The Power of Feminist Art

Once while on retreat at Hopscotch House I started perusing The Power of Feminist Art; The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. The book is 318 pages of information I don’t know a lot about.

I have a BFA and a MA in visual art yet I’ve never had a class on feminist art. My self-guided studies had only once or twice stumbled across direct evidence of the Feminist Art movement. The more I thought about this gap in my education the more I knew I needed/wanted to mend it.

Calling their names;
a biography bonanza

I went through the index of The Power of Feminist Art and wrote close to three hundred woman's names on index cards (there are so many more that my ADD kicked in). I only wrote their names because I'm fascinated by names. I use names in my own art making. Naming is an age old power generator.

Celebrations for every woman

As I dowse the web in search of valuable information to turn my list of names into useful biographies I’m sure to run across multiple Laurie Anderson’s, Mary Boone’s, Angela Carter’s, and Susan Griffins. How will I know if the woman I find is the woman I'm looking for? It may be obvious. It may be that most of the women are "multipurpose" so an accountant could also be the artist I'm looking for or two women might share a name and they both may be artists even though only one was listed in the book. It won't matter in the grand scheme. The artists in the book are a baseline. We are open. We may uncover some unsung feminist artists. Is that so bad?

These duplicates will also fuel my curiosity about women who are doing other (extra)ordinary things and I’ll do random interviews with some of them.

Who will I leave out of
the feminist artist listings?

You’ll notice soon enough so I’ll make a disclosure. My focus will be American female visual artists. Women all over the world are making feminist art. But in my mind “feminism” is contextual and I don’t know enough about any other culture’s politics and history to tell if an artist’s work is feminist. You’ll find that even within American culture making the call can be overwhelming. Will I get really technical about who is “American”? No.

In theory men can make feminist art. In reality there are so many female artists out there making feminist art that focusing on the one gender will be enough for me to contend with. Someone else can gather info about the male artists.

I’m a visual artist. I’m going to stick with what I have a background and interest in. Again, someone else may read this and get motivated to do something about feminist musicians, electricians, students, etc.

What is feminist art?

There is not a universally accepted definition of Feminist art. However, a group I trust, The Kentucky Foundation for Women (KFW) “…recognizes feminism as a dynamic force for social change that varies across age, ethnicity, economic class, geography, sexuality, and other differences. For this reason, KFW does not promote a single definition of feminism but encourages grant applicants to describe their own understanding and practice of feminism.”

I’ll follow this self-definition rule and look for evidence that an artist considers herself to be a feminist artist.

The feminist artist section of MultiPurposeWoman has:

• art posters available for viewing and purchase
• an ever growing biography section
• reason for daily celebrations
• opportunities to discuss artwork by feminist artists

feminist art 101

Linda Nochlin,(professor)
Read Linda Nochlin's article, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" first published in Art News, Vol. 69, No. 9, (January, 1971)

Since 1993 Linda Nochlin has been the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at New York University

She received her PhD in 1963, the year I was born.

Lila Acheson Wallace, (philantropist)
(Deceased) co-founder of Reader's Digest magazine. Read a brief history received a BA in Germanic Languages and Literature, 1917 from the University of Oregon Her legacy - The Wallace Foundation