Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (born 1940) is an American graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design. In 1990 she became the director of the Yale University Graduate Program in Graphic Design and the first woman to receive tenure at the Yale University School of Art.^[1]

Life

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville holds degrees from Barnard College^[2] and Yale University^[3] and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Moore College of Art and California College of the Arts.^[4]

de Bretteville's poster for the Women in Design conference held at the Los Angeles Woman's Building in 1975. Woman's Building records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In 1971, de Bretteville founded the first design program for women at the California Institute of the Arts, and two years later co-founded the Woman's Building, a public center in Los Angeles dedicated to women's education and culture.^[5] In 1973, de Bretteville founded the Women’s Graphic Center and co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop (along with Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven), both based at the Woman's Building.^[6]

She designed a necklace of an eye bolt on a chain, meant to represent "strength without a fist"; she gave the first of these to Arlene Raven and Judy Chicago when they started the Feminist Studio Workshop in 1972.^[7][8] Since then she has given them to other women with whom she shares a vision of the creation of women's culture.^[7] Members of the Feminist Studio Workshop of 1978–79 also made 500 of these necklaces to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Woman's Building in Los Angeles.^[7] The feminist art group Sisters of Jam (Mikaela & Moa Krestesen) turned the necklace into a mobile monument; they see the eye bolt "as a symbol for the work already done but also as an encouragement for the work that is not yet completed." ^[8] Sisters of Jam also did the installation "Hello Sheila", which features an eye bolt on a chain, at the Survival Kit Festival in Umeå in 2014.

In 1980 de Bretteville initiated the communication design program at the Otis College of Art and Design.^[5]

Poster created by Sheila de Bretteville in 1973

De Bretteville has had a lifelong interest in communal forms of art, which she believed were an essential component of the Feminist art movement in the United States. In 1973, she created "Pink," a broadside meant to explore the notions of gender as associated with the color pink, for an American Institute of Graphic Arts exhibition about color. This was the only entry about the color pink.^[9] Various women including many in the Feminist Studio Workshop submitted entries exploring their association with the color. De Bretteville arranged the squares of paper to form a “quilt” from which posters were printed and disseminated throughout Los Angeles. She was referred to by the nickname "Pinky" as a result.^[10]

De Bretteville has worked extensively in the field of public art creating works embedded within city neighborhoods. One of her best-known pieces is "Biddy Mason's Place: A Passage of Time,”^[11] an 82-foot concrete wall with embedded objects in downtown Los Angeles that tells the story of Biddy Mason, a former slave who became a midwife in Los Angeles and lived near the site.^[12] In “Path of Stars,” completed in 1994 in a New Haven neighborhood, de Bretteville documented the lives of local citizens—past and present—with 21 granite stars set in the sidewalk.

She has been honored with many awards including a 2004 Gold Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the most distinguished in the field in recognition of exceptional achievements, services or other contributions to the field of design and visual communication.^[13] She is a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.

See also

• First Things First 2000 manifesto, signed by de Bretteville (among others)

References

Bibliography

• Redniss, L. "First Person: Three Styles." Print v. 58 no. 2 (March/April 2004) p. 56–61
• Close, J. A. "Reconcilable Differences." ID (v. 48 no. 1 (January/February 2001) p. 58
• Pou, A. "Exploding the Model: On Youth and Art." Public Art Review v. 9 no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1998) p. 4–11
• Betsky, A., et al., "The I.D. Forty: An Insider's Guide to America's Leading Design Innovators." ID (New York, N.Y.) v. 40 (January/February 1993) p. 45–67
• Brown, B. A. "Hope for the 90's" (What Feminist Art Movement Leaders Feel Today." Artweek v. 21 (February 8, 1990) p. 22-3
• Brumfield, J. "Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (interview with Yale's new director of the graduate program on graphic design)." Graphis v. 47 (March/April 1991) p. 30-5
• De Bretteville, Sheila Levrant. "Some aspects of design from the perspective of a woman designer." In Looking Closer 3: Classic Writings on Graphic Design, edited by Michael Bierut, et al., p. 238–245. New York: Allworth Press, 1999. Originally published in Iconographie 6 (1973).
• De Bretteville, Sheila Levrant, and John Brumfield. "Sheila Levrant de Bretteville." Graphis 47, no. 272 (March–April 1991): 30–5.
• De Bretteville, Sheila Levrant, and Ellen Lupton. "Sheila Levrant de Bretteville." Eye 2, no. 8 (1993): 10–16.
• De Forest, A. "Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (the Biddy Mason Wall, Los Angeles." ID (New York, N.Y.) v. 37 (May/June 1990) p. 24
• Deneve, R. "A Feminist Option." Print 30, no. 3 (May–June 1976): 54–9, 88–90.
• Lupton, Ellen. “Sheila Levrant de Bretteville: Dirty Design and Fuzzy Theory,” (interview), Eye magazine, 1992.
• Wallis, B. "Public Art Marks Historic L.A. Site." Art in America v. 78 (June 1990) p. 207

Further reading

• Video Interview with Sheila de Bretteville 1990
• Video Interview with Sheila de Bretteville 2008
• AIGA Medalist, Sheila de Bretteville
• Emigre 51: First Things First, 1999.
• “Good Design Is Feminist Design”: An Interview with Sheila de Bretteville