Could there be such a thing as “New Image Sculpture”? Richard Marshall’s catalogue for the 1979 Whitney show, to rephrase it somewhat, advertised Imagist painting as representation under new management: realism pensioned off; abstraction hired as consultant. True to inflated times and a pinched economy, the new image has been cut back, pruned of all but the most essential identifying characteristics, yet it remains “emotive,” psychological and highly suggestive if sometimes mysterious. Consider, in this light, the “Flashers” of Rosemarie Castoro, the cradles and ladders of Harmony Hammond, the

One of the reasons why these props function so well as sculpture (apart from an innate integrity) is that they have been objectified, ceased to function as contributors to a setting. Physically separated (although the toasters are grouped together, as are the houses), given breathing space—the chair has even been hung on the wall—their isolation serves to help make them emblematic. As Roberta Smith points out, however, the solitary shape(s) on a unified field to which this is analogous was only half the story of the Whitney presentation. The other half, featuring “Jenny, Zucker, Bartlett, and

The feminist art dialogue of the ’70s freed a lot of media long damned as “craftsy.” By nurturing the use of traditional craft techniques and materials in the creation of (anti/non-functional) art, it also started breaking down the dialectically exclusive definitions of art and craft. Looking at Michael Olszewski’s “fabric constructions” (his term), I am reminded of an exchange between Lucy Lippard and Joan Snyder (taped in ’73, printed in Ms. in ’75). Responding to Lippard’s question as to how Snyder can “tell women’s art from men’s art,” Snyder answers: “It has to do with a kind of softness,