1000 Words with Rochelle Feinstein in Artforum

Just in time for her stunning retrospective at the Bronx Museum 1000 words on Rochelle F... Beginning here: ROCHELLE FEINSTEIN’S paintings pack punches and punch lines, yet the jokes are so bleak they can be hard to laugh at. The ebullient, Helen Frankenthaler-esque In Anticipation of Women’s History Month, 2013, may at first suggest earnest excitement about the commemoration of women’s achievements that occurs every March. Round pin-back buttons—variously displaying a tiny curtsying Minnie Mouse and a suffragette—are stuck into the colorful stained canvas. Yet a glittering black heart at the painting’s center gives the game away: The work is, in fact, acidly ironic and tinged with melancholy, meant to underscore the patriarchal system that deems “women’s history”—the contributions of more than 50 percent of the human population—as a category distinct from “history” itself...  read the full intro and interview in Artforum’s November issue.