FEMINISM
- Feminist activity in the arts emerged as one of the most significant developments of the 1970s.
- 1970 women were paid half the wages of the average male
- illegal abortions were killing thousands of women each year
- divorce laws favoured the male
- most ivy league colleges in the US still did not accept women
THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION IN ART
- by the late 1960s and early 1970s, Canadian women artists, most of whom were members of the baby boom generation matured
- they entered an art world that had been dominated by male artists, but a world that was changing because of the Feminist Revolution
- by the mid-1970s, women had moved into positions of power in the public and private art institutions
- female head of the National Gallery of Canada in 1966 – Jean Sutherland Boggs
Feminism & Art
-MARY PRATT benefitted from the new movement and the acceptance of a broader range of subjectsalso techniques – such as photography
–JOYCE WIELAND (wife of snow)
–Wieland is credited with blurring the boundaries between art, craft, and the media
- making male and female sexual imagery and political and ecological issues acceptable as art
- introduced the narrative, the personal and the autobiographical into Canadian painting
- -at the beginnings of their careers, their husbands given more attention by the art world than them
Work By Francine Larivee
- -her intention was to create a Feminist statement – has been described as a Feminist Manifesto
- the work re-examines the role of women and men in society
- it is in fact a social manifesto and is an integral part of the feminist artistic movement.
Judy Chicago
THE DINNER PARTY, 1974-77
(AMERICANFEMINIST ARTIST)
The first major statement of Feminist Art in the U.S. The installation piece shows 90 dinner settings, each for female writers, poets, artists and important historical woman who were overshadowed by their male counterparts. The table setting included ceramics, needlework, and embroidery.
Larivée comparison with Chicago
- in 1982 it was shown at the Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal along with Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (1979)
- however it is important to emphasis that both artists intentions were different
- Chicago’s work – also an installation showed an imaginary dinner party with sexualized place settings
Joanne Tod
Self Portrait political message about female subjectivity in North American culture
- is an image copied from an ad in a fashion magazine
- in an ironically pointed portrait of how the gendered self is portrayed for and by women themselves
self portrait as a prostitute
- title suggests that women have been prostituted not only to fashion an advertising but also to domesticity
- all are manifestations of patriarchal power and ideology
Having Fun Joanne
both images focus on the gestures of the female dancers
-the ballerina shows the typical affected gesture of mock resistance and compliance to seduction
^ portrayal/depiction of women in art
Therese- Joyce Gagnon
LES DEMOISELLES DE BANFF (1990
- -put in the place of the five prostitutes in Picasso’s 1907 painting, LES DEMOISELLES D’AVIGNON, five women artists and performers that she had met in the artist’s colony at the Banff Centre during the late spring of 1989
- -the setting is the artist’s studio in Montreal
- she populates the studio with women who were “ready to claim their rights as artists, and at the same time, had decided to deny any connection with the women in Picasso’s work”.
- expressions – rebellious attire – show that these women are not to be considered sexual objects
Jana Sterbak
JANA STERBAK, VANITAS: FLESH DRESS FOR AN ALBINO ANORECTIC, 1987,
could be considered sculpture – or body art
- 50 pieces of flank steak stitched together – initially worn by a model
- then hung on a hanger to cure
- Sterbak is essentially depicting the female body as meat – controlled by men
ATTILA RICHARD LUKACS
-this theme of the representation of the male and the masculine by gay artists such as Lukacs recall the feminist works we’ve seen
–thus gender and sexuality are two important politicized issues explicitly raised by postmodern Canadian and by current feminist and gay criticism and theory
