Five Women Artists


Throughout this class a recurring topic of discussion was focused on the way females are perceived in society and how the artwork made by women addresses the power struggle faced by women and their journeys to explore themselves through art to find their identities.


Lilly Martin Spencer:

Lilly Martin Spencer was a popular artist in the nineteenth century. She was brought up in a reformist household with educated parents. She was part of the group of female artists who had to use their education and professionalism to support themselves and their artwork. Her artwork depicts many aspects of the domesticity and household life for women. A piece of hers that is my favorite is We Both Must Fade, made in 1869. This piece shows a young woman in her prime, the peak age of beauty and grace, she is adorned in a beautiful dress. The message behind this is that this young girl will age as will her beautiful dress, eventually the color will become old and washed out and the dress will look out of date like how a woman is thought to age. Eventually, this young woman will start to age and become less “appealing”. Her artwork turns tables by taking the role of women in society and showing the importance of their work and labor. Although many of her paintings depict women in a domestic role, they show the women embracing this role and they are happy knowing that they enjoy what they are doing and are confident that their role in society is important.


Suzanne Valadon:

Suzanne Valadon was an artist. Her artwork mainly features female nudes and portraits and combats the typical identity of how the female body is perceived. Her work constructs female identity, shows that women are controlled by their own emotions, sexual instincts, and biology. For her work, she received backlash and instead of being seen as a strong feminine artist, she was perceived as a pseudo-male and associated with masculinity and inconsistency. Her two very well-known pieces The Blue Room done in 1923, and Grandmother and The Young Girl Stepping into The Bath done in 1908 are perfect examples of what her work stood for. They show a woman who can own her body on her own. The women in the painting are not posed sexually, they look almost awkward and do not give the viewer the opportunity to sexualize the subject. Also, the bodies of the women in the painting do not fit societies expectations of how a woman’s body should be. This shows that a woman can still be confident with herself and own her sexuality and her biology which is based off how she looks.


Frida Kahlo:

Frida Kahlo was a very famous Mexican artist from the twentieth century. She was born to a German father and a Mexican mother and often explores her racial and cultural identity in her artwork. Her paintings serve as a way for her to discover and become familiar with her own body and its strengths and vulnerabilities. Her artwork is largely surrealist and explores her creative potential as an artist. Her piece My Birth was created in 1932 after the death of her mother and after she suffered a miscarriage. This piece shows the pain and suffering that not only she, but other women are put through. Women are expected to be maternal figures of comfort and the pain and suffering surrounded by motherhood and everything that comes along with it is often overlooked. This piece shows maternalism in such an aggressive and violent way that it combats the sexualization and eroticism surrounding the female body when it comes to pregnancy and motherhood. Frida’s artwork addresses identity, gender and race roles, and speaks to her true feelings and emotions and it is important because the topics she addresses pertain to the female experience and the female form. Although her artwork is extremely famous today, Kahlo’s work was widely unknown and flew under the radar until about the 1970s when it was rediscovered by historians and became a powerful symbol in the feminist and LGBTQ movements.


Shirin Neshat:

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian videographer and photographer. Her early life consisted of being surrounded by western culture and western femininity. Her father often encouraged her to be her own individual and take her own risks. She was well-educated and brought up in an Islamic religious based household because of her maternal grandparents. Her work often provides a bridge between two differing topics. In her piece Turbulent made in 1998, a woman and a man are shown side by side on two different sides of a film. While the man sings a sweet and poetic song, the female shrieks and screams wordlessly and eventually the man stares at her shocked at what he is hearing. It addresses the role of women in Islamic society and shows how women are constantly pushing boundaries and rebelling against societal norms whereas men seem to stay confined and conserved to do what is expected of them. Neshat’s work is very feministic and proves that women will not be silenced throughout the power struggle for equality and are stronger when working together than when they are separated.


Yoko Ono:

Yoko Ono has a variety of types of artwork, she is a photographer, filmmaker, singer and songwriter, and a performance artist. She was raised in japan and lived there for most of her life. As she entered adulthood she struggled with mental illnesses such as depression and was briefly placed in a mental institution until she was eventually released. She was a talented conceptual artist and used performance art to speak on subjects that were important to her. Her work Cut Piece done in 1964 is a performance where she is dressed in a suit and she invites members of the audience up to cut pieces of her suit off. This addresses issues of female sexuality and gender through costume and dress pieces. The performance ends under the discretion of Ono which goes to say that ultimately she has control over herself and her femininity.