Bunny in Chains

Linda Kramer has lived and worked in Chicago since the 1960s. Throughout her career she has maintained a strong feminist stance in her politics and art. In 1973 she was among the founders of the Feminist cooperative gallery Artemisia in Chicago, named after the 16th-century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi. Chicago was home to Playboy magazine and its founder Hugh Hefner introduced the “men’s entertainment” magazine known for its nude centerfolds of models called Playboy Bunnies. Kramer went to a party at the Playboy club with some friends in the late 1960s and was appalled by the way in which “Bunnies” were dehumanized and objectified by the attendees. She had already begun a series of drawings addressing the treatment of women in American society of the late 1960s; this visit prompted the sharply humorous and perceptive drawings shown here.