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The blacks were not the only faction to make waves during the spring of 1969. The women among us, at first only a few though their numbers were to swell, had begun to dance to a different piper. They were quite defensive at first, as though they assumed we assumed their position was a joke, and they wanted us to know they really were serious. A few of them began to demand greater equality for women as artists and at last for an amendment to our Thirteen Demands to include not only a black wing at the Modern but a women artists' wing as well. Militant feminism was still a year or so away, but these women were quite insistent even then. At first this sub-group was known simply as the Coalition's Ad Hoc Women's Committee, but towards the beginning of summer, some of them began to embrace the melodramatic title of "WAR," or Women Artists in Revolution. To the surprise of many the name stuck.

I immediately took up their cause, partly because I had long regarded myself as an advocate of women's rights partly because I had seen what difficulties Ilene had encountered dealing with galleries, particularly on the continent, simply because she was a woman, but also because I sensed that here was another issue that could grind the Coalition to bits and must be accommodated. I do not want to paint myself in bright heroic colors on this issue, for I had no inkling of the sheer rancor and fury that would soon surround this subject, but I was concerned about this matter and made my concern known from the beginning.

My friend the art critic Gregory Battcock was not so lucky. Already in March Gregory had published an article in the New York Free Press that had these early feminists calling for his head,

"Someone actually said that what's more important than black artists are women artists in general who have never been encouraged to be in art, and are never given an even break, only trodden upon. God, if I hear that line again. If anything women have too much power in the art world and every other world in modern America. And, there are so many Rich American Women Artists that one should make a list starting off with Helen Frankenthaler...and then add women artists like Lee Krasner, Lee Bontacou, Louise Nevelson, Elaine de Kooning, Marisol..."

And he went on listing several other women artists.

As always Gregory deserves praise for shooting straight and saying just what he felt, however his comments may look in retrospect. In point of fact, Gregory was, as I have said elsewhere, one of the most committed spokesmen for what came to be known as Gay Liberation, and I suspect it may well be impossible for these two branches of the liberation movement to be altogether objective about each other, even though the feminists also include representatives of their own gay community. I mention this dispute not merely in passing, but as an example of how the various branches of the movement were to hinder one another instead of providing mutual support, a theme I shall return to when I discuss the reasons why the 'Sixties slowly wound themselves down.

Another who had doubts about the women's cause at that time was, surprisingly enough, Lucy Lippard, already a well-known art critic. I believe her solidarity with other women was less important to her at that period than her loyalty to the established hierarchy of the arts and her own position as a critic in that hierarchy. She had not at that time chosen to consider an artist's sex as being a factor in the work being produced, though she was later to jump on the feminist bandwagon and claim that there was such a thing as a "feminist" element in art.

In spite of the unity our sessions working on the two published books had created, it was hard to keep the group from flying apart during the week after our demonstration. Good news was on the way, though we did not know it, but even when it came, it could not countervail the factionalism and pettiness which seemed to be the primary concern of our members. It has often occurred to me that in any contest, be it political, institutional, or personal, it is not the better party—in any positive sense of "better"—who ultimately wins but the one that has the fewest internal conflicts going on a group or individual basis. And often this party wins merely by virtue of outlasting the adversary.

On May 10 we held another demonstration at the Modern, and this served to distract some of our artists from their squabbles. But not all our members took part, and it was on the whole a minor though amusing affair. The goal of the demonstration was to play up once again our demand for free admission to the museum. As the Modern was now claiming that anyone could enter without paying if he bothered to approach the downstairs information desk and ask to be admitted, we instructed a number of arts students to do this. and some of them secured admission in this way. It was a Saturday, and there were long lines waiting to get in. We therefore explained this tactic to those waiting to pay their money by means of a prepared leaflet.

But we also warned those standing on line that they might have to wait some time to enter, as we had another little trick to play. At least two dozen of our members were waiting on this line in a group, and when they came to the box office, they started to pay the $1.50 admission fee, but all in pennies, slowly and laboriously, counting out each penny to the total number of one hundred and fifty. The museum guards were furious, another stall was opened for tickets, but several of our members succeeded in reaching it as well. The guards began to push and shove the artists, and there was a good deal of tension, but finally we had all spent our pennies and entered the museum with our hard-earned tickets. There we gathered in the garden and sipped beer for an hour or so, while the massed museum security forces watched our every move in case we were planning any further action.

Another issue that kept people's attention span relatively taut was the so-called artists' resale contract, introduced by a left-wing lawyer named Bob Projansky.. This is the still controversial principle by which the purchaser of an art work guarantees contractually to the artist at the time of sale that he will pay him a certain percentage of any increased price the work might ever fetch on resale. After many years, this simple concept has begun to find the allies it needs to convert it into law, and such a law has in fact recently been passed in California. I was one of the first proponents of this contract, though I always felt there were a number of flaws in the concept, for as constituted it would tend to help only those artists who are already able to sell their work at high prices. It also involves an inflationary assumption about art prices, that they will continue to go up. This assumption is not confirmed by the history of art prices in all cases or even by certain fluctuations in prices for contemporary art. The contract also makes no provision for the work of dead artists, who are often the ones most benefited, (if that is the word, since they are dead) by resales of their work. I will have a bit more to say about this concept in its place.

By mid-spring Takis had largely retired from our activities, mainly because he felt that he did not want to draw any further attention to himself. In this I believe he was perceptive and wise, as his continued presence would undoubtedly have led to renewed accusations that the group was being dominated by tech artists. Takis, would occasionally appear at our meetings but would remain in the background, saying nothing, and even at our demonstrations he would make only a brief background appearance. This was essential so as to inform the Modern that we were no longer the small coterie they had first met with but a new organization with some claim to representing the artists at large in the city. Another artist, whose name I have already mentioned, also dropped out at this time but would later become one of our group's most important personalities. His name was Jean Toche. Later that year he and Jon Hendricks would form the "Guerilla Art Action Group" and were to become the chief heroes and martyrs of our little branch of the movement. Toche dropped out on May 18 and accused the group of turning back from major social issues in order to reinstate itself as a small elitist coterie.

A position paper he wrote was widely distributed and was directed mainly against Lucy and her clique for reasons which will become apparent. On the whole I agreed with Jean and was sorely tempted to drop out myself. I had urged the expansion of the group to allow for the maximum participation of other artists and was always looking for ways to delegate authority and involve as many members as possible. Takis, had retired to the sidelines for the same reasons, to help this come about.

But many of the more established artists around Lucy had quite different ideas about keeping the group open. Increasingly, complaints were heard from this faction that some kind of standard ought to be applied in determining who could become an AWC member. I felt then—and still feel now—that these artists, accustomed to manipulate the intricate inner workings of the art world, were simply moving in on a good thing and wanted to make it entirely their own. They saw the headlines and publicity we had been able to generate, and they did not understand that we had only been able to do this because we were trying to speak as the voice of all artists. As soon as we became limited or parochial in our membership or goals, we would forfeit this right, and the publicity would disappear overnight. I tried to explain this to all our members—Lucy's clique, my own friends, and the many uncommitted members. I did this at meetings, in the bars afterwards, and on the phone during the week. But it was like speaking to stones most of the time.

The meetings at Lucy's Studio of the "Alternate Structures Committee" were about...it would really stretch my mind to say what they were about. The several that I attended—during that spring many artists were attending AWC meetings three nights out of each week, besides participating in mailing sessions, work on the two books, and demonstrations—touched on every possible field except that of defining any alternate structures for the art world. One might hear gripes against the various museums and galleries, personal histories, diatribes by the proponents of ideological sub-factions, tirades by the women and the blacks—and by those opposed to the women or the blacks. Some even mentioned the supposedly forbidden subject of esthetics, of "good" or "bad" art.

All of this and much more came to be discussed. I finally began to stay away because I could simply no longer afford the time. I had also reached the conclusion that these meetings, far from being concerned with setting up alternate structures, were a distillation of everything that was most distasteful to me about the existing structure of the art world. I could not help but find myself thinking that many of the artists who came to these meetings were mainly there to meet Lucy, a real live critic in the flesh who might conceivably help them with their careers. The fact that she kept copies of books she had written displayed prominently on the coffee table around which we all sat did little to dispel this impression for me.

The regular Coalition meetings were on Mondays, Lucy's group would meet on Sundays, and our Legal Committee would come together on Wednesdays at various artists' homes and studios. Theoretically, each committee was supposed to report back to the Monday meetings so as to keep all our members abreast of what had been discussed—or optimistically—decided. In reality this rarely happened, though the Legal Committee was eventually to make a report which paved the way for most of the so-called artists' rights movement which has come since. As I have noted, there was almost no way of ensuring an orderly meeting of the Art Workers Coalition, and indeed its members purposely wanted things kept that way out of fear of being corrupted by more structured proceedings, which they associated with the system they believed they were trying to change.

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