Gender Essay in Art.

In 1971, Linda Nochlin issued her article “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? This idea of aesthetic genius, says Nochlin, is fiction. Art is rarely produced entirely by the artist for the idea of personal expression. Few identifiers in contemporary art have been as fraught as the term feminist art. What does it mean, who defines it, and how does it relate to past accomplishments of the feminist movement?

The question of “why feminism?” has been presented to a number of female artists who deal with strong constructions of gender in their work. The answer, overwhelmingly, has been the desire to modify stereotypes about women that have prevailed in male-dominated art history. In the 1960’s, women who explored “feminist” issues in their art were criticized, causing mass mobilization and conscious raising as to what, exactly, was the purpose of feminist art (Crowell, 1991). Since that time, women have been trying desperately to overturn the art world and rescind the traditional stereotypes and images that have plagued them. Feminist artists created somewhat of a unified front during that

Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity was written by Griselda Pollock in 1988, and later published in The Expanding Disclosure in 1992. Griselda Pollock is an art historian, and writes this article for fellow art historians. This is an article written to show the different approaches to femininity in the late 19th century, mainly dealing with the field of art. This article shows how during this time period there were women artists, but due to the gendered ruled ideas attached to art history, these women are largely ignored by art historians. Pollock thought that these women artists are primarily overlooked due to the fact that they are judged by the same standards that are affixed to the work of their male counterparts. But she argues

(Millhouse, 2011) In the 1980’s Pollock’s Feminism “critiqued the essential myths of individualism, the artist, and the social constructions of femininity and masculinity that define bourgeois culture”. While the 70’s feminism movement aim was to stand next to the existing masculine dominated culture. “Feminism's encounter with the canon has been complexed and many-leveled: political ,ideology,mythological,methodological and psycho-symbolic” (Pollock, 1999). The 1970’s movement was followed by the immediate task which was “the need to rectify the gaps in historical knowledge created by the consistent omission of women of all cultures from the history of art” (Pollock, 1999). The only art that was put on display was significantly male dominated work, if you wanted to see work created by women, you would have to view them “in a basement or storeroom of a national gallery” (Pollock, 1999). Female artists are only known in their own category of female artists while male artists don’t require a separate category . Art that is created by females have been historically dismissed from the art historical canon as craft, as opposed to fine art. The evident of

1985 (Figure 2) first appeared in 1985 plastered on billboards around New York City. The piece is illustrated in monochrome colours so to not distract viewers from the meaning of the poster. The harsh contrast in colours between the black writing and white background make the piece stand out and draw the attention of bypassers. Written on the artwork is a list of well-known museums in New York City and beside them is a score of how many women artists have had one-person exhibits there in the past year. The results showed that the Guggenheim, Metropolitan and Whitney museums each had zero, whilst the Modern museum had one. These results are supposed to shock the audience and make gallery curators feel a sense of guilt, that it’s clear the art world don’t appreciate women artists like they do men. Whist they are confronting the public with that truth they are also providing another critical message with this piece. The Guerrilla Girls identified these museums by first name, not out of convenience, but to make a statement, that the only museums to allow women artist some form of respect like male artist do was the ‘modern’ museum. Emphasising the fact that gender discrimination and bias nature in the art world should be in the past, and the only museum that realises and recognises this is the modern one. The poster’s main message challenges the patriarchal world of art and confronts art galleries

Every girl growing up always use to play dress up in clothes as a childhood past time for fun. Cindy Sherman used that passed time as a way to create art with photography and is known for her talent of this act and taking self-portraits of it. Her ideas come stereotypes of women throughout past and present society. These self-portraits are known to “confront and explore the representations of women in society.” (Jankauskas).

In addition, I will examine the differences between male and female sexuality and how each tended to be perceived and treated by society. Then, I will look at prominent female artists and their personal experiences and beliefs on feminism and the female in their art focusing on how it tended to be received along how male artists responded to it. Mainly, I will be analyzing the clash of sexualized images in art, focusing on the differences not only between male made art versus female art, but the differences in the women’s art community, as well. What are the reasons and goals for women to use a “sexualized image” of women in their art versus

* Through the postmodern frame of reference, explain how artists have appropriated historical artworks. How has the artist incorporated parody and wit into the work? In what way has the artist questioned the values implied in the original artwork?

I fell in love with methodologies of art history. I felt empowered in that, through my own interpretations, I could attach words and meaning to objects. My study of art history reached a turning point when, in 2012, I took a class entitled Identity in a Post-Identity Art World: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Trans/Nationality, 1990 to the Present. The course endowed me with another lens with which to examine works and, more importantly, shed light on representations of marginalized identities. As a result, I was introduced to the writings of Judith Butler and Simone de Beauvoir, both seminal theorists who inspired my own analyses. I enjoyed every minute of conducting research and forming arguments to support my claims. Ultimately I was interested in developing my understanding of issues in contemporary art further and sought to accomplish this by engaging with a larger

The characters Sherman portrays, lighting, clothing and expressions are cliché of what is present in cinema, so much that viewers of her work have told Sherman that they ‘remember the movie’ that the image is derived from, yet Sherman having no film in mind at all.[iv] Thus showing that her word has a pastiche of past cinematic genres, and how women are portrayed in cinema and photography and how Sherman has manipulated the ‘male gaze’ around her images so they become ironic and cliché.

Judy Chicago (artist, author, feminist and educator) has a career that now spans five decades. In the late 1960s, her inquiry into the history of women began a result of her desire to expose the truth of women’s experiences, both past and present. She still continues on a crusade to change the perception of women from our history, “Women’s history and women’s art need to become part of our cultural and intellectual heritage.” (Chicago, 2011) Through our history women - their struggles, accomplishments and contribution to history, have been overlooked, downplayed and even completely written out of a male dominated society and culture. In anthropologist Sherry Ortner’s 1974 essay “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” she supports this view, writing “…woman is being identified with—or, if you will, seems to be a symbol of—something that every culture devalues,” (Ortner, 1974) Where Mendieta's work primarily came from a striving to belong and an understanding of where she came from, I feel that Chicago's aim was to find a place for all women, past and present in this world, starting with herself in the art world. Chicago did explore her peronal heritage in later works entitled 'Birth Project' and 'Holocaust Project'.

The physical body has been seen as many things both positive and negative. It can be thought of as the temple which houses the soul or can be seen as entrapping, like a cage of flesh. More often it seems that the body, especially women’s bodies, are looked at in more complicated ways than the bodies of men. As I grew up, it began to feel more and more like my body, and the bodies of other women, did not actually belong to us like we believed. Through my Women’s Studies class I have gained more knowledge on the body as a political object. In this essay I will examine six different articles with the similar theme of women’s bodies, the expression of those bodies and how by using feminism as a political standpoint they gain power and ownership of their bodies.

Throughout history many artistic works have been deemed "great" and many individuals have been labeled "masters" of the discipline. The question of who creates art and how is it to be classified as great or greater than another has commonly been addressed by scholars and historians. The last quarter of the 20th century has reexamined these questions based on the assertions that no women artists have ever created or been appreciated to the level of "greatness" that perpetually befalls their male counterparts. The position that society has institutionalized on women as unable to be anything but subordinate and unexpressive is a major contributor to this claim. Giving a brief history of gender discrimination in the art

     For many years society has embraced the idea that the difference between men and women were biologically determined. Thou through traditions, media, and peers we act accordingly to how others view us. Each individual has pressure placed upon them based on their gender. Our sex is determined by genetics while our gender is programmed by social customs. Some theories interpret that a women is tender and a loving mother while on the other hand men are aggressive hunters and are the dominant one of the family. People who support this theory seems to believe that men and women are happier when fulfilling the roles nature determined for them. Women are to be nurturing and men are to be providers by

There is some disparity between the way critics and philosophers like Judith Butler view Cindy Sherman's work and the way that Cindy Sherman speaks of her photographs. It may be the disparity that exists between many modern artists, who often operate on an intuitive level, and the philosopher critics who comment upon them from a theoretical perspective or a pre-established framework. On one level, Cindy Sherman may only be playing "dress-up" (as she herself admits) in her famous History Portraits (1989-90) (Berne, 2003). On another level, however, her "dressing-up" may be indicative of a deeper problem in modern gender identity theory which is the problem of "becoming" woman (Butler, 1994) or, as Judith Butler sees it, the problem of performativity. In the History Portraits, Sherman may certainly be said to be "performing" and perhaps even attempting to "become" the male and female characters she represents in her work. Indeed, it is upon such a premise that philosopher critics and gender theorists find her work so engaging. This paper will examine Cindy Sherman and her History Portraits in relation to Judith Butler's gender theory, the portrayal of the self, and how gender identity has changed throughout the course of modern history. It will examine representations of womanhood from Romantic Idealism to Post-Modernism and will also