Women creatives were often ignored or pushed to the sidelines in art history. The prestigious places in art schools were reserved for men to teach them how to paint and sculpt, whereas woman’s place in society was considered to be in the home, caring for the children and husband, ensuring that everything ran smoothly from breakfast to dinner.

Sarah Lucas, Cigarette Tits [Idealized Smokers Chest II], 1999. Credit: Andrew Russeth/Wikimedia Commons

Education was not a place for women for many years, let alone an art education.

Women who had access to the arts often came from wealthy families and had time to learn to paint or had an artist as a father or uncle, such as Artemisia Gentileschi, whose father was a prominent painter in the 16th century.

Gentileschi was the first woman to enter the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts, and her masterpieces such as Judith Beheading Holofernes (1612-1613) and The Conversion Of The Magdalene (1616-1618) revert the prominence of the male and female roles in these often depicted scenes.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the feminist ideal Neue Frau (New Woman) took shape, referring to independent women seeking radical change and later as a term used for the growing number of educated, career-minded women across Europe and the US. 

In this period, art schools began offering more opportunities to female artists, with more funding and exhibitions, however, as an ideal, it was viewed as a threat to traditional womanhood and social order.

Neue Frau artists include Claude Cahun, Leonor Fini and Carol Rama. 

In its 127 year history, the 2022 Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani, included a majority of women and non-conforming artists as a “deliberate re-thinking of men’s centrality in the history of art and contemporary culture”.

Among the artists presented is a selection of Neue Frau creatives, and more recent names, such as Paula Rego, Niki De Saint Phalle, Simone Leigh and Nan Goldin.

Gwendolyn, 1966 / 1990, Painted polyester resin on a metal base, 262.3 × 200.3 × 125.1 cm
Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation, with the additional support of Salon 94
59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams
Photo by Roberto Marossi. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

In the art world, women were more often than not seen as the subject of the artwork rather than the maker.

Painted with the male gaze, the female body becomes the object of desire, made to be consumed by the viewer, her sexuality pushed to the forefront. 

Feminist art reverts this gaze, even creating the female gaze, a theory that gives the woman agency rather than being a static, passive object. 

Barbara Kruger references this in her 1983 work Untitled (Your Gaze Hits The Side Of My Face), which consists of a photograph of the side portrait of a sculpted female face, where the gaze must be absorbed and cannot be returned.

WHAT IS FEMINIST ART?

Feminist art is part of an art movement that began to take shape between the 1960s and 1970s, its makers, who were mainly women, introduced themes that before then had rarely been used in art, such as domestic labour and the patriarchal society’s expectations of women.

This movement ranged in materials and art mediums, from painting and sculpture to installation and performance art. 

Due to the lack of access to art education, the classrooms, and consequently the tools and materials, feminist artists have often turned to, worked with, and expressed their art through unconventional means, such as chewing gum in Hannah Wilke’s works or the body itself, and its nudity, in performance art, such as Carolee Schneeman, Lenora De Barros, or Anne Imhof.

POEMA (POEM), 1979 / 2014
Black-and-white inkjet print on cotton paper. Photography Fabiana de Barros
Overall: 139.7 × 29.8 cm. Exhibition copy
59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams
Photo by Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

Exploring works that highlight inequality, sexism, and racism in society, feminist art took on an immediate protest quality, confronting the viewer on important and at times controversial topics. 

The art was not directed solely at other women, but at everyone; the general public, the institutions, and the government. 

The movement’s objective was to bring positive change to both the art world and the society in which it thrives, uprooting its years of tradition and conformity, to make room for a more liberated way of thinking.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF FEMINIST ART

There is no specific date or year to the beginning of feminist art as it has developed and evolved over the years, most notably taking form in the 1960s with the rise of the student protests, the civil rights movement, and the second-wave of feminism.

The works of female and non-conforming artists began to be taken seriously as they organised exhibitions, happenings, and cultural events outside of the museum walls.

The media coverage was at times positive, celebrating the radical change in art, and at other instances, critical of the movement’s rebellion against the status quo and use of nudity. 

In January 1972, artists and co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Programme, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro organised the exhibition titled Womanhouse.

The installation was centred upon female empowerment and questioning, subverting and exaggerating women’s conventional roles in society.

In the exhibition’s month-long duration, approximately 10,000 people visited.

Womanhouse, 1972. Credit: Sheila Levrant de Bretteville/Wikimedia Commons

As the feminist movement gained traction, it was clear that more needed to be done to include other marginalised voices, this also applied to the art world.

Intersectional feminism represents work by Black women, people who are transgender, and disabled, a feature which has pushed them into the shadows causing their work to have little representation, less access to funding, and excluded from the art world network and so forth, all in all creating a challenging atmosphere in which to become a successful artist.

In the 21st century, museums and galleries are presenting more shows of female, non-binary artists, and from different backgrounds.

The consequence of this is the storytelling of more voices, a variety of perspectives, and finally art exhibitions that stimulate and reach a wider audience.

To delve further into the world of feminist art, several books are recommended as must-reads.

They include Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? by Linda Nochlin (Thames & Hudson, 1971); Great Women Artists (Phaidon, 2019); A Little Feminist History of Art by Charlotte Mullins (TATE, 2021); and The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel (Hutchinson Heinemann, 2022).

FEMINIST ARTISTS IN RECENT HISTORY

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

Serbian visual artist Marina Abramovic (1946-) was a pioneer in the performance arts movement in the early 1970s, closing the gap between artist and viewer and using her own body as an art medium. 

At times she has even put herself in danger due to the extreme nature of the artwork.

For the infamous work Rhythm 0 (1974) presented in a gallery in Naples, Abramovic remained motionless as she became an “object” and the audience could do with her as they wished using the 72 objects laid out as part of the performance, which included a feather, honey, lipstick, whip and a single bullet.

The performance, almost becoming a social experiment, divided the public into those who wanted to harm the artist and those who wanted to play with or protect her, just as society sees women, the femme fatale and the femme enfant.

After six hours the performance ended when a man picked up the gun and held it against the artist’s head.

Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present, 2010. Credit: Andrew Russeth/Wikimedia Commons

GUERRILLA GIRLS

“Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Section are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.”

These are the words printed on bright yellow advertising-style posters placed on the side of New York buses with Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque (1814) wearing a gorilla mask.

The billboard project as initially created by the Guerrilla Girls (founded in 1985) was rejected, therefore this became plan B. 

By bringing these posters out of the exhibition space and onto the street the images reached a wider audience, they often use humour as a way of engaging the viewer and transmitting serious messages.

Guerrilla Girls, who came together in New York during the mid-80s, is an anonymous group of feminist, female artist activists.

Their objective is to continuously fight racism and sexism within the art world, by using “disruptive headlines, outrageous visuals and killer statistics to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in art, film, politics and pop culture”.

“We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights for human rights for all people,” reads the statement on the Guerrilla Girls website.  

The identities of the group members have continued to remain concealed as a way to keep the focus on the issues and not the individuals.

Guerrilla Girls. Credit: Eric Huybrechts/Wikimedia Commons

JUDY CHICAGO

In 1979, Judy Chicago (1939-) presented The Dinner Party.

This is an impressive installation of a triangular table laid with thirty-nine place settings, where each guest is a mythical or historically famous woman in history, for example, Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keefe and Virginia Woolf.

The table is decorated with hand-embroidered table runners, gilded chalices and porcelain plates with raised central motifs such as vulvas and butterflies.

An additional 998 women are named on the white tile floor.

The criteria of those chosen were that they had made a worthwhile contribution to society or tried to improve the lot of other women.

The life and work of each of them must also have had illuminated significant aspects of women’s history – plus these individuals need to have provided a role model for a “more egalitarian future”. 

Considered an epic piece of feminist art, The Dinner Party took almost six years to complete. Today it is possible to see the piece in its entirety at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York.

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1979. Credit: Gabriel Fernandes/Wikimedia Commons

TRACEY EMIN

Tracey Emin (1963-) is best known for her autobiographical and confessional works, discussing relationships, sex, and her own health.

Emin rose to fame as part of the London-based Young British Artists YBA group in the 1980s, whose works were adored and collected by Charles Saatchi. Her practice ranges from painting and sculpture to installation and neon drawing.

In 1999, Emin was a Turner Prize nominee with the work My Bed. The readymade installation consisted of her own bed, in which for several weeks prior she had slept, smoked, drank, and had intercourse in.

The result is a dirty, unmade bed with used condoms and tissues splayed on the floor, period stains on clothing, and empty vodka bottles. 

Emin presented an intimacy that is rarely shown in the art world. She presented a self-portrait from when she was the most vulnerable.

Emin dashes society’s expectations of women as tidy, timid creatures without sexual agency.

Tracey Emin, I Do Not Expect, 2002. Credit: tracey emin/Wikimedia Commons

ANTHEA HAMILTON

British artist Anthea Hamilton (1978-) intertwines humour and surrealism into her large-scale installations.

In Leg Chair (Cigarettes) (2014), black perspex legs on pointed toes, based on the artist’s own, are spread with oversized cigarettes down the middle.

The work recalls and refutes the so-called playful sculptures of Allen Jones, where life-size female mannequins are dressed in fetish clothing and their bodies become pieces of furniture – a chair, table and hatstand.

Jones’ sculptures demonstrate the patriarchal view of women as objects, both functional and aesthetic, made to be consumed and enjoyed; whereas Hamilton plays with the idea of female sexuality, consumerism, and the visualisation of desire.

TAnthea Hamilton, Project for Door (After Gaetano Pesce, 2015). Credit: Fred Romero from Paris, France/Wikimedia Commons

LUBAINA HIMID

Lubaina Himid (1954-) was the first Black woman to win the Turner Prize in 2017 with works that address racial politics and the legacy of slavery. As well as an artist, Himid is a writer, curator, and professor of contemporary art.

Between 1983 and 1985, Himid curated three influential exhibitions, Five Black Women, Black Women Time Now and The Thin Black Line. 

These shows defined a moment of radical change in British art, with the introduction and celebration of young Black and Asian women artists. 

One of Himid’s most notable works is A Fashionable Marriage (1986), an installation of larger-than-life-size figures made with cardboard and mixed media, a piece directly inspired by William Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode (1743).

Hogarth’s painting touches on both comedy and tragedy, as it satirises the lives and social ambitions of the various classes, while Himid presents a “satirical attack on funders, critics, artists, politicians and the hypocrisy of an art world that mirrored the political world but was too duplicitous to admit it”.

PAULA REGO

Portuguese-British painter Paula Rego (1935-2022) focused much of her artistic research on depicting women’s rights and abortion rights.

Opposing the anti-abortion movement of the 1990s and in response to Portugal’s 1998 referendum on abortion, Rego presented a series of pastels depicting clandestine abortions, emphasising the feelings of the whole procedure, before, during, and after.

Untitled No 1 (1998) consists of a woman with splayed legs on a bed, sitting on a towel, with a basin on the floor.

She appears to be alone, determination on her face, as she must wait for the procedure to either begin or end.

The abortion series serves as an autobiographical work, as Rego herself underwent an abortion in the 1950s which ensured the artist’s ability to continue studying.

Paula Rego, Sit, 1994, Pastel on paper on aluminium, 160 × 120 × 4.5 cm
Paula Rego, Sleeper, 1994, Pastel on paper on aluminium, 120 × 160 × 5 cm
Paula Rego, Gluttony, 2019, Papier-mache, gouache, wood, PVC, metal, cotton, tulle and fabric, 150 × 110 × 175 cm
59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams
Photo by Ela Bialkowska. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

For more on feminism, read:

• Hannah Wilke: The Feminist Artist That 70s Feminism Rejected
• How Frida Kahlo Broke All Conventions And Shaped Feminism
• Top Female Revolutionaries In Music

Cover Credit: Untitled (Beginning/Middle/End), 2022 Site-specific installation, print on vinyl, three-channel video installation (on 3 flatscreen monitors), sound. Dimensions variable. 5 mins. 35 sec.
With the additional support of Spruth Magers; Maharam
59^th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams
Photo by Roberto Marossi Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia

Writer | Glesni Trefor Williams

Glesni Trefor Williams is a Bologna-based art journalist/translator from North Wales, who focuses her writing on contemporary art and interlinked exhibition spaces. She writes for Lampoon, Spinosa Magazine, and is an arts contributor on BBC Radio Cymru. @glesniw

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