Kunst mit Eigen-Sinn, Museum of Twentieth Century, Vienna

“Visual Art as the continuous play of veiling and unveiling, was in a sense translated directly into physical actions by Anne Bean in her powerful performance on the opening night. She was provided with the conference space: a dais and rows of chairs. Having created the expectation that a performance would take place on the dais, plain and revealed, a thunderous noise was heard at the other side of the space and a drill-bit broke through the partition wall. An opening was cut out, an arm came through wielding a hammer—like an armorial device from the days of heraldry or the muscular arm of the action painting—and smashed a little bag of oil paint against the white screen. After this, openings were cut from behind in a canvas screen, each one revealing part of her body in a series of very imaginative images suggesting the exploitation and struggle of women. In one, she made up her face, pulled a sheet of cling film against it smudging the song and sang ’……. they said they’d put me in the movies…’ In a very interesting way she used many of the props of the conventional art event—conference chairs, partitions, paint, canvas, –to go through them to a new idea of artist and woman. She ended by pulling down the canvas screen and winding herself into it repeating as she did ‘ I want to do a painting where the painter and painted are one disappearing through and in and out of each other…”

Her actions combined with her words were moving and apt. The point at which feminist ideals intersect with other progressive attitudes, both social and aesthetic, does become a key issue at a time of regression and regression.”

Studio International, Guy Brett