Phantom
· In 1971, she traveled the country creating 4 installations of poured polyurethane. The first was Phantom created at the Kansas State University Student Union in February of that year. 4/5 sculptural components of this installation are house at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
· Benglis is interested in the physical form of the human body and its relationship to her sculptures.
· While it takes a certain gaze to recognize the sexuality and relationship to the human body of the poured sculptures, Benglis openly talks about them in these terms. They are inherently so and mark an important stage in the development of Benglis’ thinking about these topics.
· Her famous Artforum ad of November 1974 confirmed that Benglis was interested in playing with more than gaze and female sexuality. It is human sexuality and the physical human condition that the artist is interested in.
· Because of this interest and sexually explicit nature of her work from 1974 on, New York magazine champion her as one of the central figures of a new movement of Feminists that the magazine dubbed New Sexual Frankness.
· Phantom was an early work for Benglis’ and was made before her references to body and sexuality were more overt.