 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points.(September 2016) |
Feminist art criticism emerged in the 1970s from the wider feminist movement as the critical examination of both visual representations of women in art and art produced by women. [1] It continues to be a major field of art criticism.
Linda Nochlin's 1971 groundbreaking essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", analyzes the embedded privilege in the predominantly white, male, Western art world and argued that women's outsider status allowed them a unique viewpoint to not only critique women's position in art, but to additionally examine the discipline's underlying assumptions about gender and ability. [2] Nochlin's essay develops the argument that both formal and social education restricted artistic development to men, preventing women (with rare exception) from honing their talents and gaining entry into the art world. [2] In the 1970s, feminist art criticism continued this critique of the institutionalized sexism of art history, art museums, and galleries, as well as questioning which genres of art were deemed museum-worthy. [3] This position is articulated by artist Judy Chicago: "...it is crucial to understand that one of the ways in which the importance of male experience is conveyed is through the art objects that are exhibited and preserved in our museums. Whereas men experience presence in our art institutions, women experience primarily absence, except in images that do not necessarily reflect women's own sense of themselves." [4] In 1996 Catherine de Zegher curated the groundbreaking show of women artists Inside the Visible, that travelled from the ICA Boston to the Whitechapel in London, [5] using the theoretical paradigmatic shift by the artist, philosopher and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger: the matrixial gaze, space and sphere. [6] [7] Bracha L. Ettinger wrote the introductory theoretical framework, art historian Griselda Pollock contextualised Ettinger's theory and de C. Zegher's curatorial project, in what became since then a cornerstone in feminist art history. In 2000, C. de Zegher organised a conference to look at Linda Nochlin's challenging question thirty years after. Highly significant female curators of the time, like Griselda Pollock, Lisa Tickner, Molly Nesbit, Ann Wagner, Emily Apter, Carol Armstrong and others presented the feminist art criticism in whose origin and revolution they took active part. [8] Following this, Griselda Pollock published her Virtual Feminist Museum book (2007). [9]
Nochlin challenges the myth of the Great Artist as 'Genius' as an inherently problematic construct. 'Genius' “is thought of as an atemporal and mysterious power somehow embedded in the person of the Great Artist.” [2] This ‘god-like’ conception of the artist's role is due to "the entire romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying, and monograph-producing substructure upon which the profession of art history is based." [2] She develops this further by arguing that "if women had the golden nugget of artistic genius, it would reveal itself. But it has never revealed itself. Q.E.D. Women do not have the golden nugget of artistic genius." [2] Nochlin deconstructs the myth of the 'Genius' by highlighting the unjustness in which the Western art world inherently privileges certain predominantly white male artists. In Western art, ‘Genius’ is a title that is generally reserved for artists such as, van Gogh, Picasso, Raphael, and Pollock—all white men. [2] As recently demonstrated by Alessandro Giardino, when the concept of artistic genius started collapsing, women and marginal groups emerged at the forefront of artistic creation. [10] Griselda Pollock, following closely the psychoanalytical discoveries of French theorists Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and mainly Bracha L. Ettinger consistently brought the feminist psychoanalytic perspective into the field of art history. [11]
Similar to Nochlins’ assertions on women's position in the art world, art historian Carol Duncan in the 1989 article, “The MoMA Hot Mamas”, examines the idea that institutions like the MoMA are masculinized. In MoMA's collection, there is a disproportionate amount of sexualized female bodies by male artists on display compared to a low percentage of actual women artists included. [12] According to data accumulated by the Guerrilla Girls, “less than 3% of the artists in the Modern Art section of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art are women, but 83% of the nudes are female”, even though “51% of visual artists today are women.” [13] Duncan claims that, in regards to women artists:
In the MoMA and other museums, their numbers are kept well below the point where they might effectively dilute its masculinity. The female presence is necessary only in the form of imagery. Of course, men, too, are occasionally represented. Unlike women, who are seen primarily as sexually accessible bodies, men are portrayed as physically and mentally active beings who creatively shape their world and ponder its meanings. [12]
This article narrows its focus on one institution to use as an example to draw from and expand on. Ultimately to illustrate the ways in which institutions are complicit in patriarchal and racist ideologies.
Women of color in art were often not addressed in earlier feminist art criticism. Intersectional analysis is essential to discuss social categorizations, such as race, class, gender, sexual identity, and disability.
Audre Lorde’s 1984 essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House,” [14] briefly addresses a vital dilemma that artists who are women of color are often overlooked or tokenized in the visual arts. She argues that "in academic feminist circles, the answer to these questions is often, ‘We did not know who to ask.’ But that is the same evasion of responsibility, the same cop-out, that keeps Black women's art out of women's exhibitions, Black women's work out of most feminist publications except for the occasional ‘Special Third World Women's Issue,’ and Black women's texts off your reading lists.” [15] Lorde’s statement brings up how important it is to consider intersectionality in these feminist art discourses, as race is just as integral to any discussion on gender.
Furthermore, bell hooks expands on the discourse of black representation in the visual arts to include other factors. In her 1995 book, Art on My Mind, hooks positions her writings on the visual politics of both race and class in the art world. She states that the reason art is rendered meaningless in the lives of most black people is not solely due to the lack of representation, but also because of an entrenched colonization of the mind and imagination and how it is intertwined with the process of identification. [16] : 4 Thus she stresses for a “shift [in] conventional ways of thinking about the function of art. There must be a revolution in the way we see, the way we look," [16] : 4 emphasizing how visual art has the potential to be an empowering force within the black community. Especially if one can break free from "imperialist white-supremacist notions of the way art should look and function in society." [16] : 5
Feminist art criticism is a smaller subgroup in the larger realm of feminist theory, because feminist theory seeks to explore the themes of discrimination, sexual objectification, oppression, patriarchy, and stereotyping, feminist art criticism attempts similar exploration.
This exploration can be accomplished through a variety of means. Structuralist theories, deconstructionist thought, psychoanalysis, queer analysis, and semiotic interpretations can be used to further comprehend gender symbolism and representation in artistic works. The social structures regarding gender that influence a piece can be understood through interpretations based on stylistic influences and biographical interpretations.
Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" focuses on the gaze of the spectator from a Freudian perspective. Freud's concept of scopophilia relates to the objectification of women in art works. The gaze of the viewer is, in essence, a sexually charged instinct. [17] Because of the gender inequity that exists in the art sphere, the artist's portrayal of a subject is generally a man's portrayal of women. Other Freudian symbolism can be used to comprehend pieces of art from a feminist perspective—whether gender specific symbols are uncovered through psychoanalytic theory (such as phallic or yonic symbols) or specific symbols are used to represent women in a given piece.
Are the women depicted in an artistic work realistic portrayals of women? Writer Toril Moi explained in her 1985 essay "'Images of Women' Criticism" that "reflectionism posits that the artist's selective creation should be measured against 'real life,' thus assuming that the only constraint on the artist's work is his or her perception of the 'real world.'" [18]
The 1970s also saw the emergence of feminist art journals, including The Feminist Art Journal in 1972 [19] and Heresies in 1977. The journal n.paradoxa has been dedicated to an international perspective on feminist art since 1996. [20]
Important publications on feminist art criticism include:
In 1989, the Guerilla Girls' poster protest [21] of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's gender imbalance brought this feminist critique out of the academy and into the public sphere.
In 2007, the exhibit "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" presented works of 120 international artists and artists’ groups at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. [22] It was the first show of its kind that employed a comprehensive view of the intersection between feminism and art from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. [23] WACK! “argues that feminism was perhaps the most influential of any postwar art movement-on an international level-in its impact on subsequent generations of artists.” [23]
Rosemary Betteron's 2003 essay, “Feminist Viewing: Viewing Feminism”, insists that older feminist art criticism must adapt to newer models, as our culture has shifted significantly since the late twentieth century. Betterton points out:
Feminist art criticism is no longer the marginalized discourse that it once was; indeed it had produced some brilliant and engaging writing over the last decade and in many ways has become a key site of academic production. But, as feminist writers and teachers, we need to address ways of thinking through new forms of social engagement between feminism and the visual, and of understanding the different ways in which visual culture is currently inhabited by our students. [24]
According to Betterton, the models used to critique a Pre-Raphaelite painting are not likely to be applicable in the twenty-first century. [24] She also expresses that we should explore ‘difference’ in position and knowledge, since in our contemporary visual culture we are more used to engaging with "multi-layered text and image complexes" (video, digital media, and the Internet). [24] Our ways of viewing have changed considerably since the 1970s.
Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by second-wave feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years feminist film theory has developed and changed to analyse the current ways of film and also go back to analyse films past. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analyzed and their theoretical underpinnings.
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to analyze and describe the ways in which literature portrays the narrative of male domination by exploring the economic, social, political, and psychological forces embedded within literature. This way of thinking and criticizing works can be said to have changed the way literary texts are viewed and studied, as well as changing and expanding the canon of what is commonly taught. It is used a lot in Greek myths.
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Écriture féminine, or "women's writing", is a term coined by French feminist and literary theorist Hélène Cixous in her 1975 essay "The Laugh of the Medusa". Cixous aimed to establish a genre of literary writing that deviates from traditional masculine styles of writing, one which examines the relationship between the cultural and psychological inscription of the female body and female difference in language and text. This strand of feminist literary theory originated in France in the early 1970s through the works of Cixous and other theorists including Luce Irigaray, Chantal Chawaf, Catherine Clément and Julia Kristeva, and has subsequently been expanded upon by writers such as psychoanalytic theorist Bracha Ettinger. who emerged in this field in the early 1990s,
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Linda Nochlin was an American art historian, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor Emerita of Modern Art at New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and writer. As a prominent feminist art historian, she became well known for her pioneering 1971 article "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" published by ARTnews.
The feminist art movement in the United States began in the early 1970s and sought to promote the study, creation, understanding and promotion of women's art. First-generation feminist artists include Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Suzanne Lacy, Judith Bernstein, Sheila de Bretteville, Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and many other women. They were part of the Feminist art movement in the United States in the early 1970s to develop feminist writing and art. The movement spread quickly through museum protests in both New York and Los Angeles, via an early network called W.E.B. that disseminated news of feminist art activities from 1971 to 1973 in a nationally circulated newsletter, and at conferences such as the West Coast Women's Artists Conference held at California Institute of the Arts and the Conference of Women in the Visual Arts, at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C..
Feminist art is a category of art associated with the late 1960s and 1970s feminist movement. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience in their lives. The hopeful gain from this form of art is to bring a positive and understanding change to the world, in hope to lead to equality or liberation. Media used range from traditional art forms such as painting to more unorthodox methods such as performance art, conceptual art, body art, craftivism, video, film, and fiber art. Feminist art has served as an innovative driving force towards expanding the definition of art through the incorporation of new media and a new perspective.
Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger is an Israeli artist, painter and writer, visual analyst, psychoanalyst and philosopher, living and working in Paris and Tel Aviv. She is regarded as a major French feminist theorist and prominent international artist in contemporary New European Painting, that invented the concepts Matrixial Gaze, matrixial (matricial) space / espace matrixiel (matriciel). Ettinger is a professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and at GCAS, Dublin. In 2023, Bracha L. Ettinger has been part of the six art experts that compose the Finding Committee for the Artistic Director of Documenta’s 2027 edition.
Griselda Frances Sinclair Pollock is an art historian and cultural analyst of international, postcolonial feminist studies in visual arts and visual culture. Since 1977, Pollock has been an influential scholar of modern art, avant-garde art, postmodern art, and contemporary art. She is a major influence in feminist theory, feminist art history, and gender studies. She is renowned for her innovative feminist approaches to art history which aim to deconstruct the lack of appreciation and importance of women in art as other than objects for the male gaze.
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, art history examines broader aspects of visual culture, including the various visual and conceptual outcomes related to an ever-evolving definition of art. Art history encompasses the study of objects created by different cultures around the world and throughout history that convey meaning, importance or serve usefulness primarily through visual representations.
New European Painting emerged in the 1980s and reached a critical point of major distinction and influence in the 1990s with painters like Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and Bracha Ettinger whose paintings have established and continue to create a new dialogue between the historical archive, American Abstraction and figuration. The major new European painters of this era show strong engagements with painful personal and general history, as well as shared history; its memory and its oblivion; and with life under the shadow of World War II, utilizing research in new and old materials, photography and oil painting.
Feminist ethics is an approach to ethics that builds on the belief that traditionally ethical theorizing has undervalued and/or underappreciated women's moral experience, which is largely male-dominated, and it therefore chooses to reimagine ethics through a holistic feminist approach to transform it.
The Matrixial Gaze is a 1995 book by artist, psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, writer and painter Bracha L. Ettinger. It is a work of feminist film theory that examines the gaze as described by Jacques Lacan, criticises it, and offers an original theory concerning feminine and female gaze. Beginning in 1985, Ettinger's artistic practice and her theoretical invention of a matrixial space articulated around her proposal of a feminine-maternal sphere of encounter that begins in the most archaic (pre-maternal-prenatal) humanised encounter-event, led her to publish a long series of academic articles starting 1992, articulating and developing for some decades what she has called the matrixial theory of trans-subjectivity. The matrixial theory formulates Aesthetics and artistic creativity in terms of withnessing, compassion, wondering and 'fascinance', as well as Ethics of witnessing, responsibility, respect, compassion and care, and the passage from co-response-ability to responsibility and from com-passion to compassion. Bracha L. Ettinger invented a field of concepts that have influenced debates in contemporary art, psychoanalysis, women's studies, film studies, feminism, gender studies and cultural studies.
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of contemporary art. It also seeks to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. The movement challenges the traditional hierarchy of arts over crafts, which views hard sculpture and painting as superior to the narrowly perceived 'women's work' of arts and crafts such as weaving, sewing, quilting and ceramics. Women artists have overturned the traditional view by, for example, using unconventional materials in soft sculptures, new techniques such as stuffing, hanging and draping, and for new purposes such as telling stories of their own life experiences. The objectives of the feminist art movement are thus to deconstruct the traditional hierarchies, represent women more fairly and to give more meaning to art. It helps construct a role for those who wish to challenge the mainstream narrative of the art world. Corresponding with general developments within feminism, and often including such self-organizing tactics as the consciousness-raising group, the movement began in the 1960s and flourished throughout the 1970s as an outgrowth of the so-called second wave of feminism. It has been called "the most influential international movement of any during the postwar period."
Catherine de Zegher is a Belgian curator and a modern and contemporary art historian. She has a degree in art history and archaeology from the University of Ghent.
Feminist aesthetics first emerged in the 1970s and refers not to a particular aesthetic or style but to perspectives that question assumptions in art and aesthetics concerning gender-role stereotypes, or gender. Feminist aesthetics has a relationship to philosophy. The historical philosophical views of what beauty, the arts, and sensory experiences are, relate to the idea of aesthetics. Aesthetics looks at styles of production. In particular, feminists argue that despite seeming neutral or inclusive, the way people think about art and aesthetics is influenced by gender roles. Feminist aesthetics is a tool for analyzing how art is understood using gendered issues. A person's gender identity affects the ways in which they perceive art and aesthetics because of their subject position and that perception is influenced by power. The ways in which people see art is also influenced by social values such as class and race. One's subject position in life changes the way art is perceived because of people's different knowledge's about life and experiences. In the way that feminist history unsettles traditional history, feminist aesthetics challenge philosophies of beauty, the arts and sensory experience.
"Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" is a 1971 essay by American art historian Linda Nochlin. It is noted for its contribution to feminist art history and theory, and its examination of the institutional obstacles that prevent women from succeeding in the arts.
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. In the visual and aesthetic presentations of narrative cinema, the male gaze has three perspectives: (i) that of the man behind the camera, (ii) that of the male characters within the film's cinematic representations; and (iii) that of the spectator gazing at the image.
Carol Greene Duncan is a Marxist-feminist scholar known as a pioneer of ‘new art history’, a social-political approach to art, who is recognized for her work in the field of Museum Studies, particularly her inquiries into the role that museums play in defining cultural identity.
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