Art on the Spectrum of Personal to PoliticalFeminist Art is artwork influenced by the feminist approach. This art movement developed around the late 1960s and the early 1970s when female artists began to align their personal art practice alongside the politics of the Women’s Liberation Movement as well as feminist theory. Feminist Art has many perspectives because feminism has many perspectives, however, there are certain concerns that tend to be of central focus to both feminism and feminist artwork. These concerns include: “sexual inequality, the oppression of women, and the ways in which this has structured culture and its history”. Art was used as a prevailing apparatus in order to diffuse the message of feminism. Feminist Art prompted the adjustment in social values which impelled a fundamental reconstructing of society in order to reveal the concern of the value of a woman’s perspective. This reconstructing involved identifying and admitting that the idea of a neutral perspective was clandestinely synonymous with the male perspective and then making it necessary to recognize the value of the woman’s perspective. Feminist Art thus sought to petrify the oppressive and regressive patriarchal society for the purpose of equality. Feminist Artists and Their Artwork There have been many approaches through Feminist Art to bring about social awareness and promote equality among the sexes. Miriam Schapiro, Mary Beth Edelson, and Rosemary Mayer created true Feminist Art. Their work sought to investigate gender identity and the social inequalities between the sexes, scrutinize the political oppression of women, and confront the traditional economic power of men in quotidian life. Miriam Schapiro’s Shrine for Two Paint Tubes (1963) (Fig. 1) illustrates a vertical black column, curved at the top, and centered on a beige canvas. The visual comparison is similar to a tower or gothic window with four panes. The elements of this work – the empty window, the pencil sketches of an ovoid and fruit, and the strokes and sections of various bold colors – reoccur in her other shrines, created as a series representing an explanation of a female artist’s life. The empty window at the bottom represents a mirror for the spectator to look into. This mirror provides the reflection the spectator has in her drive to create feminist artwork. The two center images follow the pattern of the shrine series. The top drawing symbolizes the profound artwork most notable in history, in Shrine for Two Paint Tubes the historic art is embodied within a traditional still life drawing. The historic art places weight upon the second drawing that acts as a portrayal of Schapiro herself. The egg is symbolic of a woman in its suggestiveness of fertility and reproduction. The egg is also representative of the creativeness of Schapiro because of the meticulous skill of shading in the conventional pencil sketch. The two meanings of the egg work collectively to reassert her femininity and confront the weight of male master artists upon contemporary female artists. The top segment is embellished with gold as symbolic reference to Schapiro’s aspirations and anticipations in her career as an artist. Schapiro encapsulates the strain of exertion a female artist experiences in the Fine Arts World through this highly symbolic and self-reflective creation of Shrine for Two Paint Tubes. One of Mary Beth Edelson’s most famous works of art is her Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972) (Fig. 2). In this contemporary work of art, Edelson challenges the tradition in religion of oppressing women and, simultaneously, acknowledges the often-forgotten feminine force of women who were omitted from history’s records. She achieved this by altering Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper to replace the men with depictions of female artists. Edelson also surrounds this rendering with a boarder of even more female artists – filling the space with nearly 70 powerful women’s portraits. This work of art was displayed in the “Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s”, an exhibition in London which celebrated “48 radical women artists who used their artwork to shatter the status quo, disrupt the male gaze, question assumptions of feminine identity and forever destroy the myth that art-making is a man’s game.” This exhibition and Edelson’s work of art showed women not as submissive models of inspiration or objects, but instead as commanding and confident creators, au fait and dominant of their own figures, identities, and artworks. Rosemary Mayer’s sculptural installation, Galla Placidia (1973) (Fig. 3), was titled after Aelia Galla Placidia, the Roman empress and daughter of Theodosius I (the ruling emperor of Rome from 379 CE – 423 CE). The name of this daughter, wife, and mother is used as a symbol of classical femininity, however, she was also chosen for her prominent role in Roman politics both as a regent to Valentinian III and as a strong political figure. The visual qualities of the sculptural installation resembles a vulva. The visual similarity – in color and form – represent this feminine characteristic as a means of deconstructing the consensus thought of delicate and passive femininity to reconstruct it as a pronounced and powerful presence. Galla Placidia functioned in orientation with many other Feminist Art pieces, as a reclamation of the female form to transform the meaning from the represented to the representor. Deconstructing Art to Reconstruct Society Another approach comes from deconstructing conventional approaches of thought and analyzing art to reconstruct the view through a Feminist Art lens. “In popular usage the term [deconstruction] has come to mean a critical dismantling of tradition and traditional modes of thought.” Thus, deconstructing the visual analysis of artworks will lead to an analytical understanding as well as a critical dismantling of the conventional concepts and contemplations about Art. The visual analysis example of Helen Frankenthaler and Jackson Pollock utilized the idea of reversal of artwork to scrutinize and draw attention to the language used when discussing an artist based on their sex and gender. This concept of reversal is creating an opposition through deconstruction which works to challenge the traditional thoughts about Art. By describing Frankenthaler’s soak-stain paintings with titles which reference the inspiration of water and geography from her hometown as belonging to Pollock, and by describing Pollock’s drip paintings as belonging to Frankenthaler – the language Hatt and Klonk discussed was also reversed. This reversal of language based on sex and gender was to prove that art critics construct a stereotype working with culture to fortify the patriarchy. The authors’ analysis of these two works revealed that the perspective of an art student in regard to the art they study also stems from the way they have been taught to analyze works of art and more specifically artists who are often discussed in Art theory and Art history classes. Both in classes and in readings, Pollock’s drip paintings are described as featuring action and struggle. In this reading, the authors both initially described Frankenthaler’s work as being flowing and flowery, thus when one observes Low Tide (1963) (Fig 4), the initial thought is that the painting is flowing and flowery. These classifications of the works were not dependent on the understanding and analysis of these works or their artists, but rather, were dependent on the way these works were described to the viewer. Here, lies in the beginnings of awareness needed for an adjustment in social values which is a fundamental reconstructing of society. Seeing value in the woman’s perspective negates the assertion that a woman is the opposite or negative of a man. Cessation These artworks and approaches combined chronologically and collectively from the emergence of Feminist Art to impact the disproportionate balance of social, political, and economic power between men and women. Feminist artists, such as Miriam Schapiro, Mary Beth Edelson, and Rosemary Mayer, used the female body, symbolisms and narratives of femininity as well as fertility, and their own experiences to construct and create visual imagery in their artwork. In doing so, they transformed the personal artwork into a fundamental, politically charged device used to diffuse the message of feminism and challenge the consensus of femininity. Feminist Art provoked a change in the social values of society which drove an essential deconstruction and reconstructing of cultural, political, and economical concern through the woman’s perspective. Bibliography
Barriga, Maria, Medefesser, Amy, Clingan, Joan, and Matson, Irene. 2016. “Deconstructing Feminist Art and The Evolution of New Media”. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1875241097/. Dekel, Tal. 2013. Gendered: Art and Feminist Theory. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Pub. Fields, Jill. 2012. “Frontiers in Feminist Art History.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33 (2): 1–21. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/483539. Frank, Priscilla. “8 Radical, Feminist Artists From The 1970s Who Shattered The Male Gaze.” HuffPost. HuffPost, October 24, 2016. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/feminist-artists-1970s_n_5800dfc1e4b06e0475943918. “Galla Placidia.” Livius.org Articles on ancient history, 2006. https://www.livius.org/articles/person/galla-placidia/. Grayson-Knoth, Saisha. “Feminism & Art.” Edited by Jon Mann and Kaegan Sparks. Art History Teaching Resources, n.d. http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/lessons/feminism-art/. Hatt, Michael, and Charlotte Klonk. Art History: a Critical Introduction to Its Methods. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, 145. “Miriam Schapiro Art, Bio, Ideas.” The Art Story: Modern Art Insight. Accessed November 26, 2019. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/schapiro-miriam/. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Deconstruction.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., September 27, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/deconstruction. Comments are closed.
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About this PageThis page consists of analyses, interpretations, and translations for various artists, artworks, and art movements from my perspective. Explore the Archives for more. AuthorTessa Barretto Archives
September 2020
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