2. 1960s saw the emergence of feminist art
movement
Women artists sought to define what makes
them and their art different from male
artists/art
3. • Been most prominent in
• The US
• Great Britain
• Germany
• Since the 1970s, it
spread to other cultures
4. Feminist points:
• Males have imposed patriarchal (father-centered)
social systems
• Resulting in domination over females
• History of feminist art can be best understood with
feminist theory
5. • Feminist theory: takes into account the
circumstances of most women’s lives as mothers,
household workers and caregivers
6. • Feminist art: notes the preponderance of art made
by males for males and that sometimes
transgress females
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Odalisque
oil on canvas, 1814 Francois Boucher
Brown Odalisque
oil on canvas
1740-1749
7. • a studio system that has excluded women from
training as artists
• a gallery system that has kept them from exhibiting
and selling their work
• and from being collected by museums
8. Guerilla Girls
• a group of anonymous feminist and racial activists
that formed in New York City in 1985.
• they created art and other media that bring attention
to the fact that the art world is extremely white
male-dominated and that it undervalues works
created by women.
• During protests, the Guerrilla Girls wear gorilla
masks, keeping their identities anonymous.
10. • Feminist art history
• Its proponents have demanded that women’s arts
from all cultures, of all periods, be included in studies
and exhibitions of art
Edelson, Some Living American Women Artists
11. • Linda Nochlin
• Why Have there Been
No Great Women
Artists? (1971)
• Resulted into more
writings of women’s
histories
Linda Nochlin, b. 1930
American art historian, professor
and writer
12. • Before late 1960s:
• Women struggled in the
male-dominated art
world
• De-gendering of art
making it look like art
made by men
• 1960s:
• Time of Civil Rights
Movement
• Vietnam war
• Economic prosperity
• Reforms in the Catholic
Church
• Experimentation with
psychotropic drugs
13. • Feminist issues: about
women’s power in areas
of which sexuality plays
an important part
(reproductive acts and
roles)
J. Howard Miller, 1942
14. • Feminist art sometimes poses or confronts such
questions as:
• 1. How is a woman's gaze different from a man's?
How does that difference influence the ways in
which the two genders view the world? And how
they view art?
• 2. What constitutes obscenity and pornography?
Where do they come from? What are their results?
Are they always transgressive? What place do they
have in art?
15. • Although feminist artists
have shown great interest in
the depiction of nude figures
(both male and female), very
few feminist artists have
shown interest in creating
erotic work.
Yoko Ono, Cut
16. The Feminist Art Movement
• Began with the idea that women’s experiences must
be expressed through art (ignored or trivialized)
• More of a reaction to the way women were treated
• Really a form of propaganda
• Envisioned a revolution
• Feminist artists: discovered the impossibility of
completely changing their society
17. A movement of the 1970s
• 1969: the New York group Women Artists in
Revolution (WAR) split off from the Art Workers’
Coalition (AWC) because the AWC was male-
dominated and would not protest on behalf of
women artists.
18. • 1971: female artists picketed the Corcoran Biennial in
Washington D.C. for excluding women artists, and
New York Women in the Arts organized a protest
against gallery owners for not exhibiting women’s
art.
19. • Also in 1971: Judy Chicago, one of the most
prominent early activists in the Movement,
established the Feminist Art program at Cal
State Fresno.
Judy Chicago, born 1939
20. • In 1972, Judy Chicago created Womanhouse with
Miriam Schapiro at the California Institute of the Arts
(CalArts), which also had a Feminist Art program.
Womanhouse Exhibition
Catalogue Cover of the
Exhibition Catalogue
Womanhouse (showing Judy
Chicago and Miriam
Schapiro). Design by Sheila
de Bretteville.
21. • Womanhouse was a
collaborative art
installation and
exploration.
• Students working
together on exhibits
• Drew crowds and
created publicity for the
Feminist Art Movement Sandra Ogel (American). Ironing,
1972. From Womanhouse.
Performance. Photograph courtesy
of Through the Flower archive
22. Feminism and Postmodernism
• What is Feminist Art?
• Is it a stage in art history?
• A movement?
• Or a big shift in doing things?
• Or a way of making art? (like Surrealism)
23. Declarations:
--meaning and experience were as valuable as form
--questioned the universal validity of Western historical
canon (largely male)
-- played with the ideas of gender, identity and form
through performance art, video, etc.
--idealized connectivity as opposed to isolation
24. Accomplishments
• Paved the way for questioning the while,
heterosexual male perspective
• Rediscovered artists (Frida Kahlo and Lee Krasner)
Frida Kahlo
Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace
and Hummingbird
25. Backlash
• Some women who were artists rejected feminist
readings of their work.
• They may have wanted to be viewed only on the
same terms as artists that had preceded them.
• They may have thought that Feminist Art criticism
would be another way of marginalizing women
artists.
26. Backlash
• Some critics attacked Feminist Art for "essentialism."
They thought each individual woman’s experience
was claimed to be universal, even if the artist had
not asserted this.
• Divisions arose when anti-feminists convinced
women that feminists were, for example, “man
hating” or “lesbian,” thus causing women to reject all
of feminism because they thought it was trying to
foist one person’s experience onto others.
27. Backlash
• Another prominent question was whether using
women’s biology in art was a way of restricting
women to a biological identity--which feminists were
supposed to have fought against--or a way of
releasing women from the negative male definitions
of their biology.
