She thinks material that humiliates women in this way should be restricted, shut away from the public eye, instead of flaunted as it's been in the past. One example she makes is that if the public perception of women is that they are objects, a rapist might safely think he's done nothing wrong.…
It was then that after being inspired by social activism she truly began to develop her own style as an artist. She continued making art for many, many years, as well as published a series of books.…
Penney Byrne and Fiona Hall are both artists that push the boundaries to the art world. They are a range of mix media artist who mainly focus on sculpture pieces. They mostly focus on social and political messages through their artworks concerning today’s issues that create an impact to the audience, by challenging and provoking them. The focus on using everyday ordinary objects that we see day to day and turning them to become something that shocks and makes the audience question and rethink the significance of what the art work it trying to portray through the postmodern art style.…
Jennifer Parks addresses the question of what constitutes a radical feminist position on assisted reproductive technology and argues that the debate over whether ART liberates or oppresses women is misguided, and that instead the issue should be understood dialectically. Jennifer Parks explains that reproductive technologies are neither inherently liberating nor entirely oppressive: rather, we can only understand the potential and effects by considering how they are actually taken up within a culture. Parks demonstrates the internal contradictions, tensions, and inconsistencies within ART and the way it is addressed within the law points to a dialectic that resists a simple reductivist understanding. The author explained that the dialectical nature of ART produces two contradictory images of what families are an can be: on one hand, it promotes a family not bound by what society rules as traditional and…
Brown, Betty Ann. 1996. Expanding Circles: Women, Art and Community. New York: Midmarch Arts Press.…
In the 1980’s, female artist addressed the dominance of cultural perceptions regarding female agency, pleasure, and spectatorship. In order to make their voice heard in a white male dominant art industry, they created works of art from paintings to films that challenged the social stereotypes and ideologies about female identity. This essay will define these three perceptions and examine the artworks from artist such as Julie Dash, Kobena Mercer , and Jenny Saville. These artists paved a way for the feminist movement through the use of disturbing the normative constructions of femininity, racial identity, and the body.…
Before the late 19th century women were not accepted to study into official art academies, and any training they were allowed to have was that of the soft and delicate nature. This may be why that during the early years of the modern feminist art movement, the art often showed “raw” anger from the artist. “The Feminist Art Movement began with the idea that women’s experiences must be expressed through art, where they had previously been ignored or trivialized.” (Napikoski, L. 2011 ) The artists of this movements work showed a rebellion from femininity, and a desire to push the limits. Women artists began to protest at art galleries and institutions that would not accept them or their work. Some also started opening women’s learning facilities of their own, such as Judy Chicago did in 1971, when she established the Feminist Art program at Cal State Fresno. The…
In Leo Tolstoy’s definition, the highest form of art is that which brings people together for a greater cause and for the bettering of humanity. Activist art attempting to bring attention to social and worldly issues certainly brings people together, and when these people are brought together, they are typically all in agreeance that a change is needed for the betterment of humanity. Activist art holds a special quality in that it is able to call out to masses and heavily influence others to become aware of current issues within the world and truly inspire people to make changes within their lives to help whatever…
2 Pollock, Griselda. Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. (London:Routledge, 1988), 172.…
Linda Nochlin’s essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists, pays critical attention to the way in which we look at art through a gender lens. The question is not whether women are capable of producing great art but rather why have they been kept in the shadows. Nochlins essay is a founding document of feminist art history that explores powerful relationship between gender and art and the history of dynamic tension. Edmonia Lewis is not only an example of a prolific female artist, but is a sculpture of African American and Native American decent. In Lewis’s sculptures we see stylistically neoclassic imagery with an important twist, she puts her own identity at the periphery. Lewis work encompasses themes of religion, freedom and slavery and while she sometimes depicts African, African American and Native American people in her sculptures, she more often neutralized her subjects race or ethnicity which made her art more acceptable to the social norms during the 19th century. In order to achieve professional fulfillment, women during this time had to deny their femininity but for Edmonia Lewis this extended even further into denying her culture, race and identity. Had Lewis not been a woman, had she not have been born from a Chippewa Indian mother nor an African father, would she have been celebrated more for her artistic genius?…
While women have achieved equality along with political and social independence in many ways over the past century, contemporary feminist movements continue to blossom as gender expectations and stereotypes remain deeply embedded in our culture. Today and in the past, feminist notions about the social norms that limit women's possibilities have yearned for expression and have found this through various artistic outlets. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin, and the 1944 Film Gaslight are three artistic works that relay feminist themes in a unique way. These three works differ in certain aspects, but all ultimately embody the same underlying theme of the oppression and liberation.…
Addressing issues of language and sign, Kruger has often been grouped with such feminist postmodern artists which she was interleaved by Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Martha Rosler, and Cindy Sherman.[6] Like Holzer and Sherman, in particular, she uses the techniques of mass…
Cindy Sherman was one of the well known and most respected photographers in the late twentieth century. Rather than doing self portraits for her photographs, Sherman depicted herself in the roles of B- movie actresses. On one level, Sherman’s work appears to be subversively linked to ‘low’ art characterized by ‘b-grade’ film and photography, on another level, her work is regarded as the modernist ideal of the ‘high' art object. Sherman has raised challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art. Sherman has been acclaimed as the subversive feminist that has boldly confronted issues concerning the female body. Even though some critics look at Cindy’s works as demining the women and exposing the women into low standards through her photographs, Cindy had a strong message for the viewers. In 1992 Sherman embarked on a series of photographs now referred to as "Sex Pictures." Sherman is not in any of these photographs for the first time in her career as an artist, yet she uses dolls and prosthetic body parts posed in highly sexual poses. She chose to often photograph up close and in color both female and male body parts which were purposely meant to shock the viewers. Sherman continued to work on these photographs for some time and continued to experiment with the use of dolls and other replacements for what had previously been herself. Critiques imply that the viewer is guilty for the negative readings of Sherman’s images. In a way Sherman’s constructed image of woman is innocent, and the way we interpret it is based on our social and cultural knowledge. Referring to the reaction of a gallery visitor who criticized Sherman for presenting women as sex objects, I would say that the visitor’s anger comes from a sense of his own involvement because the images speak not only to him but from him. Critiques depicted Sherman as a whore for producing such photographs but…
There are many contemporary artists in the world that provoke conversation on controversial topics. Keith Haring, Francis Bacon and Barbara Kruger are a few examples of artists with a message. These artists have all created works that "evoke a sense of struggle 'against the system.'" Not all of these outspoken artists share the same vision, but they have fought their own personal battles to get their message out to the public.…
Feminism is the movement that aims to gain a better understanding of gender inequality, politically and sexually. Feminist fight on issues such as domestic violence, sexual harassment, and discrimination. Feminist also argues that they are treated unequally with issues that include stereotyping, oppression and patriarchy. When looking at pieces of literature such as Chopin “Story of an Hour,” Gilman “Yellow Wallpaper,” Williams “Streetcar Named Desire,” Henderson “Trifles,” and Mina Loy “Feminist Manifesto you see the actuality of how poorly women and even married women were treated throughout the years. Feminism represents the next step in the evolution of the feminist movement.…