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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 feminism|second wave of feminism]]. It has been called "the most influential international movement of any during the postwar period"<ref>[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042000400.html Jeremy Strick], director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in the ''Washington Post'', 2007 </ref> and its effects continue to the present. |
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 feminism|second wave of feminism]]. It has been called "the most influential international movement of any during the postwar period"<ref>[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042000400.html Jeremy Strick], director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in the ''Washington Post'', 2007 </ref> and its effects continue to the present. |
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Revision as of 18:02, 15 December 2013
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.
Origins
West Coast: Feminist art's first steps in Fresno
One of the first feminist art classes in the United States was started at Fresno State University in the fall of 1970, led by artist Judy Chicago, who was a visiting artist at the university, teaching 15 students. The 15 students, which formed the Feminist Art Program, included Susan Boud, Dori Atlantis, Gail Escola, Vanalyne Green, Suzanne Lacy, Cay Lang, Karen LeCocq, Jan Lester, Chris Rush, Judy Schaefer, Henrietta Sparkman, Faith Wilding, Shawnee Wollenman, Nancy Youdelman, and Cheryl Zurilgen.[2] The group would rent and refurbish an off-campus studio space, which was located on at 1275 Maple Avenue in downtown Fresno. The intention of the space was to allow the artists to create and discuss their work "without male interference." Participants in the class, which in 1971 became a full-time program at the university, spent extensive amounts of time together. Students lead reading groups and discussion, collaborated on art, and practically living and working in the studio.[2]
The program was different than a standard art class. Instead of the typical teaching of techniques and art history, students were taught to collaborate with each other and focus on raising the students feminist consciousnesses about their artwork and ways of thinking. For example, students would go around the room, during discussions, and share personal experiences about specified topics such as money, relationships, and family. It was believed that by sharing these experiences, students were able to not only individualize their experience and insert more emotion into their artwork, but also learned about the collective experience among the one another, and empower themselves as individuals and a group. Instead of supporting the typical idea of artists being secluded and working as independent "geniuses," the class aimed to emphasize collaboration. The class was described as a "radical departure," for the time period.[2]
Judy Chicago eventually left, with the program developing at the California Institute of the Arts. The class continued at Fresno, and was first taught by Rita Yokoi from 1971 to 1973, and then was taken over by Joyce Aiken in 1973, who taught the class until her retirement in 1992. After taking over the class, Aiken and her students opened Gallery 25 in downtown Fresno, which was an all-women's co-op gallery. With her students, Aiken would also help develop the Fresno Art Museum's Distinguished Women Artist Series and the Council of 100, which helped develop programming and exhibitions about women at the museum.[2]
The Fresno Feminist Art Program would serve as a model for other feminist art projects and programs such as Womanhouse, which was a collaborative feminist art exhibition which is credited with introducing the general public to the movement due to extensive media coverage. Womanhouse was the first project produced after the Feminist Art Program moved to the California Institute of the Arts in the fall of 1971. Womanhouse, like the Fresno project, also developed into a feminist studio space and promoted the concept of collaborative women's art.[2]
Questions about women in art and the movement spreads to Los Angeles
In 1971, the art historian Linda Nochlin published a groundbreaking[3] 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.
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).[4]
Women's Caucus for Art, an offshoot of the College Art Association was founded in 1972 at the San Francisco Conference. A WCA conference 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.[2][5] 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.
Feminist art moves throughout the US
Simultaneously, women artists in New York also began to come together for meetings and exhibitions. Collective galleries such as A.I.R. Gallery in New York (1972–present) and Artemesia 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.[6] 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.[6] Women artists of color also began organizing, founding groups such as the African American group Where We At (WWA) and the Chicana group Las Mujeres Muralistas in order to gain visibility for artists who had been excluded or marginalized on the basis of both their sex and racial or ethnic identity.[7] [8]
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 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, and Dextra Frankel.
Journals about feminist art
- Chrysalis Magazine (1977–80), was organized out of the Los Angeles Woman's Building.
- Genders: Feminist Art and (Post)Modern Anxieties
- Genders: Feminist Art and (Post)Modern Anxieties [9]
- Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics](1977–92) [10]
- N.paradoxa [11] is an international feminist art journal that explores the work of contemporary women artists and feminist theory founded in December 1996.
- M/E/A/N/I/N/G [12] had 20 issues (1986-1996) and 5 on-line issues (2002-2011)
- Woman's Art Journal [13]
See also
- Australian Feminist Art Timeline
- Depiction of women artists in art history
- Feminism in 1950s Britain
- List of 20th century women artists
- Historiography
- Women Artists
Notes
- ^ Jeremy Strick, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in the Washington Post, 2007
- ^ a b c d e f "A Studio of Their Own: The Legacy of the Fresno Feminist Art Experiment". Legacy/History. California State University, Fresno. Retrieved 8 January 2011.
- ^ Tate[dead link]
- ^ Getty "Pacific Standard Times" Archives
- ^ Lippard 84
- ^ a b Lippard 42
- ^ Mark, Lisa Gabrielle (2008). WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
- ^ Burgess Fuller, Diana (2002). Art/Women/California. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- ^ Genders: Feminist Art and (Post)Modern Anxieties
- ^ Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics(1977–92), now the subject of a documentary film, The Heretics.
- ^ N.paradoxa
- ^ M/E/A/N/I/N/G, ed. Susan Bee and Mira Schor
- ^ Woman's Art Journal
Further reading
- Armstrong, Carol and Catherine de Zegher (eds.), Women Artists at the Millennium, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006.
- Bee, Susan and Mira Schor (eds.), The M/E/A/N/I/N/G Book, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 20000.
- Brown, Betty Ann, ed. Expanding Circles: Women, Art & Community. New York: Midmarch, 1996.
- Butler, Connie. WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art. 2007.
- Chicago, Judy. Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist. New York: Viking, 1996.
- Chicago, Judy. The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979.
- Chicago, Judy. Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979.
- Cottingham, Laura. How Many 'Bad' Feminists Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb? New York: Sixty Percent Solution. 1994.
- Cottingham, Laura. Seeing Through the Seventies: Essays on Feminism and Art. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: G+B Arts, 2000.
- Deepwell, Katy, ed. New Feminist Art Criticism: Critical Strategies. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.
- Frueh, Joanna, Cassandra L. Langer, and Arlene Raven, eds. New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action, 1993.
- Hess, Thomas B. and Elizabeth C. Baker, eds. Art and Sexual Politics: Women's Liberation, Women Artists, and Art History. New York, Macmillan, 1973
- Isaak, Jo Anna . Feminism and Contemporary Art: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Laughter. New York: Routledge, 1996.
- Lippard, Lucy R. From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art. New York: Dutton, 1976.
- Meyer, Laura, ed. A Studio of Their Own: The Legacy of the Fresno Feminist Experiment. Fresno, Calif.: Press at California State University, Fresno, 2009.
- Phelan, Peggy. Art and Feminism. London: Phaidon, 2001.
- Pollock, Griselda, Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts, Routledge, London, 1996.
- Pollock, Griselda, Looking back to the Future, G&B Arts, Amsterdam, 2001.
- Pollock, Griselda, Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive, Routledge, 2007.
- Raven, Arlene. Crossing Over: Feminism and Art of Social Concern. 1988
- Schor, Mira. Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1997
- Wilding. Faith. By Our Own Hands: The Women Artist's Movement, Southern California, 1970-1976.
Lippard, Lucy R. From the Center: feminist essays on women's art. ^ eNY NY: Dutton, 1976.
External links
- Feminist Art Project (Rutgers University)
- The Woman's Building (Los Angeles)
- Information about the first Feminist Art Program at Fresno State University
- Women's Caucus for Art
- New York Feminist Art Institute
- The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum
- !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.
- Website of !Women Art Revolution, a documentary about feminist art.