My Personal Art and Feminism

Feminism and art are both extremely important in my life. And in every aspect of my art I think about my personal feminist beliefs and incorporate those beliefs. To me, my art is an opportunity to express my emotions and outlook of the world in relation to those issues I feel most passionate about.

Nevertheless, my current concentration is in graphic design, and with the media portraying images that ultimately perpetuate patriarchy and hegemonic beauty standards, I have a unique struggle to face. As a graphic designer, I will most often work for a client to represent a specific aspect that my employee wants to portray. This is where I am nervous the most that I will have a problem in my future career. It is difficult to turn down a client when this issue arrises because my income will come from these projects. How do I walk a tight line between what the client wants portrayed and what I refuse to perpetuate in society?

In these regards, I hope to be able to give the client what they want to represent in a way that will respect my personal beliefs. I am firmly confident that this will make me a better designer because I have the ability to look at an image and understand the social and cultural implications the image holds because of my background in women's studies. I can experience a design through the eyes of a socially-conscious woman and understand how another facet of society will comprehend it.

Although I feel this challenge will be difficult, I plan to take it head on. Designing is something that I think I am meant to do and I have the opportunity to create artwork that will be seen by a large group of people. Through these means, I also plan to continue to grow in my feminist beliefs and help others to understand feminist theory and thought through art.

Seeing the Body- The representation of the female body through women’s eyes

"Feminists who portrayed the human body or used their own bodies in their art created some of the most radical and provocative works of the 1970s. Since then, the body has been an image, an idea, and an issue of continuing significance in women's art." (Frueh, 190)

The body is a highly debated topic in both feminism and society at large. Our bodies are the sites of self identification and understanding as well as form our experience of how we interact with the rest of the world. The female body in art has been a studied figure for centuries, however, the understanding and representation of the female body has transformed throughout time. The female body has also become degraded and devalued and images of the female form have become taboo in society. A certain degree of self-loathing for one’s body has also increased over time with eating disorders and body image issues rising.

Louise Bourgeois, Femme Couteau

Beginning in the 1970s (as with most feminist art movements and trends), the body became a place for self exploration and enjoyment. Feminist artists of the time began to affirm “not only the authenticity of their own experiences that informed their art, but also the beauty and sexual and spiritual power of the female body as correctives to idealizations…” (Frueh, 190). With the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the widespread use of the pill, women began to explore their bodies and their own sexual pleasure. These experiences came out in images and art created during the period in a positive form. Previously, the female form was idealized and a myth in artwork that worked against women as an impossible image to live up to.

Alice Neel, margaret evans pregnant

Today’s popular media constantly influences us with the ‘ideal’ body size. This constant reminder to fit into hegemonic beauty standards influences women’s understanding of their own body and their own personal worth. Women are expected to conform to these beauty standards, “Just as the Classical Greek nude occludes women’s bodies in this kind of aesthetically rigid form, so the socially correct beautiful body disciplines—and punishes—women, through frustration, guilt, anxiety, and competitiveness with other women” (Frueh, 195). Furthermore, by depicting the female form in its most natural state, artists were challenging patriarchal norms, as “’real’ female bodies were taboo within patriarchy, so it was left to [artists] to create works critiquing and challenging society’s homogenized dictates” (Frueh, 194).

Through the work of feminist artist’s focus on the female body form, a more positive and accepting image appeared in art. The female body became the site of positive spiritual presence, erotic powers, and sexual appetite. Some feminist artists even looked to the goddess as a site of inspiration for independence and power as the “’Goddess symbol for women is the affirmation of the female body’” (Frueh, 201). The Goddess also symbolizes “the female body [as] a heroic status that resonates with political, sexual, and soul-inseparable-from-the-body presence” (Frueh, 201).

Body image has always been a difficult topic for many of the women I know in my life, including myself. With images in advertising and media of the ‘perfect’ body, it is difficult to look at your own body with a sense of aesthetic beauty. In a patriarchal society, where the female body is in some way inadequate and incomplete, low self esteem is not something that should come as a surprise to any of us. However, with feminist art portraying the female body not only in more accurate forms, but also positive forms, it gives power back to the female form and women who experience these art pieces.

Frueh, Joanna. "The Body Through Women’s Eyes." The Power of Feminist Art. Ed. . Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1993. Print.

Images from:

http://previousexhibitions.fondationbeyeler.ch/e/html_11sonderaus/27eros21/02_bild_bourgeois_07.htm

http://altogether-elsewhere.blogspot.com/2009/03/alice-neel.html

Symbolizing Environments- Womanhouse

“Womanhouse became both an environment that housed the work of women artists working out their own experiences and the ‘house’ of female reality into which one entered to experience the real facts of women’s lives, feelings, and concerns” –Judy Chicago

I know, I know, I have written quite a bit thus far about artwork from the 1970s, however, the artwork from the 1970s created during the feminist art movement present some of the most complex, intriguing and informative pieces to my personal interests in feminist art. Thus comes about Womanhouse. Created by 21 students from the feminist art program at the California Institute of the Arts and led by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, the house presents a real life representation of the constraints the suburban housewife face, “ideas and viewpoints first articulated in Betty Friedan’s 1963 The Feminine Mystique” (Raven, 51). The house, located in residential Hollywood, was an abandoned building, which was donated to the students and later torn down as planned by the city of Los Angeles. The seventeen-room mansion was transformed in only 6 weeks into a gallery that lasts just one month in 1972 between January 30^th and February 28^th but ultimately affected feminist art inevitably.

Sandy Orgel, Linen Closet

Each room became the site of a different installation discussing an aspect of the confinements of the 1950s housewife and woman. The rooms included the Nurturant Kitchen with plastic fried eggs and breasts mounted on the walls, Menstruation Bathroom with sterile white surroundings except for blood soaked pads, and Linen Closet with a nude mannequin stepping out from the shelves between linens. Each room became a complete environment which represented the everyday life of women.

Susan Frazier, Vicki Hodgetts, Robin Weltsch, Nurturant Kitchen

Womanhouse became the site of the public visualizations of women’s frustrations within the private sphere. Before the building was demolished, “Womanhouse made a widespread difference in feminist art making and in all subsequent American art. Entirely new aesthetic subjects that had until then remained in the distant shadows of suburban American homes burst into the public sphere through the installation and performance art of Womanhouse” (Raven, 48). The installation artwork provided the environment of understanding the overwhelming feelings experienced by women while the performance art aspect brought the ideas truly to life.

Judy Chicago, Menstruation Bathroom

The performance art pieces happened throughout the different rooms of the house and either related specifically to the area enacted, or brought about a new facet of private life. Judy Chicago’s play, for example, titled Cock and Cunt was performed in the living and outlined dialogue between a female and male about doing the dishes, touching on traditional gender roles. Other performance art pieces involved the students simply sitting in the rooms enacting a specific practice such as in Leah’s Room where one student sat in front of a mirror continuously applying make-up to her face “expressing, the artists said, ‘the pain of aging, of losing beauty, pain of competition with other women. We wanted to deal with the way women are intimidated by the culture to constantly maintain their beauty and the feeling of desperation and helplessness once this beauty is lost’” (Raven, 60).

The impact of Womanhouse was both immediate with viewers crying, laughing, empathizing with the performance art and installation pieces and long lasting as Womanhouse has continually influenced the art world. Womanhouse became such an important aspect of feminism because it “held the raw, explicit expression of an incipient feminist sensibility that has, to this day, provided a source and reference for a tradition of innovative and socially concerned contemporary art made by women” (Raven, 61).

Womanhouse has proven to be a conglomeration of performance and installation art that ultimately includes a wide range of artistic expressions, which, in my eyes, stands as one of the greatest feminist art accomplishments of the century. By turning the private public, it also created a visual expression of the pain and confinements women felt during the time and still to this day continue to feel. And although the house only stood for one month to the public, its legacy and impact on the world of feminism and art are obvious. This is one piece of work that makes me wish I could travel back in time to experience.

How would this experience today impact society? If Womanhouse was in some fashion recreated today, would it have a similar effect on the public?

Raven, Arlene. "Womanhouse.” The Power of Feminist Art. Ed. . Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1993. Print.

Images from:

http://artnews-catherine.blogspot.com/2009/08/feminist-art-judy-chigaco-and.html

http://art-history.concordia.ca/cujah/essay6.html

http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/1120212912.html

Performing art- Women in performance art

“Performance is not a difficult concept to us [women]. We’re on stage every moment of our lives. Acting like women. Performance is a declaration of self – who one is…And in performance we found an art from that was young, without the tradition of painting or sculpture. Without the traditions governed by men. The shoe fit, and so, like Cinderella, we ran with it.” –Cheri Gaulke (Fox)

Performance art covers a wide range of actions, however, feminist performance art seems to be aimed at identity and exploration of self much like previous forms of art already discussed. Performance art includes dance to one-woman monologues and interactive art pieces to audio based showings. It creates an immediate connection between the artist and audience.

Meret Oppenheim, Feast

Feminist performance art has become a significant and important part of feminist art. Beginning in the 1950s, public performance art continues throughout today’s society. In 1950, Meret Oppenheim gave a spring feast for a group of friends and “served a banquet on a woman’s nude body. The artist described the piece as follows: ‘it was not just men, not a naked woman for men only, but a fertility rite for women and men” (Fox). The 1970s, during the feminist art movement, brought about some of the most significant performance art pieces of the century. Marina Abramovic was a major contributor during this time period with performances such her Freeing the Voice where she laid on her back with her head tilted back screaming for three hours until she lost her voice and her and Ulay’s Relation in Time where they tied their hair together and sat motionless for 16 hours.

Marina Abramovic, Freeing the Voice

One of the most significant aspects about performance art is the immediate connection the viewer makes with the artist and the emotional impact the viewer often feels. Often times, performances evoke some kind of emotion, which the artist can use as a form of conscious raising and awareness. As with feminist performance art, the artists’ identity in relation to gender, society, and patriarchy are often the main theme of the piece.

Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Relation in Time

Personally, I feel performance art is incredibly effective in feminism primarily because of the reason already stated, that it connects the viewer and artist in a very emotional way. The performance can easily make the viewer feel sad, confused, angry, happy, and an array of other feelings, which will ultimately impact the way the viewer understands and further relates to the artist. Performance is also an important representation of the artist’s identity in the context of society.

Performance art also speaks to the everyday performances we enact in society to follow culturally sanctioned norms and traditions. Performance art is simply a premeditated conscious act while performing gender norms are engrained into us and we enact them in an unconscious form. With that said, Performance art, and in particular feminist performance, has the ability to consciously bend and twist society’s perception of acceptable behavior. By doing performing actions one would not ‘normally’ see, the viewer often feels uncomfortable and uneasy. Nevertheless, this adds the effectiveness of the art because it grabs their attentions and forces them to think about situations of conditions not previously understood.

How does feminist performance art fit into the feminist movement? And how can it be understood in terms of identity?

Fox, Oriana, “body tracks.” N.P. 2010. Web..

Images from:

http://bodytracks.org

Reforming art- The Feminist Art Movement

"What was revolutionary in feminist art…was not its forms but its content. Feminist artists’ insistence on prioritizing experience and meaning over form and style was itself a challenge to the modernist valorization ‘progress’ and style development…” (Broude, and Garrard, 10)

The Feminist Art Movement began in the 1970s with women discussing and thinking about their identities, bodies, and experiences as women in society and how this looked and felt in the art realm. They “differed from past women artists of the fifties and sixties most of all in the deliberate grounding of their art in their socialized experience as women and—the corollary of that position—in their acceptance of women’s experience as different from men’s but equally valid” (Broude, and Garrard, 21). They began to search for an understanding of women’s collective circumstances and how this affected gender and society. The female body became a central focus point and many feminist artists defined their goal to be “‘the de-colonizing the female body,’ reclaiming it from masculine objectification” (Broude, and Garrard, 22).

Feminist artists began to consider the body (both male and female) and how they relate with society. Many artists “created body images for the female viewer…directed to the lesbian gaze” (Broude, and Garrard, 22). By creating the images in mind for females, the artist takes away the connotations and implications of the male gaze towards the female form. The body became a site of celebration and acceptance (see my post on ‘cunt art’ for examples during this time period) as well as sexual desire. Other artists focused on love between males and females, such as Joan Semmel who “sought gender balance through images of men and women in bed together, ‘sensuality with the power factor eliminated’” (Broude, and Garrard, 22). Still other artists aimed their imagery in re-envisioning the male form with negative societal connotations. These artists looked to the body as an impact full and culturally significant form which conveyed a particular message to a particular audience.

The feminist artists within the movement began to think consciously and critically about their intended audience and how this could change the perception of art. Artist strove to create “a dialogue—between art and society, between artist and audience, between women artists of the present and those of the past—and with collaboration as a creative mode” (Broude, and Garrard, 22). These artists strove to create not only visually beautiful and emotional pieces, but also work which sought out a social context.

Nevertheless, feminist artists of the seventies have since been labeled essentialist. Although I disagree with this labeling, their connections between the biological female form and feminine characteristics have been viewed as a form of essentialism. I feel, on the other hand, that the exploration of the female body by the artists of the feminist art movement was not intended to be seen as biological determinism but more as a representation of a positive view of female anatomy not seen in previous years through society nor art. I feel that this movement advanced the acceptance and understanding of women’s identity through art and is a very significant period in feminism.

Do you consider these feminist artists to be essentialists?

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.

Creating identity- Claude Cahun

At a time when anti-Semitism and homophobia were widespread, Cahun’s daring self-portraits were revolutionary in their challenging traditional notions of gender, race, sexuality, and identity. –Danielle Knafo (Knafo, 30)

Claude Cahun, Untitled (1930)

Claude Cahun was a little known surrealist photographer who constantly challenged society’s understanding of gender and identity through her amazing photography in the 1920s and 1930s. I have always viewed photography as a significant aspect of art and one that contributes to our societies knowledge of past and current events and Cahun’s photographs stand out as an important step in feminist art. Cahun used photography to depict a range of gender identity and personal self, which stood out for its time period. As she “was one of the first 20th-century females to dress up and photograph herself in the name of art”, her work is groundbreaking for both photography and surrealism (The Guerrilla Girls, 62). Nevertheless, she is often left out of surrealism books and anthologies while listed as a man in others.

Claude Cahun, Untitled (1927)

Cahun was born Lucy Schwab in 1894, however, she later chose the name Claude Cahun, a gender ambiguous name. Her photographs also depict this gender ambiguous nature as she played constantly with the fluidity and performativity of gender by dressing like masculine youth, ultra feminine maidens, or completely ambiguous androgynies. She stood out from her male counterparts in both photography and surrealism at the time, and “instead of presenting herself as a passive object ready to be consumed by a heterosexual male gaze, she defiantly presents herself as both object and subject of her own sexual fascination” –The Guerrilla Girls (63) Male surrealist artists often viewed the female form as an object, something to be owned and consumed, and the “Surrealist manipulation of the female body can best be understood as a visual and aesthetic manifestation of male perversion (Knafo, 36). Cahun’s images also focused on the female body, however, “her photographs embrace her own image and challenge the gaze that had become accustomed to objectifying women” (Knafo, 36).

Cahun also toyed with the idea of identity. By continually changing her appearance, she suggested the different forms of identity and gender roles a woman was able to perform. She became both the self and the other through her multiple images and “by performing her Otherness through multiplicity and artistically playing with her marginality, she engaged her audience to reevaluate some of the possibilities of what a woman might be” (Knafo, 56). This concept of fluidity in identity is still not fully accepted today in society.

Claude Cahun, Untitled (1928)

Nevertheless, Cahun also suffered from a sense of loss and confusion as her past family relationships were strained and difficult. Her mother was taken to a psychiatric clinic as a young age and her father sent her away to a boarding school soon after. She later fell in love with her step-sister who became her life long partner, however, this relation caused a great deal of stress in the family. Her images reflect this difficult past with a constant search for identity.

As an artist, Cahun took a major step in changing the perception of women and gender. She stood as a female figure in a predominantly male controlled art form, and as a Jewish lesbian in times of homophobia and anti-Semitism, her commitment to her art becomes even more significant. She challenged societies understanding of a woman, gender, and identity through her formation of a fluid identity and a gender not necessary bound by labels. I feel she is also an amazing example of how we perform and create gender simply through appearance and body language. She mastered an understanding of how we perceive gender and identity to be able to easily change it. Her photographs speak directly to Cultural feminist theory suggesting that gender is a constructed set of actions one is not inherently born with.

Knafo, Danielle. “Claude Cahun.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 2.1 (2001): 29. Women’s Studies International. EBSCO. Web.

The Guerrilla Girls. First. The Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: the Penguin Group, 1998. Print.

Images from:

http://www.preview-art.com/features/actingup.html

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/