Is there a type of criticism which can be identified as feminist art criticism?
There are plenty of examples of feminist art being discussed in exhibition reviews or one-person profiles – even when the writers rarely identify themselves as feminists?
Is feminist art criticism confined to discussions of feminist art?
Where can this type of art criticism be found?
Is there a valid distinction between art magazines, women’s art magazines and feminist art magazines?
What feminist art magazines or journals have been and still are published today?
What percentage of art criticism is about women artists? their exhibitions or their work?”
What do you expect feminist art criticism to do?
offer profiles or features about contemporary women artists’ lives and works?
discuss and review only the latest women artists’ exhibitions?
offer comparisons between art by male and female artists?
discuss how the biography of an artist’s life can be read into or through the works they produce?
have feminism (as in a feminist cultural politics) as the object of its enquiry?
critique the unequal position of women artists in the art world?
name, discuss and define what feminist art is now?
offer considered and insightful re-evaluation of women artists’ works?
‘Why do the words used to describe particular paintings change when they are reattributed from a male artist to a female artist? Why are the words associated with femininity often words of disapproval in art criticism (soft, pretty, pastel, passive, etc), while words associated with masculinity are approving (strong, vigorous, assertive, challenging, etc)? Feminist work in the art world has had to engage with, disrupt and reform the partial and totalizing discourses surrounding art by women’
Hilary Robinson Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology, 1968-2014 (2015) p.129
Is the question: Not “what” but “where” is feminism?
The most common way in which feminism is discussed in newspapers and art reviews of exhibitions is with a journalist/social interest kind of approach. Most reviews attempt to test the “temperature” of feminism according to an index of whether it is “in” or “out” of fashion. The following questions typically arise and are regularly tackled in relation to most newspaper and blog discussions of feminism in contemporary art:-
- Can we identify the “trends”?
- What kind of “status” does it have?
- Is it “in” or “out” of fashion right now?
- Does it speak to issues today?
- What does it tell us about our “contemporary” – our lives or society today?
- Who is the audience for it?
- What meanings does it have for them?
Perhaps this kind of reporting (not criticism) is simply trying to answer an audience need for information about:
- Where’s it at?
- Where’s it coming from?
- What’s it about?
- Who’s promoting it?
- Where is feminist art on show?
As Mira Schor suggests, these reviews often privilege male artists as the point of comparison, rarely women artists:
‘The exhibition review is one of the most basic, routine, preliminary elements in canon formation. Reviews at the back of the major, mainstream, international art magazines are generally short texts that usually refer to at least one other artist or author to offer context and validation to the artist being considered. Almost without exception, men are always referenced to men; with few exceptions, women artists are also referenced to men. Such references do not usually involve serious efforts at comparison and analysis but rather function as subliminal mentions. Just the appearance of the name of the sire on the same page as that of the artist under discussion serves the purpose of legitimation….Women artists are rarely legitimating references for male artists – or should I say that women artists are rarely legitimated by the mention of their work in the contextualisation of a male artist, even when significant visual and iconographical elements link a male artist’s work to that of a female forebear or contemporary?’
Mira Schor ‘Patrilineage’ Art Journal 1991 p.58-63
Lucy Lippard’s recognition of this unequal comparison led her to develop different strategies to discuss women’s work:
‘My reluctance to compare can be attributed to several other things: one, my preference for a dialogue with the work itself, in the present; two, my desire to help forge a separate feminist esthetic consciousness; three, the “inauthenticity” of some of my favorite women’s art when compared to the male mainstream, and conversely the “inauthenticity” of the male mainstream when compared to some of my favorite artists’ work (these streams diverge, or run parallel, or perhaps they are oil and water; and thus a protective impulse, a resistance to bringing this art in all its newborn sensitivity into a history that has rejected its sources.’
Lucy Lippard ‘Changing since Changing‘ Introduction to From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art (New York: EP Dutton, 1976)
Here are examples of this kind of journalism, but this is not feminist art criticism, it is journalism where the subject is feminism and contemporary art:
What Makes Contemporary Art Feminist? An Art Genome Project Case Study
or Holland Cotter ‘China’s Female Artists Quietly Emerge’ in New York Times (30 July 2008) which describes the emergence of several prominent women artists in relation to their work, the art market and their husbands.
or Jerry Saltz ‘Where Are All the Women? On MoMA’s identity politics‘. New York Magazine (2007).
or Tess Thackera ‘We need a new kind of feminist art‘ – in Artsy (20 Dec 2016). Ostensibly an interview with Catherine Morris, turned into a review piece on the state of feminism.
You might like to contrast any of the articles above with:
Claire Capel-Stanley ‘Why we need feminist art criticism: a response to Jonathan Jones‘ (Jonathan Jones is one of the art writers in The Guardian in the UK) Lipmag 5 May 2014
or
Susan Steinman ‘The Crime of Candor: Feminist Art Criticism’ Studio Potter article, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1991
or
Elizabeth Garber ‘Feminist Art Criticism: Issues in Feminist Criticism Written About the Work of May Stevens‘ Working Papers in Art Education (Iowa Research Online) Volume 8 Issue 1 (1990) Combined issue 8 & 9 (1989-1990) pps. 13-22
In the next part of this lesson, we will look at feminist art criticism in feminist art and women’s art magazines and their history.
Many art journals and magazines have devoted one-off special issues to the question of feminist art. n.paradoxa online webpages have listed these so you can find them quickly and easily.
n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal was published for 20 years (1998-2017). In those 20 years, 500+ articles from women artists and writers living and working in more than 80 countries have been published.
