Part of a series on |
Feminism |
---|
![]() |
![]() |
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 sought to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. By the way it is expressed to visualize the inner thoughts and objectives of the feminist movement to show to everyone and give meaning in the art. It helps construct the role to those who continue to undermine the mainstream (and often masculine) narrative of the art world. [1] 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." [2]
The 1960s was a period when women artists wanted to gain equal rights with men within the established art world, and to create feminist art, often in non-traditional ways, to help "change the world". [3]
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) and German-American Eva Hesse (1936-1970) were some early feminist artists. [3]
On 20 July 1964 Yoko Ono, a Fluxus, avant-garde artist, singer, and activist, presented Cut Piece at the Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan where she sat still as parts of her clothing were cut off of her, which meant to protest violence against women. She performed it again at Carnegie Hall in 1965. [4] Her son, Sean, participated in the artist performance on 15 September 2013 at the Théâtre le Ranelagh in Paris. The Guardian's Jonathan Jones considered it "one of the 10 most shocking performance artworks ever." [5]
Mary Beth Edelson's Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972) appropriated Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with the heads of notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles. Benglis was among those notable women artists. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement." [6] [7]
Women artists, motivated by feminist theory and the feminist movement, began the feminist art movement in the 1970s. Feminist art represented a shift away from modernism, where art made by women was put in a different class to works made by men. The movement cultivated a new feminist consciousness, a "freedom to respond to life... [Unimpeded] by traditional male mainstream." [8] Or, as Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker put it—a separation of Art with a capital "A" from art made by women produced a "feminine stereotype". [9] The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, an art installation symbolically representing women’s history, is widely considered the first epic feminist artwork. [10]
This demand for equality in representation was codified in the Art Workers' Coalition's (AWC) Statement of Demands, which was developed in 1969 and published in definitive form in March 1970. The AWC was set up to defend the rights of artists and force museums and galleries to reform their practices. While the coalition sprung up as a protest movement following Greek kinetic sculptor Panagiotis "Takis" Vassilakis's physical removal of his work Tele-Sculpture(1960) from a 1969 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, it quickly issued a broad list of demands to 'art museums in general'.[ citation needed ]
Alongside calls for free admission, better representation of ethnic minorities, late openings and an agreement that galleries would not exhibit an artwork without the artist's consent, the AWC also demanded that museums 'encourage female artists to overcome centuries of damage done to the image of the female as an artist by establishing equal representation of the sexes in exhibitions, museum purchases and on selection committees'. [11]
There are also feminist forms of postmodernism which emerged in the 1980s. The feminist art movement grew out of the struggle to find a new way to express sexual, material, social and political aspects of life, and femininity. [12] Feminist art movements emerged in the United States; Europe, [13] including Spain; [14] Australia; Canada; [15] and Latin America in the 1970s. [16] [17]
The women's art movements spread world-wide in the latter half of the 20th century, including Sweden, Denmark and Norway, Russia, and Japan. [18] [19] Women artists from Asia, Africa and particularly Eastern Europe emerged in large numbers onto the international art scene in the late 1980s and 1990s as contemporary art became popular worldwide. [20] [21] [22]
Major exhibitions of contemporary women artists include WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution curated by Connie Butler, SF MOMA, 2007, Global Feminisms curated by Linda Nochlin and Maura Reilly at the Brooklyn Museum, 2007, [23] Rebelle, curated by Mirjam Westen at MMKA, Arnheim, 2009, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang! 45 Years of Art and Feminism curated by Xavier Arakistan at Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 2007, [24] Elles at Centre Pompidou in Paris (2009-2011), which also toured to Seattle Art Museum. [25] have been increasingly international in their selection. This shift is also reflected in journals set up in the 1990s like n.paradoxa . [26]
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 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.
Valie Export is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer animations, photography, sculpture and publications covering contemporary art.
Monica Sjöö was a Swedish-born British-based painter, writer and radical anarcho/ eco-feminist who was an early exponent of the Goddess movement. Her books and paintings were foundational to the development of feminist art in Britain, beginning at the time of the founding of the women's liberation movement around 1970.
The absence of women from the canon of Western art has been a subject of inquiry and reconsideration since the early 1970s. Linda Nochlin's influential 1971 essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" examined the social and institutional barriers that blocked most women from entering artistic professions throughout history, prompted a new focus on women artists, their art and experiences, and contributed inspiration to the Feminist art movement. Although women artists have been involved in the making of art throughout history, their work, when compared to that of their male counterparts, has been often obfuscated, overlooked and undervalued. The Western canon has historically valued men's work over women's and attached gendered stereotypes to certain media, such as textile or fiber arts, to be primarily associated with women.
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.
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.
Rozsika Parker was a British psychotherapist, art historian and writer and a feminist.
Mary Beth Edelson was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists." Edelson was a printmaker, book artist, collage artist, painter, photographer, performance artist, and author. Her works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Chila Kumari Singh Burman is a British artist, celebrated for her radical feminist practice which examines representation, gender and cultural identity. She works across a wide range of mediums including printmaking, drawing, painting, installation and film.
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. It continues to be a major field of art criticism.
n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal was a biannual academic journal covering feminist art criticism and the work of women artists since the 1970s. It was published by KT press and the editor-in-chief was Katy Deepwell (London).
Katy Deepwell is a feminist art critic and academic, based in London. She is the founder and editor of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, published 1998-2017, in 40 volumes by KT press. She founded KT press as a feminist not-for-profit publishing company to publish the journal and books on feminist art. KT press has published 8 e-books, supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. In Feb 2017, Katy Deepwell wrote and published a MOOC on feminism and contemporary art at. In May 2020, a second advanced course on feminist art manifestos was added to the site. The model for both MOOCs is FemTechNet’s DOCC: Distributed Open Collaborative Course.
Catherine Elwes is a British artist, curator and critic working predominantly in the field of video art and a significant figure in the British feminist art movement. She was born in St Maixent, France. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and later graduated with an MA in Environmental Media from the Royal College of Art. She began working with video in the late 1970s. In 1979 Elwes performed Menstruation II, a three-day performance at the Slade which lasted for the duration of a menstrual period.
Mary DuBose Garrard is an American art historian and emerita professor at American University. She is recognized as "one of the founders of feminist art theory" and is particularly known for her work on the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi.
Penelope Dalton is an artist, critic and writer.
Hilary Robinson is a British academic and art theorist. She is Professor of Feminism, Art, and Theory at Loughborough University's School of Social Sciences and Humanities. She was Dean of the School of Art and Design and a professor at Middlesex University, and previously served as Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on the history, theory, and practice of feminist art.
Elke Krasny is a cultural and architectural theorist, urban researcher, curator, and author. Her work specializes in architecture, contemporary art, urbanism, feminist museology, histories and theories of curating, critical historiographies of feminism, politics of remembrance, and their intersections. Krasny received her Ph.D. from the University of Reading. She is Professor of Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She worked as a visiting professor at the University of Bremen and the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. In 2012 she was visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture CCA, Montréal. In 2014, she was City of Vienna Visiting Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SKuOR) at the Vienna University of Technology. Using the framework of political care ethic developed by Joan Tronto, Krasny works on developing a perspective of critical care for architectural and urban practice and theory. In 2019, together with Angelika Fitz she edited Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet.