Feminist Art

Where does all this leave the question of women, art and feminism? First, surprisingly few women seriously concerned with art participated actively in the women's liberation movement of the 1960s. Around 1970 movements of women artists began tentatively to form. By 1972 more women artists (and a few other women art workers) were willing to call themselves feminists, but even now the women's art movement is notable for its almost total focus on simple reform, for its tendency to assume that its demands can be achieved well within the structure of advanced capitalism, and for its general failure to raise the issue of what a feminist art or art criticism might be. Among art historians the situation seems to me to be worse, and the few art historians who consider themselves feminists have been forced to work largely on their own.

Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of the growing force of feminism is the small but increasing number of exhibitions devoted to women artists, both past and present. Attempts have also been made to mount exhibits of "the image of woman" in art, although these shows have tended so far to range from incoherence to outright sexism. Articles on women artists and on the feminist art movement are beginning to appear in the more established art magazines. Several new publications have been started: Women and Art, Feminist Art Journal, Womanspace Journal. Cooperative galleries of various sorts have been founded.

Feminist Art is different from feminine sensibility. Feminist Art is political propaganda art which like all political art, should owe its first allegiance to the political movement whose ideology it shares, and not to the museum and gallery artworld system. Since feminism is a political position (the economic, political and social equality of women and men) and feminist art reflects those politics, it could even be made by men, although it is unlikely that at this point men's politics will be up to it.... In fact, talking about any form of political art within artworld limitations and audiences is absurd. Not very much in the way of feminist art criticism of the contemporary scene has appeared so far. Feminist art criticism of the contemporary art scene will, I think, be forced to remain weak and restricted so long as feminist art, art history, and art teaching continue undeveloped.