Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective Catalog review - An Artist, Wife, and Mother, All in One

Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective catalog spread.

By JONATHAN OROZCO August 27, 2024

On April 8, 1973, Chicago artist Christina Ramberg (1946-1955) wrote in one of her many kept diaries “IS it possible to be an artist and be a wife and mother too? I feel sick with anxiety over this question.” What The Art Institute of Chicago argues with the phenomenal retrospective of the same name is that she was very much successful in being all three. Featuring over 100 objects made or collected by the artist, we can see how Ramberg progressed as a student to figurative painter, to later abstract expressionist. The exhibition is now on its way to The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and in the meantime, I perused the exhaustive catalog featuring texts by curators, scholars, and her fellow artists.

At times academically dense, and at others, exceedingly saccharine, Ramberg is characterized as a genius with no flaws (besides her own self hatred). 

In many ways, this exhibition is a full circle for Ramberg. She was a student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, taught there for years, and now, is being exhibited at it once again. 

The catalog is a complement to the oversized exhibition, adding context to what Ramberg was thinking about as she developed her artistic practice. Spanning from her time as a student, to quilts, to sketchbooks and her diaries, we see how Ramberg engaged or distanced herself from feminism, how and why she painted what she painted, and how her work is a reflection of how she saw herself.

In total, there are seven essays standing at varying lengths, some more intellectually rigorous than others, but much of the works contributed to the catalog are not necessarily meant to be art historical besides those written by the curators. An essay by Australian artist Ricky Swallow, for example, is about how he displays pieces he owns by Ramberg in his home. 

Front cover of Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective.

Lori Gunn Wirsum too wrote an essay about how much of a kind hearted person she was. This piece of course doesn’t necessarily advance the art historical knowledge of Ramberg’s work, though, it does characterize her as caring and loving. She wrote, “Christina Ramberg and I first bonded over my daughter, Ruby, who was a babe in my arms when we met in 1969 at the opening of False Image at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago.” Gunn Wirsum also mentioned that Ramberg was an activist, fighting for nuclear disarmament. 

“I think that good art has no sex, color, or religion,” Ramberg wrote in one of her diaries on February 19, 1973. In many ways, her engagement with feminism and how it intersected in her art was biographical. Not much later that same year, she described her own body as “white legs, with whiter scars, a hint of stubble, skinny calves, flabby upper thighs, and bony bunioned large feet.” She was particularly insecure about her feet and how large she perceived them to be. These vicious self-reflections show the tension in her figurative work. They are both exaggerated and anonymous, and at times disembodied frames. 

Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective catalog spread.

Artist Riva Lehrer provides an excellent and fascinating analysis of Ramberg’s art in relation to Monster Theory in her essay titled Body Partings. Lehrer invokes amputation, disability, and feminism making it a must read for the understanding of Ramberg’s art. 

The section with the images, as is the case with all catalogs, was absolutely stunning. It is chronological, starting with Ramberg’s earliest work to her final abstract paintings. Toward the end, there are images of her diaries, sketchbooks, and collections and collages.

After flipping through the images, I wish there were a few paragraphs on two untitled artworks from 1969-1970, and in 1975. They are wads of hair in pleated paper, the way bite-sized chocolate candies are displayed in a box. A very quick analysis could talk about how the images are both surrealist and feminist, speaking on beauty and consumption. They are also uncomfortable images too, the way one would imagine sipping from Meret Oppenheim’s 1936 fur covered dishware. 

One fun little tidbit is that Ramberg created work for the formerly Chicago-based Playboy Magazine, which was an essential source of income and exposure to many artists. Ramberg “was tapped for the opportunity because the style and content of her artwork played so well within the pages of the publication,” wrote Thea Liberty Nichols in Parallel Manipulations: Christina Ramberg’s Art and Archive.

The catalog concludes with a succinct biography of Ramberg, bibliography, exhibition history, and contributor biographies. It is a must read for those interested in the Chicago Imagists, feminist art history, or disability studies, offering insights into an often overlooked artist. WM