How Do the Works of Yasumasa Morimura, Julie Rrap and Anne Zahalka Challenge Conventional Ways in Which Gender Has Been Depicted Historically in the Visual Arts?

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 goal for feminist artists all along has been the gender-blind interpretation of art, allowing women equal opportunity for success. Feminists have long cried for museum curators and art collectors to see more than just “male” or “female” in a work. However, politics tend to get in the way, and it may be argued that, by clamoring for equality, women have isolated themselves further, making female art a socially-conscious fad rather than a respectable institution. In Women, Art and Society, Whitney Chadwick elaborates: “Feminist critics remain sensitive to the dangers of confusing tokenism with equal representation” (1990). Fear of such tokenism, and perhaps too much emphasis placed on inequalities, has made feminism somewhat of a “dirty word” to some artists today.

Similar to postmodern art, Faith Ringgold's work appropriates unmistakable imagery and other artistic practices to offer basic social editorial. She provokes us to consider expectations for gender and race, and in addition customary desires and estimations of what art may be. Through picture and content, Ringgold changes history to make a place for women like herself in its historical advancement.

Required Text: Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, eds. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, University of California Press, 1996.

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'.

We can learn a lot about history through art. Take for example prehistoric cave painting, the painting of pictures on caves gave historians insight into the mindset of a culture that lived a long time ago. Since the invention of the printing press and television, we can learn a great deal about modern culture through newspapers, television programs, novels, and print advertisements. In this essay, we’ll explore what we can learn about 1960s American culture through a popular comic book. We will examine how gender roles were portrayed during this period and how a popular comic book portrayed the difference between male and female gender roles.

Gender credo has signified political and cultural values in Greek and Roman era. In particular women representation in artwork has pondered and reinforced the values of their times. In the articles, "Parthenon and Parthenoi: A Mythological Interpretation of the Parthenon Frieze" by Joan B. Connelly and "The Muted Other" by Natalie Boyment Kampen, the Parthenon frieze, the Ara Pacis: Imperial Family frieze, and Cornelia: Mother of the Gracchi, are pieces depicted to characterize women in their implemented roles.

In Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” Edna St Vincent Millay’s “[What my lips have kissed, and where, and why],” and “[I being born a woman and distressed]” the authors use imagery to demonstrate a shift from rigid societal rules about sex to more adventurous views of female sexuality. In “Goblin

Nochlin's criticisms of American and European society are still relevant today, women are still given an unequal chance in the art community. Modern female artists are continually critiqued harsher, especially if their artwork strays from what is deemed as an appropriate feminine piece, such as one that deals with serious political matters. Another limitation is the fact that women are mostly kept in front of the canvas as a muse rather than allowed behind it as an artist. These examples reinforce the ideas that Nochlin discusses regarding historical art injustices which one can still see

Conventionally, artist Anne Zahalka is one of Australia's most recognised artists working in photo media, questioning the conventional ways in which gender has been depicted throughout the history of European Art. Through appropriation and the utilisation of irony Zahalka highlights contemporary issue associating gender as well as questioning traditional artistic representations of women. Her use of photography allows Zahalka to explore how culture can be identified through images. She highlights photography’s ability to demand, disfigure or deny the truth. Zahalka challenges stereotypes in previous artworks by re-staging historical art scenes in ways that address the representation of gender and various cultural issues in order to reflect modern concerns. Throughout her career, Zahalka has examined the relationship between the place and the objects placed within it. Whether those objects are people, animals or objects, they often sit uncomfortably in it.

She observes how breast cancer adverts would empower women, but ones for face cream would make you feel neurotic within a simple flip of a page. She used this dichotomy to step away from the historically weighted past of Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite art movements, and find her own way to depict women, to paint her women in their own beautiful individuality. She paints “women who have been made to think they are big and disgusting, who imagine their thighs go on forever.” She sees human flesh like a piece of meat, she has stepped away from the history of perfect pubic hair, she gives her paintings no narrative, they are never in a room, a plain background is all they are given, she lets the paintings speak for themselves, invoke discussions, and show the disparity between the way women are perceived and the way they feel about their

The Nihon Shoki, one of Japan’s oldest works, has the most extant historical record of Japan. It begins with the creation myth of how Izanami and Izanagi created modern day Japan. However, this myth explicitly mentions sex, allowing for a clear distinction of gender: “the glaring excessive form in Izanagi’s body and perceived insufficiency in Izanami’s body.” Izanami’s description led to the subordination of women, as the myth describes her gender as insufficient, thus reducing a woman’s power and influence. Over time, we have developed a tacit definition of gender, as we constantly see gender depicted through the use of stereotypes in several media outlets, such as anime. Notwithstanding, media outlets, including anime, exist that challenge traditional gender definitions. In Taro the Dragon Boy and Princess Mononoke, differences exist in the portrayal of female characters; each director defines the female gender, which influences how his audience perceives and constructs gender identity, thus impacting Japan’s progress towards gender equality.

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