83)

• 1981
  • Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, Angel of Mercy.
  • Nova Gallery, Vancouver B.C., Canada.
  • Palomar College, San Marcos, CA, Early Works.

• 1980
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev.

• 1979
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, Before the Revolution.
  • Franklin Furnace, New York, NY, 100 BOOTS: Transmission and Reception.
  • Marianne Deson Gallery, Chicago, IL, The Black Ballerina.

• 1978
  • Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Ballerina.
  • Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA, The Nurse and the Hijackers. (video installation)
  • Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, Ballerina.

• 1977
  • M.L. D'Arc Gallery, New York, NY, The Angel of Mercy.
  • La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, The Angel of Mercy.
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, The Nurse and the Hijackers. (video installation)
  • Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, 100 BOOTS Once Again (Part 1), Choreographies (Part 2).

• 1976
  • The Clocktower, New York, NY, Eleanor Antin, R.N. (Escape from the Tower, It's Still the Same Old Story)

• 1975
  • The Kitchen, New York, NY. (video exhibition)
  • Stefanotty Gallery, New York, NY, 2 Transformations. (The Ballerina Goes to the Big Apple)

• 1974
  • Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY, Several Selves. (video exhibition)
  • Galleria Forma, Genoa, Italy, The Ballerina and the King. (The Ballerina)
  • University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, Black is Beautiful.

• 1973
  • Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 100 BOOTS.
  • Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Portland, OR, Part of an Autobiography.
  • Northwood Experimental Art Institute, Dallas, TX, More Traditional Art.
  • Orlando Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, I Dreamed I was a Ballerina.

• 1972 Henri Gallery, Washington, D.C., Traditional Art.
  • California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, Library Science.
  • University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, Library Science.
  • Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN, Library Science.
  • Orlando Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Traditional Art.

• 1971
  • Brand Library Art Center, Los Angeles, CA, Library Science.
  • Chelsea Hotel, New York, NY, Portraits of Eight New York Women.
  • United States Postal Distribution (through the mail), 100 BOOTS (1971 through 1973).

• 1969
  • Gain Ground Gallery, New York, NY, California Lives.

• 1968
  • Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY.

Performances

• Angel of Mercy
  • Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, 1981
  • M.L. D'Arc Gallery, New York, NY, 1977
  • La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, 1977

• As Time Goes By
  • Whitney Museum, at Phillip Morris, New York, NY, 1998
  • Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, 1991

• The Ballerina
  • Galleria Forma, Genoa, Italy, 1974

• The Ballerina Goes to the Big Apple
  • Stefanotty Gallery, New York, NY, 1975
  • Woman's Building, Los Angeles, CA, 1974

• Battle of the Bluffs
  • La Mamelle, San Francisco, CA, 1982
  • Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, 1982
  • Western Front, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, 1981
  • Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 1981
  • Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Harbor, CA, 1981
  • National Women’s Caucus for Art, College Art Association, New Orleans, LA, 1980
  • 11th Annual International Sculpture Conference, Ford Thester, Washington, D.C., 1980
  • College of Art, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 1980
  • Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, 1978
  • Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, 1978
  • Center for Music Experiment, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 1978
  • University of Houston, Houston, TX, 1978
  • The Clocktower, New York, NY, 1976
  • Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, 1976
  • Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 1976
  • American Theatre Association Convention, Los Angeles, CA, 1976
  • Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, CA, 1975
  • Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA, 1975

• Before the Revolution
  • The Kitchen Center for Music, Video, and Dance, New York, NY, 1979
  • Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, 1979

• El Desdichado
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, 1983

• Eleanor 1954
  • Woman's Building, Los Angeles, CA, 1974

• Escape from the Tower
  • The Clocktower, New York, NY, 1976
  • Palace of the Legion of Honour, San Francisco, CA, 1975

• Help! I'm in Seattle
  • Franklin Furnace, New York, NY, 1987
  • LACE, Los Angeles, CA (premiere), 1986
  • Intersection, San Francisco, CA, 1986
  • Lyceum Space, Horton Plaza, San Diego, CA, 1986

• It's Still the Same Old Story
  • The Clocktower, New York, NY, 1976

• The King's Meditations
  • Center for Music Experiment, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 1975

• The Last Night of Rasputin (performance with film)
  • Sydney Opera House, Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 2002
  • Arnolfini, Bristol, United Kingdom, 2001
  • Chester Springs Studio, Center for Visual Arts, Chester Springs, PA, 2000
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, 1999
  • CSU Summer Arts ’91, Performance Festival, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA, 1991
  • Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 1990
  • Eighth Annual National Graduate Women’s Studies Conference, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 1990
  • Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C., 1990
  • Pacific Film Archives, University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 1990
  • Sushi Performance Gallery, San Diego, CA, 1990
  • Filmforum and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles, CA, 1989
  • Instituto de Estudios Norteamericanos, Barcelona, Spain, 1989
  • Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute, Portland, OR, 1989
  • Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, 1989

• Recollections of my Life with Diaghilev
  • The Saint, New York, NY, sponsored by Poets and Writers, 1987
  • Forum Theatre, sponsored by the Laguna Beach Museum of Art and the Laguna Beach School of Art, Laguna Beach, CA, 1985
  • American Studies Association 10th Biennial Convention, San Diego, CA, 1985
  • Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, 1984
  • Women and Their Work, Austin, TX, 1984
  • California State University at Chico, Chico, CA, 1983
  • Tortue Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1983
  • Espace, DBD, Los Angeles, CA, 1982
  • Sushi, San Diego, CA, 1982
  • LACE, Los Angeles, CA, 1982
  • Oklahoma City Museum of Fine Arts, Oklahoma City, OK, 1982
  • Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN, 1982
  • Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, 1981
  • School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1981
  • 80 Langton Street, San Francisco, CA, 1980
  • Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, 1980

• Student Days in Paris
  • Radio Station WGBH, Boston, MA (reading), 1984

• Who Cares About a Ballerina?
  • Anderson Center for the Arts, SUNY Binghamton, NY, sponsored by New Views/Other Voices and the Comparative Literature Department, Watters Theatre, April 14, 1988 Beyond Baroque, Venice, CA, May 27–29, 1988
  • Bowery Theatre, San Diego, CA, February 26-March 29, 1987

Films

• It Ain't the Ballet Russe, 1986. 16 mm, color, 23 min.
• The Last Night of Rasputin, 1989. 16 mm, b/w, 38 min.
• Loves of a Ballerina, 1986. (film installation)
• The Man without a World, 1991. 16 mm, b/w, 98 min. (screened in major film festivals around the world; commercially distributed in the United States and sold to German ZDF * Cable Television for programming in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland)
• Minetta Lane, a ghost story, 1995. (film installation)
• Music Lessons, 1997. 16 mm, color, 47 min.
• Vilna Nights, 1993. (film installation)

Video productions

• From the Archives of Modern Art, 1987. b/w, 24 min.
• The Angel of Mercy, 1981. color, 64 min.
• The Nurse and the Hijackers, 1977. color, 79 min.
• The Adventures of a Nurse (Part I and Part II), 1976. color, 64 min.
• The Little Match Girl Ballet, 1975. color, 27 min.
• The Ballerina and the Bum, 1974. b/w, 54 min.
• Caught in the Act, 1973. b/w, 39 min.
• The King, 1972. b/w, 52 min.
• Representational Painting, 1971. b/w, 38 min.

Books

• The Man Without a World (a screenplay by Yevgeny Antinov/Eleanor Antin). Los Angeles, CA: Green Integer, 2002.
• 100 Boots (photography with short essays by Eleanor Antin and Henry Sayre). Philadelphia, PA: Running Press, 1999.
• The Eleanora Antinova Plays (part of the New Theatre and Performance Series). Los Angeles, CA: Sun & Moon, 1995.
• Being Antinova (complete journal of her experiences living as the Black ballerina in New York). Los Angeles, CA: Astro Artz Press, 1983.

Grants and awards

• School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Honorary Doctorate Degree, 2009
• CAA, Lifetime Achievement Award, Women’s Caucus for Art, 2006
• AICA (International Art Critics Association), “Best Show of a Mid-Career Artist,” First Place, 2002
• AICA (International Art Critics Association), "Best Museum Exhibition Outside New York”, 1999
• National Foundation for Jewish Culture, Media Achievement Award, 1998
• Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1997
• UCSD Chancellor’s Associates Award for Excellence in Art, 1996
• Dorothy Arzner Special Recognition for Film Direction, Man Without a World, 16th Annual Crystal Awards, Women in Film, Beverly Hills, CA, 1992
• VESTA Award for performance presented by the Women's Building, Los Angeles, CA, 1984
• Pushcart Prize VI: Best of the Small Presses for A Romantic Interlude, Sun & Moon, 1982
• NEA Individual Artist Grant, 1979

Selected collections of Antin's work

• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
• Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
• Deutsches Post Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
• Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France
• Jewish Museum, New York, NY
• Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
• Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
• Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
• Museion, Museum of Contemporary Art, Bolzano, Italy
• Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
• Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA
• Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA
• San Diego Museum of Art, CA
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
• Verbund Collection, Vienna, Austria
• Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT
• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
• Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, MO
• Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC
• The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
• Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA

Further reading

• Historical Takes; Prestel, San Diego Museum of Art, 2008 Exhibition catalogue with contributions by Eleanor Antin, Betti-Sue Hertz, Amelia Jones, and Max Kozloff. 128 pages, full color and black and white reproductions.
• Man without a World; Green Integer: 66, Copenhagen and Los Angeles, 2002 . Edited by Per Bregne The script and film stills from the silent film of Eleanor Antin's invented Soviet film director Yevgeny Antinov. 96 pages, black and white reproductions
• Eleanor Antin : Real Time Streaming; Mead Gallery (United Kingdom), 2001. Exhibition catalogue with essays by Rachel Thomas, Howard N. Fox, Catherine Elwes, Martha Rosler 48 pages, black and white and full color reproductions
• 100 Boots; Running Press, Philadelphia, 1999. Introduction by Henry Sayre and memoir by Eleanor Antin 112 pages, black and white reproductions
• Eleanor Antin ; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Fellows of Contemporary Art, 1999 . Exhibition catalogue with interview by Howard N. Fox and essays by Howard N. Fox, Lisa E. Bloom ; 260 pages, black and white and full color reproductions
• Ghosts; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC, 1996. Exhibition catalogue with essays by Eleanor Antin and Henry Sayre: 47 pages, black and white reproductions. Out of print
• Eleanora Antinova Plays ; Sun and Moon Press, Los Angeles. CA, 1994 ; Essays by Henry Sayre, Frantisek Deak; plays by Eleanor Antin : 253 pages, black and white reproductions
• Angel of Mercy ; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, 1977 Introduction by Christopher Knight and essays by Kim Levin and Jonathan Crary: 28 pages, black and white reproductions.

External links

• Oral history interview with Eleanor Antin, 2009 May 8-9 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
  Archives of American Art
  The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 16 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C...
  
  
• Eleanor Antin collection in the Museum of Modern Art
• Humor, Personas, & Yiddish Theater an interview with Antin from Art21
• Antin exhibitions at Feldman Gallery
• Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Feminist Art Base: Eleanor Antin from the Brooklyn Museum
• Antin biography from the Jewish Virtual Library
• Artwork by Antin from artnet
• Antin's career data from Art Facts