Feminist art movement
The feminist art movement is the international effort of feminists to produce art reflecting women's lives and to change the foundations on which art is produced and judged. Beginning in the United States and Great Britain in the late 1960s as an outgrowth of second-wave feminism and flourishing through the 1970s, it challenged the hierarchy that ranked painting and hard sculpture above 'women's work' - weaving, sewing, quilting and ceramics - and turned those materials, with soft sculpture, stuffing, hanging and draping, into vehicles for women's own stories. Its tactics included consciousness-raising groups, performance and institutional critique. Early figures include Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Yoko Ono, whose Cut Piece (1964) became one of its emblematic actions.
Defining characteristics
- Women's lives, bodies and labor as declared subject matter
- Craft and 'women's work' materials - textiles, ceramics, needlework - used at fine-art scale
- Soft sculpture: stuffing, hanging, draping and other anti-monumental techniques
- Performance and action as political speech (e.g. Ono's Cut Piece)
- Collective organization and consciousness-raising as working method
Key figures
- Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) — Early feminist artist of the body, memory and soft sculpture
- Eva Hesse (1936-1970) — Pioneer of soft, abject materials in postwar sculpture
- Yoko Ono (b. 1933) — Fluxus artist whose Cut Piece (1964) made the body a feminist statement
Example works
- Cut Piece — Yoko Ono (1964)
- Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper — Mary Beth Edelson (1972)
Sources
- Feminist art movement - Wikipedia encyclopedia