Feminist Art
Started: 1960s
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KEY ARTISTS
 | Judy Chicago Quick View Artist Page |
| Judy Chicago |  |
| Judy Chicago is an American feminist artist and author. Originally associated with the Minimalist movement of the 1960s, Chicago soon abandoned this in favor of creating content-based art. Her most famous work to date is the installation piece The Dinner Party (1974-79), an homage to women's history. Art Story: Judy Chicago Artist Page | ||
 | Miriam Schapiro Quick View Artist Page |
| Miriam Schapiro | |
| Miriam Schapiro is a leading figure in the feminist art movement. Often tied to the 1970s era Pattern and Decoration movement, Schapiro creating a path forward for herself and her colleagues as she worked to resurrect the reputations of women artists who had been forgotten or dismissed by art historians. She is perhaps best known for co-founding, along with colleague Judy Chicago, the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute for the Arts. Art Story: Miriam Schapiro Artist Page | ||
 | Barbara Kruger Quick View Artist Page |
| Barbara Kruger | |
| Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of Kruger's work merges found photographs taken from existing sources with pithy and aggressive text. Her captions engage the viewer in the work's greater struggle for power and control. Art Story: Barbara Kruger Artist Page | ||
 | Carolee Schneemann Quick View Artist Page |
| Carolee Schneemann | |
| Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relationship to social bodies. Schneemann's works have been associated with a variety of art classifications including Fluxus, Neo-Dada, the Beat Generation, and happenings. Art Story: Carolee Schneemann Artist Page | ||
 | Hannah Wilke Quick View Artist Page |
| Hannah Wilke | |
| Now seen as an iconic and path-breaking Feminist artist, Wilke's performances and photography are a crucial component of the Feminist movement in their use of the artist's own body in ways that addressed issues of female objectification, the male gaze, and female agency. Art Story: Hannah Wilke Artist Page | ||
 | Jenny Holzer Quick View Artist Page |
| Jenny Holzer | |
| Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual and mixed-media artist. Her work is best known for using a variety of text, propaganda imagery, sound, video and light, all of which she attempts to incorporate into public spaces, thus bringing artistic experience directly into the world. Art Story: Jenny Holzer Artist Page | ||
"Because we are denied knowledge of our history, we are deprived of standing upon each other's shoulders and building upon each other's hard earned accomplishments. Instead we are condemned to repeat what others have done before us and thus we continually reinvent the wheel."
Summary of Feminist Art
The Feminist art movement emerged in the late 1960s amidst the fervor of anti-war demonstrations and civil and queer rights movements. Hearkening back to the utopian ideals of early-20th-century modernist movements, Feminist artists sought to rewrite a falsely male-dominated art history as well as change the contemporary world around them through their art, focusing on intervening in the established art world and the art canon's legacy, as well as in everyday social interactions. As artist Suzanne Lacy declared, the goal of Feminist art was to "influence cultural attitudes and transform stereotypes." Feminist art created opportunities and spaces that previously did not exist for women and minority artists, as well as paved the path for the Identity art and Activist art of the 1980s.
Key Ideas
In 1971 at the California Institute of the Arts, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro founded the first feminist art program. Chicago said she was "scared to death of what I'd unleashed," but, at the same time, "I had watched a lot of young women come up with me through graduate school only to disappear, and I wanted to do something about it." They did do something: she and Schapiro founded Womanhouse, a space for collaborative feminist art projects, that became a foundational model for the movement.
Important Art and Artists of Feminist Art | |
 Artwork Images | Some Living Women Artists/Last Supper (1972)Artist: Mary Beth Edelson Artwork description & Analysis: Mary Beth Edelson used an image of Leonardo da Vinci's famous mural as the base of this collage to which she affixed the heads of notable female artists in place of the original's men. Christ was covered with a photo of Georgia O'Keeffe. Aside from challenging the painting's male-only club, it also confronted the subordination of women often found in religion. The piece quickly became one of those most iconic images of Feminist Art and reinforced the movement's desire to negate women's absence from much historical documentation. Lithograph on paper - Smithsonian American Art Museum |
  | Womanhouse (1972)Artist: Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro Artwork description & Analysis: The installation Womanhouse encompassed an entire house in residential Hollywood organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro as the culmination of the Feminist Art Program (FAP) at California Institute for the Arts in 1972. The twenty-one all-female students first renovated the house, which had been previously marked for demolition, then installed site-specific art environments within the interior spaces that ranged from the sculptural figure of a woman trapped within a linen closet to the kitchen where walls and ceiling were covered with fried eggs that morphed into breasts. Many of the artists also created performances that took place within Womanhouse to further address the relationship between women and the home. Mixed media site installation |
 Artwork Images | ArtForum Advertisement (1974)Artist: Lynda Benglis Artwork description & Analysis: In 1974, when artist Lynda Benglis was feeling underrepresented in the male-heavy art community, she reacted by creating a series of advertisements placed in magazines that took critical stabs at traditional depictions of women in the media. Her most famous ad was run in ArtForum in which she promoted her upcoming show at Paula Cooper Gallery by posing nude, holding a double-headed dildo, with sunglasses covering her eyes. She paid $3,000 for the ad, a small price for something that would establish her as a major player in Feminist art history. Also, by paying for the ad, Benglis was able to assure her voice would be heard without editing or censorship. She later cast a series of sculptures of the dildo, bent into a smile, a cheeky "f*** you" to the male-dominated art institutions. |
More Feminist Art Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 01 Feb 2017. Updated and modified regularly. 
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