What is the Feminist Art Movement

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Feminist art is art by artists created consciously in light of developments in feminist art theory in the early 1970’s. Though hard to pinpoint it’s thought Linda Nochlin’s essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? first sparked debate when published in 1971, she explored the social and economic factors that had prevented talented women from achieving the same status as their male counterparts.

Building on that idea were parts of John Berger’s book Ways of Seeing in 1972, which, among other things, explored differences in representation of men and women, Berger concluded ‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’, essentially saying Western art was replicating the unequal relationships already embedded in society.

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As what’s known occasionally as the first wave feminist art, women artist began to create work that dealt with the feminine experience, they began to explore vaginal imagery, menstrual blood, body art, conceptual films and using techniques previously dismissed as ‘women’s work’ such as embroidery.

One of the most Iconic works of this time is Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (shown above). The installation shows 39 place settings arranged along a triangular table for various mythical and historical women. The piece functioned as a symbolic history of women in western civilization. Below shows a test place setting that the artist created for author Virginia Woolf.

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The progress made by previous generations of feminist artists as meant that many contemporary creatives working in the 21st century no longer feel the responsibility to identify as ‘women artists’ or openly address a women’s perspective in their work. Rather many artists produce work that is focused on their individual concerns as opposed to a general feminist message.

This can be seen in the work of artists like Tracy Emin or Cindy Sherman, whose self-portraits take on the role of iconic stereotypes and questions the male gaze. While Sherman doesn’t identify as a feminist artist herself, her practice grew from and is connected to the first and second generation of feminist artists.

My work I feel can take on some of these ideas especially relating to Cindy Sherman, ideas of not forceful feminism anymore however just slightly pointing out and bringing out photographs to get people to notice things and look at things differently in terms of feminism and females in relation to males. Cindy Sherman has been my biggest influence throughout the project for me personally as I try to generate ideas from looking at the way she works and generated images that allowed people to generate their own ideas.

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