Kelly’s pioneering, diaristic approach to making art through gradual, methodological practices has been especially influential on following generations of women artists, both directly and indirectly. Parallel approaches and methods can be seen in work by these younger women artists, for example, whose careers’ followed Kelly’s.
Pat Steir is a strongly process-driven painter. She says “I think of painting as a research. I’m not a product-maker. I’m a researcher.” Her signature drip-style painting emerged from a desire to demonstrate that painting, too, can be conceptual.
The power of Lacy’s work has undoubtedly been in its ability to effect real social change. For example, her works focused on sexual violence in the 1970s helped end societal silence toward acknowledging rape and improve police response.
Horn became a key figure in a moment for art that challenged and changed formal ideas. The author, Jeanette Winterson, has described Horn as performing a role akin to an artist-inventor or alchemist, and as possessing a capacity to produce artworks that rouse powerful elemental forces and emotions.
Sherrie Levine, along with Richard Prince, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman and a small cadre of other artists came to define “The Pictures Generation.” Their collective efforts wrestled with age-old questions surrounding authorship, citation, and originality in art. Her acts of artistic appropriation drastically renegotiated what was permissible both creatively and legally in an unprecedented way.
Before Holt’s Sun Tunnels, all major Land Art projects (Spiral Jetty (1969), Double Negative (1969), Lightning Field (1977)) had been completed by male artists. Holt broke the glass ceiling, paving the way for the ascension of one the most brilliant Land Artists, Maya Lin, whose work is visibly indebted to Holt’s in its focus on ecology, history, and complex systems in nature.
Joan Jonas is a prolific artist, who has greatly influenced the generation of performance artists to follow. She developed her own particularly fluid language and style of working, and furthermore revolutionized the practice by incorporating video and single circuit video loops into her work.
Rosalyn Drexler is an ex-professional wrestler whose experience as ‘Rosa the Mexican Spitfire’ influenced her subsequent work as a visual artist and writer, and who is now becoming recognized as a key feminist voice in the Pop Art movement.
Given how little of her work was actually exhibited during her lifetime and how much of it was lost, Oppenheim’s impact on future generations is all the more remarkable.
Kay Sage is among the few Americans associated with early Surrealism. She fully integrated the language of the movement within her own practice and achieved notable success during her lifetime.