5 Women Artists 

You know that you've had a successful semester in your Art & Women course when you sit with the question 'Can you name five women artists?' and know immediately that you can.  The fact that I can answer that question without hesitation is only half of my success.  My real success comes from sitting for hours going back and forth with myself as to which five, and only five, that I will chose to discuss. I wonder, if I were to work with Judy Chicago and be asked to invite some of my favorites to the Dinner Party, who would they be and how would I choose?   Instinctively, I find myself wanting so much to go back in time and dirge up my favorites such as Artemisia Gentlischi (who rightfully so sits at the original table), Elisabetta Siriani and Sofanisba Anguissola, but it's time to leave the Renaissance in the Renaissance.  So here I am finding myself moving into the modern world.  A world where some of these women are actually my contemporaries; at least they could be had I been a little (or a lot) more creative, motivated and inspired; possibly with the help of a take no prisoners feminist muse that had the power to give me some artistic ability....but I think that ship has sailed.  Let's let bygones be bygones.  

Let us take a look at the heroines of Post-Modernism. With Modernism came a strong social movement.  Post Modernism offered more questions than answers to the questioned posed.  Post Modernist artists forced the viewer to question feminism, civil rights, and gay rights, among all other human rights that people were fighting for all over the world.  It became an issue of intersectionality for female artists, especially for those of color.  It's important to know that those voices came from every corner of the world. 

To begin, let's look at Ana Mendieta who was born in Cuba in 1948 and came to the US as an orphan refugee in 1961.  Mendieta was a performance artist, painter and sculpture. Her art was created with the common themes of feminism, violence against women, life, death, identity and belonging.   Her humanist form knows no era or culture.  Her Silueta Series, 1978 uses the Earth Body as an art form using the four elements of nature.  In 1983 she was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.  She was married to Carl Andre in 1985 and died by his hands the same year.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/sep/22/ana-mendieta-artist-work-foretold-death

Next, is Elizabeth Catlett.  Ms. Catlett was born in 1915 in Washington, DC.   She was a graphic artist of sculptor.  Much of her artwork focused on the female African American experience. She received her degree from Howard University and was later admitted into Carnegie Institute of Technology, only to be refused when they discovered her race.  In 1946 she was awarded a fellowship to work in Mexico City where she lived and worked for 20 years.  Much of her art has a African and Mexican influence.  She, too, exposed many racial injustices in her artwork.  http://www.artnet.com/artists/elizabeth-catlett/

Betye Saar, born in 1926 in Los Angeles, California.  She is a visual storyteller and printmaker.  She was part of the Black Arts Movement of 1970.  She, like Catlett, turned her focus onto civil rights and race issues. Her work The Liberation of Aunt Jemima became a symbol of revolution and political action.  Ms. Saar is still alive and living in California. https://www.artsy.net/artist/betye-saar

Embarrassingly enough, it was in this class that I had learned that Yoko Ono was in fact an artist and not just the wife of one,  John Lennon.  Born in 1933, Japanese American Yoko Ono was a multimedia artist and peace activist.  Ono used performance art to push people into uncomfortable spaces to see how they felt.  She used her honeymoon as a Bed In for Peace to protest the Vietnam War.  https://www.theartstory.org/artist-ono-yoko.htm

Finally, we will look at Sherin Neshat.  Sherin is Iranian born visual artist who was born in 1957.  She was an Iranian visual artist who liked to capture the public and private life and Islam and the West and women's position in both aspects of their life. In 2010 Neshat was names Artist of the Decade by Huffington Post critic G. Roger Denson. http://www.artnet.com/artists/shirin-neshat/

What do all five of these women have in common?  Well, that's easy, no?   They are all women of color who chose to make art that speaks of their identity and for what they believe people should made aware of.  They are issues, that without such art, may not make the mainstream media.  They all   highlight the intersectionality of their lives in their work and create pieces of protest.  Basically, they are all pretty bad ass and these are the 5 contemporary women that Judy Chicago should find room for at her Dinner Party.  

WorkCited
Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society,  5th edition, (New York: Thames and Hudson), 2007.