Surmounting the Shadows Postmortem
‘Canon’ has acquired quiet the negative connotation because of its systematic exclusion and under-representation of artist who are not Western white males. During the late 1960s and early 1970s artist from the United States began protesting museums’ systematic exclusion of women and artist of color. To support this protest, the Artist Mary Beth Edelson created a piece titled “Some Living American Artist” in 1972. It’s the first artwork that uses a European masterpiece with the aim to contest an exclusionary male Euro-American art canon. Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” was used as a base on which the pictures of American women artist where glued on the heads of Jesuses crew. Additionally, she created a frame with the portraits of 69 additional artist. Edelson’s message is clear: the male exclusivity of the patriarchy needs to end in relations to art canons. Whilst some of these artists had an impressive career, a lot of themes were overshadowed due to their gender, skin color, or even the person they were married to. This exhibition takes a closer look at four of the overshadowed artists by exhibiting one of their artworks. The artist in question are Lee Krasner, Yoko Ono, Alma Thomas, and Elaine de Kooning. Krasner was a first-generation abstract expressionist whose greatness can be considered in the same frame of historical importance as Still or Roth. Unfortunately, her reputation as a painter only began to catch up to her achievements in her 70s. This is mainly due to the fact that American museums did not show her, nor would American critics support her. Only when Barbara Rose organized a retrospective in 1983 for the Huston and her work spoke louder than any critic could, did she gain traction in her native land. Yoko Ono is an incredible artist, filmmaker, peace activist and musician whose work sadly stood in the shadows of her ex-husband John Lennon. Although she was celebrated during her time, it often went hand in hand with mentions of the lead vocalist of the Beatles. The artist Elaine de Kooning suffered a similar situation. Her husband William de Kooning was always at the forefront while her work didn’t gain nearly as much traction. Interestingly while researching literature for this exhibition, I couldn’t find a single book which only featured Elaine de Kooning in the library of University of Bern while there were tons of books about William. Lastly, the artist Alma Thomas will be shown. It wasn’t easy to make a name for oneself as a woman in the art world, but it was even more challenging when you were also a POC. Thomas perseverance showed millions of black girls around the country that it is indeed possible to become a well-known artist facing those challenges. Each artist is exhibited in its own room, since they deserve their own moment and suffer enough comparisons during their time on mother earth.
Mary Beth Edelson, Some Living American Women Artists, 1972. Cut-and-pasted gelatin silver prints with crayon and transfer type on printed paper with typewriting on cut-and-taped paper. 71,8 x 109,2cm. MoMA, New York. © 2026 Mary Beth Edelson.
For this collage, Edelson re-envisioned Leonardo da Vinci’s world-renowned Last Supper by covering the original faces with photographs of American women artists and writing their names with a typewriter on small snippets of paper and gluing them accordingly. Additionally, she created a frame by adding the pictures of 69 other female artists which can be identified at the bottom.