Feminist art movement

The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to make art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and reception of contemporary art. It also sought to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. 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" [1] and its effects continue to the present.

Contents

Origins

The feminist art movement began in the late 1960s. America's first feminist art education program took place at California State University, Fresno in California in 1970 when fifteen female students and instructor Judy Chicago helped pioneer key strategies of the early feminist art movement, including collaboration, the use of “female technologies” like costume, performance, and video, and early forms of media critique. Judy Chicago, with painter Miriam Schapiro, went on to found the feminist art program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles, whose students created, in 1972, a month-long feminist installation in an empty house, entitled Womanhouse. At CalArts at that same time, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville founded a feminist design program and Deena Metzger taught feminist writing.

In 1971, the art historian Linda Nochlin published a groundbreaking [2] essay 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' in ArtNews in which she investigated the social and economic factors that had prevented talented women from achieving the same status as their male counterparts.

Subsequently, many organizations dedicated to women artists were founded in the 1970s to support women artists. Only a few lasted into the 1990s and beyond.

In response to the 1971 Art and Technology exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, an ad hoc group of women organized, calling themselves the L.A. Council of Women Artists. They researched the number of women included in exhibitions at LACMA and issued a report protesting the absence of women artists from that exhibition, as well as generalized artworld sexism. They set a precedent for later feminist groups (such as the Guerrilla Girls).[3]

Women's Caucus for the Arts, an offshoot of the College Art Association was founded in 1972 at the San Francisco Conference. A WCA confernce is held annually and there are chapters in most areas of the U.S.

The Woman's Building which included the Feminist Studio Workshop was founded by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, art historian Arlene Raven, and Judy Chicago in 1973.[4] Many of the feminist artists and designers from CalArts joined other feminist artists at the Woman's Building, an important center of the west coast feminist artist movement in the 1970s and 1980s in which meetings, workshops, performances, and exhibitions regularly took place. Womanspace Gallery relocated there. During the first year, there were national conferences on feminist film, writing, ceramics, among others.

Simultaneously, women artists in New York also began to come together for meetings and exhibitions. Collective galleries such as A.I.R. in New York and Artemisia in Chicago were formed to provide visibility for art by feminist artists. The strength of the feminist movement allowed for the emergence and visibility of many new types of work by women but also helped facilitate a range of new practices by men. Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) protested the lack of exposure of women artists in 1969.[5] The Ad Hoc Women Artists' Committee (AWC) formed in 1971 to address the Whitney Museum's exclusion of women artists but expanded its focus over time.[5]

The Women's Interart Center in New York, founded in the 1970s in New York City, is still in operation. The Women's Video Festival was held yearly for a number of years in the early 1970s, also in New York City. Many women artists continue to organize working groups, collectives, and nonprofit galleries in various locales around the world.

The Feminist Art Project (TFAP) was founded by the Institute for Women and Arts at Rutgers University. The Feminist Art Project is an international collaborative initiative focusing on the Feminist Art Movement and the aesthetic, intellectual and political impact of women on the visual arts, art history, and art practice, past and present. The project is a strategic intervention against the ongoing erasure of women from the cultural record. The Feminist Art Project promotes diverse feminist art events, education and publications through its website and online calendar and facilitates networking and regional program development worldwide. The Feminist Art Project brings together feminist artists, curators, critics, and educators from all backgrounds to shine a spotlight on the accomplishments of the Feminist Art Movement. Its primary goal is to increase the visibility of feminist art and to promote the recognition of the aesthetic and intellectual impact of women on the visual arts and culture. TFAP facilitates regional networking and program development internationally by linking visitors to TFAP Regional Coordinators, now 40 in number. As a result, many universities have created courses dedicated to surveying women's contributions to the art world, and many workshops around the nation have taught and displayed the dynamic elements of feminist art. The Feminist Art Project Calendar posts over 1300 feminist art events and publications. Educational materials are available for downloading from the site's Resource pages called FARE (Feminist Art Resources in Education)

There are thousands of examples of women associated with the feminist art movement. The following are only a few examples of majorly important artists and writers who can be credited with making the movement visible in culture: Judy Chicago, founder of the first known Feminist Art Program (in Fresno, California), Miriam Schapiro, co-founder of the Feminist Art Program at Cal Arts, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Arlene Raven co-founders of the Woman's Building, Suzanne Lacy and Faith Wilding, both participants in all the early programs, Martha Rosler, Mary Kelly, Kate Millett, Nancy Spero, Faith Ringgold, June Wayne, art-world agitators The Guerrilla Girls, and critics, historians, and curators Lucy Lippard, Griselda Pollock, Arlene Raven.

Timeline of Feminist Art

Major exhibitions

Journals about feminist art

Online archives

The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum is an exhibition and education facility dedicated to feminist art and to raising awareness of feminism's cultural contributions. The Dinner Party (1974–79) by Judy Chicago, is housed there along with a biographical gallery highlighting the women represented in "The Dinner Party".

!W.A.R.: Voices of a Movement, video interviews with artists and critics’ chronicling the founding years of the feminist art movement in the 1970s from Stanford University Digital Collections.

Woman's Building Herstories, a collection or video interviews about early feminist art and artists active within the Southern California area during the 1970s.

Further reading

External links

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Jeremy Strick, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in the Washington Post, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042000400.html
  2. ^ http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=103
  3. ^ Getty "Pacific Standard Times" Archives http://www.getty.edu/pacificstandardtime/explore-the-era/archives/i143/
  4. ^ Lippard 84
  5. ^ a b Lippard 42
  6. ^ Anne Kirker in Delia Gaze (ed) Dictionary of women artists, Volume 1 (Fitzroy Dearborn: USA, 1997), p.262
  7. ^ http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=116421&PICTAUS=TRUE
  8. ^ Australian Women's Art Register. (retrieved 23 August 2011)
  9. ^ http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE1034b.htm
  10. ^ Juliana Engberg, 'Breadline: Women and Food', ArtlinkVol19, No4, Australia.
  11. ^ Women at Work : a week of women's performance, exhibition catalogue (George Paton Gallery: Melbourne, 1980)
  12. ^ Luomala, Nancy. "Women of Sweetgrass, Cedar, and Sage." Woman's Art Journal. Vol. 9, No. 1. Spring-Summer 1988: 42 (retrieved 23 August 2011)
  13. ^ Juliana Engberg, Feminist Narratives, exhibition catalogue, (George Paton Gallery: Melbourne, 1987)
  14. ^ Kate MacNeill, 'When historic time meets Julia Kristeva's women's time: the reception of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party in Australia' Outskirts, Vol 18, May 2008, online at http://www.chloe.uwa.edu.au/outskirts/archive/volume18/macneill
  15. ^ Frames of Reference: Aspects of Feminism and Art(exhibition catalogue. Australia: Sydney: Artspace, 15 Aug-29 Sept 1991
  16. ^ [1]
  17. ^ Site lost, some documentation at http://www.library.uow.edu.au/archives/digital/alumni/UAlumni1995Spring-Summer.pdf
  18. ^ Jo Holder (ed) The national women's art exhibition : a great collaborative exhibition, (Uni of NSW COFA: Sydney, 1995)
  19. ^ Joan Kerr & Jo Holder (eds) Past present : the national women's art anthology, (Craftsman House: Sydney, 1999)
  20. ^ http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/fence/picket.html
  21. ^ Women Hold Up Half the Sky: the Orientation of Art in the Post-War Pacific (Melbourne, Victoria: Monash University Gallery, 1996)
  22. ^ Catherine de Zegher (Ed.)Inside the Visible An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and From the Feminine, MIT: USA, 1996
  23. ^ Difficult Territory: a postfeminist project, exhibition catalogue (Australia, Sydney: Artspace and Woolloomooloo, Visual Art Centre, 1997.)
  24. ^ Merren Ricketson, Australian Women's Art Register - The Bulletin, 30 August 1999
  25. ^ Joan Kerr & Jo Holder (eds) Past present : the national women's art anthology, (Craftsman House: Sydney, 1999)
  26. ^ Rebecca Coates, Neo-neo feminisms, catalogue essay, Neon Parc, Melbourne, 2008
  27. ^ Emily Cormack, review 'Girls, Girls, Girls,' Artlink, Vol29, No1, Australia
  28. ^ Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth (Columbia UP: New York, 2008)
  29. ^ Melissa Miles, Art Monthly, "Whose Art Counts?" Issue 224, 2009 http://www.artmonthly.org.au/article.asp?contentID=850
  30. ^ Sarah Rodigari Interviews CoUNTess Runway, Issue 18, 2011 http://www.runway.org.au/issues/issue18.htm
  31. ^ http://artabase.net/exhibition/2181-feminism-never-happened