Eleanor Antin was born
in New York City in 1935. An influential
performance
artist, filmmaker, and
installation
artist, Antin delves into history—whether of ancient Rome,
the Crimean War, the salons of nineteenth-century Europe, or her
own Jewish heritage and Yiddish
culture—as
a way to explore the present. Antin is a cultural chameleon, masquerading
in theatrical or stage roles to expose her many selves. Her most
famous
persona
is that of Eleanora Antinova, the tragically overlooked black ballerina
of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Appearing as Antinova
in scripted and non-scripted performances for over a decade, Antin
has blurred the distinction between her identity and that of her
character. In the process, she has created a rich body of work detailing
the multiple facets of her beloved Antinova, including a fictitious
memoir and numerous films, photographs, installations, performances,
and drawings. In her 2001 series “The Last Days of Pompeii,”
Antin lingers behind the camera to stage the final, catastrophic
days of Pompeii in the affluent hills of La Jolla, California. In
“The Golden Death” from this series, the imagined citizens
of Pompeii drown in the excess of their own wealth—an ironic
parable of American culture in the throes of over-consumption. Eleanor
Antin received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1997 and a
Media Achievement Award from the National Foundation for Jewish
Culture in 1998. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, including
an award-winning retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum
of Art in 1999. Antin is a highly respected artist and teacher,
and has been a professor at the University of California, San Diego
since 1975. She lives with her husband and son in Southern California.
For additional biographic & bibliographic information:
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York
Eleanor Antin on the Art21 blog |
