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Looking back now you have to imagine life was, if not hell, at least a brutal minefield for women of the era who, free of a patriarchal home, were paroled to experience the full trauma of a world of men, those sexually "liberated" of the artworld excusing discomfort as "no major offense," the assaulters still allowed their sexual plumage to hang out openly in museums, forced to dodge big pendulous egos swung to wide berths, the male surety allowing the Greenberg-likes to steamroll the scene almost on machismo alone, to allow Judd to state as an entire thought about Anne Truitt in Art International: "She doesn't have a clear idea of what she is doing though," - that's it that's Judd's entire sentence - the defense of which is simply Judd was this much of a prick to everyone, and maybe Italy was kinder, less of the implicit patriarchal rules for gender so pervasive you still hear a generation occasionally defend as "natural," and within this then to somehow find some small elbowed room to make something soft. Only to have echoing in your head Judd's castigation of Frankenthaler: "Frankenthaler's softness is fine but it would be more profound if it was also hard."
See too: Hannah Black at MUMOK
