Feminist art

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 within 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. 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.Suzanne Lacy, Between the Door and the Street, 2013, Creative Time and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum of ArtSheila de Bretteville, Pink, poster, 1973. Photo provided by Sheila de Bretteville.Womanhouse, installation and performance space, 1972, organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, at the Feminist Art Program in Fresno, CA. 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 within 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. 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. Historically speaking, women artists, when they existed, have largely faded into obscurity: there is no female Michelangelo or Da Vinci equivalent. In Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists Linda Nochlin wrote, 'The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education'. Because of women's historical role as caregiver, most women were unable to devote time to creating art. In addition, women were rarely allowed entry into schools of art, and almost never allowed into live nude drawings classes for fear of impropriety. Therefore, women who were artists were largely wealthy women with leisure time who were trained by their fathers or uncles and produced still lives, landscapes, or portrait work. Examples include Anna Claypoole Peale and Mary Cassatt. Feminist art can be contentious to define as it holds different personal and political elements, different to each individual. Is all art made by a feminist then feminist art? Can art that is not made by a feminist be feminist art? Lucy R. Lippard stated in 1980 that feminist art was 'neither a style nor a movement but instead a value system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life.' Emerging at the end of the 1960s, the feminist art movement was inspired by the 1960s student protests, the civil rights movement, and Second-wave feminism. By critiquing institutions that promote sexism and racism students, people of color, and women were able to identify and attempt to fix inequity. Women artists used their artwork, protests, collectives, and women's art registries to shed light on inequities in the art-world. The first wave of feminist art was established in the mid 19th century. In the early 1920s, with woman gaining the right to vote in America, liberalization wave spreading through the world. The slow and gradual change in feminist art started gaining momentum in 1960's. Before the 1960s the majority of woman-made artwork did not portray feminist content, in the sense that it neither addressed nor criticized the conditions that women have historically faced. Women were more often the subjects of art, rather than artists themselves. Historically, the female body was regarded as an object of desire existing for the pleasure of men. In the early 20th century, works that flaunted female sexuality – the pin-up girl being a prime example – began to be produced. By the late 1960s there was a plethora of feminine artwork that broke away from the tradition of depicting women in an exclusively sexualized fashion. In order to gain recognition, many female artists struggled to 'de-gender' their work in order to compete in a dominantly male art world. If a work did not 'look' like it was made by a woman, then the stigma associated with women would not cling to the work itself, thus giving the work its own integrity. In 1963 Yayoi Kusama created Oven-Pan – part of a larger collection of works she referred to as the aggregation sculptures. As with other works from that collection, Oven-Pan takes an object associated with women's work – in this case a metal pan – and completely covers it with bulbous lumps of the same material. This is an early feminist example of female artists finding ways to break from the traditional role of women in society. Having the lumps made from the same color and material as the metal pan completely takes away the pan's functionality, and – in a metaphorical sense – its association with women. The protrusions remove the item's gender by not only removing its function of being a metal pan women would use in the kitchen, but by also making it ugly. Before this era, common female work consisted of pretty and decorative things like landscapes and quilts, whereas more contemporary artwork by women was becoming bold or even rebellious. Towards the end of the decade, progressive ideas criticizing social values began to appear in which the mainstream ideology that had come to be accepted was denounced as not being neutral. It was also suggested that the art world as a whole had managed to institutionalize within itself the notion of sexism. During this time there was a rebirth of various media that had been placed at the bottom of the aesthetic hierarchy by art history, such as quilting. To put it simply, this rebellion against the socially constructed ideology of a woman's role in art sparked the birth of a new standard of the female subject. Where once the female body was seen as an object for the male gaze, it then became regarded as a weapon against socially constructed ideologies of gender. With Yoko Ono's 1965 work, Cut Piece, performance art began to gain popularity in feminist artwork as a form of critical analysis on societal values on gender. In this work, Yoko Ono is seen kneeling on the ground with a pair of scissors in front of her. One by one, she invited the audience to cut a piece of her clothing off until she was eventually left kneeling in the tattered remains of her clothing and her underwear. This intimate relationship created between the subject (Ono) and the audience addressed the notion of gender in the sense that Ono has become the sexual object. By remaining motionless as more and more pieces of her clothing are cut away, she reveals a woman's social standing where she is regarded as an object as the audience escalates to the point where her bra is being cut away. During the 1970s, feminist art continued to provide a means of challenging women's position in the social hierarchy. The aim was for women to reach a state of equilibrium with their male counterparts. Judy Chicago's work, The Dinner Party, emphasizes this idea of a newfound female empowerment through the use of turning a dinner table – an association to the traditional female role – into an equilateral triangle. Each side has an equal number of plate settings dedicated to a specific woman in history. Each plate contains a dish. This served as a way of breaking the idea of women being subjugated by society. Looking at the historical context, the 1960s and 1970s served as a prominent era where women began to celebrate new forms of freedom. More women joining the work force, legalization of birth control, fight towards equal pay, civil rights, and the Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion, were reflected in artwork. Such freedoms, however, were not limited to politics. Traditionally, being able to expertly capture the nude on canvas or in a sculpture reflected a high level of achievement in the arts. In order to reach that level, access to nude models was required. While male artists were given this privilege, it was considered improper for a woman to see a naked body. As a result, women were forced to focus their attention to the less professionally acclaimed 'decorative' art. With the 1970s, however, the fight towards equality extended to the arts. Eventually more and more women began to enroll in art academies. For most of these artists, the goal was not to paint like the traditional male masters, but instead to learn their techniques and manipulate them in a way that challenged traditional views of women.