Feminism

What Is Feminism?

Feminism by definition is the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state.1

The Basics 

Feminist artists sought to create a dialogue between the viewer and the artwork through the inclusion of women's perspective. Art was not merely an object for aesthetic admiration, but could also incite the viewer to question the social and political landscape, and through this questioning, possibly affect the world and bring change toward equality.

Before feminism, the majority of women artists were invisible to the public eye. They were oftentimes denied exhibitions and gallery representation based on the sole fact of their gender. The art world was largely known, or promoted as, a boy's club, of which sects like the hard drinking, womanizing members of Abstract Expressionism were glamorized. To combat this, Feminist artists created alternative venues as well as worked to change established institutions' policies to promote women artists' visibility within the market.

Feminist artists often embraced alternative materials that were connected to the female gender to create their work, such as textiles, or other media previously little used by men such as performance and video, which did not have the same historically male-dominated precedent that painting and sculpture carried. By expressing themselves through these non-traditional means, women sought to expand the definition of fine art, and to incorporate a wider variety of artistic perspectives.

The representation of the woman's body and of female sexuality continues to be politically charged and to express the tension between personal and public identity. Today's generation of women artists, like Kara Walker and Jennifer Linton, continue to speak directly about sexism and equality in their works. The topic persistently shows up in works as diverse as Mary Schelpsi's Beauty Interrupted, 2001, which shows a model walking down a runway covered in a blur of the artist's white brush strokes that obscure both her eyes and her rail thin ideal, and Mickalene Thomas' paintings that reframe the identity of African American women while dismantling historical beauty memes. Whereas the Feminist Art movement opened doors for these very important dialogues, female artists continue to pinpoint the exhaustive and never-ending presence of its issues.3

Sources 

1 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/feminism

2 https://revisesociology.com/2017/02/03/feminist-theory-summary-sociology/ 

3 https://www.theartstory.org/movement/feminist-art/history-and-concepts/#later_developments_header  

Image 

Karen Finley | A Woman’s Life Isn’t Worth Much | 5/18/1990 | Originally at Franklin Furnace, New York, NY 

https://www.artstor.org/tag/feminist-art/

Artforum magazine - november 1974 lynda benglis' controversial double page ad 

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/artforum-magazine-november-1974-lynda-1826996096  

Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975 

https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/53501/Carolee-Schneemann-Interior-Scroll