Barbara Rosenthal

Her work often explores existential themes and has been noted for its philosophical underpinnings. In 2021, her archives were acquired by Queens College. She has used pseudonyms such as "Homo Futurus," the title of one of her books, and "Cassandra-on-the-Hudson," which reference themes in her creative work. In 2022, she trademarked "Homo Futurus." Rosenthal lives and works in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City.

• Name — Barbara Rosenthal • Birth Name — Barbara Ann Rosenthal • Born — 1948 • Birthplace — The Bronx, New York • Known for — Avant-garde art, writing, performance, photography • Training — Brooklyn Museum Art School Art Students League Carnegie-Mellon University Tyler School of Art in Rome New York University Institute of Art History City University of New York • Notable Works — Journal: Volumes 1-71 Homo Futurus Surreal Photography Conceptual Photography Provocation Cards Existential Cartoons

Barbara Rosenthal was born in The Bronx in 1948. At the age of 11, Rosenthal wrote a weekly column for her town newspaper, The Franklin Square Bulletin.

Rosenthal started her education at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1963, where she studied figure drawing and painting with instructor Isaac Soyer. From 1964-1966, she continued her education at the Art Students League. She later attended Carnegie Mellon University, where she earned her BFA in painting in 1970. During her sophomore and senior years, she was the editor of the literary art magazine Patterns. She spent her junior year studying abroad at Temple University's Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy, studying art and art history. She earned an MFA in painting from Queens College in 1974. During her years as an art student and teacher, Rosenthal supplemented her earnings as an assembly-line painting artist and a go-go dancer at clubs, including Metropole Cafe and Club Mardi Gras. She also worked as a stringer photojournalist for The Village Voice, East Village Eye, and The New York Post. From 1972 to 1974, she taught at the Lakeside School in Seattle, Washington.

Rosenthal's first college teaching position was as a painting instructor at Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri, in 1976-1977. Since 1990, Rosenthal has taught writing as an adjunct lecturer at the College of Staten Island of The City University of New York. Rosenthal has also taught studio art and art history at other colleges in New York. She also taught as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Photography at Nassau Community College in 1994.

As a writer, Barbara Rosenthal produces short- and long-form works, including poetry, novels, art criticism, and essays. Her fiction, like her visual art, tends to present a grim worldview, depicting surreal surroundings in which a lone individual faces incomprehensible situations. Rosenthal is a regular contributor to NY Arts Magazine and is known for her stand against art as advocacy, which she labels "retrograde." She says that she opposes many prevailing political, cultural, and feminist trends in contemporary art. In 1982, Rosenthal became an associate member of the Women's Institute For Freedom of the Press, Washington, DC.

Rosenthal's performance art has utilized installation, projections, voice, music, and abstract sound to convey themes of individuality, identity, and time. Her first performance/installation, "Self-Portrait Room," was performed in 1968. From 1976 to 1984, she performed in videos by placing a stationary camera in front of a single-action life situation. Rosenthal's ventriloquism video, How Much Does The Monkey Count, was made in 1988 and was reprised at CBGB in 1991 and the Living Theater in 1992. From 1976 to 1996, she was the leading female actor in the Super-8 films by Bill Creston. Seven other films produced by Rosenthal were also screened at The Museum of Modern Art in 1989. In 2005, Rosenthal crashed the Performa05 Festival in NY with Existential Interact wearing her image-text "Button Pin Shirts" and handing out Provocation Cards in front of the Guggenheim Museum and White Box Gallery in New York. This interaction was performed at various iconic street locations across several cities in the United States and abroad. She represented the United States in both performance and text-based art at the Tina B. Prague Contemporary Art Festival in 2009 and 2010. Rosenthal’s project Existential Interact was featured in a full-page spread in the 2011 issue of Emergency Index, an annual documentation of performance art. In 2013, Rosenthal began including video morphs in her work, beginning in I’m Growing Up, which was performed at Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn and at AudioPollen in Brisbane, Australia.

Since 1976, Rosenthal has made over 100 videos. She has worked in different formats as the technology has changed, including 1/2" open reel, 3/4-Umatic, VHS, mini-DV, and HD. The first works, The Haircut and The Bath, began with 1/2" open reel portapak partnering with Bill Creston. In 1982, she won a Festival Prize for Helen Webster: Cancer and Self-Discovery at the Global Village Video Festival in New York. In 1988, her videos Leah Gluck: Victim of the Twins Experiments and Women in the Camps were shown in the installation at The Jewish Museum, New York. Besides partnering in New York and Missouri with Bill Creston in her early videos, as well as his films, she has partnered in Berlin, Germany with DJ RoBeat for several of her videos and live performances since 2008.

• Clues to Myself, Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, NY, 1981 • Homo Futurus, Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, NY, 1986 • Sensations, Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, NY, 1984 • Soul & Psyche, Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, NY, 1998 • Weeks (collaboration with poet Hannah Weiner), Xexoxial Endarchy, Madison, WI, 1990

• Existential Cartoons, L-Gallery of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia, 2007 • Catalogue Raisonné, The Museum of Modern Media, NYC, 2007 • Children's Shoes, eMediaLoft.org, NYC, 1992 • Introduction to the Trilogy, eMediaLoft.org, NYC, 1985 • Names/Lives, eMediaLoft.org, NYC, 2001 • Old Address Book, eMediaLoft.org, N.Y.C., 1984 • Structure And Meaning, eMediaLoft.org, NYC, 1981