5 Women Artists
Throughout this class, we have addressed women and their art starting from the middle ages to today's female artists who use social media to expand their creativity. On one hand, those female artists have represented different themes ranging from gender, class, race, and art history. Each work of art by those female artists represents women’s struggles throughout history. On the other hand, contemporary female artists have been able to break new grounds. Women artists have used their craft as a way to exhibit the issues that have plagued women throughout history. Also, they represented the new issues that are prominent today. It was “modeled on the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. The contemporary feminist movement in the arts emphasized political activism, group collaboration and an art practice centered around the personal and collective experiences of women” (Chadwick 8). These women were able to shed light on the injustices relating to sexuality, race, class, and many more issues.
1. Frida Kahlo is a Mexican Artist who is remembered for her self-portraits and use of emotion in her works. She began to paint in 1925. Her work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s. She is often celebrated in Mexico for bringing attention to Mexican and indigenous culture and by feminists for her depiction of the female experience and form. She was also regarded as an icon for the feminist movement and the LGBTQ movement. Most of her paintings were displayed through the physical pain and the emotional distress caused by her relationship with another painter by the name of Diego Rivera. Her work also mixed realism with fantasy. It aimed to explore questions of identity, gender, class, and race in Mexican society.
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| Frida Kahlo, Broken Column, 1944 |
2. Barber Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1945. She is a contemporary artist. She creates collage art, famous for her layered photographs. Most of her work consists of black-and-white photographs. Her work is overlaid with declarative captions in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", and "I" addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, and sexuality. All of her work inspires thoughts and offers assertive thinking. It is also very different from the work she was doing prior to becoming an artist. Kruger used to be a head designer at a magazine company which inspired her to create art pieces. Her art pieces critique the idea of mass media, magazines, and advertising. Some of her art pieces critique consumerism which she supported and promoted as a graphic designer for a magazine. Moreover, Kruger uses the techniques of mass communication and advertising to critique gender and identity. Her pieces could be found in overcrowded areas like train stations, skate parks, and public posters.
In the artwork below, Kruger uses the element of the male gaze to critique the desire of man, which is a woman.
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| Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face) 1981 |
3. Cindy Sherman is best known for her series of untitled films. Sherman was more in films and she was a self-portrait of her painting and artworks. She dressed in different characters and played different roles. Her roles were mostly in black and white. She also presented sexually assaulted roles. She presented the stereotypes that have arisen throughout both the history of art and the history of advertising and media. Further, she explored images of women in films of the 1950s and 60s. The first six images of the series, including Untitled Film Still #6, 1977, depict the same blonde actress at various stages of her career. Later, the character in Untitled Film Still #34, 1979, appears as a seductress, waiting at home for her lover, and in Untitled Film Still #35, 1979, Sherman might be seen as the trope of the diligent, stay-at-home wife who remains sexually attractive and available to her husband.
4. Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” was an important icon that was developed in 1974. It is a reinterpretation of the last supper from the point of view of “ones who’ve done the cooking throughout history” (Chicago, YouTube. To complete this work, Chicago employed the assistance of about 400 volunteers, both women, and men. “The Dinner Party” consists of 39 place settings that represent different women throughout history including names of 999 women from history on the floor. ). It is an interpretation of these powerful women from history sitting and having a meal together. This exhibition celebrates “feminine work” by featuring needlework. The designs on the plates are representative of the female anatomy. Each place setting has a chalice, flatware, and napkin of the same exact size, as to show the equality of all these women. In fact, the triangular shape of the table works to represent the “equalized world we want” (Chicago, YouTube). The triangle also represents the ancient symbol for the goddess. Her famous art piece is displayed in the Brooklyn Museum.
5. Yoko is a contemporary artist who is well known for her music and her performance art. She is Japanese American. Her courageous artwork was able to expose the flawed nature of how men viewed women. I believe it is incredible. Some of her performance art was correlated with Dada. She stated that “What I am trying to do is make something happen by throwing a pebble into the water and creating ripples.. I don’t want to control the ripples” (Yoko Ono). One of her most famous piece that represented both feminism and the female body was, “Cut Piece” in 1964. This was unique because she allowed the audience to have control and cut pieces of her clothing off with a pair of scissors in order to test their ability to respect her boundaries as a woman. However, many men viewed Yoko as a sexual object rather than an individual which represented reality.
work cited:
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. 4th Edition. 2007
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