IDC6005: Week 6 Feminist Art of the 60s and 70s

The Dinner Party Judy Chicago	Amagansett Afternoon Joan Semmel	Woman Rising 1974 Mary Beth Edelson

Feminism Defined

British journalist and suffragist Rebecca West once said, “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people". The Oxford dictionary states that feminism is “a social movement, combining theory with political practice, which seeks to achieve equality between men and women.” Feminism also involves sexual and reproductive freedom as well as self-identity. The primary goal of the feminist movement is to achieve social, political, and economic equality for women—all women regardless of race, class, religion, or socio-economic status.

The struggle for women’s rights dates back to the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the 1800’s. In The Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill wrote "the legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong...and...one of the chief hindrances to human improvement." The first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, NY in 1848 marked the beginning of the organized movement. Utopian socialist Charles Fourier, in 1837, coined the term feminism.

Waves of Feminism

The first organized actions towards eradicating legal and social inequalities against women took place in 18th century London. Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women would not be inferior to men if they had the same educational opportunities. In 1858-1864, she and a group of middle-class women in London met to discuss issues and subsequently publish the English Woman's Journal.

First Wave feminist consisted of middle-class women whose key issues were the limiting circumstance of the single woman, marriage laws, employment, and education. They succeeded in establishing higher education institutions for women and improving the girls’ secondary-school system. The First Wave feminists’ efforts garnered increased access to more professions and established the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870.

Betty Friedan's ground breaking book The Feminine Mystique (1963) conceptualized the problem that had no name. Marsha Lear created the term Second Wave in reference to the escalating feminist activity in the United States, Europe, and Britain from the late 60’s and forward. The Civil Rights and anti-war movements were the catalysts to the U.S. second wave feminist movement. Women were disillusioned with their second-class citizen status and banded together in consciousness-raising groups to fight discrimination. The slogan of the wave was “the personal is political.” When asked about the role of females in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Stokely Carmichael (then Chairman) is said to have replied that the "only position for women in SNCC is prone." The tactics employed by Second Wave Feminists varied from low key to highly public activism, such as the protest against the Miss America beauty contest in 1968. British second wave feminist were primarily focused on working-class socialism, as evident by the Ford women workers’ strike of 1968.

The tumultuous 1960s probably could not have happened without the prosperity of the 1950s widespread higher education, and the introduction of oral contraceptives.

Timeline

Exploring Feminists Artists

According to feminist Lucy Lippard, feminist art formed around "a value system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life." It was "neither a style nor a movement."

"Many of us shared the belief," said Judy Chicago, "that we as women could help to transform the world, not only for women but for everyone...I believed that art has the power to transcend differences, to help us see the world through other people's eyes, and thereby help to create a sense of empathy with those who would otherwise be entirely unknown to us."

1960s and 1970s

Feminist artists of the 1960s and 1970s — painters, photographers, print artists, and craftwomen — began to break taboos and redefine the place of women in the male-dominated art world. As Linda Nochlin observes in Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, nudes are required by great art. Most nudes have classically been painted by men; it wasn't socially accepted for women to pose for or to paint nudes. As you will see from the following examples, women redefined the painting of their naked bodies. Meyer's essay on Joan Semmel shows how she explores the nude using her own naked body; she said she wanted to "develop a language whereby a woman could express her own desires, whatever they might be, without shame or sentimentality."

	Frida Kahlo Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who died in 1954, but whose work became iconic for feminist artists. She began painting after a bus accident in her teens left her seriously injured, in constant pain, and unable to bear children. Her 1932 painting Henry Ford Hospital or the Flying Bed shows her female body in a new way, with her images of a fetus, broken bones, and a dead flower. "I paint myself," she said, "because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best."
	Judy Chicago Judy Chicago was an art educator who pioneered feminist programs for women artists. Along with Miriam Schapiro, she produced Womanhouse (1972), taking over a California home and letting each artist design a room on feminist themes. Chicago's room was the Menstruation Bathroom, where bloody pads revealed a side of women not usually seen. From 1974-1979 Chicago turned to recognize women's contributions to history, collaborating with others on her best-known work, The Dinner Party. This multimedia project consisted of a banquet hall with a triangular table. Thirty-nine place settings honors mythical women and historical figures, from Kali and Judith to Hildegard of Bingen, Susan B. Anthony, Virginia Woolf, and Georgia O'Keefe. Other women were honored on the flooring tiles. The piece received both positive and negative reviews. It was controversial because of the butterfly vulvar imagery of its plates, one artist remarking, "We're all reduced to vaginas, which is a bit depressing." However, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where the work is now housed, comments "Because of her gender politics and attention to social commentary, as well as her use of diverse styles and media, Janson and Janson's history credits her not only for her role as a leader in the Feminist Art movement but also as a forerunner of the late-20th-century movement known as Postmodernism."
	Joan Semmel Joan Semmel is an abstract figure painter. Her works depict bodies from a woman's point of view. She says of herself, "I have tried to find a contemporary language in which I could retain my delight in the sensuality and pleasure of painting, and still confront the particulars of my own personal experience as a woman. My intention has been to subvert the tradition of the passive female nude. The issues of the body from desire to aging, as well as those of identity and cultural imprinting have been at the core of my concerns...My new work continues to use the prism of the nude self view, as a way with which to focus on the social and psychological aspects of gender and age. "
	Mary Beth Edelson Mary Beth Edelson is another pioneer in the feminist art movement. Even in art school at DePauw University she generated controversy when two of her works were removed as being degrading and not pretty. In 1971 her poster entitled "Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper" reproduced the image of da Vinci's Last Supper with the heads of women artists. The image became one of the icons of the Feminist Art Movement but produced a strong negative reaction because Georgia O'Keefe's head replaced that of Jesus. Edelson became known in this period for her Goddess images and her desire to create a new feminine spirituality. More recent images include women from old Hollywood movies and film noir.
	Lee Krasner Lee Krasner was an abstract expressionist painter in the 1940s and 50s. In 1945 she married Jackson Pollock, another abstract expressionist. They moved to a farm in East Hampton, NY, where they created much of their work. Their partnership provided mutual support, but Krasner struggled with being identified solely as Pollock's wife. Krasner said, "I go on the assumption that the serious artist is a highly sensitive, intellectual, and aware human being, and when he or she 'pours it on' it isn't just a lot of gushy, dirty emotion. It is a total of their experiences which have to do with being a painter and an aware human being. " After Pollack's death in 1956, Krasner painted a number of large canvases, with violent strokes, probably as the result of her grief. Later she explored color and graceful feminine forms in paintings and collages, such as the one at right entitled Pollination. The painting brings together forms from two periods of her life. The original canvas was painted in the 1950s but it was completed in 1968 with the addition of white. Even though the shapes are abstract, they have taken on a feminine, organic quality. After her death in 1984, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) held a restrospective of her work, one of only four women artists to be honored in that way.

Post 1970s

	Melissa Ann Pinney Melissa Ann Pinney has photographed girls and women, from infancy to old age, to portray how feminine identity is constructed, taught, and communicated. The work in Girl Ascending focuses on a touchstone moment in the lives of American girls and women: their emergence from protected youth to public maturity (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago).
	Chantal Joffe Possessing a humorous eye for everyday awkwardness and an enlivening facility with paint, Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity to the genre of figurative art. Joffe questions assumptions about what makes a suitable subject for art and challenges what our expectations of a feminist art might be (Victoria-miro.com).
	Stella Vine Stella Vine's paintings reveal a Technicolor world of memory, nostalgia and fairy tales. Her subjects, ranging from celebrities to family portraits portray a colorful world with disturbing hints of collapse. Ttwo controversial images of Princes Diana and teenage heroin victim Rachel Whitear were the center of a media sensation (http://www.morelbooks.com).
	Rachel Lachowicz Rachel Lachowicz is a Los Angeles-based artist well known for her recontextualization of classic works of art by famous male artists and for her sculptural use of unorthodox material such as eye shadow and face powder (ArtCommotion.com).
	Charles Moffat Male feminist artist Charles Moffat is a sculptor, photographer, and painter. He studied gender issues while attending York University and become deeply influenced by photographer Cindy Sherman. As a result much of his work involves feminism, sexuality, and gender. Charles Moffat said, "Women will always be the core of feminism, but there is a huge role to be played by men and women making tiny decisions that result in them teaching their children by example (CharlesMoffat.com). "

Feminist Fast Forward

The Third Wave feminism movement began in the 1990s in response to the perceived failures of the Second Wave. Third Wave feminist are proponents of race relations, sexual freedom and identity, reproductive rights, and reclamation of derogatory terms towards women. This movement’s focus is globally centered fighting for the rights of women internationally.

The feminist and civil rights movements were center stage of the many advances in Western society. The diagram below summarizes the forces, movements and subsequent outcomes.

There would be no term for; much less laws against domestic violence were it not for feminist activism. In 1964 feminists opened the first shelter for battered in California. Prior to the movement, women had no means of legal self defense in abuse cases.

Gender permeates every aspect of life and for that reason, feminist artists have been given cause to discuss and portray an array of subject matter previously hidden from the art world. Washington Post Staff Writer, Blake Gopnik stated "Feminism can be thought of as the crucial movement of the recent past because it could act as an umbrella for any number of approaches to making art. It encourages a vast range of attitudes and media and forms, with each one valued, in theory, for whatever point it's most suited to making—but maybe, more accurately, for whatever market niche it fills"

Men, who were taught they had to be strong and not express their feelings, began to be able to do so. Women, who were viewed as powerless and overly emotional, gained new power in society and began to find that their feelings were accepted. . There are organizations for men in support of women's rights such as the Meninists and the National Organization of Men Against Sexism. There is great debate as to whether or not a man can be a feminist. An argument in support of male feminists suggest that the boldest statement a man can make against sexism is to identifying himself as a  feminist.

Feminist Humor

Required Readings

Discussions

In the discussion thread Week 06: How do men and women see art differently?, use the readings to discuss the ways that feminists changed their art to reflect a female point of view. Were their claims of differences in male and female art valid? Can science explain our differences — or our similarities? Here are two viewpoints from neuroscience and psychology .

Exercise: A Room With Two Points of View

We'd like you to use Google Images (google.com/images) to find a photo of a human body. Your human can be nude, clothed, male, or female.

Then, we'd like you to create two drawings of that image: one from a female perspective and the other from a male perspective.

Here are the rules:

• No computer except for when you scan, combine, and convert your final image to .JPG.
• Your drawings can be on separate sheets of paper and later placed side by side digitally.
• One drawing will be from the female perspective. Her perspective can be straight, gay, married, old, young — human and XX chromosome.
• The other drawing will be from the male perspective. His perspective can be straight, gay, married, old, young — human and XY chromosome.
• Your drawing can follow any style. We've envisioned a classic line drawing, but use your imagination.
• Place at least two objects in the each drawing's setting. How do they contribute to the perspective of the imagined artist?
• Do NOT label your your drawing.
• Post your work to our Photobucket account and, in the description field, identify the perspective of each drawing. Describe what makes the drawings different — or the same. What objects did you include? How did the objects modify the message of the image?
• When you look at your classmate's drawings in Photobucket, guess the perspective before you look at the Photobucket description.

Next Week

Holding place for Palmer