Postmodernist Art Movement- Feminism Art by Savanna Smith

Political Climate in Iran

savannalynnsmith — 2025-04-09 03:15:35 UTC

Shirin Neshat was born in Iran and was influenced by avant-garde photography using symbolism. After living in the United States for a few years, when she returned to Iran she saw a huge shift in the ability of freedom in women. After seeing this, this impacted her deeply. She was seeing the control on Muslim’s women's rights which inspired her protest to women's rights through her art and performing. She was inspired by the Iranian Revolution that had happened while she was in the United States and conveyed what it was like to live in these two worlds.

(https://www.thebroad.org/art/shirin-neshat)

Judy Chicago

savannalynnsmith — 2025-04-10 03:28:39 UTC

Judy Chicago, one known as Judy Gerowitz, is a very popular female artist. Her birth name was Judy Cohen then married and changed her name to Gerowitz. In the 70s though, she changed her last name to Chicago (her birth city and where her strong accent comes from) as a statement to show her independence. She initiated a feminist studio art course at Fresno State College in California and collaborated with Miriam Schapiro on a feminist art program in Valencia.They worked together on a Hollywood mansion to turn it into a Womanhouse. When Judy was involved with Womanhouse, this prompted her desire to embrace activities that were thought to be specifically for women. She was inspired to create The Dinner Party through incorporating embroidery, weaving, and china painting. The Dinner Party, as mentioned earlier, is one of her most well-known works. This work was made to honor memorable women in history with a “dinner party.” Each plate was designed for the different personalities and accomplishments for each of the invited women. Examples of these women are Sacajawea, Emily Dickinson, and Susan B. Anthony. This work was very popular with the public for the role of women in art and society. The artwork included table runners with the names of the women embroidered on it, utensils, a goblet, and a porcelain china plate with ceramic patterns. Critics commented on the table runner but not the beautifully designed plates. Some plates resemble female genitalia and were disturbing to many. This caused a lot of attention and chaos when Judy tried to donate the work to the University of the District of Columbia. They were not able to accept because the U.S. senate threatened to stop funding to the university if they accepted the “3-D ceramic pornography"(https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/post-minimalism/post-minimalism-sculpture/a/judy-chicago-the-dinner-party). In 2007 though, the art piece was placed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in Brooklyn Museum of Art.

(https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/schlesinger-library/collections/judy-chicago-through-the-archives)

Definition of Feminist Art

savannalynnsmith — 2025-04-10 03:31:30 UTC

Feminist Art emerged in the late 1960s through the 1970s because women were wanting to challenge the supremacy of males in art in society. Women wanted to be different from males and wanted recognition for women in art and womanhood. Before feminism, women were overlooked and women began to challenge this idea. By doing this, women broadened the idea of fine art. Women were now participating in all forms of art that were considered “women work” like painting, quilting, performance art, and crafts to end sexism. Sometimes this movement is referred to as Second Wave feminine art. It became very popular to celebrate female experiences like vaginal imagery, menstrual blood, etc. One well-known example of an art work is The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago that will be explained in more depth later.

(https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/feminist-art, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/feminist-art, https://www.theartstory.org/movement/feminist-art/)

Miriam Schapiro

savannalynnsmith — 2025-04-10 04:22:40 UTC

Miriam Schapiro co-taught with Judy Chicago and together they founded the Feminist Art Program in 1917. They also worked on a project called Womanhouse. It once was an abandoned mansion and they turned it into an art installation focusing on feminism. Each room had meaningful and purposeful work contributing to the ideas of feminism. Some examples of the rooms are in the kitchen there were breast-shaped eggs, a bridal staircase with a mannequin in a wedding dress symbolizing that marriage was the “ultimate” goal for a woman and this is the expectation, and in one bathroom had lipstick covered on objects and walls to show that women are to maintain a specific look and are objectified. This called attention to the desires and needs of women. These symbolic rooms expressed anger towards critics, historians, and the injustice of art-world politics. They showed that men’s subjects are not of interest to women. A powerful quote by Schapiro says “I began to see myself as another kind of artist, as a woman artist, very much connected to those women who had made quilts, who had made samplers… who are not honored, but whom I honor, and I honor them by continuing their tradition" (https://americanart.si.edu/artist/miriam-schapiro-6244).

(https://www.theartstory.org/artist/schapiro-miriam/)

Guerrilla Girls

savannalynnsmith — 2025-04-10 21:59:17 UTC

The Guerilla Girls is a group of anonymous women artists who came together and showed themselves in public with gorilla masks. They wore masks to keep identity classified and protected so that the public would not focus on the individual women but the purpose of their message. These women were artists so wanted to protect themselves and their careers. This group formed when there was an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art and there were no featured women or colored artists. The Guerrilla Girls use humor, statistics, and pop-culture to create their activist art. One of their most famous posters was asking the question “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female. It is a nude female painting wearing a gorilla mask. It was funny and eye-catching, challenging not only museums but the whole system.The idea was to show that women are objectives in art but how women are not appreciated and seen as artists.

(https://www.guerrillagirls.com/about, http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/guerrilla-girls/?utm_source=chatgpt.com )

Shirin Neshat

savannalynnsmith — 2025-04-11 04:14:16 UTC

Originally from Iran, Shirin Neshat moved to Los Angeles and while she was there began to be introduced to photography. She studied at University of California, Berkeley and then later went to University of California, Los Angelses.Her push for feminism was through gender, religion, politics, and identity all together. She did not attack the Islam religion but showed how it was used to control women. Neshat is known for her photography, film, and video installations. Her subjects in the photos are silent and calm but their body language like eyes or weapons they hold show a deeper pain. Her photography is of Muslim women in black and white with writing on them. The videos she created compared men’s experiences to women's experiences. Her films focused on freedom and oppression. Women of Allah was a series taken between 1993-1997. The photos had writing across faces, skin, clothing, etc and the women mostly also held guns or rifles looking straight at the camera. This series was most significant because it created a shift in rethinking a woman's role in Islamic societies.

(https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/486834, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shirin-Neshat, https://nmwa.org/art/artists/shirin-neshat/)

Yoko Ono

savannalynnsmith — 2025-04-11 04:52:17 UTC

Yoko Ono was a Japanese-American artist, activist, and even musician (she got more attention to her music once she married John Lennon from The Beatles). She was known mostly for her performing art though. She enjoyed creating messages and performances by inviting the audience to participate and used this to express her opinions on sexism. She was heavily influenced by avant-garde movements. One of her most famous works was “Cut Piece.” This is when Ono sat on stage and invited the audience to cut parts of her clothes off with scissors until she was nearly naked. This was very symbolic and caused reflection of the idea of objectifying women in society and in the world of art. Another popular work of hers was “My Mommy Is Beautiful” created in 2003. This was more a personal work by Yoko Ono dedicating this to her mother and all other mothers. She publicly invited people to express how they felt towards their mothers and celebrated motherhood. This could be as long or as short as desired but this work showed emotional intimacy.

(https://www.theartstory.org/artist/ono-yoko/, https://www.moma.org/artists/4410-yoko-ono, https://www.art-19.com/news/japan-nakama-yoko-onos-art-interweaving-japanese-and-american-identity, https://mymommyisbeautiful.com/)

Second-Wave Feminism

savannalynnsmith — 2025-04-11 05:25:46 UTC

The Second Wave of Feminism focused on gender inequality, reproductive rights, women’s roles, etc compared to the First Wave of Feminism focusing on fighting for legal rights and the right to vote as women. Women artists questioned why their art was not being shown and men's artwork dominated. They created the protest group, Guerilla Girls. The movement shaped Postmodern Ideas. Artwork that was known as made by like video, installation art (like Womanhouse) men became more performed by women to embrace this. The second wave influenced the feminist art movement and challenged the ideas of a male-dominated art world. Many female artists fought this idea and created bold artworks to go against this traditional way of life.

(https://www.womenshistory.org/exhibits/feminism-second-wave)