Reclaiming Sexuality- Cunt Art

"‘What does it feel like to be a woman?...To be formed around a central core and have a secret place which can be entered and which is also a passageway from which life emerges? What kind of imagery does this state of feeling engender?'”

–Womanspace Journal (Broude, and Garrard, 23)

Many of you may feel uncomfortable about the term ‘cunt’. The term has habitually been used to degrade and devalue women and I have to admit, I myself feel a sense of discomfort with it because of its deep connotations. And the idea of art based solely on the vulva and/or womb may also make you feel uncomfortable. However, I also feel that it shouldn’t. Women’s bodies are often looked at in society as dirty or corrupt. We are taught through popular culture and society that the vulva and vagina are a point of shame and often times mysterious, even to women. The female form and body has continually been formed around the male gaze as “conventional feminine beauty… require women to conform and contort their bodies for the (white capitalist) male gaze” (McCann, and Kim, 21). It is important for women to accept and rejoice in their bodies outside the male gaze as the body is “an integral part of one’s self, whose health and wellness (including sexual pleasure) are a necessary basis for active participation in social life” (Correa and Petchesky, 124). Cunt art provides a mode of accepting, rejoicing, understanding, and expressing the female form and body for and by women.

Faith Wilding, Flesh Petals

Beginning in the 1970s, ‘Cunt art’, created primarily by a group of women at Fresno State College Feminist Art program led by Judy Chicago, became a form of art that allowed feminists to explore and celebrate the female anatomy. The very label aimed to embrace “the derogatory sexual term ‘cunt,’ traditionally used by men to alienate women from their own sexuality, with the goal of reclaiming a female descriptor and transforming it into a celebratory term” (Broude and Garrard, 24). ‘Cunt art’ found its grounding among women yearning to represent their sexuality and bodies in a more assertive form and as one artists puts it “was exciting subversive and fun, because ‘cunt’ signified to us an awakened conscousness about our bodies and our sexual selves” (Wilding, 35).

Judy Chicago, Cunt as Temple, Tomb, Cave or Flower

The history behind ‘cunt art’ is very valuable in understanding the importance of the movement. Due to the extreme repression of women’s sexuality in the 1950s and 1960s, “it is not surprising that in the early seventies feminist artists should have taken their first rebellious step by challenging the most repressive category—the sexual. Indeed, they may have made the most radical move possible when they asserted the power to define their sexuality on their own terms, not men’s” (Broude and Garrad, 24). The imagery became an important and prominent move towards claiming women’s independence and power in society by exploring and representing their personal sexuality through art.

Judy Chicago Peeling Back

‘Cunt’ imagery is found in paintings, drawings, mixed media, and a variety of other mediums and includes images of not only the vulva and vagina but also round, womb-like images. The women at the Fresno Feminist Art Program looked at the materials used as another avenue of exploration using “production methods and materials traditionally used by women…[including] tampons, Kotex pads, artificial flowers, sewing materials, underwear, household appliances, glitter, lipstick, jewelry, old letters and journals, eggs, animal entrails, blood, and sex toys [which] were used to recombine the organic, artificial, sentimental, and anti-aesthetic in our art” (Wilding, 35).

Feminist artists such as Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro were some of the most prominent artists of the time to explore ‘cunt art’ and urged viewers not to see the artwork as “‘vaginal or womb art’, but rather as the framework for an imagery that would reverse the loathing and devaluation of female anatomy in patriarchal culture (Broude and Garrad, 24). By taking the main source of a woman’s ‘otherness’ and reclaiming it to portray a positive and beautiful identity, feminist artists gained a source of power and liberation.

Judy Chicago The Dinner Party

Nevertheless, ‘cunt art’ received a great deal of criticism from a variety of viewpoints. Many saw the work as offensive and suggested it tied women to their biological anatomy. Critics viewed the work under terms of the biological importance and “because there was no understanding of how and why this imagery emerged, and of the historical place it occupied in the interrogation of the representations of female sexuality and identity, many 1970s feminist artists were falsely categorized as ‘essentialists’ by 1980s feminist theorists.

Today, forms of ‘cunt art’ are still present in the art world. An exhibit at the David Nolan Gallery in New York City titled The Visible Vagina featured a variety of artists (including men) and chronicled imagery of the vagina in artwork throughout time. This excerpt is taken from a press release about the exhibit:

As the title of the exhibition suggests, the show is designed to make visible a portion of the female anatomy that is generally considered taboo―too private and intimate for public display. If shown at all, this part of a woman's body is usually presented in an abject fashion, generally within the context of pornography, intended, in almost all cases, for the exclusive pleasure of men. The goal of this exhibition is to remove these prurient connotations, implicit even in works of art, ever since the pudendum was prudishly covered by a fig leaf. This gesture of false modesty, it should be noted, was devised and enforced entirely by men (not only in the case of classical sculpture, but also in the Bible, in which, immediately after their disobedience in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve cover their genitalia with fig leaves). Indeed, until recently, men made virtually all depictions of the frontal nude female figure, but as this exhibition will demonstrate, that has changed dramatically in recent years. (Chan)

Personally, I feel ‘cunt art’ is a beautiful and empowering representation of the female body. It allows women to reclaim an area of their body that has become shameful and hidden in society as well as exerts women’s sexual independence over the male gaze. ‘Cunt art’ enforces the idea that the female anatomy is something to embrace and not feel shameful or hidden.

How do you perceive ‘cunt art’ in a world with pornography and sexual abuse rampant? How does ‘cunt art fit into our world?

Broude , Norma, and Mary D. Garrard. "Introduction: Feminism and Art in the Twentieth Century." The Power of Feminist Art. Ed. . Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1993. Print.

McCann, Carole and Seung-kyung Kim. "Introduction." Feminist Theory Reader. 'Ed'. Carole R. Mcann and Seung-kyung Kim. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print

Correa, Sonia and Rosalind Petchesky. "Reproductive and Sexual Rights: A Feminist Perspective." Feminist Theory Reader. 'Ed'. Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print

Wilding, Faith. "The Feminist Art Programs at Fresno and CalArts." The Power of Feminist Art. Ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1993. Print.

Chan, Katherine. "The Visible Vagina." David Nolan Gallery.Web.

Images from:

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/feminism/female_art/female_art.html

http://littleaugury.blogspot.com/2009/07/off-to-charleston-by-way-of-bloomsbury.html

http://emilypothast.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/vadge-at-the-vag/