Feminisims

What is Feminism?

•       O.E.D: ‘The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.’

•       ‘The issue of rights for women first became prominent during the French and American revolutions in the late 18th century. In Britain it was not until the emergence of the suffragette movement in the late 19th century that there was significant political change. A ‘second wave’ of feminism arose in the 1960s, with an emphasis on unity and sisterhood; seminal figures included Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer.’

•       Tate Glossary: Feminist Art

•       ‘May be defined as art by women artists made consciously in the light of developments in feminist art theory since about 1970.’

Historical Context

•       First wave feminism:

            19^th and 20^th Century

1759- Mary Wollstonecraft

‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’

The ‘suffragettes’- 1903 The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) founded by the Pankhurst family.

1918- women over the age of 30 given the vote.

1928- women win the vote on equal terms with men.

First woman allowed entry to Oxford University- 1920

•       Second wave feminism:

            Late 20^th Century (1960s-1980s)

•       Third wave feminism:1980s- today?

Feminist Art History and Theory:

•       Feminist analysis suggests that the art system and art history have institutionalised sexism, just as with society at large.

•        Indeed the very notion of ‘the artist’ and ‘art history’ (i.e. his-story) can be viewed as an entirely masculine construct. 

•       Feminist theory, therefore, argues that women artists have been ignored, and effectively ‘written out’ of art history.

•       Feminist analysis argues for a total re-evaluation and reinterpretation of art history.

•       The feminist critic seeks to both increase the visibility of women artists in art history and contemporary practise, as well as criticising the sexist nature of society and culture.

We are then dealing with ‘Feminisms’ as there are a range of different view points, theoretical perspectives and practices which fall under the concept of ‘feminism’ or ‘feminist theory’:  

Linda Nochlin – writes a famous essay titled: ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (ARTnews January 1971)’

•       ‘The most signal omission of feminist art history to date is our failure to analyse why modern art history ignores the existence of women artists. Why it has become silent about them, why it has consistently dismissed as insignificant those it did acknowledge.’

•       ‘To confront these questions enables us to identify the unacknowledged ideology which informs the practice of this discipline and the values which decide its classification and interpretation in all of art.’

-Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology,

1981, p.49

‘What is feminist art? There is no such entity; no homogenous movement defined by a characteristic style, favoured media or typical subject- matter. There are instead feminist art practices which cannot be comprehended by the standard procedures and protocols of modernist art history and criticism which depend upon isolating aesthetic considerations such as style or media.’

-Griselda Pollock, ‘Feminism and Modernism’ in Parker, R. and Pollock, G. Framing Feminism: Art and the Woman’s Movement, 1970-85, (London: Pandora Press, 1987)

Challenging traditions of representation and ‘the gaze’:

•       ‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of men to themselves.’

                        John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972

•       ‘We need to track the ‘tradition of western erotic art and the nude (man the maker and spectator, woman the passive object of desire).’’

                        -Lisa Tickner, ‘The Body Politics: Female sexuality

                        and women artists since 1970’, 1978

Who is looking?

•       ‘Whose body and whose sexuality have images of the female body traditionally encoded?’

•       ‘What rules and conventions govern the visual representation of the sexual body that, during the nineteenth century, came increasingly and exclusively (in terms of both art and popular media) to be primarily the female nude?’

•       ‘Who is looking?’

•       ‘Who is and is not allowed to look and thus to know the body of the sexualised other or, as importantly in the case of woman, the sexualised self?’

– Questions posed by feminist art historian Griselda Pollock in her essay

‘Nude bodies: Displacing the Boundaries between Art and Pornography’ in

Sweeney and Hodder eds., The Body, 2002

‘I’d like to make a distinction between “feminist practice” and the “feminist problematic” in art (problematic in the sense that a concept cannot be isolated from the general theoretical or ideological framework in which it is used). One aspect of the problematic is that it points out the absence of a notion of practice in the way the question is currently phrased and most familiarly posed- ‘What is feminist art?’’ 

Mary Kelly, ‘Art and Sexual Politics’, 1977 in Kelly, M. Imaging Desire, (London: MIT Press, 1996)

Mary Kelly, Post Partum Document, 1973-79.

’Post-Partum Document is a six-year exploration of the mother-child relationship.’ Mary Kelly

•       The work was originally shown at the ICA London

•       It caused controversy due to the inclusion of dirty nappy liners.

‘Each of the six-part series concentrates on a formative moment in her son’s mastery of language and her own sense of loss, moving between the voices of the mother, child and analytic observer.’          

INSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL CRITIQUE :

Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro,

Womanhouse, (Los Angeles, 1972)

California Feminist Woman’s Art

Programme (Cal Arts)

Kathy Huberland, Bridal Staircase, 1972

 

Mierle Laderman Ukeles,  ‘I make maintenance art one hour every day’, 1976

The Guerrilla Girls

•        Formed in New York in 1980.

•       The group aim to expose discrimination in the art world.

•       They conceal their identity by using gorilla masks and pseudonyms using the names of deceased women artists- Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keefe etc.

Defining ‘Post Feminism’:

•       The debate around what feminism is now continues the sense that we are not dealing with one perspective but many.

•       Post feminism represents a shift in feminist theory from 1968 onwards, which is interested in what feminism is/means today.

•       It is a pluralistic viewpoint / political position that argues feminism has achieved a deconstruction of patriarchal discourse.

•       It is also a reaction to second wave feminism.

•       It is a label used to describe some critical perspectives that may argue feminism has succeeded in its struggle.

•       Alternatively third wave feminism can be seen to focus on diversity and identity in global society. It focuses on the multicultural nature of society and considers the role of feminism in challenging dominant ideologies for all who are not represented by them.  

WACK ! Art and the Feminist Revolution

•       The Museum of Modern Art Los Angeles (MoCA), March 4^th- July 16^th 2007

•       Rationale: ‘The first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution focuses on the crucial period 1965-80, during which the majority of feminist activism and artmaking occurred internationally.’

Critical Reception of WACK!:

•       Survey of feminist art - Timeframe 1965-1880

•       Too broad? 119 artists, 21 countries

•       How does it frame feminism? Art movement or set of practices responding to emerging feminist critique of 1970s?

•       Cover of the catalogue becomes an issues of debate. Original artwork: Martha Rosler, Body Beautiful, of Beauty Knows No Pain: Hot House or Harem, 1966-1972 – was intended as a critique of representation.

•       What means are being communicated in its recontextualisation on the cover of the catalogue?  

Conclusion

•       Feminism is a response to society and culture.

•       It aims to highlight gender as a social construct and to illuminate the discriminatory practices that have historically shaped the role of women in society. 

•       In a theoretical sense it is a set of ideas and perspectives about how we might understand and destabilise dominant ideologies in society and art history.

•       In terms of art practice we can map a series of methodologies, approaches and practices that respond to the emerging feminist critique of the 1970s.

•       Feminist art history offers us a way forward in understanding the meanings and ideologies that underpin the art world, the writings of the histories of art, and art practices that seek to challenge them.  

Differencing the Canon:

‘In the work by artists we name women, we should not read for signs of a known femininity- womanhood, women like us…..- but for signs of femininity’s structurally conditioned and dissonant struggle with the already existing, historically specific definitions and changing dispositions of the terms Man and Woman within sexual difference…..

            We can read for inscriptions of the feminine – which do not come from a fixed origin, this female painter, that women artist, but from those working in the predicament of femininity in phallocentric culture in their diverse formations and varying systems of representation.’

            Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art's Histories, (London: Routledge, 1999.)